So, my girlfriend Ciera came back to Melbourne last Saturday (26th June 2010)! We've been having a great time so far, I'm so very glad to see her again! I honestly don't think I would have been able to wait much longer, so I'm extremely happy that she came her when she did. It's been a week since she got here, and things have already been so amazing! I think she's been enjoying it here heaps (I know she loves it in Australia), and I've certainly enjoyed it. Today we just did a bit of shopping, nothing too big. Bought a bookshelf to put all our books and stuff on 😛

I can't wait for what the future is going to bring us!

Ciera and me!

Until next time,

— Daniel

Well, I haven't blogged for a while (seems to happen to me quite often). I was pretty busy with university work, exams, arranging a work placement for next year for IBL, and other stuff. I get my exam results in about one and a half weeks, hopefully I did alright on them. We'll see I guess...

Many of you know about my girlfriend. If not, her name is Ciera, and she's absolutely amazing 😄. We met online on MySpace (haha) towards the end of September 2008. I had broken up with my ex-girlfriend after a short and hopeless relationship in August 2008. I was rather upset after my ex broke up with me (to be honest, I really have no idea why, looking back at it now), and was just looking for people to talk to, to make me feel better. I was browsing MySpace one of those days, and was looking through Tom's (you know, the guy with the pretend friends) blog, where Ciera had posted a comment on one of the posts. There was something about her in particular (the way she wrote? Her picture? I really don't know) that made me click on her and take a look at her profile. Now, I don't know why this happened (even today, neither me nor her know why things happened the way they did), but I'm glad it did. Reading her profile made me realise that we had so much in common! I sent a friend request right away, wondering if she'd accept and become my friend. I really wanted to get to know her more.

Luckily, she accepted my friend request. We started talking on MySpace, and eventually on Windows Live Messenger. We chat for hours and hours every day... It made me really happy (still does today), and made me forget about my ex-girlfriend and what happened with her. We kept learning more and more about each other, and got closer and closer. It was amazing how much we have in common! After about a month, we started to realise how we felt about each other. What started as a good friendship was definitely growing into something bigger (bigger is better, right?). There was only one problem with this — Distance. You see, while I'm here in Australia, she's all the way in the USA. We were so close, and yet physically we were so so far away from each other. Quite annoying really 😦. She told me that when she finds a job, she'd start saving up to come see me!

Fast-forward eight months later, to June 2009, and Ciera was on her way here! She had saved up some money for the flight here, and I contributed some money towards it as well. It was so unbelievable, finally getting to be with her. I honestly didn't know what to expect, but I knew things were going to be alright (since me and Ciera were extra-close by this time 😄). And things were way better than just "alright" — The whole experience was AMAZING! We had a great time staying together! She was here for three months, and we did so much in that time! I showed her around some places in Melbourne, and we just generally  had a great time. Just holding hands and even just being in the same room as each other felt so amazing after dreaming about it for so long. It was really like a dream come true to us.  It was really upsetting when she had to leave though, and I still miss her all the time 😦. At least now I know who I'm going to spend my life with. It's a great feeling knowing someone as amazing and attractive as Ciera. 😃

Being in a long-distance relationship has been quite an experience. While it's quite hard and I miss her every day, knowing that she's there for me and we'll be together one day is an amazing thing. I miss her heaps. I miss her smile, her laugh, everything about her. Being able to chat to her every day helps HEAPS though. It makes me feel like she's with me, even though we're physically so far away.  A lot of people say that online relationships don't work, but me and Ciera are proving them wrong 😄. I love her more than anyone else I've ever met, and I have a feeling things will be like this forever. We're both working towards seeing each other again, and it'll be amazing. Like I mentioned at the start, I have a work placement next year. If that goes well, I'll save all the money from that, and use it to fly over to see her at the end of the year. That's pretty far away, but it'll be incredible when it happens. It'll be the first time I've travelled outside Australia (outside Victoria, even).

Ciera's also written a similar post on her blog, if you want to read her one.

Until next time,

— Daniel

So, umm, yeah, I don't blog often. You've probably noticed. Seriously, look at the "Archives" widget on the right (or left, depending on what stylesheet you've chosen for this site) and you'll see there's basically nothing since 2007. I really just don't have much to write, haha. I eventually want to write a page about me for the homepage here, but I guess my MySpace and Facebook profiles are serving that purpose right now. In any case, my sister has a blog, which you should all go read. Unlike me, she has a talent for writing, and I promise you that her blog is a lot more exciting than mine. Go subscribe to her too. And send her lots of spam (well, okay, maybe not the spam, but do all the other things. 😛 ). Also, check out my friend Ben's new blog "EpicToast.com."

While I'm on the topic of blogs (including this one), it's interesting thing to note, my "37 things a girl probably doesn’t know about a guy" blog post is still by far the most popular/accessed. And it wasn't even mine, it was just copied and pasted from a MySpace bulletin. Maybe one day I'll write something similar, with my own thoughts on it. I guess. Speaking of random stuff that gets passed around, I keep getting tagged in those "12/20/38/50/100/whatever Things About Me" notes on Facebook, haven't done any yet though. I suppose I might do one of those one day. It's hard to think of that many things about myself, though. And I also try to avoid those chain things anyways. But one day someone will be like "OMG DANIEL YOU HAVEN'T DONE THOSE ANNOYING CHAIN THINGS, I HATE YOU LALALALALALA RAWRRRRRR" and I'll be like "OH FINE >_<" and do it. 😛

So anyways, what's been up with me, apart from avoiding chain "random stuff about me" Facebook forwards?? Well, Valentines Day came and went... I bought my amazing friend Ciera some flowers and a valentines day teddy... She loves them both 😄. I wanted to do something special, seeing as this year's the first year I've considered buying something for someone 😛. Apart from that, I haven't been doing all that much. Over the last few weeks, I worked on a few programming projects, then got bored of that and stopped working on them xD. Nothing much apart from that, just the usual chatting on Windows Live Messenger, and browsing Digg, news.com.au, and some other sites.

I go back to university on Monday... Second year of Professional Software Development at Swinburne University, should be fun 😃. No usability this semester! Although I reeeeeeeeeeally hope that we don't have a subject that's as bad as Usability was, HIT2308 Software Development Practices looks like it'll be just as bad as Usability 😢. And I have that THIS SEMESTER. We'll have to see if it's bad. I blame you (yes, whoever's reading this) if it is. You're evil 😦

For now, I'll leave you with this video clip by GoRemy:

youtube.com

❤️ GoRemy

And here is a remix of "Break Up" by Kim Sozzi that I started at the start of January:

[wpaudio url="http://dan.cx/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/Kim-Sozzi-Break-Up-Daniel15-Remix-2nd-Iteration.mp3"]

Here's the MP3, if you want it (not that you would, it's not too good 😛)

Well, that's all for now. Have fun browsing your internets.

— Daniel

So, I haven't blogged for a while... Mainly due to real-life getting in the way. Yeah, real life gets like that sometimes, it's rather annoying 😛 . That, and the fact that I'm lazy - I won't really do anything unless I'm forced to (or force myself to). Well actually, most people are like this, it's just very few seem to admit it. And realisation is the first step to admitting you have a problem, right? 😛 . And I haven't really had anything to blog about either. Aaaand this blog has approximately 0 readers. I don't think anyone is even reading what I'm writing right now. If you're one of the 0 readers, then HELLOOOOOOOO TO YOOOOOOUUUUUU!!! I have a cookie for you, come and get it before I eat it.

Well anyways, enough of my stupid rambling... my first year of University is finally over, and geez did the time pass quickly 😐 ! It was generally enjoyable, way way more so than high school was. University life is completely different to high school, in a sense it's a lot more relaxed. Some people take advantage of this and try to breeze through Uni without studying... And end up dropping out 😛. I tried concentrating in class (moreso than last year at high school), but in the end I just ended up not paying attention at all, and rushing all my last assignments (isn't this the case with everyone?). Results day is 13th December 2008, so I guess I'll be worrying about my results until then. There's one... no, wait, two things I really hated though:

1. Exams!

Okay, sure, everyone hates exams. Me moreso than most I reckon. I seriously HATE HATE HATE exams. On a scale from 1 to OMG I HATE THIS, it'd be on the very end. Seriously. They drive me crazy. Crazier than I normally am, and that's a LOT. 😮 I seem to often forget everything and have a whole heap of stuff rush back to me at the last minute. I hate it, haha. At least these exams aren't as bad as the Year 12 English Exam (or maybe Usability is that bad... I'll get to that in a bit)

And especially one of my subjects was a subject about website development using HTML. We had to write HTML (yes, by hand) in the exam. Seriously, what is that testing? Most (hell, all) normal web developers always have references handy (HTML for Dummies, Complete All-In-One Website Reference, Garfield comic strips out of their local news paper, whatever), they don't need to know all HTML stuff off the top of their head (and certainly don't need to write it on paper). But this subject was nowhere near as bad as everyone's enemy:

2. Usability

Falling over might be enjoyable. Jumping off a cliff could potentially be enjoyable. But this, usability, this subject is not enjoyable at all, it's literally the worst subject. Ever. Well maybe not really, but it's boring. Most of the class was common knowledge (you know, things like "red writing on a green background looks fugly", "make sure users find your software interface easy to use", and "don't stab people"). I'm hoping we don't get more subjects that are as annoying as this one was. If we do, I'm stabbing someone with a red and green paper. An easy-to-use one.

Go-karts? Did someone mention go-karts? Oh yeah, it was an idea I had when I was around 8 years old or so. I had this amazingly awesome (and by "amazingly awesome" I mean "it sounded good at the time") idea to build a go-kart that goes along the tram lines (anyone not living in Melbourne should look up "Melbourne Trams" on Wikipedia to see these mythical "tram" thingies I'm talking about). But basically, trams are a form of public transportation here, a form of light rail. The streets have tram lines in the middle of the street, kinda like a train line except it's on the road instead of being separate. Trams have overhead powerlines, which is what gave me this idea. Instead of the go-kart needing petrol or a battery, it could simply use the power the trams are using. Although now I realise several downfalls with this:

  • The go-kart would only be able to go down certain paths. Not all streets have tram lines (while a lot of the streets in the CBD have tram lines, not many suburban streets do). This would restricts its mobility
  • It'd need this giant stick thing coming off of it to reach the power. Kinda like a dodgem car
  • Legalities - Would it be legal to "steal" the tram's power? What if you hold up the trams? I can imagine my go-kart breaking down and screaming "GO AROUND!" at the trams 😛
  • Some fourth downfall that I've forgotten
  • I like turtles

So what else can I say? There's not much really, my life's pretty boring right now. Oh yes, my girlfriend and I broke up, I guess just things weren't working out. So yeah, I'm single again. And no I'm not looking for a girlfriend at the moment, so don't bother asking (unless you like the feeling of being rejected I guess) xD. I guess that made me realise a lot more about myself, who I am and exactly what I'm looking for. I made a special friend that I'm very similar and now extremely close to, it's like we're soulmates or something. She knows who she is, and I'm pretty certain she'd be reading this (maybe she's the one of the 0 readers 😮 ) 😃. As a person I've changed pretty significantly over the past year or so (especially in the last few months), and it really seems like a pretty good thing. But I'll save all of this for another blog post, this one's getting rather long. I should try to blog more about life I guess, it's something I like writing about. If you look through the firsts posts to this blog, they were pretty geeky. Then again, I've become way less geeky (still do programming though), haha 😛 . It all fits in to the whole "change" thing.

Oh, and for anyone from Australia, the NoCleanFeed protests are on the 13th December (same as Swinburne results day!). For more information take a look at NoCleanFeed.com. The protests in Melbourne are going to be at the state library, and I might be going, I'm not sure yet. Perhaps you want some No Clean Feed Posters, thanks to my friend Joseph. 😄

Well that's all for now...

Oh and btw, the cookie's all gone. Sorry about that.

Until next time 😃

  • Daniel