| As long as I can dream... | |||
| 12:09am 13/02/2015 | |||
 Hi! You've reached the home of Scribblette and the birdies. Feel free to browse, but be advised that as you read back in time, you go through my recovery from life in reverse. That means you will be reading it as a spiral into melodramatic teenagehood instead of out. For the sake of your own sanity - don't."Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them." ~ John Updike I'm an ex-Pandora user. Nowadays I mostly tune in to Demoscene or Final Fantasy Radio to stay pixelated. |
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| Updates. Moving, Dragon Age, etc. | |||
| 03:10pm 18/11/2009 | |||
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Okay, updates, lessee... Birthday: Had a nice time with friends. Picked up a new processor. Ended up overclocking my videocard & processor and can now play Dragon Age at full settings at 1920*1080. Happily surprised. I've had a pretty good year and achieved a bunch of the goals I set out for myself. Moving house: We'll be heading to the north-eastern suburbs (Bayswater North) in a couple of weeks because of Sue's work. Apparently we made a good impression. New place seems quite wonderful, and is near a couple of great friends who we're planning on getting in some regular tennis & swimming with. Get us extra fit. Plus it's near a lake so I might get to go rowing more! :D Meanwhile much cleaning is ensuing. I'm being sure to be organized this time around. Finished weeding & gardening today. Still picking between phone/internet/electricity/gas companies. I'm fairly sure we'll stay with Telstra & TPG but don't know about electricity/gas. There should be an extra special house-warming not long after we move. ^_^ Cooking: I finally figured out the obvious: that the only way I'll get a clue as to whether a meal has the right amount of something is if I taste it on every single stage along the way. Bugs: Random interesting little creature outside today. The Australian Green Grocer cicada, google tells me. Some bird had started at it and it was making a loud, loud fuss. Had these two incredible little sparkling red gems in the middle of its forehead. I'd never seen anything like that before. Dragon Age: So far the overall story has been a tad predictable (if it sounds like a bad guy, it is a bad guy), the gameplay mediocre, the companion AI moronic (courtesy the idea that you can only have four abilities in mind, as remembering how to do more than four things requires training), the textures bland, the areas rather unexciting, the performance poor (especially if you're going to put people in little zones like that), and the talents for warrior/rogue more uninspiring than anything I've seen before. All that would rate the game a 3 out of 10, maybe. World of Warcraft looks better. And runs better. That said, Dragon Age is a lot of fun to play. The voice acting is perfect. The characters are believable and you can't help but love them - and be surprised by their actions. That's about all it has going for it, but it's enough to push the score up to 9/10 and make you forget everything you had an issue with, as is evidenced by all the rave reviews. It really is quite mind-boggling. A lot of the gameplay seems uninspired. Sure, mages have a bunch of nice spells to choose between and combining spells with each other or with traps is funky, but do rogues and warriors really have to share the vast majority of their talents? Diablo had much more exciting choices when it came to choosing your new abilities, as do WoW, Neverwinter Nights, Torchlight, etc. You were actually excited about what your new abilities would be. Really excited. It was something Different. Not just more of the same. Here, we've got twelve talents devoted to sword & shield, of which three are near identical, providing increased defense & protection to ranged attacks. They don't really combine, one making the other two near redundant - yet you need to get all three to get to a better talent. The effective problem is that mages are a lot more fun to play than the other classes, as they provide a lot more variety. Almost every talent is a new spell for them. That's a LOT more variety. Dual wielding talents for a warrior could have been different than dual wielding for a rogue, providing more replay options, etc. Anyway. I'll still play it when Sue's busy on Assassin's Creed. I just occasionally get an eyeful of lost potential. :| |
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| Read 4 - Post | |||
| Dragon Age: Origins - impressions. | |||
| 08:54pm 05/11/2009 | |||
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I've been playing Dragon Age: Origins, and I really am quite appalled by Bioware - how a couple of small things REALLY impact on the fun to be had. Mass Effect had much better party AI than this. All too often one of my group will simply stand there and do nothing - yet he's not been ordered to stand down. In fact, he has been ordered to attack anything on sight. I have to constantly micro manage everyone - they can't do the very basic thing of HIT BAD GUY. And it really stifle's player creativity. I can't stealth into an encounter - no, I have to start a dialogue with most bad guys, lose my stealth and the major advantage of being a rogue. Bah. I understand pausing occasionally to give orders, but I'd rather it were more like Mass Effect where you could actually focus on just playing the main character if you wanted and only needed to give orders in complicated bits. The animations feel very clunky as well for some reason. I don't know why exactly - maybe it's because they just move their heads and hands without the rest of them? I don't know. Oh, and for heaven's sake they should KNOW ALREADY - if all of my best gear is on a party member and they're about to LEAVE the group (in fine circumstances, even!) GIVE ME MY STUFF BACK! I shouldn't have to reload a save before a big battle, unequip everything on the chap right before the cutscene and THEN get it all back... it's just ridiculous. CORRECTION: Turns out they do strip the party member and return the gear to you - it can just take a gap and several cut scenes first. The AI could still be smarter about where to stand. The story so far is predictable as always (mage & city elf origins so far), but actually interesting enough to keep me playing through odd mechanics, unlike NWN and Oblivion. ...will probably update as I go along. |
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| Read 14 - Post | |||
| 02:25pm 30/10/2009 | |||
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Augh, I can't believe it. My old PC worked fine. I got a new faster PC, so I shut the old one down - via the power switch at the back of the box, even - and didn't touch it for months. The hard drive in my old PC was only a couple years old I think. Today I turned my old PC on to back everything up - photos of Squiggy and Zog, mainly, as Sue & I were going to put our first photo album together. That was the only important thing that I can remember. Well, and ancient emails from Outlook Express which I was never able to backup/transfer into any other program because M$ is a bitch... but that was another life. So, -on switch- It started making a clunking noise. Ker-klunk. Ker-klunk. Like back in the days of bad floppy disks. No warning signs or any such previously. Just... wham. No indications at all. I tried plugging it into my existing, new PC. It's not an IDE drive, it's SATA. The BIOS can auto-detect it, but I can't find it in Windows. It's bothersome because I remember copying everything off an ancient HD to that one, thinking it wise - yet the ancient HD still works just fine. Blaaargh. |
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| Read 2 - Post | |||
| 11:40am 30/10/2009 | |||
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Most of what would be my blog entries have been squished down to a couple of sentences and posted as Facebook updates lately (on there as username Scribblette / Shak Ahmed too). Not quite short enough for Twitter though. I wonder if FB & Twitter will go down as blog killers, or if FB will continue to keep messing with an interface people already like and turn into something that looks like MySpace. I sorta wouldn't mind if everything just merged into ONE platform rather than having to keep track of several different places. Tax Anyway, I had something to ask about. Suellyn is trying to work out whether she can claim a bunch of her text books & her laptop in her tax return, as they are relevant to the career she studied for & has started working in this year. However, she bought it all four years ago, as a student. From what I understand, she can't claim any of that. Correct or incorrect? Then there's something more recent - this financial year, but in the last half of last year, while she was a 'student' (doing placement at a Hospital) she undertook a short work-related course. From what I'm reading, she can't claim that either, as it didn't relate to paying-work at the time? If anyone has an inkling, please feel free to share. Moving Went and sold the old fridge & washing machine via ebay recently. A pity I didn't sell the washing machine while it still worked fully, though - only got $15 for it. The fridge went nicely, think I got a fair chunk of what I paid for it! Just have to get around to doing the same with all my old PC games. We're looking to move up to the eastern suburbs in the next few months. A lot of the market is quite horribly overpriced - we've seen tiny crap houses & units with electric stoves going for $330. Makes it all the harder when a good place comes along - there were dozens of applications for the one nice property we've applied for. Glerp. Birds Mowgli's incessant fluff eating (worsened by any attempt to catch her and take the fluff away, as she swallows it even more certainly then!!) has sadly caught up with her. It seems to be compacting etc. Occasionally find a small piece in her faeces. Had to take her to the vet as she keeps trying to cough it up - sometimes some comes out - and a birdie coughing all day is not a good thing. Her chirping pitch has lowered considerably. The vet recommended a small bit of peanut butter to help oil it up so she finds it easier to pass and to monitor her for a couple of days. Hopefully she'll be okay. Vet said surgery for removing the string otherwise would mean 50/50 chance of survival. Idiot birds. Sigh. It dampens the joy of snuggles a bit when the only time they really want to snuggle you is when they're feeling sick. Oh, and I can't figure out Gargamel's problem. She smells like PEAS. Peas or seaweed. I have no idea why at all. I'm interested in finding out what the chemical behind the smell of peas is, so I can try and work out whether she's sick. |
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| Read 5 - Post | |||
| Whities and brownies and racebending | |||
| 10:29am 29/10/2009 | |||
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I am so terribly disappointed by the casting of The Last Airbender. We finished watching all three seasons of Avatar: The Last Airbender recently and absolutely loved it. Perfect voice acting and everything. Uncle Iro was my favorite character and a huge chunk of why I watched it. I can understand why they said it COULD be their Harry Potter franchise. Avatar is probably my favorite tv series ever (all the grumpier for only three seasons). But they're screwing the movie version up. They're... racist morons, really. People are up in arms about it all over the web - see RaceBending.com or a full blown explanation in images from the show demonstrating how if anything, everyone is asian and THERE ARE NO WHITE PEOPLE. In the cartoon, Sokka & Kitara - the 'eskimo' waterbenders, the companion heroes - are BROWN. And I mean definitively brown. They are not white. There is no question of that. There are no shades of grey. THEY ARE NOT WHITE. The firebenders - the villains - such as Zuko, forever chasing the Avatar, are white. They are not brown. There is no question of that. THEY ARE WHITE. THEY ARE NOT BROWN. That's part of the charm. For once, the heroes aren't all white. Maybe it's part of why you empathize with Zuko, maybe not - you're used to the good guys being white. Yet they have gone and cast whitey white kids as the goodies and indians as the baddies. WHY?? Because of audience empathy and everyone in America being racist, apparently. :|   The Avatar himself is white, sure. He seemed rather American to me, I guess. If nothing else, he's meant to be insanely adorable until he goes all glowy. He's not supposed to look tough. The Asian kid they hired, however, looks like he could chew everyone else up and spit them out and still have minty fresh breath. @_@ Why is it that most movies in Hollywood seem to either be ALL WHITE or ALL BLACK with only a token character of the other side? Why can't these casting directors celebrate diversity and not racial prejudice? What would have been so hard about sticking with the original ideas in the cartoon? Why the hell didn't the Nickelodean network or writers try and have better control over the movie - and why didn't they use their noggin's and realize Hollywood was too racist and that they'd have had better luck trying to produce it somewhere in Asia? And why the EFF is Uncle Iro not the gorgeously fat man he was in the cartoon? What happened to Zuko's scar? Sigh. I have the horrible sensation this is going to flop and not be the new Harry Potter franchise at all. Feel free to pass on the info or the links - maybe some impact will be had. |
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| Read 3 - Post | |||
| Too inappropriate for Facebook. | |||
| 01:02pm 09/10/2009 | |||
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Extreme humour inappropriate for anyone either religious or who prefers humour less soiled than that of Eddie Murphy. Too inappropriate for me to link on my Facebook, even, probably, so here it is! Based on the tale of Nicholas White, who was trapped in an elevator for 41 hours. Trapped in an Elevator...With Diarrhea - Watch more Funny Videos |
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| Post | |||
| Python tip appreciated. | |||
| 03:11pm 07/10/2009 | |||
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Playing with Python 3.1.1 on the PC since Idle wouldn't launch on Mac OS 10.3.9, got around halfway through A Byte of Python, and I'm having troubles. I can't run a module. I thought I had before, but now I can't. python mymodule.py or once already at the python prompt, mymodule.py Nothing. I can launch the module via 'run module' in Idle just fine. But I shouldn't have to do that - I'm supposed to be able to do it from the prompts! I can import them just fine, so it reads THAT from the sys.path... why not run them, then? Edit: Maybe you can only do so if you're running it from Unix? I'm absolutely sure I'm running it from one of the sys.path directories - I've tried several, down to the basic C:\Python31 and still no luck. To add to that, Komodo Edit is darn fussy on running these - it wouldn't recognize RAR as a command, while IDLE would do it fine. Has its own strange little command interface. |
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| Read 1 - Post | |||
| Have Python, need snake charmer | |||
| 12:12pm 25/09/2009 | |||
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*quietly removes his grumble after discovering that apparently the source-requiring-compiling-with-programs-h ... re-edits a grumble back in. Correction - the executable isn't on the official page, no wonder I was confused. See, when I visited http://www.python.org/download/ they didn't link to any 3.1.1 regular executable for the Mac just tarballs etc. So I downloaded them and then struggled to compile something I didn't have the utilities or knowhow to compile... I'm only practicing on the mac while I wait to get a keyboard for the laptop. ...and eventually I found a 3.1.1 executable, but after installing I'm still having troubles. It won't open the 'IDLE' program with which I could otherwise do Python. It bounces once and nothing happens. Meanwhile, clicking the Python launcher gives me a preferences window missing the RUN button. Hitting NEW gets me a new preferences window with the RUN button which opens up the terminal program - from that, I can type 'python' to get started (again, any indication that I had to do this instead of stumbling around in the dark for the obvious would've helped!) This all works fine on the PC right off the bat on install. Stick that up your mac. |
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| Read 5 - Post | |||
| More on glasses (updated) | |||
| 08:56am 24/09/2009 | |||
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Hmm... Budget Eyecare didn't give me a copy of the prescription. I went in there asking for the details and they didn't give me the details. Instead they scribbled down on the back of the card -0.25 and 0.5 and that was it - I was told the 0.5 was the astigmatism, but where's the AXIS value and the pupillary distance? When I first called back the lady who answered wasn't much help at all - said she couldn't give me the details over the phone and insisted I'd have to pick it up - but before I did that, she'd show me the range of glasses there and if I didn't want any of their competitively priced blah blah blah, THEN they'd give me the prescription. So I rang OPSM, and I was told I could just ask to have the information faxed through to me. Called back and spoke to a much nicer fellow who had no troubles saying he'd fax it through once the optometrist came in and wrote it out. Updated my previous post with full prescription. |
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| 01:54am 20/09/2009 | |||
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*hopes REBOL is as easy to learn as it sounds* Need more coding confidence and a break from only focusing on art while up here. |
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| Post | |||
| Dreams of elements & night skies. | |||
| 08:40am 15/09/2009 | |||
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Fantastic dream last night. Turning into avatars of the elements - leap and spread your arms to form a whirlwind about yourself, stomp your feet to turn into a rock golem - fantastic fun. A bit worrying though when turning into water (just do a dolphin kick) as we were all trekking across sand dunes and I could feel myself being absorbed and had to change back. Up here in the country I get pretty excited about being able to see the stars so well (though I don't get why I need to borrow glasses to see it appropriately 'crisp' despite my eyesight being fine). In the dream everything was already that crisp - and it seemed, incredibly close. As if I were somewhere in the middle of the galaxy, a region probably so turbulent life would have a hard time getting started. The stars, nebulae etc were all so close, exploding with light, clouds of dust appearing as if some constellations cast shadows on others. What I find a little concerning is that I've seen these constellations in a dream before. Long time ago. Looking into space was terrifying. Most of what I saw was on the horizon - I didn't look up much except for at a quasar. I think that's what it was, anyway. Some cosmic entity that looked like a small galaxy shooting out a massive presumably deadly ray as they depict in all the pictures, world ending stuff. And it rotated incredibly quickly, flashing around and around... it seemed to be narrowly missing the world I was on, or at least the area I was in, and I had the horrible sensation it was only a matter of time or chance before it hit me. Not sure how I wound up in an ancient (Mayan?) temple from there. In other bits, this book called 'Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain' does seem to be helping and I remain hopeful that the massive improvements in drawing ability it promises are still possible. Early indications indicate yes, but had some trouble with negative spaces (incredibly bumpy chair against non-consistent background as my first attempt probably didn't help). |
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| Read 6 - Post | |||
| 08:17am 07/09/2009 | |||
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...I don't get why instead of recognizing it'd be easier and less painful to move forward, some people insist everyone else stay behind with them, miserable and stagnant. I don't think there's any reason to EVER tell someone they're not allowed to be happy, or to question it. |
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| Read 11 - Post | |||
| ...these are the things I adore. | |||
| 02:04pm 01/09/2009 | |||
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If you're not already into the Legend of Neil, you should be. Isn't the first episode, but is the first musical (you'll recognize the Fairy as Felicia Day, from The Guild & Dr Horrible's Singalong Blog). Is vaguely spoilerrific, so if you think you might enjoy it go to the first episode instead over here. |
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| Read 3 - Post | |||
| WoW: Cataclysm! and stuff. | |||
| 01:34pm 28/08/2009 | |||
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If you're on Facebook, feel free to add me - I'm on there as Scribblette also. Pulled from over there: So they announced the new WoW expansion, and it looks like they're finally focusing on the reality that everyone has a billion alts now and really really would rather enjoy levelling up with something new instead of hardcore raiding - or some such line of logic, anyway. It all looks a wee tad exciting. Sure, there are prettier games being advertised, but none of the ones I've encountered have a 'natural' feel to movement when you're hopping about, and WoW is far better polished. Maybe we'll have time to play it after this rotation. Also, on gaining weight - what I should be eating to REALLY gain weight - or where he should be: America. Things that make the double quarter pounder look like a celery stick. Though I suspect I'd throw up after eating any of these putrid concoctions. The Fast Food Industry's 7 Most Heinous Concoctions They don't include the McGriddle, though: egg, cheese & pork nestled between pancake like biscuits stuffed with genuine fake-maple-syrup flavor. Eee. I've been hearing for yonks that the fast food industry is behaving like the tobacco industry did. :/ |
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| Read 4 - Post | |||
| Be boggled by my burgeoning belly! | |||
| 01:41pm 27/08/2009 | |||
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I just finished reading The Animator's Survival Kit and am on to Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. I think my reading pace is finally picking back up, though I'm also falling asleep easier while studying again. Also just discovered I weigh all of 54kg - I finally broke the 50k mark and have almost beat my best weight ever (56kg, back when I was 16). This is all the more surprising given the incredibly spicy pizza last night and the consequential cheek calcination forcibly repeatedly experienced thereafter. Easily a kilo lost there. Anyway, with my P license and all now... and confidence levels and everything... it's really rather pleasant to be achieving some of these evasive personal goals. :) Be boggled by my burgeoning belly - wonders'll never cease. |
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| Read 6 - Post | |||
| ...thinks if you: | |||
| 10:43pm 26/08/2009 | |||
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- form assumptions about someone you've never met - tell your kid to break up with the someone you've never met - refuse to ever meet the someone, or refuse introductions, or conversations - tell your kid that if they go visit someone one more time they should never come home - tell your kid you'll never recognize their relationship with someone - tell your kid you'll never visit their new home - leave immediately when you see the kid and/or their partner at a relative's house - are furious when you see the kid and their partner at your church - never ever phone your kid - yet are furiously upset at them for not calling you daily, or on a special occasion - and barely speak to them when they do call (even on a special occasion) - or refuse to speak to them altogether (and yet meet and speak with your other childrens partners) ...you've got much, much bigger issues than who your kid is getting married to. If you want any degree of happiness in your old age, you should look inward, not outward. The outside comes for free. - Also my last entry re: driving apparently had the wrong date on it. Is nice driving Suellyn around, rather than just up the wall. :) |
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| Read 2 - Post | |||
| facebook status copy... | |||
| 02:13pm 16/08/2009 | |||
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Fair warning: stay off the roads. They're mad enough to think 'I' can drive unsupervised already... *brandishes his new P plate with a deadly two tonne hunk of steel attached* Thought I'd failed it, but didn't too badly. Screwed up my reverse parking. Big car, driveway instead of curb, too easy to mount unfortunately. Also some of those instructions are evil: "Merge into the right lane. When the road ends, turn left (we won't tell you to merge left afterwards BWAHAHA if you forgets TWICE we fails you!). First time I was just following instructions, the second time... I figured screw the instructions, something's off. Yay for brain functions! I'm a bit old to be getting my license, just never needed to before. The concept of people driving around is bloody terrifying - moreso is the fact it doesn't feel as terrifying as it should while you're at it. The whole day is going fuzzy for me now. I figured I'd best write it down before I forget all of it and pass out in relief. |
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| Read 4 - Post | |||
| I killed a man today. :( | |||
| 01:58pm 14/08/2009 | |||
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Killed a man as he got off his tram while I was doing my test today. Was very upsetting. ... 57% on that computerized hazard test. Very first scenario was 'when to slow down'. Having not driven around trams, I didn't realize I shouldn't follow the virtual idiot breaking the law in front of me, nor that it was a tram stop - and so I didn't slow down as I passed to the left of the tram. A man leaps off during the video (effectively ending the video, too) - scared the crap outta me. And the receptionist behind saying "Oh no, you killed a man!" did nothing to help my confidence. :P Passed the test... barely. It marks you down for slowing too early, too - if I can't see anything in a street full of shadows on a tiny tv screen, I'll slow down thankyouverymuch! The proper one is on Monday, btw. Was reading about this online. Tips included "Don't click too early!" and "If it's a yellow sign, don't click until after you've passed it." Apparently everyone thinks it's a complete joke - not just me. It was weird, though. If I'm going 80 and on a country road and a curve comes up, I'm going to slow down in advance. Does anyone really care if it's a few seconds too early? Then the exact same scenario except then a car is coming on the other lane - and somehow that makes it different. I still slowed down. Then there was a traffic light that went yellow AFTER you JUST started passing the solid white line (middle line in road, the one indicating safe braking distance vs keep going) and I braked.. don't know if it was right or wrong. Stupid test, most especially because the speeds it says you're going aren't always the speed it actually has your virtual car travelling at!!! Screws up reactions. There's a link to the practice questions here, but all require installing. I got all of those right, except on my second try where I braked too early (before the yellow sign, and when I was going 30km/h coming up to a pedestrian crossing. |
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| Read 5 - Post | |||
| 11:20am 06/08/2009 | |||
| Saw Harry Potter & the Half Blood Prince last night, and couldn't help but feel like chunks of the story - characters - weren't explained, so it seemed only so-so-mediocre-to-okay. As it turns out, we missed out the last movie (Order of the Phoenix) altogether. Bah! I thought FTA TV would've shown it in the lead up to this new one. :( | |||
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