Wednesday, June 29, 2011

A deep sentimental story about me pondering the philosophies of life

Ok, so this sort of story usually belongs to http://happinessequalsbracket.blogspot.com/ (for some reason I always think the stories are made up), but yeah this is a true story that happened to me while I was sitting in my car.

At the traffic lights I was looking out the window and saw this guy in a wheelchair and he looked about 40 or 50. Anyway, the street that we stopped at was really really steep like at a 20 degree angle, sort of like that street outside our school on the cross country route, the one next to the big public road? Forgot what it's called. Anyway the guy had to wheelchair himself up that hill and it looked really difficult because he didn't have any of those rails at the side of the wheels and the armrests really restricted the pushing movement. Basically it was one of those wheelchairs that are designed for a person to push you rather than you wheeling yourself. Anyway, halfway up the hill he gets really tired and tries to stop so that he can rest. Except he can't really hold tight enough on the wheels and he starts to slip and eventually he ends up at the bottom of the hill again. After a few seconds he just looks up at the hill and starts pushing again. I didn't see what happened next because the light when green but yeh, for a long while I thought "Wow, this guy can never walk again and can't even go up a hill and there are people out there (myself included) who complain about stuff like the HSC". Watching that man just looking at that hill and trying again really put things in perspective for me.

That is all.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

What I do on the Internets

Quite a long while ago Alex told me that revealing embarassing entries in my Google search history would make for an interesting blog post. I thought this was a great idea but unfortunately I knew that I cleared my search history everyday to hide embarassing searches. However, when I googled a way to recover search data, I found this site.


It turns out that if you have a Google Account, then Google will keep a record of every search you have ever made. Privacy issues aside, this was pretty cool because it meant I could look at a list of every Google search I have made since Year 7. I spent about a very long time looking through the pages. It was kind of nostalgic, which is kind of sad.

There's also a feature which lets you see your most frequent search terms. Now, I would guess that a lot of people reading this probably have an image of me as a pretty untainted, innocent kinda guy. So that these people can continue holding this wholesome image of me, I have strategically blurred several terms on this list. The rest of you can fill the gaps with your imagination.


This isn't really an accurate representation of what I do on the internet. 'Kol wiki' is from some text-based game I was really into during Year 8. I don't look up Crysis 2 anymore since the game came out. 'Daily clicks' is for Neopets, which I have played intermittently over the years. 'Thesaurus' is to help me write my English essays (though I've kicked that habit now). And I don't really go on 4chan that much anymore.

The Top sites thing isnt really that accurate either since I only enabled it to start tracking a few weeks ago. I think the 'most visited' page on Chrome is a better representation. Right now it reads 'Facebook, Formspring, rogerebert.com, Youtube, Kongregate.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Really Really Bored

This is more of a stream of consciousness thing here so don't expect anything particularly interesting.

The only reason I'm writing this post is because I'm really really bored and I don't feel like doing any work but I still have to look like I'm doing work, so I remembered that I can post in this blog and that typing looks like doing work and so I'm doing this post. Everyone also seems to have formspring but I'm trying to resist the temptation of getting for some reason I don't even know. Maybe it's because I want to prove to myself that I'm not a conformist. But I have a feeling I'm going to get one soon even though there is absolutely no peer pressure for me to get one. Don't you hate it when people say "Countries like Africa"? Africa isn't a country!!! It's a continent!!!! So there can be no countries "like" Africa because Africa is not a country!!! Blair's 3U speech today was really good. Actually my class is full of excellent public speakers and I'm so glad the majority of them went today so that hopefully Ms Mayers will forget how good those guys were last week. But there are still some pretty good speakers left, in fact I think there's still a good majority of good speakers left, if not all of them are good. Great, now I sound like a suck up. To balance things out, I'll say that there is a really crappy speaker in my class. OK now I sound like a douche. Man I really hate the red squiggly lines under words which are supposed to be wrong but they really aren't, they're just proper nouns.

Oh, almost forgot, today was the happiest day of my life because I finally broke the 1000 point barrier in fruit ninja arcade mode!!!!!!!!! WHHOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! Damn it!!!! Another squiggly line. Anyway, high score of 1043. Check it out on Raymond's iPad. There's also a screenshot of it. As if iPad isn't a word! Stupid Alex got 1199.

I haven't watched any movies in quite a while and the only games I have played for the past few weeks are Bejeweled Blitz (EVERYBODY SHOULD PLAY THIS!!!!), Zuma Blitz and Fruit Ninja plus the odd random FaceBook game. You guys should really check out Fruit Slasher. It's a really really really really really really really really really crappy version of Fruit Ninja.

My life seems to have lost a lot of purpose after Steve Carrell left The Office. I'm afraid to watch the episodes after because I think they might ruin the glorious Steve Carrell period I watched. Will Ferrell was so bad he almost ruined the farewell to Michael Scott. I don't even know why he was there. He isn't even a permanent character, he just showed up for the farewell. Or should I say the "Ferrell"? Haw haw haw. Oh man not these type jokes again.

That is all.

Friday, June 17, 2011

Stuff I did in the last two weeks

This exciting blog post will be about all the stuff I've done in the past two weeks. In roughly chronological order:

Shakespeare Festival
Was kind of fun. We were fully unprepared and were practising in the car on the way there. The people there didn't laugh at our jokes as much so it felt kind of awkward. They're still deciding whether or not to let us through to state because (of all things) we went over the time limit. Tim and Louie are hoping we don't get through because the State Festival is on the week before trials.

The festival was at William Clark College which is a pretty well to do private school. All the buildings looked so impressive that we went exploring out of the school. We tried to go into the library but the guy kicked us out because we looked super dodgy as a bunch of asian dudes wearing full black drama clothes. That was pretty awkward.

Exams
Were mostly okay. I found 4U maths really hard and I wasn't very confident about my Physics answers. I was severely lacking in motivation for this round of exams so I feel that I could have tried harder. (Except for English. I tried pretty hard for that because it's pulling me down.)

Minecraft!
I have been developing my floating rock island and it's looking pretty good now.



During my studious studying, I managed to build an okay looking house. I also tried to build a TNT cannon. In Minecraft, a TNT cannon is a structure that uses TNT to propel another block of TNT a very long distance before it blows up. It works because if TNT explodes while in water, it can propel objects but won't destroy blocks. But I kept stuffing up the design and the TNT didn't fall into the water. And when that happens it just destroys everything and you have to start again.

To add to my troubles, I kept falling off the floating platform. While a floating island looks cool and everything, it's pretty annoying to get back into if you fall off.

Watching X-Men: First Class
Okay this is actually the real reason I wrote this post. I watched X-Men with a whole bunch of other guys yesterday and afterwards Alex asked if I was going to write what I thought about it on my blog. So here is my attempt to write a serious review about this movie.

The movie shows the first meeting of Professer X and Magneto and the events that surrounded the revelation of mutants to human society. It's centered around the Cold War, in particular the events surrounding the Cuban Missile Crisis. Putting everything in a historical context allows for a more complex plot and gives a bit more weight to the action. It makes the movie look more serious than say, X-Men 3 or Thor.

But the effectiveness of the movie is lost to its plot. It weaves around all its characters without finding some kind of focus. The movie should have focused more on Charles and Erik rather than spending so much time going through the other mutants. I suspect that comic-book fans wanting to see all their heroes was behind this decision.

In the end I found the movie to be alright. It is quite well paced and some of the performances are quite charming. The final act plays out nicely. But it needed some kind of emotional edge which could have been brought by perhaps giving more insight into its characters.

Monday, June 6, 2011

Formspring

I've had a Formspring for a while now but I never shared it because I worried that noone would ask me questions. I also didn't know how to publicise my Formspring without looking like a wanker (seeing as I already use my MSN pm to publicise my blog).

Anyway, for various reasons all of that doesn't bother me so much anymore. So here's my Formspring:

http://www.formspring.me/vincentkong


(I will give answers as serious as I think the questions are.)

Friday, June 3, 2011

Movies

For our faithful readers out there expecting another deep and meaningful post, this is my return to our traditional topic of movies. So movies that I am currently really excited about are:
  • Super 8 - some kids make a film and discover aliens I think. Not too sure because it doesn't actually say in the trailer but it's pretty obvious.
  • X-Men: First Class - I really didn't like the X-Men origins movie and the Xmen 3 also seemed a bit lame but I hope that this new one is better with a decent director (this guy also directed Kick-Ass)
  • Green Lantern - Not really too sure about how good this one will be but it seems kind of interesting
  • Cars 2 - Even though the last one was my least favourite Pixar movie, I still think it's going to be good because it's Pixar.
  • Transformers 3 - I think this going to be crap, but I still want to see robots fight each other. And that new chick.
  • Cowboys and Aliens - just look at the title
  • Crazy, Stupid Love - STEVE CARELL!!!!!
  • Johnny English Reborn - I haven't seen Rowan Atkinson for so long
  • Hugo Cabaret - New Martin Scorcese film
  • The Adventures of Tin Tin
That is all.