Month: November 2018

Christmas traditions🎄

Bringing a family together is no simple feat. When a family lives far away you might not get to see them often, and this can be the case for many people. For one special day a year to bring everyone together, is revolutionary. To be able to see the people that mean so much to you, is very important. Christmas fulfils this outline, but it contains so much more than just the stereotype “Christmas,” let me tell you about Christmas with the Brittons.

 My Christmas Traditions 

Any celebration, or festivity will be celebrated differently by each person. I know for my family we are a very consecutive family. Our Christmas is pretty much planned out to the day, not consciously though. We will put our lights up on the last weekend in November. This weekend is an ever changing date, but it is set, and every year we put our lights up then. The next weekend is reserved for the buying of the Christmas tree.

 

The putting up of the tree is a celebration in its own. My family feels very strongly about ornaments and the lights looking nice and the experience of putting up the tree being one to remember. (I can not tell you how many times the tree has tipped while we were putting on the ornaments!) While everyone is putting the ornaments up, I always come out with some shortbread and egg nog. I feel this is a tradition for me, maybe not the rest of my family, because I really enjoy sharing home baking with others and my favourite Christmas drink (chosen over the candy cane hot chocolate at Tim Hortons) is egg nog.

While the traditions can be set in stone, I feel that my family has new traditions every year, and we are constantly getting rid of old ones. A tradition that we created rather recently is my brother and I are allowed to open one gift on Christmas Eve. I feel pretty strongly about this new tradition because who can wait the painful 12 hours till the next day to open all of their gifts, and I feel it kind of rounds the edges of Christmas. My family also will have a advent calendar and Christmas lists, so its a pretty basic list of traditions, but who you spend the festivity with and your outlook on it changes everything. Thats why Christmas is so important to me. It wraps my family up in a warm little cocoon, and rewards us for being good people. I am so fortunate to be able to live with a family who is loving, and to live in a warm home. I could truly not ask for more than that.

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CBC writing challenge

My teacher sent out an alert telling us that there is a writing contest coming up and that any of us who feel experimental, and want to try and write a 300-400 word story prompt set in 2168, should give it a shot. So considering the fact that I have literal buckets of homework, a job, and extra curricular activity’s, there was nothing holding me back, and I decided to give it a shot. 

This plant has tons of depth and focus. Comment down below on some of it!

Story draft 1 CBC-1o7puvo

(This is my writing promt please leave some feedback down below if you have anything you want me to change! I would love to hear your feedback!)I feel very fondly of writing and really enjoy reading books and magazines, and so I decided to write this prompt on something I feel strongly about. The prompt was not quite long enough to achieve a proper storyline, but I wanted to write about depth and focus. I wanted to go into so much detail that the whole 400 words is about one moment. One second, and all that people can draw from it. I really enjoy toying around with the idea of what people can take from certain situations and how much people can make out of one moment, because our brains move very fast and sometimes were not quite ready to move on.

 I wanted to take a subtle approach to the futuristic theme, because I am not so keen of sci-fi and futuristic books, and I wanted what I was writing about to be something I enjoyed to write. So I sort of just dismantled that part of the challenge, aside form the fact that the person who’s perspective it is told from is time traveling back for the 28th time to that exact scene in time, they are seeing the girl under the oak tree for the last time. Every time!

I feel as though this prompt went well because I decided to pour myself into detail, and I really am happy with how it turned out. I recently read French Exit, by Patrick deWitt, and I wanted my prompt to reflect some of his influence. I  also used the information that I have been learning in school about hooks and bridges to compete the intro and to draw people into the story. 

The challenge was put on through CBC and I would totally recommend you check it out. The deadline to enter your pieces is the 29th, so get them in fast!

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Could your cousin be your twin??

Scimatics has puzzeled us with the challenge of answering the question, that remains quite confusing. The question is: Could cousins be twins? Now thats a pretty weird question, because you’d think that it is a definite no, but there is actually a minuscule chance of it happening in real life! Luca O, and I created a video made from the perspective of the girl who thinks her cousin could be her twin. Give it a watch and maybe that will help you understand the question and situation a bit more. 

Now that you’ve seen the video and you understand the question a bit more, I explain the parts that make a little bit less sense. The first point that is really important to the question is: the parents of both of the cousins are twins. By this I mean that the uncle and the dad are identical twins and the aunt and the mom are twins. This means that 2 children born at the same time could have the possibility of being identical. The next point that is important is the steps to figuring out if they are or are not twins. The first step is the phenotype of the child. To figure out certain phenotypes of the children you would have to use a punnet square.

A punnet square is a way of showing the percentage of attaining a certain phenotype. We also used a punnet square to figure out the genotypes. Genotypes are the characteristics of a person on the inside! We also used Meiosis. Meiosis is a type of cell division that splits 2 chromosomes into 4 daughter cells. Once we were finished with the science we filmed and edited and in the end we figured out that there is a very small chance of this ever happening in real life, but it might just happen one day!…

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Edublog Challenge. You can study the ocean?!

Oceanography

 

Oceanography. Have you ever heard of it? Ive always wondered about what the ocean is truly like and how we can become at one with it. Water has been a huge part of my life and I could not live with out it, so I though for Week 6, I could think about oceanography. 

Oceanography is “a branch of science that deals with the physical and biological properties and phenomena of the sea.” Dictionary Definition.

A student of oceanography is called an oceanographer. An oceanographer studies the ocean. There are many fields when studying oceanography such as marine life, ecosystems, ocean circulation, plate tectonics, the geology of the sea floor, and marine ecology.Depending on what field you choose the job will vary. 

Educational Video

The video I found is called When Your Job Is Saving The Ocean. The video is created by Mashable. I found this video very interesting. It explains the day to day job of a marine biologist in the United States. It also talks a lot about saving the ocean as a part of the job and I find that very powerful. The video is based off of a woman named Ariadne

Reynolds, and how her dream was to become a marine biologist, as it was for many young people, but it is a lot dirtier then what it looks like. Ariadne talks about how lucky she is to experience a place in the world that very little get to experience. She also talks about how a little bit of change goes so far, and that under the water a certain plant or animal species can grow so fast, so to say that if you were to change one thing about an environment or atmosphere, that you could truly see the change quickly. 

Two Truths And One Lie

After watching that video, I have a quick little 2 truths and 1 lie test to see if you’ve retained the information, and your ready to move on. Let’s start!

1. Oceanology is what you call people studying oceanography.

2. Climate change can be studied by oceanographers

3. Oceanographers must have a strong understanding of chemistry, geology and physics.

Hope you guys can get it, and if you need a bit of help this is the website that I used to find this information on this topic! Also just leave a comment and I will help you out!

Thanks so much for reading about oceanography, and I hope that you guys have retained some new information about the ocean and its studies!

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Live loops are what again?

This is a video guide to creating your own live loops on Garage Band, made by TheGarageBandGuide.

In maker we have been toying with garage band and the loops that accompany it. We were tasked with the assignment to create our own loop. We started this assignment by triggering loops. By this I mean we created our own song using loops and “triggered” multiple instruments to create different noises and sounds. The second step was to record the loop and share it with the world. And the last step was to create our own loop and record it and create this blog post explaining it! So without further to do this is my loop.

 

I created my loop using Chinese traditional, and added different attachments on to it. The loop Chinese traditional is a very upbeat loop already so I just chose to add a few more “popish” loops to the track. It ended up sounding more like dub smash if it was a traditional Chinese version. 
I learned a whole bunch from this project about garage band. I had barley even touched garage band before this, and now I know so much more about the different pieces and items that they have created. Did you know that you can DJ? And you can reverse certain tracks. It such a cool app and I am excited to see the progress I can make in it!

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Am I Crazy?

 

Recently in humanities 10 we have been considering the word Crazy and what it means to be crazy and what comes with it. The driving question for this unit is “Why Does It Take A Crazy Person To Change The World?”

We started this unit with a short discussion about what crazy means to us and what crazy people have done for our world. We were also introduced to the Apple Think Different Campaign, (here’s the link if you want to check it out) the people that Apple decided were crazy in their own way and should represent their company. We were then given the task of picking one person out of the campaign, and creating a Keynote about them.

I chose Ansel Easton Adams. Ansel was crazy because he explored a field that had not been explored by many, and he thought outside the box. He did not want to continue into a job that everyone had tried. He wanted to create his own path. He was driven to push forward a (then known as) hobby into a career. 

He was a very private person, even as a child. He preferred to play with bugs in creeks, then play aggressive sports with other people his age. He began playing piano at a young age and he believed that piano would be his ticket out into the world. He later realized that his hands were to small to become a professional pianist. He could however become a teacher or play for special events but that was not good enough for him. 

His father took him to Yosemite for the first time in 1916, he also bought him his first camera this trip. He became addicted to photography and Yosemite. He came back the next year with a better camera and a tripod. After these trips he really started to realize that he can carry photography to a new level. He picked up a part time job at a photo finishing company in San Francisco, and he began to write for photographic journals around his area. 

He met his wife in Yosemite, her father owned the photo studio in Yosemite, called Best Studios. The studio is now dedicated to Ansel Adams and his footprint. Around this time Ansel was still quite focused on piano, which meant he would take photos when he could. This lead him to dangerous situations and bad weather at Yosemite. 

While taking photographs Ansel would often try using lenses to create different contrasts between the sky and the cliffs. This was a area previously unexplored. Lenses were for those risking a lot, because if you think about it, if you were to use a lens on a photo you would not be able to retake the photo. It was a hard thing to master.

His first portfolio gained him nearly $3,900. People saw his work and suddenly people all over the world were interested. He had an exhibit of his work in the Smithsonian in 1931, and continued to gain praise from here. 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

This is the slideshow I presented in class along with all this information. It was in Pecha Kucha format.

My thesis for my keynote was : Ansel Adams perseverance and determination allowed him to show the true power of a photograph. His creativity and advancement challenge the way we interpret and partake in photography today. 

I believe that this thesis works well with the context of Ansel’s story but it think that if I was to redo the thesis I would include information on his challenges and his story of success. 

Hearing about these people taught me a bit about myself. I realized that every one of these people (the apple Think Different campaign people)  advanced our living in someway. I also learned that each of these people held themselves to an expectation. They all felt that it was mandatory to meet these expectations that they hold against themselves. It is weird to think about these people being so determined to create something that satisfies them, that it can literally drive them crazy. 

I really enjoyed this project and can’t wait to see where it takes us next. Also if you have any questions or comments I would love to hear them! This is the link to my rules of commenting page, if you would like to read more. I would love to hear what words come to your mind when you think of the word crazy!

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Frankenstuffies

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 is 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.

 

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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, but not as much as some of the others had!
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 night before.So here I am. I guess I never learned my lesson, but I do hope you learned something from my mistakes!

Thanks for reading!

Adlih

 

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Bring 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 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.

Anyway I had so much fun and learned a ton!

Thanks for reading and until next time..

Here’s my day!

 

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EduBlog Challenge Music

For week 5 for the Edublog Challenge the task that I chose to conquer is music.

I would love to share the music that I listen to everyday with the audience. I will be sharing a playlist that I have been listening to for a bit now. The play list is called Killer and it includes songs from Kali Uchis, Brockhampton, and Duckwrth.

Kali Uchis

Kali Uchis’s song Killer is one of my favorites of hers. She describes her heartbreak and sadness through a very mellow feel. I also read that in this song she struggled with a bunch of emotion and past history, and for her to get over it and to create a song that addresses these facts in such a positive way shows that she has strong mindset and that she is such a strong figure.

Brockhampton

Brockhampton addresses everything you’ve ever felt, whether positive or negative. Brockhampton is a “boy band” and they claim to be the best boy band since One Direction. Brockhampton was created quite recently in 2015. In the past year they have gone from a few fans to almost everyone knowing who they are. The song that really touches me from their most recent album Iridescence, is called Tonya.

Duckwrth

Duckwrth is a musical artist and his art is very real. He uses lots of different backround effects to enhance his pieces and it can really speak to the listener. His songs are all very different and my favorite song of his called Indica La Roux. I feel myself merging with this song. I feel the reason I like this song so much is because it really makes you feel nothing around you but the song. I also perceive it as very calming.

Duckwrth in his own universe

These songs make me feel happy and comfortable, I don’t completely know what it is about them. I am also a huge fan of the artists them selves. Kali Uchis has had to struggle through many challenges to get where she is today, and I think it makes her a better artist. Brockhampton has had to undergo a few changes since the creation of the iteam. They seem to be closer because of this situation, and it makes them more of a family. These songs challenge me to think and act strongly, and I hope that they can do the same for you.

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Essay not easy

Have you ever heard of a synthesis essay? If you haven’t I would love to tell you what it is. A synthesis essay is an essay that takes a unique viewpoint on a topic or theme. It is also backed up by many sources. 

For this section of our course Ms. Maxwell assigned our driving question to be « How do authors use text to teach us more about ourselves? » ( ( We had also created trailers to books we had read in class with this in our minds, if you would like to watch my trailer for More Happy Than Not, its right here! ) Our task was to then figure out our own versions of that question, and create a plan for writing the essay in class later in the week. For my essay my thesis was:

The essay had to have shape and so we had to follow a example we had been given. 

This is the example.

The introductory paragraph has a hook and your thesis. This was really important, the stating of the thesis, this makes it so that the reader can comprehend what your about to write about, and what you believe in. The next 3 paragraphs are unique in knowledge but they repeat in the outline. 

Ms. Maxwell prepared a few questions for us to answer in our blog posts, so I would like to try and shed some light on those. The first question I will be addressing is:

I believe that the most important step to preparing for an in class essay would have to be the outline that I stated above. The outline really helps put all of your thoughts together, and it helps you to see if your missing anything to complete your thoughts. It also helps you to see what and essay consists of, so when reading others essays you can see things like the 2nd paragraphs topic sentence, or the supporting points, and you can fully understand what’s going on.

The second question that I will be answering is:

I personally found my book to be a little over the top, and the story moved to slowly at first and then it moved to fast. It almost felt like I was getting a headache every time I read. It continued to move around and I felt myself losing a grasp. I also felt the character was a little to fast to jump to conclusions which made me really frustrated for some reason. For the reasons stated above, I felt that my book hindered my writing of the essay, because I could only truly remember the parts that got on my nerves and I could not get over those parts.

I found it hard to show the point of my essay through this book since I did not connect to the character, the setting, the storyline, I was not interested in the cover art or the aesthetics of the book. I also found relating the plot back to my life was tricky and so I could not fully feel for the character. 

The last question I will be answering is:

I personally believe that this essay and the preparation behind it will help in the future because I sort of want to become a journalist, and creating these preparation essays really will come into play if you continue into a writing career, like an author or a screenwriter. I believe the importance of writing essays and the planning behind them is because by doing this it is helping us as students to have every option possible when we have to chose in the future. 

If you would like to read my essay, it is here. 

In the future, and for the upcoming essays I think I will be focusing on making sure that all my points tie together well and create something that makes sense!

Thank you for reading and hope you have a great rest of your day

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