Ballad of the Victorious Conqueror

May 7th, 2012

икона за подарък(This is my English final.) (EDIT: Wordpress screwed up my formatting. It sucks now, sorry. Nothing I can do.)

T’was the end of the year

In the way measured by students

They wanted away from here

With all due prudence

It was a day that would never end

Lectures eternal

Thus one chose to send

For an escape that was maternal

He bid adieu

To his many friends

They took the cue

And glared, giving him the bends

The rest remained

Staring with their eyes shut

Til one feigned sickness

Heaving his gut

Another had fled

Filling his classmates with envy

But envisioning a warm bed

They contained the building frenzy

The day wore on

Wearing them thin

After what felt an eon

10 minutes, it had been!

“I cannot survive, I must go now!” a student proclaimed.

“You’re still alive, stay there cow!” a teacher exclaimed.

“I am sure to fall over dead!” he protested.

“Due to lack of brain cells in your head!” the teacher attested.

The sparring continued

the teacher always won

Both sides were rude

Until he announced, “We’re done!”

But then a student rose

And donned his cap

He had a largish nose

And looked like a sap

He challenged the teacher

To one more verbal duel

One final feature

To end school

The teacher laughed

Right in his face

“Are you daft?

“You can’t keep up with my pace!”

“I certainly can,

“And I certainly will!

“Now face me, man,

“And prepare to take ill!”

The battle was long

And often rough

Each was strong

And couldn’t get enough

Terminology and

Etymology and

Phonology and

Philology and

Bibliology and

Characterology and

Codicology and

Demology…

The students could not keep track

Of the flurry of terms

The teacher was called a quack

The student, a can of worms

As a climax was reached

Seething fury flowing

The teacher screeched

“IT’S TIME FOR YOU MAGGOTS TO GO HOME AND START MOWING!”

The bell had rung

As one, all stood

And they all sung

Praise to the hero

Who stood up to the tyrant!

Besting him in every manner,

Equaled by none,

Triumphant conqueror

Of all Englishland!

Over the break

The villain’s house was afflicted

With toilet paper and eggs

Horribly depicted!

And the monster himself

Considered a life of piety

Before saying “screw that!”


And returned to filling student’s lives with fear and anxiety!

T’was the end of the year
In the way measured by students
They wanted away from here
With all due prudence
It was a day that would never end
Lectures eternal
Thus one chose to send
For an escape that was maternal
He bid adieu
To his many friends
They took the cue
And glared, giving him the bends
The rest remained
Staring with their eyes shut
Til one feigned sickness
Heaving his gut
Another had fled
Filling his classmates with envy
But envisioning a warm bed
They contained the building frenzy
The day wore on
Wearing them thin
After what felt an eon
10 minutes, it had been!
“I cannot survive, I must go now!” a student proclaimed.
“You’re still alive, stay there cow!” a teacher exclaimed.
“I am sure to fall over dead!” he protested.
“Due to lack of brain cells in your head!” the teacher attested.
The sparring continued
the teacher always won
Both sides were rude
Until he announced, “We’re done!”
But then a student rose
And donned his cap
He had a largish nose
And looked like a sap
He challenged the teacher
To one more verbal duel
One final feature
To end school
The teacher laughed
Right in his face
“Are you daft?
“You can’t keep up with my pace!”
“I certainly can,
“And I certainly will!
“Now face me, man,
“And prepare to take ill!”
The battle was long
And often rough
Each was strong
And couldn’t get enough
Terminology and
Etymology and
Phonology and
Philology and
Bibliology and
Characterology and
Codicology and
Demology…
The students could not keep track
Of the flurry of terms
The teacher was called a quack
The student, a can of worms
As a climax was reached
Seething fury flowing
The teacher screeched
“IT’S TIME FOR YOU MAGGOTS TO GO HOME AND START MOWING!”
The bell had rung
As one, all stood
And they all sung
Praise to the hero
Who stood up to the tyrant!
Besting him in every manner,
Equaled by none,
Triumphant conqueror
Of all Englishland!
Over the break
The villain’s house was afflicted
With toilet paper and eggs
Horribly depicted!
And the monster himself
Considered a life of piety
Before saying “screw that!”
And returned to filling student’s lives with fear and anxiety!

подаръци

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Utensils for the Pi

March 2nd, 2012

The 25/35$ price tag of the Raspberry Pi is really just for the chip. This is not an attempt to scam you out of more money by the Foundation, but rather because in many cases all the parts you’ll need for your slice of Pi can be found around the house!

Here is the list of necessary accessories:

Keyboard- a USB one- there are no PS/2 slots (PS/2 is the term for keyboards and mice that have a circular plug)

Mouse- also USB for the reason above

Monitor or TV- it does not come with any cables, you’ve got to provide them yourself. It has an HDMI port, which can be used for HDTVs or HD monitors. Alternatively, you could find an RCA cord or use a converter for either the HDMI or RCA ports.

SD card- you will want an SD card that holds at least 2 GB. It should theoretically work with SD cards up to 32 GB, but has trouble with some cards that are only 16 GB. See this list for the cards that are certain to work, but if you already have a card lying around, by all means try it first. If it works, you can add it to the list to help someone else out. The SD card is necessary because the RPi lacks any sort of hard drive to save space and, more importantly, money. (You actually have two options for the SD card: you can buy one with the OS (operating system) preinstalled, or set one up yourself. The price of a preset SD card is unknown right now, but considering the Foundation is non-profit, it will likely be just enough to offset the cost of producing them, so only a little more expensive than buying a new one. If you choose to make one yourself, then it’s a little more complicated. Your best chance of success is to buy one preloaded, but I think I will try to set one up myself, so you can follow that later to learn from my mistakes.)

Micro USB charger- Most modern phone chargers (with the exception of iStuff) should work just fine for this. You might have one of these lying around the house somewhere in addition to the one for your phone. Just read the fine print and make sure it outputs ‘5V’ and, if you’re using the Model A, ‘500 mA’ (or 2.5W), and if you’re using the Model B, ‘700mA’ (or 3.5W). If you see those numbers somewhere on the charger, you should be just fine.

So now we have input devices (mouse & keyboard) and output devices (a monitor or TV). We have electricity running through the circuits which is switching bytes and compiling numbers for us. We have some software running on the machine from the SD card, allowing us to easily use it. You might want some other things, though.

A powered USB hub would be wise. ‘Powered’ as in ‘plug in a separate cord for electricity so the Pi is not sapped dry’. With that, you can add many other gizmos and gadgets. You could have a USB stick or two for storage, since they are easier to remove than the SD card, and the Pi can work without them, allowing you to access those files on a more powerful computer without unplugging the Pi. You could plug in a webcam, a microphone- anything with a USB plug. On the Model A, a hub is pretty much a given, unless your keyboard has extra ports. It only has one USB port, and you won’t be able to work very effectively without a mouse!

You will also want speakers (or headphones) for the Pi, and an Ethernet cable connected to your router (or switch, or hub, whatever you use).

So there is a list of what you’ll want for a Pi. Any questions, post in the comments or see here.

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Overheard at the dadman’s work

February 17th, 2012

“Abraham Lincoln was a vampire. They’re making two movies about it.”

“Hey, uh, you can’t leave until you code your share of the work. So… See you in ten years.”

“Nah, we’ll let him out. Once or twice.”

*indecipherable Chinese/Japanese/someforeignlanguagethatsoundsAsian*

“Man, I can’t wait for those movies to come out.”

“Ooooooh, I’ve got it.*

*uncontrollable laughing*

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English Questions Suck

February 16th, 2012

I have always hated English tests- especially the ones made not by your teacher but by someone at a desk somewhere. Here is an example of a question:

Ten thousand thousand fruit to touch.”

Is that alliteration or hyperbole? I examined it thoroughly. “Ten” and “fruit to touch” have an alliterative sound to them. “Thousand thousand” does not. So it is a little alliterative (no pun intended), but not completely. So, hyperbole? Well, I don’t know approximately how apples can be picked in a season. On an apple-picking farm (assuming it’s a modern one) I can be pretty sure that there will be several people doing the harvest, and they will have a large farm because all farms are now, due to the fewer number of farmers but the remaining demand for food. Could they pick about 1,000,000 apples in a harvest? I think so- when you consider of how small an apple is, and how many are shipped to various grocery stores, and the sheer size of an orchard, that seems reasonable (to me). So it might be hyperbole, but I am guessing* it’s not.

*This is the problem- if I know what the term is, then it should not be a guessing contest between two answers. Hyperbole means extreme exaggeration, and alliteration is repeating ion of consonants (Sally sells seashells by the seashore). I really, really hate when there is doubt in what an answer is. This one of the reasons I would rather take a math test than an English test, because of the ambiguity of the questions. I do sympathize with the people creating the tests, because there is almost no way to truly test someone’s aptitude at a language. But the test really fails if it represents someone’s knowledge at a lower level than it truly is.

I chose alliteration.

It was hyperbole.

*sigh*

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A Step in the Right Direction

February 7th, 2012

Read the rest of this entry »

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Personalities

February 3rd, 2012

I just took the Myers-Briggs Personality Test. It was… Interesting, to say the least. I look forward to any psychology classes in college. I was, ultimately, the INFJ type. (Introversion, intuition, feeling, judging.) I had a lot of trouble picking answers for this, especially the last question- judgement or perception. I eventually went with judgement because I shared more factors with that than with perception, but I was loathe to leave the ‘avoids commitments that restrict flexibility, variety, and freedom’ part of perception. ‘Works better without deadlines’, however, has been proven to be very true for me, as well as planning details. I was roughly half and half between those two.

Introversion is not at all surprising. I fit with that entirely, though I have a few symptoms of extroversion. I favor intuition over sensing, though I had trouble deciding this as well. I also found difficulty in deciding feeling over thinking.

Overall, that was very interesting and personally… Not personally revealing, but certainly personally clarifying. I’m still not sure I made the right choice in judging over perceiving. I look forward to psychology classes now. What an interesting subject.

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Busy busy bees

January 22nd, 2012

Last semester, Algebra II was fun. For homework, all we had were a couple interesting problems, maybe ten or so. Now? We get more like twenty or thirty problems- and these are in-depth, five-minute problems. If I can do these things five or ten times, I can do them twenty times (assuming skills are not introduced within the homework, which would be another problem within itself). This is why I rarely enjoyed classes in elementary school and why I used to read under my desk all the time.
I understand the teacher is trying to figure out how to help the kids who did poorly on the midterm by making them practice more, but this is not a solution. If they failed to understand the material before, what makes you think they will understand better once they copy even more of their friend’s answer, or follow the same set of instructions more times, but still come out with the wrong answer, thus teaching the kid the wrong solution, confusing him and undermining his confidence, and wasting everyone’s time? This just makes them hate the class more than they may have before. Busywork is (almost) never ever ever the answer.

A better solution would be to list problems in addition to a few for homework that are, say, extra credit, or even completely optional. If you fail a test, you must do more homework/worksheets than before the last test (not for extra credit, for a grade- probably just a completion grade). If you pass the next test, the worksheets are optional again.
This teaches kids responsibility- if they need to do extra work to pass the class, and they know it, it becomes their responsibility to work harder until they actually do fail a test, at which point the teacher intervenes. It gives the kid a fair chance to be mature and grow up (several chances, actually) while not leaving their success entirely up to them.

Naturally, special exceptions must apply, such as a kid who misunderstood one critical skill but otherwise excels, and once taught the missing skill demonstrates a good understanding of the material. That was just a summary of what I believe would work better.Богородица

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Conversation: I do not think that means what you think it means…

January 20th, 2012

[After discussing an upcoming project, then being released to 'free study' time...]

Teacher: “Noah, Doug, do your work. I know you both have something to do.”

Noah: “But I’m being creative and using my imagination and engineering skills in Minecraft.”

Teacher: “No. That does not count. Do your work here; you can play Minecraft all you want at home.”

Noah: “But at home I have to do my work.”

Teacher: “…”

Doug: “You know, he does have a point.”

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Stop SOPA/PIPA

January 18th, 2012

The EFF’s View (Electronic Frontier Foundation)
A Reddit Summary
We wouldn’t even have xkcd!

Basically, SOPA completely undermines everything the Founding Fathers and their successors worked for, violating freedom of speech, press, and, indirectly, assembly. This bill is fundamentally flawed. It would affect every country in the world. I wish pirates would stop stealing just as much as you do, but this violates just about every freedom we have. A lot of the content on this blog is in violation of that bill. YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, just about every website is in violation of that bill. If there’s a way to stop pirates, this isn’t it.

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Pixel Art 1: Sunny View

January 17th, 2012

I found an app called ‘Pixation’ that lets you manipulate individual pixels. I made a view of… something. I’ll let you interpret it.

20120123-140005.jpg

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