The State of the Blog

Since my title is sort of a reference to the State of the Union address, here's a random tidbit - do you know state governor also make an address, called "State of the State" addresses?  Is that not hilarious?

No?  Just me?  Darn.

In other news, I'm sure you noticed that my background is like, whoa!  OH MY ROWLING WHAT DID SHE DO?  What is wrong with your background??  It's not right.

Basically, I've been playing around with new backgrounds recently, because I felt like the old one was too busy and distracting from other, more important things, like my hilarious jokes.

Did I ever tell you guys the Heisenberg/Schrodinger joke?

So Heisenberg is driving in the car, with Schrodinger in the passenger seat.  They get pulled over by a cop.
"Sir, do you know how fast you were going?"  The cop asks.
"No," replies Heisenberg, "but I can tell you where I was!"

So the police officer takes that as a suspicious comment and searches the car.  In the trunk, he finds a dead cat in a box.
"Sir, did you know you have a dead cat in your trunk?"  The cop asks, bewildered.
"Well,"  says Schrodinger, "I do now."

So, what was I talking about?  Oh yes, backgrounds.  It was distracting from my wonderful jokes.  So I changed it to this lovely thing with lots of awesome nerdy pictures.  However, I suck and all the pictures were blurry and pixely and it looked very un-lovely.  So I've been playing around, and this green boring thing that you see on your screen before you is the result.

Clearly, I'm not very good at this.  I'd love some suggestions on what backgrounds are good and which ones suck and all that.  Also, let me know your preference, because I have no idea what you peeps like.  I'm an awesome person, not a mind reader, okay?

So, yeah.  Leave a comment and let me know.  Or answer the survey, I guess, but it's not as cool, because it's anonymous, and then I can't go and crush anyone who criticizes me.

Kidding!  I love criticism.  Seriously, please tell me what you think, honestly.  I'm lost here.

Best wishes, peeps.
(I need a better name for you guys than "peeps."  Must deliberate.  Farewell.)

So, we had some snow...

You know what the Nazca lines are?  They're these huge giant lines in the middle of Peru.  On the ground, they look something like this:

Not very impressive, right?  Just some dusty lines in the sand.  Well, these lines go on for miles and miles, and when you fly over them and look from above, they look like this:

Crazy, huh?  They were somehow made before the people were actually able to look at them, and make sure they looked right.  Impressive.

So anyways, my sister and I decided to make our own, reduced-size version of the Nazca lines in the snow.  Here's what we ended up with:

It doesn't look quite right because the photo is taken from our second-story bathroom.  We couldn't convince our mom to let us rent a helicopter to fly directly over it and take a proper picture.

I wonder if it can be seen by people in airplanes.  That would be SO COOL.

Ultimate Battle: Neil Patrick Harris vs. the Milk Carton of Doom

This happened about two weeks ago, but I forgot to post it, so here's a fun story.

First, during Creative Writing, we did something called "found" poems, in which we cut words out of magazines and glued them together to make poems.  I was cutting up a People magazine when I found a lovely picture of Darren Criss singing to me.  My friend then found a random picture of Neil Patrick Harris holding a chicken (no, I don't know why).  We cut them out and I saved them.  

Next period, for our AP World test, I gave Darren Criss to my friend as a good luck charm, and then gave NPH to another friend during lunch.  After lunch, we wander down to the office and find a hole in the wall, as though someone had taken a 2 by 3 by 4 inch block out of the wall.  We stood there for a while, pondering why there was a hole in the wall.

We never found out why, but my friend had a great idea to put Neil Patrick Harris (and his chicken) into the hole, just to see how long it lasted, and if anyone would notice.  We propped him up and said goodbye.

Meanwhile, Darren Criss got taped to his own special page in my friend's history notebook, labeled with the caption "This is what supermegafoxyawesomehot looks like."

Two days later, we went to check on Neil Patrick Harris.  He was gone, and the hole instead had a milk carton in it.  Strange.

Moral?  In a fight between Neil Patrick Harris (+ chicken) and a milk carton, bet on the milk carton.

Just going on a tangent (pun intended)

Since when do they even give you projects in math?  I think my last one was in 8th grade, but that wasn't a project.  We had to make a kite (my group won Best Design: it was an Escher lizard tessellation).

But basically, we have a Pre-Calc Project.  We have to choose an island, find its tide information, and graph it as a sine or cosine wave.  Then, do this stuff involving slope and wheelchair ramps and other things that I won't get into.

I have a group of three.

Theoretically.

In reality, it's a group of me, except there will be three names on the final project that we hand in.

Happy Alaska Young Day!

This message brought to you from 6th Period Marketing class.  Just to let you know that I am awesome.  You must admit, it's an important fact to note.

Happy Alaska Young Day!  If you don't know who that is, go straight to your local library and check out "Looking for Alaska" (in your pants) by John Green.

Do you know how I'm going to celebrate Alaska Young Day?  That's right, I'm going to meet John and Hank Green!

You have no idea how difficult it is for me to stay coherent at this moment, and not dissolve into a fit of babbling.

You see, for those non-Nerdfighters amongst you, today is not only Alaska Young Day, but the release date of John Green's new novel, "The Fault in Our Stars."  And I, flyergirl13, will be attending the first stop on John's book tour, the Tour De Nerdfighting, which is right here in Massachusetts in about 5 hours.

Yes, you are all very, very jealous.  

Whoops, class is almost over.  Have fun with your mundane evening plans!  DFTBA, yo.


UPDATE:
I'm sorry if you didn't understand that, I was slightly crazed with excitement when I wrote it.  John Green is one of my favorite authors, and I went to the book signing for the release of his new book, The Fault in Our Stars (which I already finished and is absolutely incredible.  HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.)
What I liked best about the event was, obviously, John and Hank, but also all the other people there. Imagine an auditorium of over 800 people, and you could (and we did) walk up to ANYONE (literally) and start a conversation, and become friends.  And don't get me started on the vast number of awesome, infinitely nerdy t-shirts present.
This is getting to be a long update, so I won't go into the details (you know, Hank in a tutu, TFiOS waving, all that jazz) so peace out, dudes.

Making my very own hipster photos

I wanted to try it out...here's what I came up with.

1) Start with a crappy picture of a person in a random pose.  (Yes, I took that...a while ago)

2) Now, first I opened it up in the Microsoft equivalent of Photoshop.  Crank up the contrast and down the brightness.

3) Already looking pretty hipster, isn't it?  Next, I blurred the whole thing a bit.

4) Now, I scrolled through the filters until I found one that made it look old and stuff.  Choose your own and apply.

5) Not done yet!  Next, Rotate and crop the image to make it artsy.

6) Note the artsy tilt of the horizon.  Finally, our final step is to add an angsty, nonsensical statement about the meaning of life or lost love in white helvetica text.  I didn't have helvetica (gasp!) so I used the most hipsterish font I could find.

And you're done!  Are you proud?  Now post it on your tumblr and be proud of your obscure photography style.  You are so not mainstream.

(Parentheses)[Brackets]{Squiggly Brackets that I don't know the official name of but look cool}

When making a list, I almost always write my numbers like this 1) with parentheses, not like this 1. with a period.

Why?  I only recently came to the realization of this habit, and I spent much time pondering exactly why I do this.  OCD?  Maybe, but I don't know.

After a great deal of consideration, I came to the conclusion that I think it has something to do with my fear for my numbers' safety.  See, if my words were to attack the poor numbers standing at the end of the lines, the numbers wouldn't be able to do much to protect themselves.  They're greatly outnumbered (pun intended), one number for every line of many words.  If the words chose to attack, the numbers would be goners.

So, to prepare my numbers in the case of potential word rebellion, I give them parentheses.  It could act as a sort of shield, right?  At least more so than a useless period.  If a parentheses is a shield, a period would be a rock.  Oh, like throwing at rock at some words will do much.  It might take out a few letters, but you'd still be left with lots of them coming at you.

Lesson to be learned from this?

Rocks are not sufficient defense against a horde of angry words.