An Actual Post About Stuff

Hello people. I know there are at least a couple of you out there, because the majority of the hits on this blog are from the US instead of Russia. (On the subject of blog hits, someone got here using the search 'scared I drank mold.' I am, of course, the premier source of information on what to do if you're suffering from mold poisoning. Obviously.) You three are cool.

My musical is going more or less swimmingly. I love it. There's an awesome review here. I'm not mentioned, because I don't have a huge part, but still. And everything said in the article is true, and everyone in the show is awesome (especially some other people who weren't mentioned - Kitty, Claire, and Andrew, you are all too cool). I'm going to be taking pictures of my costumes tomorrow and doing a post with pictures, because the costumes are amazing. And I sort of want to buy the party dress for a Homecoming outfit, just to see how people would react, because I love it.

I'm quite happy right now, is it obvious? I've gotten enough sleep for the first time since dress rehearsals about two weeks ago, so I'm on my own little natural high. Wheeee!

I've discovered during the course of the shows so far that I'm possibly clinically oblivious to certain normally obvious things, like when I'm being flirted at. However, someone is beating me with a metaphorical cluebat, which is appreciated, and I will have updates on that later, I hope.

No, please use it! I'm so confused!

Later today, I'm going to a movie to see off one of my best friends, who's going to college in four days. Then tomorrow or the day after, I'm making random pancakes with Kitty and her girlfriend, to see her off to college. I'm in a bit of a Peter Pan state, therefore, covering my ears and going 'lalala I'm never going to grow up you can't make me lalala.' Very mature. But since I've been writing college essays in between doing Camp NaNo, it's not working very well. At least I can reuse them once or twice. And then I have to write my resume and get senior pictures taken tomorrow and apply for scholarships and go on a final college visit and figure out how to take Creative Writing as a class (thereby making NaNo a legitimate use of my time) and survive five more shows and audition for the next play and...

You know, excuse me. I'm going to go and watch childhood cartoons for a while and pretend I'm six.

YES.

Final Preparation

So Camp Nano 2012, August Edition starts in eleven hours and twenty minutes for me, as I write this. I'm hoping to start at midnight, for that all-important head start. And so, if I'm very good and/or very lucky, I'll have 3k words - perhaps an entire chapter! - to be posted sometime tomorrow afternoon. My average wordcount goal is once again 2k a day, but it never hurts to have a buffer.

In other news, Mame opens in a week and a half. So I've got an entire other thing to be freaking out about, so non-story posts may be a little thin on the ground until I stop hyperventilating. Sorry. Go watch me dance (I'm the one with the pale, pale legs) or read TVTropes. Or read about zombies.


Link to Portable Solar Panels

I'm Baaaack

Hi.

So the week was interesting. I got sunburnt in new and exciting ways, received a Sexy Wristband Tan (the name not my own), and spent every minute not actually stamping brochures watching stuff like this:

A re-enactment of the Pearl Harbor attack. Complete with explosions and planes, but missing an actual harbor. 

And this:

The most representative bit is from 1:00 to 3:20. Yes, he did just cut his engine mid-air and tumble.

I've seen things fly that look like they shouldn't. I've gained a new appreciation for boredom, repetition, multi-tasking, and hot tea to soothe my vocal cords. I've bruised my hands from stamping, nearly been run over, (slightly, gently, and without damaging anything at all) bumped into my parents' car with mine, and used the word 'Hello' 4000 times, if my estimation is correct. 

• Estimation: Roughly 3 stamps a minutes (averaging out huge lines of people with 20 stamps a minute with the occasional slow moments), working 8 hours a day, for five days. 3 x 60 x 8 x 5 = 7200. I didn't say 'Hello' every time though (those huge lines again. Plus, I said 'Hi', too.) so about 4000.

I've learned more about current Ford models and concept cars that I ever needed to know. I did not meet George Lucas. I watched the first half of the first season of Community, because my library splits the seasons up by DVD for some reason. And finally, I discovered a situation in which I intend to use 'Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy, but here's my number, so call me maybe' only sort of ironically. Which is awesome. So.

I'm going to go pass out for a couple days, now.

Content!

This is a bunch of random recommendations for stuff that I like, because content is hard and my brain burnt itself out yesterday. Wheeeee!



First! I'm reblogging something from the amazing Mentalfloss Watercooler Ammo emails: The Disciples, a series of photographs by James Mollison, documenting the types of people to attend different concerts. The video projection in amazing, especially the first picture, of the Goths.

Especially these four. Yes, I'm slightly creepy. Deal.

Second! This makes my day, every time I see it.

Third! I have finally joined an MMORPG. It's Fantasy Online, and this might be my addictive nature and lack of experience speaking, but I like it. Level 40 in the past week! Woo!

Fourth and Finally! MIT has designed a mechanical Willy Wonka. No lie. It is a literal chocolate candy printer, with refillable cartridges. And less specifically, there's also just a straight food printer. Gene Wilder, purple suit, top hat and all, is in my head and grinning at me.

Gene Wilder, I'm sorry we ever doubted you.

Review: Angelmaker, by Nick Harkaway

Nick Harkaway has been one of my favorite authors since I first read The Gone-Away World a while back. I own that book, even, which should be an indicator of how much I love it, because I only buy books I adore lest I completely fill my room.

I'm about two series away from this.

Its cover is pink fuzzy stuff with neon green lettering and I loved it. Then I went to go read everything else by Harkaway. But much to my despair, I found out that The Gone-Away World was the only thing he'd written. Ever. He was in the process of writing a new book, though, called Angelmaker. So I put that on my mental 'Read As Soon As Available' list, and went on with my life.

Fast forward two years. In the meantime, I've reread Gone-Away at least twice, and completely forgotten to check if Angelmaker was published. (spoiler: it was) When I found out, I immediately geeked out, put it on hold at the library, and waited. For two weeks. Popular books, is Angelmaker. 

But I finally - finally - read it this last weekend. I'd say I read it all in one day, because it was that good, but that's a lie. I stayed up until 4 AM the next day to finish it, because it was that good, and that long. It was freaking amazing.

I glee'd about the last novel I reviewed, too, which may give you the impression that every novel I read I adore. That's not true at all. *cough 61 Nails cough* But Harkaway did something incredible with Angelmaker that made my head spin. He took tropes and turned them completely inside-out, then filled them with clockwork bees. No lie.

So. The first trope he made his minion: That of Those Two Bad Guys. Yes, there is a pair of bad guys. One is even tall and skinny and the other is short and fat. But they are not bosom buddies. They do not necessarily stick together. One even defects to the side of, for the sake of simplicity, what I'll call 'good,' and leaves the other out to dry. 

Then there's that of the White Sheep. Jack, the main character, is living a completely normal life, partly because he hopes it will atone for his father's former King of the Gangsters lifestyle. It doesn't work out, and it fails in the most spectacular way possible. It is, in fact, an Epic Fail. And I love it.

There's the Cloak and Dagger espionage bit. Edie, another main character, was one of England's most important female spies, and she was James Bond before he existed. Now, however, she's a 90-year-old woman who's decided to set off the supposed Doomsday machine that her lover from WWII made, because she figures the world can't get much worse.

Also, there are clockwork bees of TRUTH. And an underground criminal society! And a Prince-cum-Serial-Killer-cum-God-Wannabe. It's amazing.


I don't really have any issues with this book. Maybe a little less obscurity towards the beginning, but keeping those details hidden makes the end of the book a dozen times cooler. So, maybe not. Angelmaker has officially become one of my favorite books. *nodnod*

Germans Have Awesome Music

Music is my thing. Beyond writing, beyond acting, beyond even reading, music is the thing I need most. I'm a music geek to an almost silly extent - most of my favorite bands are groups that have unfortunately never even come near mainstream radio play (except for my guilty-pleasure hair metal bands). Which is why it completely shocks me that I only just discovered the amazingness that is German pop music.

That is Peter Fox singing Alles Neu. It is also insane and the best thing I have ever seen. It is also the song that drew me to find more. For the people who can't watch it, yes, those are monkeys drumming behind Fox in the image displayed. Yes, the entire thing is like that, only with an orchestra and an explosion.

This is Culcha Candela's Schöne Neue Welt. In the music video, which is embedding disabled because of stupid, there is also an explosion, funnily enough. The music video is cool enough that you should watch it just for the artistry. Plus the song is awesome.

There is no explosion in Kraftklub's Zu Jung, but there are bad-ass old dudes. It's funny, in a slightly depressing 'rock and roll is going to die with these dudes' way.


All of these are awesome songs. I had to find all the lyrics on a lyric translation site, to make sure I knew what was going on, but that doesn't lessen the awesome. The human voice is as much an instrument as a keyboard or guitar - if it's properly used, the words are unnecessary and occasionally detract from the song itself. There are several songs on top 40 radio today that I think would benefit if I couldn't understand what the singers were saying.

That's really all. *goes and listens to Alles Neu again*

Review: The Long Earth

My attitude going into this novel was basically one of glee mixed with mild apprehension. Pterry (Pratchett) is one of my favorite authors on the entire planet, bar none, but the last collaboration he did was in the eighties, and The Long Earth was't billed as his normal snarky work. Plus, it wasn't a Discworld novel. (Protip: you should really, really read the Discworld novels. Start with The Truth.) On the other hand, the last collaboration he did was Good Omens, which is the closest I've ever seen to a genuinely perfect book. He's also the creative force behind the Science of Discworld books, which are far less tacky then they sound and taught me more about the actual theories and hypotheses behind human evolution and development than all the science classes I've ever had, put together. It's safe to say my expectations were high.

Then I actually read the book and my mind. It was blown.

The basic idea behind the story is that the multiverse is a real thing, and ten or so years into the future, humanity suddenly gains the ability to 'step' from our Earth (Datum Earth) to next-door Earths, up and down the line (East and West are the arbitrary terms used) with the assistance of a machine called the 'stepper'. It gives the world a new dimension - hence the term and the title 'Long Earth'. The rest of the story basically explores the effects the suddenly infinite amount of space has on humanity, with the main plot being told from the view of natural stepper, Joshua Valiente, who doesn't need the machine to step. There are enough subplots and sideplots that my count got muddied up, because they interweave seamlessly. There is no wasted ink - it's safe to say that whenever a character or device or trait is mentioned, it's going to come in handy later on, although usually in a completely different manner than you'd expect.

Part of what makes it so good is that it feels realistic. You read about the Earth-Firsters, the people who want to ban stepping, and you think, yeah, that would happen. You read about the Australian Aborigines gone walkabout, leaving the planet for their new ever-ever, and it's real. Nothing feels contrived; there are no Dickensian Deus ex Machinas appearing to wrap it up. When good things happen, they don't feel forced, and when bad things happen, they feel realistically tragic. The book feels natural, almost more like an artfully written historical account than a novel. 

In that respect, the book reminds me of Makers, by Cory Doctorow, albeit with some steampunk influences. Really, it feels like a cross between Makers and the Foglios' Girl Genius series. Because while it is more scientific than sparky, there is still <spoiler> an airship run by and embodying a sentient A.I. </spoiler> and it is awesome.

I have one minor complaint, though. The ending, while suitably dramatic, almost feels a little abrupt. After the shattering discovery, there's just the dramatic phone call and a slam to black. It would make an amazing movie ending, with a huge orchestral score being played over the credits and the authors' names in white on a black screen, but in a novel the effect is lost a little. It feels slightly arbitrary. This might be an effect of the organic feel of the novel. There's more story left, I know it! I want to find out what happens in the aftermath of the shattering discovery! There's a sequel hook there, dammit, and I want to read the sequel now!

... I've taken a deep breath, I'm better now. The book is really, really good. Like, I-might-reread-it-this-afternoon-good, an honor that only my absolute favorite books have gotten. Because it's really really good. Read it. 

Excuses and SUGAAAR.

I've been away for a bit (yeah, sorry about that), but it was for, if not a good purpose, at least an explainable one. Rehearsals started for Mame, my current off-Broadway summer show, and also, I got The Long Earth. (squeeeeeeeeeeeeee)

So that's taken up most of my time for the past couple days. But never fear! Tomorrow a review of The Long Earth shall be put up, because now that I've said it will, it will hang over my consciousness until I actually write it. It shall hang like a doomy cloud of doom. Doooooom.

The reason it isn't being written now is because I'm on a bit of an adrenalin-and-sugar high, because my SAT scores just got in and I'm celebrating with an abundance of reese's cups. :D Nothing I wrote right now would be as coherent as I'd want a review of a Terry Pratchett novel to be, so I'm going to hold off until after the sugar crash.

 Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!

Rambling Thing About Yesterday

So. Yesterday. Yeah. About that.

So the day started at four, when I left for a friend's new house. Shut up, it's summer, I'm technically nocturnal now. I had my swim suit, because he has a hot tub, and if there is a hot tub I will rewire the house to be able to play whatever videogames are being played from within the hot tub and/or set up a string-and-can system to be able to participate in the conversations. Because hot tubs are that awesome. But then I showed up, and found out that the hot tub no longer worked due to some mechanical issue or another and I had never gotten the text telling me this. Sad face. Plus I now had to wander around for the rest of the day with a halter top bikini under my clothes.

Then there was the awkward hour and a half where Rockband was played, other people were given directions to the house that consisted of, and I quote, 'Just keep taking lefts until the road isn't blocked off any more,' more Rockband, a search for the ring I lost (which turned out to be at home,) and finally sitting and staring at each other while Devin sat in the corner making prank calls to random numbers.

Then Baustin received a text inviting us all to Chickenfest, which we leapt on because we'd completely run out of ideas of what to do since there was no hot tub. Having learned from experience, when we drove over I rode with Baustin, because Austin is a scary driver. And considering the fact that we saw him nearly cause three accidents in the twenty minute drive there, it was a wise choice. Seriously, freaking SCARY.

Then we got to Chickenfest (there were no chickens in evidence, sadly) and I discovered how much testosterone poisoning I was suffering when I turned into a freaking Valley Girl at the sight of Jess, my one stereotypically girly friend. I squee'd. I don't do that unless I'm in fangirl mode. Of course, I got free unlimited rides and a VIP pass for the concert from her because she didn't want to 'waste it on the guys,' so yay for me, I guess?

The concert was Stefano, apparently an American Idol reject. It probably says something about me that while the tweenage girls around us were screaming his name, I was spending way more time checking out the keyboard (and keyboardist) and sound system (and sound guy). Still not worth the bleeding ears from the tweenagers, though.

Then we (the guys and the girls) all met up by a gigantic motorized street-legal shopping cart and BSed for a while before Baustin wandered away, then called me to say that I had to head to the woods because FIREFLIES. Of course I promptly headed towards the woods. Jess followed, because no way no HOW was she letting me hang in the woods with the guy she wanted to be Her Guy. Right about then I remembered why I only have one girly friend, because she was becoming highly irritating and I just wanted to hang with my best friend and watch fireflies.

There were fireflies. It was cool. Then we all got slightly lost in the woods.

Yeah, walking through the woods after dark with no flashlights and no clue where we were going was a bad idea. Moving on.

There was a playground back in the festival area, so of course we took over the tire swing and just hung out talking and listening to the slightly above mediocre cover band perform in the tent behind us. Then I left, or tried to leave, and when I found out I couldn't due to directional issues I went back and found out everyone else had left. Which, of course, meant that I headed to the VIP concert section and listened to the final concert of the evening, a better cover band, and rocked out until my ride showed.





*A recent survey revealed 95% of my friends are guys. A further 4% are girls that are about as 'girly' as a pink flamethrower. Then there's Jess.

Mini Game Review Thing

I just finished one of the most recent games in my favorite game series ever, the Professor Layton games. For the third time in the history of the series I spent the end of the game crying. Curse games that make me feel... In any case, the game was awesome, as always. The gameplay is largely the same as normal - the only difference I noticed was that you're now able to drag around the navigation shoe icon and the menu trunk icon. Was that something we were able to do before? I don't know. I only found out about it this time by accident.

My one complaint - it's not much of a complaint, but still - is that I was able to predict a couple highly important plot twists half the game in advance. But the story was compelling enough to keep me going, just to see how they would be revealed. The predictable elements were offset by the trademark Layton moments of complete random absurdity. Where the first game had sudden clockwork, the second had hallucinogenic gas, and the third had a complete copy of London, this one has Nessie. Honestly. It's like the script-writers for the game read Sherlock Holmes, then took acid, and decided, 'We should write one of those detective stories. But we need it to be believable, so no actual magi- Hey, dude, that clock/bong/map/fish is staring at me!" That was their actual train of thought, I swear it.

Actually, no, I've one other complaint. I hatehateHATE those stupid sliding block puzzles where you have to get a square from one slot to another by moving all the other blocks around to make a spot for it. Stupid blocks that don't actually leave enough room for the square to move anywhere, much less get to the other side of the screen. asdfjhjh.

That is all. Professor Layton rocks.

How Not To Choose a College

Today, I was going to do something productive, like clean my room or try to plot out a story using songs on Spotify, but I was distracted when the mail came. A while back, I got a scouting letter from Yale, one of those mass mailings sent out to everyone in the top ten percent of their class or something. I get a lot of college junk mail, so the only reason I noticed the Yale one was because, holy crap, it's Yale scouting me. I ignored it though, because none of the East Coast schools are super high on my list of potential colleges; I joked about it, in fact, saying that if I got one from Harvard, I'd race the two letters to see which one won, and that would be the elite school to which I'd apply and from which I'd be rejected. Well, the Harvard scouting letter came today, and I remembered that I kept the Yale one, just in case. So today, instead of being productive, I staged a grand experiment: Which School's Paper Airplane Will Win?


Now, I'm going to do this right, because: A) I'm really bored, and B) I think it's funny. So. Here's the experimental log.

The Great Paper Airplane Race

• Goal: To see which airplane flies furthest
• Necessary Materials:
• Two (2) scouting letters, one each from Harvard and from Yale (each letter having two (2) pages)
• Two (2) plain sheets of printer-quality paper
• One (1) kitchen scale
• One (1) tape measure
• One (1) large, open basement in which to fly the planes.
• Procedure
• Weigh all sheets of paper, to determine if there is a bias towards either of the schools or the control. Not for any real reason, just for kicks.
• Take one (1) sheet from each scouting letter and one (1) sheet of regular printer paper, and fold all three sheets into a normal paper airplane, like so.
• Take the remaining sheets of paper and fold them into a different design of airplane. (I chose a slightly modified version of the Dart, the difference being that I folded the wings to give them a larger surface-area to weight ratio)
• Carefully throw all six paper airplanes across the basement.
• Measure after each set of throws and see which airplanes went furthest.
• Results
• (I'm going to record my thoughts here - bad form, I know)
• Harvard's paper weighs in at .010 pounds per sheet, while Yale weighs .015 lbs each and printer paper weighs again a light .010 lbs. This may result in a bias against Yale. Sorry, Yale.
• So, from a steady position  kneeling on my couch and leaning over the back, I start launching paper airplanes. First up were the normal planes. 
• Test One (Normal planes)
• Yale went first, with an unfortunate distance of ten feet, and an odd spin as it fell to the ground. Poor show, Yale
• Harvard did the exact same thing, however, with a worse showing of six feet. 
• The control went last, and did a loop before landing upside down, a somewhat better fifteen feet away.
• At this point, I realized I'd folded the planes oddly, a mistest was called,  and time was taken to correct their wings.
• Test One-B
• Harvard was thrown again, with better results, but was batted from the air by a rogue cat before the flight was completed. Second mistest called.
• Test One-C
• Harvard successfully flew twenty feet, with a graceful twirl and upright landing
• Yale successfully flew a surprising twenty-four feet, with a smooth landing and subsequent skid
• The control went roughly twenty feet, but ran into a box before it could skid further.
• Test Two (Dart planes)
• After numerous mistests, the causes of which included but were not limited to: planes circling around and flying essentially negative feet, planes falling open and drifting to the ground mid-flight, another rogue cat, and a plane circling around and hitting me in the head, a stapler was procured and one (1) staple was added to the tail of each of the three dart planes, for structural support
• Harvard flew a disappointing fourteen feet and landed upside down.
• Yale flew a somewhat better twenty feet, landed upside down, and pulled a 180 degree spin upon landing.
• The control did a nosedive, only flew eight feet.
• Discussion
• I should probably have thrown the planes several more times, just to make sure I achieved scientific rigour, but as the point of this experiment was mostly to entertain myself for an evening rather than actually prove anything, I'm not going to. 
• Mean Distance Flown
• Harvard: seventeen feet
• Yale: twenty-two feet
• Control: fourteen feet
• I'm thinking that the control's paper, not being of the nice, high-quality, quite-possibly-parchment stuff that the colleges' paper was, didn't have quite the lift that they did. Or maybe I just threw it weird. I don't know.
• Conclusion
• Yale wins!

So much for choosing what elite school I want to be rejected from in a mature, adult fashion. Huzzah for paper airplanes!

Easiness and Guns

Well, that calc. final was easy.

 Not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, so that's all I'll say.

The foreigns are leaving in roughly two weeks, and since we realized exactly how much American culture they've missed out on, we're trying to educate them. This weekend, it's either rollerblading or shooting guns. When I pointed out that there's just about nothing more American than shooting things, the general complaint from the Americans in the room was, 'Yeah, but do we really want to give guns to the communists?' (They're all from the former USSR satellite nations.) They were joking. I'm 99% sure of that.

In any case, I'm going shooting guns this weekend, both legit ones with gunpowder and stuff, and the kind that you control on the 70 plasma screen tv my friend keeps in his barn.

Yes, I have friends who keep televisions like that in their barns. We're a bunch of hicks, where else would it go? You should understand that this is the same guy who keeps the family's gun collection in his room. His dad is a freaking gun dealer. You could live through world wars III through X at his house.

If the zombie apocalypse happens, look for me there.

Big booms are going to happen. :D