I have a webcomic, maybe? We’ll see how often I can keep updating it. For now, here’s the first comic:
It’s about a Giant Space Squid, of course.
And here’s a link to where you can read the second comic and what others may follow: http://giantspacesquid.thecomicseries.com/
Oh man, an update!
So, I’m doing this thing now, called poi (if you’re too lazy to read the Wikipedia article, it’s basically taking balls on ropes and whirling them around in patterns). And now it’s turned into fire poi.
I’ve been in my college’s poi exco (sort of a class, though I’m not taking it for a grade, twice a week in the evenings) this past semester, and we ended the year with a burn. It was the first time any of us (excepting our instructor, of course) had done fire poi.
It was awesome.
The poi for fire poi are different than normal ones. These are wicks on chains. The wicks are designed to hold fuel, and you soak them in it for a bit and then remove the excess by spinning them around inside a bucket. That step is important, otherwise you’ll end up spitting flames out, usually at yourself. There’s a lot of safety stuff but that’s not as exciting so I’ll just put in some more pictures.
Anyway, yeah. It’s a lot of fun. And I didn’t even set myself on fire.
We’re hopefully going to do one more burn before the semester ends, but since it’s so weather-dependent and we only have a week left, we might not be able to. Which is sad, but still, even just the once was awesome.
Compy is back in action! New posts should resume as soon as I have any semblence of time.
In the meantime, I’ve grown by 2 nerd-levels and have started playing Magic the Gathering.
Also, this is what my schedule looks like. I saw it the other day and had one of those oh-god-how-did-I-end-up-doing-all-this moments.
(The 3 0-credit courses are excos, once or twice a week each)
Eep. Also, I’m still on hockey and Quidditch and am now treasurer of the Oberlin Harry Potter Alliance and I might have just signed up for the Circus Spring Showcase. What.
My computer had a panic attack* two weeks ago, and has been recuperating at the tech store for the past week. Not sure when I’ll be getting it back; I’ve been borrowing computers from friends to do homework on, but I don’t really have time to loiter around the internet as I usually do. More posts will have to wait until I get it fixed. Thankfully, it’s still under warranty, so it should be fine.
*fine, a kernel panic
During high school, I was very much a stressed person. I took on a lot of commitments, and then took on even more. By my sophomore year I was on the tennis team, a varsity hockey team, a very intense travel club hockey team, tech crew, drama club, National Honor Society, photo club, band/extra flute lessons, and all honors classes. Junior/senior year I traded honors for AP’s and added GSA and a few other clubs. And probably more that I’ve forgotten.
My schedule on weekdays was wake up at 6, school by 7:10, stayed there till 5pm (as soon as tennis season ended, tech crew started, so I rarely went home before then), and then was at home for less than an hour and a half before I had to leave for hockey practice. I was at the rink doing off-ice training and then on-ice practice until 10pm, and would get home around 11. Then I’d have to start my homework (although I often had to work on it in the car to/from practices), shower, and get at most 6 hours of sleep (usually less) before the next day.
Weekends without hockey games was hockey practice saturday day (I was able to sleep in till 11am to catch up on what I missed in the week), and then sunday morning I had practice, and then a second practice sunday night for the other team. Homework happened in the leftover time. Weekends with games I’d spend about 5 hours extra at various rinks. Weekends with tournaments (about 5 a year) I would skip school friday, drive/fly out to Michigan/Minnesota/Connecticut/New York/Canada and spend all my time either in transit to rinks, at them warming up, actually playing, or crashing at the hotel/shoveling down food. Homework happened late sunday night when I got back home. Plus there were tennis meets and musicals and plays with hell weeks and papers and all sorts of crap that would just pile up.
It wasn’t good for me. I wasn’t very good at dealing with everything emotionally. I was overwhelmed nearly all of the time, but instead of working to make it better or dropping some commitments, I would keep pushing myself until I sort of broke down and would have to just sit in my room for a few hours doing nothing/crying until I was calm enough to start working again. I couldn’t afford to take the breaks people advised me to because I was afraid I would fall behind, and not be able to catch up. I was, and still am, very afraid of failure. I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve always been pushed, and pushed myself, to excel or some other cause.
It was bad times for me. I cried a lot. School was stressful, and for various reasons (not big ones, but little ones that piled up) home was as well. “Breaks” in the school year didn’t really let me unwind, usually they just stressed me out more, honestly. By the end of my sophomore year I was very apathetic about everything–I couldn’t afford to care about school and stuff, because I was already teetering on the edge of being too overwhelmed more than half the time. It’s something that still happens, which can be a problem–I realize the day something is due that I haven’t done it, and i just sort of shut down and never do it, and push it’s existence out of my mind instead of dealing with it (like turning it in for a lowered grade rather than none at all). I had a brief conversation with my psychology teacher once (when our class was learning about personality types) about how I’m one of those people that feels things (emotionally) very intensely.
This sometimes surprises people. The fault is my own–I hate people seeing me emotionally distressed, so I hide it. Instead of talking to friends (let alone family–I wasn’t close to them in that sort of way) about problems, I either vented to the internet, or, more commonly, locked them away inside myself. I don’t like showing weakness. So when I don’t manage to hide that I’m crying or upset, and people notice, it just adds to it. I get embarrassed that I’m crying, and even though a lot of the time I’m not actually all that upset inside I can’t stop myself from sobbing everywhere. Attempts to explain that it’s not as bad as it looks aren’t usually successful, so then I feel guilty for making people worry on top of that.
Even so, I managed to hide things pretty well. Some of my close friends knew I was very stressed, and my family did to an extent (although, as mentioned, I am not close with them), but most of what I felt I kept to myself.
Looking back from now, when I’m in a much better place emotionally, I was a lot worse than I thought I was at the time. There were days when it took all my effort to make myself get out of bed, when all I wanted was to stay there forever and never face life. Times I would blow off homework because I couldn’t force myself to care enough about it, even though I knew it would just make my problems worse. The physical exertion of hockey was good for me in some ways, but it also added different social stress, and also feelings of inferiority because I was on the lower end of the skill scale for the team, and knew that there was only a certain extent to which I could improve. By the end of my junior year there were months where I cried–on the bus, in the car on the way home (though I kept it hidden), alone at night–twice as many days as I didn’t.
And then college applications came along. It resulted in more secret emotional meltdowns than the previous years combined. I applied to nine schools in all, and while they were all thankfully on the common app, they each had a supplement that required essays and short answers. I had to try to convince myself, not to mention the schools, of all the reasons I really wanted to be there above anywhere else–when really all I wanted to do was lay down and sleep forever. Even after I’d finished and submitted them (easily one of the worst experiences of my life), I still had to wait 3 months before I heard back from anywhere–even though nearly all of my friends knew that they were into at least one school by the time I had finished applying.
But in the end I got through it. And I ended up in what was probably the best place for me–I can’t imagine being at another college anymore. Maybe they would have been just as great, but this is where I ended up, and it’s helped me a lot. The combination of being away from nearly all of my previous stressors (home, my school (although there is still a lot of work, don’t get me wrong), etc) and the awesome people I met here have gotten me a long way from where I used to be. I’m still emotionally unstable at times, but I’m better at controlling the panic I sometimes feel. I still occasionally have the “oh-god-what-am-I-doing-with-my-life” crises in the early hours of morn when I should be asleep, but I’m getting better at handling those as well.
That’s enough for right now. Writing about personal stuff is a lot harder than I expected it to be (as you can probably tell from the notable lack of it, despite my promise). But I’ve been thinking about different stuff for a while now and at some point I will talk more about some of it.
I am a fan of the lovely Vi Hart, a “mathmusician” who has created many interesting objects and videos! I would highly suggest checking out her YouTube videos.
In her most recent one (Hyperbolic Planes Take Off), she describes hyperbolic planes, which are a very interesting sort of non-euclidian geometry (here’s the wikipedia entry for those of you more interested in what a hyperbolic plane is). In it she made a lovely interpretation of a hyperbolic plane out of seed beads, and through a marvelous tutorial on her website, I made one as well. Here’s pictures of how mine progressed:
Attempt one started with seed beads on wire. However, after the initial “flower” I discovered that my wire was too thick for the beads I was using, so I switched to larger (and differently colored) beads.
You can see it starting to warp here…
Even easier to see the bending as more beads are added
warp warp warp
Finished! Top view.
Side view
Top view of another one I made, with the same pattern, but different colors. It’s also bent into a different shape even though the structure is the same! Non-euclidian geometry is the best.
Held for size. I like the colors in this one the best I think.
Made one out of thread to feel the difference when it’s stiff versus movable. Also, you can see from this one how it’s impossible to get it to lay flat (aka force it into a euclidian shape).
You can bend it into the same shapes the stiff ones were in.
So yeah! Fun times and cool things! If you have the materials and a few hours you’re not doing anything in, try one! They’re not too hard to make once you get the pattern in your head. I may try one with an additional loop of beads (4 instead of 3 layers), but we’ll see. It’d take a lot of beads/patience.
Edit: The pictures are all sliiiightly too big for the column width. Aka I have to go resize them all one at a time. Which I’m going to do later because I’m lazy and half D&D in half an hour.
(This isn’t one of the posts I meant to write about confronting things about myself, although I still intend to do that. This is just a post).
I just watched Amélie. It was a beautifully whimsical movie and now I have the undeniable urge to go write poetry on the bottom edges of buildings and secret messages on the undersides of stair railings.
It is currently 1:24am. To some people this might be late, but it’s actually rather early for me. I’ve always been a night owl, but this last semester I really learned just how much. On school nights I tried to go to bed from 2-3am, so I’d get at least 6 hours of sleep for the next day (but probably less, to be honest). Apparently some people enjoy 8, but I’ve learned that without 8 ice hockey practices/games a week like I had for the past 3 years (I played for 9), my energy levels shoot way above what is probably health for your average hummingbird on crack. Keeping myself slightly sleep deprived keeps me able to function a bit more like a human, although I only got 6 ours or less all through high school as well, technically.
The only thing about being up so late all the time is that sometimes there aren’t others around to share it with. I’ve always been an introvert and socially awkward (although I think I am improving. Or, well, I’m surrounded by people just as abnormal as I am) so it doesn’t really bother me, this enforced solitude.
Last night some friends and I watched a movie (My Neighbor Tortoro). It finished about 1:30am, and we parted ways. I live in a dorm right next to the one we watched it in, and there’s a large patch of open ground between them. Covered in fresh fallen snow.
I can’t walk by fresh snow without walking in it. Not just walking, but wandering in spirals and squiggles and loops. Well, it’s not ALL the time I have to do this, but in general I shuffle through the snow next to the sidewalks making patterns while my friends walk more normally, and watch in bemusement.
But there was a great big patch of undisturbed snow, and I was overflowing with giggling energy (even though I’d only gotten 5.25 hours of sleep the night before, which is a bit worrisome I admit), so I just HAD to draw a great big dragon in it. I spent about 15 minutes on it, including wings and flame. Then I went to my room, took off my jacket and hat, and decided I was still to energetic for just sitting around and promptly walked back out again (without bothering to take the jacket. I did still have a sweater on though).
So I wandered for a bit, and ended up in Tapin Square (large area, not technically a quad but sort of like one, with many trees (though not a forest by any means) and lots of paths cutting through it). I drew and squiggled for a solid half hour (resulting in one very large, random pattern consisting of just one line) until I had calmed down enough to walk back. It was snowing at this point, though you could only see it falling in the yellow beams of light from the streetlamps. It was one of those moments you need now and then.
By this point it was around 2:15am. I didn’t go to sleep till 4 though, out of principal (well, actually, because it took till then to really settle down).
Watching Amélie reminded me of the feeling I had wandering around campus at 2 in the morning. No one was up, and it was the sort of quiet you only get when there’s snow. Or the feeling of gently drifting underwater, in a green lake, and staring up at the sun and sky through the water.
Anyway, I highly recommend the movie.
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