Last week was mock end of year exams. This is a chance for us to sit the papers we are going to be doing at the end of the year in exam conditions. These run for the whole week and you only have to be there when you have an exam. I only had 3 subjects with exams and two were on the same day, so I only had to show up for 2 days, one being Monday and the other Wednesday. I was lucky enough to get a nice long 4 day weekend.

My first exam was on Monday afternoon and it was for Geography. We only had to do 2 papers, one for skills and the other for cultural processes. I spend most of the 2 hours allocated doing the skills paper thoroughly but didn’t even write my name on the second paper because I couldn’t be bothered writing lots, and I couldn’t remember anything because I didn’t do any study.

And on Wednesday I had one exam in the morning, which was Statistics, and another one in the afternoon, which was Physics. I hadn’t studied for either of them so I knew I wouldn’t do that well. The Stats papers were relatively straight forward, with the Probability paper being the most difficult of the three. In Physics, I was completely lost. I had no idea what I was doing and knew as soon as I looked through the papers I was screwed. I still tried to answer as many questions as I could in case I could fluke a grade.

Well today i got my results back from all my exams. For the Geography paper I did do, I got an Excellence for it, which was well above the expected Achieved/Merit I would have expected. In Stats, I managed to get once of each, an Achieved, Merit and Excellence for each of the papers. In Physics, I flat out failed! This is what you get when you do absolutely no study. Although I justify the lack of study for having other priorities, my reading log assignment which is due in a few days. I will try and study for the real exams and hopefully get good grades in those ones!

From now, I will have no more school for 2 weeks. This has been a long term consisting of 11 weeks, although there was Easter break in the middle somewhere so it was probably more like 10 and a half weeks. Still, the term has been pretty long and has been pretty busy, as you would know if you have read the post from last week.

As far as schools concerned, we haven’t done that much at all this term. Have had 2 assessments in Statistics, which I managed to get an Excellence in, and the other one hasn’t been marked, 1 assessment in Geography, which hasn’t been marked either, 2 assessments in ICT, one passed, other not marked (but will be a pass),  1 assessment in Electronics which I passed and 1 in Physics which hasn’t been marked, but I know I haven’t passed it, yet.

Last day pretty much was mucking around. In ICT, I had finished the test in 2 and a half of the 4 periods given, so I ended up browsing the Internet and playing Minesweeper. In Electronics, I helped a friend try and troubleshoot a computer but it was well and truly fucked, then I started installing Windows XP on another machine and later on helped, which turned out to be actually doing it, installing RAM into another machine. Then last period of the day was the Physics test which was hard. Got to leave early which was a upside, I guess.

I don’t have anything planned for the holidays but it will more than likely consist of my being on the computer and internet doing basically nothing. Two weeks after doing that, school will start again. Not really looking forward to that but it will be nice to get test results back. Hopefully I can think of things to blog about during my holidays to make up for the lack of posts during the school time. HOLIDAYS ARE GO!!!

As you may not have noticed, my blog was updated to Wordpress 2.5 last week, thanks to Peppery. The only noticeable change is in the admin panel where is has been redone to be easier to use and look much nicer. It is taking a little bit of getting use to but after a while, I’m sure I will remember where they have moved things. For a new Wordpress user, the admin panel will definitely be easier to use but for an old user like me, I’m going to have to get fully use to it.

You may have noticed the lack of update in the past week or so. The reason for my absence in blogging is because I have been overloaded with assessments that were due. I had 5 different bits of schoolwork to do. One was a report for geography on the processes of building the new Carisbrook Stadium in Dunedin, which was really hard to do. I’d be lucky to pass because I had no bloody idea what I was rambling about. I also had a Statistics project to complete which was straightforward, just took a little bit of thinking and time to complete and write up. There was also some small bits of homework such as 2 pages of physics questions, some Computing tasks and also an electronics research project on transducers to be completed.

I have finished doing all assignments and hopefully my plate stays relitively clean for a while, especially during the holidays, so I can do what I normally do and not be tied down with homework and assignments to get done. Hopefully there is no homework for me to do over the holidays so I can have a relaxing break without having to even think about school or school work. I guess we will just have to wait and see.

A couple of days ago, Digg rolled out its new profile page on Digg. There are heaps of differences and everything has changed in a way that you can get a little confused when you first use it but quickly find your way around. The main goal to this is to make the site more social and not just a bookmarking/news finding site. Now let me talk about the new profiles as well as give my opinion on them.

As soon as you enter a person profile page, the changes become apparent. First off, up the top we see the 3 newest favoured stories from the user followed about ten of the users most recent activity, including stories dugg, commented on, submitted and even new friends added and shouts. Under that is the last ten shouts you have received. Down the right hand side is a little about section which includes a space for your bio as well as links to your other internet services, photos, friends, and the usual statistics about your digging habits.

The new profile page is really nice looking and smooth. Having more than just the most recent stories you have dugg and one favourite is really what your profile page should have had from the start. It is also nice to see all the types of activity that a person has recently done on the site, it really shows that there is more to Digg than just digging the stories. Shouts are not a feature I think is that great. It is very similar to Pownce, I wonder why. This feature is a little unneeded in my opinion and if they really wanted to do this, they probably could have integrated it with their Pownce service instead of making it individual to Digg. I don’t use the feature because I don’t see any reason to, it doesn’t add anything and is really not worth using.

Being able to see a little About section about a user is good. It gives you a little background information on who the person is and a little bit about their life outside of Digg. Links to peoples Pownce, Facebook, Flickr, Blog or whatever else they have signed up to is nice. It may be a bit creepy if you have a stalker but otherwise it is a nice feature so you are able to follow your fellow Diggers around other services, not only Digg. They also have the ability to upload pictures to the site for other people to see. This is another useful feature which I think should have been cut. They could have found a way to integrate with a popular service, like Flickr, that everyone already uses instead of making a cheap one themselves. It is also great to be able to see a few of the users friends on this page too.

The profile statistics are really interesting. They have added on the page a space where you can see the most dugg topics the person has dugg in the past 30 days. This is cool because it allows you to see which section and which types of stories the user likes to digg and can help with finding new friends on digg with similar tastes to your digging. It still has the same stats from the old profile page with total stories dugg, commented, submitted, the percentage of your stories that make the front page, friends referred and the number of profile views (that number should start to rise with it being more social and profiles more appealing to look at.)

With the profile pages done up, they haven’t gotten rid of your history page, as well as your friends history page. They are still there but the big difference is that there are now useful filters. You can now filter down to the thing you are looking for, whether it is stories dugg, submitted or even comments and shouts. These filters are on both of these pages and make it much easier to filter through the content. You can always view all activity if that is what you prefer.

With these new features, I have been noticing more people adding friends, including people adding me. They have email notifications for activities you select which has allowed me to follow who is adding me as a friend. It seems now that it is so easy to do and follow people, it is becoming more social and randoms are adding randoms, just like of other social networking sites. I personally won’t be adding randoms because I plan on using the site for what it was primarily set for, news and articles. I am only friending my friends and the few people that digg similar stores as I would.

I think it is nice that they are taking a step into trying to make the site more social but I personally could do without it. I think that they should be concentrating on the news side of things and strengthen there instead of moving in a different are, one which is being done so much that they can really succeed or grow because of it. I am going to stick to doing what I do best, digging, and they should do that too!