TheLAD - The Little Apple Dude

Exam week! Arrgh!

2005-10-31T23:26:00.000+11:00

So, 1 exam down 3 more to go. Did my Object Programming today, glad
to have that behind me. Thursday I have 2 Tests worth 60% and 50%.
The 60% I'll pass without a problem, the other is statistics, yuk!

Work work work, study study study.
Going home to build my train in a week and a bit now. Can't wait.
I've spurred a bit of interest around the club, Steam Trams are
rarely modeled and the last known one ran at the club over 6 years ago.

Ok, I'm gona get a good night sleep and just chill and study for
Thursday.

Reece

Oh, here's a good quote...
"The 'S' word doesn't happen in this room..."

4 more days of Uni! (I'm not counting or anything)

2005-10-17T14:29:00.000+10:00

You can tell a lot about a person from their dorm door. Gender,
religion, race, preference in women etc. Just wandering around the
corridors you find everything from pr0n to comics to artworks. Beer-
bottles stuck to ceilings is not uncommon, well, at least on my floor...

Got more work to do, finish class this Friday so I have to wrap
everything up!
Reece

Winding down for the year.

2005-10-10T16:08:00.000+10:00

Whoot! 9 more days of Uni this year! I finish everything for the year
on November 13, at which point I'll be heading home. I still have a
shit-load of assignments to finish and a bunch of College events so
I'm going to be quite busy. Next Saturday I'm going ona 100Km ride
from Sydney to Wollongong which should be lots of fun. This Thursday
we have a talent night, next Sunday a short film festival and the
formal and recovery sometime after that. A busy few weeks. Followed
by 2 weeks of exams and my cousin's wedding. Then three and a half
months off before I come back and do it again!

AL stands for Artificial Life. Some people were wondering if it was a
spelling mistake.

Anyhow, till next week,
Reece

More work!

2005-10-03T13:14:00.000+10:00

Ok, busy this week. Still have a lot of work to process that I
couldn't do over teh session break. For some reason I just couldn't
concentrate. Either way today I can, so a lot of work is being done.

Busy as always,
Reece

Comic Delayed

2005-09-13T10:38:00.000+10:00

Sorry but the next comic is delayed until next week, this week is
massive with all the work I have to do among other commitments.

Sorry guys,
Reece

Yay, an easy week!

2005-09-05T15:11:00.000+10:00

This week I've gotten something I haven't had in a long time...sleep!
This thing called sleep is really good as I now have a lot of work
this week that needs attention and I'm ready for it. Anyway, the
comic is up. As with most of my comics, this one is based on
something that happened here at college. (Look no further than Dell
Dust!) Never ever EVER plug an iBook, camera, mobile charger and who
knows what else into a transformer designed to take about 20W. (The
iBook alone is 60W) It also had a nice large warning on it saying not
for constant use and with electronic devices...

Anyhow, 2 more weeks till the 'mid-session' break (week 11 of a 14
week session, work that one out) Anyhow I've spent enough time on
this comic and I need ot get my programming done.

Catch ya!
Reece

Ahh, the joys of Uni life!

2005-08-30T00:09:00.000+10:00

Whoot! Halfway through session!

Hey, it's week 7 of a 13 week session. The time has just flown by.
Not only that, but TheLAD just turned one! To commemorate the
occasion, the-lad.com was dossed... Fiddlesticks. Anyhoo, it's back
online with comic no 47. Not too bad for a year's work. (I still have
time to make it to comic 52 before the-lad.com's birthday in December!)

My novel has stopped dead in it's tracks. Unfortunately I just don't
have the time to sit down and stare at a screen. I do that too much
already. I'm ahead in my work for a change and the bike is finally
repaired after a slight...mishap...last week.

This holidays I'm hoping to put 3 months of the year to good use to
build a 5" gauge steam engine. A big, expensive challenge, but
something that I have dreamed of doing for many years. I'm in a
position to build one and hopefully operate it at the local track, yay!

Anyhow, enough of a rant, it's late, I've drawn Shrike, done the
scripts for the next 4 comics and now have a basic plot going. (There
will be some random strips in there as well) It's a big day tomorrow,
so I need some sleep.

Night,
Reece

Problems..

2005-08-25T19:31:00.000+10:00

I currently have a few problems that I need to sort out. Among them,
my hosting service is having a few problems so I have to wait till
they can get themselves sorted out.

Reece

Building a better bike...

2005-08-15T19:44:00.000+10:00

I have had bike problems over the past few days. First it ate a pair
of trousers, then the front wheel broke a number of spokes and then
the peddle broke this morning on my way to class. Bugger.

My programming assignment has been submitted since Saturday which
makes a nice change. I've had a rather relaxed weekend and caught
some well earned sleep.

Oh well, a new day, a new comic a new assignment.
Reece

Better late than never...

2005-08-09T00:38:00.000+10:00

Sorry the comic is so late, I've been racing around college fixing
computers all afternoon/night. So much for getting my work done! Oh
well, there is always tomorrow.

Anyhow, the comic is up. Not my bet work, but hopefully a bit funnier
than most.
Night,
Reece

Yawn...

2005-08-01T20:05:00.000+10:00

It's been a long week of work, and it won't stop for a while. Went
out fishing with a few people the other day. The only bloke to catch
a decent fish had never been in a boat, couldn't swim and had never
fished. Good times.

It's my birthday tomorrow so its off to the UniBar at 11:30 for 2
hours of drinking before my statistics and object programing lectures.

This comic was supposed to follow on straight after fireworks, but
has been put back for ages. (About time I finished up this story loop.)

Till next week,
Reece

This Session will Rock!

2005-07-25T13:59:00.000+10:00

I'm on-time with the comic for the first time in weeks! I'm feeling a
lot better now which is great news, it means I can finally get stuff
done and start my programming assignments. Yuk!

I'm going to have a busy few weeks ahead, but the comic should
progress as normal. I only have an easy Lab class on Mondays this
session and Wednesdays are the same. The rest of the week is busy
though. 25 hours a week at the Uni! (I envy arts students that only
have about 7-12 hours...)

My Pismo has had a battery die on me which isn't very good. I'm going
to go out and buy 2 new batteries in the coming weeks, 12 hours of
battery time here I come!

This session is shaping up to be a good one. Good classes, good
people around college and reasonable days at Uni. (Unfortunately I
miss Toss the Boss on Fridays to to a Lab :cry: )

Anyhow, I'm going to go check on my washing and get it in before it
rains (I love the weather widget!)

Till next week,
Reece

Arrgh, the flu!

2005-07-20T09:13:00.000+10:00

Sorry! I've been sick.

The comic still isn't done. Someone brought a cold/flu to college and
it has been going around. I've now had it for the best part of a
week. Before that, O-Week was going off and meeting all the new ppl
was great fun. So, between Uni enrollment, O-Week, a broken bike and
a multitude of other unexpected things, I'm behind on the comic.

Today I'm well enough that I should be able to sit down and get one
or two done at least. I've done most of the other chores that where
piling up and desperately needed doing.

So, I'm off to breakfast, the next comic should be up today!
Reece

Sorry, this weeks comic will be late.

2005-07-12T10:22:00.000+10:00

I had a rather bad week last week. All the new Americans turned up
and I've met a whole bunch of them. Unfortunately, this has left me
tired and quite ill. I'll get the comic up later today hopefully, but
failing that maybe tomorrow morning.

Reece

I'm bored.

2005-07-04T17:52:00.000+10:00

Comic's up and I know where I'm going for next week, always a good
thing. I'm not sure what to do with myself at the moment. I have a
week before O-Week kicks off so the college is still void of ppl.

I'm going out to see War of the Worlds tommorrow. Hopefully it's as
good as it should be, I've been disappointed once with Hitchhiker's
Guide to the Galaxy, so I hope WOTW won't do the same. The live
action movie of Neon Genesis Evangelion was due out this year, but it
looks like it's going to be late and probably suck. I think I'll
stick to the Anime.

Anyhow, I'm going to go get dinner,
Reece

Whoops, a bit late...

2005-06-29T00:23:00.000+10:00

I decided to redraw/rewrite this one, again. I've only just finished it now and I'm quite pleased with it. I've using http://www.slashdot.org as an excuse I've written in some funny news posts. I've also used a quite few visual jokes this time as well. Enjoy!

Oh, and one last thing, you can get that picture of Steve Jobs as a wonderful dashboard widget from http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/18617 Thanks to Alexander Albrecht for putting it together. A brilliant widget! Right up there with simstapler and jared!

Anyhow, I need sleep, Night!

Reece

Whoops, its been a while...

2005-06-25T20:09:00.000+10:00

So, what has happened since my last update. ALOT!

Intel inside is now the new Mac slogan. Shit happens, and loosing PPC
is and was a sad day. However, the promise of being able to get cheap
CPUs for towers and cheaper GPUs. There is also the promise of better
laptops and portable devices. Maybe even higher clock speeds than in
PC machines. Couple that with Apple not stopping you running windows,
the Mac may be the best option for many ppl in the future.

Exams are done and buried, hopefully will get results back within a
week. Just winding down now and saying goodbye to all the mates that
I've made over the past few months. Had a great bash at a mates place
and managed to rub a few Campus East residents the wrong way...
Anhoo, many of the residents here are going back overseas. College is
really quiet at the moment, except for some major counter-strike games.

My aim tomorrow is to buy an AMD Sempron 2200 for playing
Counterstrike over the holidays. I have $300, which should get the
CPU, motherboard, 512 RAM a HD and a PSU. Case? I think not, this
thing is gona sprawl on my desk. A PC doesn't deserve a case! It
should tie me over till the Mactels come out next year. For $300 who
cares?!

I have had the machine tied up now for ages. I have been mastering
DVDs for ppl which takes a lot of time on a 733 with a 8x DVD burner.
Rendering 3 full DVDs in iDVD then burning out multiple copies...ouch.

I uploaded the latest comic yesterday and I've added it to the main
page now. My next one is already underway. Unfortunately a detailed
script was required, so I've been giving it much thought over the
past few weeks since the Intel announcement. I almost thought I had
written myself into a corner, but I've gotten out of it and hopefully
I can continue to pump out the weekly comic for the next few weeks
without a problem. So, you get one today, and then one on Monday as
usual.

Regards,
Reece

Apple and Intel team up, for the better?

2005-06-07T22:32:00.000+10:00

Well it's been an interesting day today.

"Yes, it is True." Intel chips in Macs, yet another architecture
change. However, this may yield some interesting opportunities. Apple
is looking at the power consumption of the Intel CPUs, very
interesting. They are also looking at the cooling factor. It will be
interesting to see where they go with it.

Marklar, the rumored x86 version of OS X Tiger was revealed today as
well. (Despite seen running on an Intel based Xserve 2 months ago
before Tiger went Gold Master.) With PPC emulation builtin to allow
apps to run without a recompile, it looks interesting. Apple's done
the smart thing and made OS X platform independent, basically if a
new type of CPU sprang up in the next 10 years, Apple could port OS X
to that and do another CPU transition. One big thing to come out of
this is that there will be comparison machines ready for when
Longhorn is released. It will be interesting to see what an Apple
built machine vs a PC running Longhorn will compare. My guess,
Apple's machine will be infront unless Longhorn is more than the
rehashed-XP beta that was shown a month back.

Today the Mac lost its Heart so that tomorrow it will be an equal.
However, the Mac still has it's Soul.

A new chapter begins...
Reece

3 Exams down, 1 multi choice to go!

2005-06-06T21:04:00.000+10:00

Monday, evening. Ahhh. Time for a drink...

The new site is up. I've gone metal in the same shade as before.
Everything has been updated, my blog is now on blogger the next comic
is up and um...yeah, going good!

Looking forward to about a week of drinking coming up. It starts
tomorrow, followed my Thursday and Friday, maybe Saturday. The
Americans are about to leave college so it's time to say goodbye. Got
a lot planed and a lot to do.

It's a rumor that wont die, but it looks like Intel chips might be
used in a Mac. At the same time, the Tablet rumors have emerged.
Should be interesting few days while WWDC is on.

Everyone is winding down, so I'm gona go join them,
Reece

A lot of drinks and now time to do the exams.

2005-06-05T14:47:00.000+10:00

What a great week. It started at the Pub on Tuesday, 8 free beers in an hour thanks to Toss the Boss. This was then followed by free drinks for most of the weekend. What a week!

TheLAD has been down for a bit. Unfortunately, I keep exceeding my monthly bandwidth. Well, no-longer! Thanks to Atspace, I now have unlimited bandwidth with no ads. Looks the goods, lets see how well it holds up.

Continuing on, the comic I started yesterday is uploaded. I actually sat down and studied for a bit last night. I managed to procrastinate long enough to finish it this afternoon. Also, like the new brushed metal look? This will be implemented in the new site, but I thought I'd add it now on the main page.

My maths test is looming on Saturday, what makes it worse is that I have to pass this no matter what. Studying appears to be my only option...

I'm doomed...

I've been quite busy over the last few weeks, mainly working on my G4 tower (again), the Pismo, my room and sometimes on Uni work. After a major problem with plagiarism in my courses, I've come out with great marks and one of the few ppl to do so. Looks like I'm going to pass considering the exam is multiple choice.

Back to studying...well to start anyway,

Reece

Ah, a few drinks, the PowerMac 360 and the main part of my assignments done!

2005-06-05T14:46:00.001+10:00

So to start off...

Tiger is the best OS ever! Speed, cleanliness and style!

10.4.1 fixed a lot of the major bugs, SMB now works and Mail no-longer keeps jamming. My new GPU is getting a good workout, I'm not gettin better framerates, but I can now play some of my favorite games in top quality.

The reason for this early post is that I have practically finished my assignments! The 400 line programming assignment is done. (Well it works, so I dub it thus!) My algorithms is sorted and submitted and my Japanese book-work is so close!

Now, onto the news which I broke in this comic ages back. The xBox 360 is essentially a Mac. Furthermore, the demos at E3 are actually run by dual G5s! The xBox 360 in the front window is there for show. Don't believe me? Check it out here!

It's good to see PPC starting to get some development backing. Should be a few interesting years of Apple and OS X!

So, what else is new? Not much. College life is still going great, our nudie calendar is due out anytime soon, some great drinking sessions, a lot of good ppl and of course a lot of fun! We head off to the Yallah Woolshed Saturday next week! This means a 24 hours piss-up! Should be great!

Exams are 2 weeks away this Saturday (Math on a Saturday!), but my first is this coming Thursday.

So, I leave you with an early comic!

Till next week,

Reece

Exam time! Drop and give me assignments! (~fun ^ ~cool)

2005-06-05T14:46:00.000+10:00

I've been messing around with Tiger over the past few days. I got my 9800 Pro, so I have put Tiger through the paces. My 500mhz Pismo is running better. The 733 G4 CPU just can't keep up with the effects of Tiger so I'm waiting for 10.4.1 that will fix this problem.

The comic that was due on the 25th last month had to be scrapped. Basically it was camping outside of the Applestore days before Tiger's release, but Hawk over at AppleGeeks beat me off the mark. I figured it was too close, so didn't post it. As for the following one, it never got done as I was coding all weekend and was dead on the Monday. As for this weeks, I noticed that my G4 is running way too hot and had to come up with a solution for that. We also had a big college footy win, so I was kinda intoxicated on Monday.

I've created a basic widget for TheLAD. I'm going to refine it a bit and hopefully offer it after the exams.

Speaking of exams, my exam weeks are coming up from about the 27th through till the 6th next Month. All is going good. I know my Japanese is in the bag, now just to get Maths, Procedural Programing and Algorithms sorted.

Depending on how fried I am next week, a comic will turn up. I have to get all my Japanese written work done and two assignments. It's going to be a push till the end!

EDIT:

New comic is up and my net is back on. (Been disconnected for a few days) Tonight I'm off to watch our college films. My films, "Day in the life of a chair" and "5 reasons not to be well endowed" should go down well. We also have films like "Revenge of the Cups!" and "Untitled" to look forward to. Still, sub 30 second stop-motion antics followed by powerpoint animation should get a few laughs.

In other news, I'm going to finally get the website looking right and hopefully ranked again on google. I've had so much trouble with it that I gave up once it started working. It shall get a complete revamp following during the 5 week mid-session break.

Regards,

Reece

Argh, Wednesday midterms!

2005-06-05T14:45:00.002+10:00

This has to be a joke!

All 3 of my midterms are on Wednesday. To make matters worse, the first one is at 10:30am and the last at 6:30pm. I'm also on class from 10:30am till 7:30pm! I'm going to be exhausted. Oh well, Wednesday is going to be a huge night down the pub!

Apart from that, I managed to loose my key last Friday. It's just one of those swipe cards, but they want $120 to replace the thing and 'change' the locks! They have a dead key in the office and I think it's mine, but I'll have to wait and see. (If it's dead, I don't have to pay for a new one)

Apple, is really stringing this out. Tiger has indeed been displayed at an industry trade-show, but is yet to be announced to the general public. Maybe this Friday. (Announce Friday, ship Monday...)

Anyhow, it's that time of night again where I'm going to go wander the corridors and see who's still up.

Night,

Reece

Uni resumes after a week break. Still no Tiger...

2005-06-05T14:45:00.001+10:00

It has been a good few days. I went down to the local Railway Society to play trains and help out a bit. Stayed up on Friday night to see if Tiger would appear, but it didn't to my disappointment. BTW, Happy Birthday Apple! What else. Um, had a good night out on Wednesday, cheep beer and free pizza, yum! Found another Mac dude on campus. Cleaned my floor's common-room again due to the mess that had accumulated. I know who it is, I just can't pin it on them. Imagine if dishes weren't cleaned for a month and left to evolve...or not. Got my programming assignment done and topped my algorithms assignment. Yeah!

So a new Monday and a new comic. I fussed over this one for a few hours, not what I originally hoped for but I'm happy with it. The next one will close I think.

Its coming up to 10pm so I'm going to go see who's around. Maybe watch Invader Zim!

Reece

Life goes on. Tiger almost here!

2005-06-05T14:45:00.000+10:00

What a few weeks!

Uni life has taken it's toll. I'm not lazy, but I'm dog tired. This Comic was intended to be done 2 weeks ago as a B'day present for one of the girls on college. Whoops. I copped both colds that were going around college so I guess I can be forgiven. Also my &%#@$! ISP is still screwing me around. ADSL and I'm getting slower than dial-up speeds!

So, the comic is up. If I'm back in-time on Tuesday, I'll do the follow-up.

Anyhow, I have to be up early tomorrow. The Easter Bunny is visiting college and I want to get the chocolate! So I'm off to bed, dreaming of how great Mac OS 10.4 a.k.a Tiger is going to be. Only a few more sleeps. April 1st all shall be revealed and hopefully I'll have my own copy by the end of the month.

G'night,

Reece