This summer....

Today was such an incredible day. But first, I’ll brief you on everything that’s happened since I last posted. However I’ll talk more about what has happened since I’ve come to Setauket.

Recently my days have been filled with coding mornings and lazy noons; then math math math nonstop for hours. I hate math. But I’m terrible at it, so I need to WORK a lot. I am taking the PSAT in mid-October so I need to be ready. Surprisingly my “Writing Skills” are sort of terrible. I’m not sure why. The multiple-choice answers are somewhat ambiguous and I also have poor vocabulary. Least you would expect from me eh? I have sub-par, I guess. I can spell all the words I don’t know the meanings of (HUGE hyperbole okay because we all love our literary devices).

So. Coding mornings? Yes. I have been writing a bunch of things in C because my dad says so… It’s a summer project. It’s a thing. Yes. I’ve also been learning JavaScript (I’ve been learning for about a year or so on Khan Academy; I never knew it was JS until I realized last month). It’s pretty exciting. I’m actually motivated to do it because of the badges and things. AND Pamela and Vi are so nice and funny and it makes people feel like they are capable.

Side note: I’ve “coded” my own version of Flappy Bird. Except for 1) It’s Rainbow Dash, so it’s really Flappy Pony and 2) I didn’t really code it. I’ve been using TouchDevelop to code it and it’s one of the projects, which means that TD helps you do it every step of the way and tells you exactly what to code. It’s cheating, but I understand everything that goes into it so I’m “learning”, I guess. TouchDevelop is a Microsoft thing, by the way, and I first used it at a Microsoft YouthSpark CodeIT! session.

This summer is IT. This summer is THE SUMMER. I’ve been involved in A LOT of charity/volunteer work. Okay, so everything is “unsubstantial” but I don’t care. It’s fun to do the things I’m doing: papercrafting signs for the newly unhomeless, writing book reviews for the teens in our community, donating a lot lot lot lot. A lot of it comes from DoSomething.org, which has a bunch of challenges/scholarships they encourage teens to participate in. Anyway, I’m not an ad, but I totally endorse it. I’ve also donated to our local library’s food drive and I’m going to donate things to the Lupus charity. But the biggest charity thing of the season will be me and my friend’s Lemonade/Cookie Stand. AAH! Guess who’s making the cookies?!  Yup. And they’ll be madeleines!!

So why is today the best day? Because I totally found a huge stash of wrapping paper!! AAAAAAH! Now I can use that to make Wildlife Cards (for park rangers) and Birthday Cards (for homeless children). So yup. Today is wonderful.

Amber: A Girl Living in the Time of Slavery

#throwbacktime !!!!!

So here is a story I wrote when I was in second grade about slavery. At the time, everybody (meaning, teachers, parents...) really liked the slaves' working song I composed within it (only lyrics, duh, not including the actual melody, which it has none.) Now, I still can't understand what is so special about it........?

Here it is!

Note: I'm sorry that Amber's last name may be offensive to some (like, oh, her last name labels her, too). I was very young at the time of writing this... also, I do think that the word Black is in some surnames so it's not specifically targeted at Amber's race.

xxx

Amber: A Girl Living in the Time of Slavery


Once, in the time of slavery, there lived a girl named Amber Blacker. She was a slave living on a plantation in a little tiny shack in Georgia.

Amber was separated from her baby sister, Anne, and from her hard working, loving sister, Sofi. Amber could not imagine life without her parents. Everyday Amber walked long distances to get water from the well and bring it to her master.

Her best friend was Becah Magres. Becah had been brought from Africa recently. Her Granny was still in Africa. Becah missed her very much. “I hardly knew her,” she said. “My Momma used to say Granny was the one who helped us all.”

One day, Amber was picking cotton on the plantation, when Becah started singing. When slaves sang, their songs had secret messages:

When will the horses come, one by one? Let’s hope they will come soon. Here they come. Here they come. The carriages they pull. The Freedom Land, the freedom Land, is where they will go to.

She understood this message: the horses and carriage are like trains. The Freedom Land is Canada. All of the slaves Amber knew escaped to Canada.


One day on August 19th, Becah, Amber, and their families escaped on the Underground Railroad with Harriet Tubman. They were scared, but they did not talk. They would get caught if they did. "The first stop is Lulu’s house”, muttered Harriet under her breath. They hid in Lulu’s garden. Her garden was full of weeds so no one could see them.

During the night, they ran to Dunkin’s Barn. Dunkin had seven barrels-- perfect!! Each person hid in a barrel. Then Dunkin put the barrels in a wagon and drove them to their next stop. Day after day, night after night, they ran and hid. Finally, they reached Canada!!

They cheered for joy. ” I must go now,” said Harriet. “Be good and I’ll get your sisters,” she told Amber. Amber smiled. Harriet always kept her promise. Exactly a month later, Harriet brought Anne and Sofi to Canada and they all lived happily ever after.

xx

Oh yeah, and I got a new signature!~ <3

Writer!

Hi y’all! Today I’m using Writer to compose this post! That’s pretty exciting, but some (maybe most?) of you guys don’t know what Writer is.

Well, the official name is Windows Live Writer, and it comes with the Windows Live Essentials pack (free! yay!). I found out about it when I was downloading Windows Live Movie Maker, which is also part of the Essentials pack. Anyway, this program immediately caught my eye. It’s like offline composing, and it’ll publish to your blog for you, and it’s a nice, easy to use interface, and it doesn’t have orange (!!!!!!) and also it lets you edit with your blog template (except for Google fonts like mine; more on that later).

The one thing that I absolutely cannot stand about Writer is the font problem, which of course could probably (in theory) be solved by downloading your default blog font from dafont.com or some other font library to your computer. Because my blog font, “Coming Soon,” is a Google font, it isn’t available on my PC (as of now). Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, because usually when composing in the Blogger window it shows your words in Times New Roman, and you see the final product in the Preview screen, or else after you’ve published the post. But, in the preview screen of Writer, it also shows everything in TNR. I have a gently and slowly decreasing hate for TNR, but it’s nevertheless still there.

So, sorry for my rant about fonts (some people don’t care, but I do not belong to that category of people). And, if you would, you can check out Writer online. It’s had no problems (thus far, which is like the time it took me to write this post )

Oh, speaking of emoticons: Writer is great for this stuff! It provides you with emoticons while blogging. When I was trying to type ( d ) (without the spaces, duh) it turned into this: , and when I was trying to type ( f ) it turned into the lovely .

So I would definitely recommend Writer to those of you in the blogosphere reading this. Thanks for reading and please leave a comment~! <3 thank you, it would make my day

Note: I am not in any way affiliated with Windows or any of its partners. The opinions expressed in this blog post are my own.

RE: "what it takes" to be american by terry

So, +Theresa Kuei  over at The Peaceful Osmanthus wrote a very interesting blog post about a largely debatable topic, and here is my response. All the below stuff is my opinion, although I do reference one other site.

~~~

Firstly, why does everyone say 'the States' when they move abroad? >:( Personally, I think that 'U.S.' is SO much more ear-friendly (that's not a real thing). By the way, the correct capitalization is 'the States', not 'the states'. But whatever, that's not really the point.

Well, I saw this issue on a Grammar Girl article once. She referred to U.S. citizens as 'Americans,' and that sparked a HUGE debate. Click here for her "response article."

Butt, I will say that there's really no substitute for "a word to mean citizens of U.S.A." And note that I said "a word" so don't tell me "U.S. citizens". Honestly, I also assume that "Americans" (in its U.S. usage) could also refer to people who not necessarily are citizens, but who identify as "Americans"-- i.e., a person "from" or "of" the U.S.A.

Ex: illegal immigrants, especially their children (who are still alien, nonetheless). The children, who have probably never visited the country of their heritage, identify as "American" (U.S. usage). But, they may not be citizens. So, in that sense, "Americans" can mean MORE than "citizens of U.S.A." It may just mean "people of U.S.A.", for this particular usage (the so-called "U.S. usage").

In common usage, "Americans" refers to people "of" the United States of America, (and I use the term "of" loosely) but Latin Americans and Canadians, Mexicans, etc., probably DO identify as "Americans" (continental usage). I support the usage of "Americans" in dealing exclusively with U.S. people, but I also agree that it can be used otherwise, making it somewhat confusing. Butt what we have got to understand here is that the full name of USA is "United States of America," and that "America" is actually IN ITS NAME. So, that's why I support using it. There simply is no alternative, and also, it's technically an abbreviation, soo.... yup.

<3 sorry for very long article <3

HAIIIIII-kus

This morning I thought
things would somehow be the same
but they were different

Today I thought that
things would somehow be different
but they stayed the same

Which one was your day?

xx

HAI THERE.

:))

I realized that this blog has no theme, but that's okay, because it's mainly a place where I randomly say things that I want to say to the world and that's okay :)

Actually, there is a theme somewhere and it's probably diy which includes all those prompts and things from 'ye olden days' of this blog because that lets you DO IT YOURSELF and also yeah.

MERPP.

Whut.

HIIIIIIIIIIIIII

So the Pocahontas thing was a success. I mean Success. With a capital S.

Yeah, pictures soon. Not now. I don't have them yet :3

And the dress itself looks really itty bitty but then when i wear it it's long enough so...............

hi.