Will’s View

I have been a student for quite some time now, and have therefore been through the joys of enrolment and subject selection many times. Now my course is not exactly straight-forward in terms of course planning (it has a handbook that rivals War and Peace), and this has been further complicated by my transferring from another university part-way through my course.

However, I have not had the best luck as far as enrolment and subject selection at universities is concerned. In my first ever semester at university it took me not one but two whole days to enrol. These weren’t the usual midday to 2 in the afternoon university days. These were days where one would turn up at nine in the morning to wait in a queue for hours on end, just to be told that you were in the wrong queue.

After moving to Australia I thought my prospects would improve. Surely, here was a university perched high on the pedestal of technology. One not plagued by the human element, and therefore more effective. Surely.

Nope. Every semester, without fail, since I moved to this land of opportunity I have had a problem with either my enrolment or subject selection. I admit that a couple of these have been due to legitimate stuff-ups on my part, or that of the course advisor. However this semester was something special. I even had an email from the Academic Programs Manager for our department, informing me that she was unable to access or change my subject selection, and that it had been forwarded up the food-chain to the Faculty. That’s progress for you.

Today was the first day of the second week of second semester, and my subject selection for this entire year has finally been approved. I was alerted to this fact by an, albeit amiably-worded, email late this afternoon. The automated system does seem to have problems dealing with course plans outside the normal scope, but at least it’s nice about finally correcting its shortcomings. Now there’s software design! I think I prefer the two-day long queues. At least there’s a sense of certainty and purpose about them.

--> I have been a student for quite some time now, and have therefore been through the joys of enrolment and subject selection many times. Now my course is not exactly straight-forward in terms of course planning (it has a handbook that rivals War and Peace), and this has been further complicated by my transferring from another university part-way through my course. However, I have not had the best luck as far as enrolment and subject selection at universities (More...)

I have owned one particular pair of trackpants for some time, and they have started to show their age: They have been used for pre-game warm-ups for as long as I can remember; had many a lazy Sunday spent in their warm confines; I even had to sacrifice them to a week’s hallway painting. That was a dark day.

Anyway, memories aside, I was catching up with some of my friends a week or so ago, when I noticed that all of us were wearing trackpants. This is a testament to just how important trackpants are to the millions of students around the world. They have an elasticised wasitband for overeating; they are comfortable for protracted study sessions; and they are cheap. But whilst looking around at my friends’ trackpants, I realised what a poor state mine were in: They have paint all over them, they are at least two sizes two big (it’s comfier that way), and several rips from various escapades.

Not wanting to be shown up, I immediately decided that I needed a pair of ‘dress trackpants’. Now this may seem a contradiction in terms, but bear with me. My trackpants of the time were unsuitable for anything but loafing around-the-house (mainly due to the fact they are a couple of sizes too big…the paint stains don’t bother me too much), and yet I wanted to be comfortable whilst going around to see my friends.

Two days, and a stop at a cut-price menswear outlet (a pair of trackpants for $29.99, who’d a thought?!), later and I was all set. I had rediscovered the wonderousness of wearing trackpants out in public. They’re comfortable, affordable, and practical, all the things that students love.

So, if you see me over the next couple of months wearing trackpants in lieu of jeans or trousers, forgive me. I am simply making the most of my new pair of trackpants. Just be grateful I’m not wearing the old pair.

--> I have owned one particular pair of trackpants for some time, and they have started to show their age: They have been used for pre-game warm-ups for as long as I can remember; had many a lazy Sunday spent in their warm confines; I even had to sacrifice them to a week’s hallway painting. That was a dark day. Anyway, memories aside, I was catching up with some of my friends a week or so ago, when I (More...)

Okay, so this post is off to a somewhat dodgy start from the title, but bear with me. It’s the best my brain could come up with at the time.

Some of you might know the recent teen-pop queen Avril Lavigne and her ‘hit’ Girlfriend (I’m having trouble believing I just linked to an Avril site. I feel unclean.) A friend of mine told me recently that there is a little bit of a fuss going around in the media about whether or not it was original. I know, some of you are tempted to say “Of course not” straight off the bat. And fair enough, but have a look at this band called the Rubinoos and their song Boyfriend. Or this comparison.

Pretty similar, aren’t they? Now Avril is of course defending these claims, and fair enough, she thinks she’s right I suppose. The fascinating thing for me has been reading the comments from all her fans. Whilst there are balanced perspectives from both sides, it seems the Avril fans have taken this criticism to heart, and are treating it like an act of Treason. I think that perhaps they’re overreacting just a tad, and should go find something constructive to do with their time. Like blogging!

--> Okay, so this post is off to a somewhat dodgy start from the title, but bear with me. It’s the best my brain could come up with at the time. Some of you might know the recent teen-pop queen Avril Lavigne and her ‘hit’ Girlfriend (I’m having trouble believing I just linked to an Avril site. I feel unclean.) A friend of mine told me recently that there is a little bit of a fuss going around in the media (More...)

I did sit down with the intention of writing about something completely different, but I thought that I would instead share with you the wonderousness and brilliance of a piece of software written by Apple. I’m one of those people who uses so-called ‘tabbed browsing’ to its utmost capacity: I often have two or three browser windows open –each with a different overarching ‘theme’– and then each of these windows will have in excess of 10 tabs, each pointed to some particular relevant website. A lot of these tabbed browsers will ask you if you really want to close a window with multiple tabs open, but I commonly turn this feature off as I find it unnecessary and annoying.

Unsurprisingly, this recently came back to bite me. I was online doing research for my final year project and had a large number of tabs open, all with content that I was pouring over trying to find certain pieces of information. Somewhere in the distance I heard someone mention dinner, and so in a flash I had reflexively quit my browser and closed the lid of my laptop. I managed to get all the way down the stairs before my brain kicked in and said something along the lines of: “Hang on, I think we just did something stupid…”

“Blast!” I said in return, “Quite correct, as always.” As with most things, I thought this problem could definitely wait until after dinner, and so proceeded to enjoy dinner and forget all about it. On the way back up the stairs, however, I had one of those feelings of dread - not too dissimilar to going to the dentist or some such. I would have to go into my browser’s history and open each one of the webpages individually, surely.

But no! Apple’s superior software design had completely anticipated a stupid mistake like mine, and provided the ‘restore last session’ functionality. This opened all the browser’s windows as they were when I mistakenly quit the browser, as well as minimising the browser into the Dock, as it was when I had quit it… Genius!

Apple’s software developers - 1;
Will’s brain - 0.

--> I did sit down with the intention of writing about something completely different, but I thought that I would instead share with you the wonderousness and brilliance of a piece of software written by Apple. I’m one of those people who uses so-called ‘tabbed browsing’ to its utmost capacity: I often have two or three browser windows open –each with a different overarching ‘theme’– and then each of these windows will have in excess of 10 tabs, each (More...)

As some of you know, I have recently joined the Facebook ‘revolution’. On the whole I’m somewhat sceptical about these online ’social networking services’, but I have had a plethora of requests from friends around the world to join, so I figured I would give in. Thanks to the wonder of the internet I have managed to locate a huge number of people that I had uninentionally lost contact with.Whilst browsing through some of my friends’ friends, I have discovered that a huge number of my friends know a lot of very attractive people to whom I have never been introduced. As far as I can see there are a few explanations to this, some of them more palatable than others:

1. My friends are obviously lying: They are obviously not friends with nearly that many people, much less that many attractive people. They’re simply lying so as to look cool to everyone else on Facebook. Just swelling their internet kudos, that’s all.
2. My friends’ friends are obviously lying: It’s self-evident that my friends’ friends are misrepresenting themselves. Those photos in their profiles are clearly doctored, or photos of someone else. Isn’t it sad what the world has come to? People misrepresenting themselves on a social networking service. For shame!
3. I’m too much of a liability to be introduced to these attractive friends: Now I think this is the least likely option, but thought it had better be here for completeness. I’m not that much of a liability, surely.

No matter which explanation you subscribe to, it’s clear that Facebook is a well-proven way to procrastinate, especially during exam period I’ve been told!

--> As some of you know, I have recently joined the Facebook ‘revolution’. On the whole I’m somewhat sceptical about these online ’social networking services’, but I have had a plethora of requests from friends around the world to join, so I figured I would give in. Thanks to the wonder of the internet I have managed to locate a huge number of people that I had uninentionally lost contact with.Whilst browsing through some of my friends’ friends, (More...)