Folding@Home

Folding@Home is an amazing distributed computing organization that researches diseases such as Parkinson's.  Each connected computer is assigned proteins to simulate.  When a work packet is finished, the processed information in uploaded to Stanford University's labs for analysis.  Currently, my computer is working on a simulation of CheY and Src tyrosine kinases.  You can find more information on FAH and get involved by checking out their web site.  The client application is designed to use only idle CPU time unless you allow it to take precedence.  FAH also has power-saving options for laptops and performance-intensive plans for amazing gaming computers.  Put your computing power to work for science!

Normal Summer?

Well, with all my summer courses done (I got a perfect score on the ENG 101 final paper, resulting in an A in the class), I can have a "normal" summer.  One problem: Summer is pretty much over.  I will begin 9th grade in three weeks.  That leaves me only three weeks to have the kind of relaxed summer that average kids get three months to enjoy.  Sometimes, I really want to be average and not have to worry about things like constant college classes or ACT test dates in middle school.  After thinking that, I remember that doing academically advanced stuff like this is going to let me graduate faster and with more knowledge.  Some might ask, "Is it worth giving up your childhood just to get ahead?"  To that I say, "Yes, if you can enjoy it."  For the most part, taking college classes, advanced math courses, and miscellaneous talent search exams is incredibly fun.

The End of ENG 101

English 101 is pretty much done.  I just turned in an essentially-final draft of the final research paper.  My current grade going into that assignment is barely an A, so I really need to do well on it to keep that A.  For those interested: The paper is titled A Christian Perspective on Homosexuality.  I may or may not put the final version up for viewing here.

In completely unrelated stuff, I saw this double rainbow yesterday:

The moon is right below the lower rainbow

Why Conclusions Are Unnecessary

I understand why introductions are necessary.  If we just launch into a discussion on something without telling the reader what's going on and what we're arguing for, nothing will make sense and our point will not be understood.  Conclusions, on the other hand, don't add anything new.  They restate already given information and usually tie together ideas that should have been already tied together by paragraphing and in-text transitions.  Ending sentences like "Conclusions are really a waste of space and time" are nice, but they don't deserve their own paragraph.

Political Correctness and Grammar

There was a time in which one could indicate an unknown gender by simply assuming the masculine.  Now, political correctness has creeped into the rules of grammar, which now require using something weird like "his/her", "(s)he", or "his or her."  I find it really annoying to interrupt my writing just to satisfy the demands of 1950-style anti-sexism warriors.  I am by no means insulting women by simplifying my already very confusing sentences; I mean no disrespect.  English needs gender-neutral personal pronouns.  Basically, on this blog, I will not go out of my way to make sure readers are allowing for women in my sentences.

To the activists of today: next time you have your battle for rights, please leave my grammar and style reference guide out of it.

(Belated) Independence Day Celebration

While igniting fuses in a late US Independence Day celebration, I pondered why people celebrate nation-specific holidays.  It's definitely fun to have days off work and shoot fireworks, but there must be more to it (I hope).  I come to the conclusion that celebrating things like independence dates make people feel like good citizens of their respective countries.  We all want to be loyal citizens, so we take time to engage in social events that conveniently are on the same date as a day off of work.  I suspect there's something in everyone's conscience that makes happiness a result of loyalty.

With those musings out of the way, I had some fun blasting off rockets of various magnitude.  Pictures:

A small bottlerocket in the process of departing the pipe

Me about to ignite a (supposedly) very powerful rocket

Fireworks are fun, plain and simple.

Celebrity Craze

I've been wondering why so many people are so fixated on knowing every little detail about their favorite celebrity.  "News" articles are frequently published talking about who was partying with whom, the latest celebrity gossip, and "shocking" "scandals".  It's really annoying for me to open up a news website and get bombarded with silly newsburgers about Perez Hilton's recent activities.

Maybe people want to follow the activities of celebrities because those celebrities have outstanding moral character or are good role models.  On today's celebrity scene, however, it is very rare to find a famous person who is famous for being a good person.  Instead, we have boatloads of cultural icons who engage in all sorts of unbecoming behavior.  So, I don't think we follow celebrities because we look up to them.

Maybe we want to know all about famous people because we think our own lives are disinteresting.  This is probably the reason for many people's fixation on celebrities.  When one works 9 to 5 at a tedious job, it adds some excitement to one's life to see what sort of famous activities famous people are up to.  Celebrities are good at entertaining - that's how they became celebrities.

The last reason I can think of is that we want to get away from a crisis around us.  It's easier to read about how well-known personalities are living than to put down the newspaper and fix our lives.  It's easier to expend our worrying energy on things we can't change than to consider the consequences of decisions that pertain to our lives.  I find that if I can't make a decision, I will start thinking about something totally unrelated (probably computer code), get tired of thinking, and stop thinking at all.

And that's the first actual post of this blog. #abruptconclusion

Whence the Split

To all the people coming over from the other blog: I'm glad to have you here!  I hope you enjoy future journals and other stuff that will be here eventually!

I started my previous blog when I was eight or nine years old.  Kids at such ages just want to talk and are more interested in telling everybody everything than actually being interesting.  I wrote incoherently at times.  I went on and on about random stuff that nobody outside of my immediate family really wants to hear about. Also, I've discovered that it's better for internet personalities to not discuss their everyday goings-on.  This is a journal, but the internet does not need to know who I visited or talked to on a given day.  (I might make exceptions for awesome stuff like meeting RTB staff.)  You can, of course, expect to read about events in my life when I am about to make observations based on them.

A less deciding reason to create a new blog was the new stats system Google introduced about a year ago.  Since that was created in the middle of my blog's existence, it did not accurately measure lifetime views and other long-term stats I would like to have.  SiteMeter is a cool thing, but is considerably harder to use than the built-in Blogger Stats.

With a fresh start, I can add labels to categorize my posts.  You, the reader, can then easily see all my thoughts on a subject.  Thanks for reading!

To all the people in the future who just read all the posts by endlessly pressing "Older Posts": I hope you enjoyed all the journals and other stuff that I do not currently know are here!