Confessions

1. I am sorry, Blogger, but I am having an affair with tumblr.  I hope you're not offended.

2. I confess that I have become quite fangirly over BBC's Sherlock.  Only a teensy bit obsessed.  Maybe more.

3. I confess that I told you I wouldn't post any more Gallifreyan art, yet here it this.  This also relates to #2

The text in this one, with which I took quite a few liberties in terms of organization, says "I am SHERlocked," which is of course from A Scandal in Belgravia.
As always, done entirely in Sharpie.  And took far longer than any other Gallifreyan artwork I've done.  Drawing Benedict Cumberbatch is HARD!  But I'm quite pleased.

The many faces of "okay"

So, texting.  Also, Facebook or Gmail chat or whatever.  We've all had that time, like the common situation I illustrate below, when you have nothing to say but "okay."  But how to do it?  Do you use "ok?" Or maybe just "k?"  Today, I solve the conundrum!

Let's get down to it, then!

Option One: "Okay"
It's simple.  It's classic.  What more to say?

Pros:
- Classy
- Traditional
- Makes you sound British.  Not that British people say "okay" any more than any other people, just that saying the full "okay" makes you sound like the kind of person who sips tea by the fire wearing a bow tie.

Cons:
- Long.  I mean, four letters is a lot to type when I'm such an important person
- Makes you sound formal, like a stuffy penguin who never has any fun.

This penguin is clearly stuck-up and unfriendly.  Don't be like this penguin.

Option Two: "'kay"
A nice abbreviation that lets you skip a whole letter, sort of.

Pros:
- The apostrophe in 'kay makes you sound kind of like Hagrid.  And half-giants are cool.  What's that?  You're just big-boned?  I didn't mean to offend you.
- Sounds kinda ghetto.  'kay, man, fo' shizzle.

Cons:
- Sounds kinda ghetto.
- Apostrophes are hard on most phones.  And skipping the apostrophe and just saying "kay" is just wrong.  I mean, what if it's someone's name?

Gangsta penguins (like this bad guys) say 'kay

Option Three: "k"
One of the most scorned abbreviations on the internet

Pros:

- Short and simple

- Can be used interchangeably with "potassium," to the confusion of all your non-nerd friends

Cons:

- Could get you scorned or killed slowly with a blunt weapon

Option Four: "kk"

For those who want to sound cute, and don't want to open themselves to the derision of the "k" users.

Pros:

Can't think of any

Cons:

- sounds dumb

- could be accidentally mistyped as "kkk," leading to many potentially awkward situations.

This is the penguin that "kk" reminds me of

Option Five: "OK" or "ok" or "Ok"

I use OK because that's what my phone corrects it to.  You might use ok.  "Ok" makes me thing of the alot.  I think that the Ok would would be a cross between an oxen and a kangaroo, and it is summoned in awkward conversations when the only thing left to say is "Ok."

Pros:

- Simple.

- Socially acceptable

Cons:

- From this point on, whenever you see the word "Ok," you will now have the image of the terrifying ox-kangaroo cross-breed I have created.  I am very sorry.

That came out looking much less cool and much more demented-centaur
than I was intending.  I apologize.

Wait, what's that you say?  This post needs more penguin pictures?  All right.  I comply with your demands.

I urge you to watch this video. 

A bit late but...the election happened

And I am SO not going to talk about it.  I love political arguments, but I have no desire to get in one right now.  So I'm not going to give my opinion.

By the way, in case you're wondering, the best wayto win any political argument is to call your opponent a communist.  Nothing can ever go wrong if you do this.  I swear.

My friend and I do that.  We start debating something, and it desintegrates into calling each other members of various political parties throughout history, which aren't really insults but are fun to say insultingly.
"You're a communist!"
"You're a socialist!"
"Marxist!"
"Federalist!"
"Anti-Federalist!"
"Whig!"
"Know-Nothing partier!"
"Populist!"
"Progressive!"
"Prohibitionist!"
"Secessioner!"
"War Hawk!"
"Hamiltonian!"
"Jeffersonian!"
"Free-Soiler!"

...and so on.  After taking AP US, I know a lot of historical political parties.

Moral of this story?  No matter who you rooted for in this election, be glad that we didn't elect a Know-Nothing partier.  They were basically the "Americans are superior; keeep out the immigrants" party and were anti-[insert any minority race or religion here].  They died out in the late 1850s.

Hey guys, I'm still alive

Yeah, the hurricane blew the roof off my house, and now I'm drifting down Main Street on a salvaged car bumper, typing this on a internet-enabled microwave.

Actually, I'm sitting in my brightly lit bedroom, having just watched the first episode of Sherlock (which I finally have time to watch).  It's pretty much stopped raining, and I still don't have school tomorrow.  Whyyyyyyy?

I've been watching people look live-blog the storm, seen horrible reports, the whole deal. The most exciting thing here? Well, at one point, the wind blew pretty loudly, and I couldn't hear Benedict Cumberbatch's witty remark.

Today, I read two chapters in my AP Physics textbook for fun (because we won't cover them in class). I guess I'll do the problems tomorrow.

In case you couldn't tell, this has been a disappointing hurricane on my end.

Halloween Movies

Last night, I went to a friend's house for a Halloween hang-out thing.  We wanted to watch a Halloween movie, but half the people wanted to watch a horror movie (like, The Omen or The Exorcist) and half were terrified of that and wanted to watch Ghostbusters or The Nightmare Before Christmas (which I'm not entirely sure if it's a Halloween movie or a Christmas movie...).

So we compromised and ended up watching this hilariously terrible 80s movie called "Killer Klowns from Outer Space."  It was horrible.  Like, you have no idea.  It was entertaining solely because it was so horrible

There were these clowns from outer space that shot popcorn at people, and then wrapped them up in cotton-candy cocoons to eat.  And the main characters were so stupid that we were rooting for the clowns.  It was bad.

BUT we had a good time.  Several of my friends are likely going to sleep with their lights on for a while.  We got to criticize it and scream at the screen and make fun of the continuity flaws.  Like, how the girl takes off her pants by pulling them UP.  We were confused.

I'm trying to imagine what would happen if we had killer clowns descend upon Earth.  Mostly, I think it would be awesome.

Oh, and then we watched half of a movie called "Troll Hunters" which was in Norwegian.  I'd already seen it - it's actually quite good.  In a weird sort of way.

I'm thinking I might post about this whole hurricane thing next.  I can either tell you about how awesome it was, or how much of a disappointment it was.  If I have power.  See ya then!

Friends, today was a monumentous occasion

So today I was in a public bathroom at Jordan's furniture. And I realize that things that happen in bathrooms are probably not what you want to hear about. But hear me out!

Basically, you know the automatic flushers, that always go off right under your butt? Yeah, those. Well, today, my automatic flusher went off at the exact right time. Perfectly!

It pretty much made my day. I just thought I'd share my little mini moment of awesome for the day.

I have a problem

See, I know a lot of facts.  And I like to tell them to people, because having a more informed populace is good, right?

Well, I'm just afraid my friends will hate me.

Consider the following, which was posted on my Facebook wall by a very good friend, whom I'm very close with:

My first reaction was to comment something like this:

"Actually, it wasn't a space jump.  People said that Felix jumped from 'the edge of space,' but actually, the (arbitrarily) politically defined 'edge of space' is 100 km above Earth, and Felix only jumped from 37 km up.   However, if we're talking about the scientific edge of space, you could say that there are still remnants of earth's atmosphere as far as 10000 km away.  However, it is the highest he could have physically gotten in his helium balloon, because helium rises only because it is less dense than air.  The atmosphere gets less dense the higher you go, so above 37 km, helium is no longer less dense than the atmosphere, and the balloon won't rise any higher.  I agree though, it was a pretty cool jump."

However, I read that over, and immediately I became slightly worried that my friend would hate me to the end of time for going all factual on what was clearly meant as a fun post.

So, as of yet, I haven't commented.  I don't know what to say!

This problem isn't new, either.  And the last time, I actually posted the comment.  AND it was on a political post, making it 10 times worse.

One of my friends was talking about the news that Romney was using a KKK slogan in his campaign.  This sounded ridiculous to me, so I googled it.  I found the following sources of information:
a) The campaign video that used the alleged KKK slogan
b) The Washington Post article that accused Romney of the deed
c) The editor's note at the top of the article, which admits that the article "contains multiple serious, factual errors" including that fact that the video that sparked this whole debacle says, at the end, "Mitt Romney does not actually support this ad."

So I commented on my friend's post with this news.  I was pretty polite about it, I think.  I guess my friend was a bit unhappy with how I had ruined her anti-Romney post.  Oops.

I just don't know what to do.  I try to tell my friends interesting things (like, last week I enlightened them about how the Earth is in a stable orbit with the sun, which is what prevents us from spiraling inward into a fiery combustion).  And the other day, when we walked by a creepy winged angel statue, I educated them all about the dangers of blinking.

Seriously though.  I don't know how to reply to the Felix post.  What do I do?

Also, here's my Felix Baumgartner artwork!  The Gallifreyan text says "Sometimes you have to get really high just to see how small you are."  Which is an actual Felix quote before he jumped.

Just two more

Sorry for not having anything else to post, so here's two more Gallifreyan art pieces I made (if you don't know what I'm talking about, see the original post).

Numba One: Deathly Hallows Mashup
I'm a huge fan of combining fandoms.  Like this picture just screams ALL THE FANDOMS.  I mean, LOTR, Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Star Wars, and Doctor Who, all in one picture?  Freakin' awesome.

Anyways, that picture is not my Gallifreyan artwork.  This is it.  The Gallifreyan text in the middle says "A man in a million could unite the Hallows" which is a quote by Dumbledore in book seven.

Numba Two: Huzzah Science!
This one isn't really a fandom.  But here ya go:

In case you can't tell, this is the Apollo 13 mission logo.  The Gallifreyan text, which is floating around in space, and also cleverly (I think so) hidden in the moon and the sun, says the famous "Failure is not an option."  (That quote was never actually said, but was made for the movie)

Gallifreyan Galore

So, I recently learned how to write in Circular Gallifreyan, which, if you don't know, is a transliterated language from Doctor Who.

I've just been making some pretty things with it - quotes and drawings and such.  By the way, these were all created by hand - with a pencil, a compass, and lots of black pens and Sharpies.  No computer stuff here.
That's all.  Enjoy :)

 This one was my first ever large Gallifreyan project.  It says "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings."  It's a quote from Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar and was used in John Green's book The Fault in Our Stars.

This is another quote from a John Green book, this time from Looking for Alaska.  It says "No one can catch the motherfucking fox."

This one was made in response to soulpancake's time-lapse art video on fear.  I tried to film the creation, but, having never done so before, failed miserably.  But here's the picture.  The Gallifreyan text says "This is fear" and it's supposed to represent my fear of losing myself.  Hence the maze (which is actually solvable...that was hard), the city, and snowflake letters.

I've been working on this one for a while.  As you can see, it's the mockingjay symbol from The Hunger Games.  The Gallifreyan says "May the odds be ever in your favor."  I really liked the way it turned out, and I'm pretty proud of this one.
I'm also hoping to make a time-lapse type video of its creation.  I'll post a link if I manage it.

UPDATE: Here's the link to the YouTube video of the creation of the mockingjay! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOCGJrBqBVY

Gravity is cool!

So we were doing a lab in AP Physics today.  It involved two different masses hanging side by side from a pulley, and then letting it accelerate and timing how long it took, then calculating the acceleration.  That may not have made sense, but the point is, we got a percent error of about 27%, which is not very good.

So we started brainstorming what could possibly have caused this error.  It's not the mass or friction of the pulley, because that would skew the results in the other direction.  It was probably due to human error in timing the experiment, but our eventual conclusion is way cooler.

I came up with this.  See, all masses create a gravitational field.  The more massive an object, the greater the force exerted by its gravitational field on other masses.  That's why the Earth, which is very massive, can exert force on us when we are so far away from the core; whereas we don't feel inexplicably drawn to, say, a bowling ball.  (Though if you feel an inexplicable attraction to a bowling ball, I'm not judging you, don't worry.)

So therefore, the most massive member of our lab group must be exerting gravitational force on the masses in the experiment, and causing the results to be screwy (because when calculating our theoretical value, we only took account of the Earth's gravitational force.  Adding another force on the system would change the results).

Someone proposed measuring the masses of each group member and banishing the most massive member, but they were overruled.  Unfortunately, the period ended before we could try the experiment again, this time standing several meters away to prevent any gravitational interference.  Oh, well.

For those who don't do physics, let me clarify: this is entirely preposterous, because the amount of gravitational force caused by a human would be incredibly, incredibly small.  We can even calculate the force between, say, a 60 kg person and a 1 kg mass that are 1 meter apart.

F = GMm/r^2

Where G = 6.67300 × 10^-11 m³ kg^-1 s^-2

So we plug in the two masses for M and m, and divide by 1 sqaured, which is still one, and get that the force exerted by the person on the mass is 4x10^-9 N.  Which is very very very small.  Negligible.

....I just realized that this was probably not at all interesting.  I apologize.  I promise, no more equations.  I just find this so COOL!

Well, actually, this concludes this post.  I was gonna say one more thing about our Science Olympiad team, but I just realized it involves equations.  I'm already gonna lose all my non-science/math readers, so I'm not going to push it.  Over and out, yo.

P.S. Your computer is probably pulling you towards it right now, with a force of somewhere around 3.2 x 10^-8 N.  Don't let it get you!

P.P.S. This is Bill Amend drawing for xkcd.  The second comic is related.  The others are also funny.

I think I'm vaguely stuck in the 90's...

Despite the fact that I'm barely old enough the remember the 90s.

You see, back this spring, my dad replaced the radio system in my car (against my protests that it was perfectly functional, thank you very much).  Or rather, the car that my parents so graciously allow me to drive.

Now, my radio has a fancy radio, a USB and auxiliary input.  I hardly use them.  All I use is my CD slot.

I love CDs, and I don't know why.  It would be easier, and higher quality, less wasteful, and the same thing if I just made playlists and played those.  But there is something I can't give up about CDs.

It's irrational, I know.  It drives my dad bonkers.  Sorry.

Maybe I'm just a hipster?  I dunno.  I just love my CDs.

On an absolutely, totally unrelated note, I broke my phone.  (That's not really true.  It was a very logical, straightforward thinking process.  I went to Wikipedia to read about CDs, because I was curious.  It made me think of my Wikipedia app and how I love it with all my heart, because I can read random things whenever I want, which made me think of my phone.)

While on vacation, I dropped it.  It smacked the corner of a wooden table and got a deep crack in it.  Luckily, the touch screen still works (as of right now, at least) but it's done funky things to the LCD screen.  It started with purplish discolorment that started around the deepest crack, and slowly spread across the screen like a rainbow.  Once a full rainbow made it across, now it's all dark and hard to read.  Not fun, and it's gonna cost a lot to fix.  :(

Because that description did not adequately capture the situation, I made a guide to show the progression of the death of my screen.  I'm quite proud.

The nerdiness of this post is slightly overwhelming

So I'm at a program at WPI (Worcester Polytechnic Institute - college in Massachusetts) and it's pretty freaking awesome.  Just thought you should know.

So here's how this goes down: 200 nerds from across the globe gathered together to be awesome and learn things.  I'm in physics, so we're learning about astronomy and black holes and quantum mechanics and special relativity and all that mind-blowing theoretical craziness.  I'm also in creative writing, since we're required to take one main STEM class (physics) and also one Humanities and Arts class, for this camp that I'm at.

Basically, it's amazing.  We've played countless games of Magic the Gathering and Settlers of Catan and Egyptian Rat-Screw.  We've held many Rubik's Cube competitions.  We've broken out into Disney medleys on the bus.  We've had light saber duels on the quad (nerf guns are, quite unfortuantely, forbidden at WPI).  We've played Ninja, quite a bit.  We've had multi-hour-long debates about quantum physics and how one would survive the eventual collapse of the universe (including detailed plans on how to become a cyborg-human and create an alternate universe within a quantum computer).  We've eaten ice cream cake at 8AM. 

The best part is, we're all crazy nerds here.  Not only do they understand my nerdy t-shirts, we can have awesome debates about Legend of Korra or Death Note or Nerdfighteria.  We all understand the internet jokes that everyone makes.

The funny thing is, every morning, the Program Assistants slip an announcement sheet under your dorm door, listing out the day's schedule and announcements.  And on the back, they put a comic.  For the past three days, its been an xkcd comic, and about 80% of the camp was talking about how they'd seen that comic before.  It's great.

Anyways, just letting you know that I'm not dead, and that I'm actually being awesome, just not online.  I have real-life nerd friends too!  Be proud of me.

I don't sleep very well on vacation

Because my sister is an octopus.

We are, more often than not, forced to share a bed. And by octopus, I mean flailing tentacles kind of thing.
Here is a picture of a fair bed arrangement. An ideal arrangement, of course, would be that I get the whole bed and she can sleep on the floor or something. But this diagram is what I consider fair sharing of our bed resources.

However, that is not the case. Next, I enclose a picture of the actual sleeping arrangement. See if you can guess which one is me.

Can you tell why I don't sleep well?

In other news, I got a blogger app on my phone. So if this post is messed up, that's why. Not because I'm incompetent. Don't blame me!

I cleaned out my backpack today

My mom always nags me about how heavy my backpack is, and I always insist that I need everything that's in it.  Well, since school's over tomorrow, I cleaned it out today.  Here's what I found.  You can tell me if you think I really need it all, but I swear: it's all necessary.

Things I Found In My Backpack (Besides, you know, actual schoolwork and things)

• 2 books (I, Lucifer and Virals)
• 1 planner (unused since February)
• 3 Rubik's cubes (one normal, one from the Mathworks, one hell cube)
• 1 Book Sock (cupcake design)
• 1 HUGE binder clip (like three inches wide)
• 10 erasable gel pens (my favorite things in the world)
• 1 bottle of White-Out
• 2 calculators (scientific and graphing)
• 2 zombie finger puppets (necessary-I swear)
• 1 school ID card (squashed beneath my math textbook)
• 1 Vera Bradley change purse
• 1 yellow highlighter
• 1 silver Sharpie
• 1 dinosaur rubber ducky (Again, this was completely necessary to carry to school every day)
• 18 buttons (like the pin type that I stick on my backpack)
• 2 CDs
• 1 DVD (thankfully in a case)
• Approximately 400 vocab notecards (I didn't count, sorry)
• 5 chopsticks (not sure where the 5th one's partner went)
• 1 tube of body lotion (made everything in my backpack smell like pomegranate)
• 1 hairbrush
• 2 necklaces

You never know when you might need these things, okay?  I like to be prepared!

Puppy-Dog Eyes

They say that telemarketers have one of the worst jobs, because your self-esteem levels plunge when you get constantly rejected.  My friend says (no citation for this fact) that the companies make them play "games" where they have to click on smiley faces to try to raise self-esteem and positive attitude.

Doesn't sound like much fun.

I'm getting my own little taste of telemarketing.  For my history project, we have to fix a global issue.  My group chose malnutrition, so in addition to writing papers and making a presentation, we have to raise money for a charity related to our issue.  So I have to go around school all week, shaking my money collection jar in peoples’ faces and begging them to donate to the malnourished children.

I guess I look sorta like this:

My friends tell me I’d be a good salesperson, because whenever someone asks about it, I can go on and on telling them all the horrifying statistics and how, if they donate just 75 cents, that’s enough money to buy nutrient supplements to increase a child’s lifespan by an entire year.  ( I could go on, but I don't want to scare you away.)

There are plenty of people who are quite generous, and plenty of people who say no.  Most people feel guilty saying “no,” though, so they say something like “I don’t have any money with me.”  Which could be true.  I don’t judge.

It was actually hilarious, though, when I asked one teacher, “would you like to donate some spare change to help malnourished children?”  He simply said “No, thanks” and walked away.  I sorta stood there, a bit shocked, because no one had said “no.”  Everyone just said that they didn’t have money or that they’d already donated to someone else.  I wasn’t offended, I just found it amusing how direct he was.

Also, my group put up flyers to advertise our issue.  Everyone else put their flyers on the designated flyer boards.  We put them everywhere: the backs of Exit signs, on the ceilings, in bathroom stalls.  Why?  Because malnutrition doesn’t follow the rules, either!  (I just made that up, but it sounds good, right?  Mostly, we just wanted to be rebels.)

Over and out.  Oh, and if you want to donate to the malnourished children, I strongly encourage it.  Just send me a blank check and I’ll make sure it’s all in order.  Don't worry about a thing.

(Seriously, though.  If you’re interested, I recommend looking at Helen Keller International, which is the charity we’re supporting.)

Ferdinand has a message for y'all

I'm sorry, people.

Yeah, it's been like a month since I last posted.  Do I feel bad?

...well, a little bit.  But it's been busy, I swear!  I mean, in the time I've been gone:

• AP Psychology Exam
• AP World History Exam
• Prom
• Prom #2 (at my date's school)
• "Saving the world" end-of-year history project (in which my group is focusing on micronutrient biofortification, mostly because I love saying all those syllables)
• And other things.  Like, you know, living!  Be proud of me, I have a life!

Yeah, as you can see, I really honestly could have posted.  But I didn't.  In apology, I will give you this picture of a....thing.  I honestly don't know what it is; I just know that it's carrying a pink sparkly magic wand.  I'm going to call it Ferdinand.

Please enjoy casting your eyes upon Ferdinand in all his splendor.  I wonder why he has a pink sparkly magic wand?  That, my friends, is an answer you will only discover if you forgive me for not having posted in, like, eons.

I won't make excuses.  I'm just here to apologize, and I'll try to post something decent in the near future.  Until then....Ferdinand has a little something for you:

Ding-Dong Ditching with a twist

So I was inspired by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and John Green's videos on Positive pranking, and decided to trty it out myself.  My sister and I went to Stop & Shop and bought a box of Hostess Ding-Dongs.  Then, we attached notes to them, and "ding-dong ditched" some random strangers.  That is, we put attached an explanatory note to the Ding-Dong, left it on their porch, rang the doorbell, and bolted.

That's a Ding-Dong with a note on it.

Overall, the whole thing made me really happy.  I got to go around watching people discover food left on their front porch.  I really hope they enjoyed the gift.  It makes me feel good to think I might have made someone's day better.  I mean, my day would certainly be better if I discovered someone had left a Ding-Dong on my porch.

The only annoyance was when people weren't home and didn't answer the door.  We couldn't exactly leave chocolate covered food on their porch when it was a sunny day, so we had to go collect it and move on.  We started only targeting houses that had garage door open, because it meant they were almost definitely home.

I strongly suggest trying a "Positive Prank" yourself.

So...Nathaniel Hawthorne was Sicilian?

I think the thing that made my day was when I discovered that Nathaniel Hawthorne used the word "inconceivable" in The Scarlet Letter.

We had a sub in English, and were assigned to read chapters 10 and 11.  Being the good, dutiful students that we are, my friends and I did the work.  We read in a happy reading circle: we sat criss-cross applesauce on the floor and switched off every sentence.

People looked at us strangely, which was the best part, but the sub pretended not to notice.  Then we came across the part with "inconceivable" and my friend shouted it, since we're all big Princess Bride fans.  The sub looks up and stares right at us, says "I do not think it means what you think it means."  Then she kept doing work like nothing had happened.

Made my day.

So, tonight, I have a presentation night for something called Humanities Scholar's Collaborative.  A bunch of students apply, and you get to be part of the group that meets with HSC groups at other schools, and goes to local colleges to hear professors talk about something in relation to the year's theme, which this year is "the family in America."  Tonight is the culminating night, in which each group performs a skit about the American family structure in an assigned decade.  We're doing the 1990s.

I get to play a neighborhood gossip woman.  I also get to wear a visor, scrunchie, and fanny pack - classic stereotypical suburban 90s mom.  This shall be exciting.

Finally, the only other noteworthy news is that Relay For Life was last Friday.  My friend and I set a goal to walk 100 laps - our track is 1/4 miles so that's 25 miles.  Originally, we actually wanted 105 laps so we could say we walked a marathon, but we ran out of time.  We actually had to sprint the last few laps so we could finish before they kicked everyone out at 6am.  We were sprinting after having walked 24 miles.

Yeah, I could hardly move my legs for the rest of the weekend.

I've started Pottermore-ing

Is that a word?  Now it is.

But before I can talk rationally and coherently discuss this new development, if you will please excuse the following:

OH MY ROWLING!  ZOMG!  YESSSSSSSSSSSSS
*happy dance*


It's official, guys.  I mean, I have a Gryffindor patch on my backpack, and my penpal made me a Gryffindor bracelet, but now J.K. ROWLING has confirmed it!

*ahem*

I have regained my composure and would like to inform the world that I have joined Pottermore.  After not getting into the Beta testing in October and clicking back every week since then to see if it was finally open to the public yet.

And finally my labors were rewarded.

Friends, my name is NifflerCauldron2980 (add me as a friend!) and I am a Gryffindor!  My wand is cedar and unicorn hair, 11 inches, unbending.  And so far I have contributed a great 14 points to my House (but I'm not sure how I did that).

Basically, Pottermore is pretty cool.  My favorite part is reading J.K. Rowling's little notes and backstories about the characters and plotlines and how it all came together.  The extra stuff, where it lets you duel people and brew potions and things, is fun as well.

But, WOW brewing potions is hard.  And stressful.  All these thoughts were going through my head:

• Which of these little bags of ingredients is snake fangs?  TELL ME NOW.
• Where the freak is my wand??!
• Who knew heating cauldrons to the right temperature was so hard? 
• I'm really good at grinding bezoars.
• What am I supposed to do for the three minutes that my potion brews?  Just stare at the screen and hope that I didn't add too many porcupine quills?

I have tried, and failed, to brew the Antidote to Common Poisons at least six times.  All of these failures are because I let my cauldron overheat while it is cooking for five seconds.

Potions are hard.  How was Lily so good at it??

Also, there's one, easily remedied issue that makes me sad:

However, all I see is:

Alas.  I shall stay with my friend-less-ness and continue to fail at brewing potions.  Wish me luck!

Colleges are pretty un-creative when it comes to photos

So I'm a junior in high school, who did reasonably well on the SATs.  So colleges are sending me things in the mail.  Also, I'm touring colleges, so I have a lot of brochures.

When I get these, I like to play a game called "Spot the Cliche College Photo."  Basically, I've noticed that the majority of pictures used in college brochures are variations on the same basic idea.  It's fun to go through and see them all.  All are actual photos from college websites or brochures.

I just find it really funny how all their pictures have the same theme.

I grouped these based on the major categories I usually find.  Some fall into multiple categories.  There are a lot of other groups that I didn't include, like "Students with Face Paint in the School Colors" or "Students Standing in Front of a Blackboard With Complicated Equations Written On It."  Let me know what ones you notice!

For example:

The "Smart Kids Wearing Lab Coats"
(this category may also contain "Students Looking Through a Microscope" or "Students Waering Safety Glasses" or "Students Holding Up a Test Tube and Peering Into It")

The "Students having Fun on the Quad"

The "Students Working Together, Because We Are All One Big Happy Community"

The "Students Doing Things With Complex-Looking Mechanical Items"

The "Our Students Have School Spirit!"