It's no secret that I like to blog, but several things are holding me back. The first huge obstacle I have is that I blog from a dialup connection, which is kind of a pain. I find ways around it, uploading all my pictures from broadband computers and then blogging from home, or blogging into word documents and then publishing from faster computers, but dialup is definitely a pain. It's a pain that will be remedied next year at MIT when there is wifi everywhere!
Another thing that holds me back is a lack of laptop. A laptop would allow me to liveblog from events, or to blog during class if I get bored. Again, a problem remedied next year at MIT when I'll have my new Dell laptop (graduation present from Grandma!)!
Things that don't hold me back? I have a great Sony Cybershot 6 megapixel camera that I absolutely love. It cost me $100 (which is amazing for 6 megapixels) and is really durable. It's been dropped several times and still works great.
The final blogging tool that I crave (I'm actually getting around to the title of this post now) is a video camera. I want to be able to make videos of the events around me, put them on YouTube, and blog those! Plus, it'll be nice to be able to share the goings-on at MIT with people back home next year, kind of a video diary (I hate the word diary). Guess what my graduation present from my parents is! A Sony Handycam!
Brand new, it just came out in April, and it's kurazy cool. My dad picked it up at Best Buy yesterday and I'm not allowed to have it until June 1st (we're going to record my graduation), but I'm eagerly anticipating making my first video. I've never had a video camera before, nor has my family, it's a first for all of us.
Here's a quick video I find that talks about it. Although the lady mentions a bunch of cameras, the one I get is the one she actually holds up and talks about for quite a while.
40 Gig internal Hard Drive 4 megapixel still camera 2 megapixel screenshot camera (takes a picture while filming) High-speed camera mode (spreads 3 seconds of film smoothly over 12 seconds) Infrared filming Touchscreen Straight to DVD burning capability
It's no secret that I like to blog, but several things are holding me back. The first huge obstacle I have is that I blog from a dialup connection, which is kind of a pain. I find ways around it, uploading all my pictures from broadband computers and then blogging from home, or blogging into word documents and then publishing from faster computers, but dialup is definitely a pain. It's a pain that will be remedied next year at MIT when there is wifi everywhere!
Another thing that holds me back is a lack of laptop. A laptop would allow me to liveblog from events, or to blog during class if I get bored. Again, a problem remedied next year at MIT when I'll have my new Dell laptop (graduation present from Grandma!)!
Things that don't hold me back? I have a great Sony Cybershot 6 megapixel camera that I absolutely love. It cost me $100 (which is amazing for 6 megapixels) and is really durable. It's been dropped several times and still works great.
The final blogging tool that I crave (I'm actually getting around to the title of this post now) is a video camera. I want to be able to make videos of the events around me, put them on YouTube, and blog those! Plus, it'll be nice to be able to share the goings-on at MIT with people back home next year, kind of a video diary (I hate the word diary). Guess what my graduation present from my parents is! A Sony Handycam!
Brand new, it just came out in April, and it's kurazy cool. My dad picked it up at Best Buy yesterday and I'm not allowed to have it until June 1st (we're going to record my graduation), but I'm eagerly anticipating making my first video. I've never had a video camera before, nor has my family, it's a first for all of us.
Here's a quick video I find that talks about it. Although the lady mentions a bunch of cameras, the one I get is the one she actually holds up and talks about for quite a while.
40 Gig internal Hard Drive 4 megapixel still camera 2 megapixel screenshot camera (takes a picture while filming) High-speed camera mode (spreads 3 seconds of film smoothly over 12 seconds) Infrared filming Touchscreen Straight to DVD burning capability
Well, today certainly was an exciting day at school, and I just so happened to have my camera! Here's the story. . .
My day started in Engineering. Basically, I showed up to class, said "HI!" to my partner, and then we grabbed our catapult and spent the next hour and a half shooting golf balls out at the baseball diamond. Long story short, it was a very good time. Here's our catapult, aka "The Scoop-a-pult"
We found a large brown foam thing that we used as a target, and we put it about 40 meters from our catapult. Try as we might, we COULD NOT get those golf balls to hit the brown thing. As you can see in this picture, they formed a perfect circle all the way around the brown thing, but not once did they hit it. Great accuracy, bad precision I guess.
My next class was band, which went swimmingly. I took a picture of my music, not much to tell after that:
Let's take a break now to talk about my school in general. This is my school:
This is my school's hallway:
Notice something? The squares on the ground match the wall they are closest to, and the lights on the ceiling are always above a square on the floor. Very feng shui, but then again, my school was built in the 70's.
My school has started to try to make me healthy by stocking the vending machines with health food. Not only that, they try to make me feel guilty about eating sugar by putting bags of gummi bears on the bottom row of the vending machine. . . . for $2.00. See!
And, let's see, what else? Oh, Sprague has murals all over the school. Here's a new one last year entitled "English Rocks"
Beautiful, eh? So, after band was lunch and then onto SKonline, which is basically a computer lab where you sit and take a course online that wouldn't fit into your schedule. It's a nice safety net for graduating seniors that need a credit in something, and I just so happened to need a credit in economics, so I'm taking sophomore economics online. w00t MIT! Here's our lab:
After that it was on to my next computer lab, CAD. In CAD I'm currently trying to draw a carousel horse. Not by my own will and volition, but because my teacher wanted to "Challenge me with something that isn't just geometric shapes", so I'm using Inventor to make a carousel horse. It's hard, very hard. You can see on the screen what I've got so far:
And since that was my last class of the day, school was over after that, until "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" FIRE ALARM! Great, with 2 minutes left in the day the fire alarm goes off. I file out of the room, through the woodshop, and out to the back parking lot with everybody else, but am distracting by an interesting scene on the way out. The woodshop teacher is out in the parking lot yelling at 4 kids. Let me preface this by saying that the woods teacher is awesome. He was yelling "Which of you did it?! I want to know now! Who was it? Who saw something? You were all in there when it got pulled!" That's about all I heard before I was forced back away from the building for safety reasons (psh). He yelled at the kids some more before they all went into the woodshop to discuss things. As the door opened for them to enter you could see the cop standing there and a bunch of security. This was good. Time to get out the camera and start filming. Although the video isn't great, because of the distance, you can see that the woods teacher and the cop come out of the woodshop with a kid and then the cop takes the kid away. BUSTED! It was exciting, as you can tell by my friends' reactions on the movie.
After the alarm we went back to class and a friend and I were discussing why somebody would pull a fire alarm with two minutes left in the day. We were also wondering who it was. Now, I'll change the name for anonymity's sake, but this is what soon followed.
[Woods teacher walks in, overhearing our conversation, starts yelling] "Well it was a sophomore if that tells you anything!" [who?] "Guess who! The biggest idiot in the school, stupid moron! Daniel Staks, biggest frickin' idiot I know. I hate that stupid kid, he's such a moron! What an idiot!"
His rant continued for quite some time, quite hilarious. I love watching teachers explode at students, it makes me warm and fuzzy inside.
Alright, well now I have to go off to a robot competition. I'll try to take some pictures, should be interesting. Hope you enjoyed my exciting day, I know I did!
Well, today certainly was an exciting day at school, and I just so happened to have my camera! Here's the story. . .
My day started in Engineering. Basically, I showed up to class, said "HI!" to my partner, and then we grabbed our catapult and spent the next hour and a half shooting golf balls out at the baseball diamond. Long story short, it was a very good time. Here's our catapult, aka "The Scoop-a-pult"
We found a large brown foam thing that we used as a target, and we put it about 40 meters from our catapult. Try as we might, we COULD NOT get those golf balls to hit the brown thing. As you can see in this picture, they formed a perfect circle all the way around the brown thing, but not once did they hit it. Great accuracy, bad precision I guess.
My next class was band, which went swimmingly. I took a picture of my music, not much to tell after that:
Let's take a break now to talk about my school in general. This is my school:
This is my school's hallway:
Notice something? The squares on the ground match the wall they are closest to, and the lights on the ceiling are always above a square on the floor. Very feng shui, but then again, my school was built in the 70's.
My school has started to try to make me healthy by stocking the vending machines with health food. Not only that, they try to make me feel guilty about eating sugar by putting bags of gummi bears on the bottom row of the vending machine. . . . for $2.00. See!
And, let's see, what else? Oh, Sprague has murals all over the school. Here's a new one last year entitled "English Rocks"
Beautiful, eh? So, after band was lunch and then onto SKonline, which is basically a computer lab where you sit and take a course online that wouldn't fit into your schedule. It's a nice safety net for graduating seniors that need a credit in something, and I just so happened to need a credit in economics, so I'm taking sophomore economics online. w00t MIT! Here's our lab:
After that it was on to my next computer lab, CAD. In CAD I'm currently trying to draw a carousel horse. Not by my own will and volition, but because my teacher wanted to "Challenge me with something that isn't just geometric shapes", so I'm using Inventor to make a carousel horse. It's hard, very hard. You can see on the screen what I've got so far:
And since that was my last class of the day, school was over after that, until "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" FIRE ALARM! Great, with 2 minutes left in the day the fire alarm goes off. I file out of the room, through the woodshop, and out to the back parking lot with everybody else, but am distracting by an interesting scene on the way out. The woodshop teacher is out in the parking lot yelling at 4 kids. Let me preface this by saying that the woods teacher is awesome. He was yelling "Which of you did it?! I want to know now! Who was it? Who saw something? You were all in there when it got pulled!" That's about all I heard before I was forced back away from the building for safety reasons (psh). He yelled at the kids some more before they all went into the woodshop to discuss things. As the door opened for them to enter you could see the cop standing there and a bunch of security. This was good. Time to get out the camera and start filming. Although the video isn't great, because of the distance, you can see that the woods teacher and the cop come out of the woodshop with a kid and then the cop takes the kid away. BUSTED! It was exciting, as you can tell by my friends' reactions on the movie.
After the alarm we went back to class and a friend and I were discussing why somebody would pull a fire alarm with two minutes left in the day. We were also wondering who it was. Now, I'll change the name for anonymity's sake, but this is what soon followed.
[Woods teacher walks in, overhearing our conversation, starts yelling] "Well it was a sophomore if that tells you anything!" [who?] "Guess who! The biggest idiot in the school, stupid moron! Daniel Staks, biggest frickin' idiot I know. I hate that stupid kid, he's such a moron! What an idiot!"
His rant continued for quite some time, quite hilarious. I love watching teachers explode at students, it makes me warm and fuzzy inside.
Alright, well now I have to go off to a robot competition. I'll try to take some pictures, should be interesting. Hope you enjoyed my exciting day, I know I did!
So, this entry is half a joke, half serious. I don't expect you to actually purchase these objects for me, but if you feel the obligations to befriend me, suck up to me, or just be nice and get me a present, these are some things you could consider. I'd love you forever, these are my favorite gifts!
