Programming Declared "Critical Foreign Language"

The America Can Code Act has been recently introduced to the US House of Representatives. It is said that it will add computer science to the list of foreign languages that are useful for US students to learn, including (I think) Spanish and French. There will be some sort of incentive for schools to teach computer science all the way through school.

What they're trying to accomplish is great! In a world full of advanced technology, most of which contains advanced programmable processors, almost anyone can benefit from knowing how it works. Of course, educators will have to choose a good learning tool to introduce the concepts - hopefully not the disaster that is Scratch. (More on that and other gripes with CS education in "Teach Real Programming, Please.") With the sudden interest in having kids learn programming, a well-thought-out curriculum will probably be developed.

I'm not sure how I would feel about the Common Core assimilating computer science into their collective. They would probably find some way to make it apply to somewhat-immediate life, but CS is such a quickly-growing field that almost any use for the things the kids are learning would be slippery. Therefore, the CC might try to teach concepts, like data hiding, polymorphism, and type systems that can't do anything on their own.

Also, nobody speaks programming. There is no level of geekness that could prompt someone to use any scripting language for verbal communication. Why did the proposers of the ACCA try to merge it with real language education? In my opinion, the education system could definitely benefit from being poked by the creation of a new subject.

Composing Songs in Nonfluent Language

I was just messing around with Lojban words and some basic tones, trying to make a coherent song when I noticed that composing in another language is a lot harder than just speaking in it. Of course, composing rhythmic lyrics in one's one native language is more difficult than just speaking, but it appeared that the two difficulties - meter and syntax - were more than summed. That is because, when speaking a language in which one is fluent, words can just be shoved together and permuted a little bit. However, when trying to write a song or poem in a different language, the text must first be translated. Especially in Lojban, translations can have wildly different syllable counts than in the native language. So, it's necessary to keep trying different ways of expressing a similar idea, selbri if you will, and translating it to see if it fits. It's a little bit easier in languages that use cmavo - particles - for grammar structure because a lot of them can be elided. However, that leads to some inconsistency in formality when trying to pack utterances of different lengths into a uniform meter. Of course, if writing for a language most people don't know, it's OK if it's not fully valid grammar!

Skill Trees in Education

I looked over some of the programming tutorials recommended by Hour of Code and found that they taught the material very linearly, even if the subject material was very divergent. I thought of the "skill trees" that some games have and imagined how they might be applied to education. Instead of having to go through every detail that the writer of the course thought was interesting, the student could start with the critical infrastructure and then get presented with an array of paths from which to choose.

Suppose a student just finished learning the syntax of a programming language and how to make it do basic IO. He should then get to choose which to pursue first: file handles, rendering, classes, or whatever else you can do with basic understanding of programming. Even better, for a computer science course, things like binary and networking could be unlocked in parallel to programming.

With skill trees, students could see their progress split into a huge sprawl of new things to learn and see how all these interesting skills work together. Perhaps some experimentation or studies are in order?

Bankruptcy is Theft

In today's culture, when people get so insanely far into debt that they have no hope of ever repaying their loans, they are encouraged to file for bankruptcy. When one succeeds in doing so, all debts and contracts are destroying, producing a new credit score. That sounds pretty nice, but...

It is, essentially, theft. The process of bankruptcy causes the money that the creditors gave to be simply destroyed. Nobody will ever give that money again. The money that would eventually be passed around, or used as interest to pay for the user of money, is withheld from whoever economics would eventually give it to. So, bankruptcy is theft from not only the creditors, but from inventors who could have used it to better the world.

Teach Real Programming, Please

Maybe this belongs at Fleex's Lab, but it seems that's a place for technical documentation; things pertaining to computers that are nontechnical can be here.

I'm all for the Week of Computer Science and the Hour of Code and all manner of other in-school programs that teach kids basic coding and computer science skills. In fact, I've done some teaching on it myself from time to time.

I'm a little bit lukewarm as to "programming languages" designed to help people learn to code. Stop: Yes, the B in BASIC stands for Beginner's. Microsoft just keeps the name because it's catchy; VB is far beyond beginner's tinkering. Things like Scratch are kind of programming in that they require you to think about program flow. However, these usually - still looking at you, Scratch - are fully visual and are a pretty bad example of pretty much any modern programming style. In Scratch, you're presented with tools that are better suited for silly slideshows. Variables are considered advanced. No. Scalar variables are some of the first things students should be learning, right after the obligatory console-outputting one-liners.

Slideshow programming is not programming at all. Get the kids into an IDE with a debugger, a compiler, and some syntax highlighting. (IntelliSense wouldn't hurt either.) The main issue is that it associates action with visual change, which is not usually how stuff works in the real world. When there's an error in the program logic, visual symptoms will usually happen considerably later in execution. We need to see the state of all the variables at each stage to really understand what's happening.

Code Academy does it very well. They use a real language, JavaScript, and provide easy-to-follow instructions. It might be a little too restrictive for those who want to jump ahead, but it's amazing for beginners. It would be great if it was offline-capable and taught OOP sooner.

Other things, like that one that lets beginners "code their own games" online, are not so good. First, it overwhelms the newbies with all manner of infrastructure that will cause scary errors if accidentally perturbed. Then, it doesn't explain what all this fancy stuff is - it just orders them to place a mysterious line in some special place that will cause awesome stuff to happen. If I had started programming with this, I never would have made it to where I am.

So, to all the lower school teachers and CS-spreading enthusiasts, please, please take the time to understand what the kids are going to learn. Teach them binary if it will help. Teach them how networks work when you start teaching how to create networked programs. Teach them, at every stage, why what they're doing works. This is what we need for a bright, technology-integrated future.

Uneducational "Educational" Games

I was recently asked to put in the Cool Math Games web site into the list of sites my younger sister can view in her white-list browser. Now, before adding a site to the list (which is kind of a pain due to the brokenness of that particular browser), I went to inspect it. The first thing I said to myself was, "woah, I'm glad she doesn't have epilepsy." The color scheme is just so abhorrent and psychedelic that I can't believe it's actually recommended or allowed by any education professionals. It could at least have semi-readable text. Also, I'm probably banging my head against a wall on this one, but I think it's a terrible idea for kid/educational web sites to have ads.

Next up, I checked out some of the games. One advertising itself as "the world's hardest game" caught my attention. It is indeed difficult, but there is a distinct lack of mathematics or science of any kind. (To be honest, the only reason it's hard at all is that the controls are really unresponsive.) Continuing my quest for legitimate education, I found some racing game allegedly about multiples. I guess it kind of did; you're supposed to jump (yes jump, cars can do that, you know) over the other vehicles that bear numbers that are multiples of a given number. It's a pretty dull game with essentially no learning or even testing going on.

On and on, I found totally pointless games that are not much better than just watching some video (and throw a whole lot more script errors, thank you, webmaster and browser developer). Now, just one web site with this kind of junk wouldn't be too shocking. However, this has been the case all over the internet. Everywhere I go, I find web sites with "learning" "games" for kids. Nine out of ten are pointless. The rare one that actually puts some effort into teaching/assessing has ads plastered all over the place. The only good one I've found so far is Starfall, which teaches language and a little math to kindergarten children.

Is there hope for our children? Maybe. We just have to get them away from mindless alpha-wave entertainment and into engaging educational environments. There aren't a lot of good games available for free, but YouTube and a few good sites have some awesome resources for mathematics and other important skills.

Table Manners

Tonight I was eating an amazingly delicious Thanksgiving dinner when I was gently reminded to use the appropriate methods of cutting/moving food. Usually, I would just stab the entire turkey segment with a fork and bite off fragments of it. However, it's apparently more polite to do some gymnastics involving a knife being supported by the fork cutting the meat like a hacksaw. It seems very much more difficult than just moving the food into my mouth in the easiest way. Similarly, placing utensils on the sides of the plate always facing a certain relative direction might look nice, but it's simpler to place all of them contiguously (in a napkin if you want) on the plate. I guess these customs just developed over time in Western civilization. Nevertheless, taking in nutrients would be far simpler if we were to abandon them.

The Halifax Explosion of 1917: An Obscure Tragedy

On December 6, 1917, the Norwegian ship Imo and the French vessel Mont-Blanc collided, yielding the most massive explosion prior to the atomic bomb. It was an accident, caused by a misunderstanding of the signals sent between the two ships. Mont-Blanc was carrying munitions for World War I, which detonated after being ignited by sparks created when metal scraped against metal in the collision. Two Canadian towns were leveled, over nine thousand lives were lost, and a whole lot of physical capital was damaged.

So - why don't most people know about this? I really don't know. It happened almost a hundred years ago, but everybody knows about WWI. Probably, it was "just an accident" that could have been averted if people were more careful. Well, maybe we should at least know the circumstances that caused (I think) the first man-made tsunami. Then, as people lay out designs for new vessels and transport mediums, they'll think "what might go wrong?" and implement better systems of communication and safety.

Useless Language Conventions

I learned today in Chinese class that there's a different measure word for family members than for normal things. I can understand why there might be a different one for indeterminate quantities (like sugar or snow), but I find it entirely useless to have a word that literally means the same thing as another but has to be used instead of the other in a certain context. This is why I like Lojban so much: It only has exceptions when the exceptions are meaningful. For example, the words to start a narrowing and descriptive appositive are different because those are actually different concepts and the two words provide clarity as to what is being described in the sentence. In language, it's my view that everything should be the same unless differentiation is required to display differentiation in the world.

Cellular Respiration Discoveries Timeline (Screencast)

For a biology project, I have created a video on five early researchers on the cellular respiration model. It's pretty good, so I think I'll post it here as well! For science!

Subscriber/Subscribed Index

YouTube subscriptions are things everyone wants to get. As a content producer, I love it when people subscribe to me. As a content consumer, I love finding awesome producers to subscribe to. However, I only subscribe to three people. Three. Not thirty. Not three hundred. I'm fairly certain that seeing me in the subscriber list would mean a lot more to a content producer than some pre-adolescent consumer who subscribes to pagefuls of LQ channels.

To measure the quality of subscribers a channel has, I propose the Subscriber/Subscribed Index. YouTube should, for each subscriber to a channel, divide the number of people that subscribe to the person by the number of people that person subscribes to, and then average all those. That would be a much better demographic than age to determine the devotedness of the audience.

For example, I have 22 subscribers at the moment. Only one of them has more than that (about 900). However, each one has literally uncountable subscription targets. So, my viewer base's SSI is very low, probably a little more than 1 including Mr. 900 and essentially zero without him.

US Allows Piracy in Antigua

The United States has recently allowed the country of Antigua, for reasons unclear to me, to sell US-copyrighted content without any respect or royalty to the proper holder. As Jeff Duntemann notes, whatever connection they have going out of there is going to be overwhelmed faster that you can say "piracy runs free." People going to the physical place to take a terabyte or two of data will probably get checked and caught by customs. Still, it's pretty insane that we're allowing people to violate all intellectual property rights and make a profit doing so. Piracy on small scales has been known to increase the popularity and legitimate sales of products, but the unfathomable proportions of what could happen here has the potential to do some serious damage to US-based content producers. Government, why?

"Hippopotamus" Themed Chess Blitz

To promote awareness of unusual openings, the chess club hosted a themed blitz tournament. In such an event, the first few moves are prescribed, usually causing a very strange position. From there, the game is played as normal. This time, we had to play the Hippopotamus, one that appeared terrible for Black yet actually allowed some good tactics. However, I did not do so well with it. Time for an account of each game!

1. Playing White against an extremely superior opponent. Things went well for most of the game, but them he just kept breaking down my structure. I could not stop an attack on my kingside, which caused me to lose.
2. Playing Black against a moderately superior opponent. I probably would have done a lot better had I not dropped a bishop within the first two nonprescribed moves. This game was essentially a disaster when taking into account my other blunders - dropped pawns, failed exchange, etc...
3. Playing Black against an opponent of uncertain strength. My opening was surprisingly OK. In fact, my middlegame went very well too. The issues came when he destroyed my castle position and took four of my pawns. Despite being down a few points, I did manage to eek out a draw from a three-move repetition.

Lojban Birthday Card

I created a birthday card, the main feature of which is some Lojban text meaning something along the lines of "time turns hope into knowledge". Probably works best for people over the age of 30.

English pronounciation: "timkee bikhuhgwah lo pakna sih koo sehlzhuo"

EDIT: There's an error; "ke" should be "ku." I'll fix it at some time in the future.

Homecoming!

Well, I did in fact attend my schools homecoming tonight. And... it was awesome! That was probably the most fun I've had in years. They had a DJ come in and use all manner of fancy equipment to queue up the requests and also control a spinning light-casting apparatus. It wasn't a really formal dance; essentially all the songs were pop music. Such dancing went on for three hours, all of which I participated in. Among those songs were two by PSY, during which everyone crowded around me and was massively entertained by my rendering of the dance. The entire event was French-themed: they had all manner of small food items and played "The Red Balloon", a 1956 French movie about a sentient red balloon, was shown after the dancing. Learned today: dancing is awesome.

Homecoming?

My school's homecoming is tomorrow and, as a high school freshman, I am now allowed to attend! I'm not entirely certain what said celebration entails, but I do know that it goes on for four hours, which is an insanely long time. Since my school is small and there's not much romantic couplage going on, I don't think there's going to be a lot of such things happening. I suppose it's a school spirit event, but to be honest I don't know what to expect from four hours at school on a Saturday.

The Sounds of Saturn

While researching the Voyager probes for a school essay, I found a really awesome web site containing the sounds naturally made by various areas in space. I found Saturn's the most interesting: an eerie, vibrating moan with some melodic pulses. See the University of Iowa's collection of space noises.

The Stanford Library of Philosophy

As I am drowning in homework, I have been forced to discover rich new sources of information. The best I have found for biographies of important dead people is the online Stanford Library of Philosophy. It contains lengthy articles on pretty much anybody who has ever thought about philosophy or theology. It's definitely scholarly and has boatloads of links to other such sources on every article. In addition to chronicling these peoples' lives, it also gives a good idea of their personalities.

Become an Amazon Author

I just learned a few minutes ago that anyone can become a published (and paid!) author on Amazon. All you need to do is have an Amazon account and go to the Kindle Direct Publishing section of their web site. I haven't actually tried to use the title-adding wizard yet, but it looks like all you need is a manuscript and some information on yourself. The home page claims you can get royalties of 70% for e-books and 80% for printed books. This might be just what I need to get motivated to actually collect my knowledge into something usable... and profitable!

MLA Signal Phrases

In writing class, I was recently assigned a research/classification essay in MLA format. I was already very experienced with MLA's style and citation format from English 101 at Black Hawk. However, this essay required that I use signal phrases before the parenthetical citations. I'm fairly certain that MLA doesn't require it, but the professor was very adamant that we use them. They're very nice in that that remove the requirement to put the author's name and book title in the parentheses, making them lengthy. However, they have the downside of placing bibliographical information right alongside content, which I personally find to be unattractive. I think it's better for text to be laid out in such a way that a machine could separate bibliographical data from real text.

G/20 Quads

This week at the local chess club, the members were split into groups of four to play game-in-20 minutes quads.  There was surprisingly no delay or increment, so time started going down immediately.  Since there were four people in each quad, each person played three others.  The first of my three games, I played my former chess teacher and lost.  I was up at first, but moved too quickly and got caught by a kingside attack. In the next game, I did well against someone who is pretty good.  He made a terrible mistake near the endgame, dropping his queen and resigning.  The last game was considerably more interesting.  My opponent played a Sicilian defense, which messed me up because I don't know it very well.  I made a few small errors that led to my being down a bishop in the endgame.  However, he had extremely little time.  When he promoted a pawn, he expected me to place it on the board for him, but I (as the rules say to do) pressed my clock and told him to place it.  By that time, only three seconds were left on his clock.  I won on time because I had one pawn left.  Two out of three is OK, I guess...

Re-listening to Songs

When I talk to people about music, they always are trying to find the newest great song.  They always want to search out new artists, which is of course fine, but it seems that they're getting bored of awesome songs after hearing them just three or four times.  I really don't understand this.  I can't really describe my taste in music, but it's hard for me to find songs that I truly enjoy.  Once I find such a song, I can loop it for hours and still experience the awesomeness each time.  Maybe it's wise for small children to slowly get into popular music; find an amazing band or a few songs and learn to appreciate the details.  Disclaimer: I know next to nothing about most popular music.

Illowa Fall Classic 2013

Just like every year, the Quad City Chess Club put on its fall tournament, the Fall Classic.  Since my chess skills have kind of been in decline recently, I didn't do particularly well this year.  I did, however, get an amazing (and undeserved draw) with a pretty good player.  The game went amazingly well for me until the endgame, where I got into a bad position.  I offered a draw in desperation; he accepted, not seeing that he could have just taken all my pawns with his king.  The next round, I was obliterated by my former teacher. He used a queen-pawn opening, knowing that I could easily defeat him had be played a king-pawn.  The third round, I played a lower-rated gentleman.  He did give me a very good game; it took quite a while to finish him off.  In the last round, I was again totally destroyed by a queen-pawn opening, this time played by a young boy with a rating of 1500+.  Overall, I scored 1.5, not bad for being in the open section.

Fixing English

After reading many books and writing many papers, I have seen many awkward phrases and unnecessary sentence breaks. Those breaks were necessary to stop the sentence from becoming really long and confusing, but the idea should be tighter than just paragraph level. There are other issues, namely the "he or she" one. Unfortunately, learning another language takes a long time and is complicated.

So, I decided to make a specification for a more logical version of English. The vocabulary can stay, but grammar needs to be overhauled to be more like programming. For example, having sub-lists is very difficult. Let's pretend you need to say that someone needs to first "fix the dryer" and then "wash the pants and shirt". One possible sentence: Fix the dryer and wash the pants and shirt. This isn't the best example, but it does demonstrate how sub-lists can sound strange. I propose that this be allowed: Today, <<Fix the dryer> and <wash the <pants, shirt>>. Yes, in this case it is longer, but in the most important places it will remove annoying sentence breaks and prevent confusion.

I just might try to invent a more logical and clean citation format as well, kind of like Ms. Turabian did.

A Solution to the Politically Correct Grammar Problem

A few months back, I posted a complaint that people freak out whenever "or she" is omitted after the default "he". Saying "he or she", "him or her", or whatever other female-including phrase invariably makes the sentence more complicated and difficult to understand. I decided that the somewhat-obscure "xe" (pronounced ksee) fixes everything.  It's just a simple matter of replacing the H with an X in "he".  For "him", use "xar" (pronounced ksahr).  For "his", use "xan".  I just might adopt this system on this blog. (Queue massively confused readers.)

Possibly Feasible "Star Trek Next Generation" Communicators

This might belong better at Fleex's Lab, but whatever.  This is a nice place.

I was operating the sound booth for a video presentation this morning when there were some issues.  Since I was so high up and far away from the teacher overseeing the presentation (despite having line-of-sight), it was necessary for her to run up to the sound booth and make the appropriate change on the light control.  A few hours later, during a chess game, I thought that the chest pin communicators seen on Star Trek: The Next Generation would have been immensely useful.

I believe it is possible for us at our current level of technology that would have at least helped my situation.  It is already possible to have reasonably thin speakers (see earbuds) and microphones (see webcams).  I'm not certain on RF transmitters/receivers, but there exists decently compact radio equipment (see MP3 players). Shove all that stuff into a 4 by 4 by 1 centimeter box, add some buttons to the front, and you've got an awesome communicator.

However, I do not believe it's possible to recreate the voice-activated routing.  Instead, it would be more practical to link two or three communicators by placing them in contact and sending the new listening frequency.  Once that is done, simply tap a large button to speak; others' transmissions are automatically played.  A button to null the listening frequency might also be nice.  Obviously, the transmissions couldn't go very far; it would be impossible to register constantly-changing mobile radio stations with the FCC.

I wonder how much such a device would cost.  If it exists already, I would definitely pay up to around $200 for it, assuming there are a few other people who have them.  Perhaps there's some company out there that could manufacture a few of these units.

Lojban Song Time

A school "talent show" is coming up and I have determined what I want to do: a Lojban song and (possibly) dance.  I've started messing around with a synthesizer, trying to get the overall sound of the song set in my mind.  Since I only know Lojban grammar (not much vocabulary at all), I require extensive use of a jbovlaste.  It's still very difficult for me to fit the things I'm trying to say into the lines because Lojban doesn't have words like "of", "through", or "with"; those meanings are a part of the sumti.

Clinton Chess Tournament September 2013

As some may know, whenever the Prince of Peace school up in Clinton hosts one of its unrated tournaments, I go up there to (generally) dominate it.  These tournaments are held only about once every three months, so it's kind of a special occasion.  I noticed that except for two people, everyone was there because I or my family had informed them about the event; there were six players and a handful of chess-knowledgeable parents in all.  Since there were only two high school students, he and I played six games, all of which I won.  After the tournament was over and the four-player elementary section had finished all its games, I hosted the simul I usually do after these.  All players and two parents participated, all of whom I defeated.

Sprained Ankle

During gym class today, I fell sideways and rolled my ankle inwards.  It hurt a lot at the time, but once I got up it felt a lot better.  Unfortunately, after the game, the adrenaline wore off and I felt the full effect of the pain, which was a lot.  I had to jump on one foot to the medic's office, who filled out a form to have me sent home.  Soon after, it was determined that I had actually sprained my ankle.  It really didn't feel that bad, but apparently I really messed it up.  I still can't walk; I'll miss the first few periods of school tomorrow to go to get examined by a doctor.  Moral of story: If you get hurt, sit out for a little while to see if it's bad.

Learning Lojban

I noticed a reference to a constructed language called Lojban in an XKCD.  Naturally, I looked it up on the internet and found that it is a very interesting language.  Its official web site has many resources to help you learn it as well as information about the people that speak it.  The language is intended to allow a range of error with pronunciation, making it easy to use in computing.  It apparently has only 1,500 words which can be combined to produce an amazing vocabulary.  I'll be learning Lojban - how about you?

Sick Days: Not Easy

It's common knowledge that elementary school kids pretend to be sick in order to avoid school.  I've been (legitimately) sick for two school days now and I can tell you that it's not easy.  In fact, it's actually very difficult.  Since I wasn't expecting to be at home, I didn't bring home any of the textbooks.  I can't easily talk to the teachers to learn the material the class is covering.  Basically, I'm on my own pace, without necessary materials, getting work piled on each day, and unable to fully concentrate due to being sick.  Even without the mental inhibitions involved, managing myself long enough to do all the necessary work would be near impossible.  But I can always count on RinkWorks to make me laugh!

Manito-wish, Part II

Time to finish up the short bullet points of what went on in the week I was up at Manito-wish!

• Self-description.  There was a short exercise in which we moved along axes of a graph-like thing drawn on the ground to answer questions about our personalities.  I am an "analytical observer", which means I am in the quadrant that focuses on the end result and focus on the parts before the whole.  Another similar exercise placed us in various "comfort zones" for various situations.
• Answering personal questions.  One night near the end of the week, classes split off with their individual advisers to answer predefined personal questions in a circle.  My class was already very close, so we didn't open up too much more.
• High altitude elements. The last day was entirely comprised of activities going on at exceedingly elevated locations.  There was rock climbing, a "cat walk", a leap of faith off a telephone pole, and other very scary stuff.  I learned that I actually am afraid of heights.  Nevertheless, the catwalk was amazingly fun.
• Food poker at night.  The last night, the Rivermont chaperons taught everyone in the guys' cabin how to play Texas Hold'em, which we did using Ritz Bits as chips.  I did surprisingly well, staying in until there were only two people left: me and the main chaperon.  I had only 25 fewer chips (150 total), but the massive blinds combined with a terrible hand killed me.
• Canoeing on a large lake.  I had never been canoeing before, so I had some trouble, especially with the J stroke.  Thankfully, there was a Manito-wish staff member on board my vessel (which happened to be the only unnamed one) who was able to show me and my partner how to control the canoe's direction.
• Baking cake in fire.  A planning and teamwork activity had my class bake a cake using cake mix, logs, a spatula, and a bow drill.  It was also kind of a budgeting activity because we were given a fixed amount of currency to spend on extra supplies.  My roles were a bark gatherer and the bellows for the fire.  The cake tasted absolutely awful, but it was immensely satisfying to see it fully baked.
• Parodies of everyday games.  Warm-ups before actual activities had all the campers participate in variants of things like tag and rock-paper-scissors.  There was a strange version of freeze tag in which each freezable was Taylor Swift and the taggers were Kanye West.  There was a game that incorporated rock-paper-scissors as a means of "leveling up" to become various celebrities.  I guess the Manito-wish people like to add popular culture to their warm-ups.

There were probably other points of interest, but I'm having trouble remembering everything now.  All those days honestly felt like one.  There may or may not be a Part III depending on my mind's ability to recall things.

Manito-wish, Part I

Yesterday's post to Fleex's Lab was the last scheduled post for the trip my class took to Manito-wish, a leadership/outdoors camp in northern Wisconsin.  Just two hours ago, I got home off the long bus ride.  (I'm noticing that, due to a week of being away from electronics, my typing is a lot slower and less accurate than it usually is.)  In the week I was away, quite a few things went on.

• McGraw-Hill LearnSmart updated.  I now know absolutely nothing about how to use it.  Fortunately, they left a classic mode button to let me use the old style.  Tonight, I just got started on the biggest assignment so far, four days later than intended.  Catching up shouldn't be too difficult; I just need to do about triple the amount I was doing when on schedule.
• Mojang pushed the biggest snapshot in the history of Minecraft's full release stage.  Grum has stated that a massive refactor "breaks all the things".  In addition to that, huge changes to the terrain and new flowers make it feel like an entirely new game.  Guess what I'll be doing when Forge catches up!
• Apex High School Learning courses progressed according to plan.  I think there's a little bit of easy review stuff that I need to do by the end of this week, but nothing major.  Currently, I have a 126% score because of an unbalanced extra credit assignment.
• I gained a subscriber on YouTube, bringing my sub count to 21.  Unfortunately, I can't really create more videos because...
• I got sick with a viral infection, possibly strep.  My throat hurts, I'm constantly thirsty, and my voice just sounds awful.  No recording will be done by me anytime soon!

Alright, now that I've covered all the things that were not related to the camp, it's time to list things that went on up there on the outskirts of Boulder Junction.

• Group name games.  It seems every new place has to have everyone introduce himself to everyone else by throwing some sort of object around a circle.  Fortunately, Manito-wish went a little further than just names.  They had this rope-like thing that would be passed around the circle and wound for each person as he spoke about various aspects of his life.
• Amazing family-style meals.  I think eating family-style (by passing around large containers of food and shoveling it off as desired) really brings a group together.  Giving pitchers, plates, pans (receiving burn injuries while doing so), and bags to nearby people on request forces people to get outside their own little world, even at the dining table.  The food was amazing, as was the occasional dessert.
• Communication building.  There was this one game in which a "minefield" had to be navigated using at least three people in three roles.  The "rescuer" was blindfolded and could only hear and walk.  The "spotters" were mute and could only see and gesture.  The "speaker" was turned away from the "minefield" and could only see the spotters and speak.  It required some planning to create the gestures, but most of the challenge was in reaction times.  My personal favorite role is the speaker.

As this is getting longer that most posts and I need sleep to recover from the 6:30 AM to 10:30 PM awake times, this will be continued tomorrow!

Element 115 Discovered

Researchers in Switzerland recently synthesized Ununpentium, element 115 on the periodic table.  Unlike an earlier Russian application, the IUPAC accepted the findings of these researchers as a discovery.  This is the first odd-numbered unnamed element to be successfully synthesized, but I'm not sure if that's significant.  You can read more about this in a Forbes article.

Teaching Chess to Boy Scouts

One of the Boy Scouts of America coordinators sent a message to the president of the local chess club, who then forwarded it to me and my father.  We will be doing an all-day chess merit badge workshop soon with groups of 20 scouts.  I'm really looking forward to this; they seem very well-organized.  They even sent me the requirements of the merit badge and a copy of the worksheet the scouts can use to study!  For more information, see the BSA's chess merit badge page.

The God of the Rand() Function

Time to wander into theology, yes?  Yes!  Disclaimer: I don't have any theology degrees or experience, so this might get really incorrect really fast.

Alright, so as human understanding of physical science gets deeper, it would become increasingly more difficult to hide intelligent intervention as a random event in some unpredictable layer.  Assuming there is some intelligent agent beyond space and time (which is easier to refer to as "God"), such an agent would probably want to conceal some of its interventions, such as causing a person via MapQuest to take one turn on a road trip that would otherwise be less efficient but puts said person in a situation of spiritual growth.  (I don't have any theology degrees or really any experience, so this might get really incorrect really fast.)  When humanity was in its early stages with few people on any major road at a time, a God might spawn an obstruction in a road fork without the instant appearance of said rock being noticed.  As humanity is able to survey and detect more changes, a God needs to make changes at a lower level such as the subatomic level to avoid getting noticed.  Eventually, I support pseudo-random number generators in computers will be one of the very few event sources left that cannot be monitored.  When humanity is at such a state, the only alternatives for a God to set an event in motion will be actual random number generators (e.g. uranium decay) and the weird shaking of the quantum layer, which is technically totally unpredictable.  Perhaps this is why such a God might create the quantum layer in the universe?

I guess that was theology-ish...

YouTube: The Problem of Discovery

It's hard to get started on YouTube.  Everyone wants to be famous, but no matter how awesome your videos are, it's unlikely your subscriber base will suddenly take off.  This video (not mine; rated PG-13) explains the issue and presents a solution that will get the best channels a subscriber base:

Incommunicado Alert

I'll be leaving for Camp Manitowish on September 3 and will be away from all electronics and Internet stuff until September 7.  During that time, automatic posts will go up at Fleex's Lab.  I know that date is a long way off, but this place doesn't get much attention, so I should probably write about it before I forget.  I'm really looking forward to this school trip because it means I can take a break from Rivermont work.  BHC classes won't be a problem because the module dates are set in such a way that I can do one module before I leave and another soon after I get back.  It might be kind of tough the few days after I get back, but the vacation is definitely worth it.

Argh

After three days of school, I need a vacation.  There is no way I am going to be able to do everything I have to without staying up two extra hours every night.  Enrolling in ECON 222 was probably a terrible mistake.  All the high school classes are going to start assigning projects all over the place in just a few weeks.  This is pretty much a disaster.

Release Indev Versions?

This might belong better at Fleex's Lab, but this place needed some activity, so here we go.

I'm seriously considering releasing in-development unfinished versions of HigherPower (my Minecraft mod) to the public.  My main aversion to doing so is that I want to shock the mod scene with all the awesomeness in the first ever public release.  Of course, that's probably more self-indulgent than appropriate; I should let the people decide if my concepts are sound.  If people in general don't like what I'm doing, I should save myself a lot of trouble and learn that now.  Another argument against prereleases is that I shouldn't get the public's hopes up before (hopefully not, but possibly) abandoning it, WildStar-style.  HigherPower is a much better concept than WildStar, but I don't want to fail again and gain a reputation as the modder who doesn't finish anything.  Then again, if it dies in secret, it would be sad for absolutely nobody to know what could have been.  Also, I might accidentally create fans of a particular aspect who would be very disappointed if that aspect was removed later.  Then again, it is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all, or so says the saying.  So, I'm left undecided.  Should I release actual downloads of HigherPower's indev stages?

The Perseids 2013

If you're into astronomy, you'll know that the Perseid meteor shower is going to peak tomorrow night.  The popular astronomy club of my area came out to the PRC observatory and had its annual picnic, which I attended.  The food was amazing, but the main feature was the occasional meteor.  Some members brought "go-to" telescopes and allowed everyone to view various astronomical objects.  It was really awesome to view the objects in the M catalog.  I just might stay up tomorrow to see the peak, which is expected to have 70-100 meteors per hour.

Wikipedia Immersion

While waiting for a few chess games to be over, I hit "random page" on Wikipedia many times and read many articles.  As I read some of those articles, I saw more than a few errors that I could have easily corrected and some stubs to which I could add information without much effort.  I soon realized that one could spend an entire lifetime reading Wikipedia and editing articles that are of interest.  Of course, I do not have that much time on my hands, but it would be fun just to spend an evening or two cleaning up some corner of the internet's encyclopedia.

Start Broad, Get Narrow

I think I've discovered the way to become well-known on YouTube.  You need to start by doing a wide array of things -- I do Minecraft, Commander Keen, programming, and chess on my channel.  Then, you can share your content in a lot of places.  Some series will be unsuccessful, but the ones that are will attract many viewers if you share your content in the right places.

This strategy might even have application in the world of business.  HP started as a very unfocused company, even reaching into agriculture.  It soon became known for its computer manufacturing and became very successful.

People like to see a lot.  There's a marketing adage, "the more they see, the more they buy."  While your YouTube channel may not be monetized (I personally will never subject my viewers to in-stream ads), showing a wide array of content will watch what interests them and then they just might check out other content from you.

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!