Brisingr

This is the third book in the Inheritance series, the first two being Eragon and Eldest. I have loved all three of the books, and would highly recommend them to anyone in the class. They are about a person who finds a dragon egg and his adventures from there.

Behemoth

This week I read "Behemoth" by Scott Westerfeld. This is the second book in the Leviathan series. It is an awesome book about an alternate world war I in which they use fabricated beasts instead of normal weaponry. I would recommend this to everyone in the class. It is an awesome book.

Eldest

This week I read Eldest by Christopher Paolini. It was a good book. Given that I talked about it last week, I won't say much. However, it did have a kind of cool plot twist. I would definitely recommend it to anyone. (First read Eragon)

Eldest

This week I read about half of Eldest, by Christopher Paolini. It is the sequel to Eragon. Eldest tells of how Eragon goes to the forest in order to meet and train with the elves. In the mean time, Roran is attacked by the Razac and the Varden move to Surda. It is a pretty good book. I have been waking up early to read it because I think that it is such a good book. I would recommend it to all of you

The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind

This week I read The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind. It is about a boy in Malawi who drops out of school to help his father on a farm. He reads about a windmill in a book from the library, and decides to build one. He ends up as the first person with electricity in his village. It is the first non-fiction book that I have read in quite a long time. It was interesting, so I would reccomend it to the people in the class.

Ship Breaker

This week I read Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi. It is a book about a futuristic world in which oil is extremely scarce, along with copper and iron. The poor people work on breaking old oil tankers for the steel and the copper wiring, which gives the book its name, as the main characters job is  a ship breaker. He comes across a ship wreck from a hurricane a few days before, and begins to strip it of copper and silver immediately. Then he comes across a rich girl who he saves in hopes of a better life. it is a good book, and I would recommend this book to all who might be interested in a futuristic dystopian novel.

Slice

Slicing this month has been very beneficial to my writing skills. I have learned different ways to edit a paper, other than just reading over it and trying to fix mistakes. I have learned many more ways to have an intro and conclusion, even though I haven't used many of them in my time slicing. I have learned how to do the same assignment over and over and make it different every time. I have learned even better how to get teachers to tell you want you want to hear. This has been very helpful in my learning about how to write well.

Slice

The ride to school is always pretty quiet. My mom usually tries to start conversations, but I am not good at keeping up the conversations, given that I am usually half asleep. I listen as she talks about dreams she had, ideas she came up with the previous day, or how work is going for her. We talk about what our days are going to look like (mostly her talking and me listening). Overall, the ride to school is pretty good, but always quiet, because its really hard to keep up a conversation in my sleep.

Slice

Despite the fact that I hate them, field journals do every now and then come in handy. For example, when you don't want a teacher to know what you are saying in the moment, but won't care if they know in the future, they are a very effective way of communicating. They make excellent doodling pads, and work very well for scratch paper. It can be nice to have a reminder to take notes, even if it is not that friendly of a reminder. On occasion, HQ pages help with some project or another, like the spring trip project. Overall, despite my dislike for them, they can be quite useful.

Slice

Programming can be really frustrating. The issue with programming is that the program does exactly what you tell it to, not what you want it to do. If you do a bad job of describing to the computer what you want it to do, it won't do what you want. This leads to a lot of looking through the program trying to find where you did a bad job of describing to the computer what is wanted. Then, the problem is usually really simple and obnoxious, and it is really maddening that the computer couldn't just fix the problem for you.

The Graveyard Book (slice)

This week I read "The Graveyard Book" by Neil Gaiman.  It is based on "The Jungle Book," about a orphan named Nobody Owens who is raised in a grave yard by a ghosts and a creature that doesn't belong to the world of the living or the dead. I highly recommend this book to everyone. It is possibly my favorite book I have read all year.

Slice

My dad and I were driving to the movies when I asked about the tradition of gift giving. This quickly became a conversation about why certain holidays are on certain days. During this conversation, my dad brought up the point that Christmas isn't even on the proper date. I went home and did some research, including:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas#History
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-small/the-origins-of-christmas_b_1140254.htmlhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rick-steves/the-roots-of-christmas-fr_b_4460062.html
and came up with this information.

The date December 25th was chosen by the Roman emperor Constantine to correspond with the pagan holidays of the Feast of Saturnalia and Yuletide. Both of these are celebrating the solstice. The emperor believed that if he changed the date to correspond with the holidays that the pagans already celebrated, he could convert more to Christianity. 

Now my birthday is coming up, and when I think about birthdays I think about gifts, which makes me think about the conversation and the further research. I found this pretty interesting, and hope that you did too.

slice

Public forum debate is an interesting debate style. It is composed of many short speeches that don't seem to flow, but in the end work together to prove a point. It starts out with a four minute speech from both sides stating their position and their points. This part is formatted like an essay, and often involves "spreading," or speaking faster than the essay can be read. Next comes a short period of cross-examination from both sides. After that comes a rebuttal speech from both sides, followed by cross-examination of the rebuttal speech. Next comes a summary speech from both sides, followed by a cross-examination in which the judges can participate. Next comes the final speech from both sides, where both sides state why they should win. This speech is very short.

Slice

Why is it that our culture has decided not to give people the benefit of the doubt, and every academic thing needs sources. Along with needing those sources, the sources must be "credible" sources, meaning something must be edited thouroghly and have sources of their own. My question is, who comes up with what is credible and what is not. All of this information must come from some person at some point just saying "Heres how it is" and then everything falls into place from there. What if that original person just made that up, but people believe them, and so thats how it is from now on. I cited sources in my last post for two reasons: 1.) So that I seemed credible. 2.) So that I could talk about why I could be completely full of balloney but since I cited sources I seem credible. So, why is it that my last post is credible at all. I am almost positive that up until this post, no one bothered to look at the articles that I cited and check if I am just making stuff up. I encourage everyone to do so right now.

slice

Why do we give people gifts on certain days, like birthdays? It seems a kind of weird tradition. Shouldn't everybody feel equally loved on any given day? Gifts are exciting to get, and the perfect gift makes people feel extra happy, but they also put pressure on everyone to find the right gift and seem excited no matter what they get. Also, the days that we give gifts on are kind of strange things to celebrate. Birthdays are a pretty arbitrary day in which we decide that we are officially a year older than the day before, and won't age at all until one year from that date, when we are exactly one year older. Hanukah is celebrating the fact that oil burned for longer than it should have. Christmas is celebrating the birth of someone who lived 2014 years ago. Christmas isn't even on the right day.

The date December 25th was chosen by the Roman emperor Constantine to correspond with the pagan holidays of the Feast of Saturnalia and Yuletide. Both of these are celebrating the solstice. The emperor believed that if he changed the date to correspond with the holidays that the pagans already celebrated, he could convert more to Christianity. Just to prove I am right, I did some research, and here are some sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas#History
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-small/the-origins-of-christmas_b_1140254.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rick-steves/the-roots-of-christmas-fr_b_4460062.html

I know that Wikipedia is not viewed as a particularly reliable source, but the Huffington Post is.

Eragon (slice)

This week I read "Eragon" by Christopher Paolini. It is about a 18 year old boy living in a medieval type world. His life is fairly normal, filled with hunting for skins and farming. However, when on a hunting trip, he finds a strange stone, changing his life forever. He is plunged into a hidden world in which dragons are not just a myth, but a friend, and where the empire will do just about anything to get there hands on the strange stone. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys fantasy books.

slice

Getting a phone is not all that it is cracked up to be. It is fun to get a phone and then be able to communicate with your friends much more easily, but with the fun comes with the responsibility of having a phone. Parents expect that you don't lose it. They expect you to not talk or text with anyone who you are not completely sure who they are. They expect you to only use it at certain times of the day, and only for brief periods of time. If these rules are breached, they either laugh at you or tell you that it is not responsible behavior to breach the rules, and you might lose your phone if you can't get it together.

Slice

A good book or good movie have the same basic mechanics. They draw you in at the very beginning. With a movie, this usually entails some weird scene that is explained somewhere towards the middle or the end of the movie. With a book, it is usually some awesome beggining that makes you want to read more. They both keep you from knowing the true story until the very end. They both make you think that one thing is true becuase you trust some character, that at the very end turns out not to be trustworthy. They will make you stay up really late not doing your homework, and that at the end you realize that you actually do have to do homework, starting with the stuff due tomorrow and ending with the stuff you have been procrastinating on for a long time.

slice

Having cousins from Texas in town is both fun and annoying. When neither of them are 8 yet, they are very energetic and loud and never stop fighting or talking. They have strange ways of talking and always ask "Why" to everything. If you don't respond within a second, they ask again and again until you do. They don't believe you when you say "I don't know." Worst of all, when you are slice of lifing, they watch over your shoulder. However, they are sweet and make you laugh the whole time your not pissed at them.

Slice

Ultimate Frisbee  is really quite an awesome game. It involves both being fast and being a good long distance runner. It involves both being athletic and being smart. It involves skill along with strength. It involves teamwork along with individual accomplishment. Along with being reasons that I suck at Frisbee, these are reasons that Frisbee works for such a wide range of people. It is very much a fair weather sport, which I find quite nice, since those are the days that one wants to be outside. It involves a lot of running, which I enjoy, despite the fact that I am not a very good runner. It helps with team dynamics enormously, which is a area that humans by nature struggle with.

Eragon (Slice)

This week, as my book of the week, I read Eragon, by Christopher Paolini. It is a book about a normal boy in a medieval land who finds a strange rock, which turns out to be a dragon egg. It is then about his adventures in raising a dragon and learning to become one of the famous dragon riders. He learns to use magic and other fun stuff of the sort. I would recommend this book to many of the people in the class.

Slice

Walking into school is almost like walking into a new dimension. The shift between what is okay and what is not is big enough so that every car ride I have to run through what I am allowed to do. At home, if you punch someone, your parents get mad at you. At school, if you punch someone, they just punch you back and all is well with the world. At home, running around is just fine. At school, running is only permitted at a specific 15 minutes of the day. Also, at school, there are so many names to remember. Walking in, there are at least 30 people who greet you who you must greet in return. This entails remembering their names. For 15 of them, its easy. They are either your freinds or the priciple or you teacher, which are some hard names to forget. The other 15, however, you only see them once a month and so it is much harder to remember their names.

Slice

I know vikings were yesterdays inspirational idea, but today seems to work just as well for me. Vikings were some of the worlds best explorers. They first discovered Greenland, and then were among the first Europeans to discover the New World. For those who don't know what the New World is, it is an old fashioned way of referring to the Americas. Some people believe that the Vikings were the first to get Tuberculosis, and were the ones to give it to cows, who subsequently gave it back to humans.

March 7 slice

We all need days off from school or work. Our society works this in to everyday life by having week days and weekends, and having the majority of people take weekends off. However, for middle schoolers and high schoolers, this is not close to enough. School cuts into our sleep patterns, making most of us completely useless in the early mornings. This is why I believe that school should be moved to later in the day, starting at 11 or noon. This would increase the learning of students, since they would have plenty of sleep. An increase in learning would result in a reduced need for homework, making the reduced homework time after school into a non-issue, since there would not be as much homework. Also, most would be up early enough to get some homework done in the morning, making the cut out of homework time even smaller.

I also believe that all homework should be assigned on monday and due the next monday. This helps students learn more real world skills, like time management, as opposed to learning relatively useless facts like what day the Declaration of Independance was signed on. Facts like that are what the internet is for. Even if the homework required knowledge that would be taught during the week, it would give people a chance to plan when they would get their homework done.

Slice

Snow days on birthdays are the greatest. Especially when the snow day is in the middle of April. Having a snow day last year on my birthday was really quite a great experience, and helped to make last year a really great year. Most birthdays one gets to do almost whatever they want as soon as they get home from school, but for me, that was all day. I even got to make a video of a snowflake melting under a microscope. AWESOMNESS!! After that, I got to have my favorite food, enchiladas, for dinner. I got to spend my whole day thinking about how I wasn't in school, and how most of the other kids wouldn't get snowdays on their birthdays. Some of them would even be on school trips for their birthdays. I hope to have another one this year, but it is pretty doubtful that I will

Slice 3

Unity is a fun but at times annoying medium for making a game. It requires a large amount of downloads that usually take a long time. However, it is nice because it does a lot of scene setting up for you, which is very nice if all of the downloads have completed. Another annoying part of unity is that there are 3 possible languages to program it in, C#, Javascript, and Boo, which makes many of the sample projects inconsistent. Javascript is generally used when they are trying to sample webbased, C# is used when they are sampling computer based, and Boo is used when they are do XBox based. However, there are many exceptions to this rule, and it can be frustrating trying to find the equivelent code in some other language. I write all of mine in C# for consistency, but many write theirs in Javascript, which makes viewing thiers quite annoying. However, if I switched to Javascript, the tutorials on the Unity website would no longer be applicable to me, since they do theirs in C#. There are not many XBox programmers, so I haven't run into Boo scripts in examples, but it can't be long before I run into a Boo script within one of the examples.

Death Cure

This week I read the Death Cure. This was a pretty good book, although the ending was a piece of poop. I would recommend the series to anybody who wants a good book, but stop after the Scorch Trials since that is that last good book in the series. This book got too into micro moving girl problems to actually move the plot along, which made the whole book almost plotless.

Slice 2

 

Weekends are truly the best. No teachers breathing down your neck about whether you are actually getting work done or just sitting in front of the computer day dreaming. If you want to play video games all except for sunday night, you can usually pull it off, even though it would not be advisable, since it is super stressful and sometimes ends in uncurrency. However, some weekends get changed becuase there is a homework assignment that has to be taken care of both days of the weekend, becuase teachers are just evil that way sometimes. This is a reason to tackle them just a little harder next time you are given the opportunity. Weekends also give plenty of opportunities to tackle your sibling, so long as you have a sibling and you are not worried about getting in trouble.

Slice 1

Is there anything more fun than tackling your teacher into the snow (or getting tackled trying)? In my opinion, there isn't. To me, it almost feels like saying "screw you" to all of the people who tell me that I need to respect authority more and the whole system of calling teachers by their last name (not that I have ever been part of one of those systems). I find that it also helps form a kind of relationship with the teacher that can't be formed otherwise. Tackling classmates isn't quite as fun, but still is far up there for most fun things to do. It helps get all of the anger at that person out, and helps anyone become friends with their classmates. It is also good practice for tackling siblings, since classmates and siblings are about the same size. I have always found that the quickest way to friendship is to tackle someone when they least expect to go down, and then let them get you back.

Tackle fights are one of the many reasons why snow is awesome. If anyone disagrees that tackle fights are the best, then they should get their head checked.

Book This Week

This week I read both The Scorch Trials and The Death Cure, which are part of the Maze Runner trilogy by James Dashner. They are both awesome books, and I would reccomend both of them to anyone in the class. I can't give an overview of the plot without giving away what happens in the first book, so you just have to take it on faith that there is a good plot.

Children's Classics week

This week I read James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl. I personally believe that anything Roald Dahl writes is the fourth coming of the Holy Text, the first three being Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and the Holy Book (the Bible, the Torah, and the Quran, which are basically the same book written in different languages, and with additions and minor changes to some of them). James and the Giant Peach is exactly what it sounds like. I boy gets stuck in a giant peach with a group of giant insects, and is transported to a magic world. I would recommend this book to anyone who would like a quick read.

Slice

Expo has been relatively stressless in comparison to other years for me. I think that this year i realized that Expo is a big deal, but the more stressed I get about it the worse my display will end up, so I made sure to not get stressed this year. Also, having an app on the app store was the biggest part of my display that I needed, so  that also made it less stressful for me. I will hopefully not get more stressed as it gets closer to Expo.

Maze Runner

This week I read Maze Runner, by James Dashner. It is about a guy who wakes up in the middle of a maze with no memory of how he got there. It then details his struggles to escape. It is a great book that you should all read. I am doing a book talk on it today, so I will say more about it then.

SOL

This weekend was awesome. It started early with me ditching school on friday to go skiing at Copper Mountain. The snow was okay, but towards the end of the day got all skied off, making the last part not very fun. When we came down, I had plenty of time to get homework done, and to relax.

Then, here in Denver, it started to snow. Snow is always fun. While it snowed, I got to do a bit of programming, and almost got an app up ready to sell on the app store.

Then, me and my family got to go to a nice irish pub for dinner.

Catch-22 Week 2

This week I continued to read Catch-22. I can't say much more about the book than I did last time without giving stuff away, so if you want to know more about the book, read last weeks post. Instead in this post I'll just answer the mandatory questions.
A classic is a book or story that has a moral and the majority of people who read it believe it to be one of the best books ever written. I believe that Catch-22 falls under both of these criteria, so I do believe it to be a classic. However, it would help enormously if Joseph Heller suddenly died, since that always help a classic be more classicy. Catch-22 has the moral that war is horrible, and that people who are impacted by war never get better. However, it shows this in a humorous way, making it a good book, although I don't think it comes even close to the LOTR books.

Catch-22

It is about a World War II Bombardier named Yossarin, who is desperate to get out of having to fight. He tries everything humanly possible in order to get relieved of duty. The book opens on him in a hospital, pretending to be sick because if he is sick, they can't force him to fly any missions. No one in his hospital is actually sick, because all those that were sick are now dead, except for one old man. The hospital has a mass breakout, in which him and all his not actually sick friends tell the doctors about them not really being sick, forcing them back to duty. The colonel who is keeping them in duty, Colonel Cathehart, keeps raising the amount of missions necessary to be relieved of duty. One of the main conflicts of the book is that if you are willing to fly missions, you are insane, and therefore unfit for duty. However, if one is shown to be insane, and therefore unfit for duty, submitting a request to be relieved of duty because of insanity proves that one is sane, since one is unwilling to continue serving, so insanity can't be a reason for being relieved. It is an interesting book, and if you haven't read it and aren't planning to, you should definitely read it.

SOL 1/17/14

Recently I have been reading Catch-22. If you would like to read this book, don't read the below paragraph, as it contains some spoilers.

It is about a World War II Bombardier named Yossarin, who is desperate to get out of having to fight. He tries everything humanly possible in order to get relieved of duty. The book opens on him in a hospital, pretending to be sick because if he is sick, they can't force him to fly any missions. No one in his hospital is actually sick, because all those that were sick are now dead, except for one old man. The hospital has a mass breakout, in which him and all his not actually sick friends tell the doctors about them not really being sick, forcing them back to duty. The colonel who is keeping them in duty, Colonel Cathehart, keeps raising the amount of missions necessary to be relieved of duty. One of the main conflicts of the book is that if you are willing to fly missions, you are insane, and therefore unfit for duty. However, if one is shown to be insane, and therefore unfit for duty, submitting a request to be relieved of duty because of insanity proves that one is sane, since one is unwilling to continue serving, so insanity can't be a reason for being relieved. It is an interesting book, and if you haven't read it and aren't planning to, you should definitely read it.


I know that this is more of a book review than a slice, but I figure I can use it anyway.

Week 19

This week I read "Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline. It is a good book about a guy who lives in a post apocalyptic society where everyone plays a video game called OASIS basically every waking hour that they have. When the creator and owner of the OASIS dies, he leaves in his will that whoever wins a tournament in the OASIS wins the OASIS. The main character then sets out to win the tournament, and it is about his struggles. I would recommend this book to any and all who like to read fiction.

Slice of life

It turns out that getting a cast off is not all that it is made up to be. They take a big electric saw and try to chop my arm off. (It actually doesn't cut at the right frequency to cut skin, but it is still kind of weird watching them use a giant circular saw to cut the cast). After that attempt to cut the arm off, they take a big crab crusher and use it to pry open the cast. They take off the big sock looking thing, which by now looks like it is made of mud its so dirty. They leave for a little while I get to wash my arm, which feels really weird after being in a cast for so long, but after sensation comes back to my arm, feels pretty good. I get to scratch my unbearably itchy arm, they check to make sure there was no nerve damage, and I'm off and good to go. They say to come back if I can't move my elbow normally within three weeks.
After the cast is off, I now need to work hard every day to get my elbow back to normal workings. At first, it doesn't move at all, which is a really weird sensation. Then, as I try every day, my elbow slowly gets back to working normally. After my elbow is starting to work normally, I have to get my arm to not look like a mummy's. I have to wash it over and over to get rid of the thick layers of dead skin. Then I have to use an exercise ball to get my lower arm muscle back, and I have to lift heavy objects in order to have my biceps even show up. By now, I feel like I am starting to use my arm again, three and a half weeks after I had my cast taken off.
People always make it sound like as soon as the cast is off, the arm will immediately feel better and back to normal. It does feel nice to be able to scratch and alleviate the itching a little, but the arm is basically a useless, itchy piece of skin for the next two weeks.  

house of hades

The House Of Hades
By Rick Riordan
This was a pretty good book that continued a decent series by a pretty good author. It is definitely written for a much younger audience. It is about the struggles a a group of seven demigods trying to save the world from the god of the earth, which I generally believe to be pretty close to impossible, given that they are basically trying to save the world from it self. despite the weak plot line, the writing is decent, which makes the book kind of interesting. I would recommend this book for someone looking to slack off on their reading, since it can be passed for a two week book, even though it is easy enough to be read as a one week book.