Showing posts with label update. Show all posts
Showing posts with label update. Show all posts

Friday, December 18, 2009

December 15th, update; life, update

Last thing: YouTube proof. That would be me, ladies and gentlemen. :D

(yay)

Also: school. is nuts. To do:
  • chemistry lab report
  • French written task
  • study material for French oral commentary
    • finish/reread La Princesse de Clèves
    • finish/reread L'enfant noir
    • read/reread La misanthrope
  • revise history assignment
  • prepare English oral presentation on Hamlet
    • write and annotate script
    • prepare writing variables sheet
    • prepare props and costume
    • oh, memorize script
  • reread Running in the Family for detail test
  • reread Hamlet for commentary test
  • prepare English oral commentary on Running in the Family
  • prepare lesson plan and material for concert band piece
  • write first draft of Extended Essay
  • write and revise Theory of Knowledge essay
  • research for Theory of Knowledge oral exposé
  • get 29 more CAS hours, fill out all paperwork
  • get 60-ish more hours of physical activity, 45-ish of which must be moderate to vigorous
  • prepare university audition pieces
    • get an accompanist
    • translate word-by-word foreign pieces
    • send paperwork to Brandon U
  • raise $2169 by January 12 to go to Rwanda
  • finish writing song for trip to Rwanda
  • cease being sick
  • relax somewhere along the line
  • I'm sure I've forgotten something ...
yeah ...

Maybe I'll actually be able to blog now. who knows. I've never been very good at this.


EDIT: oh yeah, I did forget something - Christmas.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Lent et cetera

It's Ash Wednesday today (well, no, technically it's the day after), which means that the Christian liturgical season of Lent has started.  Lent lasts from Ash Wednesday until Easter, or 40 days (not counting Sundays, depending on who you ask) of fasting.  Not everyone marks it by literally fasting, but many Christians choose to give something up for Lent, such as chocolate or Facebook.  

It's meant to be a time of reflection, meditation and prayer, a time to refocus one's life on what truly matters in the Christian faith (which can also vary, depending on who you ask).  The tradition of 40 days comes from Jesus' time spent in the wilderness, where He prayed, listened, reflected, and so on.

This year, and I think I did the same last year (having realized that giving up material things, at least at this point in time, did little good in the way of actually pointing me in the right direction), I have 'given up' procrastination.  

This is less of a sacrifice and more of a re-focusing and re-orienting move: in choosing consciously not to slack off and let myself get distracted, I will not neglect what I have been neglecting, which is my time with my Lord (whether that be quiet time before sleep, or time during the day).  Lately my mind has been everywhere twice over in the space of five seconds,  leaving little brainpower or space for reflection and prayer (or so the excuse goes).  Not only will I get more done by choosing to do what I need to do first, but everythingwill simply get better.

Also, if you do something for 40 days, it theoretically becomes a habit.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

"I'm famous on the Internet"

So I've been fussing with this math for several days.  I finally figured it out: I was making it entirely more complicated than it needed to be.  Figures, eh?  Just like me.

I've been pondering the concept of Internet fame.  I follow Wil Wheaton's and Neil Gaiman's Twitters, along with several others (Fred Gallagher, Dave Kellett, Zoë Keating), and am constantly amused by them, and I feel connected to them.  Yes, I know, it's a standard celebrity thing, but it's cool to have a different sort of look into their lives: a personal one, rather than a media-official one - which is why I like reading Wil Wheaton's blog so much.  Not only because he's a writer who knows how to write well, but because it's way more down-to-earth and approachable than, say, reading an interview.  (I'd read Neil Gaiman's blog too, but with the amount of feeds in my Google Reader, that might be a few months away.  I think I would like to read into the archives of his blog, so I'd like to have a day where I don't feel bad about neglecting other things to do so.  ^^; )

I've been considering why it is these people (and many, many others whom I could list) have hit it big on the Internet - and wondering if they would be so successful, say, thirty or forty years ago.  I don't think so.  The general populace of today is a strangely different beast (but then, any generation could say that), with our instant-access addiction (it's so true!) and off-kilter etiquette.  I only wish the Netiquette that seems to be prevailing in civilized corners of cyberspace would spread to the real world - but that's a rant for another time.

In pondering why these people are big names on the 'Net (I recently heard it put that one of the first things anyone does when they get a Twitter account is follow @wilw, which made me giggle), I wondered just what it takes to become an Internet phenomenon.  Do you have to make a fool of yourself?  (Looking back at the past four years of posts, that shouldn't be hard.  XD)  Do you have to be brilliant at what you do?  (This one seems more likely, with the people I follow actively at least, but then it's not a rule: there are many people who are phenomena for not being brilliant ... but are they more gawked at, or listened to?)


Oh, and in other news, 4+x (my boyfriend, if you didn't know already) has hooked me onto classical techno remix.  It's honestly addictive.  I'm listening to a remix of the Bagatelle in a-Moll für Elise (yes, it's more commonly known as just Für Elise, I'm just being my music-geek self: the actual names are often much more interesting than the common names), and I want to dance.  Or rather, groove.  ... No, I suppose one could choreograph this.  Ballet to techno!  I'd so watch that.  Now it's changed to the Toccata und Fuge in d-Moll.  *headbang*

Connecting to dancing, and also to 4+x: I took an hour-long introduction to ballroom dancing Monday morning (meringue and jive), and was astonished at how simple it is in principle.  Even better, 4+x agreed to learn with me!  I'm quite excited about this now, as I've wanted to dance since I was little, even though I'm not suited for professional ballet (which is what I took briefly) - gotta be triple threat in this world, eh?


I'm going to have to find a way to keep these from becoming blurbs of random musings, and actually giving them subjects.  (Might take a while.) 

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Diffusion, Matrices and Sound Distortion

Not the best day so far ...  

Haven't gotten much done, but it looks like I might finish my biology report before the end of the night.  Spent much of the day looking for math help - I'm working on an IB math assignment about binomial matrices (which doesn't even show UP on Google, how useful is that), and while I understand what I'm trying to work towards, and I understand what they're giving me and how to do it, I don't know how to present what I'm trying to say, which is what is causing the problem.  I've been Googling for related matrix theory, and while there are two that obviously work (eigenvalues and Cayley-Hamilton theorem), both have too much prerequisite theory for me to work through them and understand them. Which bugs me, 'cause they're both prettier than using an "n-1" exponent.

Oh well.  I'll retackle it after the bio gets done, which should be soon ... I'm into the analysis and already have something to compare it to.


In other news, I seem to have fixed the Schtroumpf (the Acer Aspire One netbook our family owns): the sound was being distorted and it was running very slowly.  I did some (a lot) of Googling, and found one person who said to disable the Primary IDE Controller.  I did, and it works much better now!  Hopefully it will stay that way.  Hooray for the powers of Google and the limitless information of other people!



Back to the bio.  ><

Monday, February 16, 2009

February 15

Today was not nearly so interesting as yesterday.

However, 4+x is here, and that makes be very, very happy.  ^_^  He currently has his head on my knee as I type on my little minilaptop.  "I hear typing."  "No, really?"  We watched The Princess Bride tonight (yay).  We might watch Nightmare Before Christmas, or we might watch that tomorrow.

Today consisted of church (waking up five minutes before we had to leave, leaving me without tea or chocolate until half an hour later ... not a fun 30 minutes), lunch after church, surfing I don't really remember, then sleep for three hours, putting siblings to bed and playing piano until 4+x arrived.

That was at 10 o'clock or so ... my, how time flies.   

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Update

Well, on the whole, the project was more or less a failure ... the historical posts are not to be found on Blogger.  

However!

They may all be found at http://lumenyare.wordpress.com, all the way back from January 2005.

(Four years of my life on the Internet.  Woh.  That's kinda scary.)