This post was written 2010-12-23 02:47
We covered a lot of ground on Day 3, which was Tuesday, December 21, 2010. I need to make sure I keep the dates right...since it's very confusing not writing the posts on time.
I got a lot of random footage of the Vegas Strip on this day. This would cover from around Bellagio to Mandalay Bay. Now when is all of that stuff going to be edited together into a nice cohesive video, time will tell. I still haven't been able to edit the video from Alaska. Or plenty of other things. You know, life throws you a curve ball and you need to be able to hit it. As for me, I'm still learning about what the "curve ball" is and the proper way to hit it.
Never mind all grievances, I got good exercise done that day. Walking so far is really tiring my legs. Not so much as skiing would, but almost there.
For dinner, we took a shuttle to Rio to eat at their buffet, and thus commence the 24-hour access pass deal a lot of people are trying out. Let's just say that Planet Hollywood's concierge was a bit bored. We learned that the shuttle to Rio would be at Paris. So we walk to Paris and finally made it to some other official, only to tell us that the shuttle doesn't stop here, but rather at Ballys. And then we get out Ballys exit. There was a bus waiting, labeled "Airport Shuttle." there was a sign that pointed toward the right saying "shuttle to Rio." So we stood next to he sign, expecting a bus to come. But then the Airport shuttle driver directed us down towards the right. Finally we see this glass covering thingy to protect us from the rain. It was cumbersome to say the least.
And a side thought, I like skiing. The bus had dirt on it's side and it was wet, windows all fogged up. That's a fairly uncommon thing to see on this bus.
THUD!
Just when we would be getting off the bus, this guy was backing up, and hit the bus. Good thing we didn't get kept in the bus for too long before we were dismissed. Interesting night.
Rio's food. I say not worth the money...and idk about the pass. More later, I can't stay up anymore.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Las Vegas Trip Day 2 - Shopping
This post was written 2010-12-21 10:39, and finished 2010-12-23 02:45
I'm non-materialistic. Enough said. I will append the blog post later once I have time. And hopefully if I remember.
Let's see what happened that day. I woke up, and I ate the rest of the buffalo chicken wrap as my breakfast. I found out that we would be going to go to some shopping area.
Since it's been so long, I have already forgotten most of the smaller details. I'm going to give a quick summary.
I walked around the shops at the outlet. While my mom, aunts, cousin and aunt's friends were shopping, I just kept walking around. The only stores that interested me were the Ritz camera shop, Bose, and this kitchen appliance shop. I don't care about clothing style. As long as I got clothes that keep me warm in the winter (and cool in the summer) and are clean and fitting, I'll be happy. (And of course if it wasn't a masculine color...such as pink...I probably wouldn't have it in my wardrobe to begin with.)
And let's see, I managed to record my walking from one end to the other of the Las Vegas factory outlet. That took a good 7 minutes.
My aunt's friend suggested that we go to this one place to eat dinner. It turned out to be at Terrible's casino. Although Terrible's is like everywhere in Nevada, this one is 60 miles from Vegas. Why here, I don't know. It was an okay dinner. Most had Steak and Lobster, one friend had New York Steak, and I had fish and chips.
After dinner, the friends and (unwillingly) my mom played with Lady Luck for a while. My aunts, cousin and I didn't want to just sit at the casino, so we decided to go to the Walgreens across the street to kill some time. There were some obscure DVDs on sale for $5 for 2 discs, so eh, I got this one production of "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." We also got a half gallon of milk to put in the refrigerator in our suite.
60 miles, and we get back to Vegas. We drove by I-15 and got a view of the strip (as in the recap video at the top). What else happened...nothing. Let's look at the post for Day 3....soon...and the video probably won't be done...and never will...too busy here.
I'm non-materialistic. Enough said. I will append the blog post later once I have time. And hopefully if I remember.
Let's see what happened that day. I woke up, and I ate the rest of the buffalo chicken wrap as my breakfast. I found out that we would be going to go to some shopping area.
Since it's been so long, I have already forgotten most of the smaller details. I'm going to give a quick summary.
I walked around the shops at the outlet. While my mom, aunts, cousin and aunt's friends were shopping, I just kept walking around. The only stores that interested me were the Ritz camera shop, Bose, and this kitchen appliance shop. I don't care about clothing style. As long as I got clothes that keep me warm in the winter (and cool in the summer) and are clean and fitting, I'll be happy. (And of course if it wasn't a masculine color...such as pink...I probably wouldn't have it in my wardrobe to begin with.)
And let's see, I managed to record my walking from one end to the other of the Las Vegas factory outlet. That took a good 7 minutes.
My aunt's friend suggested that we go to this one place to eat dinner. It turned out to be at Terrible's casino. Although Terrible's is like everywhere in Nevada, this one is 60 miles from Vegas. Why here, I don't know. It was an okay dinner. Most had Steak and Lobster, one friend had New York Steak, and I had fish and chips.
After dinner, the friends and (unwillingly) my mom played with Lady Luck for a while. My aunts, cousin and I didn't want to just sit at the casino, so we decided to go to the Walgreens across the street to kill some time. There were some obscure DVDs on sale for $5 for 2 discs, so eh, I got this one production of "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." We also got a half gallon of milk to put in the refrigerator in our suite.
60 miles, and we get back to Vegas. We drove by I-15 and got a view of the strip (as in the recap video at the top). What else happened...nothing. Let's look at the post for Day 3....soon...and the video probably won't be done...and never will...too busy here.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Las Vegas Trip Day 1 - I'm Leaving on a Jet Plane
This post was written 2010-12-21 01:49
It's really exciting (now that I love airplanes) that I would be going to the airport. I was listening to "Leaving on a Jet Plane," and the lyrics really struck me. My dad was dropping my mom and me off at the Southwest terminal. I saw a couple hugging. "Hold me like you'll never let me go." Pretty much sums up the feeling.
While waiting at check-in, I saw the officer in charge of regulating the flow of traffic. She was walking up and down the Southwest Airlines terminal. A car had just parked, and the wife had gotten out of the car. She needed some help with the bags, so her husband shut off the engine and ran with her to get the bags into the airport building. Later, I saw that officer run up to the car, blowing the whistle. Of course the husband wouldn't be able to hear...he's too much in a hurry. And there she goes, busting out her notepad and writing him a citation. He comes out just after the lady finished writing his ticket. He said, "I'm here." The officer simply nonchalantly hands him the ticket. A person waiting behind me in line said, "Merry Christmas?" Basically I'm pretty sure the guy cursed, drove off, and with a ruined mood for the rest of the day. The law's the law, and you break it you got to pay.
But then I see this other couple. They get out of the car. No, the bags didn't come out. Only their persons. To put it nicely, the were taking the lyrics "hold me like you'll never let me go" way too far. They just hug and kiss for a good 3-4 minutes. The same officer had walked to the farther end of the Southwest terminal and didn't notice. Only around 5 minutes in, the guy helped get the bags out of the car. He got in, and by the time he started the engine, it would have been twice as long as the guy who got ticketed earlier. That just really made me mad. That's not fair...or well...it's only illegal if you get caught. There was also this other guy. Let's just say opening the door mean loud blasts of music accompanied with a heavy bass rhythm came out. It's catchy...but annoying. The people who came out basically were extremely clumsy and had large bags haphazardly packed, along with a few papers that fell out upon opening the door. And by the time a second officer came buy, she told the driver, "hurry up let's go." And traffic was blocked. Again. What a way to start the vacation.
Now where was this take place? This time it's Oakland International Airport. It means seeing all those different airlines, ads, and the rushing of passengers. Not to mention, the bureaucracy: the TSA. It was a fairly quick process, and if I had went through an X-ray machine, I wouldn't have known.
And then I find this moving walkway, and I see a view of the wind blowing hard on the San Francisco Bay. Eventually I make it to the Southwest terminal. I bought a Chicken Caesar sandwich at California Pizza Kitchen, since I hadn't had any breakfast. I make it to Gate 29, and await boarding.
"And Section C, welcome aboard." Uh...it was lame. All the aisle and window seats were taken in the entire 737-700. I was desperately looking for a window seat since I have always been looking forward to recording the takeoff again. I made it all the way to the last seat and saw a middle seat. I figured, whatever, all other seats are going to be taken anyway. I sit down and then I hear on the PA: "We have a few window seats over here by the wing." Hmm...I wanted that. I like hearing the engines. And I love hearing the flaps...especially the flaps. I've flown on a Boeing 737 so many times that I'm somewhat mad I didn't hear the flaps sounds too well from where I sat. Anyway I got a good view of the winglet at least. And the person sitting to the right of me was out of the way for the most part.
Here are the takeoff and landing videos:
Takeoff
Landing
No need to say anything about the turbulence on this flight.
My mom and I rendezvoused with my two aunts and cousin that flew in from San Francisco. They had an earlier flight, but the departure delayed it due to weather. (California's been having some pretty nasty weather lately.) Thus, my later flight arrived at Las Vegas before theirs. I posted to Facebook I had landed, and attempted to upload a video. (I really am an addict to uploading stuff whenever there's Internet access during a trip.)
The taxi driver was pretty bored:
-Hello.
-[no response]
-You can help us with our bags.
-[no response]
-We're going to Planet Hollywood.
-[no response]
-(In Chinese) Wow this guy sure is weird.
-[pushes the button to start the fare counting]
-[arrive at PH, pushes button to stop the fare counting]
-Thirteen fifty.
-(In Chinese) Wow. He doesn't even open the door for us.
-(In Chinese) Nor does he help us unload
-(In Chinese) We're not going to tip him that much, he doesn't deserve it.
-[takes the $16, counts a few times, incredulously looking at the bills]
Then we go to the registration counter. I sit there, waiting, attending the baggage we have. There really was some pretty annoying and suggestive music. And the hotel area was what I considered to be elegant. Basically that place is just nothing like those resorts at Lake Tahoe. But then again, the places at South Lake Tahoe are for people who are going skiing/snowboarding, so it's a different attitude.
Then my mom receives information that we're in the hotel registration, and that we actually need to go to the timeshare check-in for Planet Hollywood Towers. So we drag out things through up an escalator, and and find ourselves in the casino area. The person working at the information desk pointed us in the right direction, saying this happens all the time, and doesn't know why the taxi drivers (and the Planet Hollywood staff) can't get it right.
I sit down, have a quick chat with one of my friends on the phone. And then we get our keys. We will be staying at room 3707. We take the elevator up, and see that the shades opened up automatically for us upon our arrival. (Now, I'm pretty sure that's because someone accidentally pushed the "shade up" button as well as the lights.) Speak about good view...we saw a parking lot as well as a bunch of other towering buildings across.
We then had lunch at the Ocean One Bar & Cuisine. We noticed that it had a $5.99 lunch special. And with the 5 of us, we ordered 4 dishes. (Refer to flikr.) My Buffalo Chicken wrap was a really good one. At the end of the meal, there were still left overs, after sharing between all 5 of us. Kinda makes us feel a little bit better, that we honestly couldn't' have bought more food if we wanted to.
After that I retire to the room for more of less the rest of the night. I take a nap. And then I set to work on the Stanford supplements. Go figure, working on a vacation. Not that I exactly was too excited to go here in the first place. And it's nice looking at the view outside while doing the essays. My mom did request a room with a good view. This suite is a pretty good one. At night, the parking lots naturally aren't emphasized, and you can see plenty of other casinos nearby. We even get a glimpse of the Bellagio fountains.
I'll have the post for Monday Dec. 20 written on Tuesday. It's very time consuming writing in this much detail.
It's really exciting (now that I love airplanes) that I would be going to the airport. I was listening to "Leaving on a Jet Plane," and the lyrics really struck me. My dad was dropping my mom and me off at the Southwest terminal. I saw a couple hugging. "Hold me like you'll never let me go." Pretty much sums up the feeling.
While waiting at check-in, I saw the officer in charge of regulating the flow of traffic. She was walking up and down the Southwest Airlines terminal. A car had just parked, and the wife had gotten out of the car. She needed some help with the bags, so her husband shut off the engine and ran with her to get the bags into the airport building. Later, I saw that officer run up to the car, blowing the whistle. Of course the husband wouldn't be able to hear...he's too much in a hurry. And there she goes, busting out her notepad and writing him a citation. He comes out just after the lady finished writing his ticket. He said, "I'm here." The officer simply nonchalantly hands him the ticket. A person waiting behind me in line said, "Merry Christmas?" Basically I'm pretty sure the guy cursed, drove off, and with a ruined mood for the rest of the day. The law's the law, and you break it you got to pay.
But then I see this other couple. They get out of the car. No, the bags didn't come out. Only their persons. To put it nicely, the were taking the lyrics "hold me like you'll never let me go" way too far. They just hug and kiss for a good 3-4 minutes. The same officer had walked to the farther end of the Southwest terminal and didn't notice. Only around 5 minutes in, the guy helped get the bags out of the car. He got in, and by the time he started the engine, it would have been twice as long as the guy who got ticketed earlier. That just really made me mad. That's not fair...or well...it's only illegal if you get caught. There was also this other guy. Let's just say opening the door mean loud blasts of music accompanied with a heavy bass rhythm came out. It's catchy...but annoying. The people who came out basically were extremely clumsy and had large bags haphazardly packed, along with a few papers that fell out upon opening the door. And by the time a second officer came buy, she told the driver, "hurry up let's go." And traffic was blocked. Again. What a way to start the vacation.
Now where was this take place? This time it's Oakland International Airport. It means seeing all those different airlines, ads, and the rushing of passengers. Not to mention, the bureaucracy: the TSA. It was a fairly quick process, and if I had went through an X-ray machine, I wouldn't have known.
And then I find this moving walkway, and I see a view of the wind blowing hard on the San Francisco Bay. Eventually I make it to the Southwest terminal. I bought a Chicken Caesar sandwich at California Pizza Kitchen, since I hadn't had any breakfast. I make it to Gate 29, and await boarding.
"And Section C, welcome aboard." Uh...it was lame. All the aisle and window seats were taken in the entire 737-700. I was desperately looking for a window seat since I have always been looking forward to recording the takeoff again. I made it all the way to the last seat and saw a middle seat. I figured, whatever, all other seats are going to be taken anyway. I sit down and then I hear on the PA: "We have a few window seats over here by the wing." Hmm...I wanted that. I like hearing the engines. And I love hearing the flaps...especially the flaps. I've flown on a Boeing 737 so many times that I'm somewhat mad I didn't hear the flaps sounds too well from where I sat. Anyway I got a good view of the winglet at least. And the person sitting to the right of me was out of the way for the most part.
Here are the takeoff and landing videos:
Takeoff
Landing
No need to say anything about the turbulence on this flight.
My mom and I rendezvoused with my two aunts and cousin that flew in from San Francisco. They had an earlier flight, but the departure delayed it due to weather. (California's been having some pretty nasty weather lately.) Thus, my later flight arrived at Las Vegas before theirs. I posted to Facebook I had landed, and attempted to upload a video. (I really am an addict to uploading stuff whenever there's Internet access during a trip.)
The taxi driver was pretty bored:
-Hello.
-[no response]
-You can help us with our bags.
-[no response]
-We're going to Planet Hollywood.
-[no response]
-(In Chinese) Wow this guy sure is weird.
-[pushes the button to start the fare counting]
-[arrive at PH, pushes button to stop the fare counting]
-Thirteen fifty.
-(In Chinese) Wow. He doesn't even open the door for us.
-(In Chinese) Nor does he help us unload
-(In Chinese) We're not going to tip him that much, he doesn't deserve it.
-[takes the $16, counts a few times, incredulously looking at the bills]
Then we go to the registration counter. I sit there, waiting, attending the baggage we have. There really was some pretty annoying and suggestive music. And the hotel area was what I considered to be elegant. Basically that place is just nothing like those resorts at Lake Tahoe. But then again, the places at South Lake Tahoe are for people who are going skiing/snowboarding, so it's a different attitude.
Then my mom receives information that we're in the hotel registration, and that we actually need to go to the timeshare check-in for Planet Hollywood Towers. So we drag out things through up an escalator, and and find ourselves in the casino area. The person working at the information desk pointed us in the right direction, saying this happens all the time, and doesn't know why the taxi drivers (and the Planet Hollywood staff) can't get it right.
I sit down, have a quick chat with one of my friends on the phone. And then we get our keys. We will be staying at room 3707. We take the elevator up, and see that the shades opened up automatically for us upon our arrival. (Now, I'm pretty sure that's because someone accidentally pushed the "shade up" button as well as the lights.) Speak about good view...we saw a parking lot as well as a bunch of other towering buildings across.
We then had lunch at the Ocean One Bar & Cuisine. We noticed that it had a $5.99 lunch special. And with the 5 of us, we ordered 4 dishes. (Refer to flikr.) My Buffalo Chicken wrap was a really good one. At the end of the meal, there were still left overs, after sharing between all 5 of us. Kinda makes us feel a little bit better, that we honestly couldn't' have bought more food if we wanted to.
After that I retire to the room for more of less the rest of the night. I take a nap. And then I set to work on the Stanford supplements. Go figure, working on a vacation. Not that I exactly was too excited to go here in the first place. And it's nice looking at the view outside while doing the essays. My mom did request a room with a good view. This suite is a pretty good one. At night, the parking lots naturally aren't emphasized, and you can see plenty of other casinos nearby. We even get a glimpse of the Bellagio fountains.
I'll have the post for Monday Dec. 20 written on Tuesday. It's very time consuming writing in this much detail.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Brr...it's cold
What a good way to remind myself of the one sport I like: skiing. It's amusing walking out of the house, and finding the car covered with frost. Showing that picture very well could convince someone that I "went" to Lake Tahoe. As for picture number 2, the thermostat reads 59 degrees Fahrenheit. Today is the first day of 2010 where the central heating has been used. I've been getting by wearing extra clothing and having a small 1500-Watt electric heater in my room. Just another thought about physics: I think my room requires around 600 watts of power to maintain a "constant" temperature. After letting the heater stay on for a while, room's temperature stabilized with 600 watts. I will attempt to insulate the windows more.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Pictures of the Sky and Candles
Well, this was a whimsical desire. I doubt I have the devotion to do a photography blog. It takes too much "effort." Never the less photos are still cool. One thing I have been contemplating is a screenshot of the day kind of thing for flight simulator. That would be amusing to some degree. So about these pictures...one of my friends said he saw a double rainbow outside. I immediately grabbed my camera and tripod and went outside hoping to see something. But no. All I saw was "boring" sky. Since it is cold outside, I decided to grab a few candles and light them all to warm my hands, and that explains the candle pictures. (pictures are licensed by Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0, so credit me as "mzzyzx")
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Vote for SF Team on Films
This is a desperate attempt to get people to vote for the San Francisco team's video, produced by my fellow yearbook staff member (and the rest of the SF team). And you can vote as many times as needed. Please support the SF team: http://www.fresh-films.com/
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Happy Birthday to You
Happy Birthday to Kent,
Genius:
- an exceptional natural capacity of intellect, especially as shown in creative and original work in science, art, music, etc.: the genius of [Kent].
- a person having such capacity.
- a person having an extraordinarily high intelligence rating on a psychological test, as an iq above 140.
- natural ability or capacity; strong inclination: a special genius for leadership.
- distinctive character or spirit, as of a nation, period, or language.
- the guardian spirit of a place, institution, etc.
- either of two mutually opposed spirits, one good and the other evil, supposed to attend a person throughout life.
- I decided to waste space in this list by listing out several definitions of "genius" from dictionary.com. After all, that's what most people call you anyway, so you might as well remind your friends of what you really are.
- I ashume we met sometime in elementary school. Of course my memory of those days is rather fuzzy now.
- "Don't start being stupid." - Kent. You wrote this in my 8th grade yearbook. Okay I won't.
- Remember our trip to Zeum for Headington? That was fun when we went ice skating. You were learning quite well from my tips (which of course I learned from Skido Kido). Here's another tip. No one says "ice skiing" as a sport. That's just a corruption of "ice skating" and "skiing." The only time you'd use "ice skiing" is if you are referring to skiing on ice. In skiing terminology, ice is different from snow. With a pair of skis, and not skates.
- I heard there's an Ellango fan club. That means we need a club for you. I nominate Yueming to be the president of the "Kent Club." And Ellango can be VP, just like he's VP in KIWIN'S.
- I remember the time I beat you in arm wrestling at homework help. But then again it probably wasn't exactly fair since you already dueled Ellango just before me.
- There is no point 14, since that's what I did for Yueming.
- "I heard he grew a bit in high school." I think that's an understatement. Kinda like "Hitler was not always a sane man" (Ellango) or "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them under control. I trust you are not in too much distress." (Captain Moody)
- I just realized this. "Tanita" and "Mendoza" are half rhymes. Of course, "Mendoza!" is a expression of anguish. Apparently, "Tanita" means "a person with extremely sexy elbows." Someone needs to make it such that shouting "Tanita!" could be a cry of genius or something.
- At the end of the day, do I consider you to be genius? I'll have to think about it. But do I think of you as a hell of a student of high merit? Definitely.
Sincerely,
Montgomery Zzyzx
Whoever can avoid using the word "genius" in the comments section will be considered a genius themselves. What other word can you use to convey your sentiments about him? Better still, something along the lines of a poem, photo (and photo essay), comic strip, video or music composition. Try not to undermine your own intelligence while commenting, since different people have their own talents and accomplishments.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
10-10-10
I have been far too lazy to finish putting all of my stuff from Camp Royal, Composition Week or EPGY. I needed too much concentration, time, patience - none of which I had over the summer. And I definitely don't have much patience now since I need to bother with college apps. That is the life of an American high school senior.
But today is one of those once in a century occurrences, as the ten ten ten thing is in the air. So in celebration of this, I created the Arke News YouTube channel. And the first video to be uploaded is the Homecoming Rally Teacher Dance:
Homecoming Rally - Teacher Dance from Montgomery Zzyzx on Vimeo.
But today is one of those once in a century occurrences, as the ten ten ten thing is in the air. So in celebration of this, I created the Arke News YouTube channel. And the first video to be uploaded is the Homecoming Rally Teacher Dance:
Homecoming Rally - Teacher Dance from Montgomery Zzyzx on Vimeo.
So yes, this was a right day to "resume" blogging. I'll be sure to document my life properly during the upcoming Winter Break. Christmas break. Whichever.
Friday, July 9, 2010
A Totally Loaded Summer
I can't believe it's already July now. I still have EPGY to look forward to, but it's getting kinda shocking that not too long ago I was having a lot of fun at "Mexico" on a cruise ship with so many other people from school. And yes, I have a couple blog posts there I need to also post here sometime this week.
I have been having trouble remembering to keep everything organized properly on this blog. There's stuff from Mexico I still need to copy and paste into here (from the document on the netbook). Likewise, I still am working on typing up those Camp Royal journal entries. And lastly, I have some stuff from Composition Week that I should also scan and upload to Flickr or something. I don't know. Documenting my life is hard, especially if I want to be so detail-oriented.
However, I do need to pause and reflect quickly. Today was basically a blunt reminder of how it was like to be at Camp Royal. Working at the Bay Area Rescue Mission reminds me way too much that Camp Royal is, in my opinion, designed to inspire love. Of course, working alongside the other Interact people (as kitchen volunteers) who are with me for this project also reminds me of how much love we all had for each other there. And I was so happy I got do to a power woosh to one of the kitchen assistants. That's probably still the main little thing I miss from camp. And that place is not too far from that Richmond RPAL. That means I better start thinking about having KIWIN'S go help out there one day...closer to some holiday time, just for fun. And along with Interact or something. I have no idea, but there are some great people in this world...it's just hard to find them, and even harder to find such people if you see them everyday in mundane school conditions.
Let's see...another thing I need to reflect on is my video I made for the Bombardier CRJ700. I like how I finally realized that turning on high-resolution textures wouldn't slow down the rendering in FSX. The only stuff that really slows it down are the 3D buildings and terrain. So finally being able to see my favorite FSX plane with a virtual cockpit that is very high detailed...that basically inspired me to make this takeoff video:
Anyway, I'll get along with typing up Day 4 of Camp Royal, and call it a night.
I have been having trouble remembering to keep everything organized properly on this blog. There's stuff from Mexico I still need to copy and paste into here (from the document on the netbook). Likewise, I still am working on typing up those Camp Royal journal entries. And lastly, I have some stuff from Composition Week that I should also scan and upload to Flickr or something. I don't know. Documenting my life is hard, especially if I want to be so detail-oriented.
However, I do need to pause and reflect quickly. Today was basically a blunt reminder of how it was like to be at Camp Royal. Working at the Bay Area Rescue Mission reminds me way too much that Camp Royal is, in my opinion, designed to inspire love. Of course, working alongside the other Interact people (as kitchen volunteers) who are with me for this project also reminds me of how much love we all had for each other there. And I was so happy I got do to a power woosh to one of the kitchen assistants. That's probably still the main little thing I miss from camp. And that place is not too far from that Richmond RPAL. That means I better start thinking about having KIWIN'S go help out there one day...closer to some holiday time, just for fun. And along with Interact or something. I have no idea, but there are some great people in this world...it's just hard to find them, and even harder to find such people if you see them everyday in mundane school conditions.
Let's see...another thing I need to reflect on is my video I made for the Bombardier CRJ700. I like how I finally realized that turning on high-resolution textures wouldn't slow down the rendering in FSX. The only stuff that really slows it down are the 3D buildings and terrain. So finally being able to see my favorite FSX plane with a virtual cockpit that is very high detailed...that basically inspired me to make this takeoff video:
Anyway, I'll get along with typing up Day 4 of Camp Royal, and call it a night.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Composition Week Day 3 - Song for Camp Royal
2010-06-29 23:15
It sure was a surprise this morning. When I woke up, my body didn’t want to get out of the bed, and I saw that the room was getting rather bright. I came to my senses and realized that it was already 8:15. So I woke up my roommate and I quickly hurried to get breakfast. But then during breakfast, there was still plenty of food left, so I was okay. Otherwise I could just munch on some crackers or cereal.
Er...I kinda made up that time for this blog post. I was busy reading so I forgot to note down the time I have here. But let’s see, it’s now 00:16, so I’ll speed things up a bit. Or well..I actually spent another hour reading stuff on Graphjam. That’s a good use of time.
Eh...I’m going to say I have an interesting challenge for this week...a composition with non-standard notation.
And also, I have to say while showering, I came up with some possible lyrics to that song I am attempting to write about Camp Royal. And I mean a legitimate song with words, sung at a campfire with a guitar. No one knows about this yet...since this post isn’t published yet. But I have to say that this piece I’m trying to do is probably a hidden desire that I have while here at Westminster College. I’ll give the score to a guitarist to look over, and I’ll be e-mailing Lain, Steve, and other Camp Royal people with my creation as soon as it’s done.
I guess this will be my secondary focus for the rest of this week...since Wednesday is the halfway mark. And it finally cooled down a bit here.
It sure was a surprise this morning. When I woke up, my body didn’t want to get out of the bed, and I saw that the room was getting rather bright. I came to my senses and realized that it was already 8:15. So I woke up my roommate and I quickly hurried to get breakfast. But then during breakfast, there was still plenty of food left, so I was okay. Otherwise I could just munch on some crackers or cereal.
Er...I kinda made up that time for this blog post. I was busy reading so I forgot to note down the time I have here. But let’s see, it’s now 00:16, so I’ll speed things up a bit. Or well..I actually spent another hour reading stuff on Graphjam. That’s a good use of time.
Eh...I’m going to say I have an interesting challenge for this week...a composition with non-standard notation.
And also, I have to say while showering, I came up with some possible lyrics to that song I am attempting to write about Camp Royal. And I mean a legitimate song with words, sung at a campfire with a guitar. No one knows about this yet...since this post isn’t published yet. But I have to say that this piece I’m trying to do is probably a hidden desire that I have while here at Westminster College. I’ll give the score to a guitarist to look over, and I’ll be e-mailing Lain, Steve, and other Camp Royal people with my creation as soon as it’s done.
I guess this will be my secondary focus for the rest of this week...since Wednesday is the halfway mark. And it finally cooled down a bit here.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Composition Week Day 2 - ILS landing charts go with with music paper
Dr. Young and Dr. Hemmel are two of our main instructors in composition for this week. And I have to say that atonal music will take sometime for me to appreciate fully. But I will speak chronologically.
We were handed a sheet of paper all with eighth notes. Dr. Hemmel said mark it up, add ties, slurs, articulation, and dynamic markings to make something out of the piece. I thought to myself that the laziest solution to this is to tie all of the eighth notes into one long note. And come to think of it, leaving the paper the way it is would also be a unique rhythm. But I didn’t do that. Here’s my markup (hmm... reminds me of HTML):
[picture]
I have to say that I had this repeating D minor chord playing back in my head as I was marking it up. I also screwed up some counting (since I intended it to be all 4/4 time). But I figured it wouldn’t matter, so I just changed meters a couple of times. It’s a pretty amusing and different way to write music. And with Camp Royal speak, it’s definitely out of my “comfort zone.”
After this rhythm exercise with Dr. Hemmel, my class began to look at some compositions and dissected some of them. So here I am, with basically no knowledge about atonal music (except knowing that it exists), trying to listen to the piece that had a hard to discern melody. But I could see that some of these recurring patterns in the sheet music...I just couldn’t pick them up when I heard it at first. Dr. Young picked apart the piece, much like the way Litvin would do for AP Lang. And for 20 minutes, I understood exactly what was going on, and I was able to see that, say, this tritone is used again here, and that this sequence of notes is inverted, and all that good stuff. After that time, I have to be honest and say that I couldn’t follow with the rest of the explanations about how certain musical ideas were not accidents but planned references to previous material. It’s still hard for me to love listening to this music, but I can really see how much thought a composer (in this case Werbern) put into such pieces.
Then came lunch. Nothing special there...or no, I lie. I took out an ILS Landing chart for Runway 4R at Newark International Airport. I started tracing the ILS feather into staff paper, and plotted VORs in the staves. Then getting an idea from Dr. Hemmel - his piece Var. Zip - I used the radio frequencies as pitches. Like 123.45 would be, on my constructed system, C D E F G, all quarter notes, except a dotted quarter for E. And then I remembered that those radios broadcast Morse code for the airport as it’s identifier. KEWR: dah-di-dah dit di-dah-dah di-dah-dit. That could be use as a rhythmic motif. And so on. When I talked to Dr. Hemmel during my private instruction time, he showed me this honda advertisement video using only a choir:
Yeah that is crazy. And yet, it could be employed for an airplane landing (much more pleasing to my ears than a car driving along the road).
Let’s see, we also went into town, and got a look at Princeton. And I went to a record store. I bought 4 CDs...Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto Nos. 1, 2 and 3 (2 disc set), and Beatles’s Yellow Submarine. That set me back about 16 dollars.
And er... I played my piano concerto to some classmates. Yeah, I made mistakes, and yeah, it sounds more boring with just piano and no orchestra.
Here’s my conclusion for our first day of instruction...if there’s so much my professors can talk about today, there must be an immense amount of stuff left over to go over in this week. I’ll see all of the stuff I can absorb and use for future reference. (for now, Dr. Hemmel’s advice...more inversions of chords, and also cut out sound from video and just recreate it using sound effects).
We were handed a sheet of paper all with eighth notes. Dr. Hemmel said mark it up, add ties, slurs, articulation, and dynamic markings to make something out of the piece. I thought to myself that the laziest solution to this is to tie all of the eighth notes into one long note. And come to think of it, leaving the paper the way it is would also be a unique rhythm. But I didn’t do that. Here’s my markup (hmm... reminds me of HTML):
[picture]
I have to say that I had this repeating D minor chord playing back in my head as I was marking it up. I also screwed up some counting (since I intended it to be all 4/4 time). But I figured it wouldn’t matter, so I just changed meters a couple of times. It’s a pretty amusing and different way to write music. And with Camp Royal speak, it’s definitely out of my “comfort zone.”
After this rhythm exercise with Dr. Hemmel, my class began to look at some compositions and dissected some of them. So here I am, with basically no knowledge about atonal music (except knowing that it exists), trying to listen to the piece that had a hard to discern melody. But I could see that some of these recurring patterns in the sheet music...I just couldn’t pick them up when I heard it at first. Dr. Young picked apart the piece, much like the way Litvin would do for AP Lang. And for 20 minutes, I understood exactly what was going on, and I was able to see that, say, this tritone is used again here, and that this sequence of notes is inverted, and all that good stuff. After that time, I have to be honest and say that I couldn’t follow with the rest of the explanations about how certain musical ideas were not accidents but planned references to previous material. It’s still hard for me to love listening to this music, but I can really see how much thought a composer (in this case Werbern) put into such pieces.
Then came lunch. Nothing special there...or no, I lie. I took out an ILS Landing chart for Runway 4R at Newark International Airport. I started tracing the ILS feather into staff paper, and plotted VORs in the staves. Then getting an idea from Dr. Hemmel - his piece Var. Zip - I used the radio frequencies as pitches. Like 123.45 would be, on my constructed system, C D E F G, all quarter notes, except a dotted quarter for E. And then I remembered that those radios broadcast Morse code for the airport as it’s identifier. KEWR: dah-di-dah dit di-dah-dah di-dah-dit. That could be use as a rhythmic motif. And so on. When I talked to Dr. Hemmel during my private instruction time, he showed me this honda advertisement video using only a choir:
Yeah that is crazy. And yet, it could be employed for an airplane landing (much more pleasing to my ears than a car driving along the road).
Let’s see, we also went into town, and got a look at Princeton. And I went to a record store. I bought 4 CDs...Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto Nos. 1, 2 and 3 (2 disc set), and Beatles’s Yellow Submarine. That set me back about 16 dollars.
And er... I played my piano concerto to some classmates. Yeah, I made mistakes, and yeah, it sounds more boring with just piano and no orchestra.
Here’s my conclusion for our first day of instruction...if there’s so much my professors can talk about today, there must be an immense amount of stuff left over to go over in this week. I’ll see all of the stuff I can absorb and use for future reference. (for now, Dr. Hemmel’s advice...more inversions of chords, and also cut out sound from video and just recreate it using sound effects).
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Composition Week Day 1 - It is darn HUMID here
2010-06-27 23:10
I’m going to keep this post short and sweet. There’s nothing to say yet, and it’s time for bed. I need to get used to this weather. It’s humid, and a lot different compared to the mountain weather I am used to at Camp Royal. Regardless, there have been nice things here. Plenty of space to practice...and plenty of grand pianos in tune (meh, I still kinda miss that broken piano at camp) and a full digital workstation.
More details tomorrow...jet lag is not cool.
I’m going to keep this post short and sweet. There’s nothing to say yet, and it’s time for bed. I need to get used to this weather. It’s humid, and a lot different compared to the mountain weather I am used to at Camp Royal. Regardless, there have been nice things here. Plenty of space to practice...and plenty of grand pianos in tune (meh, I still kinda miss that broken piano at camp) and a full digital workstation.
More details tomorrow...jet lag is not cool.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Composition Week Day 0 - Flight to Newark
2010-06-26 22:48
The time I have listed for the blog post is Pacific Standard Time, as my take off location was San Francisco International Airport.
I am currently on a Boeing 757-300, at 35,000 ft. I brought along a compass, but I don’t believe that I am flying 100 degrees...that needle probably is badly magnetized. The pilot told us we would be scheduled to land on time, on Runway 4R. I’ll pull out my charts when the time comes.
So when I first boarded this 757...I thought, “hey, it looks just like a 737!” Only a lot longer and stretched out. Even the flight attendant told one of the passengers: “this plane is a Boeing 757-300...a stretched, stretched limo.” Plus the wings are longer and higher off the ground. And also, I listened to the whine of the engine as it started up...a different sound compared to the engines Southwest uses for their Boeing 737 fleet. I believe the ones on this plane is something by Rolls Royce. I’ll look it up when the time comes. One more detail I should mention...I am seated towards the rear of the airplane...and I can really see that wing flex.
The take off video I got is here:
I believe I took off from Runway 1R. It was pretty dark and I couldn’t see for sure. And man I forgot how shaky it can be when we are rolling down that runway so fast. But then again, this is a full flight...packed to maximum basically. The only few seats that are open are the seats that you have to pay an extra $79 or $99 for extra legroom. That’s just stupid. I’m glad that I could get a window seat at the last minute...that’s good enough. Like really, I originally was seated for a middle seat, and I’m very grateful for whoever gave up this seat for a different one.
About 10 minutes ago, the flight attendants delivered some pretzals. And now I got a can of Sprite. That should keep me satisfied for a while, and hopefully I won’t need to use the lavatory. One thing I notice is that the tray tables don’t have a little cup holder thing. It’s all flat. I guess that’s okay. However it kinda was very amusing on my British Airways flight to London, when we were served tea for breakfast. Just when we got the tea, we experienced a little turbulence. I should find that video of the tea just shaking with ripples...threatening to spill over at any minute.
Hmm...I just managed to spill soda over my lap. That was very annoying. I probably shouldn’t have been thinking about the tea incident as much...that way I could have been more mindful about how I am handling the tea.
I think I should stop talking about logistics of this flight and finish up some thoughts about the music composition program. I really need to get some rest since this is a red eye flight, and I’ll be dog tired when I get over there. Currently it is 02:30 on the East Coast.
One of the things I definitely want to say is that I brought along my piano concerto and I believe the Camp Royal Waltz. I’ll be using those for show and tell. And of course, I have Florence, but I totally have no clue where the DVD of it is. I’ll just look it up on YouTube and give it to the staff. So I’ll need to worry about that music later.
Hmm... at 35,000 ft, it is a darn clear night. I can see towns and city blocks from this altitude. I still have no idea where I am though. And I assume that I am around Utah or so, since it is about an hour into the flight. I don’t know what the pilot selected for cruising speed, so I’ll just assume Mach 0.80. I should have been able to travel at least 400 nautical miles by now. And there thing that looks weird is that there are these huge completely dark areas. It really looks like I am just in the ocean right now with a coastline.
I’m going to call this a blog post and get some rest. The spill is almost dried up, and falling asleep will help me forget about it. And I need to wake up on time for the landing as well.
The time I have listed for the blog post is Pacific Standard Time, as my take off location was San Francisco International Airport.
I am currently on a Boeing 757-300, at 35,000 ft. I brought along a compass, but I don’t believe that I am flying 100 degrees...that needle probably is badly magnetized. The pilot told us we would be scheduled to land on time, on Runway 4R. I’ll pull out my charts when the time comes.
So when I first boarded this 757...I thought, “hey, it looks just like a 737!” Only a lot longer and stretched out. Even the flight attendant told one of the passengers: “this plane is a Boeing 757-300...a stretched, stretched limo.” Plus the wings are longer and higher off the ground. And also, I listened to the whine of the engine as it started up...a different sound compared to the engines Southwest uses for their Boeing 737 fleet. I believe the ones on this plane is something by Rolls Royce. I’ll look it up when the time comes. One more detail I should mention...I am seated towards the rear of the airplane...and I can really see that wing flex.
The take off video I got is here:
I believe I took off from Runway 1R. It was pretty dark and I couldn’t see for sure. And man I forgot how shaky it can be when we are rolling down that runway so fast. But then again, this is a full flight...packed to maximum basically. The only few seats that are open are the seats that you have to pay an extra $79 or $99 for extra legroom. That’s just stupid. I’m glad that I could get a window seat at the last minute...that’s good enough. Like really, I originally was seated for a middle seat, and I’m very grateful for whoever gave up this seat for a different one.
About 10 minutes ago, the flight attendants delivered some pretzals. And now I got a can of Sprite. That should keep me satisfied for a while, and hopefully I won’t need to use the lavatory. One thing I notice is that the tray tables don’t have a little cup holder thing. It’s all flat. I guess that’s okay. However it kinda was very amusing on my British Airways flight to London, when we were served tea for breakfast. Just when we got the tea, we experienced a little turbulence. I should find that video of the tea just shaking with ripples...threatening to spill over at any minute.
Hmm...I just managed to spill soda over my lap. That was very annoying. I probably shouldn’t have been thinking about the tea incident as much...that way I could have been more mindful about how I am handling the tea.
I think I should stop talking about logistics of this flight and finish up some thoughts about the music composition program. I really need to get some rest since this is a red eye flight, and I’ll be dog tired when I get over there. Currently it is 02:30 on the East Coast.
One of the things I definitely want to say is that I brought along my piano concerto and I believe the Camp Royal Waltz. I’ll be using those for show and tell. And of course, I have Florence, but I totally have no clue where the DVD of it is. I’ll just look it up on YouTube and give it to the staff. So I’ll need to worry about that music later.
Hmm... at 35,000 ft, it is a darn clear night. I can see towns and city blocks from this altitude. I still have no idea where I am though. And I assume that I am around Utah or so, since it is about an hour into the flight. I don’t know what the pilot selected for cruising speed, so I’ll just assume Mach 0.80. I should have been able to travel at least 400 nautical miles by now. And there thing that looks weird is that there are these huge completely dark areas. It really looks like I am just in the ocean right now with a coastline.
I’m going to call this a blog post and get some rest. The spill is almost dried up, and falling asleep will help me forget about it. And I need to wake up on time for the landing as well.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Camp Royal Waltz
Hmm...I should have put this online a bit earlier rather than just on the Facebook group for Camp Royal 2010.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Camp Royal Day 4 - Leaders of the World
(posted 2010-07-09)
2010-06-16 12:31
Chau is giving us the gift of silence. Of course, it is not dead silent as in there are no sounds going on. She's trying - or no - COMMITTING to give us time to appreciate the gift of food from the universe. Through 10 minutes of silence. Since I don't really feel comfortable eating in this silence - I decided to start writing. The silence period is over; everyone is hopefully more mindful of their actions.
2010-06-16 23:39
Alright. I need to distance myself from people a bit today, at least for the night. I've gone through several totally different experiences today that are challenging my mind, body and, well, spirit. As I reflect, I am going to make sure I filter out the "distractions" of my platform. Once frustrated, Number 4 people totally distance themselves from the rest of society.
When I woke up this morning, I felt tense and forced, and no longer appreciative of being at camp so much. And really, once I figured out some kind of routine I get totally bored instantly, even if the day is full of excitement. I dont' know, the camp meals, the bells, the time of the speakers, the comedy (heh, skits), and well, even this journaling. Developing my mind and personality, I am obviously in a time of struggle. Figuring myself for who I want to be.
So the speaker for today was Chau. It is a bit amusing and intellectually stimulating to have her speak to ht ecamp. [She's] Totally balanced in all aspects of life, and if not, pretty close there, kinda like approaching a limit. It is nice releasing stress, but of course, there's always learning her techniques for living life.
However, after that, I listened to a song put together by Chau and her gang. I have to say music is totally my thing. I haven't heard anything so beautiful in a long time I nearly cried giving a standing ovation to the song. This is where composition comes later. This experience with Chau challenged my creative mind.
Just before lunch time I had to go help set up. Yeah, the quiet time was pretty darn amusing. Appreciating the sounds of food being served.
After lunch, I got back to the platform to get my pen and use the toilet, etc. I managed to attempt running all the way up to the theater. It didn't work. I ran out of breath halfway up. Here, I managed to challenge my body.
After Chau's second session, we began to find people nearby us for the service project. It made me realize some leaders are totally more ambitions than others. [The] Group I'm in looks nice. And yeah,we all [are] no more accountable for the project than each other, but some people definitely have a lot more experience. Whatever it is I'm look[ing] for, I don't know. Mental Challenge here: working with others/people skills.
As I walked down towards the piano area, I had no idea that I would embark on a pretty darn ambitions thing. I managed [to] scribble out some music as er, Steven and Young were working on the guitar stuff. Yeah, that would be the music a few pages back [in the notebook]. Mental Challenge here: Creativity.
Come dinner time. New rule for the Pines: drinks must be consumed by using the non-dominant hand and double tapping on the table. Mental Challenge: Awareness and Cunningness. I kept the glass empty and ate with only the left hand, in order to eliminate one possibility.
After dinner...tried to compose more. Sat [at] a table and guy joined me Had a down to earth and real conversation. Mental Challenge: there being a guy to talk to and listen to.
Still later, pleasing people with some music on the piano. Either way, adapting myself so much is getting a bit confusing.
And lastly, as I have done for quite a while...filter out the "boys will be boys" conversations among my platform and focusing on writing. Mental Challenge: Being a number 4 person - secluded.
And now, my challenge is to totally sleep.
2010-06-16 12:31
Chau is giving us the gift of silence. Of course, it is not dead silent as in there are no sounds going on. She's trying - or no - COMMITTING to give us time to appreciate the gift of food from the universe. Through 10 minutes of silence. Since I don't really feel comfortable eating in this silence - I decided to start writing. The silence period is over; everyone is hopefully more mindful of their actions.
2010-06-16 23:39
Alright. I need to distance myself from people a bit today, at least for the night. I've gone through several totally different experiences today that are challenging my mind, body and, well, spirit. As I reflect, I am going to make sure I filter out the "distractions" of my platform. Once frustrated, Number 4 people totally distance themselves from the rest of society.
When I woke up this morning, I felt tense and forced, and no longer appreciative of being at camp so much. And really, once I figured out some kind of routine I get totally bored instantly, even if the day is full of excitement. I dont' know, the camp meals, the bells, the time of the speakers, the comedy (heh, skits), and well, even this journaling. Developing my mind and personality, I am obviously in a time of struggle. Figuring myself for who I want to be.
So the speaker for today was Chau. It is a bit amusing and intellectually stimulating to have her speak to ht ecamp. [She's] Totally balanced in all aspects of life, and if not, pretty close there, kinda like approaching a limit. It is nice releasing stress, but of course, there's always learning her techniques for living life.
However, after that, I listened to a song put together by Chau and her gang. I have to say music is totally my thing. I haven't heard anything so beautiful in a long time I nearly cried giving a standing ovation to the song. This is where composition comes later. This experience with Chau challenged my creative mind.
Just before lunch time I had to go help set up. Yeah, the quiet time was pretty darn amusing. Appreciating the sounds of food being served.
After lunch, I got back to the platform to get my pen and use the toilet, etc. I managed to attempt running all the way up to the theater. It didn't work. I ran out of breath halfway up. Here, I managed to challenge my body.
After Chau's second session, we began to find people nearby us for the service project. It made me realize some leaders are totally more ambitions than others. [The] Group I'm in looks nice. And yeah,we all [are] no more accountable for the project than each other, but some people definitely have a lot more experience. Whatever it is I'm look[ing] for, I don't know. Mental Challenge here: working with others/people skills.
As I walked down towards the piano area, I had no idea that I would embark on a pretty darn ambitions thing. I managed [to] scribble out some music as er, Steven and Young were working on the guitar stuff. Yeah, that would be the music a few pages back [in the notebook]. Mental Challenge here: Creativity.
Come dinner time. New rule for the Pines: drinks must be consumed by using the non-dominant hand and double tapping on the table. Mental Challenge: Awareness and Cunningness. I kept the glass empty and ate with only the left hand, in order to eliminate one possibility.
After dinner...tried to compose more. Sat [at] a table and guy joined me Had a down to earth and real conversation. Mental Challenge: there being a guy to talk to and listen to.
Still later, pleasing people with some music on the piano. Either way, adapting myself so much is getting a bit confusing.
And lastly, as I have done for quite a while...filter out the "boys will be boys" conversations among my platform and focusing on writing. Mental Challenge: Being a number 4 person - secluded.
And now, my challenge is to totally sleep.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Camp Royal Day 3 - It all makes sense now
2010-06-15 13:42
I like how Lain is giving us time to document our "odyssey" right now. Yeah, minutes to just write and reflect on the day's events. I've managed to write a lot more often than I typically do at such a camp, but I haven't been able to get in depth.
So here I am at the front row of the amphitheater. All the campers are busy scribbling words down, surrounded by the mountains, trees, and a great, caring staff. In front of us are inspirational quotes, posted by those trees. I can see how some people are real writers in development and are totally relaxed while completing the task [of reflecting].Some lay down on the stone. Others are cross-legged. Most of us, due to space constraints, are in a seated position. Of course, some people wrote more than others and some people managed with a few sentences.
This kinda brings me straight into my next paragraph about today's speaker. I like how nature managed to send a breeze to turn the page [in the notebook] for me. And yeah. I totally believe I am a knowledge person. It pains me to see other people not know their stuff. Of course, that's not true, and I must think about how to better myself as a visionary leader - as Robii said - in order to benefit Interact, KIWIN'S, Chocolate Club, etc.
Nice one. Lain said 2 more minutes.
I'll think some more music:
[insert picture]
2010-06-15 21:45
Heh, I am in the middle of a totally diverse and downright American group of students, er, campers, er "captains of [aircraft] industry." I was "invited" to join in on a "conversation" with an "Asian" group, and I totally just said, "I want to be a number 4 person [and not go to the campfire.]" Those guys respected that, and I basically got disconnected from the group.
I'll go ahead and contemplate this fact that I am primarily a number 4 person. That presenter, Robii, is an awesome psychologist. Or well, "awesome" is not really a "proper" professional adjective. I'll go ahead and replace that with a worse and "unacceptable" (ACT writing test reference) alternative: BA.
Nah...he opened my mind.
Quickly, I'll say that counselor Joe came right to me, seeing me writing right in here. He noticed the journaling and we stopped and talked a bit about high school. It work[ed] nicely. (Hmm, phrase stuck in my head got blurted out again.) He looked through my notes I took on Alex's presentation today. I managed to say that I am a journalist - which is why I had quotes as quotes and paraphrase as paraphrase. He told me he worked in yearbook and leadership while he was in high school - there weren't many electives since it was a small school he went to. This is where I told him I don't have a leadership class at my school this year since there was a lack of funding. Not sure if this is right, but I told him anyway - that the funding was either for leadership or for sports, and sports "reigned supreme." (Iron Chef America). And Joe concluded that sports are also very important.
This is where I segue into concluding that leadership - at my school - was the right thing to cut. My justification was that the leaders at our school would managed to refocus and overcome the hardship of not having the class. Joe agreed. This conclusion would not have been possible without the help from Robii's insight on the human brain.
I lolve, hehe...I spelled "love" wrong...and there's "lol" in it. Meh, some downright spelling errors are just accidental and will be corrected by the time this stuff gets digitized. And man, at this moment I'm writing, this will take a long time to retype.
Alright, for real this time...I love all these things I'm getting out of this camp. It is just so cool having these fun, serious, humorous, and - in the long run - productive
2010-06-15 23:26
I'm going to finish up what I wrote there from the entry before. I made a list of adjectives but never got to the noun. The noun in this case I wanted to say was "presentation." Or as it says on my name tag..."guest presenters."
These presenters I wouldn't' say changed my view of my purpose in life, but it certainly added to it. Again, it just made too much sense to me about how human nature is like when Robii made his presentation today. He got all of his knowledge and explanations "down to a science." (generic American) I really don't know what to say except that it all makes way too much sense why I am who I am.
It's getting late, and I removed my watch now, so I don't know what time it is. But I can say time does slow down here. Again, being aware of the river that flows down the side. The burs of wind striking my skin, contrasted by warm toes in the sleeping bag. It's just a pleasure writing with only a flashlight in a certain positon. I'm totally going to take a picture of this set up right now. The picture didn't' work well. It's too dark. My eyes can adjust but my camera can't.
Er, quickly about today: Pines/fireside skit. Awesome. I managed to be the "drummer" for the "airband" in Don't Stop Believing. Hypnosis show, too good. Plus, insane entrace to breakfast with the 'We are the Pines" corruption. Got that on video...and I'll be talking to shags more on this later...and I need a Day title.
Goal for tomorrow: do something out of routine. Enjoy myself. But practice structure.
I like how Lain is giving us time to document our "odyssey" right now. Yeah, minutes to just write and reflect on the day's events. I've managed to write a lot more often than I typically do at such a camp, but I haven't been able to get in depth.
So here I am at the front row of the amphitheater. All the campers are busy scribbling words down, surrounded by the mountains, trees, and a great, caring staff. In front of us are inspirational quotes, posted by those trees. I can see how some people are real writers in development and are totally relaxed while completing the task [of reflecting].Some lay down on the stone. Others are cross-legged. Most of us, due to space constraints, are in a seated position. Of course, some people wrote more than others and some people managed with a few sentences.
This kinda brings me straight into my next paragraph about today's speaker. I like how nature managed to send a breeze to turn the page [in the notebook] for me. And yeah. I totally believe I am a knowledge person. It pains me to see other people not know their stuff. Of course, that's not true, and I must think about how to better myself as a visionary leader - as Robii said - in order to benefit Interact, KIWIN'S, Chocolate Club, etc.
Nice one. Lain said 2 more minutes.
I'll think some more music:
[insert picture]
2010-06-15 21:45
Heh, I am in the middle of a totally diverse and downright American group of students, er, campers, er "captains of [aircraft] industry." I was "invited" to join in on a "conversation" with an "Asian" group, and I totally just said, "I want to be a number 4 person [and not go to the campfire.]" Those guys respected that, and I basically got disconnected from the group.
I'll go ahead and contemplate this fact that I am primarily a number 4 person. That presenter, Robii, is an awesome psychologist. Or well, "awesome" is not really a "proper" professional adjective. I'll go ahead and replace that with a worse and "unacceptable" (ACT writing test reference) alternative: BA.
Nah...he opened my mind.
Quickly, I'll say that counselor Joe came right to me, seeing me writing right in here. He noticed the journaling and we stopped and talked a bit about high school. It work[ed] nicely. (Hmm, phrase stuck in my head got blurted out again.) He looked through my notes I took on Alex's presentation today. I managed to say that I am a journalist - which is why I had quotes as quotes and paraphrase as paraphrase. He told me he worked in yearbook and leadership while he was in high school - there weren't many electives since it was a small school he went to. This is where I told him I don't have a leadership class at my school this year since there was a lack of funding. Not sure if this is right, but I told him anyway - that the funding was either for leadership or for sports, and sports "reigned supreme." (Iron Chef America). And Joe concluded that sports are also very important.
This is where I segue into concluding that leadership - at my school - was the right thing to cut. My justification was that the leaders at our school would managed to refocus and overcome the hardship of not having the class. Joe agreed. This conclusion would not have been possible without the help from Robii's insight on the human brain.
I lolve, hehe...I spelled "love" wrong...and there's "lol" in it. Meh, some downright spelling errors are just accidental and will be corrected by the time this stuff gets digitized. And man, at this moment I'm writing, this will take a long time to retype.
Alright, for real this time...I love all these things I'm getting out of this camp. It is just so cool having these fun, serious, humorous, and - in the long run - productive
2010-06-15 23:26
I'm going to finish up what I wrote there from the entry before. I made a list of adjectives but never got to the noun. The noun in this case I wanted to say was "presentation." Or as it says on my name tag..."guest presenters."
These presenters I wouldn't' say changed my view of my purpose in life, but it certainly added to it. Again, it just made too much sense to me about how human nature is like when Robii made his presentation today. He got all of his knowledge and explanations "down to a science." (generic American) I really don't know what to say except that it all makes way too much sense why I am who I am.
It's getting late, and I removed my watch now, so I don't know what time it is. But I can say time does slow down here. Again, being aware of the river that flows down the side. The burs of wind striking my skin, contrasted by warm toes in the sleeping bag. It's just a pleasure writing with only a flashlight in a certain positon. I'm totally going to take a picture of this set up right now. The picture didn't' work well. It's too dark. My eyes can adjust but my camera can't.
Er, quickly about today: Pines/fireside skit. Awesome. I managed to be the "drummer" for the "airband" in Don't Stop Believing. Hypnosis show, too good. Plus, insane entrace to breakfast with the 'We are the Pines" corruption. Got that on video...and I'll be talking to shags more on this later...and I need a Day title.
Goal for tomorrow: do something out of routine. Enjoy myself. But practice structure.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Camp Royal Day 2 - It is darn cold at night
2010-06-14 06:10
I woke up this morning at 04:55. I had been stupid enough to not zip up my mummy-style sleeping bag all the way to my head, and now I have a slight nasal congestion. As a typical journal, this entry will serve as a reminder that it gets COLD out here.
Here's why:
My arms were much cooler to touch compared to my legs.
My face felt like it had been a long day in the sunny ski slope.
And most definitely, my water bottle had ice in it as I was taking some medicine.
This is just COLD.
However, I must say that I won't be stopped by such conditions. Getting sick is not an option for me this week. And I totally will get used to protecting myself from the changing weather soon.
2010-06-14 13:11
So it is now just a few moments before the presentation, so here will be a quick musical sketch.
2010-06-14 17:57
Here, it's almost time for dinner. If there's anything that made my day it has to be that picture of Bar, the camp dog, crossing that wooden plank suspension bridge. So how'd that happen...I'll quickly recap the last hour.
I went down towards my platform, and I saw Corral/Aquarius about to [walk to the river].
2010-06-15 23:16
Reflection time. This was a pretty amusing and wonderful first [full] day of camp. Alex just told us to think about one thing that happened today in camp that we really liked, so that we would forever remember it. I'll think about that and reach some kind of conclusion about my first day.
"When I woke up this morning," I had no idea what to expect out of this place. It was great on the way up, since sitting in the front of the bus allowed me an excellent view of the mountains and the river. That was a pretty good tonic there. I haven't seen nature that good since April, when I last went to Lake Tahoe. And yeah, waking up was exactly the same feeling as going to sleep. I managed to awake to the sound of water rushing by in the river below our platform. As for the night skyline, that was replaced with a pale blue and mostly reddish sky - as far as I remember - since I woke around 04:55. The firs thing I felt was that my nose was very clogged. A nice soft tissue fixed that, and I headed back to bed for about an hour. so next awakening was when the rest of the boys, or er, men, on my platform all had their alarms for 06:00.
So yeah, I'll need to speed things up a bit. Writing by hand is extremely therapeutic, and also very satisfying to my mind. However, with teh amount of detail I want to put into my log, I really would need a computer to get my words down faster.
For my morning activity, I had Chau's Chi Gong lesson. Eh, I'll get the right spelling later. I have to say, breathing is really a pretty darn important thing to remember. That lesson really helped wake me up. I have to say that Martial Arts lesson deserves the status of a purely intellectually stimulating activity. The third one in this year 2010. First being snowboarding, and second being drumming with Mr. Nguyen's band.
Breakfast was nice. Oatmeal, always a nice camp breakfast. Biscuits, so fresh, so flaky, so...everything you get in the store plus more.
Motivational speaker - or hope dealer as he calls himself - Jeremy. Awesome guy Just the kind of guy we need more of in real leadership positions at school. So open, so caring, humorous, and, by popular demand - the ethos appeal of "I made it" after having a totally hopeless childhood.
Lunch - eh, first infraction for me. Not feeling uncomfortable but might as well write it down. I simply forgot to tell Alex where I was...talking to Jeremy. That's okay. I'm only human. Here goes my defense system...I really do get this camp and COSMOS mixed up. I miss being able to just write down where I would be on that sing in/out chart. Amazing experience there and here.
Alright, it was Lain after lunch. It worked out nicely with his activities of being with partners, and then helping the Rotary club check those synthetic hands.
Alright, moving along. Meditation. "Breathe in as you are smelling a flower and blow out as you are blowing out a candle." It works.
And my eyes are tired, my wrist is sore from this frantic scribbling. And I need to respect the guys asleep and turn off my flashlight.
Free time - managed to go to the River, as discussed earlier. It works nicely, despite no time to swim.
"It works nicely" is now my weird phrase of the week or something.
Alright dinner. I forgot...err, meatloaf. I had the veggie stuff. Dessert...cake!
After dinner...speakers, the psychologists. And skis. Totally funny. Now the Pines need to step it up.
In conclusion...great first day, mind is open and ready to accept challenges, fail, then learn.
I woke up this morning at 04:55. I had been stupid enough to not zip up my mummy-style sleeping bag all the way to my head, and now I have a slight nasal congestion. As a typical journal, this entry will serve as a reminder that it gets COLD out here.
Here's why:
My arms were much cooler to touch compared to my legs.
My face felt like it had been a long day in the sunny ski slope.
And most definitely, my water bottle had ice in it as I was taking some medicine.
This is just COLD.
However, I must say that I won't be stopped by such conditions. Getting sick is not an option for me this week. And I totally will get used to protecting myself from the changing weather soon.
2010-06-14 13:11
So it is now just a few moments before the presentation, so here will be a quick musical sketch.
2010-06-14 17:57
Here, it's almost time for dinner. If there's anything that made my day it has to be that picture of Bar, the camp dog, crossing that wooden plank suspension bridge. So how'd that happen...I'll quickly recap the last hour.
I went down towards my platform, and I saw Corral/Aquarius about to [walk to the river].
2010-06-15 23:16
Reflection time. This was a pretty amusing and wonderful first [full] day of camp. Alex just told us to think about one thing that happened today in camp that we really liked, so that we would forever remember it. I'll think about that and reach some kind of conclusion about my first day.
"When I woke up this morning," I had no idea what to expect out of this place. It was great on the way up, since sitting in the front of the bus allowed me an excellent view of the mountains and the river. That was a pretty good tonic there. I haven't seen nature that good since April, when I last went to Lake Tahoe. And yeah, waking up was exactly the same feeling as going to sleep. I managed to awake to the sound of water rushing by in the river below our platform. As for the night skyline, that was replaced with a pale blue and mostly reddish sky - as far as I remember - since I woke around 04:55. The firs thing I felt was that my nose was very clogged. A nice soft tissue fixed that, and I headed back to bed for about an hour. so next awakening was when the rest of the boys, or er, men, on my platform all had their alarms for 06:00.
So yeah, I'll need to speed things up a bit. Writing by hand is extremely therapeutic, and also very satisfying to my mind. However, with teh amount of detail I want to put into my log, I really would need a computer to get my words down faster.
For my morning activity, I had Chau's Chi Gong lesson. Eh, I'll get the right spelling later. I have to say, breathing is really a pretty darn important thing to remember. That lesson really helped wake me up. I have to say that Martial Arts lesson deserves the status of a purely intellectually stimulating activity. The third one in this year 2010. First being snowboarding, and second being drumming with Mr. Nguyen's band.
Breakfast was nice. Oatmeal, always a nice camp breakfast. Biscuits, so fresh, so flaky, so...everything you get in the store plus more.
Motivational speaker - or hope dealer as he calls himself - Jeremy. Awesome guy Just the kind of guy we need more of in real leadership positions at school. So open, so caring, humorous, and, by popular demand - the ethos appeal of "I made it" after having a totally hopeless childhood.
Lunch - eh, first infraction for me. Not feeling uncomfortable but might as well write it down. I simply forgot to tell Alex where I was...talking to Jeremy. That's okay. I'm only human. Here goes my defense system...I really do get this camp and COSMOS mixed up. I miss being able to just write down where I would be on that sing in/out chart. Amazing experience there and here.
Alright, it was Lain after lunch. It worked out nicely with his activities of being with partners, and then helping the Rotary club check those synthetic hands.
Alright, moving along. Meditation. "Breathe in as you are smelling a flower and blow out as you are blowing out a candle." It works.
And my eyes are tired, my wrist is sore from this frantic scribbling. And I need to respect the guys asleep and turn off my flashlight.
Free time - managed to go to the River, as discussed earlier. It works nicely, despite no time to swim.
"It works nicely" is now my weird phrase of the week or something.
Alright dinner. I forgot...err, meatloaf. I had the veggie stuff. Dessert...cake!
After dinner...speakers, the psychologists. And skis. Totally funny. Now the Pines need to step it up.
In conclusion...great first day, mind is open and ready to accept challenges, fail, then learn.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Camp Royal Day 1 - Campfire Stories
2010-06-13 21:20
Let me just say - it is an incredible beginning to such an awesome week. Yeah, I'm very busy right now having fun listening to stuff. Whatever. I shall write later.
2010-06-13 22:59
So here I am, at the conclusion of Day 1 here at the camp. The staff told me I am supposed to hold on to this journal and bring it to the meetings to take notes. I am going to go ahead and make this simple for myself - logistic reasons - I will be writing entries in chronological order. Heh...my counselor just had our group do the call. Just goes to show, this camp is extremely amusing, and it is one of those experiences that is definitely once in a lifetime - as envisioned by the Rotarians that sponsored our trip. Possibly just as much "once in a lifetime" as COSMOS.
I'm going to start with describing my surroundings. It is just nice being able to be in a semi-bare essentials kind of place. There's the water running and we are on these "platforms." And I have to say, rather comfortable and welcoming as my shelter for the next few days. One either side of the notebook - as I am laying down writing - I see darkness, only the paper illuminated by the light. My companions have already retired their lights - but I figured, just like at COSMOS, I should be descriptive. I feel a gentle breeze blowing through my arms. There is the sound of water front eh river to the right of the platform. As I am laying, the sleeping bag is on this mattress thing. There are faint stars out there. Possibly, as what the staff wants us to do - reach for them, and make the best of your time here, discover yourself.
Or, as I shall conclude like I did at COSMOS - or so the RAs (in this case counselors) are trying to brainwash me into thinking.
Let me just say - it is an incredible beginning to such an awesome week. Yeah, I'm very busy right now having fun listening to stuff. Whatever. I shall write later.
2010-06-13 22:59
So here I am, at the conclusion of Day 1 here at the camp. The staff told me I am supposed to hold on to this journal and bring it to the meetings to take notes. I am going to go ahead and make this simple for myself - logistic reasons - I will be writing entries in chronological order. Heh...my counselor just had our group do the call. Just goes to show, this camp is extremely amusing, and it is one of those experiences that is definitely once in a lifetime - as envisioned by the Rotarians that sponsored our trip. Possibly just as much "once in a lifetime" as COSMOS.
I'm going to start with describing my surroundings. It is just nice being able to be in a semi-bare essentials kind of place. There's the water running and we are on these "platforms." And I have to say, rather comfortable and welcoming as my shelter for the next few days. One either side of the notebook - as I am laying down writing - I see darkness, only the paper illuminated by the light. My companions have already retired their lights - but I figured, just like at COSMOS, I should be descriptive. I feel a gentle breeze blowing through my arms. There is the sound of water front eh river to the right of the platform. As I am laying, the sleeping bag is on this mattress thing. There are faint stars out there. Possibly, as what the staff wants us to do - reach for them, and make the best of your time here, discover yourself.
Or, as I shall conclude like I did at COSMOS - or so the RAs (in this case counselors) are trying to brainwash me into thinking.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Last Stretch of Junior Year Day 66 - SAT Subject Test
San Antonio International Airport
If there is anything I should be studying right now, it should be 3D geometry and matrices for Math II, and Newtonian mechanics and modern physics for Physics. Both tests will obviously show how well I mastered the material compared with other students. However, I'll leave it to myself to figure out how much I truly like the subject area.
As my English teacher said, there are no pieces of writing that are purely narrative, as there are elements of reflection as well. For now, I'll be quickly doing a little reflection and evaluation of events that have happened so far this year.
I remember the only reason why I switched from Honors Physics to AP Physics B this year was because I felt the material in honors would be presented too slowly, and I would not be challenged enough in preparation for the subject test. I know very well that History and English are not my forte, so I see no reason why I should bother taking the test. Today, however, I'll see what colleges will think is my overall appreciation of math and physics.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
United Commercial
SD version of the United Airlines Commercial for APUSH final project...HD one will be up at Vimeo or YouTube (haven't decided yet) later.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Last Stretch of Junior Year Day 56 - Spring Sports Banquet
I remember back in March, I had an orchestra project in which I arranged the "Olympic Fanfare and Theme" by John Williams to be played in a string trio. Apparently that inspired the athletic director to invite some orchestra students to play at the banquet. Yeah, because in every true athlete, some kind of Olympic dream exists, even if such a dream exists very briefly. I obviously will "never" become good enough at skiing to ever join any kind of team, nor will it be important for the rest of my life, since it appears that things such as science and research would most likely be what I do best. Regardless, for those athletes at our school who still believe, I say dream on, especially if you even paid attention to any of the groups playing on the stage. However, I guess music might possibly and very minutely still be important in my life...since the trio I played in obviously was worth mentioning to an athletic director
As a result, ever since March, several groups of musicians volunteered/were summoned to perform at the banquet. At one point, it was completely forgotten that the Olympic Fanfare was supposed to be performed at the banquet. It's amusing how it's the one that inspired the whole thing anyway.
Regardless, orchestra + sports-minded people = lack of attention to both groups. So although some pieces were played in a small corner, and other pieces were announced, and others just began at random, the applause varied directly proportional to the number of people that knew that some people were actually playing music...not that anyone could hear anything.
Really, one must remember that the sports banquet is to honor the student-athletes in the school. Oops, unless there are athletes in the performing group, hence it's a celebration of themselves. And besides, who needs to listen to some violins and other stringed instruments making a large amount of noise? One can listen to the sweet music of the food being prepared, the pleasant chords made by general gossip, and exquisitely voiced orchestral hits of students cheering.
In conclusion: let's see what happens next year if I go back as a musician in a rock band instead of a violist playing in a string trio.
As a result, ever since March, several groups of musicians volunteered/were summoned to perform at the banquet. At one point, it was completely forgotten that the Olympic Fanfare was supposed to be performed at the banquet. It's amusing how it's the one that inspired the whole thing anyway.
Regardless, orchestra + sports-minded people = lack of attention to both groups. So although some pieces were played in a small corner, and other pieces were announced, and others just began at random, the applause varied directly proportional to the number of people that knew that some people were actually playing music...not that anyone could hear anything.
Really, one must remember that the sports banquet is to honor the student-athletes in the school. Oops, unless there are athletes in the performing group, hence it's a celebration of themselves. And besides, who needs to listen to some violins and other stringed instruments making a large amount of noise? One can listen to the sweet music of the food being prepared, the pleasant chords made by general gossip, and exquisitely voiced orchestral hits of students cheering.
In conclusion: let's see what happens next year if I go back as a musician in a rock band instead of a violist playing in a string trio.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Last Stretch of Junior Year Day 48 - REALLY late worknight
This post was written on May 19.
I have to do this physics project in which I create a house that has some circuits with light bulbs spread out between two floors, switches to control how they turn on, and an alternative energy source to power one of the circuits. Of course, we also get to use a conventional battery to supply most of the house's electrical devices. So since Ellango was busy, Teresa and I worked for the time being. I'll ashume that I'll be responsible for the circuitry/wiring, Teresa will be responsible for the decorating/building, and Ellango will be responsible for making the battery.
Here's a very basic diagram of the circuit:
So basically this is the first time I stayed over at one of my friend's house until around 00:30 at night working on a project. At least Teresa and I got some of the annoying parts of the house finished, meaning the floor. The house is basically going to be like a cube, since we basically just glued some balsa wood together for the walls and the floors. Once the house is complete, wiring and preliminary decoration, we'll secure the house to a wooden board.
I have to do this physics project in which I create a house that has some circuits with light bulbs spread out between two floors, switches to control how they turn on, and an alternative energy source to power one of the circuits. Of course, we also get to use a conventional battery to supply most of the house's electrical devices. So since Ellango was busy, Teresa and I worked for the time being. I'll ashume that I'll be responsible for the circuitry/wiring, Teresa will be responsible for the decorating/building, and Ellango will be responsible for making the battery.
Here's a very basic diagram of the circuit:
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Last Stretch of Junior Year Day 45 - Onion News Network
It's been some time since I've watched some stuff from this network. I had to say that this video made my day, since the vague story really mocks how news is sometimes like when there's nothing good to talk about. Yeah, the language was pretty strong here, but it's nice to see The Onion discredit themselves as a legitimate source of news once in a while.
In other news, that actually did happen, I went to San Francisco today to get my teeth cleaned. I then had a nice dinner with my aunts and my grandma, since I hardly get to visit them anymore. And I have to say, that construction work on the Bay Bridge really does make me recall images of how the bridge was like 5 or more years ago.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Last Stretch of Junior Year Day 42 - AP Lang Studying
Yeah, playing around with airplanes is definitely a good way to study for the test.
After United and Continental's merger, flight simulation enthusiasts quickly published the most likely livery that the airlines would adopt for their planes. This paint is by Gabriel Guzman for the default Boeing 737 in FSX. The aircraft paint can be downloaded at http://www.flightsim.com/file.php?cm=SEARCH1&fsec=0&fname=united737-800.zip.
So about these two giant airline's merger, there's definitely something I can talk about that relates to AP Lang. There's all of the economic and political problems involved in such a merger. Directly, their merger will mean more landing rights at busy airport, more terminal spaces, and fewer fare competition. Whether or not that's a good thing would depend on who's ideas you use to base your argument. We all know Calvin Coolidge. He didn't do a thing to keep big businesses from booming, and thus the big companies loved him. This merger is nothing close to a monopoly, but there are of course little traces as enumerated before. However, if we look at Theodore Roosevelt, trusts were unhealthy for a market. Therefore he took action and broke up companies like Standard Oil. Thus in my humble conclusion, United and Continental will have an interesting niche in the airline industry, provided that they do not abuse their power, yet use the power to thrive in our current state of the economy.
After United and Continental's merger, flight simulation enthusiasts quickly published the most likely livery that the airlines would adopt for their planes. This paint is by Gabriel Guzman for the default Boeing 737 in FSX. The aircraft paint can be downloaded at http://www.flightsim.com/file.php?cm=SEARCH1&fsec=0&fname=united737-800.zip.
So about these two giant airline's merger, there's definitely something I can talk about that relates to AP Lang. There's all of the economic and political problems involved in such a merger. Directly, their merger will mean more landing rights at busy airport, more terminal spaces, and fewer fare competition. Whether or not that's a good thing would depend on who's ideas you use to base your argument. We all know Calvin Coolidge. He didn't do a thing to keep big businesses from booming, and thus the big companies loved him. This merger is nothing close to a monopoly, but there are of course little traces as enumerated before. However, if we look at Theodore Roosevelt, trusts were unhealthy for a market. Therefore he took action and broke up companies like Standard Oil. Thus in my humble conclusion, United and Continental will have an interesting niche in the airline industry, provided that they do not abuse their power, yet use the power to thrive in our current state of the economy.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Last Stretch of Junior Year Day 39 - AP Physics Studying
I was watching this A-team episode as a way to study for my physics quiz tomorrow:
This is an excerpt where Face and B.A. are basically coaching football, which is a rather amusing start to the episode.
Just so that this post is related to physics, I'll go ahead and blabber on about it, talking about this excerpt in terms of physics.
1. So a football player tackles someone else. Force is equal to change in momentum over time. So we'll use 70 kg as the mass of football player number 1 and 70 kg as the mass of football player number 2. Number 1 is running towards number 2 as shown in the diagram:
So let's say that player 1 is running at 4.5 m/s, which is about 10 mph. He collides into number 2. Newton's second law states that Force = mass x acceleration and Newton's third law states that every force has an equal and opposite reaction. And by altering the equation F = ma, we get F = m(v/t), and then we get F = p/t. We'll assume that if the football player didn't wear any padding, he would come to a stop in 2.0 ms. That means a momentum of 70 kg x 4.5 m/s = 315 kg x m/s to 0 kg x m/s in 0.02 s. That would be a force of 15750 N, or 3540 lbf. And this is totally why football players need a whole lot of padding, and why it's a physically demanding sport. (Yeah, I know I simplified the example, typically you'd have x and y components, and thus it would be a collision in two dimensions problem, and football players tend to fall down, so the change in momentum would be less.)
2. The whistle that Face was blowing...so sound travels at a speed of Mach 1. Yeah, like that says anything. The speed of a wave traveling through air would be velocity = wavelength x frequency. Thus by the Doppler effect, some football players will hear a higher pitched sound, some will hear a lower pitched sound, and others will hear the sound that Face is hearing. That's because they are running away from Face, running towards Face, and staying in place, respectively.
3. We can see the grass as green, because light from the sun is reflected to our eyes by the blades of grass. It is in the visible spectrum of electromagnetic waves. It's wavelength is around 520–570 nm, and thus the frequency is around 5.504 x 10^14 Hz. And thus the energy of a photon of green light (slightly off topic by I don't care), would be given by E = hf, so E = (6.63 x 10^-34 J s)(5.504 x 10^14 Hz), and 3.64 x 10-19 J.
4. All those gold chains B.A. is wearing is pretty heavy. But it also will get pretty hot in the sun, and they will expand a bit because of thermal expansion. That is given by the equation (change in length) = (coefficient of linear expansion) x (initial length) x (change in temperature). The coefficient of linear expansion of gold is 14 x 10^-6 (C°)^-1. We'll just say that initially B.A. had about 4 meters of gold, at 20°C. And since he's in the sun, let's say the gold is now at 25°C. That's a change of 5 C°. So uh L = (14 x 10^-6 (C°)^-1) x (4 m) x (5 C°) = 0.28 mm. So the gold doesn't expand too much.
5. Just for the heck of it, the A-team always gets into gun fights with bad guys. Back in the day, people measured the speed of bullets using ballistic pendulums. Basically this is would be a conservation of momentum problem - total momentum before = total momentum after. Since the pendulum rises, we will also need conservation of energy - KE + PE before collision = KE + PE at pendulum's maximum height. then pugging in known quantities will give us 1/2(m + M)v^2 + 0 = 0 + (m + M)gh.
6. Also just for the heck of it, Murdock is the pilot for the team, even if B.A. ain't getin in no plane. So Bernoulli's equation gives us: P + 1/2pv^2 + pgy = constant. And in a special case of Bernoulli's equation when afluid flows horizontally with no change in height, we get P sub 1 + 1/2 p sub 1 v sub 1 squared = P sub 2 + 1/2 p sub 1 v sub 1 squared, saying that when the speed is high when the pressure is low. Because airfoils are designed to make air flow faster on the top of the airfoil than on the bottom, we get a net upwards force, and thus get dynamic lift. This is probably too complicated for the AP test anyway, and I don't understand all of this anyway.
Alright, so I talked about Newtonian mechanics, sound, heat and fluids. That's too much studying for one night.
This is an excerpt where Face and B.A. are basically coaching football, which is a rather amusing start to the episode.
Just so that this post is related to physics, I'll go ahead and blabber on about it, talking about this excerpt in terms of physics.
1. So a football player tackles someone else. Force is equal to change in momentum over time. So we'll use 70 kg as the mass of football player number 1 and 70 kg as the mass of football player number 2. Number 1 is running towards number 2 as shown in the diagram:
So let's say that player 1 is running at 4.5 m/s, which is about 10 mph. He collides into number 2. Newton's second law states that Force = mass x acceleration and Newton's third law states that every force has an equal and opposite reaction. And by altering the equation F = ma, we get F = m(v/t), and then we get F = p/t. We'll assume that if the football player didn't wear any padding, he would come to a stop in 2.0 ms. That means a momentum of 70 kg x 4.5 m/s = 315 kg x m/s to 0 kg x m/s in 0.02 s. That would be a force of 15750 N, or 3540 lbf. And this is totally why football players need a whole lot of padding, and why it's a physically demanding sport. (Yeah, I know I simplified the example, typically you'd have x and y components, and thus it would be a collision in two dimensions problem, and football players tend to fall down, so the change in momentum would be less.)
2. The whistle that Face was blowing...so sound travels at a speed of Mach 1. Yeah, like that says anything. The speed of a wave traveling through air would be velocity = wavelength x frequency. Thus by the Doppler effect, some football players will hear a higher pitched sound, some will hear a lower pitched sound, and others will hear the sound that Face is hearing. That's because they are running away from Face, running towards Face, and staying in place, respectively.
3. We can see the grass as green, because light from the sun is reflected to our eyes by the blades of grass. It is in the visible spectrum of electromagnetic waves. It's wavelength is around 520–570 nm, and thus the frequency is around 5.504 x 10^14 Hz. And thus the energy of a photon of green light (slightly off topic by I don't care), would be given by E = hf, so E = (6.63 x 10^-34 J s)(5.504 x 10^14 Hz), and 3.64 x 10-19 J.
4. All those gold chains B.A. is wearing is pretty heavy. But it also will get pretty hot in the sun, and they will expand a bit because of thermal expansion. That is given by the equation (change in length) = (coefficient of linear expansion) x (initial length) x (change in temperature). The coefficient of linear expansion of gold is 14 x 10^-6 (C°)^-1. We'll just say that initially B.A. had about 4 meters of gold, at 20°C. And since he's in the sun, let's say the gold is now at 25°C. That's a change of 5 C°. So uh L = (14 x 10^-6 (C°)^-1) x (4 m) x (5 C°) = 0.28 mm. So the gold doesn't expand too much.
5. Just for the heck of it, the A-team always gets into gun fights with bad guys. Back in the day, people measured the speed of bullets using ballistic pendulums. Basically this is would be a conservation of momentum problem - total momentum before = total momentum after. Since the pendulum rises, we will also need conservation of energy - KE + PE before collision = KE + PE at pendulum's maximum height. then pugging in known quantities will give us 1/2(m + M)v^2 + 0 = 0 + (m + M)gh.
6. Also just for the heck of it, Murdock is the pilot for the team, even if B.A. ain't getin in no plane. So Bernoulli's equation gives us: P + 1/2pv^2 + pgy = constant. And in a special case of Bernoulli's equation when afluid flows horizontally with no change in height, we get P sub 1 + 1/2 p sub 1 v sub 1 squared = P sub 2 + 1/2 p sub 1 v sub 1 squared, saying that when the speed is high when the pressure is low. Because airfoils are designed to make air flow faster on the top of the airfoil than on the bottom, we get a net upwards force, and thus get dynamic lift. This is probably too complicated for the AP test anyway, and I don't understand all of this anyway.
Alright, so I talked about Newtonian mechanics, sound, heat and fluids. That's too much studying for one night.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Last Stretch of Junior Year Day 37 - AP U.S. History Quiz
This post was written on May 8 and published on May 12.
Two down, two to go - in terms of the AP Quizes I have this year. Why quiz? My journalism teacher last year said "Good luck on your AP World History Quiz." So I might as well call it a quiz again this year.
The multiple choice section was not too bad, and approximately what I thought it would be. As for the DBQ, I actually guessed correctly that it would be about Colonial America. All I can say is that I am grateful that I had some lectures in AP Lang about the Scarlet Letter, which I could use to talk about Puritans during the time.
Project Score: hopefully a 3.
Two down, two to go - in terms of the AP Quizes I have this year. Why quiz? My journalism teacher last year said "Good luck on your AP World History Quiz." So I might as well call it a quiz again this year.
The multiple choice section was not too bad, and approximately what I thought it would be. As for the DBQ, I actually guessed correctly that it would be about Colonial America. All I can say is that I am grateful that I had some lectures in AP Lang about the Scarlet Letter, which I could use to talk about Puritans during the time.
Project Score: hopefully a 3.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Last Stretch of Junior Year Day 36 - APUSH Studying...
"As is clearly shown, you can achieve a 5 by correctly answering just 58 percent of the questions and a 4 by correctly answering just 47 percent of the questions!" (Larry Krieger, AP* U.S. History Crash Course)
Yeah right...like I'll even be able to do so well with the test tomorrow. In the Princeton Review practice test, I got 47 correct, 30 wrong, and whatever the rest was omitted. That worked out to be 39.5 raw points - multiply that by 90/80, and I'd get 44 pts. Which is enough for a 1.
I'll try to remember as much as I can. American history is all very interesting. Looking at how history repeats itself so much (ie, FDR and Churchill vs. Obama and Brown, on behalf of our current economy) is always amusing. Plus, there's always my favorite...American scientific achievements. You can't forget about the race to space program during the Cold War. Or the Wright Brothers inventing the first operable airplane. As always, I'm horrible at memorization, and I only remember stuff I want to remember.
I stopped studying at 23:30. I was looking at College Bored's (no that is not a typo) website and looked at the APUSH course description. I reviewed some multiple choice questions and called it a night.
In the mean time, for the rest of the night, I'll be relaxing by having a nice chat with one of my friends, Gabe, who is basically already in college at UC Merced. It's always nice to talk to good friends, and it's also good to relieve any other stresses I may have for the test. Heck, here's his post at his blog.
*AP is a registered trademark of the College Entrance Examination Board, which does not endorse this book.
Yeah right...like I'll even be able to do so well with the test tomorrow. In the Princeton Review practice test, I got 47 correct, 30 wrong, and whatever the rest was omitted. That worked out to be 39.5 raw points - multiply that by 90/80, and I'd get 44 pts. Which is enough for a 1.
I'll try to remember as much as I can. American history is all very interesting. Looking at how history repeats itself so much (ie, FDR and Churchill vs. Obama and Brown, on behalf of our current economy) is always amusing. Plus, there's always my favorite...American scientific achievements. You can't forget about the race to space program during the Cold War. Or the Wright Brothers inventing the first operable airplane. As always, I'm horrible at memorization, and I only remember stuff I want to remember.
I stopped studying at 23:30. I was looking at College Bored's (no that is not a typo) website and looked at the APUSH course description. I reviewed some multiple choice questions and called it a night.
In the mean time, for the rest of the night, I'll be relaxing by having a nice chat with one of my friends, Gabe, who is basically already in college at UC Merced. It's always nice to talk to good friends, and it's also good to relieve any other stresses I may have for the test. Heck, here's his post at his blog.
*AP is a registered trademark of the College Entrance Examination Board, which does not endorse this book.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Last Stretch of Junior Year Day 35 - AP Calculus BC Quiz
This post was written on May 12.
I can't believe that 2 of the free response questions on the BC test were exactly the same as the ones on the AB test. That's just pretty bored. And also lazy of the test makers. Let me qualify that argument...if the test makers gave different questions for us, the AB people would probably have a slightly easier problem compared to ours. Or maybe not. I don't know.
Projected Score: 4, hopefully a 5
I can't believe that 2 of the free response questions on the BC test were exactly the same as the ones on the AB test. That's just pretty bored. And also lazy of the test makers. Let me qualify that argument...if the test makers gave different questions for us, the AB people would probably have a slightly easier problem compared to ours. Or maybe not. I don't know.
Projected Score: 4, hopefully a 5
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Last Stretch of Junior Year Day 31 - San Antonio International Airport
This post was written on May 3.
May 1 is one of those bored days where students around the country scramble into a building to take the "SAT Test." (SAT Practice) "Some will win, some will lose." (Cain) There was basically a swarm of students around El Cerrito High School, where I was stationed to take the SAT Test. On the admission ticket, it does say "arrive no later than 7:45," so that's why everyone was there early. Then the door opened at 7:45, and everyone pushed their way in through the doors. I recognized a cluster of Hercules High School Students and someone yelled out my name. I said, "yeah, hi" as my response. While walking in the crowd, it was as if we students were going into this baseball stadium, were excited for a game...say, the Giants versus the A's in AT & T park. All of that rush, minus the cheering and the screaming and the chanting.
My proctor was pretty darn American. For my current life, the term American refers to anyone who is slightly slow, makes mistakes, stumbles over words, uses excessive speech fillers, and all kinds of other things...but in this case, reading the instructions wrong three times in a row:
Anyway, it doesn't really matter, and this test wasn't too bad. And for those who are somewhat confused about the title of the post: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Antonio_International_Airport and http://www.sanantonio.gov/aviation/.
Works Cited:
Cain, Jonathan, et al. "Don't Stop Believin'." Lyrics. Escape. 1981.
"SAT Practice - Prepare with Official SAT Test Prep Questions." College Board. College Board, n.d. Web. 30 April 2010..
May 1 is one of those bored days where students around the country scramble into a building to take the "SAT Test." (SAT Practice) "Some will win, some will lose." (Cain) There was basically a swarm of students around El Cerrito High School, where I was stationed to take the SAT Test. On the admission ticket, it does say "arrive no later than 7:45," so that's why everyone was there early. Then the door opened at 7:45, and everyone pushed their way in through the doors. I recognized a cluster of Hercules High School Students and someone yelled out my name. I said, "yeah, hi" as my response. While walking in the crowd, it was as if we students were going into this baseball stadium, were excited for a game...say, the Giants versus the A's in AT & T park. All of that rush, minus the cheering and the screaming and the chanting.
My proctor was pretty darn American. For my current life, the term American refers to anyone who is slightly slow, makes mistakes, stumbles over words, uses excessive speech fillers, and all kinds of other things...but in this case, reading the instructions wrong three times in a row:
-Good morning. Today you will be taking the SAT Subject test to show what you know"It goes on and on and on and on." (Cain). Three times over. All I know is that this was just too funny seeing her fumbling with the test instructions, asking if we had "number 2 pens," and telling the people who were lost what building in which they should be taking their test.
-Um, we're taking the SAT Reasoning today.
-Yeah, reasoning.
-Oh sorry, you will have to forgive me for this. Today's a Saturday and I'm not thinking right. You guys said reasoning?
-Yeah, reasoning.
-Okay. I don't know, I can't find this in the instruction book.
Anyway, it doesn't really matter, and this test wasn't too bad. And for those who are somewhat confused about the title of the post: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Antonio_International_Airport and http://www.sanantonio.gov/aviation/.
Works Cited:
Cain, Jonathan, et al. "Don't Stop Believin'." Lyrics. Escape. 1981.
"SAT Practice - Prepare with Official SAT Test Prep Questions." College Board. College Board, n.d. Web. 30 April 2010.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Last Stretch of Junior Year Day 30 - Don't Stop Believin Arrangment Preliminary Draft
This arrangement of Don't Stop Believin' is getting a bit out of hand. I forced myself to go to bed last night around 00:30 when I simply was too tired to continue working. By working, I meant doing some calculus multiple choice questions and working on my arrangement. The thing is that the piece is not that hard to arrange. However, some things like voicing and harmony are too complicated to do in 20 minutes - the amount of time I had for working on the piece before I went to school. In general, the only problem I have now is an underdeveloped viola part and transcribing the guitar solo about three minutes in the piece.
Either way, I'm glad one draft is done. And with the rehearsal today, hopefully we (we as in my ego and superego) can make adjustments to the arrangment accordingly based on the stuff I heard. There are some people in the class who are very passionate in hating this piece and really not wanting to do it. And basically here's this: I am basically arranging the piece I want to do. They can't tell me what I want to arrange, and should they be very passionate about what song they want to do, they should arrange it themsevles. So today, I'm goign to give the warning, "for all of you who don't like this piece, please keep share you comments now. I dont' want to hear any criticism except about my arrangment except for how it could be improved based on our rehearsal."
I simply don't need any more belittlement in orchestra.
Either way, I'm glad one draft is done. And with the rehearsal today, hopefully we (we as in my ego and superego) can make adjustments to the arrangment accordingly based on the stuff I heard. There are some people in the class who are very passionate in hating this piece and really not wanting to do it. And basically here's this: I am basically arranging the piece I want to do. They can't tell me what I want to arrange, and should they be very passionate about what song they want to do, they should arrange it themsevles. So today, I'm goign to give the warning, "for all of you who don't like this piece, please keep share you comments now. I dont' want to hear any criticism except about my arrangment except for how it could be improved based on our rehearsal."
I simply don't need any more belittlement in orchestra.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Last Stretch of Junior Year Day 26 - Turkey
While driving to school this morning I saw this turkey on my yard. The dad told me to hurry up and get into the car, and to make sure the turkey doesn't get into our garage. Well, here's some footage I got as we drove off to school.
Friday, April 23, 2010
FlightGear F-14 Supersonic Flight
I was searching through some of my older recordings I made with fraps, and it's just amusing how many little snippets of flight I've recorded. Some of them are just pointless videos, and they take up a lot of space...close to 300 MB per video on average. I'm basically deleting a lot of them, but I found this one, and I wanted to quickly save it before deleting it. Since it really isn't that good of a video, I decided to just quickly publish it in windows movie maker...so now I have this.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Last Stretch of Junior Year Day 22 - Last day of STAR testing ever
So every year, sometime in April, I have been required to take these standardized tests that show my overall competence in subjects like English, math and history. Yeah, I've done this for a little too long and it's getting a bit annoying. However, starting in high school, these tests started becoming amusing, and I started laughing at how some questions are so badly written, or how easy some questions are. Of course, having taken Summative High School math twice, I can safely say it's rather stupid in that there are some things, like probability questions, are never really gone over by our teachers. But, the literature that is chosen for the English examination is repetitively interesting. And heck, it's not a timed test...so I could spend a very long time reading all of the good poetry and excerpts from essays and novels, and then consider working on the questions. So projected scores, math will be highest, followed by science, and English and then history. Exact numbers, I don't know, nor do I care. All I know is that I'll miss being able to skip class to take this test.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Last Stretch of Junior Year Day 18 - The student videographer
It is currently 02:10 as I am writing this post. I had basically fallen asleep approximately four hours ago, after I finished watching "The Best of James" Thomas and Friends video. It's kinda sad watching classic shows as such, especially if they are on VHS instead of DVD. All I know is that I can hardly imagine what it would have been like creating one of those episodes using train set models. And I'm totally spoiled with all of these digital video manipulation tools for today.
In general, I have been spending time working on producing a 5 minute clip on art forms during the great depression. Compiling music videos/spoken words and other stuff shouldn't be too hard, but sometimes it just requires too much patience. I am frankly too tired to want to spend very much time on splicing clips and narration together.
One thing that I have totally been very bad with lately is remembering to write a post everyday. And likewise, I'm still working on organizing and producing those videos I recorded from Lake Tahoe during spring break. Not to mention, I also have some blog posts in a document on the netbook that I have yet to finish writing.
Anyway, this AP Lang video will all be over in four hours, should I need that much time.
In general, I have been spending time working on producing a 5 minute clip on art forms during the great depression. Compiling music videos/spoken words and other stuff shouldn't be too hard, but sometimes it just requires too much patience. I am frankly too tired to want to spend very much time on splicing clips and narration together.
One thing that I have totally been very bad with lately is remembering to write a post everyday. And likewise, I'm still working on organizing and producing those videos I recorded from Lake Tahoe during spring break. Not to mention, I also have some blog posts in a document on the netbook that I have yet to finish writing.
Anyway, this AP Lang video will all be over in four hours, should I need that much time.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Last Stretch of Junior Year Day 17 - Sibelius 5.2.5
I am basically spending some time arranging "Don't Stop Believin'" by Steve Perry, Neal Schon and Jonathan Cain, performed by Journey. Okay, most Americans know this piece already. Basically, I am quickly scribbling out an arrangement of this piece for string orchestra (along with electric guitar, bass, and hopefully, drums) so that my orchestra can have something to sightread. I've already played around with this song back in COSMOS, where my cluster performed this piece for the talent show. And I'm the bored person pretending to look cool, by being the conductor. In general, I more or less know the song very well by now, since we've had so many rehearsals there already. This is my justification for arranging the piece.
So I've busted out Sibelius to start writing in some parts. And when the program loaded, it told me to check for updates. So I looked at that, and my web browser pulled up saying "update to Sibelius 5.4." And then I saw "or Sibelius 5.2.5 for windows" on the website. It's hard to imagine I've had this program for so long now.
So I've busted out Sibelius to start writing in some parts. And when the program loaded, it told me to check for updates. So I looked at that, and my web browser pulled up saying "update to Sibelius 5.4." And then I saw "or Sibelius 5.2.5 for windows" on the website. It's hard to imagine I've had this program for so long now.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Last Stretch of Junior Year Day 15 - AP Lang Practice Test
I am seriously behind in writing these blog posts. But frankly, it doesn't matter since I haven't done anything important, interesting, worthwhile, exciting, necessary or exillerating for the past couple days since I went to Lake Tahoe. Basically, a good deal of juniors are going to be taking a practice AP Lang test in the library, which means missing periods 1, 2, 3 and 4/lunch. And just to make sure we take it seriously, our instructor decided (out of the kindness of his heart) to count the three essays and multiple choice section as part of our grade. That's all for now....
Monday, April 12, 2010
Last Stretch of Junior Year Day 12 - What happened here?
Today I got back in school since Spring Break ended. And I am currently writing this on 2010-04-13 02:00, meaning I'm definitely staying awake doing stuff. I frankly don't remember what I even accomplished today, because I'm still extremely scatterbrained and sleep deprived from the night before.
I am theoretically working on my AP Lang project right now, since it is extremely important we have everything be completely done for peer edits on Tuesday. What I'm in charge of for now is to finish my part of the essay and finalize a bibliography. Also, I'm supposed to work on my note cards for any additional sources I may have found besides the ones I already found.
Okay, other stuff I'm supposed to do...Spanish, where I'm supposed to look up some more information on Barcelona, Spain. I will be writing 10 sentences about the place, in particular relating to a picture of the city. This shouldn't be all that bad.
Also, I need to study for physics, if I can even find the time in this night to do so. So yeah...I need to remember stuff regarding radioactive decays, and the amount of energy released, and some equations telling me how to compute the kinetic energy of those particles moving around, etc. And no I don't really know what I'm talking about (yet).
So all in all, I basically have got a good deal of stuff left over for my first night right after Spring Break. Also, I simply was too lazy to write daily entries for my time at Lake Tahoe. I have one of the days drafted on a document on the netbook while I was on my way down from the mountain, but the other days I just got lazy or something. And for this very moment, I don't know whether that ski trip was beneficial to my sanity or not. I got very lucky to have another chance to go up the mountain, but now that it's all over, I'm in a slight depression. All I can say, upon reflecting on the past few days, is "what happened here?"
I am theoretically working on my AP Lang project right now, since it is extremely important we have everything be completely done for peer edits on Tuesday. What I'm in charge of for now is to finish my part of the essay and finalize a bibliography. Also, I'm supposed to work on my note cards for any additional sources I may have found besides the ones I already found.
Okay, other stuff I'm supposed to do...Spanish, where I'm supposed to look up some more information on Barcelona, Spain. I will be writing 10 sentences about the place, in particular relating to a picture of the city. This shouldn't be all that bad.
Also, I need to study for physics, if I can even find the time in this night to do so. So yeah...I need to remember stuff regarding radioactive decays, and the amount of energy released, and some equations telling me how to compute the kinetic energy of those particles moving around, etc. And no I don't really know what I'm talking about (yet).
So all in all, I basically have got a good deal of stuff left over for my first night right after Spring Break. Also, I simply was too lazy to write daily entries for my time at Lake Tahoe. I have one of the days drafted on a document on the netbook while I was on my way down from the mountain, but the other days I just got lazy or something. And for this very moment, I don't know whether that ski trip was beneficial to my sanity or not. I got very lucky to have another chance to go up the mountain, but now that it's all over, I'm in a slight depression. All I can say, upon reflecting on the past few days, is "what happened here?"
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Last Stretch of Junior Year Day 7 / Spring Lake Tahoe Day 1 - SLOW Internet Connection
This is post is also written late, but I don't care. Basically, I managed to get out of the house to go skiing/snowboarding one final time. I had been looking forward to it for a while at home. But in general, it simply wasn't as exciting as it was in February. But I can say that I got to sit right seat on the car ride up, and I was able to get approximately 40 minutes of continuous scenery (yeah, with some small cuts between). Yeah...days to upload this large amount of data...and yet Embassy Suites still call it "high speed Internet." These videos and others I recorded that day needed the past few days uploading to YouTube... while I was busy on the mountain. And I must say that Embassy Suites is relatively enticing with it's floor plan and interior design. Seeing a central atrium and a view all the way up to the roof really reminds me of the design of cruise ships. Either way, I"m going to quit writing now and reflect on yesterday, since I am writing this post on Friday, April 9, for Wednesday, April 7.
AP Lang Project Status Update 2
Ideas for Video Project
Order: Literature, poetry, music
Clips from videos, vintage-look for videos
Author pictures should be zoomed out/video
Clips of Depression
Videos of music/music recordings
Look for: Jazz band clips, depression clips/pictures, famours author/musicians pictures, pictures of the radio
Order: Literature, poetry, music
Clips from videos, vintage-look for videos
Author pictures should be zoomed out/video
Clips of Depression
Videos of music/music recordings
Look for: Jazz band clips, depression clips/pictures, famours author/musicians pictures, pictures of the radio
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Last Stretch of Junior Year Day 6 - Legit Workday
Although this blog post is supposed to be for Tuesday (2010-04-06), yet is written two days late (2010-04-08), I feel that it's better to write about this day rather than skipping this day. I managed to get my AP Lang project members together to do some "complicated" group work. The most important thing we got down were some recordings of the poetry we selected. All other stuff will have to be searched for at some website or archive. Or if I get bored, I could perform some music selections, as long as it pertains to "art in the 1930s." Or something like that.
I also had to leave for another trip to Lake Tahoe (2010-04-07). Why...well I kinda had two left over passes from when I went in February. That's approximately $140 wasted if I don't go. And besides, I think to most people who know me well enough, skiing is more important than a lot of normal everyday activities. So is snowboarding...since I took two lessons at Boulder Lodge in February, and I feel it is another one thing to add to my tiny list of athletic capabilities I have. This hopefully explains why "mundane" desires are reducing my productivity in this project (and in school in general).
I also had to leave for another trip to Lake Tahoe (2010-04-07). Why...well I kinda had two left over passes from when I went in February. That's approximately $140 wasted if I don't go. And besides, I think to most people who know me well enough, skiing is more important than a lot of normal everyday activities. So is snowboarding...since I took two lessons at Boulder Lodge in February, and I feel it is another one thing to add to my tiny list of athletic capabilities I have. This hopefully explains why "mundane" desires are reducing my productivity in this project (and in school in general).
Monday, April 5, 2010
Last Stretch of Junior Year Day 5 - First Post I am Behind on Writing
I remember in COSMOS I basically managed to write some posts the following day. Meaning, if the post was for Wednesday, I wrote it on Thursday. Basically nothing happened today, except more goofing off on FSX and reading some papers on some Great Depression musicians. I believe I had this next Cessna Citation 500 that I installed that day. Anyway, it's been two days since I wrote for this post, which is kinda embarrassing.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Last Stretch of Junior Year Day 4 - Set Autopilot for Lang and Calc
One of the projects I have over the break is this AP Lang research paper on art during the Great Depression. So today, one of my partners came over to find some more poetry that we could possibly use in the essay, and possibly read out loud in the video. I have the list of some poems we found in this other blog post.
So one of the songs that I am now practicing for piano is "Charleston" by Mátyás Seiber. I played it - or rather I attempted to play it - and noticed it had this sort of jazz-style syncopation. At the bottom, I noticed that it said "Copyright 1933 by Schott Music International, Mainz." I thought that this music might work for the Lang project since it's in the 1930s. Plus, the music had a rather rushed and anxious tone. But then I remembered my piano teacher told me he was a Hungarian composer. I think I would be better off using American music.
Later in the day, I was working on some AP Calculus stuff. This time I was reviewing polar graphs, how to find the length of the curve, and the area of the curve, and the like. All I know is that I seriously need to memorize the half-angle and double-angle formulas for sin^2 x and sin 2x, etc. And, I'll need to review some techniques of integration, such as splitting it up, using trigonometric substitution, and other fun stuff.
Not only did I review math, but also I reviewed English. I worked on some sample ACT English problems. The style is a bit different compared to what I'm used to with the writing section in the SAT. And obviously, for anyone who bothers to read this blog, my writing style is far from perfect. I know I'd get about a 3 for each blog post had it been an essay prompt to reflect on my day. Why? Stylistic errors, poor structure, inconsistent tenses, less than feasible transitions, distracting digressions, grammatical errors and all kinds of other components of writing. Regardless, I still managed to get 32 out of the 45 sample questions correct. I was too lazy to time myself, since this is my first time, and because it's just a rough idea of the areas I need to practice. And heck no, of course I don't have patience to review the exact reason why I got each problem wrong.
So to end the day, I was looking around on flightsim.com to search for some scenery and some aircraft. I found this Cessna Citation 500 I used to love flying on back when I still had my Dell Inspiron laptop, and before the hard drive failure (which one of these days I need to find some data recovery service to retrieve my files). So seizing the opportunity, I quickly downloaded that and installed it. I also downloaded this Qantas A330-300, this Queen Mary cruise ship (yeah, it's configured as an "aircraft"), and some scenery for Albany, New York. Flight sim communities are really the reason why FSX is not going to get boring for me any time soon.
So uh...all that's left is to actually enjoy playing around with the stuff I downloaded.
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