dallin May 10th, 2011

For the last three months, Luke and I have been working on a new project. It’s called SchoolBuy. The concept is simple. Schools need more funds. People want to help, but don’t have time, money or motivation. SchoolBuy allows you to help, without any of the hassle. How? Through online shopping.

We’ve partnered with hundreds of online stores, each of which will make a contribution to your school with each purchase. These are products, brands and stores that you would be using anyway, at the prices you would normally pay. Places like Apple, Dell, Optus, Virgin, Vodafone and lots more! It doesn’t make any difference to you, but it adds up to a big difference for your school!

The process is simple

1. Visit SchoolBuy
2. Search for the school you want to support
3. Find a partner merchant and go shopping!

If you use Firefox, it can be even easier. Just download our Firefox Plugin, found at the top of the page where you select a merchant. Then you can just go about your business shopping online and any purchases from SchoolBuy partners will automatically make a contribution for you school! We’re working on similar plugins for Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Safari (and maybe even Opera), so check back for updates on that (or sign up for our e-mail newsletter…)

So why are you still reading this? Shouldn’t you be shopping by now?

There is more that you can do, though! We’re working hard to get schools involved with this so they can promote within their community, but it’s often hard to reach the right person at a school who can do something about it. Feel free to pass this on to any teachers, principals, Parents & Friends committee members or anyone else you know who is involved in a school community. You can also give them my e-mail address (dallin@schoolbuy.com.au), and I’d love to hear from them. We expect people to have questions, and we’re here to answer them!

If you have a blog or a website, we’d also be very appreciative of you linking to us. We’ve created a set of ‘badges’ with cut and paste html code for you to add to your site, on our marketing page. I put one on my blog, so you can too! If you’re a graphic designer, feel free to make a better one, too! You can also link directly to your school’s page on SchoolBuy – click the marketing link at the bottom of your school’s page, and then the code for the badges will automatically link directly to your school. Magic!

Finally, you can also like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. We’d also love for you to sign up for our e-mail newsletter (promise not to spam you!) – there are forms for that at various places on the site.

This site has the potential to do amazing things. We’d love for you to help us on the way there!

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dallin November 21st, 2008

I’ve talked before about my Computer Graphics course. All of my exams are done now for this year, so I thought I’d give you a bit of an update. And since Computer Graphics was my most interesting course, that’s what I’ll focus on!

The second assignment was to make an interactive billiards simulation. Well, a really simplistic one, at least. We only needed the white ball and two other coloured balls and a table. No pockets, no scoring, no cues. The mouse controlled the camera viewpoint, and the space button ‘struck’ the white ball, sending it in whatever directio nthe camera was facing. We could optionally add some scenery and other elements to making to more realistic or more like an actual game. I added a little scenery, and made the power variable. I’ll upload a video when I get the chance, but for now you get a screenshot.

Our final Graphics assignment was to make a racing game. I had grand plans for this assignment, because I’d been playing Mario Kart a fair bit when we were first given the assignment. Unfortunately uni for for other subjects, and being busy with various other things, meant that most of those grand plans never got finished. The game still needs a lot of work before it would be considered ‘fun’ in any sense of the word. I really wanted it to be a lot better. But that said, I am quite impressed with what I did get done, especially considering the little time I had for it. 

If anyone would like to have a go with any of these things, they only run under Cygwin, but I’d be happy to send the exe to anyone who’s interested.

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Kathryn October 2nd, 2008

Where do I start! New calling, new house, work experience! And the list goes on…

Last Sunday Morialta ward got a new Elders Quorum president, yep, Dallin!!! Dallin’s excited about it, and will hopefully have his counsellors sustained this week. He claims he has no idea what he’s doing but I’m sure he’ll do a wonderful job. I mean one of the first things he did after being sustained was orgainse for a few of the Elders Quorum to come and help us move on Tuesday, which was great!

The move wasn’t too bad…..I was pretty busy through the last week of term and so didn’t get any of the packing done until Monday afternoon, when mum came and helped which was wonderful, as we weren’t getting anywhere by ourselves! So we moved on Tuesday and pretty much just put everything in the lounge room, which was full by the time everything was in there. After everything was moved we stayed back at the unit to clean through it ready for the new occupants!

Dallin had an interview today at one of the government departments (Dept of land, water and biodiversity conservation) for some work experience. As part of the course he’s doing at uni he has to have 6 weeks full time (or equivalent) work experience in the field. He contacted some of the guys in our ward who did the same or similar degree and he has managed to get some work experience with them, which is great. He starts next week and will just work Wednesday mornings and Thursdays until uni finishes then he’ll probably do 3 full days each week, and work at State Supply the other couple of days… but we will see how it goes.

That’s about all for updates, so here’s a story for you all……

A few months back Dallin noticed that when you turned the fan on in the bathroom it made a funny noise and then seemed to stop, so we decided we should stop using the fan because it was broken. A few weeks later we took the cover off the fan and realised that it was working. It made a funny noise when starting up but other than that it was working perfectly. So we started using the fan again. A week or so after that one day Dallin turned the fan on and it made a cracking, thwacking sound and then silence. So again we stopped using the fan. The day before we moved we decided to take the cover off again and have another look. So Dallin took the cover off, I came in to have a look and we both looked up and went ‘IT’S GONE!’ So the cracking, thwacking sound (thanks Dallin for the accurate sound effects) we assume was the fan flying off into space… Or atleast the roof anyway. The issue is yet to be resolved….

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dallin August 14th, 2008

So, this semester at uni I’m doing a subject called Computer Graphics. I’ve been looking forward to it, because it presents a new kind of challenge, completely different to anything that I’ve been doing before, but it’s very fun and interesting. I knew quite a few people who were doing it last year, and I always enjoyed looking at things they’d been working on.

Well, I’m just finishing up my first practical exercise, and it has been really fun. The core of the practical is reasonably simple (once you know what you’re doing) but several ‘extensions’ are listed, and either one of those extensions or one of your own is required, if you want full marks.

The core of the exercise was drawing 2 dimensional ‘reptiles’ – Shapes which can be formed by drawing 4 smaller versions of itself. A slightly boring example would be a square – you can make a square by drawing four smaller squares. Each of those 4 smaller versions could then be filled with 4 smaller versions, potentially creating an infinite fractal-like pattern. Actually, one of the things we had to draw, was the Sierpinski Triangle, shown on the fractal page.

Well, for an extension, I decided to try my hand at a 3D version of the Sieprinski Triangle. I only just now learned from Wikipedia that it is called a Tetrix. I wanted to share it with you, because it’s pretty. It looks better when it’s moving, but I can’t capture a video for you at the moment (believe me, I’ve tried!) *EDIT* – Youtube video embedded below. Enjoy!

Oh, and Liv is like awesome. Or something…

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dallin July 13th, 2008

So, it’s been a while since we last updated our blog and a lot has happened since then, so we’re not going to try and catch you up on it all. We have both turned a year older and had fairly quiet and mostly relaxing birthdays, although that was almost 2 months ago. About one month ago Dallin received a new calling into the Elders Quorum presidency and was released from Young Mens, which was surprising but also exciting.

More recently, Dallin finished his mid-year exams just over a week ago and we are waiting on the results, but he is confident that he did well in (or has at least passed) all his subjects. With only one year of his degree left we are looking forward to him finishing and being able to work.

The music school Kathryn has been working at for the past year closed at the end of last week. Our last week of lessons was followed by a good bye concert on 5 July. The closing of the school has been sad but also provided Kathryn with a wonderful opportunity to start her own business teaching piano. Almost all of the students that were at the school have moved with Kathryn which has been a great blessing as her workload will only increase slightly but it will result in a payrise! She starts teaching as of July 21 and is a little nervous but still quite excited.

We also just had a trip to Sydney to spend a few days with Callie, Luke and their families. We had a great time although Blaise and Lady were unwell for a bit of the time we were there. We were only there for a few days and as always, the time went too quickly and we wish we could have stayed for another week! We took the opportunity to go the Sydney Temple which for Kathryn was the first time she had done a full session in a temple other than Adelaide. The temple is such a beautiful place and we just love being there!

Love Kathryn & Dallin

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