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I haven't put a news post for quite a while and I have some spare time so I'll just quickly update:

Happy New Year! I hope it was as good for you as it was for me (and hopefully everyone here in NZ). And I hope everyone enjoyed the rare palindrome date yesterday (01/02/2010)

My music studies have been progeressing nicely. I have just started attending a music school on tuesdays for learning keyboard and the associated theory. For guitar, I will be looking at a few AC/DC songs, the reason being, on saturday, I went to Wellington to see my first rock concert....

AC/DC LIVE!! Yes, one of the worlds best rock bands, live at Westpac stadium in Wellington city. To all those who have been to previous concerts, I hope it was as good for you as it was for me. I was thoughroughly mind-blown by the awesomeness. To all those considering attending their other venues, it is as good as it is hyped up to be and then some. I highly recommend it if you are looking for an awesome band which, despite being 60+ years old, still manages to rock with the energy of a hurricane. The performance was further improved by Angus Young's classic moves ie. getting down to his shorts (and presenting a nice view of AC/DC underpants!), running around like his pants are on fire and playing guitar while completly spazing out rolling on the floor. The highlight of the show would be, just winning over a masterful reformance of Highway to Hell, the extended version of Let There Be Rock, with Angus adding tons of solo wankery in the middle. Although, an honourary spot goes to the encore, For Those About To Rock. You have not heard an epic rock song untill you have heard one... with CANNONS FIRING TO THE TEMPO AND ENDING.

There, that was my first two months of 2010. How were yours?

It's my b-day, defined on I'm Sorry I haven't a Clue as "two days before D-Day."

I got an electric Ibanez guitar plus amp and tuner, and Guitar Hero: Greatest Hits/Smash Hits. That's keeping me busy for a while. I'm arranging a party on the weekend and, between that and invitations and school is giving me lots to do.

Will report back soon.

It's a Yamaha Psr-X413. This may be the first step towards learning the keyboard. Though you could play piano with it. The piano setting is remarkably realistic.

...Of Karate! I just got my yellow belt today. That's the belt above newb/white belt. Also, I am now allowed to do kumite/sparring. Sweet! Don't have a pic to show you. You'll just have to settle with me writing out the nifty certificate I got:

Certificate Of Rank
GO-KAN-RYU

Sam Roseveare
Has trained in the Martial Art of Karate-Do has shown skill in the technique and general physical development and has also matured in discipline and mental application in Karate-Do. In accordance with the grading system of Go-Kan-Ryu Karate-Do, the above named person is awarded the rank below:
(Goes on to state my rank, 8th Kyu, the date and the sig of my sensei. Also repeats the above in Japanese)

In other news, gonna start learning keyboard and possibly guitar soon. Since I'm taking music, it kinda makes sense.

Yesterday and the day before, I attended a fencing competition. The first day was for epee, the second for foil. In the first, I didn't do so well, winning a total of no bouts, but I was losing CONSISTANTLY, with about 2 or 3 each time (winning score is five). I did better with the foil... sort of. I lost the first two fights with 0 points (noobish!), but I managed a 5-4 win the next time. Then, my final fight was a bout to 15 with my best friend, Michael Sirvid. One of the most remarkable things about it was that, I think the bout held the unofficial record for technical problems stalling a fight. It took a total of about 15 minutes to get it fixed at one point! Well, I lost by a narrow margin of 14-15, but Mic's always been a good fencer... and a lot faster. Mainly because he's about 5'5 and I'm about 6'3. My placing was 12/22. Not bad, considering the guy in 4th was the under-15s champion. Anyway, that's my weekend.

Plus, getting Karate yellow belt soon! :)

Yep, because it's open-day soon for my school, Onslow College, they ended school at lunchtime. W00t! 11111! YAYz! And whatever game-speak happy things there are.

So, um, nothing else there. Oh, yeah, there is.

Changed the optional subjects for the last three terms. In the first half of the school year, I took History and Consumer Studies. Now, it's Maori and Music. Oh, and for the dip-shits who don't know, Maori is the language of the- who knew- Maori, the natives of NZ before the euro-colonists arrived.

Finished now. Seriously. I mean it. Byes.

I have just attended a course on 3D graphics in Capital E in Wellington. Here, we got to do something rather... special.

You see, *checks NZ secret sevices aren't looking* there's this confidential new program-game thing called.. Atmosphir. Well, confidential as in the general public doesn't know yet. I don't think they are actually trying to keep it secret, so I might not get 'terminated' for telling you about.

It's still in it's beta stages, but it's already pretty good. You create maps and play in them with a third-person RPG style gameplay. There are lots of ways to create maps, and there's lots of variety in the sense of what kind of maps you can create. Hell, there's one map that's based on Guitar Hero!

It's released to the general populace (NZ, at least) in a few months, but, remember, you heard it here first.

'Phew, glad I didn't-'
'Halt!'
'Wait, I- Auurghhhh!'

I have returned home. To quote Martin Luther King (I think) "Free at last! God Almighty, free at last!" More specifically, free from an atrociously slow laptop. It took minutes to do what should take seconds, like go to an interface in Dragonfable. To give you an idea of how easy that is, you could BLINK and it would be done on a normal computer. Anyway, umm, that's it.

Things really have taken a bad turn here. It turns out the laser-shooting is no longer avaliable. For those who don't know, which is probably a lot, Rotorua is a geo-thermal hotspot in NZ. Because of this, the air is often foggy with sulfur. Because sulfur eats into the electrical systems, laser-shooting has been permanently canceled. It's geo-thermal matters which lead to the next Unfortunate Event.

We were going to the Rotorua Hot Spings. Then the sat-nav gave us problems. First, it lead us to a route which was closed. So we went around. That took a while, and when we finally did find a road, which took three pass-bys because it was poorly indicated, it was off-limits. From what I could tell from the signs, the area was poisonous or something. When we finally arrived at the hot springs, it had taken us twice as long as it should have to get there.

So that's more of my time in Rotorua. How is things with the rest of you?
P.S. As I typed the last bit, the 'y' key have fallen off. That makes five of them now with this laptop.

I have now got to Rotorua, so I am typing this from an apartment on a laptop. I'm sleeping on the sofa because there is only one bed and I'm NOT sharing it with my mother. The internet connection is giving me trouble, I had to use Firefox just to get here on NG. And I will be attending a special computer graphics course soon and me and mum plan to do laser-shooting thingys, sometime tomorrow, I think. Anyways, I will update soon.