Friday June 26, 2015 {Gay rights, debate, and a party!}

1. When I woke up this morning, I was looking at my email and FB notifications and such, and somehow the email from NPR (I'm on their mailing list about important world events, which I actually highly recommend) about the supreme court ruling was the last thing I saw. Mom came in a minute later and said "Have you seen the news? Obama's making a great speech." I did end up missing most of Obama's speech, but it was still an exciting way to start the morning! :)

2. Cleaned up the house a bit, moved furniture around, and did whatever else was required to prepare for the final current events class of the year.

3. Listened to the new Cortex podcast.

4. Current affairs class! It was the last class of the year, and it was debate style.We were divided into two teams and we debated a number of topic, with the parents voting on who won each round. My team won overall, but just barely. Our topics were - 1) if you could only read classic books or modern books, which should it be 2) Should school stop using grades 3) Should all dogs be allowed to get a license to be in public spaces (like service dogs do now) 4) Should we let Google move to Bham, and 5) Should their be family presidential term limits (ie, should Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton be allowed to be president).

5. After the debates, we all went to the Pyles house for a party! It was a ton of fun, and we played lots of Mafia and Bush Commando.

6. Ted told us that when he was in 9th grade, he did this challenge to transport 7 people 50 ft with only 4 feet touching the ground. We spent a long time trying to do it, and it was challenging. We did manage it eventually, though. Spencer had my arms/head, EK had my feet, and they each had a person on their backs, and there were two people sitting on me. It was crazy, but we did it, and I'm still a bit sore. :P

7. We left the party around midnight, and went home.

Wednesday June 17, 2015 {Geology Final}

1. Slept through my alarm again, and was once again scrambling a bit to get out the door on time. I rode the (surprisingly full) bus to WCC, and was, as usual, early to class.

2. Took the Geology final. I feel like I did pretty well on it, and I know I didn't need a very high grade on the final to do well in the class, so I wasn't too stressed about it. I feel like I did well on the multiple choice questions and short answer/calculation problems, but I'm not so sure about the essay questions. I'm kind of wishing I'd tried a tad harder now, but more on that later...

3. After Geology, C. and I hung out for a while with L. and then Spencer showed up! C. and Spencer played giant chess for a while, and I played with this little 3 dimensional cube puzzle for a long time. It was endlessly frustrating to me because even when C. showed me how to do it, I could not figure it out for some reason.

4. After Spencer left, I followed C. to the math center where he had free pizza for being a tutor there, and stood around awkwardly for a while talking to him before leaving and walking to meet my dad and Isabelle.

5. We headed to park day at Boulevard Park, which was great. I mostly hung out with various friends, and had a good time.

6. While we were at school, C. and I decided to make a bet on our grades in Geology, since we went into the final with the same grade, and have both been doing quite well in that class. What exactly the bet is will be revealed in time (it is a rather contentious issue at the moment :P), when one of us wins.

7. We got a ride home, then made some pizza for dinner. I listened to the new Hello Internet podcast. After mom got home we ate some cake she brought back from the party she was at earlier.

8. Read Sense and Sensibility and went to bed.

Monday June 15, 2015 {Almost Done}

1. Got up 20 minutes late (gah) and had a hard time getting out of the house on time.

2. Made it to school, and went to Geology. We got lots of old assignments back, and then went over them.

3. C. and I hung out for an hour and a half, and then headed off to our separate classes.

4. English was mostly an open lab day, so I spent most of the time working on my paper. We also did a fun brainstorming exercise to help come up with a title.

5. After that, I met up with C. again for a while, then hung out with L. for about an hour.

6. I took the bus into town and volunteered at the library for an hour, cleaning books and toys.

7. I went to Chocolate Necessities w/ Julie and the boys, and hung out for an hour and a half or so. Flavors of the week - Lemon and Pink Grapefruit.

8. Irish dance! I went to class where we practiced hard shoe dances, and briefly rehearsed for the school dance recital which is this coming Saturday.

9. Came home, ate dinner, had some strawberry pie, listened to a podcast, read Sense and Sensibility, went to bed.

Sorry for the brief post. Finals week is here and I'm kind of exhausted. I'm also not thinking very clearly. I had written an entire draft of this post before I recalled that I'm not using full names.

I also asked Bernice, my volunteer coordinator at the library, to sign an affidavit for how many parking passes I've gotten in total. When she looked at me oddly, I realized that I had said parking passes where I should have said volunteer hours. *shakes head*

Podcasts

I know I've talked about podcasts on here before, but I've started listening to a few new ones recently and I wanted to talk a little bit about my current set up.

First of all, I listen to podcasts using Overcast. I used to use the default iOS one, but Overcast is much better.

As for the podcasts I listen to, there are a few categories. First are the ones I've listened to every episode of, and eagerly await new episodes of:

-Welcome to Nightvale. You probably all know I'm a big WTNV fan. If you listen to it too (and are totally caught up) you probably know that wierd things are happened in Nightvale and that this is a wonderful and terrifying time to be in that particular fandom.

-Hello Internet. I know I've talked about HI on here before, but really, it is worht talking about again. I love Hello Internet so much. It's a show of "two dudes talking" and it's awesome. It's hosted by CGP Grey and Brady Haran (of Numberphile and numerous other YouTube channels) and they talk about many, many things. I don't even know sometimes why I like this show so much, but it's really awesome.

-Cortex. Okay, so this only has one episode so far, but I'm putting it here anyway cause it was a pretty great first episode. This is CGP Grey's new podcast with Myke Hurley. This is about work flow, organization, and basically how Grey gets stuff done.

There are also other podcasts that I listen to periodically, but not religiously. I don't always listen to the episodes in order, and I sometime skip some:

- The Digital Gentlemen Podcast. This is also the "two dudes talking" style, and it's hosted by Matthew Gaydos and Matty Kerr. It's good, it's very weird, and it's very often not family friendly. They are both commedians in some sense, and the show is often very funny, and totally random.

-Radiolab. I don't to try to sell this one to you. Radiolab is clearly great, and it's the podcast that got me into podcasts. I don't listen to every episode, but there are some really awesome ones out there. 

-This American Life. Same basic story as Radiolab.

-Ear Biscuits. This is a podcast by Rhett and Link where they interview people of Youtube fame. Some episodes are really good, other less so. I usually just listen to the interviews of people I know and am interested in.

-The Cracked Podcast. This is run by Cracked.com, and it is sometimes a little overproduced for my taste, but it is well done. I dont always listen to it, but there are some great episodes out there. They focus on pop culture analysis and all sorts of human interest kind of things.

-99% Invisible. This is a new favorite of mine. It's hosted by Roman Mars, and it is about design - architecture, sound design, product design, all kinds of design. It's really great and the episodes are really short. It's well done, and you don't have to be into architecture to like it.



These are some of my favorites. What podcasts do you listen to? I'm always looking for more good ones!

Monday May 25, 2015 {Memorial Day}

1. I got up around 8:30, and hung around for the morning. I worked a bit on a paper for English. I also listened to the new Hello Internet.

2. At about 1pm, Gloria and Spencer picked me up and we went to Fairhaven. Spencer and I walked down to Boulevard Park, and then continued all the way to downtown, and then came back, which is, I calculated, about 2.5 miles one way.

3. It was great catching up with Spencer, and we talked about all sorts of college stuff, and the state of the homeschool group, and our future plans.

4. We stopped for donuts at Rocket Donuts in Fairhaven, then met Gloria again, and they dropped me off back at home.

5. I ate some food quickly, and then left to babysit. The weather was nice, so the kids and I played outside for most of the time.

6. I got home about 8:30, and watched some philosophy videos on YouTube for a while before reading Jane Eyre, and going to bed.

Saturday, May 16, 2015 {BA~CON}

1. Got up and did very little productive for several hours, though I did look over the study guide for the Geology exam next week and do some of the practice questions.

2. I finished listening to the new Hello Internet, in which I learned a lot about politics in the U.K. I also listened to the new Welcome to Nightvale.

3. Ate lunch, then headed to WCC for the Bellingham Anime Con! Also known as {BA~CON}.

4. Spent the next four hours as a volunteer at the event. I'm not really into anime or cosplay, but it was still pretty cool to be there.

5. I spent the first two hours at the Peacebonding/Cosplay First Aid booth, where I helped one person superglue something back onto her costume. People occasionally asked me questions which I usually didn't know the answer to, in which case I just directed them to the registration booth to ask someone who actually knew what they were doing.

6. I spent the next hour doing "crowd control." My job was to stand in one of the panel rooms and make sure that everyone who came in had a badge, and that the room didn't exceed max capacity, which was somewhere around 50. I don't think there were more that 15 people at the most.

7. I then was sent to start an anime showing in another room, which took all of 3 minutes. I also was one of the judges of the art contest at somewhere in there.

8. I spent the last hour picking up trash, and handing out glow sticks. That, it turns out, is the way to get a building full of strangers to suddenly love you. The two of us who were wandering around handing out glow sticks were remarkably popular very quickly.

9. I left WCC, and headed home for dinner and such.

10. Ate dinner, ate some cake, watched Doctor Who, read Jane Eyre, and went to bed.

Sunday, May 3, 2015 {Plate Tectonics}

*This post has an Amazon Affiliate link in it, which means that if you click on it, then buy something, I'll get a small cut. You won't pay any more than normal, but Amazon will pay me a few percent of the purchase price.

1. I slept in until 8:30, then got up and ready.

2. I organized all the stuff I have to do this week (a lot), and figured out what I needed to do today. 

3. I ate some grapefruit and a muffin while working on a Geology lab that is due tomorrow. Most of the morning was spent working on that lab.

4. For the purpose of completing the lab, I downloaded and worked in Google Earth for a while. I'd never really used it before, and while there was a bit of a learning curve, it was actually pretty easy to use once I figured out how to use the search function properly. 

5. I spent a bunch of time working on a big world map, labeling tectonic plates, mountain ranges, volcanoes, geologic land forms, and the like. I'm not thrilled with how the map turned out - I think it could have been a lot clearer and easier to read, but it is what it is, and it's not worth enough points for it to be worth the time it would take me to try to make it better. 

6. I went shopping with Mom and Isabelle. By which I mean that they dropped me off at Starbucks, and then went shopping while I read more of the What If? book. I've talked a tiny bit about this book before, but I must recommend it again. It's by the XKCD guy, and it's really awesome. I'm not really a science person, but his descriptions and explanations still manage to both get my attention, and make sense to me. 

7. I came home, and researched and categorized a bunch of mountains and mountain ranges, and, when I finished that, the lab was finally done. On the whole, I think it could be better, but I'm not going to try to work on it more. I do know that I might not have answered all the questions fully, or in the intended manner, but I think I did well enough that I'm calling it good. Also, I have to budget my time. This is an assignment I need to do well on, but I don't have to get 100%, and I don't have to time to try. I have other things to focus on. Coming to the realization that I can't always try to get 100% on everything has been an important one for me. I get stressed out if I feel like I'm not doing well enough, but the reality is that with the grade I have in the class, I could not even hand in this lab, and still be doing well. I might not get the grade on this that I ultimately would like on this assignment, but I'll do well enough to still get the grade I want in the class, while also giving me time to work on other things I need to do.

8. After finishing that, I listened to the new Nightvale episode (episode 67). It was (no spoilers here, I promise), really great. As I described it to my friend E,, "It's amazing. It's one of those episodes that really rewards the people who have been there the whole time, but it also adds a new level of mystery and plot." It's true. If you're up to date on the episodes, you'll know that recent plot developments required this episode to be a bit different that most, and they handled that very well. It's one of my favorite episodes, I'd have to say.

9. I made a few little note cards. These are for the notecard exchange board in the art department at WCC. You can put up 3x5 (or similar) cards, and take ones that in return. They can have any kind of art on them, you just have to have made them. I'll put some pictures up once I have a chance to take them.

10. I spent some time doing random stuff, working a little on an essay I have due this week, and talking to some friends. We ate dinner

11. We watched Doctor Who, I wrote this, read Jane Eyre, and went to bed.

Things I Like Right Now {Podcasts and CGP Grey}

Recently, I did a blog post about some blogs I read, and I thought maybe it would be fun to do a similar post, but instead of blogs, it would just be other random stuff I'm into. If you guys like this, maybe I'll try to do these regularly, maybe every month or two.

My big obsession recently has been podcasts. I've been listening to Welcome to Nightvale for almost a year now, and it introduced me to the wide world of podcasts. Radiolab, and This American Life are classics that are favorites of mine, and of course I had to jump on the bandwagon with Serial as well.

Nightvale is definitely my favorite fictional podcast, but of the talk show/educational variety, there is also little competition. Hello Internet is by far my favorite. It's a podcast of the "Two Dudes Talking" style, and if you don't like that, or if you don't like the two dudes (CGP Grey and Brady Haran), you wouldn't like it. It's nerdy, it's educational, it's funny, it's weird, and best of all, there are currently 31 episodes of nearly two hours each, meaning you won't run out too quickly. 

Finding this picture was a dangerous endeavor: I had to do a Google image search for CGP Grey. Grey is anonymous on the web, you never see what he looks like in any of his videos, and while pictures of him aren't that hard to find, I don't want to see them. I just don't.

CGP Grey has long been one of my favorite YouTubers, and since listening to his podcast, he has become one of my very favorite internet people (somewhere up there with Hank Green and Wil Wheaton). I am nowhere near as anal or organized as he is, but is is kind of what I aspire to be. Since listening to him, I've started using a lot of his suggested apps and here are a few that I've come to really like.

1. Overcast. This is a free podcast app that I started using at his suggestion (and the suggestion of a friend of mine who is probably a bigger Hello Internet fan than I am). I haven't been using it very long, but so far I like it. It's a thousand times better than the one that comes on iOS (not that that's very hard), and it's well organized.

2. Anki. This is a flashcard app that I absolutely love. It allows you to create cards and decks, and has many options to personalize how you use it. It's not the prettiest app, but it is very functional. It shuffles your cards for you, and shows them to you at intervals that are optimal for memorization. It can be a bit confusing at first, partly because of it's rather bare bones structure, but if you put some time into getting it how you want it, it's amazing. The desktop app is free to use. You can purchase a mobile app for the hefty sum of $24.99, but I haven't tried that personally (mainly because of the cost), so I can't vouch to it's quality. 

Another random thing not related to podcasts that I love is the webcomic XKCD. I've been a fan of  XKCD for a long time, and I can't believe I've never mentioned it on the blog before. It's funny, it's geeky, it's current, and it's sometimes a little inappropriate, and I highly recommend checking it out.