My new Blog

As you can tell, this is my first blog post in a while. I probably won't write on this blog much more, but...

• I've started a new blog at hum.phrey.net
• I've put up a mini website for the coffee roasting we have been doing at zombiecoffee.net

Btw, since nobody will probably read this, it's really just here so Google things people are linking to my new blog and it appears higher in search results :-)

My Election Thoughts

The election is happening in four days, so I've been looking into who I should vote for. I've been trying to filter through all the BS and and look at the facts... So this how I'm currently thinking of voting in the House of Representatives:

1	MILLEN, Tom	The Greens
2	CAMPBELL, Jodie	Australian Labor Party
3	WIENER, Sven	Independent
4	WATTS, Adrian Ronald	Citizens Electoral Council
5	BENNETT, Shem	LDP
6	FERGUSON, Michael	Liberal
7	de HAAN, Ixa	Family First

So why?

Family First
Ok... So why have I put family first last? Well, they are a Christian based party, and I don't like the idea of church and state being together. Look at history. Every time the church has been in control of state, everything has gone super pair-shaped. Also, Christian parties in politics seem to push their moral worldview onto everybody else. As if making a law against something is going to change peoples hearts? Politics should be about what is best for society, not necessary Christians. I don't agree with gay marriage, but I think it's wrong that gay people are discriminated by our countries laws. I'm sure these family first people are are all nice, but I'm not voting for them.

Liberals
I think it's time that the Liberals lost power. Yes, they have done some good things, but they have also stuffed up in a lot of ways. They don't seem to have respect for human rights -- detention centers, anti-terrorism laws. They don't seem to care about the environment. Surely we should be trying to lead the world in getting rid of carbon? They're giving us tax cuts, but why don't they use that money to fix the crippled health care system? Any Johny seems to worship Bush. Yeah sure the yanks helped us out in the war, but that doesn't mean we should blindly follow them in their stupid invasions of other countries. So I'm voting to get rid of the Libs.

The Greens
So I was a bit weary with voting for the greens. I grew up amongst a strong "The greens are evil hippies" culture. However, I've been reading some of their policies, and they are actually really good. Most of the things that annoy me about the current situation, the greens have a policy that I like. For example, they will bring back the Iraq troops, will reduce green house emissions, will bring back public dentists, will not accept donations from large companies, etc. They will also get rid of detention centers and let refugees live in the country while their application is processed. Really, these guys have a lot of stuff going for them, even more than just the environment. So that's why I'm planning to vote for them first.

Yes, they do want to push forward for gay marriage. But really... So what? They are mostly trying to remove the discrimination against these people anyway. I'm not a fan of the whole gay thing, but I don't think that Christians should be pushing their views onto society like that. You can't force people who don't believe in God to live as if they did.

Labour
Realistically speaking, the greens aren't going to win a seat. So if it's a close election, then my 2nd preference is what is going to count. Labour will undo some of the mess that the libs have got us in. And I quiet like Rudd. However, their policies are a bit too much of a compromise for my liking. So I'm giving them a 2. I'd give more reasons for this but I'm about to fall asleep.

Other
WIENER, Sven seems like he's alright. He says to vote for him if you want to look after the environment but are too scared of the greens. The other two candidates are really hard to find out about on the net, so I've put them in the middle. Really, if they want any body to vote for them, then they should at least have a simple webpage with what they stand for.

Here's a couple of links if you're interested:

• A great overview of the main Greens policies here
• Understanding what voting 1,2,3, etc means
• Lower House
• Upper House

So I don't want to tell you how you should vote, but rather just to give you a couple of things to think about. Don't just vote for the name that you've seen the most of the side of the street, but vote for who you think is going to be the best for this country and the world.

And look, I didn't even mention the pulp mill once! :-P

Humphrey

Does this make sense?

Here is a couple of paragraphs that I wrote for an assignment. I re-read it and just laughed. A re write was definitely needed!

With a smoothed histogram, an analysis can be undertaken to locate a circle. Firstly peaks in the histograms located. This is accomplished by finding the highest points in the graph, and then looking to the left and right of these points to see whether the graph slopes downward.

Once all the peaks have been found, each peak is paired with every other peak in the same axis to produce a number of peak pairs. Each of the peak pairs are given a score of the likelihood that they represent a circle. This score is determined by how high the peaks are, and if they have the same height and width.
Then each peak pair is paired with every peak pair in the other axis. These new pairs of paired peaks are also given a score which is determined by how similar the pairs of pairs are to each other. The pair of pairs with the highest score is assumed to represent the circle.

Weymoth Camp Theme Song

I was sorting through some a box of old papers this morning, and I came across this song that we wrote at the first Weymoth Camp. It brings back some memories of the good old days!

We've come along to the Weymoth Camp,
Jesus our saviour he is a champ.
Kris for baptized on the old boat ramp,
It's a La-la-la-la-la land.

HELLO!

Ness was left with nothing to say,
When Dave said something that made our day.
When she didn't talk back we though, "No way"!
Hay hay hay.

GET BACK IN THE KITCHEN!

Five cool people for saved this week,
I don't know about you, but we think that's sweet.
Jesus is saving all of the week,
Making them strong, da da da deek.

SERIOUSLY?

Spagetus Labotomus, what's this stuff Matt?
I wouldn't even fed this crap to my cat.
It's the main ingredient in the rat sack,
Da da, that's that.

GET OUT OF MY KITCHEN!

Well there you have it, the song that we wrote on the first Weymoth camp. If I remember rightly, Kris and I put it together. I must have been in about grade 11 back then. According to the piece of paper that I found these words are on, the chords are G D C D7 \ A. I don't really remember how those chords fit the song though.

The Latest

Well it's been a while since I've blogged... So what has been happening in the World of Humphrey?

• Got a Job
  For the last week or so, I have been doing some IT work for the Federal Hotels & Resorts. My job is to create some floor plans for some of their convention rooms. I'm now about half way through doing those, and hopefully I finish them before uni goes back.
• Honours
  In case you haven't heard, I'm planning to study computing honours this year. I'm looking forward to doing some research into some cutting-edge areas of the computing world. To make 2nd semester a little bit easier, I'm planning to do a summer school unit. So that will start early February.
• Godstock
  For New Years Eve (and the surrounding week) I headed up to Marrawah for Godstock. I got to stretch out my el'dodgio surfing legs and to spend a lot of time bludging around the campfire. I must admit that I'm not the worlds greatest surf, not even tasmania's, but it was good fun trying. I even got to try out a body board!
• Weddings
  If you haven't noticed, EVERYBODY IS GETTING MARRIED! So recently I've been to a few different weddings. The last wedding I attended was Karl & Katies. They got married on a beach at Bridport, and I played a couple of songs on the guitar for it. The next wedding I'm going to is Elly and Stu's, which is on this Saturday. Which reminds me, I have to knock together some powerpoint stuff this week sometime.
• Moving House
  Yes, I've moved house. Well I haven't actually started living there yet, but most of my belonging are up there. It's a really nice three bedroom house, and I'll be living with Matt Yost and most probably Thomas :-) I can't wait, cause it's going to be heaps cool.

Well that's what I've been up to lately. I'm sure there are many things that I've forgotten to write about, but I'm sure you'll get over it. Anyway, I better go and do some work.

Humphrey

Humphrey Murray BComp

Saturday morning marked the completion of my uni degree with our graduation ceremony. It was a pretty cool morning. We got to walk through the streets of Launceston to Albert Hall. The ceremony was rather long, mostly due to the fact that they had to read out lots and lots of names!

It was a bit weird during the beginning of the ceremony. It started off with depressing organ music and a procession of deans and stuff walking up the front in their gowns and robes. It really reminded me of sitting through a traditional church service. The only difference being that it wasn't the God of Heaven and Earth that was the focus, but the God of Knowledge and Understanding. :-s

However after that, they had some chick sing, "Oh Holy Night". So it was really cool to have a hymn about Jesus been sung.

After the ceremony, we got to eat food! So that was cool. :-)

Last ever undergraduate uni results!

Well I received my uni results today. I'm really happy with them, because they are higher on average then they were last semester. :-)

I was particully happy with my music (elective) mark. Anyway, here are the results!

Aural & Ensemble 1A	1	71	Distinction
Software Engineering Project A	1	82	High Distinction
Computer Networks	1	80	High Distinction
Knowledge-Based Systems	1	78	Distinction
Aural & Ensemble 1B	2	67	Credit
Software Engineering Project B	2	84	High Distinction
Computer Graphics & Animation	2	86	High Distinction
Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing	2	86	High Distinction

Spare time!

So what does somebody like Humphrey do when he's on holidays and got nothing else to do?? He works on a jig-saw puzzle. So after many hours of pain and frustration I have managed to get some of the pieces matched together :-)

Anyway.. back to the old granny sport me thinks!

Jams Outrageous Bucks Surf

6:20 am today... RING RING... goes my alarm! Got out of bed, ate, and headed off to the East Coast for Jams Bucks Day! Yay! We hit the surf, and we went hard core. I kinda froze to death, as the wetsuit I was wearing had short sleeves and arms. But that was cool :-)

I sorta stood up on the first wave I caught! However it wasn't long after that, that my hands and feet started to go numb. I discovered that surfing is rather hard when you are numb limps, so I ditched the board and went body surfing instead!

After that we all went off to get some hot chippies for lunch! So good after a big surf :-p Then we played a game of Olly Oop. Which is an awesome game which involves passing the ball around while doing crazy jumps, and trying to stay in the circle!

We then did the usual Bucks Night things.

How tough is my camera?
On the way home, I left my digital camera sitting on the top of the car. So the combination of a corner and 100 or so clicks caused it to fall off the roof. We heard a thud, and we all turned around, only the see my camera rolling along the road.
Anyway, we u-bolted, and picked it up... and guess what? It still works fine! A few minor scratches and a very slightly munted battery bay is about all that happened. Keep in mind that the road was sealed, and the camera was not in it's case. That's a pretty good effort I think... Not even the lens or the LCD display got a single scratch!! Also the sudden jolt didn't corrupted any data on the memory card either.
Thank you Jesus!

That reminds me of the Usb Flash disk that I left in the pocket of my jeans while they were been washed. So the flash disk survived both the washing machine and the drier.... and it still worked fine. Actually, I'm still using it!

Crazy Bogans!

Last night I could hear some bogans making a racket outside our house. It sounded like there were smashing our fence! So I went outside and shone my torch at them. That probably wasn't the smartest thing to do, because that really.. yes really pissed them off! They wanted us to fight them. Instead of fighting them, we rang the cops (who didn't actually seem to come).

This morning I went outside to discover our remodeled mailbox and fence.

If anybody know who those bloody bogans are, let me know and I'll go talk to their parents! :-)

Uni is over!

My Saturday morning exam marked the end of my undergraduate degree!! Yes that's right... I've finished! Just a lil matter of a graduation ceremony and I'm all done! :-) Here is a lil picture of how I feel about computers now that I've finished a degree in computing!

So what now? Well I'm planning to go back and do a year of honours!

New Keyboard & Mouse

Last Friday, my new wireless keyboard and mouse arrived! As it arrived the day before my last exam, I didn't actually get that much study done.... But that's ok, because I needed an excuse to not study! :-)

This keyboard/mouse was a bargain! This exact model sells for $175 down in Launceston, but I got it new off eBay for $66 including postage!! :-)

My College Animation

I was sorting through some of the junk that is scattered throughout my room, getting it ready for when I move, and I came across a CD. On that I found the animation I did back in college. Here is in case any of you are interested in seeing it.


See it here:

college_animation.mov
(9Mb QuickTime Movie)

Optical Illusion?

Hey guys, I came across this while studying for an exam:

Are tiles A & B the same colour?


Click here to see the answer

More info and full description at:
http://web.mit.edu/persci/people/adelson/checkershadow_illusion.html

Animation now available in Quicktime

My graphics assignment can now be viewed by using quicktime:

BenderChase.mov
(8.8Mb Quicktime Movie)