Happy Birthday!

No, not to me, silly. To Philip Glass! It's his 75th birthday.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Anyway, by some coincidence that is completely unrelated to the fact that it just so happens to be his birthday, his ninth symphony was released on iTunes today. I haven't actually heard it all yet (am am doing so now :) ) but it seems really good so far. Get it for yourself here.

In other news, I attended another music "concert" by... some guy. Anyway, it was sort of... well, he certainly doesn't do justice to philip glass or murray gold or anyone else I like. Anyway, at the end, he said, "I'm just going to give you something to think about. I've never done drugs, I don't smoke, and I eat healthy. And I'm 73.". And then he left. (can you guess where this "concert" might have been?) Anyway, I'm not sure what his point was. Was he implying that I shouldn't do drugs, I shouldn't smoke, I should eat healthy, and I should be seventy three? Or was he saying that if you don't want to do concerts at elementary schools, you should do drugs, you should smoke, you should eat unhealthy things, and most of all you should never be seventy-three! Or had a principal or someone like that instructed him to say that? If that's the case, then I think I have reason to worried.

Drug problems?

At an elementary school?

I mean, I can understand high school, but here?

I guess there are some pretty stupid people here who would gladly take drugs.

Also, it's 2012.

But still! I don't want to be at a school with drug problems! I don't want police to be questioning me about  whether or not I'm doing drugs! I'm innocent! Unless you count Vitamin C chewable thingies. But they are legal, they don't kill you, and some people seem to think they prevent illness. I'm not so sure! And I take 2 a day, max! I'm not a junkie! AAARGGH! Those aren't even drugs! MIG!!!!!!!

Anyway. I don't like drugs. And I believe this is the first time I've actually talked about myself in greater detail, but here is a convenient, consumable summary:

I'm in eighth grade. I am thirteen years old. And please don't try to "dumb down" for me just because I'm young, because chances are I'm smarter than you. No, just kidding. But really, I am smart. Anyway. The end. Blah! Happy january! I'm not looking forward to valentine's day!

Yeah!

I was using my iPod on "the bus" today, when I saw a Wi-fi notification pop up. I didn't get time to see it, so I went into settings, and this is what I saw:

Yes. It was HILARIOUS. Isn't that a high resolution display?

Rules Are Meant To Be Broken, Right?

Okay, so you may remember that in this post, I mentioned that I wouldn't announce pageview milestones unless they were in thousands, since if I were to do hundreds, I'd need to do them every few weeks (which I don't want to). But I'm breaking that promise just once. And this sort of proves my point, because just look:

That's over 300 views in a month. Whoa. That's a LOT of milestone posts, since in this month I would already have done three. And, if you read this blog even every once in a while, you'd be tired of those pointless posts. See, I don't want to lose potential followers by making boring posts like these, or, by extension, seeming like I'm boasting about how many people have seen my blog. That's not what I intended, I just wanted to share my progress with people, but it will probably be interpreted that way. Anyway, carry on. That's all I have to say.

What's Kind Of Weird

I've always found it odd that the heart is a symbol of love. I mean, it's completely arbitrary.
if anything, the brain should be the symbol of love and emotion, since it's the organ that's actually responsible for those. And this is isn't new, since until recently the brain wasn't considered important. Did you know that when the egyptians were preserving people's organs, they'd just yank it out and throw it away, but keep the rest? But anyway, this whole "Heart = Love" thing definitely isn't based on beauty, because really, what looks better, this:

...or this?

It seems pretty obvious to me. Yecch. It actually took me a lot of courage to put that picture in a post. So, associating the brain with love is pretty stupid. I mean, it's a fancy pump! What's so special about a pump? I mean, wouldn't it be dumb if people associated normal water pumps with, like, victory or something? That would be ridiculous!

"Man, I'm gonna knock your socks off!"

"Oh yeah? Well, wait till you see my new moves!"

"Well, I swear to every drop of water in my pump that I will win this match!"

"What makes you so sure! You got a pump made of plastic!"

"What did you just say?!"

"You heard me, bro! You ain't got no pump!"

"Why, you!!!"

I mean, doesn't that sound so dumb? Well, I thought so. Anyway, that's my opinion on that.

Things To Quote #1

Um, yeah. I haven't posted for a bit longer than usual now. It's because I don't really have anything to talk about. Yet. Anyway, I've decided to start making posts where I just say a random thing that you can quote. Or don't. I don't know. Anyway, today's is:

You know, you don't know until you know. You know?

External SuperDrive

As some of you may know, I currently own an 11" MacBook Air. It's a great, portable, powerful computer, but the lack of a disk drive can (occasionally) be a bit irritating. You can sort of "borrow" someone else's disk drive, but it hogs the bandwidth on that network, and it's often laggy. But anyway, I didn't really think I'd need a disk drive much, but there have been a few times where I'm sitting somewhere, and I see a DVD I'd like to watch, but then I remember, "Oh that's right, I can't.". And then I have to go get a big heavy computer that can. But now there's a solution to that dilemma:

THE EXTERNAL SUPERDRIVE.

This thing is great. It's this tiny aluminum case, with just a small slit for the CD to go into. It can read and burn CDs and DVDs. It's actually kind of neat, because it takes in the CDs a lot faster than the one on the MacBook Pro and the iMac. The first time I put a disc in, I was quite surprised when the disc just shot in there. It reads the discs really fast, and it's quite quiet after the first little bit. It's almost as if it reads the whole entire disc in the first few minutes, then just lets you watch without noise for the rest of time. Anyway, I got one, so here are some photos of it and (for the first time on this blog, actually) my computer: (I apologize that these are rather low quality images, but I took them with my iPod under low light)

There they both are.

Now the laptop is open, and the DVD for "Naqoyqatsi" is sticking out.

And the DVD being played, flawlessly.

So, summary: Another great product from Apple. Works beautifully. The end.

Oh and by the way, just a quick message, I encourage you (whoever you are) to comment! Go ahead! It only takes 30 seconds, you don't need an account, and I want to know that these hundreds of views aren't just robots that randomly browse the internet.

Rejoice!

I just checked my email, and this message was waiting for me:

Alexander,

Wow.  We just won.

From the Associated Press:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he was postponing a test vote set for Tuesday "in light of recent events." 

So, in other words, because of all of us.  Absolutely amazing.

Demand Progress has been fighting this legislation for more than a year -- having grown from nothing to over one million members during that period.

We rely on those members to fund our (2-person) operation -- are you able to help out?

Please click here if you're able to chip in 5, 10, or 20 bucks so we can keep on fighting for Internet freedom.

Even the Motion Picture Association's Chris Dodd is awed by what just happened.  Here's what he said yesterday:

“This is altogether a new effect,” Mr. Dodd said, comparing the online movement to the Arab Spring. He could not remember seeing “an effort that was moving with this degree of support change this dramatically” in the last four decades, he added.

Thanks so much for your work on this.  Will you consider a donation to Demand Progress so we can keep up the fight the next time the Internet comes under attack?

Please click here if you're able to chip in 5, 10, or 20 bucks so we can keep on pushing for Internet freedom, civil rights, and civil liberties.

You're amazing.

-Demand Progress

Yeah. That's pretty good. Now for some news.

You may have heard about Apple recent announcement of iBooks 2 and iBooks author.

Well, right now, I'm porting an abridged version of the Beethovenist Bible (and the Kikiwa Theorem Wiki) into an iBooks Author Project. It's sort of like a textbook, but it has questions and stuff. If you're hoping study Beethovenism. I'm sort of thinking of it as like a companion the Beethovenist Bibbl. And actually, I think the iBook might get finished first, because in the Bibbl, there are some really long sections of narrative storytelling, whereas the textbook is pure information (mostly).

Image/Teaser Thing For Blog

I've recently created a little image to advertise this blog. Well, not advertise, but it's essentially just an image that represents it, or something. Maybe you can use it as a desktop picture. I don't know. It's not as pretty as I'd like it to be, but if I can get my hands on Photoshop, I'll be able to make better stuff. You see, I used to have Photoshop Elements, but since my computer runs OSX Lion, I can't use that particular version (it's a PowerPC application). Anyway, image:

Yeah. It's just a Chromey-wave thing in the side, with the blog's title in the top. I think I might use something like this for the top pane in the future, because the glow sticks never really looked that good anyway. If I get photoshop. EDIT: Well, maybe sooner. I don't know.

Resisting SOPA and PIPA:

Stop SOPA and PIPA!

You may have noticed that my title has changed to "SOPA and PIPA suck!". I am aware that many sites are currently down to protest, but I don't have enough freedom with blogger to do this. I've thought about setting up a server, but that's a few years down the road for me. And most sites are only doing this for a day- whereas I shall have this title up for as long as SOPA and PIPA are still looming, or even pass. Anyway, I have a little video which will explain everything:




Anyway, yes. That's that. Also, to defy the censoring stuff of SOPA and PIPA, I'm taking the path of passive resistance. I'm going to include a link to copyrighted content on my blog in every post until SOPA and PIPA are de-um... anyway. The point is, if entertainment companies didn't want their stuff freely on the internet, THEY SHOULD NEVER HAVE DIGITIZED IT. I know there are people who will hold their camera in front of the TV, but really, who watches that? No one. Anyway, here's today's share of copyright infringement:




And, just a side note, I have just found my new favorite poem:


The voice in his head 
never stopped for breath,
it spoke of danger, 
it warned of death. 
It shouted, "Hurry, 
pack up and flee!" 
And all before his morning pee.




Chuck Lorre is pretty odd, isn't he?

If You Fall In, You Will Die!

So I just came across a rather entertaining photo from a few years ago when I went to the state of Maryland. I went near a river (the name escapes me) and in the restrooms, they had a warning sign which defies convention:

"If You Fall In You Will Die". That's certainly more effective than "during certain seasons, water may result in injury or death". It sort of reminds me of R-Dizzle's "You Will Die":




Anyway, yeah. I just thought that was kinda funny.

EDIT: I recently reached 500 views. If you see how far away my "400 views" post is, you'll see there has been a huge increase. So now, I'm only doing "milestone posts" for every thousand.

Random Chemistry Facts Daily

So one of my friends is doing this thing where he posts random facts and stuff about chemistry on facebook. It's a page called Random Chemistry Facts Daily. Anyway, I just thought I'd put it on here because it's kind of cool, and since my blog is starting to get a noticeable amount of views each day, I'd promote it here. Anyway, yeah.
Also, I made a windows cursor set, and I tried to post it here, but I can't figure out exactly how to do downloads. At least, not on blogspot. If anyone knows how to do this, I would very much like that, and it's really quite good.
Also, between the time that I started writing this post and wrote the above sentence, I became an administrator of Random Chemistry Facts Daily, simply so that my friend may refer to his self as 'we'.

EDIT: I suppose I should include a link...
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Random-Chemistry-Facts-Daily/172700132831873

EDIT (27/02/2012): The page has now been deleted. It wasn't me!

The Adventures Of Tintin Review

So I saw Steven Spielberg's "The Adventures Of Tintin" the other day, which is a movie based on Hergé's series of comic books, The Adventures Of Tintin.

This movie isn't the first adaptation, in the 1960s there was a TV which looked like it wasn't that good, and then in the '90s there was another TV show, which was pretty good.

Anyway. The movie is sort of two stories woven together, The Secret Of The Unicorn, and The Crab With The Golden Claws. One would expect that pulling two stories together like this would result in a sort of messy patchwork of ideas. It ended up being a very good story, which both captures the spirit of the original comics (in fact, in the first part, a cartoonist is seen doing hergé-style portraits of people) and being a new and exciting story, taking elements from various different places. I can justify this by saying that it's kind of hard to summarize 20+ long comic books in one movie (if you've ever read them, you'll know what I mean. if you haven't, do so now). Now, on to graphics.

The movie uses motion-capture technology, which basically means they put dots on your skin and it turns you into a 3d model. You might be familiar with it; I think The Polar Express used it. I didn't really like the polar express. The 3d models weren't that good, there was too much singing, and the only good thing is that is has trains in it. I like trains. Anyway. The good thing about motion capture is that you can capture really in-depth facial details and expressions and stuff. It also lets you do stuff in many takes and it has the impression of one continuous take. So in this movie, it worked really well, because the people looked really realistic and fluid, but they still looked like the original cartoony Hergé characters.

Which brings me to my next point.

As you can see in the two pictures, the captain doesn't really look like his cartoonish self. And that's all I have to say about that.

400 Pageviews (well, 402)

A huge increase in stuff

Remember how I've been starting to talk about how many pageviews I'm getting? Well, it's not just that I'm all proud of myself for getting nearly 500 views* (which I am, by the way), but it's mostly because there's been a huge, huge, huge huge huge, kinda big increase in the amount of views I'm getting. Let me show you what I mean:

In August. Three views. Notice the large increase in the following months.

Now, in January. 3 views. The difference is, that's one day. Today, January first, I have gotten the same number of views I did in the entire month of August.

So, yeah. I just wanted to share that, because I think that's kind of neat. And the Bible is still in production. Although I haven't been working on it as much as I would have liked. But I have a good reason!

I didn't want to.

No, I was busy.

No I wasn't.

Yes I was.

Okay, whatever.

~FIN~

*EDIT: 500? I have no idea what I was talking about. 400 is obviously what I meant.