Spring break is coming up soon for me, and one of the main things I want to do is to read.(Also sleep, work with my Arduino, make origami, and write a Mobius News post.)
Because I often like book recommendations, I thought I'd give you reader(s) some books that I have found interesting or think might be interesting but have not read yet.
In case you can't recognize it, it is a Webkinz tag. There's nothing strange about it to you, but it definitely deserves the sinister music in the title. For several reasons:
1. I don't have a Love Monkey- I have never even seen a Love Monkey before in real life. Therefore, I could not have ever gotten this tag.
2. All my Webkinz tags are stashed in my bookshelf- This tag was not at its spot near my computer beforehand either. It has also been years since I last played Webkinz, so there would be no need for it anyways.
3. Even if Ganz mistakenly gave me this tag with my Love Frog or Lion, then I shouldn't have it anyways- I gave away my Love Frog's tag years ago. If this tag came with any of my other Webkinz, then I would have known since I looked at and used their tags often. When I put my Love Lion's code into my Webkinz account, I got a lion. Not a monkey. It's not my Lion's tag.
Characters-
Coeltree- The deceased person
Huum(the priest)- A clergy man of questionable origin, who was hired just to make the funeral more dramatic.
Mr. Scoot- The organizer and owner of the funeral home
Whue- A random person at the back of the crowd of people attending the funeral, but separated from the others by his distinguishing behavior.
Grieving Person 1(Self explanatory)
Grieving Person 2(Self explanatory)
Audience- A crowd of about ten people
Enter all characters ( Huum stands next to dead person, who should have already been on stage. Mr. Scoot faces the front of the audience. Both Grievers stand in the audience.) Mr. Scoot- We're hea te-day to mourn the passin' ov -( insert coughing fit; Scoot doesn't quite know the name of the deceased) Excuse me!- and to remembe' and celebra' hea live. (Mr. Scoot Audience and Grievers- *sobs loudly* Huum- And now, a prayer to ensure her safe passage: Dear Pork God, we hope with all our hearts that this person passes safely to the Land of Vegetables and that her path is not obstructed by carrots. Keep the corn away. May the afterlife be filled with beans and potatoes for the deceased. We pray this in your Porkiness's name. Bacon. Whue- *giggle* Audience and Grievers- *sobs loudly* Huum- Would anyone like to say any words of remembrance? Grieving Person 1-(Raises hand) I would-d! *sobs*Coltree was the best person ever! She was so smart, and she got straight C's! *wipes away tear* Whenever, I met her, she seemed so friendly and full of life, even when she was comatose! No one in the world was as amazingly perfect as she was!*Audience and Grievers sob* One time-
(Mr. Scoot walks onto stage at this moment.) Mr. Scoot- I am sorry te announce that there'll be no re-freshments at thees funeral.( Mr. Scoot leaves.) Audience and Grieving Person 1(but not Grieving Person 2)- AAAAWWWW MAAAAAN!(Half the audience and Grieving Person 1 walk off the stage and mumble things like "What kind of funeral doesn't have refreshments", "I wanted some refreshments", "I wasted two minutes of my life here! Two whole minutes!", etc.) Whue-*Has a hysterical laughing fit, and makes a vain attempt to disguise it as sobbing*
(Have 10-15 seconds of awkward silence[except for Whue's laughing] here after half the audience and Griever 1 leaves) Huum- Would anyone else like to say anything? Grieving Person 2- *sobs* Coltree and I were SO close! She was, like, my uncle's cousin's co-worker's sister's son's former roommate! * sobs* I , like, knew her whole full name!*breaks into sobbing fit* Coeltree- * sits up suddenly* My name is Coeltree, not Coltree, get it right! * Looks around* Wait a minute, who are you people? Huum- May his Baconess save us, a zombie! Whue- * laughs maniacally* Remaining griever and audience- ZOOOOMMMMMBBIIIIEEEE!
(Huum, Griever, and audience run off the stage while screaming) * Intro to Latintutorial begins playing* ( Mr. Scoot walks in) Mr. Scoot- Sorry 'bout that, I'm ex- Hey! You're alive? Whe'e is ev'ryone? Coeltree- They thought I was a zombie and ran away. What's going on here? Was I dead? Mr . Scoot- The morgue said you died of, um, a sonic he'gehog mutation or sumthin'. Yer lucky I don' start the em-embelmation process befoe the funeral recepshin.
(Mr. Scoot leaves muttering "In my dey, dead peeple stay'd dead...")
(Coeltree gets up follows Mr. Scoot.)
(Whue, who has been laughing during the entire conversation, continues laughing as the curtains fall.)
Intro to Latintutorial(watch the first five seconds):
... is good news?
Well, it looks like we won't have a Möbius Strip News issue out today.
Hopefully, we can start posting weekly "news" updates again next week.
Remember what I said in my previous post? Oh wait, you probably didn't read it. Anyway, I said that Google+ identifies text not in your language and gives the options to translate it for you. I'm reconsidering that now.
Why? Take a look at this post, please...
No, I'm not sure why there's a blue do at the top in the white space... Probably an accident.
That's not English, really. It's written with the Greek alphabet, I think. Yet, when it's "translated"...
It gets translated to... Greek again. (I think. Correct me if that's incorrect.)
This makes me wonder what Google+'s translate is really supposed to do. Maybe it's just a temporary glitch. They might have been changing things across Google and done something to the translate on accident (or on purpose, possibly). By the way, today I noticed that the profile picture at the top right of the page when you log into Gmail has become circular, so it's possible that they've been changing stuff on Google+ as well...
Either way, the translate option seems to have suddenly "broken", so to speak, since the last time I posted about it.
Whenever there's any sort of break from school, I like to consider the many things I'd like to accomplish. Somehow, I always think that not being in school will give me a lot of time and energy to do things. That is not the case. Here's a tiny sample of stuff I wanted to do but didn't do.
1. Program a Python game. -- Honestly, I've wanted to do this since the summer, but I never quite learned enough Python to make a game. I could just get all the code online, but that obviously would not be me programming. It's not that I don't have the resources to learn. There are online resources, and I have an introduction to Python programming book (with a target audience of 10 year old children, which does not include me).
2. Read 1984 by George Orwell. -- Having recently studied Orwell's Animal Farm at school, I figure that it would be a good idea to read another book of his. I bought the book last year with the intention of reading it, but I never did. I still have not read past chapter 3.
3. Write a rant for The Incredible Present. -- My friend added me as an author on his new rant blog, and I've been meaning to write a rant for it. It makes me feel a little better that as of now, he hasn't posted a rant either. I'll post the link to the blog once there's some actual content on it.
4. Clean my desks. -- There's one upstairs that I mostly use as a storage space, and one downstairs on which I have my laptop and several stacks of stuff. As a result of piling random things on it, I can no longer use the upstairs desk as a writing surface or a place to rest a book as I read it. That's become somewhat problematic, but obviously not problematic enough for me to do something about it! As for the downstairs desk, I'm being inspired by the architecture in big cities. I'm building up! Basically, I combined some stacks, and look, more desk space! But it's not exactly cleaner...
5. Remember the Latin I learned last semester. -- I took home my textbook thinking, Yeah, I'll definitely have lots of time to review! Ha, nope. I'm currently figuratively digging through my brain to remember how to decline the pronouns is, ea, and id.
Google+ has a feature that is supposed to recognize things that are not in your language and provide the option of translating them. In theory, it's a good idea, but I don't think the language recognition is superb.
For example, I was on the Google+ page of Connor (author of There's Always a Catch) when I saw this:
In my opinion, that's obviously in English. I decided to see what Google+ thought the post meant, so I clicked on "Translate." Lo and behold...
I'm wondering why the program might have thought Connor's English to be something in another language. Occasionally, I come across a horribly misspelled comment or a post with the "Translate" option, but that is somewhat understandable. Here, however, there are no misspellings or symbols not used in the English language. What other language could "Tickle Me Elmo deserved to die" possibly be anyway?
Oh, for context, here's the GIF that was in Connor's post:
(Since we haven't had a Technology These Days post all year, I decided to write one. I mean, it's not like N is going to show up and start writing them again... Yeah, the format is a little different, but let's just call it a Technology These Days post anyway.)
Recently, my friends who do Quiz bowl/Knowledge bowl told me that there was a question asking about someone who rides horses while being shirtless. The answer was Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, President of Russia, also known as Rootin' Tootin' Putin by my seventh grade social studies teacher. Anyway I began wondering if he's done anything else, um, interesting. (You know, besides doing stuff as the President of Russia...)
Well, take a look.
Maybe he saved a television crew from a tiger... According to The Telegraph, according to Russian media, Putin was visiting the Ussuri reserve to see how researchers monitor the tigers, and suddenly, a tiger escaped and charged towards a nearby television crew. Putin pulled out a tranquilizer gun and shot the tiger. (But it wasn't caught on camera...)
He flew with migrating birds in a glider. Dressed in a puffy white jumpsuit, Putin flew in a motorized hang glider and led cranes on their migration path. Fun fact: The cranes were considered by the area's original inhabitants to be gods.
While scuba diving, he "found" pieces of ancient pottery. This one was basically a fail. Putin went scuba diving and came up holding pieces of what appeared to be ancient Greek pottery. However, many people were suspicious. After all, he had only gone to water about six feet deep. The chances that ancient pottery had just been sitting there without anyone seeing? Heh, almost none. Soon, Putin's spokesman revealed that it had all been set up.
His puppy was named by a five year old kid. (The human kind of kid, not the goat. I'm just clarifying. I wouldn't put it past Putin to discuss puppy names with young goats...) Putin received a Bulgarian shepherd puppy from Bulgaria's head of state after signing some natural gas deals. He asked for name ideas from the public and finally chose Buffy, a name suggested by Dima Sokolov. Later on, Putin gave the boy an autographed soccer ball when he and his family visited Putin and met the puppy.
Judo. On his 56th birthday, Putin released an instructional judo video creatively titled "Let's Learn Judo with Vladimir Putin." I'm pretty sure he's the only President to ever make an instructional Judo DVD...
