Before I entered this class I didn’t read at all. Now I read at least once a week and growing. I changed by finishing the books I read rather than stalling till I decide to stop reading it. Just as I went into AP Drawing class to force myself to start drawing again, I decided to take Honors English instead of plain old English to force myself to read just as every person I know does.

Before entering this class, I chose not to use adjectives and adverbs to give my writing flare. Now I’m more exepting towards using it when I write. I changed by being tought the meaning in using adjectives and adverbs. I told the class I wasn’t judgemental but theres always a time when writing where I needed to be judgemental. How else was I going to get the enterest of readers like you.

This year I’m sure I had likes and dislikes in this class, but none worth mentioning. If I don’t metion them to friends when socializing, I guess I have nothing to say here. I believe I can safely say blogging was a great experience and that experience will be used for the years to come.

As I make my leave, I believe I’ll be ready to read novels of college grade level. I perceive my self to be a very considerate person when it comes to other. I don’t look for fame when blogging and there was a time where I commented on other blogs in a positive manner, even when it came to correcting someone of their mistakes. I definitely learnt a lot about myself from watching the TED videos. They made me think of the past, present, and future of my life. Not only that, but I also learnt from my classmates thoughs. I’m glad I got to share some of my thoughts as well.

My advice for all you next year students is to share as much in class as possible. Not everybody does there reading. So, it helps when you tell them what you read so they can catch up faster. As for your blogs, make an effort to have some variety. You might regret not doing something someone else did, so look at other blogs to get a few ideas. Lastly from Mrs. Lahaise herself, “Remember, critiquing is okay, but make sure it is constructive and not destructive.”

If there’s one thing I didn’t think  about when it can cames to catoons, it would be the physics.  This poem really shed some light on the topic.  I don’t know if that’s what the cartoonists were trying to imply but it indeed makes sence now.  I like to think of it as way to distract your children from asking too many questions.  Instead, you make them ask questions based on what they see from the cartoons.  In other words, making them think they’re getting the answers they want.

Physics, in my opinion, is based what’s physically possible.  When I was young, I didn’t dare try to attempt the stunts pulled on television but I did take a few phrases I heard.  They were only good for inside jokes or friends that watch the same shows I’ve been watching.  Now it isn’t worth the time and I end up making my own jokes that soon become inside considering my friends are the only ones who’ve heard it.  One example is when someone asks me, “What’s up?”, I reply, “What’s down?”.  I use to say something less clever like “The sky” or just point up at it.  After that, it literally got deeper when I started saying “What’s down?”.  This is because if you go so far down into the Earth and pop up on the other side, the answer will still be the sky even if it’s at a different hour.

Cartoons can sometime backfire though.  I once had a job at a kind of summer school called the Boys and Girls Club.  There was a little girl who got the wrong impression from watching family guy.  She had told me she hated teenagers even though she would one day become one.  She would constantly try to make my job miserable.  She knew I was getting paid to work there and assumed that was the only reason I worked there.  For me, it was really for the experience but nothing was going to change her attitude towards teenagers.

From watching cartoons, I want to become a cartoonist myself.  I dedicated my life to drawing and wasting time watching anime to this day.  Sadly, it gets in the way of my studys.  Maybe watching cartoons is only ment for ten year olds and if your any older, it’ll get in the way of work.  I’m a living example though I may have no F’s, D’s, U’s, or S’s.  Timmy Turner from Fairy Odd Parents always got F’s.  This would be an example of the way simple cartoon can influence a childs work habits.  Sometimes their’s a price to pay for letting children watch too much television as well as letting them have access to one.

The ending of the poem is what caught my eye the most,

“…learn that if a man runs off the edge of a cliff
he will not fall until he notices his mistake.”

What drives me to be a cartoonist is the life lessons you can teach to “viewers like you”.  Not just trying to get a good laugh.  Some methods are exaggerated and can give young viewers the wrong idea as The Simpsons does to the father figure, Homer.  Sometimes, it’s just pure action like DBZ.  Cartoons come in many shapes and sizes, but I want to be the type who can incorporate some physics into this line of work.

http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/038.html

As you may know I ran the LA Marathon and finished it.  Sadly I didn’t get to meet my expectations do to pulling my leg.  Apparently I decided to run fast in the wrong place at the wrong time.  I happened at about the 19th mile.  I was thinking about going to one of the ambulances spread across the run, but I knew I wasn’t the only one who had pulled a muscle.  There were more than 25 thousand runners running the same marathon and I’m sure anyone of them had to go through the same stoke of bad luck.

At the start, I wanted to take it easy a while and wait for the runners to spread out a bit like the usual Student Run LA mini-thons I did in the past.  That wasn’t the case with people how had run 10 minutes before me and I’m sure more than 30 minutes behind me.  I felt I had no choice but to run the pace I wanted to, if not faster.  I even did it on the up hill, practically jumping the whole way up.  I was running with a friend and even though I spead up, every time I slowed down, he caught up to me.  He had more experience than me so I should’ve stayed with him.  I was going the same speed as him after all, all up till the 19th mile.

Before I happen to pull my muscle, I had accidentally step on someone elses foot.  I said sorry but I still feel guilty.  I have a few technques that I learned to use for rechaging but running backwards isn’t such a great idea in a big crowd.  I believe I got distracted by the cheering and forgot to look back.  Usually, I look at the shodows to avoid the runners but the sun wasn’t placed in my favor.  After that I decided to only walk backwards whenever I felt the urge to.

The way I got tired so fast was a rule I made that I hadn’t gave to much thought about.  It was to pass every runner wearing pink.  Eventually, I forgot all about it when I caught up with a few of my friends.  I got ahead of them again for a while, but I had to slow down.  I felt I had reached my limit, until they caught up with me again.  They had told me to run with them the rest of the way but I felt there pace too slow.  I liked running fast so I did so to get ahead of them and that’s when I pulled my muscle.

I had to stretch a lot, which slowed me down the most.  I just had to make sure I didn’t stretch too must or else I would end up pulling it again.  Near the end, I eventually had to run with some strangers after my leg had healed up enough to run.  I had many obsticles in my way and pulling a muscle wasn’t one of them.  I have asthma after all and it would seem my body can’t even touch it any more.  Ash from fires and sickness are probably the only things now.  I believe am capable of exercizing however I please.  In other words my body will give out before my lungs are effected.

As I ran there were water stands and products (ment to ease leg pains) that I passed by.  I had wondered if I should’ve stopped more frequently.  I was thinking drinking too much water would only put on more weight.  As for the products, I didn’t think it’d help.  I thought of putting the water on my legs instead, but that didn’t last very long.  Next time, I might reconsider.  Not to mention all the stuff I had been carrying on me.  Not the first time I carried too much.

I was surprised I could run at all as I reached the finish.  My time was 6 hours and 8 minutes.  I din’t meet my expectations but I believe I’ll do it next time around for I am now an experienced marathon runner.  I’m certain I won’t make the same mistakes I made as a beginner.  My expectations were 4 hours and 30 minutes and that plan still stands.  What are your expectations after reading how I failed my first attempt?

(Makes you wonder how that lone spartan did it without that much water or the cheering…then again, they are said to have die from the run after leaving the message) As for use LA Marathon runners, it’s a different story considering life must go on.  I was going to use a like to the post title “Marathon”, but finding this video rests my case with an exeption for the last seen.  My fellow classmate said I’d have that issue if I didn’t put tape over it, but I didn’t put it on I came out perfectly find without it.  I guess it dependes on what you where or else it’s how you run.  The shirt I was wearing didn’t move around that much.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-hCuYjvw2I

This after noon, I was looking  at the history of where “marathon” originated from on the History cannel.  It was around the time the Spartans existed.  If I remember correctly, a messanger would do a marathon towards their home land to tell them they made a victory or “nike” as we know now to be the name of a shoe brand.  Sence I’m going to run the LA Marathon this sunday(March 21, 2010), I thought I’d shed some light on some of the preparations I had to make before I got to this point.

As you know, SOCES has a Running Club and a Cross Country.  If I knew the difference, I might’ve joined Cross Country.  I’m in Running Club, which runs long distances.  Cross Country has more competition considering your running fast at a shorter distance.  I was indeed a fast runner, but was glad to join the Running Club none-the-less.  The link at the bottom of this post is a video I’ve been saving for this moment.  It’s long but shows most of the issues a runner goes through when they first start training.

 The runners in this video had their own individual problems to get through and most of them over came it.  I’m sure in a pervious post, I’ve stated that I have asthma.  Just about every runner has an obsticle to over come before they get to where they want to be.  A friend of mine got hit by a car for example but still continues to run just as I do even though I’m at risk.  With time and effort, that risk has been slowly going away to the point that my asthma doesn’t kick in unless I’m sick or there was a fire near by.  Most of the runners had low VO2 Max levels, but in the end of their training got excellent or superior.

VO2 Max isn’t the only that you should watch out for in running.  Leg problems, clothing worn, and the shoes you were make a difference as well.  Every now and then I ran home with my backpack on instead of taking he late bus.  From school to home is about 5 miles tops.  The last time I did it, I had more things in my backpack than usual and I started to feel it as I was running.  It felt like I was training for the first time again with the same leg problems where my muscles were tight.

I made this post to see what was going through my head before I do the LA Marathon.  After seeing this video & looking back at my 18 mile run of about 3 hrs, I predict that it will take me 4 hrs 30 mins.  I feel a bit sick today, so I probibly won’t have my “A” game.  What I eat the day before makes a big difference.  I might eat too much…or I might eat too little, but drinking plenty of water and getting plenty of sleep are my main priorities.  Getting better before the big day is one as well.  Even if there’s a sign of my asthma kicking in, I’ll run to the very end.  Just like these runners, this is my first marathon as well.  Wish me luck!

(I’ll tell you how it went…probibly the next post I make. L8rs!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH8nQiILe1Q&feature=player_embedded#

 ”So John knows his way in the alleys of creativity.”  Indeed I do, but so does everyone.  Think of creativity as a little extra time spent on doing something.  Yes, this would be the best way to put it.  There are many examples of this today.  I’m sure way back when, it would have been considered extrinsic.  Now that we have factories that do the work faster, we have time to add that extra flare.  Because of that, we have people who specifically work for that purpose.  In today’s world, being superfluous is needed to be noticed by the public.  Now lets see some of the bolded phrases in the article:

Visual effects in the script are what you can’t go out and shoot: This applies to movie versions of fictions books as well like Harry Potter, Twilight, Time Mackine, & many more.  Events in these books could never really take place in the real world, so that’s where technology comes in.  We have it now, so why not use it.  I remember renting a movie called Gamer & it had same extras on how they filmed the movie.  To my surprise, they said they used a RED camera.  I know  little of it now so I can’t describe my self.  I may as well suggest you rent it youself or look it up if you want to learn more about it.  They hade created it resently for the movie & it has now been used to film other movies as well.  From the first photograph taken in 1814 to 2 hours or more of films all created for the sake of viewers, we have gone a long way.

“Advertising is the price companies pay for being un-original”: Have you ever noticed this fact?  Where?  When you think about it, there’s 3 kinds of places.  These place are the ones you’ve been to, haven’t been to, & one you’ll will never get the chance to.  The places you’ve been to are most likely close by.  The places you haven’t been to are discovered passing by, advertisement, or someone you heard it from.  All other places are either unknown or too far away to get to.  Just recently, my chemistry teacher showed us a video on the Bloom Box.  I never heard of it but it was a power source that was harmless, more or less, to the environment & was more efficient than solar panels.  This was an original idea, thus it didn’t need to be advertised…then again, there’s always the fact that only rich companies could afford it.

Most people still think that origami is flapping birds made of paper, but it’s really become something much more sophisticated — thanks to mathematics: I’m just going to mention what I created an origami that supposedly no one else hase creared before.  My intention was to teach myself how to make a swan.  Instead I ended up creating a moth.  I decided to make one that looked even more like a moth by coloring it in & saving it to this day.  Sadly I’ve never given myself time to remember how to make it, but I’m sure if I look at it again I could teach myself how to do it again.  Thankfully, my creativity didn’t stop there.  Here comes another “Just resently”.  Just resently, I started tagging & it too is a creation never seen before as so many other taggers have claimed.  It follows rules just as Robert J. Long followed his own rules in making origami.  When it comes to naming my style, I have a bit of a problem because I used so many rules.  My brother suggested “Skrew” & I’m think’n “Double Hex”.  Maybe now you can see that it is somehow related to 6 sided bolts.

What I need in effect is a focus. When I have a question, I have a focus, and all these object go through that question: In a way this is like poetry.  You wonder & wonder until you finaly connect the dots like asking a question you already know the answer to.  What was the point in asking yourself in the first place?  It’s probably the fact that you never asked yourself before or no one has ever asked you.  When you ask that question, you feel determined to answer it; focus.  What you know are the so called objects like putting a puzzle together.  What you’re diverting your attention to is solving that puzzle.

We all hate moral ambiguity, and yet it is so necessary in writing a story, it’s the place where I begin: Some of Amy Tan’s writings are disagreeable so this will be the last phrase I’ll comment on her writings.  I looked up the word ambiguity & it pointed me out to the word ambiguous.  It had 2 definitions: 1. doubtful or uncertain especially from obscurity or indistinctness 2. capable of being understood in 2 or more possible senses or ways.  For me, it was one of those words that descibes yourself yet you don’t know what it is.  Considering I can relate to it, it does get annoying at times.  Writers probably understand this most of all.  A story being created can have the same  beginning with a different ending, begin differently with the same ending, or even have a twist that makes both possible.  That’s just my opinion of what a writer goes through.  What is yours?

Music, even better than words, is a powerful way to explain who we are: Under Tom Machover, you’ll read how todays Guitar Hero came to be created.  He asked himself,”why can’t we make instruments like those for everybody”.  By those, he means the hyperinstruments he created.  They have all kind of sensors built in, so the instrument knows how it is been played.  If we had the money, couldn’t we all make our own indivitual instruments with our own specifications?  In my opinion, there may even be a genre not yet discovered.

http://blog.ted.com/2008/02/ted2008_how_do.php