GOOGLE

Google, you heard my declaration of unconditional, everlasting love for you, and although you didn't respond for a week and a half, I'm so happy that you return my feelings.

I'll be flown down to their headquarters down in Sydney for the Google Student Ambassador summit!

Infinite number of happies. c;

HECS or not to HECS?

For most of us, there isn't a choice of whether we use HECS-HELP, an interest-free loan that the Australian Government allows domestic students to use. Thankfully, I'm blessed with parents who have the money on hand to pay for my degree, and I'm super-duper appreciative.

My parents have agreed to pay for my tuition up-front when we were given a 20% discount. Unfortunately, about a year ago it changed to 10% (Labour trollin lols) and after some analysis, I've found it more cost effective to allow HECS to accumulate loan.

In the included spreadsheet, I compare the NPV (net present value) of each of the two following options:

1. Pay upfront making full utilisation of the 10% discount.
2. Use HECS-HELP until university is over. A deposit account is opened with the balance of the NPV of option 1, and an annual 4% interest rate is accrued bi-annually. The loan is paid off using the deposit account.

Linky link to the analysis~

tldr; option 2 came out in front, saving the student over $2,000. That's enough for a decent computer that will make your old uni puter to shrivel up in a corner and die. Worth.

Although, if option 1 had a 20% discount like originally, it would save you over $4,000!

This sort of feels like a rich person problems post :/ If there's any errors in my analysis, don't hesitate to tell me.

I love the smell of Bunnings.

It may be the sausage sizzle smell in the mix, but nothing has made me so willing to chomp on thick cardboard and chew on dusty plastic pipes.

Perhaps I had a gastric bypass while I was sleeping? That would explain why my dieting is working.

An inappropriate topic

I mentioned previously that I wanted to make a game based on Pascal's wager. I made it this evening's entertainment. I used Javascript/jQuery.

It includes:

• 10 different absurd death scenarios
• 9 different outcomes based on a randomised God
• No happy endings
• My terrible, terrible sense of humour

A live version is here (console will show God's characteristics):
http://jsbin.com/ebABAged/3/edit

My original code is here:
https://gist.github.com/melatonind/8576643

This was my original outline with all options and endings:

I don't think it needs a GUI. I did feel like I should add a few pictures, but I feel I've put enough effort into such a terrible sardonic item. I've been planning to create an app about complaints.

I grabbed the absurd deaths from:
http://smashingtops.com/weird/top-10-absurd-deaths/
http://www.popcrunch.com/13-of-the-most-absurd-darwin-award-deaths/

Talk about GOD, death and hedonistic video game playing, after 39 hours, I have finally finished the tiny indie game that is The Binding of Isaac for the first time! As in I have managed to defeat Mum. I can now wear my Binding of Isaac t-shirt with pride, rather than with shame. When trying to replicate my winning run, they've added two additional dungeons and increased the ferocity of every single the boss.

;_;

Just imagine what I would have conquered had I spent those same hours reading about tax evasion.

Etsy, here I come.

I'm very happy with how it turned out. It's super comfortable and it looks pretty good.  I don't think it looks too homemade, but the real test is if I'll actually wear it out.

The entire project took me about 2 hours (half an hour was spent looking for the needle I use for felt... and the state of my bedroom could be described as a hay stack). I wish I hadn't stupidly picked a colour that so easily blends in with my hair. I wonder what's going on in my head sometimes.

I think I might try again with a red bow and grey headband. Also there are some polka dot patterns that I quite fancy.

The below is what I was trying to emulate.

It's a lot more elegant that mine D:

I swear one day I'll progress from lead and colouring pencils.

Headbands and bows are for children.

I've been obsessed with this haters headband by Tokyo based brand Le Vero:


I love headbands but I won't allow myself to fork out more than $5 for a mere accessory for the hair that really doesn't do anything. Because of this, I've endured many headaches and headband disasters.

Rather than gathering the courage and purchasing a decent headband, I've decided to embark on another adventure into DIY. Inspired by the below headbands.







I'll need to purchase 2 pieces of felt and random things I have around the house. That will bring the total cost of this to $2.20, vastly lower than Le Vero's $23 asking price. Worth it? We'll see.

Is my cat a pretzel?

Yes she is.

These stellar interpersonal skills

After watching myself talk to myself for a good portion of the night/morning, it's not so hard to believe that people might dislike me.

I think it's not necessarily anything that I do consciously, I have terrible body language. I look like I have no confidence in what I'm saying, which doesn't surprise me. I'm not Google so it's impossible to know if every single fact that comes out of my mouth is completely true.

Its hard not to notice that when handing out flyers, some people have a closed disposition and no one wants to interact with them in fear of the impending awkwardness, but there are others who are successful with an open disposition.

What is the difference between the two? How do you stop others from talking over you? How do you impose a positive initial impression on someone so much so that they will purchase whatever your selling? (In this case, myself)

An easy way to sum it up for those alike me with terrible ~interpersonal~ skills, its similar to The Elder Scrolls, in which my friend has more EXP in speech than I, and can get additional tips and tricks. I recently witnessed this situation first hand in real life and it completely baffled me.

How do you get this EXP in real life?

I've been stumped for the longest time. Wikihow can only get you so far. I'm trying to make myself more presentable...

In terms of career, at least with IT its expected for you to be socially incompetent, but I know once I have my foot in the door, sweet talking and politics will come into play.

Anyway, that is a topic for another time.

Google colours because Google.

Oh deer god

I feel obligated to make this into a sardonic text game, but I'm scared that I've completely misinterpreted it.

My ideal 21sts

I'm currently going on 21, this is somewhat important to me because I'm planning a birthday party and I've been indulging so much in my hedonistic solitude that I haven't thrown a party since primary school. I'm planning three events:

1. An intimate and casual gathering all my close friends (amazingly I've picked 15 likely candidates worthy of this title)
2. Unreal Tournament 2004 online party
3. High tea with a friend

I'm super excited about the ut2k4 party. It's was the first game that got me into first person shooters, even though I only played it briefly as back then, it was already considered dated. I've never really played it online. I've always been astounded me how timeless the graphics are. At that time they knew the fact that computer graphics wouldn't be realistic in the way the Battlefield 4s of today are, rather than striving for it, they embraced it and made fantasy beautiful fantasy environments that unlike anything we had seen at the time, which I guess is why they called themselves Unreal.

Anyway, I'll need to find if I can actually find people who would want to play with me, and if those are willing to pay for their own copy, or perhaps even break their moral barrier and use illegal means to obtain it just for me. And then there are server rental complications, like do they even have them anymore??

I'm looking forward to it :)

21 doesn't really mean much to me. I'm still studying and I'm very much dependent on my parents and friends for guidance. I haven't reached a level of maturity that I'd expect of a 21 year old. I think I'll have a real reason to celebrate when I get that professional job.

Also it will be a real reason to go on shopping sprees, which is another thing I've indulged in as of recently.

A negative bank statement should make me feel much more guilty.

KITTYYYY!

For Christmas, my parents got me a kitten! I've been wanting a cat for a very long time, but there were a bunch of complications (eg. my being nocturnal, in which I thought that was a positive, allergies and other irrelevant stuff).

I feel that deep down, since I think since all my friends have cats, I subconsciously took note and longed for one for myself.

Anyway, we visited a local cat hospital and I chose this girl:

That dramatic eye liner.

She's surprisingly boisterous and bipolar. Her name was Victoria and despite my wanting to call her something nerdy like Private Class, she acts like she's royalty and is set in her ways so I felt it appropriate.

Anyway, if it's this much work for a kitten, there's no chance in hell I'll do babies.

There's a time in Summer

in which you just accept your fate of being stinky and sweaty that you just give up and let nature take its course.

Not enough.

I couldn't afford my own personal actuary, so I used death-clock.org to predict how much time I have left. A depressing 64 additional years. Not enough for me.

In this blog I will be documenting my journey to becoming worthy of artificial life extension. A few ways I can think of is the storing of my consciousness or becoming a cyborg - pace-makers have never sounded so fashionable.

This journey will consist of a few things that I'll address when the time comes to it:

• Surviving until said date
• Attempt to survive even longer by using a Healthy Lifestyle
• The cool things I'll do after I've passed my expiry date - the whole of my current life will be a great big teaser
• Deciding on what temporary immortality technology to employ
• Acquiring resources to undertake said technology, eg. begging, Australia's generous unemployment benefit, becoming a busking magician
• Develop a strategy to conquer my lethal addiction to food - lethal because I think I will die without it

In all seriousness though, I might be going through a minor quarter-life crisis (no I'm not or I'd do something about it). I'm currently 20 years old. I study finance and software engineering. I'm fairly sure that when I graduate, I'll get a decent job so there's that for security, the one thing I'm deathly scared of losing.

So... is that it!? I was the impression that there was a lot more to it than that. I haven't reached self-actualisation, made an impact on anything apart from being a huge liability, and in person, I stink of buzz kill so it's sort of hard to make an impression.

I'm currently half way through the holidays and there are a few things that I actually do want to accomplish. These are the things that I have done:

• Binged on Paris Hilton's BFF (ikr lmao)
• Binged on Gossip Girl
• Binged on QI
• I made a derpy catbug
• I learnt the accordion
• Lost a bit of weight

I assure you, the next half of the holidays will not consist of the above hedonism, and rather, hard work and pure unadulterated ambition eg.

• Cleaning up my goddamn bedroom
• Make an app which lets people complain about things
• Finish up two of my piano songs to a performance standard
• Lose a lot of weight
• Look beauteefull

All of this to achieve the real main aim in life: to be Paris Hilton.

In this post, I have set up goals for the rest of my mortal life, and short term goals for my holidays. I think that's an adequate start but it's also an awful lot of talking and not a lot of doing, something I personally don't have much respect for, and as consequence, have little respect for myself.