Today I faced someting that struck me odd. I turned on the monitor of one of the computers at my school and I was wide-eyed when I saw that everything was upside-down. After doing some quick reserch, I found out that many monitors are capable of doing this. Even my laptop monitor.
Some computers when you hold down CTRL, ALT, and an arrow key will automatically rotate the screen display 90 or even 180 degrees, depending on the arrow jey you press. Sometimes you'll have to go into Display from Control Panel, the go to the Settings tab, click "Advanced," and find within there the screen rotation settings. This may be handy for tablet PCs so you can experience different angles of the screen in certain situations. Other times it's a prank.
The "Kyle's Huge List of Sites" page isn't working out, so I signed up for Ma.gnolia, a Del.icio.us-like site that's a little different. I'll soon have all the sites bookmarked there and then you can easily search through the handy tag cloud to see all the sites I've found, recent additions, and ones I haven't even mentioned on the blog. So get ready. Tagging to the rescue!
OK now this week's been busy in interesting. Let me show you a visual depiction of my week in SITES!!!
The week started interesting. We had a sub in Science, who taught us a lot about the periodic table. She even suggested a site that shows all the elements and their information. http://webelements.com/
We were learning more about the Supreme Court in Humanities. We had to find reserch about the Supreme Court from their official site. http://www.supremecourtus.gov/
I got to know a little more about the GIMP this week now that I've finally found the online GIMP manual! http://docs.gimp.org/en/
So that about does it for new discoveries and stuff. I noticed I have about 0 visitors, and I'm getting a little worried. Hasn't anyone stumbled across my blog yet? I sure hope so. I have a lot to share with you. So if you're reading this, thanks and tell your friends.
Substitute teachers always get the dirty work. They have to deal with those students that dislike their ways, want to do what they want, and just plain goof off. I saw this in vibrant colors yesterday. Our science teacher was gone and is for the whole week. So we have a sub that I would have to say is pretty impressive. She's well-experienced in the curriculum and knows what she's doing. But the trouble students make the whole experience miserable.
I don't know what they're thinking when they talk back or walk out of class without saying a word, but it's gruesome to see them corrected by the sub. But there's something unfortunate these teachers face: if they fairly punish a student, that student is going to hate that teacher and think she's the worst in the world. There are other regular teachers that many friends I know dislike. But I like them because if I listen and behave, it can be a very worthwhile experience.
Some teachers have their own format of getting things done. And when that conflicts with the ways of students, hatred stirs. I know no fellow classmates that get thorough that "Wait a minute!!!" moment. They never think "Maybe I should sit down, shut my yap, and listen to what she has to say. I just might learn something." They're caught up in socializing and exercising the jaw muscles (chewing gum). It's not that I hate these people. I just think that they're wasting my time and the teacher's time, and that should be corrected.
We have a room in our school called the BLC. It stands for the Behavior Learning Center. Some call it "Bad Little Children." But there's nothing really bad about it at all. Many that I know who are sent to the BLC on the regular basis like it there, and are friends with the teacher who supervises the "Bad Little Children." They want to go there to get away from this teacher that seems to be so unfair. But I saw something different yesterday. One of the student in the science class was really making it clear to everyone that she hated this teacher. She actually said to the sub "Can I please go to the BLC?" I was thinking the sub would say "No, you can go to the principals office." But she said "No, you're just going to sit here in the front and not go anywhere." Wow was I off. And it made sense too. The BLC was evolving into a ticket out of education.
But still, is there a way for these students to "see the light?" Of course there is. But the brilliant minds of the school district haven't thought of it yet. I'm thinking right now what would be a good way to do this. Boot them out of school after three times misbehaving? Yes, we also have punishments like lunchroom cleanup and suspension. No real detention at this school. I guess we'll just have to wait for someone to figure things out. Or else.
I recently found this cool site called photoshopcontest.com. You can enter all these contests and see who gets the most votes. It's awesome. One of my entries is this car in space. See below. It rocks.
I wake up from my long pleasuring sleep to my mother. She's waking me up for school. I sit up, and the object is visible in the corner of my eye. Multicolored and complex, yet simple once understood.
The object is my Rubik's Cube.
I don't know why, I've just taken to a liking for this little cube of color. Sometimes it seems like the hardest toy in the nation, and then there are those "Aha!" moments when I understand that turning this way and that swaps these two colors. But there are 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 ways for a cube to be configured.
But there is a way to learn to solve the cube every time. And once practices it can be accomplished in five minutes. Yes, it's possible for YOU to do it. No kidding.
Just go to this site. It's has step by step videos with Tyson Mao, a Rubik's Cube wizard. And once you've aquainted youself with this "cheat code," you can test your wits on the online version.
OK, enough with Rubiks. Now just do it. Or else. Just kidding. Bye. Hi. What am I doing? AHH! OOH! OgoshIgottagonow...
Ok I'm taking a break from all the tech stuff and I'm gonna talk more about just cool things...not necessarilly on the computer. So no Familiar Friday for this week I'm afraid. I'm astounded by all the work I get every week...I've done as much work in a month as I would do when homeschooled in a year, which I was for 5 years actually. It was interesting, but there were always those boring moments that sneaked up on you once or twice a week. Of course, that was back when I didn't know what the Internet was and thought the computer was for Magic School Bus CD ROMs, but I soon found out about my horrible ignorance.
I suppose you may be wondering why I titled this post "Filial Piety." Well, last year I learned about filial piety when we were studying China in humanities. It has to do with loyalty to one's parents and sacrificing your well-being for their comfort. Back then, a boy would get in their parents' bed for a few minutes to warm it up or let mosquitoes bite him so they wouldn't get to his parents. It's supposed to show true love for your parents. Honestly, I think this was a bunch of good deeds taken to extremes.
So this "filial piety" thing hasn't left my mind since then. Just wanted to make you aware of that.
I have a question. Really. No. Yes. I'm formulating a list of questions for things that I just wonder. Some are nonsense, some are interesting. Ponder these:
Can one be a prefectionist and a procrastinator?
Why solve for x when you can solve for y?
Are you OK?
Am I OK?
Whaat makes a writer a good writer?
Can art change because of criticvs?
Why are lava lamps still legal?
What's with 42?
How do you control your dreams?
Will we colonize mars?
Do bumper stickers have any real purpose?
What is normal?
What's your question?
That's the best of the best that I have. Just don't use them. Only with permission for me can you. Sorry.
And here's something I've known about and have wanted to share. One of my friends told me about Charlie the Unicorn, a finger-lickin' awesome short movie by Jason Steele. See his site at Filmcow.com. See the movie here in Quicktime and here with Google Video. Download it. Share it. Live it. OK don't do that last one. That's just creepy. Oh and also, this guy is making a feature length Spatula Madness movie based on the short on his site too. AND, once that's over he'll be working on a sequel to Charlie the Unicorn. Yay!
Weekly Tweak: only answer with questions. This was an incredibly hard thing to do. I managed to answer people with just questions for around one hour, usually making sentences a question by saying "Did you know?" at the beginning of each one. Very difficult. I challenge you to try it.
Cool Video: The link for this video can be found here.
This is actually a comercial for Bangkok Insurance. It's well made and has the right amount of humor in it. Just in case you're interested, here's their website. But I warn you. It's not all that exciting if you don't know Thai.
Googlewhack is all about the search for "The One." It's all about a challenge to find Google searches of two words that only give you one and only one result. If you find one, you can submit it to the Whack Stack and people can try searching for it and see what they get. However, with all of Googlewhack's publicity, certain queries that once yielded one result not has fove or six. People post about the phrases in their blogs, articles, etc... And I promise you it is REALLY HARD to find a search with one result. Even "abandoned horseradish" gives you 108,000 results. So test you skills at Googlewhack. By the way, no need to sign up.
Rocketboom, a well-known vlog, is all about cool stuff. Whether technology, culture, literature, or just something incredibly strange (like painting with maggots). You'll find a lot on each episode of Rocketboom.
Picnik is a new online photo editor with nice amount of features. Easily upload a picture from your computer, a URL, or Flickr, and then save it as the file of your choice. this is a nice coice for image editing on a computer quickly and simply. Oh, and here's a quick tip: if you want to edit your image in fulscreen, just click on the Picnik logo at the top left corner of the page while you have you image open for editing.
I'm also starting a new type of post with an interesting picture. Coming soon...
Today I faced someting that struck me odd. I turned on the monitor of one of the computers at my school and I was wide-eyed when I saw that everything was upside-down. After doing some quick reserch, I found out that many monitors are capable of doing this. Even my laptop monitor.
