Jacob’s Escalator

Last weekend, Shelby and I went on some adventures. We intended to visit Pike Place, then Uwajimaya, and then return home for a cooking project. Most of that we still fulfilled, but on our way to downtown, it came to Shelby’s attention that her Godiva chocolate membership was ready to provide her with her monthly free chocolate, and we found that there’s actually a Godiva in downtown Seattle, so we went to investigate.

In the very tall buildings, seven or eight stories or more, you expect there to be many offices and small businesses (or big businesses), that sort of thing. In smaller buildings you expect to see single businesses or stores. What about the medium-size ones?

Westlake Center is such a ‘medium’ building: it’s four floors from ground to top with basement parking. There’s a Godiva Chocolatier on the second floor. When we wandered around the block without seeing the shop on the street, it occurred to us that maybe it was inside somewhere - but we really had no idea what to expect from these buildings, so we just went in to see what we would find - and it turns out that these medium buildings are actually small shopping malls. We explored it with fascination, took note of the Monorail station and restaurant collection on the fourth floor - and then departed, but we somehow managed to go the exact wrong direction. And instead of ending up at Pike Place, we ended up at Pacific Place, which is a couple blocks away.

Pacific Place - pictured at left - is considerably nicer on the inside, a beautifully kept and structured building with a slightly unfortunate design that allows you to go up on escalators on either side, but only allows going down on one side. I’m not sure why it’s like that. Among some other attractions, we explored a toy store that we found, third floor I believe. For some reason it was the toy store that stuck with me (and not the Victoria’s Secret excursion……).

I’ve recently been confronting a sort of life turning point that I call the “Working Man Revelation”, since it was discussion of Working Man that actually brought it initially to my attention. When you’re a kid, especially a high school student, and you think about all the time your parents spend away at work, you think, “Man! I can’t imagine what it must be like to give up so much of my day like that! I don’t want to do that, I want to stay home and never get a job so I can do what I want!” But when you actually get a job, you find that… you actually still have a lot of time to yourself. A lot. I am far more relaxed and at ease working full time than I have ever been during the school year. And multiple times, I’ve wondered, what did I even DO with myself??

We were walking down the causeway and a glass casing allowed a massive K’Nex Ferris Wheel to visually accost us. And accost it did. It was about as tall as I was. Shelby was ecstatic - she was one for K’nex when she was younger, apparently, and talked about how she’d tried to make those contraptions when she was younger and never succeeded. I tried to play it off as a “simpleton’s lego” but really K’Nex was just a different approach to the same idea, and one geared towards future engineers and scientists (Shelby!) rather than future writers and artists (Sam!). You all know I enjoy science - so, I did sometimes really miss the K’Nex. They seemed like lots of fun… but also a huge pain to try and get enough to do much with. When you have as many Legos as I did, you get a little invested.

The accosting then took a marketing turn, and the ferris wheel offered us entry to  a toy store. Like, an actual children’s toy store. I feel kind of stupid saying so but I can’t remember ever seeing such a store. Toys R Us doesn’t qualify - there’s just something wrong about that place and I will avoid it with all my might if ever I have children. I don’t like its atmosphere at all. But this little shop was cute and quaint and reminded me very much of polished craft wood, like Dad used to work with. I think it was the coloring? Anyway.

We went inside to investigate, and I found myself looking upon things that children played with these days. Some of them were gently nostalgic, others amusing, and still others rather frightening - and I found it fascinating to see, and wanted to share some of the things we found.

Credit to some random sites Google picked up for these images.

 Wooden Trains

It’s almost a relief to see that some of the most successful devices for entertainment are still some of the most simple. We didn’t see it until we were on our way out, but there was a wooden train set laid out on a table near the entry, using the same smooth, cream-colored carved wood that most of my tracks use. I remarked that I would ensure any of my children would have quite a large set to play with (if I had my way), and Shelby agreed that it was a staple.

Wooden trains are definitely a staple. They inspire you to think about landscapes and the world you’re playing in. You can’t see it, I might say to you, but there’s a mountain right here - that’s why this is a tunnel piece. Or, you can’t see it, but there’s a river here! That’s why there are bridges. They encourage some kind of storytelling, as well - I vaguely remember thinking up why the trains did what they did…

Of course, you can’t forget that children are just fascinated by things that move around. That’s perfectly fine, too - I just like overthinking stuff. I know I liked pushing the trains and letting them run their course around something I could predict, or lay out. That’s why we adults still love electric trains. But for a children’s toy, I think the extra interaction required to play with a basic wood set is important somehow.

Also, wooden trains are not dangerous. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone get hurt playing with a wooden train set. Big plus right there.

Coloring Books

This was a bit of an awkward one for me because I never liked coloring books but I can’t for the life of me figure out why. They had a spinning rack of them, so not very many, but Shelby spent a moment looking through them and pulled out a couple that she said she’d had when she was little. Since I didn’t use coloring books much, I just sort of stood and watched, poking at them mentally from afar, but thinking about it caused me to tangent off to another train of thought…

…How is it that the things that Shelby and I played with, fifteen years ago, are still in print and production??? Do the children’s toy makers just make one thing that works and then sit back and let it sell? When you think about it, this phenomenon must be almost constant - encountering things you used to play with as a child, that is. You only ever use it for a year or two, but when you come back as an adult, you remember.

…And then you buy it for your kids!! It’s a marketing scheme, I tell you!

Hexbug Nano

Okay, these things were both frightening and fascinating simultaneously.

A respectable portion of our society has a fascination with robots. For all that I enjoy things that I can predict and control, robots never were my thing - the idea of a programmable companion has always struck me as very counter-intuitive, and the point at which you make something sentient, is also the point at which you lose control over its actions. Aside from the moral implications, that doesn’t sound very fun to begin with.

But nonetheless, we rich technologically-advanced people like robots, and are always finding ways to make them publicly available, as if presenting everyday people with random robotic toys and pets - robotic dogs come to mind, which now come in more makes and models than your average car -  will somehow advance us closer to the Jetsons age in which your robotic housekeeper can give you marriage counseling. *Shudder.*

But even I think the Hexbugs are cool. Hexbugs are supposed to be bugs. I love bugs: they’re small and containable, but weird and fun to watch and look at. You never feel too threatened by them and they never seem too threatened by you. In fact, I think that’s why I am so scared of spiders - spiders break that barrier by freaking out you come close to them. Ladybugs, beetles, mantises, they don’t care at all. It’s like you aren’t even there, and you have your own private show into the life of what amounts to a completely alien creature that might as well be from another world.

Well, Hexbugs capitalize on that idea. They’re robotic bugs. Pictured above are “hexbug nano”s, a small and bare-bones variety. They use a vibration control to scurry around like real bugs, and they can flip over if they somehow end up on their backs. That’s it. That’s their whole bid and package - it’s a cute little thing that scurries around. They’re powered by the same batteries you’d put in a watch.

HEXBUG is a brand name that produces loads of these little pets, in many varieties, with fairly simple, standard capabilities - optical sensors, noise and pressure detectors - used in novel ways to produce something entertaining. For example, they have a “Crab” robot that moves into dark places and then stops, but will move or change direction in response to light or loud noises. That just sounds like loads of fun to me. Let’s stop for a moment and consider what you could do with a mean streak, ten Hexbug Crabs, and your sibling’s friend that has never seen one before. Mmmmm, that was great. Let’s move on.

The Nanos fascinate me most, though. They are so incredibly basic and simple - and yet, so obviously entertaining. You can buy little pieces of track that curve around or have little pods, and they’ll move around in this little contained environment you make for them - like a train set, but with both autonomy and organic randomness.  They become entertaining little things to have in your room or on your desk - something to stare at when your thoughts leave you behind. But all they are is a plastic microchip design, and an oscillator that makes it move. That’s it. Nothing else.

Apparently, HEXBUG is taking a collector approach to Nanos - they come in a variety of designs and colors, some rarer than others, and you don’t know what color or design you’re going to get when you buy one. Gotta catch ‘em all? So that tickled my interest as well… what with my obvious Pokemon background.

But through all this, looking at them, I couldn’t help but be intimidated. And I still can’t figure out why for sure, but they bug me (pun intended). There is something about the idea of offering a fabrication of life to a child as way to entertain and stimulate them, that strikes me as bad. The Hexbugs themselves I have no problems with, but when I think of them as a kid’s toy… something doesn’t sit right. Maybe it’s my preference for the hands-on approach to things - if something is predictable, it should be predictable because you made it that way. Giving my child something that he(/she) can program to walk around and wave “hello” somehow sounds just fine to me. Giving that child something that is already programmed to do that for him(/her) is… stale and pointless at best. And to me, inexplicably “wrong” at worst.

Let’s move on.

 Legos

Man, I love Legos! They were almost the entire reason I wanted to head into that store. They’re just wonderful - creative building blocks that are designed to make pretty much anything you can possibly imagine. Top tier imaginative entertainment from years five through fifteen (and onwards).

Back when I was young, when you went into a toy section of any given store, you expected to see Legos. It’s like a qualification for being a toy section. If you don’t have Legos, you aren’t a toy section. That’s just the end of the deal. And not just a few Lego items, either - you better have a lot. A good stock and selection, even if you don’t want to carry the big ones, at least have a nice set of small sets to choose from.

My memory really lets me down here, but if I’ve ever subscribed myself to a magazine, I’m pretty sure that it would have been LEGO Magazine, and nothing else. I know I had a catalog that I absolutely adored - it had some base set models you could order from the main factories directly, but most of the booklet was pictures of things people had built on backgrounds or matte paintings or something to give you ideas. And ideas I got - loads and loads of them. Castles, teleporters, ruins, abandoned buildings, houses, spaceships, you name it. I was never as good at it as anyone else I asked to play with me, though, and that’s still sort of remained a disappointment that’s stuck with me. I don’t come up with good ideas on my own, and I never have. I take other people’s ideas and rework them - that’s my strong point.

Around when we prepared to move to Bellingham, we made our repeated rounds of donation and cleaning to streamline the move and only take the things we absolutely wanted to have. My massive thirty pound tub of Legos didn’t make the cut. But I think in my mind, I didn’t give it up because I didn’t want it anymore, or didn’t play with it enough to justify it - I gave it up because we were making our rounds to donation, and I looked at it for several minutes, imagining the toys dozens and dozens of different kids could make with all those Legos. They’re in much better hands now, I hope!

I still sometimes entertain the idea of buying some specific lego sets and trying to make some things for fun. Now that I’m older I could probably do a great deal more with them, if I coordinated my purchases and bought the things I knew I’d want to use. (I had so many square blocks - and those aren’t very useful.) So whenever I catch wind of a Lego selection, I’m eager to look.

The Pacific Place let me down. There were Legos, yeah, but they were all from either an underwater fortress theme, or like, a dark castle theme - neither of which really got my interest (the dark castle theme made lots of facades but no interesting castles, and the terrain designs were never that great). There weren’t very many, and they all seemed old, like things I’d seen dozens of times before. There was a somewhat equal selection of their “bionicle” series sets, which I did give a try a couple times - and they were interesting, but took a definite K’Nex direction that I didn’t like out of my Legos. You could only rebuild the Bionicle  pieces in certain ways, and that was just a letdown. I hope that isn’t the direction most of their new advancements are going… but it did seem that way.

What do you think of the things we give children to play with? What are your favorite things to play with?

Man, it’s been such a long time since I wrote a post for any reason whatsoever! Wow. It’s almost like I forgot about it. I offer no explanation.

As consolation, however, I will summarize my life situation. I’ll start by announcing that I was at last dragged into Facebook. You can follow my status there as well, now. In fact, if you have been paying attention to aforementioned Facebook, you may have already seen the subject matter of this post.

Anyway, a summary of my life situation.

• I’m entering my second year at Western Washington University in this upcoming fall. College is busy work, far more so than you can really easily be prepared for. I’ve decided to major in Computer Science (which was obvious) and minor in Japanese (less so). Japanese is loads of fun, and the presentation experience is good for me. So is the huge amount of group work required for Computer Science.
• Shelby and I have been together for 2 years and 2 months now, and are still going. It’s been a blast. Very, very educational, and very, very enjoyable. Shelby is not one I will ever forget, nope nope.
• I adore Bellingham and would not mind remaining here for the rest of my life. I don’t have any particular desire to, but it’s a great place. There’s stuff to do, the scenery is beautiful, the town is adorable, it’s just wonderful.
• I have successfully abstained from Pokemon while the format sucked and while I didn’t have money or time. Now I have external funding and a little more time, and the format doesn’t suck. I don’t have high hopes for abstinence.
• I have an amazing job working at the technical services and web help department at Western. I’m gaining all sorts of valuable experience, they’re unfazed by budget cuts (you gotta have tech support!) so I have full time employment over the summer, and the environment is just awesome. I’ve almost forgotten what it was like to not have a job over the summer - what was ever so bad about working? What did I even do?

Now we get into the subject matter of this post.

Is it bad if I really enjoy creating elaborate gifts for Shelby? This year, for our two-year anniversary, I wrote her an entire album of computer-generated rock and orchestra-esque music (the genre is “instrumental” I guess), which is titled Sketches. I intended to write up a post about the album immediately, actually - but to be honest, my excuse is that I couldn’t figure out my login information and had to go hunting for it. Here is the belated “analysis” to go with the album - my thoughts on each individual song.

I admit it… I just like writing stuff.

Track 1: Tempus Borealis

It’s the first track of the album, but this was actually the last one I completed.

It took about two days in all to write (which is fast). I had originally intended to play with some sort of techno sounds, but the mixture of bass and percussion was very hard to emulate, and I ended up just sort of going in a rock-ish direction. You can hear a lot of influence from some of my newer musical interests, such as 10 Years’ “Fix Me”, as well as some of the whispers of a recent Rush concert (Caravan). The song has a lot of chorus and echo - which led to playing with some interesting “effect solos” (primarily, the end of the song), but also seemed to make the whole thing very busy and noisy.

I still really enjoy it. It’s one of my favorite tracks on the album.

Track 2: Land of Atomyka

Inspired clearly by Atomyk Ebonpyre, by Toby “Radiation” Fox for Homestuck - this was the earliest creation I actually finished. I went back and updated each of the instruments with my improved “skills” so that it would mesh with the rest of the album. This was really meant to just be sort of a rock-y remake of the original song, and I succeeded in that. It’s a heck of a lot of fun to play.

Track 3: Thunder for a Dead Man

Thunder for a Dead Man comes immediately after Land of Atomyka in the timeline, I believe. This was also indirectly inspired by a Homestuck song - rather than enjoying an entire melody, there was a simple sound I wanted to accomplish, involving a gentle orchestral sweep to a sudden climax. I wrote that… and then the song took a different direction. A wonderful direction. Though I enjoy the simple metallic feel of some of the later songs, I often amaze myself with the intricate inner workings that went into the latter part of this song.

This is the only song with external sound effects added in. There’re a couple of glitches at the beginning, and I could have done my fades and timing a bit better - but it sounds pretty cool nonetheless.

Track 4: Odyssey Noir

This song was a ‘dream remix’ I had hoped to do and didn’t think I had the skill for. Until I actually tried it. I believe it comes in second-last chronologically - after my experiences with Thunder for a Dead Man, Time Stands Vigil, etc - and would almost stand for a culmination of my efforts. Sadly, I don’t think it really measured up to the huge epic I wanted it to be - but it sounds pretty darn cool.

The original is another by Toby Fox: The Ballad of Jack Noir.

Track 5: Time Stands Vigil

One of my online friends had been proof-reading some of my music for me. He’s a writer, and he takes music and characterization seriously - in response to one of my later songs, he asked me to write something about one of his characters. This was an original result. We spent some time talking about it and it turned out that this wasn’t what he had envisioned at all, but we both agreed that it was still a really cool song and so I stuck it on the album for good measure.

This one was odd. I enjoyed making it very odd. The harsh piano accents and the chromatic scales somehow manage to make a less violent and angry sound than I usually produce, despite being musically - well - violent. It also includes some time shenanigans, because who doesn’t love time shenanigans? Metronomes. That’s who.

Track 6: Wistful Dreaming

I don’t know what happened here.

This song literally appeared in GuitarPro after about ten minutes of staring at a blank piano track. One of my mental characters had vividly begun to play piano in my head - and then this happened. I don’t know how I did it, really. I don’t rightly remember writing any of it, making any design or artistry decisions… none of it. All I know is that I wrote this thing that was meant to sound haunting, sad, and alluring - and I succeeded wonderfully.

When I showed it to J’Neil, she asked how many pianos there are. Technically, there are two tracks - one on the left and right side, playing the exact same thing (I did this in a number of songs), but they’re only playing one “piano part”. I described it to her as being played by a single telekinetic pianist. See if you can pick out the places where there’s a “third hand” playing…

No, that’s not meant to be dirty in any way. Goodness.

Wistful Dreaming, despite being a one-of-a-kind pure piano track, is apparently a pretty common favorite. I do really adore it… but I can’t say it’s my favorite. That title belongs to one of the next two.

Track 7: The Wraith King

This song is inspired - for the Stephen King buffs out there - by Randall Flagg, somewhat indirectly. Him and his many forms. His cosmic omnipresence. His unending cunning and cruelty. The unbelievable will to get what he wants - whatever it is someone like him could want.

The Wraith King was a turning point in my musical experience. It sounded completely different when I first started - I don’t remotely remember what it originally sounded like, but it wasn’t anything like the current sound, not nearly as heavy and harsh. I got into the song a ways, thinking that it was “all right”, and as I delved onward, I ended up making something that sounded better… and better… even though it was turning completely away from the original sound. At one point, I stood back, and realized that whatever it was I was writing was not what I had started with - and it was much, much better. (For the musically acute, it was around the key change.) I went back and rewrote the beginning, then finished the song. This is the result.

This is probably my favorite song on this album, and contends for my favorite song ever. I just can’t get enough of that key change.

Track 8: Light at the End

Light at the End was another “character theme” inspired by my music proofer. The original character in question is a mixture of your everyday “magnificent bastard” and a classic antihero. I adore him, and I enjoyed writing his theme once I got into the character of it - but what ended up happening was, I wrote something far more general, whose artistry I liked a lot more than just a “character theme”.

This song feels to me like one of those weird romance themes where you have a character seemingly too cruel or self-serving to be capable of a romantic interest - but they pick one up anyway, and are forced to learn the hard way how to handle one, but also just how rewarding it can be. Except, sick and twisted, a backwards and violent version.

Or you can just like it because it sounds cool and crazy. That’s perfectly legitimate too, because it is pretty cool, and it is very crazy.

So that is Sketches, I suppose. I shamelessly force you to listen to all of the songs again or be condemned to irrational guilt. My plot advances. Ha, ha, ha, ha.

It is  clearly 12:10 AM.

…okay, so, Easter was kinda lax this year for us. Not that I mind terribly much, nor is there much we could have done about it; we just finished moving (…really, we’ve hardly finished…) and J’Neil is still back in the Tri-Cities for school. She won’t be back for another week or so. It would hardly work to have any Easter celebrations around here, which are mainly catered to the children, without both of the children available.

Dinner persists, though, which is good, because I could use some ham.

Shelby dropped back to Benton City for her own Easter weekend; she could use the relaxation, really, the quarter has been a little frightening so far. Her family apparently has quite a lot of Easter enthusiasm, which shouldn’t really surprise me because their family has an awful lot of enthusiasm in general. Perhaps what should be surprising me is that they wait until holidays to show it. Well, actually, maybe they don’t do that, maybe that’s just when I take note of it… the Johansons are rather insane, but we like them that way, don’t worry.

Meanwhile, I start Physics 3 tomorrow, the class of electrical nightmares. Awesome. Apparently the math gets absolutely horrifying, which is okay with me, I loved physics math: it was actually pretty easy, all you needed to do was memorize which formula went where and the class became a piece of cake. The concepts are a bit harder though. (Which is bad, because that’s how you figure out which formula goes where!) The basics we went over at the end of last quarter didn’t seem so bad, really, it was just like gravity except the forces are pushing you away instead of pulling you. And the numbers were always way smaller, which we like.

I’m considering picking up a Gamefly subscription after the quarter starts and I get an idea what my work schedule will be like. Gamefly, for those who haven’t heard or seen ads for it, is a video game service that works exactly like Netflix: you put together a wish list of video games, they’ll send them to you, you play, then you send them back and they’ll get you the next one on your list. I THINK I will have the time to devote to video games - definitely here and there over an extended period - but I certainly don’t have money to buy every game everyone recommends to me. If I can play through them quickly enough with Gamefly, though, I’ll be saving a lot of money by just sending them back as soon as I’m done. It seems theoretically like a good plan, so, I’ll be trying it.

I’ll probably post reviews/thoughts on the games I get, if I choose to subscribe… mostly because it amuses me, and I need something to post about. Besides, I’m a video game designer, I’m entitled to look a little more obsessed than I have.

Speaking of video game design, I’m back in spriting mode. Maybe I’ll show off the three main characters’ sprites when I get the kinks all worked out. The basics are done, they look pretty sweet, just need to animate them a bit more…

I think that’s all that’s really on my mind for the moment. Really, this is just me trying to get my head wrapped around the idea of consistent updates. x.x

Happy Easter, everyone!

And I think I’ll start here.

http://thisiswherewestart.blogspot.com/

WOW, so much has happened… Rather than try to recap all that has happened, let’s try to summarize your life, Samwise!

- The most spectacular person ever - that is, Shelby Johanson, for those of you who are not well-informed of my opinions - now openly adores me and I openly adore her in return. And the first two lines of this post, pathetic as they are, are partially dedicated to her and her amazingness. Go. Bask in her awesome hyperness blog. Please? <3
As you should have noted, there is now a category specifically for her. I’ll only use it for plans/pictures/posts that are primarily dedicated to her, though, so it’s okay.

- I now live in Bellingham, Washington (as of TODAY!) rather than Kennewick. It has been quite a horrific moving process, but it’s over now, and I’m a lot closer to the most spectacular person ever than I have been for the last several painful months. It shall only improve from there.

- New category - Fierzra. That is the name of a video game Eric Claybrook and I are putting together. We are finally out of the design phase and into the implementation - well, rather, he’s working on environmental spriting and effects, and I’m going to start working out the game mechanics and formulas, while I continue to study C++ and its glorious Allegro library for video game graphics handling. Expect to see some Fierzra material in the near future. Actually, expect to see a lot of Fierzra material. I don’t think I could keep it to myself if I tried.

- I am hoping to work as a web designer while I am in Bellingham. That may or may not work out depending on how able I am to go out and talk to potential customers, but, I will certainly give it a shot. If you know of any small businesses or similar groups that want a web page and are willing to pay for it, please give me a shout!

- Next year I will be attending Western Washington University. So exciting. Maybe if I can get myself posting semi-actively again, I’ll rage about the computer science program. To summarize: if you want a computer science degree, don’t waste your time at a community college: go straight to the 4-year university. You’ll thank yourself.

I am being horribly vague because that is how you summarize a ridiculously long period of time: vaguely. There will be more later if I can be convinced to write it! Maybe another this week, I’m sure to be quite bored.

Sorry about the hiatus!

[[This is long. It damn well better be, considering how long it was since I posted last.]]

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Coming up with 25 random things about yourself - unimportant, things you wouldn’t expect everyone to know - is a lot harder than one might think.

But I have other excuses, including finals, Pokemon tournaments, SATs, school in general, and college.

This is little more than a quick update; I need to be packing and showering for an unexpected trip to Oregon, where I will be taking a second shot at a state championships title with a new and improved deck and strategy. Who knows if it’ll actually work, but hey, it’ll probably be better!

My SAT scores came in a while back. I don’t remember them off the top of my head, but where 2400 is the highest possible score, I scored 2100. Apparently that’s very good, because my CBC counselor says she has never seen scores so high. It wasn’t like the test was all that hard, either - a few questions that had me confused and the writing section was difficult to really put effort into, but otherwise, not that bad.

Armed with those scores and some other information about my wants, last weekend Craig and I took a field trip to Seattle to talk to an admissions officer at Digipen. I wish I had more time to describe the place (I will quite soon), but the very idea of it is simply fascinating. One of the most well-known and famous games of our current video game culture, called Portal, was designed by Digipen students. Not graduates - students. They designed it in school. It will be exciting to go there in a few years!

And finally, a little more elaboration about my status as a Pokemon player.  I’m ranked somewhere in the top… 60…? of players in Washington in my age bracket (out of a couple hundred, I think). Trying to go for higher.

States championships aren’t too important, although they are very fun. It gets important at the Regional level (April). In Regionals, the top finishers get a travel award and invite to Nationals - and the top finishers at Nationals get invites and travel awards to Worlds, in San Diego. Winners at Nationals and Worlds also get scholarships; last year the top finishers won between $2000 and $5000 in scholarships.

Anyway, that’s my status. I need to hurry and pack so we can go, so, bye, viewers!

Okay, I’ll be straight up honest with you: I am way too excited about this for my own good.

In six days’ time, I will be enjoying a bit of BK lunch in Richland while people around me, including myself, open six booster packs of Pokemon Cards from a set that hasn’t come out yet - then we’ll make a small deck out of those cards and play a tournament for fun. For you guys, this doesn’t make a whole lot of set, so I figured that while I’m thinking about prereleases, I’ll “prerelease” a little bit of information from my Thunderlight post for the Trading Card Game. Read More »

Freerice.com is a wonderful little site for pretty much anyone.

It’s a very simple concept - it includes a vocabulary game in which it gives you a word, and you must select another word whose definition is close to it. For each answer you get right, you earn enough money for the site to buy ten grains of rice, which it then donates to the UN’s efforts to end world hunger. As you answer more and more of their questions correctly the vocabulary gets extremely advanced; they have sixty levels of English vocabulary. They say it is very rare to get above level 50, and I myself haven’t passed level 35.

I’m going to be donating about 2000 grains a day to help study for the SAT, which is coming up this Saturday. I encourage everyone to try it, just for 100 grains or so a day, just for fun.  According to the statistics on their site, FreeRice has - since its creation in 2007 - donated enough rice to feed 100,000 people for a month. That’s pretty cool. In actual distribution FreeRice has fed just over a million people for, in some cases, up to two months.  It feels nice to be a part of that.

So begins 2009 - awake half-an-hour from noon, and still waiting on my sister and her friend; the Gator Bowl (?) is playing downstairs amid the sea of confetti from last night. It doesn’t feel like January, or winter at all for that matter; I’m quite comfortable in a loose shirt and shorts at home. There is probably snow left, but it looks and feels out of place; the world looks more like a chilly November morning than a cold January afternoon. Read More »

Isn’t it strange how we take things and warp their original meaning or significance? I mean, look at Christmas if Thanksgiving isn’t enough proof - Christmas has ceased to be about ‘Christ’ in about 80% of all cases. Whether or not this is bad, of course, is entirely up to you.

Thanksgiving, I think, was originally intended to honor and celebrate the Native Americans’ kindness in helping us found this nation. Although I’m a little less inclined to like our country some than people think I should be, I’m certainly all for Thanksgiving’s patriotic little theme (if only because I’m there for the food, followin’ behind Dad over there). Either way, though, I think our current definition for Thanksgiving, while entirely unrelated to its original, is a little better, a little more realistic and more relevant; it’s a day to remind ourselves that we have so much, and that it can be reduced to so little in a heartbeat. So savor it, and be appreciative! Read More »