Tie Die

Earlier this month, I had to try and do some tie dye. The actual tie dye itself went okay, surprisingly (except for two bits of fabric which, instead of having a gradual fading effect from top to bottom, was just a single block of colour) but not a lot else. So, for the benefit of other would-be tie dyers, I shall give a heads up about what not to do (though most of these should be obvious):

This is the result. Isn't it pretty?

Who needs a cryptic code when you have appalling handwriting?

As mentioned before, I carry around a notebook in case of writing emergencies (and ideas). Also previously mentioned is the fact that I only study Maths, Chemistry and Physics nowadays. In 1 and a fraction years, the most writing with a pen that I've done is doing a proof by induction (They are pretty darn long). My handwriting was hardly perfect to begin with, but now it is effectively illegible. However there is a silver lining in all of this. Unless you are me, you can't read anything I've written (seriously, not even my parents and close friends can decipher it).

The Chaotic Effect of Cake

In one of the first maths lessons of the year, our teacher made a small but unrecoverable error that basically caused the collapse of the entire lesson before it had even started.
She gave us cake before we'd actually started any work. Bad move.

Now cake is a good thing on the whole. Fewer things make a double lesson seem more managable than having a cake break scheduled. Especially delicious cake. But cake is a tricky thing, and it needs to be carefully controlled. Otherwise all hell breaks loose.

My view on doors

A few months ago, my friend asked me to write something for the school magazine. On account of me being lazy, I merely sent her a link to my post on selfish umbrellas (which, to be fair, is still a post I'm pleased with, so I'm not that irritated by my own laziness). Anyhow, the theme was supposed to be about doors so it didn't quite work but she still put it in anyway. She's slightly odd (yet lovely) like that for not laughing at my writing. But to make up for it, I am now going to write down all the random door-related thoughts that are floating around in my head.

In case of apocalypse

In preparation for National Novel Writing Month, I've been doing a lot of research into zombies - my chosen genre this year is 'Humorous Post-Apocalyptic' which can only go well... I've even gone so far as to order the Zombie Survival Guide (seriously, the zombies had better not invade before next week because that's when my book arrives) And, looking over the available zombie survival advice, I'm pretty much sorted for when the zombies come.

The benefits of peer pressure?

Basically my friends and I are sat in the school's computer room, desperatly avoiding doing our UCAS personal statement and we start talking about blogs (after googling ourselves, like all good bored teenagers) and I brought up mine (after a quick disclaimer that it was basically just me talking aloud to myself online.) So, as they try and decide whether or not to create their own, they challenged me to write one right now, completely kill any attempts at productive work.

Anyway, I'm taking up their challenge and writing about the benefits of peer pressure (rather suitably, I thought).

Why can't I be an astronaut?

Okay, so if you ask a little kid what they want to be when they grow up, they may well say something like policeman, fireman or astronaut. However, if you ask someone who is in the process of applying to university what kind of job they want, you wouldn't expect astronaut as a response, probably. Which means I may have a slightly awkward time during any interviews (To be honest, I'm also considering being a firefighter. But that's a different post).

42 - The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything (including procrastination)

Okay, if you haven't assumed this from my sporadic blog postings and recent 3 month hiatus, I procrastinate a lot. A LOT. It's an art form I perfected, somewhat accidentally, over the years. I can just waste time without realising it. Which is problematic considering this year, I'm trying to pass exams, go to university, train for my sport, write a 50,000 word novel in a month and maybe, just maybe, have a social life.

Fortunately, I've found a kind of helpful way to help me get some more work done. And, as you might be able to guess from the title, that involves that all-purpose answer: 42.

An assortment of writing totems

I stumbled across my writing box again today. (Yes, I have a writing box. Who doesn't?) Having been buried since November's Nanowrimo, I dusted it off and looked through it. And nestled on top of a sheet of paper, were my four special writing totems. Each totem was given to me by someone and each one now reflects a different part of writing. And here, in no particular order, they are:

Evil change to blog #1 - Jump breaks

So, in an attempt to cut down on front page clutter and a devious way to force interested readers to go on the page to read each article in full (which means I get to see more stats), I have started to add jump breaks to things! I've done this to the current 7 posts on the main page because I'm too lazy to do all of them. Except for this, because I've kept it (relatively) short.
Blog change announcement over. That is all.

Theme Parks - Way too much exercise!

Having recently been to a theme park, I feel like this is a topic I have a good knowledge of. Theme parks are a lot of work and are very tiring! This may seem odd at first - after all, most rides involve sitting down - but when you really break it down, you can find many pyschially challenging activities in theme parks.

The fun bits of shooting

By shooting, I here mean ISSF rifle shooting, at paper targets (the poor defenceless things!). This is a sport (yes, it is a sport even though I spend an hour and 15 minutes trying not to move at all) I've been doing for several years so it's kinda obvious that I enjoy it. So, for the purpose of informing others, here is a list of things I like about shooting:

The travelling fountain pens - Some things were never meant to fly

So, when I went on holidays recently, I decided to treat my fountain pens to a trip as well. I love my fountain pens (I took both to be fair to them even though my red one is my favourite [don't tell the other!]) and I intended to do some writing whilst abroad so it seemed like a good idea.
It wasn't.

Why umbrellas are selfish

As I said in this post, I love rain. So it's understandable that I'm naturally against umbrellas and haven't used one in 5 years. But I do feel that there is more of a reason to dislike umbrellas than the fact that they block the rain: Umbrellas are one of the more selfish inventions to have been created.

Instinctive response and their consequences

A.S. (I think I made this up, but I'm hoping it's ante script [before text]...) Advance warning but this is yet another post on exams. I promise it's the last one for this year and that I'll get back to writing semi-regularly! Damned exams...
So, you know how in an exam you're in absolute silence or else. No scraping your chair, no excessively noisy page turning or pen scratching, no kicking the metal table legs (which is a bad idea anyway, considering how unstable our exam tables are). Even drinking water too loudly gets you a stern glare from the invigilators. So it goes without saying that actually talking and communicating with someone is the exam equivilant of a mortal sin. The only thing that would get you in more trouble would be a phone, smuggling in notes elaborately tattooed on your hand or running around the exam hall shouting like a lunatic.

What geeks do in their spare time

Designing geeky t-shirts of course! (Okay, your definition of geeky may be different to mine). Anyway, whilst doing revision, my poor tired brain keeps taking the information and trying to twist it into something not dull. And then I get distracted.

When in England - enjoy the rain!

Having lived in the U.K. for more than a few years, I've adapted to some small things. I now know that potato chips are called crisps (though I still refuse to use that term) and kindergatern is nusery. I know the first verse of 'God Save The Queen' - a feat which a concerningly large number of naturally British people can't do. I know that if you pronounce vitamin 'Vita-min' instead of 'vit-amin', you will get some very odd looks. But, asides from the completely different form of English, the main problem I've had to overcome is the weather. Because if you live in the U.K. and you hate the rain or the cold, you're basically screwed.

Revision! (Honest...)

Erm, well I did some Physics revision yesterday (I finished the whole of fluids! Yay!) But then, as usual, I got distracted. Which isn't too surprising. What is slightly more surprising is how I got distracted.

I kinda tried to write a Physics song. 'Overcoming the forces that be' is the working title (I know - I really really suck at titles. But it's better than some other titles I've had before). It's got pressure, gravity, normal reaction force, electrostatic forces, friction, chemical -> kinetic energy, viscous drag (see! I told you I'd done some physics revision), nuclear fusion and space. All in one, horrendously bad, song. It's also a little cheesy. Actually, it's possibly more cheesy than the food tent at a cheese rolling event but... er, can't think of a defence here.

Well, when I say I wrote a song, I mean the lyrics. I cannot play any form of musical instrument to save my life (but I haven't tried the ukulele yet!). I can't sing. I can't play the piano. I can't even hum in tune! It's really more like a very repetitious poem. I don't even think I have the right amount of syllables in each line. Or a consistent number of syllables in each line.

I've tried asking my more musically minded sister to help me. She kinda laughed at me... Considering she's about three years behind me at school, I suppose trying to explain some of the 'deep' lines ('Protons! Do you not know what a proton is?!') was a little hopeful. That and, as I mentioned before, we have very different music tastes. So, yeah, that didn't work out. I then tried the Internet - the Internet is always an option - but even the music programs I have found I can't actually figure out what half the fancy buttons do. So about now, I'm starting wish I had paid a little bit more attention in those music lessons so long ago, instead of having a sword fight with the music batons.

So, right about now, it seems like my little Physics song will never torture the ears of any unfortunate souls *sigh* So, it's back to the Physics revision (next up: materials - solids. Whoot!). Besides, the sooner I finish Physics revision, the sooner I can move on to a maths song! How about 'Negative numbers, positive squares'? (You're right, that's also pretty terrible as a title!)

Dancing - Way too much exercise!

So today, I had a bit of a sibling showdown to see which of us was the champion of dance (Answer: Not me...). After an hour of bouncing around like an idiot, I feel shattered. Not as shattered as when I ran the 1500m, but still pretty tired. There is a surprising amount involved in dancing!

For one thing, our one on one showdown was in a 2 by 2 metre box. So as well as getting all the moves right, there was a certain fighting element to it as we dodged stray arms, flailing legs flicks and out of control jazz hands. Seriously, there should be a health warning on the front of the dance CD! You know your reactions are a little too jumpy when you see the cat moving 2m away and instinctively go into a defensive crouch.

There was more fighting involved over the lead remote to pick the songs. I wanted to keep to the songs I knew (which, oddly, were mostly songs from before I was born) but my sister refused anything not from the past two years. There was some compromise that was basically 'Look, you do that song and I will sit here and laugh at you'. That meant even more work because you then had to do super well in that song to maintain your dignity (Mission Failed there)...

Speaking of maintaining dignity, whilst jumping about like a loon, scrabbling about on the floor (a freestyle move I like to call 'The Distressed Beetle') and doing some slightly dodgy looking moves, I had to be on the lookout for a phone 'subtly' filming my efforts. Once I spotted her phone, I had to add in my own moves 'The Phone Grab'. Which is harder than it looks.

Finally, as well as all the leg exercise from the bouncing, my right arm feels really sore now from flapping the remote about (which has probably permanently damaged my wrist...). That remote can be quite heavy - trust me, I got whacked by it enough times - and the game expects you to fling it about, both as part of the moves and when you realise you've done the wrong thing and have had to correct it. So yeah. I'm sure my wrist will appreciate the work out.

I'm not really sure how dancing works in real life for someone who dances professionally, but for their sakes' I'm hoping it is nothing as strenuous as the game! (Maybe I should just exercise more...) What do you reckon the worst song is for energy expenditure anyway?

Why don't people believe me?!

Okay, I don't think anyone's read this post, but if you have read 'The Improbable-ness of statistics' then you might remember me saying that people don't always take into account the very very crazily rare events. This has a knock on effect as I found out, because when such a unbelievable event does happen (no, none of my coins spontaneous disappeared into a black hole), it takes a lot more convincing.

Everyone has probably heard/used 'My dog ate my homework', right? It's pretty much the most cliched of implausible excuses for not doing homework but I suppose it is still possible. And since that old classic was first used by some desperate student, lots of spin offs have been created by even more desperate students. For instance 'My budgie ate it', 'My cat ate it', 'My friend ate it'.

Now, I can fully understand why people have to use excuses for homework, (I've had to use them every now and then when my time-turner has broken....) but it does mean that teachers are less understanding when you tell them that your friend really did eat your reply slip.
I should explain a bit more quickly. My friend was messing about and we were talking about eating paper (maybe we were discussing rabbits or something?!) so to prove a point my friend, with no regard for hygeine/littering, snatched the first piece of paper she saw into her mouth without looking. I could hardly give in a chewed, slightly soggy reply slip, now could I?!

But, for reasons unknown, when I asked my teacher for another one, explaining what had happened, she didn't believe me. Oh the injustices of the educational system :(

The most pathetic bullet-proof armour...

I'm going to talk about the slightly obscure sport I do today. Target shooting. No! Not shotgun! Yes! At paper targets, not people/animals! The number of questions I get when I tell someone I shoot is incredible (unless they too are a shooter). But on a dress-up-like-a-sport day, when I came in in all my shooting kit, I got a new question: 'Is that like bullet proof or something?'

(Picture from edinkille.co.uk)

This is literally the only picture I could find so I'll describe it. The jacket and trousers are made of stiff canvas/leather that is really inflexible. Really, really inflexible. The trousers often has grippy stuff that looks like the soft tarmac they put in kids' playgrounds.. The jacket have buttons which have some overlap (to fit the rules) but are still quite tight. Some jackets need a special spoon to do up the buttons, to give you an inidication of how tight a fit it is. The shoes are ankle boots that look like they have a rectanglar bit of plastic stuck on the sole so that the sole is flat with a square toe and heel. All of this is also really uncomfortable to wear at times - try wearing a leather suit for a hour and a bit in the middle of summer indoors! This stuff is really hard to move about in and looks a little odd to say the least. In fact, in order to stop shooters waddling around like penguins and looking ridiculous, rules have had to be brought in saying that the shooter must be able to walk properly! So I suppose, it isn't too unexpected that people might think it is some sort of bullet proof protection.

But really?! We aren't going to be shot in this sport - it's really safe for one thing and the targets are at least 10m away with all the shooters far, far away from the dangerous bullets. Admittedly, it might be bullet-proof but I certainly don't want to find out soon. Nope, the reason we have this (seemingly excessive) kit is to stop any movement. Any movement whatsoever. With air rifle, the nine ring (shooting is scored out of 10 by the way with 10 being the best) is the size of the pellet you are shooting. And when you get really competitive, a single 9 makes a big difference to where you are on the results list.

The flat soled shoes stop you rocking back and forth or side to side on your feet (theoretically - I still bounce on my heels), the stiff trousers support your back and help your knees - this back support is really important in shooting where back injuries are one of the more common injuries - and the jacket holds your upper body in the right place. Zero movement is the goal. Elite shooters even try and get their heart rate to a minimum! All of this to get the perfect shot, and from there, the perfect match (600/600 or 400/400 depending).

So next time you stumble across someone in shooting kit (as common as that is...), you now know why they are wearing that slightly bizarre outfit!

The awesome-ness of Chemistry

I'm in a really good mood with Chemistry at the moment. I've finally finished all my revision notes for the first unit of Chemistry! I'm in such a good mood I'd thought I'd write a blog post about why I love Chemistry.

I mean, yes, Chemistry is awesome in part because it basically helps us understand why things are made the way they are, like why graphite is special and can conduct electricity even though it's not a metal (free electrons!), and how things work together, like why I need fire to burn stuff (to exceed the activation energy needed to get the oxygen and the flammable stuff to react [I think...]). But I think the main reason people should love chemistry and have at least a basic understanding is all the chemistry related puns!!!

Completely by accident, I said to myself, 'Let's get cracking with this Chemistry revision!' and I was just about to start fractional distillation and cracking! (Look, I found it funny at the time.) 'Carbon is a girl's best friend' based off diamond being a allotrope of carbon  (I thought about putting that on a t-shirt once...). Dative covalent bonds - sharing is caring. And who hasn't heard 'I've lost an electron!' 'Are you sure?!' 'I'm positive!!!' ?! Not going to get me many marks on my exams but it's making revision a little less painful...

Okay, these probably aren't too hilarious, but in the post-revision daze, everything seems hilarious. Except metal extraction. That isn't such a fun topic. Anyone got any good chemistry jokes to share? (To be fair, all the good ones argon :P)

My Unusual Athletics Injuries

As I said earlier I like running. I never said I was any good at it. And I have just learnt how horrendously bad at it and unhealthy I am! (The only muscle I really exercise is my brain and even that is a rare workout) Anyway, here is a hopefully amusing list of my injuries (excluding general aches): - 1 x bruise in hip and 1 x battered elbow Instead of jumping over the high jump bar, I did this odd rugby tackle jump on to the bar and somehow trapped it between my elbow and hip. Those poles really hurt too - probably a good incentive to clear it then! - 2 x bruise on ribs Whilst running my 4th and longest race of the day (remember me saying I didn't do long distance...? Yeah.) I kind of died figuratively speaking. I had a huge stitch down my ribs and everyone was yelling at me to 'run it off' (Said the ones not running it!). So I did this awkward little jog thing whilst clutching my ribs (you know, in case they fell out or something) but turns out, I was gripping my ribs so hard, I've left a hand shaped bruise! - 2 x grazed palms Because apparently, just finishing the relay race and passing on the baton isn't enough. It helps to stay upright and not fall flat on your face afterwards. Or more specifically, flat on your hands. - 1 x dodgy right eye For some reason my right eye decided it literally couldn't cope with the sight of any more laps and went all blurry :/ It's fine, I don't need to be able to actually see where I'm running... - 1 x slightly twisted ankle Not from the running, that would be too common a injury for me. Nope I hurt myself after the race whilst walking down the stairs to get a healthy ice cream. Gravity as always won :( - 1 x sore throat From all my crazily high pitched 'team encouragement' and the even higher pitched squeal I made every time I tried to do the long jump (again, another event where you are actually supposed to jump!) There you have it. Despite, or possibly even partially because, of this list, I had fun. And even better, I am still currently alive so all is well. But I should probably stay away from stairs, ice cream, cheering, running or jumping. Or maybe just movement in general... Anyone else had any interesting sports related injuries?

Cats - (Not so) Secretly Evil

Now, don't get me wrong. I love cats, especially my cat - an adorable blob of fur, fluff and cuddliness. But I'm pretty sure that she is evil. Really evil.

She doesn't move much (she is a bit of a lazy cat...) so you think you are safe, that she isn't going to do anything. That sense of security is a lie. She is just sitting there plotting her next attack. My cat's preferred offense is 'less is more'. She will just sit there. That might not seem like too much, aside from the trip hazard, but the main problem is where she sits. On the paper you're trying to read, the homework you are trying to do or the seat you are about to sit on, even if it requires her leaping over sofas or ducking under your makeshift (ineffective) cat-block. And if that still doesn't get your attention, she will walk on your laptop or sit on your lap just as you were about to move. To make matters worse, as well as being a lazy cat, she is also rather pudgy so she will take up all the space. Every last micrometre. Not helpful.

Once she is in position, she will start the attack properly. Her claws might seem quite small but they are really, really sharp! Teachers do not appreciate you giving them in ripped homework, my mother doesn't appreciate having to fix threads caught by her paws and I don't appreciate having a few more ventilation holes put in me.

But despite all this, my family still loves our cat. I'm pretty sure it's not just her either. Anyway, we just keep a suspicious eye on her, especially when she looks like she is about to sit down...

When the recipe asks for one thing - substitute!

Not much of a substitution really, but if you ever need to ice some cakes and you've run out of icing (and like me, you can't really make some) then Nutella is pretty good alternative. Hard to spread but oh so delicious! Or, you know, you could just eat the Nutella straight from the jar without the cake... (Also - try eating condensed milk just on its own. Yum!)

Running around everwhere like a maniac is fun! (Really!)

I tend to run everywhere (short distance wise that is - I have no stamina!), which is quite entertaining for both myself and bystanders, except from those I run into that is. I think it's mostly entertaining for bystanders because I look stupid when I run (someone once said I ran like a dinosaur...) but, hey! An interesting technicality in my school rules means that theoretically I can't be told off for running in the car park or towards the main building because running is only banned in 'covered walkways' - being the rebel that I am, I sometimes break that too. So I intend to make full use of this loophole because, simply, I like to run. Not so simply, here is why:

- It's so much more efficent (Time wise that is - running burns more calories per mile than walking). I am really impatient so if I have the choice between a 2 minute walk all the way to the far side of the school or a 30 second jog, I'll chose the latter. Have you any idea how much time a day we spend walking everywhere, even short distances?! It all adds up
- I am quite prompt outside of school (5 minutes early is what I consider late!) but in school, clubs and lessons over run. Every teacher wants their lesson to start on time but think that the end of their lesson is the time when the next lesson starts meaning there are only two ways of being on time - apparate or run. And I'm too young to apparate...
- It adds more excitement to my day. It's like a little obstacle course - weaving between the chatting groups, dodging a year 7's giant rucksack, jumping up on to the side walk and swinging around corners, hopefully without any collisions. Because that is the kind of exciting thing that goes on in my life...
- If I run a little bit, I can claim to be exercising and healthy! Between that and all the stairs I have to go up - steep ones too! - ...okay, still pretty unhealthy. But a start nevertheless!
- Running fast is just really fun on its own in the right conditions. For me, the right conditions are when I'm feeling energetic (or angry...) to put on a burst of speed, it's raining or just finished but it's not cold because for me there is nothing better than the rain or splashing through a puddle (real mature), there's a slight wind against me so when I run I can hear that faint whistling that makes it seem faster. I mean, yes, fast for me is like 5 miles per hour for about 10 seconds but it's still fast relatively.

So why do you run? Long distances, short distance? When you can or when you plan? (I don't plan because if I plan something, it increases the chances of it never ever happening :/)

The improbable-ness of statistics

I have a statistics exam coming up soon and I just saw a video on probability so that is what I'm going to talk about today. (Side note: I don't think the link work - try searching on YouTube for Fun Science: Randomness by charlieissocoollike. Curse my lack of technological skills!) If I were to flip your average coin, there is not a 50:50 chance of getting heads. In part this is because of slight biases in flipping techniques (because there is a right and a wrong way to flip a coin!) and imperfections on the coin that make it more likely to land on one side. But even the probability of getting heads or tails is not necessarily 1. Okay, I'll admit that it is pretty likely that if you were to flip a coin a billion times, it's going to end up as one of those two outcomes. But there are other, admittedly highly unlikely, possibilities that could completely ruin any lovely heads/tails tree diagrams: - The coin could land on its side. This is actually not entirely out of the realms of plausibility. If you can balance a coin on its side without too much difficulty, then it could potentially land like that. What would you do then?! Call it a draw? Thump the table until it falls over (ruining the unbiased-ness of the already biased experiment). Probability: minute but still possible. - The coin might not land properly. Excluding the fact that it might land on its side, the coin still might not land in a recordable way. It might end up stuck in something. See that could happen. If you were to conduct the experiment in space, it might never land at all, just keep flipping around FOR ALL OF ETERNITY. By which point you would have given up and returned to Earth (unless you were really dedicated as a scientist). Probability: even less likely but still possible. - The coin might not make it. Imagine, if you will, that you had flipped that coin back in 2009 when the LHC was first started and everyone was panicked about the possibility of a blackfoot engulfing the Earth. Imagine (bear with me ere) that you flipped the coin inside the collider and a black hole appeared and swallowed your coin (and probably yourself and the rest of the planet too). It hasn't landed so you can't record a result, you can't do a retest and, like a school bully, the black hole has run off with your lunch money. Bit of a scientific nightmare. Probability: Admittedly a little unlikely but who knows? So basically, even when we think we have all the possible outcomes, we probably don't. And yes the probability of these outcomes are so minuscule we can probably safely ignore ten, they are still an option. And that is what I shall put on my test. ...And that'll probably be why I'll fail the test too!

Script Frenzy - Training for a future in sleep depravation

So, it's day 3 (technically, day 4 now) and I've just started my Screnzy. That means I'm 10 pages behind already. And that is the main reason why I'm up at 1am when I'm normally asleep by 10pm (because I'm such a party animal like that).

Script Frenzy and Nanowrimo are very important especially for teenagers, I think, because they give a good insight in to the adult world. Staying up later than possible even with caffeine (I've been up way later than this for Nano before...), frantically working away to hit that nigh on impossible deadline.

Drowsiness both hinders and helps the creative process I think. It helps because, at that point, you are too tired to really care what you are writing (like this) so at least you get stuff done, and who knows, the ramblings you end up with might be entertaining. The downsides are that, asides from writing complete rubbish, you also end up with some many spelling errors that even the good text is uncipherable, and there is the serious risk of falling asleep on the keyboard and filling 100 pages with one repeated letter.

But after Script Frenzy or Nano, when I've slept off all my writing time, life suddenly feels so much  longer. When you are no longer spending at least 3 hours a day writing (Yes, it takes me forever.), you suddenly get a lot more time to socialise, chill and, best of all, sleep.

In the future, I'm inevitably going to end up in situations where I have to do things wih very little sleep (I'm going to become nocturnal for uni - it's when I get most done!) and I feel as if I now have a solid foundation to build on. So thank you Script Frenzy and Nano, for preparing me for the real world where a day is 24 hours too short.

Why Latin is NOT a dead language!

Okay, I'll admit it now. I actually enjoy learning (on the whole). To some, this might make complete sense, but it seems to me that several people about my age think that willingly going to school is about as weird as me having grown a second head - I got some quite interesting looks. I didn't help myself much when I mentioned that one of the subjects I learnt was Latin - apparently even taking Latin makes you posh, which is a complete lie when you look at me or my Latin taking friends.

Admittedly, I spent the last year of my Latin course complaining about how much I hated Latin (a view which changed considerably once I got my results back), but now I no longer do Latin, or any other language based course actually, I've surprisingly come to miss it.

Yes, Latin Literature involved hours of writing the same text over and over again, combined with analysis of every word, its placement and some literary device I never understood. Yes, Latin grammar also took hours of rote learning all the various endings and tiny words or letters that changed the meaning of the whole sentence, and occasionally the story. I don't really miss that aspect at all.

What I miss is the vocabulary. Alright, that also took hours of rote learning. But at least with that, as I scrolled through lists of words, I could pick out the familiar looking ones. Considering English is partly from Latin, you can guess some of the words in English using a bit of Latin (and luck). Some of them are obvious - corpus: corpse, nauta (sailor): nautical - but some of them are bit more obscure. Credo means I believe/trust and if you give someone credit (in the sense of money), you trust they will pay you back. Extra means outside in Latin so extra-ordinary is something outside the ordinary (not something additional on top of the normal). Latin helps with those extra layers of meaning.

And I know I said doing Latin doesn't make you posh, but it can help you fake it. Loads of mottos and stuff are in Latin: Cognito ergo sum - I think therefore I am, Arte et Marte - By skill and by fighting (Also, one of the few grammar points I picked up on, but its in the ablative case which means by!). And at least three commonly used abbreviations are Latin: e.g. - exampli gratia - for the sake of example, i.e - id est - that is (Commonly confused those two: e.g. gives a general example, i.e. gives a specific thing), and etc - et cetera - and others. So yes, you can pretend to be posh as well, which has its benefits.

Clearly Latin language is still very much alive, both mutated into new English words, and as it was. Latin history isn't even dead, considering how much we learnt and are still learning from the Romans (though we didn't study that as much, asides from a few tangents). So, whilst I don't really expect there to be too many fluent Latin speakers out there (though surprisingly, there are quite a few), maybe we should try and bring back at least an awareness of Latin!
Ab hinc, lingua Latina!! (Which, I hope, means 'From here on, the Latin language!', but again, my Latin was never brilliant, so no guarantees :P)

Juggling with onions

Just putting this out there, but any amateur jugglers who want a good starting ball without having to buy/make one should serious look at onions. Here is a convenient bullet point list as to why:

- Onions are about the right size for juggling, and if you have very large hands, you can just get a larger onion!
- They are also about the right weight; not so heavy that you drop them immediately (though that would have to be like a lead ball...), but not so light that you can't feel you've caught it (which is a downside of using balled up socks)
- They are also about the right shape! Trying to juggle with oddly shaped things (again, like socks) is really hard
- Onions are quite sturdy. If you drop them a couple of times, they stay more or less the same. Drop an apple a couple of times and you end with puree everywhere, which is not fun to clean up.
- Onions are pretty available. We tend to have some in the house which is perfect for an impromptu juggling session (it's just a matter of finding the onions...)
- Having gone into the garage to get them (which is where I get mine from), you are far away from any objects that may take badly to mis-thrown onions
- When you get fed up with dropping them everywhere, you can make spaghetti!

I suppose one of the main disadvantages is that you may look a little odd juggling onions, but I'm going to justify that by saying you would look odd regardless of what you were juggling (unless you were very good, which I most certainly am not).

The Hidden Benefits of Obscurity

Let's be completely honest. No one is likely to read this. Even I'm unlikely to read this once it is down on paper (proof reading is not something I do often). This poet, like this blog is probably going to end up in some dusty old corner of the Internet, contributing the bandwidth clutter. And I'm fine with that to be honest. I've even come up with a list about all the perks of being unread (silver linings rule!): - No one cares about my atrocious spelling/grammar. Which is doubly handy as I'm an inaccurate typist who never proof reads and has a dodgy Autocorrect function on their phone. - I don't have to worry about spam/trolling comments. I'd rather have no comments at all than a hundred telling me I've won an iPad or that my computer is at risk. - There is no one to critise my insane theories. I could announce on here that I plan totals over the world with a bunch of pirates and a parrot called Bob and there would be no one to bat an eyelid (I you thought that was an example, you might like to thinking again: I have a script for my world domination and everything) - I can get hours of entertainment from looking at the stats page of the blog. I get really exicited when I get a pageview and I'm sure major blogs don't leap for joy when they see they've had three page views today (Disclaimer: one of them was me XD) Really quite fun! - I don't feel as guilty about posting at random times with irregular intervals and about completely bizarre and unrelated topics. I mean, I still feel slightly guilty, but if people were actually to read this regularly, the resulting guilt for not having posted in a week might actually kill me (I'm very susceptible to guilt) So you see! Not just one silver lining but many! Of corse if you are actually reading this then this post is slightly pointless. Then you wouldn't be reading it. And we would be stuck in a Catch-22 like paradox... Maybe not such a silver lining after all!

Script Frenzy - Oh the Thinks you can think up

Today is the 1st April (Just in case you hadn't noticed). As well as being April Fool's Day and Palm Sunday, it is the start of Script Frenzy!

What is Script Frenzy? It's a challenge to write 100 pages of a script (film, TV, graphic novel etc.) in April. Basically, it is a month where aspiring writers, like myself, put random words down on a piece of blank paper in the hopes of filling it up. Some people try and go for something intelligable at the end, but for me (and my appalling writing skills) it's more about making sure that the sentences are at least sentences (i.e. one verb, one noun at least. Though sometimes, I don't even manage that). There isn't really much of a plot, there isn't really much sense. And why most people would think that was a crazy thing to do (Why write a script if it makes no sense?!), actually, some of my best writing, and most fun has come from it.

There are a few reasons for this (One of which is because I'm doing this with my equally crazy friend with the best sense of humour - half the time is spent in hysterics over what she's written!), but the one I want to mention today is linked to a Dr Suess quote I recently read (Because what normal teenager doesn't read Dr Suess books in their free time?!) :

'Oh, the Thinks you can think up, if only you try.'

Under such time pressure, you don't worry too much about how much sense stuff makes. It just goes on the page. And that means that you can think up some truely crazy things that you had never thought about before which is half the fun. Last year, my friend and I, writing a comedy script, ended up with two main characters who start off as villian and hero, and swap roles until the hero-turned-villian is defeated by the milkman (who at one point was tortured using bubbles. Yeah, that's right.). See? A little off-the-wall and all the funnier for it (in our opinion at least). The things we thought up, and just 'cos we tried. (A similar challenge in November, Nanowrimo, involves writing a novel. Even more random things happen there).

The above post made probably no sense, because we've already started writing uncomprehensible stuff. But I suppose the moral of this post is: Do lots of crazy insane creative challenges. You;d be surprised what you come up with!

P.S. For anyone interested in Script Frenzy, you can still sign up now! www.scriptfrenzy.org A month of crazy writing awaits!

My number one tip for revising

It's Easter time! Now, I don't know what Easter means for you, maybe fluffy bunnies (or bilbies, if you're in Australia), maybe chocolate, maybe just general celebration but for me, Easter is a time of panic. Sheer panic.
Exams are almost upon us people.
I know panicking is not going to help much with my education but I can't really help it. Just thinking about all the stuff I have to learn is a little intimdating: Waves! Matrices! Intergration! Reactions, reagants and conditions! I start hyperventilating before I've even worked up the courage to open the book. So, as a way of calming myself before I flip the cover, I have resorted to stealing tatics from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy 'has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.'

Okay, so I'm not sure just how friendly looking those letters are, but they are working better than nothing. And it also helped delay my revision by five minutes as I waited for the Tipex to dry! (These blog post is taking up 20 minutes of revision time)

On a similar, yet still off topic note, I know exactly where my towel is. So I am even more prepared for my revision!
There's not a lot more procrastination I can get out of this post, so I'm off to learn more about the history of the structure of the atom... Anyone got any good revision tips (aside from this) that would help any?

Cosmic Latte - Not an awesome coffee

If you look up at the sky at night, you would probably see a darkish looking sky with specks of white light (or just an orange haze if you are near a street lamp). So if you were to ask someone what colour the universe was, they might well say 'Black'. In fact, astronomers at John Hopkins University decided the universe was 'Cosmic Latte' which is kind of beige-y like:
 (Image from articlesbase.com)
Its code is #FFF8E7 (which means nothing to me... :/) Interestingly enough, the other names that it could have been called were 'Big Bang Blush', 'Astronomical Almond' (there is a lot of alliteration here...), 'Cappuccino Cosmico' (apparently scientists drink a lot of coffee) and my personal favourite 'Skyvory' which does sound rather nice.

It's these kind of important scientific discoveries that push the boundaries of paint manufacture! Technological advances like these are vita for our society! Okay, they were actually looking at emission spectrum, which shows what light stars give out and (using some chemistry-physics emission of light from electrons thing) that shows what the star is made of and (using some physics life cycles of the stars thing) shows a bit about the history and type of star.

Anyway, as far as I can see for a quick Google search, there is not a cosmic latte pencil or crayon and no cosmic latte paint so any representatives of Crayola or a paint company out there, there is a gap in the market of the colour spectrum that hasn't been filled! Think of the advertising: 'With this crayon, you too can draw the whole of the universe!' or 'Our new paint gives the feel of having all the space in the universe'. Anyway, what do you think? Would you like a cosmic latte coloured kitchen?

P.S. If you want to read more, the website with the astronomers' comments is here: http://www.pha.jhu.edu/~kgb/cosspec/

What a light year really is:

Look, I know a lot of people will already know this, but just to clarify:
A light-year is a measure of DISTANCE. NOT TIME. So, do not say 'In some light-years time'. Please, just don't.
A light year is the distance light travels in a year (According to Google : 9.4605284 × 10¹⁵ metres i.e. a very VERY long distance!)

A lucky find

Unusual things can appear in unusual places. And whilst you might expect some pretty bizarre things in a school's lost property - how can someone lose a singular school shoe?! - I found something rather unexpected whilst clearing it out one day. No, not a body. Or buried treasure. I found a horseshoe. Which is a bit odd considering that our school is in the middle of a town with no farms or horses nearby (that I know of at least).

As well as being a lucky find in these sense of the good charm properties attributed to horseshoes, it was also lucky as I survived the ordeal of fishing out of the bottom of lost property. I know it might not seem dangerous, but when your lost property is a wheelie bin as high as your chest and you have to lean right in and risk entrapment... Anyway, I ended up keeping that horseshoe. It was my 'reward' for sorting out the lost property because the teacher had not the faintest idea who would have a horseshoe or more importantly, why. Admittedly, we could find an owner for the lost fork in there either but no one was willing to accept that present. So, any readers out there, what is the weirdest thing you've ever found? And did you ever find the owner?

Why head lamps are a bad idea

Having lost/broken/taken apart for experimentation several conventional torches, I got a head torch (on the condition that I do not bring a screwdriver within 10m of it). I was ridiculously overexcited by this. A head torch! Wow! Hands-free working! Conveniently placed! Night vision mode! The torch does not live up to its hype. Firstly, although a head torch does allow for you to see what you ate looking at, it isn't very selective. For example, it is useful when looking for tent pegs, but when someone talks to you and you look up, it won't magically turn itself off. People tend to get annoyed when you shine torches directly into their eyes. Secondly, it really isn't that well placed. It keeps falling off my slightly small and oddly shaped head. Torches are less fun when they are trying to strangle you. Finally, the night vision mode is great... If you can get to it. The night vision mode is after three stages of bright night-vision-ruining white light. Someone really thought that one through -.- Basically, head torches are pretty useless, as far as I've used them. I would probably be better scrambling around in the darkness.

Minibuses and Music

After conducting extensive research on several minibus journeys I have concluded that loud music is the major cause of fast, erratic driving. Every time we set foot in the minibus, the inevitable request comes: 'Can you turn the radio on please!'
Up this point the driving has been okay. I mean, minibus driving never seems particularly brilliant (or maybe that is just the 'macho' air between the male drivers in a typically male dominated organisation), but once that radio goes on and the first few notes hit our ears, any pretence of sensible driving goes out the window. Thrown back in our seats by the rapid acceleration (that is, if our highly trained drivers haven't stalled the bus), we speed off the amber traffic lights. Hurtling down the roads at the limits of the speed restriction set on them, vying with the other drivers to see which bus will make it there first (though it will still inevitably be late), holding our breath as we squeak through an 'dark yellow' light, only to grind to a halt at roundabouts. That is the minibus way - music blaring to drown out the terrified screams of its passengers.
Okay, I suppose there are other reasons why our minibuses are so dangerous (half of which is probably just the organisation and my innocent view of 'good driving' from a non driving perspective)but you never know. Regardless of the cause, the minibus journey is always an... interesting start to a trip!

The life of a newspaper hunter

As I said earlier, my room is littered with newspapers. That's because I collect them on a daily basis more or less. And they sure do accumulate.

And that's just the stash of papers I decided to keep!
My paper of choice is the Metro - a free commuter newspaper. I like because a) it's free (and I'm broke), b) it's the one that is easiest for me to get and c) it has some quite funny articles. The only problem is that, you get the paper on the train. I don't get the train. So slight logistic issue there.
Luckily for me, however, my friend DOES get the train and gets the paper. The downside is that there are about 5 other people who also want that same paper. One paper, six readers. So things get a little frantic.

Every day, I get in really early. I spend the time loitering in the other room, waiting for my friend to arrive in between doing other things. My friend often gets in quite late though, so I often have to go. That means I have to sneak out of my room into hers. Unfortunately, the other paper-readers are in that room as well. I find my friend and start up a conversation, whilst quickly scanning the room for the paper. If it's being read or I can't find it, I curse my luck, but if not, I subtly wander over and acquire the paper. Whether or not I have the paper, I still stay for a bit and talk. That's the dangerous par really because if one of the other readers see me with the Metro, they will ask for it back and I, being slightly meek, will just hand it back to them. If I do get it and make it out, I will escape back to my room, or my reading spot. If not, I try again at break, or during a free period.

I have gone to some slightly extreme methods to acquire the paper. Snatch and grabs work if the reader moves away for a few moments. I have shoved the Metro up my shirt before to avoid detection (despite the odd bulge). A little selfish to steal the paper for myself, but if asked I will return it (and I'm quite a fast reader). I like getting to the paper first because a) I'm selfish/impatient at times, b) they can take ages to read it and c) I'm protecting the paper from vandalism. There is little worse than reading through a swiss-cheese like paper because someone decided to cut out all the articles that they could use to prove they have an interest in a subject.

But the weekday paper is important to me. It's the only way I catch up on news (since TV channels only ever have sports, or one story on repeat), the suduko puzzles are a good brain starter (and quite entertaining if I'm doing it with my other friends) and the texts section is a good source of thought-provoking, hilarious or bizare writing prompts. So, now, I'm off to search for today's one!

The necessity of notepads (or a pen and your hand)

Thoughts are tricky creatures to manage. Sometimes you spend ages rumaging around for one specific thought and just can't catch hold of it, only for it to pop out and taunt you when you least expect it.
At this point, the pen you should be carrying about comes in handy. Whether it's a to do, a question, a eureka moment that could change the world, it will be of no use if you can't pin it down with ink. It's almost like a race against time to find something to get it down with before it darts off again - though that could just be me, with my attention span of a gnat always dashing from one place to another before being squashed.

Unfortunately, I hardly ever have paper in that 3 minute window of opportunity (see? Really short attention span!). Even if I did, it would go in my bag and would soon be lost in the small forest in there. So, I have to use the one write-able surface that will stay attached to me hopefully - my hand. It tickles, and looks odd but it works. By glancing at my hand right now, from the few words on it, my brain suddenly snaps onto what I meant by that word on the whole. I know:
 - I need to revise moments. Really need to. REALLY badly!
 - Fehling's solution - why do we have to make it fresh in the lab?
 - I really need to be more careful with my ink pen (ink splodges everywhere!)
Even better, it's better than a cryptic code. Few people see my hand that closely. Even if they do my handwriting is bad enough already without smudging the ink or the lines of my palm that it is illegible. I myself can only make out rough letters but that is enough.

The obvious downside of that is that it is really quite short term. I have a few spontaneous writing ideas a week but I hardly ever get round to writing (Only once a year really). And I wash more frequently than that (I'd have hoped that was obvious though) and my hand is too small for that, despite my lanky fingers (all the more surface area for writing on). So I always have a small notepad that goes in my backpack, my handbag, my suitcase. Yes, the hazard of that is that people can look at it and laugh at all the appaling writing in there, but it works well for capturing free-roaming ideas. Not only that, but real life has some real novel worthy conversations! I hear some amusing comment ('I feel about as useful as a defibrillator in a funeral parlour!' and 'I sure hope insanity isn't contagious!) and rip out my notepad and franctically jot it down. Yes it looks odd to bystanders to see some deranged teen drop everything for no reason and write something in a battered notepad, but it works.

Where else can you keep ideas? The Sticky notes thing helps, but gets too cluttered, as do endless tabs of Wikipedia articles with interesting facts. That, or do you just keep ideas firmly in your head until required (how can you do that though?!)?

Tangible music

Following on from this morning's post about something that pushed the limits of existing, today I decided to talk about something that 100% exists. CDs!

Music is quite an important, and quite a novel, thing for me. I only really started to listen to songs 6 years ago (The Beatles, courtesy of my friend). My music tastes can best be described as a mixture of whatever is floating past me at the time (primarily rock/alternative/indie though) from friends, adverts, the radio in the minibus. As a result, I tend to mostly buy the odd song or two off an album on iTunes because it's generally more convenient. But if I like an entire album and one of my friends hasn't already lent it to me, I'll step out from the digital age and will order a lovely tangible copy.

Yes, I know that there shouldn't really be a difference. The songs will be the same regardless. I upload them straight away on to my computer and I don't have a CD player (or at least, not one that still functions). CDs can get scratched, they take up space, they use up resources that could be used for other things. Sometimes they are more expensive than downloads (although, on the whole, they seem to be cheaper...)

But despite all the logical reasons why I shouldn't get a physical CD, I just like it more. Album artwork looks much nicer in reality - all my CDs are displayed in a toast rack (Don't ask). They give me some back up so that if my computer mysterious dies and takes my precious music to it grave, I have a selection of songs to tide me over until I can restore them. It's nicer to hold the CD case, to spin the disc round and flick through the front cover bit (especially when it has lyrics!). In short, I like the tangible feel of having music (yes, materialistic, I know). And it keeps reminding me that I do actually now have a music 'collection' which is something I find strangely satifying.

So, counter arguments aside, I think I will be stick with tangible discs for the time being. Hopefully, MP3 files and downloads won't completely overrun us in the foreseeable future!
(P.S. I got some new CDs today! Hence the post. I am currently importing the songs and listening to them as I go. So far, so good!)

Imaginary numbers: Make-believe maths

Exams soon (just a reminder for those of you who haven't seen many stressed out teens lately) and today, I have been revising imaginary numbers! Because in maths, not only do you have nice, real tangible numbers like 1 and 2 (1 orange, 2 shoes) we also have made up numbers that don't really exist - have you ever seen √-1 of anything?

How is this any different to √1? Is the answer just -1? NO. Any number squared has to be positive (because  positive x positive = positive and negative x negative = positive) Since square rooting is just the opposite of squaring, to find √-1, we just need to find a number which is negative when squared... which we've just shown does not exist. Whoops. But mathematicans are not happy with just accepting that it doesn't exist because that means they have a whole lot of numbers that they aren't allowed to play with. So they call √-1 'i' and just carry on trying to do maths with it anyway (By this, this also explains awesomely nerdy t-shirts like the mental_floss one: √-1 <3 Maths, which is obviously completely true...)

But to make life more complicated, these numbers don't just not exist. I know I just said they were imaginary but they can magically become real. If you square a root, it cancels out the square root part (opposite functions remember?) so you're just left with the bit under the root:
√-1 x √-1 = -1
Which is very real. It's a bit like having two imaginary friends together and ending up with a real person at the end. Weird, huh?
And sometimes, like when solving quadratic equations, you get things which have actual real numbers, and imaginary numbers like this: 1+ √-1. This is called a complex number (quite understandably). You have to treat them as two seperate bits because you can't suddenly add between the boundary of existance.

As for their uses... er I'm not really sure (I'm not exactly great at this maths thing!). Apparently, they are used in electronics, but really, in exams, they come up in quadratics and roots where the descriminant (The b² - 4ac bit of the quadratic equation) is negative (because we have to square root it, and if it is negative then it's not real). And they can be used to find the root of negative logs! Which may or may not have any use whatsoever.
So there you have it. √-1. The only time where an imaginary answer will get you the mark.

Obese Emoticons

It happens surprisingly often. Typing too fast and your over excited finger hammers one of the keys too many times. Typos everywhere. But lurking amongst them, well hidden despite their size, is the obese emoticon:
:DD
We pass it off as a mere typing accident but it is not. The chubby, double chinned emoticon is a sign. We must fight the rising obesity levels amongst emoticons before we have a huge strain on our poor monitors and chat windows that simply cannot cope with their size!
This is what happens when you eat too many apostrophes and do not exercise enough. This is a challenge we must all face together. So please. Next time you accidently tap the keyboard twice, think of the hidden epidemic that is emoticon obesity.

Attack of the Guilt Monkeys

There are lots of things we are supposed to do. And as a result of that, there are lots of things that are meant to be done but just don't quite happen. Like writing that blog post you said you would do two weeks ago...
They arrived from the murky depths of Nanowrimo, where they shove faultering writers towards the 50,000 word - 30 days deadline. They escape from their barrels unless words weigh the lids down and they WILL come.

Do not believe this picture. Guilt monkeys are evil.

They cling to you with their surprisingly strong tails and chatter away in your ear about all the things you had blissfully forgotton until they drive you insane.

Since doing Nanowrimo, the monkeys have escaped from captivity, it seems and have followed my writing friends and I around in real life (because Nanowrimo can hardly be consider 'real'...) Forgot to bring the cake for writing club? GUILT MONKEYS ATTACK! Left that important thing at home (probably more cake)? Guess who is coming to get you.
Yes people. The fear has been realised. The guilt monkeys have been releashed into the wild and have diversified. Be warned...

(Side note: Happy now, guilt monkeys? I've written a blog post for today. Now go and get someone else)

Things I'm bad at:

Over the past couple of weeks, I have noticed some things that I really need to work on:
1) Trigonometry. Really very little hope for me on that one.
2) Keeping my room tidy. It's covered in old newspapers...
3) Writing blog posts on a regular basis!!!

I will improve!

On being a potato

I was reading an article about job interviews ages ago (standard reading for your typical unemployed teenager) and they said you should prepare for questions. One of their example questions was 'What vegetable would you be?'. After going through the usual responses ('...Why would I be a vegetable?' and 'Are we including tomatos in this? [apparently, they are vegetables for the purposes of American tax]) I decided to put some serious thought into this. Hey, it is always good to plan ahead, even for unlikely scenarios! And my verdict is...

A potato!

I even have reasoning to back this up:

• Potatoes grow underground in the dark and don’t socialise with other potatoes. I do have friends (Yes, really) but I also like sitting in my room/reading in various enclosed spaces like cupboards). And have you ever seen a potato throw a party?
• Can be dug up and easily replanted. I've moved a bit so in part this is true. Also, I used to be told to go and stand in a grow bag so I can possibly be planted literally.
• Can do many things (chips, what-the-English-call-crisps, mash, roast) – Okay, I don’t taste as nice, but can’t have it all. However, I can't really cook any of the above.
• Not necessarily good for your health in large amounts. Potatoes make you fat (unless eaten as part of a balanced diet and coupled with exercise). I make you insane (unless seen as part of a balanced lifestyle and coupled with alternative friends) - good insane though, just to reassure you.
• Edible – Ask my friends (yes, the ones I just said I had). They've bitten me before (honest! They are my friends!)
• However, I am always like a potato because if you eat me I die. I had to fit that in somewhere :P
• Not much to look at. Potatos do not win the vegetable beauty contest (unless potatos are your kind of thing? I mean, aubergines are all well and good but...)
• Hey, I was the potato in the Yr 3 French play. I’m fully trained as a potato (Je suis une pomme-de-terre!!!)

So yeah. I would certainly have passed that interview. Especially if it was an interview to be a farmer or a potato in another play. Maybe this explains why I am unemployed...

Cooking Catastrophe - Lamenting over Lamingtons

Cooking is not one of my strong points. I can just about manage to chop a tomato for a cheese and tomato sandwhich but even that took three years of food tech. However, considering I'm (hopefully) off to uni in a year and a bit, now is a good time to learn. (That and I need to prove to my mum I will be self sustainable. She keeps suggesting universities for me. 'Over 100 miles away, Mum? Don't you think that's a little close?') So I started with one of my favourite Australian desserts: A lamington.

Just for those of you not in the know, a lamington is like a square of sponge soaked in chocolate and rolled in dessicated coconut. If you've never tried one before GO AND DO SO NOW. With cream :) It looks like this:

(Here's the batch I made [and ate] earlier. Don't they look delicious?)

Today's cooking session was very constructive (if you believe the whole 'learn from your mistakes' thing). Here is a convenient list of lessons learnt:

- Just because you eat a lot of lamingtons does not mean you can make them.
- Even if it only has four steps (cut, roll in chocolate, roll in coconut, eat), it can still be deceptively tricky

 Step 1 - The cutting-If something has to go in the freezer for an hour before you can use it, it's a good idea to put it in an hour before you actually want to start. Not five minutes before.
- Maths really has every day uses. The optimal method of cutting things into eigths (half, half, half). And for find the best surface are to volume ratio (cut it into quarters one way then half down another plane) Could not find a good use for any complex numbers though.

This is roughly the point where I realised 'Oh [grawlix] I forgot to actually prepare my ingredients!!' So:
 Step 0 - Preparing your ingredients

- This is a good thing to do in the hour whilst the cake is chilling. As opposed to playing games.
- Metric really is the way to go. That said, if the ingredients are only listed in imperial, you're going to just have to make do with it.

- Even when you do follow the ingredients list correctly, it isn't the correct value. It's a bit like this in chemistry too, although the problem is more to do with incomplete transfer of substance than it being eaten on its way to the other container. It also doesn't take into account the fact that when sieving cocoa powder, 1/3 goes to the surroundings rather than in the bowl.
- On the topic of sieves, it is a good idea to notice that you need to sieve the sugar before you put it in the bowl.

- One final note on sieves. Tea strainers are not the best alternative to a small sieve.
- Sticking your hand under a stream of water from the kettle is not the best method of seeing if the kettle is still warm (I realised this one before I did fortunately...)

Step 2: Chocolate Dipping and Coconut Rolling  (Yes, I multitasked here!)
- It helps if your nice smooth coating liquid doesn't have huge chunks of sugar/unmelted butter in it.

- Adding more water does not really help this much

- The aim is to coat the sponge with a bit of chocolate. Not to fish it from drowing in a murky puddle of chocolate. Admittedly, this is rather fun.
- If you use the same forks to rescue the sponge and to roll it about in the coconut, expect cross contamination of chocolate/coconut.

- Huge gaps of sponge can be filled by delicately pasting some of the above chocolate contaminated coconut on to it.

- This does not mean it has to be a work of art with you admiring it from all angles and adding a splodge more here and there.

- When you have only a tiny bit of wallpaper-like chocolate paste in the bowl and five more sponge squares to coat, experimentally adding handfuls and pinches of random ingredients does not help.

- Adding more water does not help you gain more mixture. It just makes the chocolate run off the sponge.

Finally, two more important points:

- Cleaning up is really hard (asides from the bowl-licking). Coconut grains get everywhere and the puffs of cocoa and icing sugar settle everywhere like sand from a desert storm. The best solution I found was to subtly push it into the gaps between the benches.

- If you are making the cake for a set purpose, it is a good idea not to eat it all before it has achieved it's purpose. Unfortunately, that is easier said than done...

So there you have it. Expert advice on how not to make Lamingtons :D

Blogger is slacking...

Spelling is an important thing. It helps give a good impression. Even for those who don't mind people getting their (there/they're) apostrophes in a muddle, you would expect some level of spelling. Especially when spelling things you use a lot. Like 'and' or 'the'. Or your name.
For some reason, blogger's spellchecker highlights 'blogger' as an incorrect word. No, Blogger, I did not meant to put logger, flogger, blocker or boggier. You'd think they would know...

When you've just gotta sing!

You know those moments. You're just innoncently minding your own business and then an odd word or two drift across from another conversation. 'What you need is a revolution.' And without even thinking, your brain fits in the most appropiate sentence it can think of: 'You say you want a revolution, well you know...' and before you can jam those synapses, the singing reflex pasts through to your mouth and you're singing Beatles at full volume. (Please say that this isn't just me?! That would ruin all the times I've tried to reassure myself of normality...)

Silence does not do well around me. I am always either talking or singing. This is very bad for anyone who comes into contact with me often as side effects of this are insanity and deafness. Insanity from my constant ramblings (as demonstrated in these very posts) and deafness from my very loud, very out of tune singing. This is even worse for those who (illogically) dislike my taste in music! Even the songs I can't hear the lyrics to, like I Bet That You Look Good On The Dancefloor - Arctic Monkeys, don't escape my voice. I mumble odd syllables that could possibly fit the lyrics and could possibly be actual words or imitate musical instruments (my guitar noise is pretty good) and then redouble my singing efforts on the chorus. At that point, basically all animals within 100m suffer severe hearing damage.

In my defense, I do not think it is my fault. I cannot control myself when catchy music comes on. It is a devious plot by the music companies - to create songs that force everyone to sing along (as well as their nefarious mind control plot involving torturing people with music that can't be fully remembered or forgotton). Seriously, when I hear Valerie by The Zutons, it is near impossible to restrain myself from bursting out into song, which makes for some really awkward situations. To add insult to injury, once you start singing, short of losing your voice or listening to an instrumental song, it is really hard to quit!
So yeah, thanks a lot, music industry :P What other cunning plans have they got?!

When seemingly simple things aren't (i.e. Maths)

I spend a lot of my life doing maths. A lot. Out of five subjects I learn at school now, two of them are maths and two more are science (which, yay, involves more maths). As you might expect from this, I learn quite a bit of new maths most days, but every so often we go back to something nice and simple.
...At least, so we initally think.

I can't quite remember what age I learnt my times tables, but most people know relatively early on that 1 x 2 is 2. So when our maths teacher wrote ' 2 x 1 = 2' on the board one lesson, the whole class was reassured, if slightly confused. Yay! We are doing something we know! Yeah. Guess again. Instead we learnt about identities (Which is anything that can multiply a number to give that number: X x identity = X) and the identity matrix. So now, the number 1 had a fancy property that I had known but never called it. Ah, the ignorant bliss of primary school maths where we don't need fancy names or matrices!

Long division is another one of those things. We all sit through it in primary school but once you hit the middle of secondary school it gets lost amongst the calculators. It was quite nice today to have a lesson where we spent 10 minutes just doing a long division. With remainders as well. Not messy decimals. (Concerningly though, about a quarter of the class said they hadn't done it before/couldn't remember/used another method. And we are supposedly the bright ones...). It was very comforting until we stuck algebra in there. Long division is a little more complex when there are unknown numbers and powers of unknown numbers floating about!

And even though matrixes are not too bad, and long division with algebra is actually kinda fun, I still long for the days of simple maths :( But progress nevertheless! Any other interesting 'And you thought you knew it...' things lurking out there?

Is there anyone out there?

No, before you think this is a desperate plea for blog readers (though I'm not necessarily above that), this post is actually all about SPACE!! And whether or not there are aliens in the remainder of the universe.

Another quick warning. I am a huge space fan. I still want to be an astronaut and am actually seriously considering what I need to do to become one (So far on my list: Learn Russian, Get a pilot's license and learn more about American/Japanese/Russian cultures [helps to know the people you are going to be stuck in a small place where there is not the option of going out for a walk]). So, there may well be a few space posts at various points. But back to the current topic.

Well, for a start, it helps to know exactly what we mean by an 'alien'. For example, extraterrestrial is something outside the Earth (Literal Latin translation - Latin is so not a dead language!) and there is currently life above the boundaries of the Earth's atmosphere! And it's confirmed! ...Only catch is, it's life we put up there ourselves, namely the ISS. But they are living in space (The longest single space journey is 437 days, which is quite a bit really). There are plans to land people on Mars, some of which include forming a permanent colony there and sending people on a one way trip there. Would any children born there be counted as aliens? Extra questions on that matter include the obvious 'Is it really possible?' and 'What country of citizenship would they be listed as?’ And if we colonise Mars, would they evolve due to the different conditions and as a slightly different species, be classified as aliens? Not really many ways of finding that one out, short of sending someone up there.

Even if we are classifying aliens as life that originated completely apart from planet Earth, is it really impossible that another planet like ours can exist? The conditions are unique, but only as far as we have explored. The universe is a pretty big place; there are probably lots of places we haven't found yet. But if we assume planets are like DNA and fingerprints (ignore twins), what's to say life can't exist outside of what we consider 'normal' conditions? The Antarctica, which is not permanently inhabited, not even by scientists, still has life. Creatures called 'extremophiles' can exist in lots of conditions like no oxygen, weird pHs, odd temperatures and pressures. Surely there is a planet that can accommodate that life as well?

As for why aliens haven't gotten in touch yet, that doesn't mean they automatically don't exist. Maybe they just haven't checked their phone or don't want to be friendly with such a small planet like ours. But in all seriousness, maybe they haven't been able to respond yet or even to notice we are sending a message. The first radio broadcast on Earth wasn't even until the early 20th century, and the first space message was the Arecibo message in 1974 (according to Wikipedia at least...). If we, the supposedly 'intelligent' species have just figured it out, maybe the aliens are still working it out. Our messaging systems could be completely incompatible like trying to open a Microsoft Word document on Paint. Besides, it would take years for any message to reach them, unless they were conveniently situated right near our planet which seems unlikely.

If you are at this point, congrats for having the patience to read all that. What do you think about life on other planets? If you are actually an alien yourself, then please feel free to leave your name and address and we'll get right back to you... give or take a few years.

The future of snow transport!

Today, parts of the U.K. got snow! Which is all well and good if you like snow. However, I was out some place and getting home was interesting. After much encouraging mutterings to the steering wheel of the car (and the odd grawlix or two), we made it back. The car has withstood much before but it still wasn't impressed at being forced up a hill with no traction (because, yes, my car has feelings).

Surely there is some better alternative? Fortunately, seeing how we were going at about 5 miles an hour at the fast parts, I had a lot of time to consider this. Husky dogs are all well in the winter but here in the U.K., where snow comes maybe 1 week a year (having been predicted for two months), the poor dogs wouldn't have much of a job to do. Tanks could probably get through snow pretty easily (those things are surprisingly fast for a sophisticated lump of metal on wheels!) but storing it would be a little difficult. Not to mention the road tax on it would be horrendous, possibly made up for by the fact that you could park wherever you wanted. Suddenly an idea hit me.

Hovercrafts.
They can go over solid land! They can go over liquid water! So what would stop them going over frozen water? That cushion of air keeps it gliding over the surface whether it is snow or tarmac. Also, hovercrafts rely on its motion coming from a propeller blowing it forwards rather than wheels pushing into the ground. And, these bits are a complete guess because I can't seem to find the information I need (thanks Google -.-) but because the wheels aren't touching the ground and causing friction, it might be more fuel efficent (bearing in mind the fact that it is not as streamlined probably and you have to keep the skirt of air inflated). That and also, if two hovercrafts collide, they might just bounce off one another! Think of that quickly - would it not be kind of fun to see them bounce off in a non-serious accident?
Final point to support my answer: Hovercrafts are awesome. I don't care how effective they are in the snow, I just really want to drive one :P (Any one out there whose driven a hovercraft? [Anyone out there at all?!])

Hello There!

'Grawlix - A string of typographical symbols, especially "@#$%&!", used (especially in comic strips) to represent an obscenity or swearword.' <-- Wiktionary definition of grawlix.

I thought I would start off by introducing my favourite word. It really needs an introduction because very few people seem to know it. But you, reader, are now in the know. Try and say it out loud now. It even sounds slightly rough like what it means. Isn't fun to say?! (That could just be me...) It can be a little clumsy (you try and fit the word grawlix in a conversation) but I personally love it nonetheless.

And after that pretentious word related start, hello there! (I'm hoping someone is there at least...) This is my new blog (I'm a complete beginner, if you didn't already gather that from the rambling). I like to talk a lot, go off on a lot of tangents (hence all the brackets) and learn lots of useless things like grawlix. And like the poor, underapreciated grawlix, I'm going to try and spread the knowledge! Even if it is only to the one person reading this blog...

So, to summarise a 200 word post into two words: Hello Internet! :D