Suh-weet!

So, not many people did not know that there was an Apple event on 12 September where they were going to release some exciting new products, of which the iMac Core 2 Duo was not a part.

Yesterday, I switched on my computer with some excitement, as I had no idea what was to have been released. Only that when I went to the Apple site, I realized that the event had not even taken place! (well, obviously India is in a totally different and useless time zone ).

Okay, so there are the updated version of the iPods which have been released - and they are really cool! I mean, all right, it ain't the iPhone and it ain't a touch-screen iPod, but hey the new iPods look really sweet! First of all, there's the new iPod Shuffle which is about the size of half your palm (depending on how big your hand is) and at $79 for 1GB, it's really good!

Next we come to the Nano. It replaced the Mini last year and was the iPod I wanted. Now it comes five different colours (black, silver, pink, green, blue), has a new 8 GB model and a new design (similar to the Mini's, except it's thinner).

The 5G Video iPod has also been updated (well, obviously). It now has a whopping big 80GB model, which inicidentally is the same size as the old 60GB one.

The new iPods also have brighter displays, much better battery life (24 hrs for the Nano) and sync with the iTunes Store to download movies, and games too.

There's also iTunes 7. Well, they've changed the looks a bit and I don't really like them, plus the logo's got a blue musical note instead of a green one. Check all these things out at the Apple site.

So long, and thanks for all the patience,
-- Sahil :)

One long German test

Well, in our school at any rate, German is supposed to be the easiest third- and therefore, second-language that one can take. Me, I disagree. And so would any other tenthy or ninthy. Honestly, if German can be said to be easy, it’s only because the level of German in our school is really low – which means that an eigthy knows about as much German as an eight-year old German. And anyway, German was only scoring (was because it isn’t scoring any more) because the syllabus wasn’t much, the paper wasn’t long and one didn’t study in each and every German class.

Now, German is exceedingly tough. As a language, at any rate, it seems to me to be loads more complex (as I’ve already mentioned before). And the papers no longer seem to be too short. See, normally, a German test can be completed in 20 minutes and an exam in, say, around half an hour to 45 minutes. But on Monday (last Monday, that is) we had this special German test which took a whopping one hour to complete (which, in case you haven’t noticed, is even more than the time taken to complete an exam). And, of course, the marks we got were inversely proportional to the time taken to complete the paper. The paper consisted of 3 essays and 2 comprehension passages. Questions in the comprehension passage all had answers of 2 lines, and were all of 3-4 marks each!

“I'm sorry, I can't do this...”

So, we had this Poetry Recitiation () competition in our school today, and I participated in it (albeit I hadn't really any choice). It was, let me tell you, unbelievably stupid. For one thing, the theme was "Seasons" (though that's not the stupid bit) and rules like the time limit were told to us two periods before the competition (that's not the stupid bit either). The stupid bit starts when I tell you that no one was allowed to take the paper with the poem written on it up onstage for some absurd reason that if you take the paper you'll keep looking into it and so you won't manage to have proper expressions .

So, here's how it went:

Participant 1: The title of my poem is "Ode to Autumn" by John Keats.
[Starts off]
[1 minute later, gets stuck; looks down, realises there's no paper to look down at]
....I'm sorry, I can't do this......[walks off]

Compere: Our next participant is [blah]

P2: The title of my poem is [whatever-it-was].
[Starts off]
[1.5 minute later, gets stuck; looks down, realises there's no paper to look down at]
....I'm sorry, I can't do this......[walks off]

Compere: Our next participant is [blah]

P3: The title of my poem is "Ode to Autumn" by John Keats.
[Starts off]
[1/2 minute later, gets stuck; looks down, realises there's no paper to look down at]
....I'm sorry, I can't do this......[walks off]

Me: Wondering why nobody can remember their poems properly and why the judges didn't allow them to take the papers with them (don't give me the expression crap) and why everyone is saying 'Ode to Autumn'.

Well, basically, there were about 5 more participants who recited the same Ode, all of whom could not remember it in its entirety, and out of the 24 participants, at least 17 walked off after saying they were sorry and could not do it.

Me? My chance came right in the end. I didn't quite forget my poem, but then I didn't quite get a prize either (came 4th by 1 or 2 points).

Ah well.

***

So the iMac Core 2 Duos have been released which makes me wonder what momentus things they're gonna show on September 12. New Mac Minis are also there, and I'd buy them if it were not for the graphics card.

Oh, and I noticed this interesting thing in my feedreader: