Pictures From Sports Drink Disaster

As promised, I finally uploaded the pictures from my homemade sports drink experimenting.  For privacy reasons, I'm only posting the ones without us in them.  To see the ones of us making funny faces after drinking it, contact me.

Black Holes!

Black holes are intensely interesting.  I chose this as a topic for a paper for school, never even thinking about it's fascinating potential.  Imagine this:
A star dies, causing an intense matter explosion.  The resulting energy causes a rush of matter so strong that space and time warps and folds in on itself, creating a a void.  Nothing ever comes out of a black hole, not even light.  The vacuum that is formed when space folds in on itself is so strong, anything that comes too close is pulled into a black hole, land of no escape.  That's why scientists don't know exactly what's inside a black hole, but they have run computer simulations which have shown what exactly happens when things are sucked into a black hole.  To explore an interactive black hole I found, click here. 
What scientists know about black holes is fairly simple.  A black hole is essentially a giant cone in space.  Everything pulled into the void then enters what is known as the event horizon, essentially a long tunnel with a point at the end where nothing can escape.  The gravitational pull on a black hole is so strong, in fact, that humans can't survive the fall in-- your body gets stretched out (see simulation).  But this is the strange part.  Recent science suggests that there is another horizon inside a black hole- the inner horizon.  And this is the weird thing:  Inside the inner horizon are two cone-like beams.  These beams work as giant particle accelerators- sucking matter in and sending it in to one beam or the other.  Theories suggest that if matter is sucked into one beam, it will be sent forward in time, and if it is sucked into the other, it will be sent back in time.   The diagram above shows exactly what this inner horizon looks like.  To learn more about black holes, visit the discover article I read that got me into black holes: http://discovermagazine.com/2011/jun/26-strange-physics-singular-views-inside-black-holes
Random thought for the day:  The other day, I discovered a new, awesome, nerdy, chemistry-y website: chemicool.com.  Check it out!

Personalized Helicopter?!?!?!?

Please take note of these four links:

http://www.plansdelivery.com/furia4.htm
and
http://www.indianhelicopters.com/
and
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=123639
and
http://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/AC%2020-27G.pdf

Also, remember that I first got the idea from the little ads in the back of old Popular Mechanics, "Build YOur Own Helicopter" kits, and, incidentally, I've found one of these ads in Googe Books.
Check it out!


INCOMPLETE POST: ONE LINK TO BE ADDED

The Mighty Lemon Drops!

Recently, I was at the library booksale and found a CD by a band called The Mighty Lemon Drops.  I had never heard of them before, but I liked their name, so I bought the CD (this time checking to make sure there was actually a CD inside) and listened to it-- and guess what: THEY ARE REALLY GOOD!  I'd reccommend them really highly.  Here is a link to my personal favorite song, My Shadow Girl.  Also today I've got a few sketches I drew some time ago but apparently haven't posted here before.  The first one is called Bobert Sees The World, and I have no idea what it's supposed to mean, but it's a cute little drawing.  You see the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower, and this bizarre helicopter creature thing; that must be what the world looks like.  The second is called Stopping to Say Hi While Walking His Cat, which not only did I like enough to put on a T-shirt, but it's just one of my favorite drawings I've done.  The third one is just one of these creepy baby things I used to draw a lot of.  I also have ANOTHER link, this one to the Deviantart page of my friend who does the creepy experimental films.  He is an artist, too, however, like his films, they're really creepy and gorey (some of them).  Check it out.  I have another friend, too, who recently made another song.  He's going to be sending me the CD soon, and then I'll post it here.
Random thought for the day:  I'm happy, because there is a Chipotle's burrito place coming to town!  I discovered them on the East Coast trip I went on over this past summer, and it's quite good, but I thought it was just an East Coast thing.  Apparently, though, it's not, so there is one coming in where the old Shoney's was that they tore down a while ago.  Yay!
Another random thought:  Currently I'm working on a list of my absolute favorite books of all time, for reference, and since a lot of them appeal to the nerd element, I'm going to post it here as soon as I finish it.
Yet another random thought: I want to make a small, one-person personalized helicopter based off of the designs in old Popular Mechanics so I can fly it to and from school and beat the traffic.  I think it's really sad magazines no longer contain blueprints to small helicopters that actually work, and so I'm going to make a statement with mine.  I will, of course, have to get FAA approval.  

Nose & Toes-- Typing Test

Note: this is what you would call a "second attempt post", as the first time I tried nose typing I somehow shut down my computer and the original post I was working on didn't get saved, so I had to retype the whole thing.  Let this be a lesson: be very careful when nose/toes typing!
This is really entertaining if you are ridiculously bored or have absolutely nothing better to do, so enjoy. 
Here's what you do: Open Microsoft Word (or whatever your word browser is, you can even use a typewriter if you want to be extra hispter-y), or open a comment for the blog.  Anywhere you can type will work, Google Docs, you name it.... 
Then try to type the phrases below first with your nose, then with your toes. Punctuation does not matter, but this is very tricky as it is, so it won't make a large amount of difference. My attempts are below, and it'd be great if you could send YOUR attempts to me as well.  If you have my email, send it to me that way, or you can even mail it if you want.  If you don't have my email, please just do it in a comment, because for privacy reasons I don't want to publicly post my email address on the internet.  I will then post your attempts here as well, unless you specifically tell me not to.  Enjoy!

Phrase 1: Cats are nice and furry.  My attempt (nose): cats are niceand rurry.  My attempt (toes): c atrs are icf ZA bnd fujhrrftuy h
Phrase 2: Kirk is better than Picard.  My attempt (nose): kirk nis bettr than icard/  My attempt (toes): kirtfk iksd bedtter tyhasn pikcsartdf
Phrase 3: Nerdy Babble Today is awesome.  My attempt (nose): nerdy babble today ims awesome  My attempt (toes): nerdy     bzab bled todfu is bawsesomew
Phrase 4: Thunderbirds are go!  My attempt (nose): thunderbrds are go  My attempt (toes): tbhundfedrbiordfsd asrer go~
Heh, this is pretty fun.  Now it's your turn!  Please be careful where you're putting your nose and toes so you don't end up crashing your computer!

Random thought for the day:  Yesterday my friend and I tried to make our own energy drink from a recipe in a magazine using orange juice, lemon juice, sea salt, and lime juice.  Unfortunately, we didn't have lime juice or sea salt, so we just put extra lemon juice and used regular table salt instead.  Our first attempt was vile!  We had the bright idea of dyeing it green for unknown reasons, which was interesting.  We had way too much salt, so we watered it down a ton, got it so it was drinkable, and then began to squeeze more lemon juice.  Unfortunately, about halfway through, we realized the bowl that we were squeezing into was still all salty, and so when we added the juice our recipe was suddenly undrinkable again.  Finally, we got something decent, and gave it to both my mom and dad to try.  My mom thought it was nasty, she couldn't even finish it, but then again she doesn't like regular Gatorade either.  My dad actually said it wasn't terrible or something of that nature.  I took a few pictures of the fiasco and will post them as soon as I get them off the camera.

Halloween!

Ok, Halloween is right around the corner, which means it's the time (of the season, get it?  That song has been stuck in my head all day) to start coming up with costume ideas.  I don't really have any this year, but I've been thinking I either want to be a crime scene, a duct tape ninja, Batman, or some sort of element (but I haven't yet decided what element).  If you have any ideas for me, please post them, along with comments on my existing costume ideas. And oh yeah: A happy Halloween you have! (Or, if you like, a Yoda-y halloween.)

Brave Story

I know I haven't posted in a while but I've been quite busy; ANYWAY I wanted to recommend a book I'm currently reading: Brave Story by Miyuki Miyabe.  This is a very interesting book, both because of it's translation from Japanese (the are parts where you find yourself thinking "This was really well translated!" or "Wow, I have no idea what that's supposed to mean," but also because of it's captivating adventure theme, reminiscint of Alex and the Ironic Gentleman, one of my absolute favortie books of all time.  Though enormously fat, I'd reccommend Brave Story very highly.  *Side note: Alex and the Ironic Gentlman is currently being made into a movie, an idea I both love and hate: it would make a great movie, but I'm afraid it won't stick to the book enough, and will be ruined in a very Coraline-ish sense.  (In Coraline, as you may recall, in the book she is a very independant character, and in the movie they had to introduce a guy character to help her out, which I resent.)  Interestingly, I started turning Alex and the Ironic Gentleman into a movie several years ago, but didn't get very far.  The entire point of my idea was to make a good movie that followed the book perfectly before Hollywood ruined it.  But I'll be in the theater the day it comes out purely out of curiosity.  And even if they do ruin it, I'll still have Jaclyn Moriarty, my favorite author EVER.