The exams are really around the corner. My world will start to boil should I not start to toil now. I’m in my sophomore year and yet I’m still having pre-exam jitters – on some nights, I’d find myself spacing out starting at the ceiling and talking to myself – how am I supposed to survive this? We’ve got so little time and yet so many things to cover – I’m expecting killer MCQ papers because multiple-choice, multiple-answer questions (yea, you read it – there may be more than one correct answer per question) will spell the death of me.
A trip back home
I went home two weeks ago – for some final adjustment to my braces before I take them off just in time for two wedding dinners and Christmas, and to catch a breather. On that weekend my parents brought us out for lunch at this Thai restaurant – we were there early so we picked the seat we wanted (kind of boisterous hah) and plopped our asses down.
We had Thai food for lunch!
My family seemed to get accustomed to my photographer instincts – they didn’t touch the food until all of our dishes arrived. Very patiently, they waited for me to get some photos taken while they occupy themselves with some mindless chatter :P I ordered their green curry chicken laksa1 – I picked that because it didn’t have a “spicy warning”. It turned out to be gazillion spicer than food that I would expect without the warning – a little too much for me to handle and I hastily guzzled the can of coke I’ve ordered. Looks like I still need to get some spicy tolerance training done.
Green curry chicken.
They served dad’s coffee towards the end of the meal, complete with a tiny jug of condensed milk. How adorable!
Sugar and milk?
Of dropped data packets
For the past two days I’ve been trying desperately trying to connect to my site through my hostel’s network but it seems that my site was filtered out and data packets were dropped every single time I request for this blog’s address. It’s kind of irritating because all the other sites are readily accessible and a quick check with Down for everyone or just me? revealed that the culprit most probably lies with the hostel server instead of the one hosting my site. I tried contacting the campus IT department and the best effort they could muster was to send me a huge chunk of information which I had already gotten online – ipconfig /release, ipconfig bla bla bla, ipconfig yadda yadda yadda. I’ve all done that. It’s still not working. Firewalls? Check. Virus scanner? Check. Reboot? Check. Latest Vista updates? Check.
It’s still not loading. I’m now blogging from the School of Art, Media and Design across my block (thank goodness I live nearby), in their minimalist and brutalist library. Loving the atmosphere!
Embracing CSS3
Warning. Leet CSS geek speak ahead.
I’ve finally given up trying, by hook or by crook, making my site CSS2.1 valid. It’s not worthwhile for us to keep dwelling on old, expired standards (even if so many review sites strictly upholds the if you’re not XHTML and CSS valid you’re screwed for good judging criteria). I’m expecting to see tomatoes, pies and rotten eggs fly.
Anyway, validation aside, CSS3 does make things a lot more interesting. Now I have added some subtle improvements to contrast of the design to make reading a tad bit easier (check out the 1px text shadows on the byline, as well as on the post, footer and comment headers). A not-so-subtle drop-shadow effects were also added for the sake of exploiting the newfound freedom with CSS3. I’m not going to border-radius anything yet (I prefer rectangular shapes), no worries. I promise I won’t overdo it – although it seems that I’m almost at the verge of overdoing shadows already heh.
Have a great weekend!
To be fair, I couldn’t access your site either over the last two weeks or so, in PGP.
Good luck with exams!
good luck with finals!!
All the best coussie ;) just do what u can and dun over-stress urself
Gwahaha. I already border-radius-ed my blog! OMG.
Anyway, my family also does the quick photograph the food before we eat thing.
Good luck and all the best for your finals! Oh how I “adore” multiple answer questions XD
LOL yours is different! Your blog looks better with border-radius but if I do that on mine it’d be disasterous. And there are just too many people out there who were desperate to get curved corners just because they felt compelled to show off how to use CSS3 :P haha!
Oh, I guess our families are all accustomed to our instincts! Sometimes when my family goes out on weekends, my parents will call me on the phone to tell me they’ve spotted a good photography subject (we shop separately haha) and I’d rush over and see what’s up.
Thanks for the wishes! Yea truly madly deeply crazy about the multiple ANSWER questions. Gosh *facepalm*
I never photograph food, and once I do, my friends/parents would stare :P I do enjoy decorating my food here though XD My friends call that OCD
I’ve already embraced CSS3 with my design, mainly for experimental purposes as well.
Good luck for your finals :) I don’t have any exams coming until January and all I’m waiting for here is term bearks (Most of my December holidays would be spent very wisely, whatnot with my study planner ready now). Hehe :) All the best!
If that’s the case, you should do that more often so that you can make them to get used to your photography habits :) haha! That’s what I did too. My parents didn’t felt quite comfortable when I first got my camera but over time they got used to the snap snap sound when they’re driving.
Oh, same here. I use it to aesthetically enhance the design but without a CSS3-compatible browser, the design still looks good and is not broken just because of the lack of CSS3 support. Thank goodness.
Wow, I’m so jealous of you! Damn, my exam is in like half a week’s time. I always look forward to term breaks too because that’s when we get to breathe a little after all the heavy workload. But usually the mid-semester breaks are pretty much meaningless to us because our tutors will pack us with enough projects and assignments to keep us busy throughout the break :P
@Eli: Ah, I realized that it was because my host accidentally blocked some Singapore-based IPs, including my hostel’s proxy. I’ve asked them to lift the block and it’s working now *rejoices*
@xun: Thank you!
@med: Thanks hehe, I will be good! It’ll take me awhile to get used ot exam stress but I’m doing great now. Just trying my best.