Adam's Blog - Homeschool Blogger

I got tagged...

Tue, 2 Jun 2009 16:56:00 -0500

I love quizzes; my sister JoMarch14 tagged me with this one.

~FOOD-OLOGY~

What is your salad dressing of choice? Caesar
What is your favorite sit-down restaurant? Olive Garden
What food could you eat every day for two weeks and not get sick of? Lasagna
What are your pizza toppings of choice? Cheese. Just cheese. LOTS AND LOTS OF CHEESE!!!
What do you like on your toast? Strawberry jam
Chocolate or Vanilla? Chocolate

~TECHNOLOGY~

How many televisions are in your house? 2
What color cell phone do you have? None, but I'm planning to buy a Blackberry Storm in the near future.
Do you have a laptop? Yes.

~BIOLOGY~

Are you right-handed or left-handed? Right handed.
Have you ever had anything removed from your body? I lost part of my tooth. :O
What is the last heavy item you lifted? A tree. An artificial tree.
Have you ever been knocked unconscious? Almost. :)

~DUMBOLOGY~

How many pairs of flip-flops do you own? Don't wear flip-flops.
Last time you had a run-in with the cops? Never been in trouble. :D
Last person you talked to on the phone? Mom
Last person you hugged? Littlest sister

~FAVORITE-OLOGY~

Season? Fall
Holiday? Christmas
Day of the week? Sunday
Month? October

~CURRENT-OLOGY~

Missing someone? Not really.
Mood? Exuberant :D
What are you listening to? My sister commenting on all my answers.
Watching? The little blinking cursor. *BLINK* *BLINK* *BLINK* *BLINK*
Worrying about? Papa with cancer.

~RANDOM-OLOGY~

First place you went this morning? Shower.
What's the last movie you saw? Last good movie was Star Wars Episode III. Last great movie was National Treasure (first one).
Do you smile often? I asked family, and got widely varying results. I think so.
Do you always answer your phone? If I have to. Phone calls for me are always boring. :P
It's four in the morning and you get a text message, who is it? A wrong number.
If you could change your eye color what would it be? Bluish grey.
What flavor do you add to your drink at Sonic? You can do that?
Do you own a digital camera? Yes, and it's really great.
Have you ever had a pet fish? Yep.
Favorite Christmas song(s)? "Mary did you know?"
What's on your wish list for your birthday? A diffused lighting system to go with my camera.
Can you do push-ups? Yes.
Can you do a chin up? Haven't tried recently.
Does the future make you more nervous or excited? Excited.
Do you have any saved texts? Yes, actually. I saved one to keep track of something. :)
Ever been in a car wreck? No.
Do you have an accent? Yes. Really bad.
What was the last song to make you cry? Wow, no idea!
Plans tonight? Hopefully to work on my blog template.
Have you ever felt like you hit rock bottom? Yes. :(
Have you ever been given roses? LOL nope.
Current hate right now? Non-compliant browsers... (Don't ask.)
Met someone who changed your life? Jesus
How did you bring in the new year? Watching the clock in bed.
What song represents you? I don't have a 'me' song.
Would you go back in time if you were given a chance? Yes, I would live around 1820, but I would want my laptop and internet access. :D
Have you ever dated someone longer than a year? Never dated.
Do you have any tattoos/piercings? Nope. 0.0
What songs do you sing in the shower? I don't sing in the shower. :D
Ever had someone sing to you? Not recently. :)
Do you like to cuddle? LOL, never done it.
Have you held hands with anyone today? Ha ha no.
Who was the last person you took a picture of? Little sister.
What kind of music did you listen to in elementary? Classical
Do you believe in staying close with your ex's? I'm not planning to date.
Are most of the friends in your life new or old? New.
Do you like pulpy orange juice? Orange juice? Yuck!
What is something your friends make fun of you for? They haven't told me yet. :)
Have you ever ridden an elephant? Nope.
Do you like to play Scrabble? Yes.
What are you saving your money up for right now? A computer. I need a desktop.
When is the last time you ate peanut butter & jelly? Many years. :D
What were you doing at 12am last night? In bed thinking about my blog template. LOL, I was up really late.
What was the first thing you thought when you woke up? *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* "What's that noise? Must turn off."

I'm tagging GraceElizabeth.

Have a nice day everyone!
~Adam

Coming soon - blog version 2!

Sat, 23 May 2009 17:34:00 -0500

I've been working on a new version of my blog template. For a preview, check out the beta.

Here are the features you'll find in the new version:
1. All code is 100% valid HTML Strict 4.01.
2. No tables; everything is placed on the page with css.
3. A nice access bar on the top.
4. The homeschool blogger bar at the top of the page is gone! Now only was it inconveniently placed, it also got in the way of the new bar, which looks great. I'll add a link to the homeschool blogger homepage to be nice. :)
5. There should be more room for the blog entries, and it should eventually be possible to comment from the main page, instead of having to go to the comment page.

The problem: though I've displayed the homeschool blogger bar, the code is still in the page. The code uses "frames" which are not valid HTML Strict 4.01. It also uses tables, which it is best to avoid. (As a matter of fact, all the default templates in homeschool blogger use tables.) So when I copy my template code into the template editing box, it gets automatically changed in an attempt to add the bar, making a wreck of my beautiful 100% valid HTML.

Until I can get the problem sorted out, I can't display the valid icons on my page. They look like this:

As soon as I uploaded my template and checked the online version of it, I got this:

Now I suppose I need to complain about it on the forums until someone changes the site code to allow the bar to be completely removed.

~Adam

I'm back! - with new photos

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:47:00 -0500

I've been on a blogging hiatus lately, and thought it was time to add an entry (or two). Here are two pictures I have taken recently; they are of my little sister.

A funny parody of Star Wars

Sat, 4 Apr 2009 20:40:00 -0500

This is a hilarious Star Wars parody video sent to me by my friend meg16's mom.

A new photo!

Sat, 4 Apr 2009 18:57:00 -0500

I took another photo recently. I thought I'd upload it for everyone to see.

Click it to full view!

The Effects of Pirating on the Music Industry

Wed, 1 Apr 2009 17:32:00 -0500

June of this year will mark the 10 year anniversary of the Napster file sharing service. When the Napster client was originally released in 1999, it changed the world of music forever. It was the one of the first file sharing services, and most importantly was the first to focus on music sharing.

What is the meaning of music sharing? The Napster Client allowed users to share music ripped off of compact discs over the internet. This illegal practice has been made worse over the years by other methods of file sharing, such as Bittorrent.

Why is it such a problem? The ultimate goal of artists in the music industry is to make money. Albums can be worth millions of dollars, and the goal of copyright law is to protect the rights of the owner. When you download a song without paying for it, it costs the owner money. Many fallicies have been invented by pirates to condone their actions. Some of them are listed below.

Music artists make enough money!
Maybe they do, maybe they don't. That's not for you to decide. At any rate, pirating music will cause the labels to increase their prices, making it more expensive for non-pirates to buy music. If you like an artist, why would you steal from them?

The music belongs to me now, I can do what I want with it!
Wrong. In the U.S. at least, the right of ownership belongs to the creator of the music. Buying a CD essentially gives you the right to listen to the music, and make copies as long as you personally keep all copies of the album.

Music should be free!
Music costs money to produce. If it was supposed to be given away, no one would be in the music business. There would be nothing to listen to - and it would all be free.

If I listen to the artist's music for free, I'm more likely to buy their CDs later!
Although this doesn't solve any moral issues, it seems to make some sense. Unfortunately for pirating proponents, this is statisticly wrong. They average Ipod owned by a teenager has 800 illegal tracks. There is no way that this money will ever be recouped by the artist later.

It's only one song! It can't be hurting that much!
Though one song may not hurt the music industry a great deal, the effects of music sharing have been enormous. Also, the average person takes more than one song! Take a look at the data below.

Click the chart to view it full size.

The chart has two main features. One shows the GDP of the United States. The other show the total amount made by the music industry. The vertical bar you see shows date when the Napster client was released. It triggered the begining of the music sharing era. The results are obvious.

A successful industry should increase in value at least at the rate of the US GDP. Better industries will increase faster, and poorer industries will increase slower. A failing industry will usually decrease in value even when the U.S. GDP goes up. The graph seems to forecast doom for the music business.

Why am I addressing this issue? It may seem unimportant to you, especially if you are one who does not steal music. I am blogging because I can safely say that at least 75% of the people I know pirate music. The problem is considerably more widespread than many think.

Do your part. Don't steal music. It's wrong.

Sources:
Chart by me. :)
Teen pirating data by The Times.
US GDP values by MeasuringWealth.org.
Music Industry values by the RIAA.

How much is a trillion?

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 19:46:00 -0500

Recently on a popular news station, a story aired giving an idea on exactly how much money a trillion dollars really is. The numerical value for "trillion" is 1,000,000,000,000. It made me think - if we could print out a trillion dollars in regular $1 bills, how much space would it take up?

According to the U.S. Treasury, a bill is 0.0043 inches thick. This means that a stack of one trillion bills would reach almost 70,000 miles into the atmosphere. It also means that a stack of 1's representing the deficit generated under the Obama budget for eight years would reach the moon. You could build the Washington Monument using only dollar bills - twice.

Interestingly, one trillion dollars was spent a few days ago. It was to buy bonds sold to Americans by the government. The Feds printed it because they needed to pay off the bonds. Unfortunately, the only thing it costed the government to pay its debts was the paper they printed it on. Who payed for it? When the money was printed, the value of the money I had in the bank went down. It is rather a clever version of taxation. One trillion dollars was taken from Americans, and no one batted an eye.

I find this rather unfortunate. Not only is our money being taken, the deficit will be enormous years from now, and it will take monumental taxation to correct it - for generations to come. That means we taxpayers (All 138 million of us), would (after 10 years of the Obama plan), each owe $72,464.

That's a lot of money to be owing when you don't control the one spending it. Think about it.

Pi Day 2009

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:54:00 -0500

Pi Day 2009 is coming everyone! On March 14th (3.14) the 32nd celebration of "Pi Day" will occur. It is sometimes commemorated by recitation contests and pie eating. Check out this pi pie right here:

I know the first 100 digits by heart. They are 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679

Last year I created a poster that contains a million digits of Pi and displays them in a colorful way. I've placed the poster online in case anyone wants a copy. Here's a preview image!

The quote at the bottom of the poster is by the author Simon Singh: "Although knowing pi to a mere 39 decimal places is sufficient to calculate the circumference of the universe accurate to the radius of a hydrogen atom, this has not prevented scientists from calculating pi to as many decimal places as possible."

The poster was designed to be printed as a 4 by 6 foot wall poster.
Private message me if you want the poster

Warning! The file is nearly 100 mb. Don't download is you have dial-up! The poster itself is very large. Don't open it unless you have at least 500 mb of free memory. Most decent computers purchased in the last 12 months will have at least this much.

~Adam

P.S. If these clouds will clear up around here, there should be some photos coming soon!

How to improve your writing with MS Word 2007

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 15:30:00 -0600

Did you know that MS Word can improve your writing skill? Until recently, I didn't. But I found a great feature in MS Word 2007, and I wanted to tell anyone who reads my blog about it.

I make a lot of contextual spelling errors. Case in point, examine the following sentence:
This sentence has an obvious error in it, but when a long essay is being written, they are sometimes extremely hard to eradicate. Wouldn't it be great if MS Word would tell us when an error like this is made? It turns out that it can. All you have to do is enable one little feature.

Follow these instructions:
Select Office:
Click Word Options:
Click Proofing:
Check off the boxes you see in the picture; I also recommend you set "Writing Style" to "Grammar & Style" so that MS Word will check and correct your style:
Now click settings. In the window that appears, you will have a multitude of options available. For the first three, it doesn't matter entirely what you pick. Basically anything except "don't check" is OK. Here are some general rules to follow:

1. Put a comma before the last item in a list. This is generally accepted as correct grammar.

2. If in the US, punctuation belongs inside the quotes. Elsewhere, select outside. Why does the US do it differently? This method of punctuation, though clearly illogical, is continued because printing presses(????) used to have problems printing punctuation outside the quotation marks. In other words, we still do it incorrectly, and it's all the fault of the printing press. (Sorry for the rant; this has always bothered me.)

3. Ever heard a writing teacher say, "always double space after sentences?" This is actually wrong as well. The method originated during the days of the typewriter (NO!) when the sentences became quite crowded if they were not double spaced. Nowadays, fonts are carefully designed so that when you hit the space bar, just the right amount of space is placed into your writing. Fortunately, this never became a rule in any country; no matter where you live, you should probably set "Spaces required" to 1.

Check out the next picture to find where you can change these settings:

If you enabled style checking, you can now change what style problems Word checks for. I selected all of these with the exception of first person. This is easy to avoid and very important in dialog.

After you finish changing the settings, let's see what effect this has on our writing!
Notice that "bye" is now highlighted!
Our second sentence is passive. That's why it's highlighted. Too many "to be" verbs!

I hope this helped everyone.
~Adam

Some of my favourite classical music

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 19:21:00 -0600

I like a lot of classical pieces; here are some of my favorites:

'Sonata No. 14 in C# Minor, "Moonlight", 1st movement' - Beethoven

'Canon in D Major' - Pachelbel

'Prelude in G# Minor' - Rachmaninoff

'Sonata in C Minor, "Pathetique", 1st movement' - Beethoven