Steampunk blog post 2

What was the beginning of steampunk and where did it start, and why was it created?

In Ms. Maxwells class, we are investigating deeper into our topic of steampunk. We also had to create a question about steam punk and investigate it further. The question I ended up with was, what was the beginning of steampunk, where did it start, and why did people create it? I began my research with history of steam punk, where I learned that the word steampunk was first derived from the book Morlock Night, by J.K. Jeter. Jeter used the word to describe a genre of fiction which is based around the advances that came with the discovery of steam, and its technological side.

Nowadays we use the word to describe a artistic movement, not so much the technology with it. Though J.K. Jeter was the first to use the word steam punk, people had been writing and talking about it for decades. Jules Verne, (I’m sure you’ve heard of him!) had been using the aesthetic of steampunk way into the 1900’s. As well as H.G. Wells,

Jules Verne
H.G. Wells

who wrote The Time Machine in 1885. Now that we know what the beginning of steampunk was, I wanted to know where steampunk started and why it was created. I’ll start with the first question, where was steampunk created. I looked everywhere, but could not find a website that told me where steampunk first evolved from, it seems more like a movement than anything. That got me thinking, if its a movement where has this movement gone? New Zealand popped up pretty fast. Apparently one quaint town in New Zealand, became the steampunk capital of the world.

In the article they mention the movement of steampunk taking hold in 2010 and turning a normal town, into the steampunk head quarters. Another search told me that Atlantis US is the most steampunk city in the United States. I could not find much more that that so I moved to the next question, why was steampunk created? What I found was, steampunk was created for people who enjoy to mix the past with the future and wear it. Steampunk is also based on class, and anyone can be the rich Victorian age person they want, without being a rich person in our world today. Another thing is steampunk is economic, it shouts reduce reuse and recycle, and is a very cool way of presenting it. All of these reasons, make up the very iconic steampunk, and finish off my what, where, and why, questions about steampunk. Thanks for reading!
Adlih

Questioning Brinton’s theory

Is there anyway a ruler could prevent a revolution from happening after entering stage 1?

Well you may be wondering what “stage 1” is so let me explain. Stage 1 consists of
-economic crisis
-sense of government injustice
-weak rulers and half hearted reform
-intellectual opposition
-class division and antagonism
-and lastly military victory

So my question is could a -really good- ruler turn a revolution around?
In the past things like class injustice, or economic crisis lead to dramatic revolts, but we are not really taught about the revolutions that never really happened, and that is what I am searching deeper into.

In 2009-2010 Venezuela had a financial crisis, where a number of banks were taken over by individual bankers. At that time 12% of bank deposits were heading towards people that were unnamed, and unidentified. People started to get upset, but did not revolt, yet. The government in time, arrested 16 bankers, and issued arrests for over 40 men who had fled the country. This is an example of a revolution that could have happened, but was stopped by a healthy government.
Another example is automotive industry crisis of 2008-10. During this time there was an energy crisis, in which the fuel price was raised up. Which means that people wanted to buy cars that had better fuel economy. This pushed automotive brands like Ford, Ram, and GMC, to the edge, because these brands live off the sales of trucks and suv’s, and trucks and SUV’s have very bad fuel economy! The people then turned to smaller cheaper brands like Mitsubisi, Volkswagen, and Fiat. The bigger brands then had to adapt and create better cars for the fuel crisis. I know it is not human adaption, it shows that a singular crisis can have a chain reaction. It also shows that the car company’s are reactive, and pay attention to there customers, just like a healthy government.
On the other hand, we have had weak rulers in the past, (and even in the present!) John, the king of England was one of them. John was the second born child and so he did not inherit a lot of what his father, Henry the second, had when he died. Richard, his older brother, became king and ruled quite a lot of land. Now poor John was given a nickname that really stuck, and that was, John Lackland. John Lackland did not appreciate that name. John needed to become king. When Richard was in jail in Germany, (talking about weak rulers!) John Lackland tried to take the throne, he did, and became the new king of England. He was terrible! He married for the second time and it started a war. Now John is quite a loser and so he had lost a lot of the land he had started with, such as Normandy, Anjou, and Maine. He was hurt and needed to show the people what he could really do. This required money, and so taxes shot up. The people were upset and created the Magna Carta. Now this is where it gets tricky. John created economic crisis, government injustice, military loss, class division and well he was a pretty weak ruler. So he created a revolution, the Magna Carta. The automotive industry crisis dealt with the high cost of fuel and so the people went against the high fuel economy truck and SUV’s and went with cheaper vehicles. This is an act of revolt as well, but it does not count as a revolution. The Venezuelan financial crisis included a well oiled government taking care of some barons making money off of peoples cash deposits. I do not believe that this qualify’s as a revolution but the country had a economic crisis. So that answers my question, a country can enter stage 1, but turn itself around before further trouble. But it brings up a new question as well. Could a country have one problem from stage 1, but strong everything else and be safe? The ratio would be 1 to 5. I guess it will be a question for the next time I sit down to type endlessly for an hour or so. So until then

Good bye

Adlih

Math card game

2+2=4 -1 that’s 3, quick maths

In math 9, we recently had to create a math card game that covered BEDMAS. (Brackets, exponents, division, multiplication, addition, and subtraction.) And I thought I would share my game with you.

My game has 4 different characters on the cards

Flinstone’s

 

Winnie the Pooh

Mickey Mouse

 

And Garfield

 

The Flinstones card symbolizes that it is either simple addition or subtraction worth 1 point. The Winnie the Pooh card shows that it is multiplication or division, worth 2 points. Mickey Mouse is worth 3 points and is questions with brackets. And lastly Garfield is exponents, worth 4 points.

The game works like this. You can have as many players as you want, but no less than 2. Everybody will have a set of cards, face down so all you will be able to see is the characters. Now when playing this game you must keep in mind which one is the easiest and which ones are harder, because before you flip the card you must know where it is going. The card can go above, below, on the left side and the right side of the prior placed card. Now after placing the card you have to answer the question that it creates. If you place the card above or below the card prior you are creating a fraction, but if you place it beside it is just a simple equation. After answering the question, say you put the card above the prior placed one, you would multiply the points on the side, but if you put the card beside the prior card you only get to add the points! Keep track of your points on an extra sheet, and you are set to play! Have fun!

Below is a simple video about how the game works!

Take your kid to work day

 

The sun was beautiful that morning.

Simon Fraser university, SFU for short, is where my dad works. He is a professor in organic chemistry, and is really good at his job! So I decided to follow him around for our recent “bring your kid to work day.” The day started off way to early. It was Halloween the night before and I went to bed late, so the morning hit me pretty hard! My dad and I hit the road after I had crawled out of bed and sluggishly put on clothes. We had to move fast because my dad had a new postdoc starting that morning and he did not want to be late to meet her. (The new post docs name is Yang and she is from china. Yang is exceptionally smart and very kind.) We stoped for a bite to eat at a oui, a French bakery, on or way out,

( we only stopped because it took so long for me to get ready that we had to leave with out eating!) We made it to SFU with a little time to spare, before the meeting. My dad sat down in his desk and immediately started to check his email.

Do you know how some people are hooked to instagram or Snapchat? Well its like that for my dad, but only with “email.” Actually I guess that’s stretching the truth a little, my dad needs email to communicate with people he is working with on projects all over the world and he needs email to apply for grants, as well as publishing papers, and keeping up with his lab. He gets hundreds of emails everyday. I guess you could say he’s pretty popular! Anyway my dad and I headed to meet his new postdoc and introduce her to the rest of the lab. Which by the way is at about 18 people! And only 2 are girls! Yang enjoyed meeting my dad and I, and even brought us chocolate.

Down 2 flights of stairs lies my dads lab. He shares it with 2 other people but is slowly eating it up the space due to the rising number of students joining. I got to meet some of the students and all of them seem really nice and kind. By students I mean, either graduate, postdoc or doctor. My dad guided me around the lab but reasoned that it was unsafe to be in the lab so we left headed to my dads lecture.
My dads normal lecture hall was in use so he had to use a theatre. It was pretty embarrassing walking around the stage with 400 sets of eyes on you as your dad try’s to figure out which button opens the curtains and which one turns on the lights, but I was alright. I sat down in a front row seat i had saved and watched as my dad started to welcome the class. i pulled out my iPad and started to work only to freeze when i heard my name. I was already pretty embarrassed as I was, from just standing up, but my dad was now telling the whole class that he was “happy to have his daughter in for this bring your kid to work day.” I just closed my eyes and hoped it would be gone. But no such luck. He then directed everybody’s attention to directly where I was sitting and and introduced me to the odd 400 university students surrounding me. And to my surprise they started to applaud me, so I waved. That sure wakes you up in the morning! I guess I owe him a thank you, it was really nice and looking back it wasn’t that embarrassing!
After the lecture was over my dad let me go and interview Roger Linington. Professor Roger Linington directs his studies to chemistry. And I had a blast interviewing him and learning more about his research.

After I interviewed Roger I went down to his lab to see what happens down there. Did you know that there are million dollar machines built soully to find the mass of the tiniest things on earth? It’s funny to think about! I had learned so much that my brain was going to explode and it was only morning still! My dad though it was a good time to go for a run so we headed out on one of the most beautiful runs I have ever taken! We ran along one of the west coast trails and ended up at a lookout, though the lookout was not of SFU, it was of deep cove and I could even make out my home! ( Just barley)

The view was stunning but we needed to get back, so we ran/walked (only me) back to SFU. After our run we were famished, and my dad had made reservations at the DAC (The Diamond Alumni Centre) for lunch. ( My dad does not usually attend the DAC for lunch but since it was bring your kid to work day he thought it would be nice.) The DAC was serving Italian for lunch, and it was delicious! There was pasta salads, gnocchi and so many more! We were seated right by the window so the view was of deep cove. It was really weird and in a way cool to look at my home from that angle.
Lunch was finished off with some tirimasu and cupcakes.
The day only got busier from this point on. Well actually maybe after coffee with roger, it started to get busy. (Everyday my dad will go for coffee with roger to talk about science and catch up.)
I now had a meeting with Gerhard and Regine. Gerhard and Regine are from Germany and specialize in biology. Some projects they have done include, wasps, bedbugs, spiders and many more. My personal favourite was the discovery Gerhard and Regine made with the spiders. They discovered that a male spider ready to mate must “twerk” to let the female know! And so they called it the twerking spider and that discovery got loads of publicity!

Here’s my favourite video!

 

The twerking spider is actually a really cool discovery, and I totally suggest reading deeper into it!

Gerhard and Regine showed me their lab ( so cool!) and then I had to move on. It was getting later now so we were pressed for time. I interviewed my dad, and I interviewed Yang and then we set off for our last stop. We got in the car and drove to SFU’s inqubator labs, where people starting there own company can have there own space. We went to go meet and interview my dads running partner, Ernie, who started his own drug company! It was really interesting, and he had a lot of information about his company. He created a drug and it is still in testing, but they are into testing on humans now, so I hope all goes well and his drug makes it out to curing people!

The sky had clouded up during the day and now promised of rain. I traveled back and I discussed what I had learned today with my dad, and I thought, “I am so lucky to have this opportunity, to be able to explore SFU, and to be introduced to science this early.”
I really owe my dad a thank you for giving me this opportunity and even if I do not want to pursue the sciences, I have is freedom about knowing what goes on, and how science works that not many have. Though through out the day I was considering what I would want to do if I had the opportunity to work at SFU. Running into Yang in the morning and letting her tell me all about what she does and listening in on her conversations with my dad, showed me how fascinating it would be to work in a lab. So the position I associate with my self would have to be student! I would strive in a lab, as a student, because I love to try new things and am very inquisitive. I am also very passionate about what ever I set my mind too! The lab is small so sharing space is something that a student would have to get used to, but I would not mind at all, I would like to share my space so it would let me have a look at what others are investing time into! And lastly I would get to spend time doing something so interesting! I could discover new drugs or new pheromones, maybe even a new element! All in all, I really liked my day at SFU, I had so much fun and learned a ton!

Thanks for reading and until next time..

Adlih

 

 

Franken stuffies

Hi!
I have recently accomplished the difficult task of completing “Franken stuffies”. Frankenstuffies is a project about the adaption of one animal due to a change in either the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle (I did this one!) the phosphorus cycle, or the water cycle. The project must be in written and video format! I really enjoyed this project and I wanted to share my expierence and my do’s and don’t’s of this project.

 

Our project began in early October, and everyone was interested and very excited. I personally had never done any big PLP projects ( I only joined this year, ) and so I was pretty nervous. Our first deadline we had to meet was October 4th, by this time we had to have written episodes 1,2, and 3. You might be thinking “ohh, that’s sounds pretty easy,” but let me tell you, when you can not write and you have got no ideas for the project you can’t really call it easy! I was struggling for hours trying to figure it out.

 

 

First do and don’t.

Don’t: struggle for hours trying to figure out the best idea and trying to perfect it.

Do: choose an idea and stick with it. It so much more fun when your idea expands along with your story! You can always go back and tweak a thing or two along the way, and never expect your first product to be perfect.

I finally choose an idea and I started to write. I never really wrote before this project, but I had read a lot and that helped the process of writing go smoother. Franken stuffies was the first time I found writing fun and could not wait to continue! That’s probably why all my episodes were 500 words!
We edited the episodes in class and were sent home with a new due date. October the 6th. By then we needed all the 6 episodes to be written and the first three to be edited! No screwing around here! I went home and decided I needed a break from Franken stuffies, already. We had a long weekend and so I left it to the last moment.

Second do and don’t.

Don’t: leave it to the last minute. If you know you’ve got work then do it. Even if you only do a little here and there it will help.

Do: your work! If you know you are going to be busy then set some time aside and do it then. And if you do forget about your work, and end up remember it last minute, still do it. Don’t make up some lame excuse. Put anything that will bother you away and get straight to it!

The last 3 episodes took a while to write, but I got them done and felt a lot better. I handed them in and edited them only to realize that I had to turn it into a script by Thursday, and it was Wednesday! I did not do my best on the script but I had a copy ready for Thursday. The next due dates passed fairly easily, but remember there is always calm before the storm. The storm hit us around October the 20th. That was when the first draft of the video version was due. I was so anxious and stressed. I had not used my time wisely and was paying for it! I spent my whole Saturday working on filming the video, and cutting and stitching my stuffy. ( which by the way, was a possum. And there are no possum stuffies anywhere!) the next day I showed up with a complete 14 minutes of clips. Someone asked to see the beginning of mine and was shocked when I had 14 minutes. It had turned out that you only needed to have completed the first 3 episodes, not the whole thing! I was angry at my self for spending my Saturday at home filming a possum dancing around the woods.

2C2F63A6-3255-42D9-A099-1EE54622D9E9-2baya8p

 

Third do and don’t.

Don’t: forget to read the due dates and mix them up. There there for a reason!

Do: read the due dates! Also remember that this project is just a small blip in your life and it should not have to take all your energy and all your focus. You have to learn how to balance!

I guess it was a good thing I got the due dates mixed up because I was able to coast the rest of the project. I only hade to edit and add voice overs. Which is still a whole ton of work!
The due date for the final project was supposed to be October the 26th, but we ended up tuning it in on November the 1st! Everybody really needed those extra days! Thank you so much Ms. Maxwell!
I had made it through the first big PLP project! I was so happy that I totally forgot about this blog post until the nigh before. I guess I never learned my lesson, but I do hope you learned something from my mistakes!

Thanks for reading!

Adlih