minolta 404si dynax results:

My first roll was just to get a feel for the camera, most shots were done through automatic settings.

Mantis Tech. Internship

Just begun an internship with Mantis Technologies today as apart of my industry project which students take in their final semester.

My project is based around project management, regarding processes that occur once a client has signed off on a proposal (for eg. a website, e-commerce packages, real-estate packages etc.) to when the final product is delivered and maintain. Some time related troubles are occurring from such factors like scope creep and bottle-necks arising at certain parts in production. Additionally, we have also been fortunate enough to be working with some internal projects that they do on a daily basis (according to David). These type of internal projects include some web based programming in ASP.NET, (X)HTML/CSS and PHP, so hopefully we will find the time and complete this aswell as the project mentioned above. Now the research begins, (n).

I’m definately looking forward to this experience, and glad to be working with such an established company here on the Gold Coast.

EHRL @ Jubilee

What a night. It was an spontaneous decision to go see these guys last night, I was at home when I phoned up Laura to ask her if she wanted to head up to Brisbane and see EHRL at around 5:30pm when the gig started at around 8pm. So after picking her up we made our way up, cold cold trip – temprature was around 13C, lucky we had Stuvyesant Classics.

After passing through numerous road work signs and going through several detours we eventually made it to Brisbane, this place is foreign to me and I always seems to loose my bearings real good each time I drive up there. I had printed directions of <a href=”http://maps.google.com”>Google Maps</a> from the Pacific Motorway right up to the Jubilee Hotel, what a failure this turned out to be though. At no point in the trip up we saw any of the street names that Google had pointed us to, I guess this could be due to Brisbane’s lack of road signage? hmm. Anyway, an hour went by searching for this place until we couldn’t take it anymore and pulled into the nearest 7-11. I was becoming paranoid about the car, the spoiler is a little faulty and has come off before – as we pulled up the car park was one way so around the car park we went. Coming out of it I managed to scrap the bottom and continued to drive just a little before hearing a loud scratching noise. Hazard lights on, I quickly got out of the car and had a look - what a sight, it looked as if I had really had a prang : )

Anyway, managed to bang it back in and pulled over on the side of the road. Laura and I went into the convenient store to get some directions, man we where not in a good mood – the store clerk was a tall man, slightly bearded and and spoke to us as if he weere under the influence of some heavy narcotic.

                    “Can I helppppp youuuu with anythingggggg guys?”

His voice was drozy, almost like he was sleep talking.

                   ”Ah, yeah we are just wondering what is the quickest way to get to Fortitude Valley from here….”

He took a little while to process what we had just asked him.

                  “Ohhh, right right……..Just go down this road, keep going…..keep going…..keep going….pass the 5-way….keep going and pass the adult stores on your right, and you should be there…”

Well, after taking his directions, and driving around for another 20 minutes we’d realised that his directions were no good. Dam smacky.

Needless to say, we did eventually make it to the Jubilee Hotel, and had only missed one band. As we went to the bar, I bumped into Jamie, an old friend who I saw EHRL back in 2006, when they supported Coheed & Cambria -

Quiet Steps were due to play next, these guys are great – they put on a solid show, energetic and raw. I think it was towards there last song the lead guitarist/singer’s amp died – such a shame, was really looking forward to hear one song. The crowd were a little cut, but I guess there isn’t much you can do about it…

EHRL started setting up there eq and herds of people from the smoking balcony came in as well as people from downstairs. Their opening track was “For The Commonwealth and The Queen”, a great song – really got the show going. They really interacted with the crowd and had everyone laughing at one stage. One of the best shows I have been to I must say, the thing that I love about this band is that they have the dynamic of being heavy and noisy as well as having that technical side and softer side – the lyrics are another entity about this band that draws me in, the stories and the way they express themselves in unreal. I was a little disapointed that they didn’t play one of their older songs “Say You See Why So” but oh well, maybe next time. After they played their last song, Girt By Piss – which by the way is short but just as powerful as any other one of their songs, they left the stage – I was needing to hear Swarming, the one track that has kept me listening to EHRL over the last three years, never been tired of listening to it. Surely enough, they came back on after a solid encore and belted it out. Amazing.

Content, we walked out onto the cold streets of Brisbane and called the nearest cab, not noticing that as soon as we got in the car the meter was already on $6.70

Back to the car and home we went.

First day @ GCCC & another project working for Mantis Tech.

Surprisingly enough I wasn’t really nervous about starting at the Gold Coast City Council on Tuesday. Evelyn, the lady that looks after administration, had contacted me several times prior to commencement date letting me know all the details of how to get there, what time to get there, what I’ll be doing and so on.

Not sure if I’m going to get use to the traffic though, leaving an hour early just left me with enough time to find a park and get my things together. As I approached the front desk, the lady at the front seemed to know who I was and knew that I were to see Evelyn. She came down and showed me through the building and gave me a short induction on how the GCCC is structured as a council, policies, WH&S, parking and got me to sign a few papers.

We walked out the building and started walking towards the other building across the street, right next to Surfer’s Rowers. This building was nice, several cafes down the bottom which is always a good thing – we stepped into the elevator and went to where the Economic Development & Major Projects department was. Evelyn left and Grant came and took over, another hour or so of introductory things were discussed at first then it was work time.

My role in this job is to compare their website in terms of their competitors and analyse what they don’t have, or what they can do to generate more traffic. My first six weeks will be writing up a report on strategies and ways to do this, then the next six weeks will consist of implementing those ideas.

Here is what the site looks like at the moment:

The day went by quite fast and I managed to get out a 1000 words on the report so far. Going to be a challenge that’s for sure.

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Yesterday I had a meeting with my Industry Liason Officer, an IT Professor and three other IT students who are taking up the industry project subject – as it is all our final semester.

I have been paired up with another student, we will be working for Mantis Tech. this semester doing some consulting work for them which is going to be very interesting I presume.

steps to making golden Mi Goreng

Here is how I make some great tasting Mi Goreng noodles, ; )

Don’t cook for too long, otherwise the noodles will become soggy : ) around 2 – 3 mins is good.

Empty all contents of given packets into the bowl and give it a hefty mix.

Perfect! ^_^

tlc site so far

Here is a quick glimpse at the site I’m designing for Bond. Just started a week or so ago, lot more work to go, happy with it so far though.

Another tutorial I found on the net somewhere, forget what site it was, anyway – it was meant to be centered in the middle of the page with a black background, perhaps some flash – good to just get the skills up. Ahh good old Dw 8.0

coincidence dream #2

The last blog I posted I mentioned something about seeing an old friend on the pokies, making a winning. Well, coincidentally enough a conversation window from msn popped up. It was him, how strange – half our conversation was about money too. Can dreams predict the future?. Well, I’m not sure but I’ve had a few along the lines of this one – hmm.

two dreams

Another dream last night has left me a little confused, however; it was interesting to be able to experience what happened. Dream #1 began slightly weird, too abstract for words but I’ll try my best – Laura and I were driving somewhere. Driving past numerous hills and valleys before ending up in Burleigh somewhere – I relised I had a phony police siren in my back seat and decided it would be a bit of a laugh to put it on the top of my car, let it off and see if I could drive through a red light. A couple seconds after letting it ring and taking off in first gear it became apparent that a police car was directly behind me. She rang her siren and immediately started to tail gate me, urging me to pull over. Following her orders, I decided to do so and pulled up next to Marymount High School. As she approached, Laura didn’t believe me when I told her that we were really being pulled over – the uniformed woman insisted I wind down my window. In doing so, her hand came through into the car and fiddle with the radio. She asked several questions about it, which seemed a little obscure as the siren was on top of my car. She kept talking when suddenly a leather wearing middle aged woman crept up behind her with a sawn-off shot gun. Everything had frozen and this point and my vision was failing me. She swayed the gun, aiming it and the police officer, then back my way – the uniformed lady was quick to push my leg down on the accelerator for me and as she did I ripped the gear stick into reverse. We flew into a fence, breaking it, and skidded down the damp grass. Next thing I know I’m running back to the scene, Laura, somehow had forgot to stay in the car. I approached the lady calmly, and grabbed the shotgun off her and pointed it back at her shouting profanities, I kicked her in the chest. She fell hard, then a shot was fired on my behalf, right through her chest. The police officer had gone, and Laura and I decided to hide the body in a near by river. Dream becomes a little hazy at this point~ …

Here is an interpretation of murder taken from Experience Festival, “Dream Interpretation – Murder: This dreams calls for a feeling of guilt and shame which were subdued in the waking life. Dreaming about being murdered means difficulties in the near future. If you are murdering someone, you need to be more careful, because you might be the one who will get hurt. Being an eye-witness to a murder is a warning, that you shouldn’t interfere in people’s disagreements, you might get hurt. You should also pay a close attention to the tool of murder to give a better interpretation to your dream.”

Dream #2. Perhaps this dream comes after the one mentioned previously or before – who knows. Vague starting point – happened at a tavern of some kind. Outside was a cemetery, inside was a bar with pokies and restaurant. It was as if my voice was silenced. My body did not consist of matter. Feeling of weightlessness. I was just casually floating around this place, until I bumped into Laura. I tried explaining my feelings at this point, informing her of how I seem invisible to everyone. It become apparent soon enough. I was dead, a floating spirit that only Laura could see. A liberating feeling overwhelmed me. Explaining to Laura how I was invisible I thought I could make her by stealing money from the till because no one would notice me. On my way over to the bar, where the till was, I passed an old friend who had just deserted his pokie machine. He’d scored the feature which ended up being $99.00. I pushed collect, the lady came to the machine and I signed the paper indicating my winning – not sure how she saw me though. Dream ends here.

suit up

I had my interview just an hour ago with the GCCC Project Officer. It all went really smooth – first time wearing a suit for a professional reason. I met up with him and V. at V’s office, immediately after I walked in and took a seat, V. rushed out saying he had to get something to eat. So it was left to Grant and I to discuss the job role. After a few minutes of him describing what I’d be doing for them, I knew straight away that the role seemed pretty much ideal for me. It involves some IT work with a CMS (content management system), some marketing work through analysing competitors and submitting weekly reports on features that could be made to their site. Unfortunately, I can’t start immediately with exam week coming up in two weeks – but after that I can come into the office as much as I can. Exciting stuff….

good things; pressure

These past few weeks I have been attending meetings that consist of students who are mainly interested in landing an internship through Bond, or are wanting some form of work experience, and we have our Industry Liaison Officer. In these groups we have discussions on student workload, upcoming internships, projects presentations and interview workshops.

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying attending these meetings (even though it is something I’m not graded on) because we get taught things that you wouldn’t normally learn in class. I’ve already given a presentation on payment gateways, very interesting stuff and it seemed applicable – I was taught to give this speech seeing as being graduates and all, coming out into the workforce it is most likely we’ll be in a small to mid sized business, and with e-commerce having such a profound effect on how we conduct business these days we will most likely come across a payment gateway at some point. Really got a lot out of it. Next meeting I’m required to give a 10 minutes presentation on search engine optimization and also a brief laymen version of how the internet works.

More good news. Last week I was informed by I.L.O. that a project was coming up within the university to build the new TLC website; the Technology Learning Centre. Although not quite sure of its purpose, I’m guessing it will having something to do with helping students with current software offered at the university through tutorials, faqs and so on. And it keeps coming. Not only did I get this offer (which I took) I have been offered for an internship to work with the GCCC (Gold Coast City Council) doing some I.T. work and marketing. So today they are reviewing my CV and will inform me of my interview by this week. Woah. All of the sudden it is finally working out, putting all this theoretical knowledge into practice.

My Sunday morning through mid-afternoon consisted of brushing up on my CSS, HTML and XML knowledge – here is a link to a layout I did through following Nathaniel’s tutorial on TutVid. Amazing site I must say, and for a person with no real academic qualifications it impresses me a lot. This basic layout was done with pure CSS, using div tags – all done with ol’ Dreamweaver 8.0

CSS Layout