Quiz...

Hello dear followers/ readers of this blog!  I have made a quiz for you to see just how often you check in on my blog and if you are actually reading it or not.  Try to do the quiz WITHOUT actually looking at my blog.  Click here to do the quiz!

More on shoes, and some thoughts

Hello all!  Ahead of me is a five-day weekend, which will be filled with tea, Futurama, and other nerdy glory.  It will also be full of BLOGGING, so settle in.
First, some thoughts on flannel.  It is an amazing material!  It is warm, which is becoming increasingly necessary as we steadily approach winter.  It is often plaid, and need I say any more on that?  I LOVE PLAID.  Flannel shirts are hipster-y, and can be worn in many different styles.  All said- they're the perfect winter fashion.
Next, some blather about food.  One of the things I would like to do this looong weekend is make some recipes I found in my Spanish textbook.  This textbook, while utterly useless for Spanish homework, is at least entertaining to flip through, and it contains a few good recipes.  I want to make dulce de leche, which is an amazing delicious caramel-y goo, meaning "sweet milk" when translated from Spanish.  Interestingly, the word "dulce" is also in Italian, and that means you often find it in music, meaning sweetly, or dulce cantabule, sweetly singing.  Aren't roots fun?  I also want to make platanos horneados (note: in Spanish, the word platano, meaning banana or plantain, has an accent over the first "a", but I couldn't figure out how to insert one.  If you speak Spanish, bear with me.)  These are bananas cooked in butter with honey and cloves on them.  NOM!!!
Currently, I'm reading Ender's Game, which actually I've never read before, though you'd think someone like me would be all over that book.  Anyway, is it just me, or are the plots of Ender's Game and the Shadow Children series awfully similar?  

I've also been busy off in shoeland lately.  Not only did I design my own shoe, (which I want to get made, by the way, but I'm afraid it would be rather pricey), but I also designed a basketball shoe on Nike ID that is wickedly awesome.   Click here to see it.  Meanwhile, be sure to check out http://nikeid.nike.com/nikeid /index.jsp , which is where you can custom-build just about any shoe.  As I design more, I'll be sure to post them.  Something else I did: Make a brochure for the shoe I made.  I'll try to post it here in a minute.

Shoe Designs

I'm sorry it's been so long since I posted.  I've been swamped with schoolwork.  However, I have managed to find time to design a whole array of shoes.  Attached is one of them.  I apologize that it's sideways, but for some reason my computer wouldn't let me rotate it.

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.