Passion Project

My passion project is to start a YouTube channel. So far progress is good, as I have fixed my previously malfunctioning Astros Headset, I have recorded some great gameplay, and I am going to try and get a Game Battles team for publicity. Once I get the team together, I will begin regular live streaming on twitch, and have a lot of fun.
One of the obstacles was the fact that my headset was not working properly, however, I was sent a new cable and now everything works fine. I am having fun so far and am looking forward to presenting!

127 Hours

We Recently finished the movie 127 Hours in my GT class. The movie is about Aron Ralston getting stuck in a cave for 127 hours, and how he almost died. The most interesting part of the movie was when I got to see Aron cut off his. That's right. To get out of the cave, he had to cut off his arm with a cheap knife. This movie shows us what some of us would do to survive. Th e most amazing part was the way he got stuck. While descending into a thin cavern, a rock loosened and fell on his arm, wedging it between the wall. He was stuck! after 127 hours, he finally made his decision. He cut off his arm and walked the many miles back towards his car and was evacuated by helicopter.
The most interesting part of the movie was the state of his mind. He started to have visions, and strange dreams. In a dream, he got free and went to his ex-girlfriends house. In fact the thing that inspired him to cut off his arm was a vision. In that vision he saw himself with a young boy, laughing and playing. He believed this to be his future son. In fact the weirdest thing about the whole thing was that his real son turned out to look just like the one he saw in that cave. This leads us to wonder the power of the human mind. I wonder if the mind is able to do things we cannot even fathom. Since we only use ten percent of our brain, according to man sources including Wikipedia, it is very possible something unique happened here. maybe he saw into the future. perhaps he remembers seeing the boy in a fabricated memory created by the brain to relive stress. Finally, he might have created the image using the knowledge of what type of woman he likes, and combined the looks. This event has more mental significance than the physical significance. After all, its all 'mental!'

Dasani

Recently our class read a 5 part NY Times article about a homeless girl in NYC named Dasani. It was a story about how there are not just homeless men and women, but homeless families. This story shows how the families are in trouble of loosing everything. They live in shelters and have terrible living conditions. Even though they live in a shelter, it doesn't mean that they have even decent living conditions. She lives with her parents, who are both drug addicts, and her 7 siblings, on of which is an infant. After reading the story I don't know what to think. Its like a city version of Beasts of the Southern Wild. Both families live in poverty, but at least In the BotSW, there is a reason they live in poor conditions. They can thrive in those conditions. Dasani cannot. It seems hard to except that there are children who have to live this way. It makes me feel petty when I don't like what Gatorade flavor comes out of the machine.
I feel like if I could tell Dasani something, it would to be determined. You have fought all this way to get out of poverty. Do not throw it all away because you feel like fighting someone. It will not be worth it.
While there are similarities in the drive Dasani has to succeed, there are multiple differences. For example, I go to a wonderful school without medal detectors and I always have a good meal. However, I feel that our drive would unite us.
I also feel sort of disappointed with the ending. I would like to know what happened to her. I want to know if she is succeeding. I also want to know where they live. It seems the story left me with a lot of questions!

Beasts of the Southern Wild

My G&T class just finished watching Beasts of the Southern Wild. This fictional but realistic movie focused on the life of a young girl named Hush-Puppy and her father who live in the bathtub. What is the bathtub, you ask? It is a place on the tip of Louisiana that filled with water with a ferocious storm. The few people who decided to stay in their homes had to find a way to adapt and survive. Unfortunately, Hush-Puppy's father, Wink, is dying, as he has some sort of heart condition. These events make it extremely difficult to survive.
As the movie begins, you feel like you are in a foreign place that cannot possibly be America. The scene is a jungle, with poverty stricken people. Yet, they are all happy. They "get the most holidays" out of everyone. They are simply content. However, as the movie progresses, you get a feeling of normalness. It seems that the forign environment is calling to you because all the people seem so happy. They ever refuse to leave their homes. Wink states multiple time that "I ain't leaving the bathtub" even with an approaching hurricane and his heart condition. This movie makes you feel weird when you turn it off and get back to reality. You miss the simpleness of their life...
The other thing that made a big impact on my life was Hush-Puppy's quote "We are all parts in a big, big universe". It makes me realize that what just happened to me (Injured, Victory, ect.) is not important. We are all cogs in the machine. Without my friends and everyone else, life wouldn't be possible. It makes you try to appreciate things more, like the fact that I can go to school and have a G&T class. It would still be cool to live like Hush-Puppy though...

Passion Project Update

I have had 8 days so far for my passion project, and yet I was barely able to do anything at school. Many of the sites that I need to visit to learn about my topic (Stealth Tech.) are blocked by the school. However, I have done a lot of my project at home on my free time. I so far have discovered and explained how the tech works, who discovered it, what types of planes use it, who makes it, and I have also gone into detail about each of the stealth planes. So far I have researched the F-117 stealth Fighter, B-2 Stealth Bomber, and the new stealth plane that will replace all the other regular fighters; the F-35. I have also contacted the military base and am going to contact Lockheed-Martin about going on a tour, but I do not have an answer if I will get one from the military base and I am trying to find contact info for one of the nearby Lockheed offices. So far I am very pleased with  how my project is progressing. I have so far accomplished my goals, and since I have, I am trying to expand them by trying to get the class the ability to go on a trip to Lockheed.

Some upcoming problems:

1. lack of access to sites at school
2. finding the right contact info foe Lockheed
3. determining if the military base will let us take a tour

Myers-Brigs Test

Recently my class took a Myers-Brigs personality test, which is a test to show what type of a person you are. It will tell you if you are driven by feeling, by fact, if you are very social, ect. This is an incredibly accurate test and many famous people have taken this test. My personal type is ESTJ, which means I am Practical, realistic, matter-of-fact. Decisive, quickly move to implement decisions.
This test has told me a lot about myself. It has confirmed that I am realistic and decisive. It has also showed me that there are lots and lots of different people out there. In our class, many people found themselves getting the same personality as other students. This was to be expected, I suppose  because many of us think alike and have similar personalities. Even more impressive, no one said that their result didn't match up with who they were. I ask that whoever is reading this post takes the test and decides for themselves if it is accurate.
As an interesting side note, Some other famous and infamous ESTJs include: Henry Ford, Condoleezza Rice, Dr. Phil, Martha Stewart, Bill O'Reilly, St Paul, Tom Clancy, and Saddam Hussein. 

Joyas Volsdoras

This piece of writing is very interesting. It talks about the hummingbird, on incredible but fragile creature. It "can dive at sixty miles an hour. They can fly backwards. They can fly more than five hundred miles without pausing to rest." However, the article has a much deeper meaning than that. It goes on to talk about how each creature only gets a certain number of heartbeats, and you can either spend them fast or slow. It goes on to describe how large a blue whale's heart is. Finally the document concludes with a section about how important and how much we store in the heart.

Joyas talks about how we all love, but we still live alone. He sums it up beautifully in this statement "So much held in a heart in a lifetime. So much held in a heart in a day, an hour, a moment. We are utterly open with no one, in the end -- not mother and father, not wife or husband, not lover, not child, not friend." Feelings seem to be one of the most important characteristics in being human because everyone has them. That is what makes us truly human.