If I had 5 ‘formatting pets’, they wouldn’t be alive for very long at all. These pet-hates really jingle my bells, push my buttons and get my knickers in a twist.

Before the computer revolutionary-age came about, these formatting-hates of mine would have never existed, simply because it would’ve been too tedious to create them with pen and paper. You see, computers are always the root of the problem. Usually this appears on colloquial blog sites, and over-enthusiastic websites, but lately, I have seen these hideous eye-sores appearing everywhere.

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One more day until exam results come out. Very scary. How scared? To the extent that last night I had a dream that I got A for Physics, B for Maths and C for English — or something similar, anyways, I got one of each, A, B and C. (Man, right now there’s this moth which is attacking my leg. Very annoying. How annoying? Every-so-often, I have to move my legs to deter it from landing on my leg, because it feels funny)

Today a became a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, minus the Ninja and Turtle. Today arrived the tasty Apple Keyboard, and guess what you little Apple Fan-people, I don’t actually own anything Apple. It’s weird how Apple-Fans like to fend off people who are mutants; people who use a fusion of Apple and non-Apple things. (Apple and Linux fans are basically are both at the polar extremes of fan-boism. They stick to their guns and defend their claim that ‘theirs is better’ even though they know they’ve lost. Lost two hundred and five times.) So basically my reason for buying this keyboard is because there was a sale, priced at $49 — which is $23 off, which is 31% off. Basically, it was an impulse buy.

The Keyboard

The keyboard is nice to type on, is moderately function and is, indeed sturdy — However I’ve reached a situation where it seems out-of-place [aggh, moth just attacked me again]. All my peripherals, tower, monitor and desklamp are all a shade of black. The keyboard’s colour composition: #F2F2F2 and #FFFFFF. And it doesn’t fit in. So time for contemplation: Shall I forfeit style points for aesthetics, or vice versa? (That was actually a rhetorical question, and the decision is ultimately up to me).

Incomplete work

As school slowly dredges it’s way towards me, I stand still (because time moves, and basically you stand still, unless you’re into time travel or like travelling at fast speeds). Moving on, school starts next week and it smells. And I have like heaps of ideas for stuff to write about, but once I try and start typing, nothing comes out at all, or I get distracted. So I decided I’d do what I do best (apart from letting flatulence free) — ramble. Uh oh, dad told me to go to sleep. And so I shall, being a good, obedient, boy. Goodnight internet peoples.

Forms. Often found at the bottom of pages, they are neglected and are left to e-rot. These form fields are deprived from much needed love from their designer, and understandably so, primarily due to their stubborn, rigid and rectangular design. In turn, we witness a conflicting square-circle relationship between the form field and the body content. More often or not, forms don’t need to be spruced with fancy CSS magic, but require just a little re-composition.

Negative space is our adversary. Negative space created around the fields and the layout of a badly designed form can be unsettling, disrupting the flow from the body-content, onto the fields.

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Your email address is your online identity. Nostalgic thoughts drift back, at primary school names were one of the things us children would poke fun at - the weird sounding, funny looking, foreign names (eg: Ben-jam-in, James Cho[de], Jun[ny] Ah). Many were ashamed of how they were labelled. Many blamed their parents.

Oh how stupid, we once were - and how stupid some are today. Many create email addresses, lacking thought. But without thought is thoughtless, dumb, as your email address is your name - you finally have the authority over how you are labelled as.

Changing an email can be a hassle. You have to re-establish who you are, and regain reputation under that new email address, people will have to re-remember that email address, people will have to update their address books, you will have to update your address book, people will still send email to your old email address, and so on.

Now it is time. Time to create the ultimate time-withstanding-email-address. Don’t do the don’t, and you won’t be not okay.

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Update: Thank you so much for your support. I raised an undisclosed amount which will help to save lives of starving children.

School is so hard now-a-days. The work is a burden; I don’t get to sleep until my homework is done. This is usually around midnight. This means I have sleep deprivation. My eyelids are as heavy as gumboots as I blink slower and slower. Today I was happy. I got to sleep in, my Saturday morning Chinese class was cancelled because my teacher was sick. I woke up at 12pm. That’s 12 hours of beautiful sleep. I feel like I’m in a low point in my life - but I should feel blessed. I am better off than most in this world. There are people worse off than me and you. A lot worse.

Half the world - nearly three billion people - live on less than two dollars a day.

This year I’m doing the 40 hour famine. Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names; The lives of 1.7 million children will be needlessly lost this year [2000] because world governments have failed to reduce poverty levels - we have taken life for granted.

The 40 hour famine is a World Wide event held annually to help ones who are holding onto life by a disintegrating piece of string, ones who ration each grain of rice, each molecule of water, ones who die of medication which costs a mere $2, one Big Ben mince and cheese pie. My objective is to stave myself for 40 hours, living on juice and barley sugars. In doing so, I get sponsored by sympathetic, rich and caring people (such as yourself), but ultimately help the ones who are dying and in need of life’s fundamentals.

Just because you don’t know me personally is no longer and excuse for not sponsoring me. This can now be done via the internet, via your shiney looking visa, mastercard or amex card. Common, help the ones in need. Give basics, give life.

Hundreds of chickens have been found dead in east China - and a court has ruled that the cause of death was the screaming of a four-year-old boy who in turn had been scared by a barking dog, state media reported.

The bizarre sequence events began when the boy arrived at a village home in the eastern province of Jiangsu in the summer with his father who was delivering bottles of gas, the Nanjing Morning Post reported.

A villager was quoted as saying the little boy bent over the henhouse window, screaming for a long time, after being scared by the dog.

“One neighbour told police that he had heard the boy’s crying that afternoon and another villager confirmed the boy screaming by the henhouse window,” the newspaper said.

A court ruled the boy’s screaming was “the only unexpected abnormal sound” and that 443 chickens trampled each other to death in fear.

The boy’s father was ordered to pay 1800 yuan ($NZ332) in compensation to the owner of the chickens.

Reuters