Tired/Excited!

Today too, I am tired… not only that, but I can’t focus on work because I’m excited! Tomorrow is my birthday Awesome

I did as much work as I could. And I worked on the presentation for the project It is my child, I love it so! Can’t wait to present it!

See ya tomorrow!

About Today (Man, I am sooo tired!)

Wow, I am very tired. Been working since 6 in the morning. Then, I slept for about two hours while the light was gone, and back to work! Did some things from Computer Science, Chemistry, and studyied one hour for the SAT. Now I just took a ten minute break. I’m supposed to do two math homeworks, but I don’t think I’ll make it. Probably, I’ll try to finish atleast one and try to finish the other tomorrow…

-.-U I don’t remember ever having this work-load before… probably because before I didn’t study as hard as now XD I want to learn god dammit! Studying is fun, just very time consuming! I think I’ll try to take more naps so I can stay up later working…

Also, I’ve kept working on the project (every day). I plan on having a presentation of the ideas (and wireframes, mockups) to someone (anyone, really) this week. Today I discovered Google APIs in Google code. AWESOME! I already found one that is going to help me a lot! I love you Google!!

Thursday

Thursday is my birthday! Awesome. I don’t know what I’m going to do… probably go out and eat some Arabic food (yay!)… probably get home and play some video games. That day, I won’t do one single homework! And then on Friday, I’ll be going to forensics. I feel a little nervous, since I picked a more serious poem than usual… I hope I can pull it off!

As a side note, I’m organizing my first D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) game! I have been wanting to play D&D since 2007, when I bought my first set of dice (so beautiful!) in the biggest anime convention in Venezuela, Avalancha. However, it wasn’t until last year that I bought the books (4e). And it wasn’t until now that I could finally convince people to play with me! I ended up making some stock characters, and my mom made her Paladin (which she always wanted). Hopefully I’ll be able to play on Saturday.

I’m not dead

Don’t worry, I haven’t died. I just had some awesome plans that I needed to formulate in my mind.

Because I decided that what I want to do in life is to understand and learn (as well as give access to ways of learning and understanding to others), I have thought about the fact that, right now, I am not doing anything towards that goal. Why? Sure, there are always a million reasons why not to do something, but usually they are object of fear or laziness. Because of that, I want to start now. However, since I can’t teach everything (and not many people would want to learn everything anyways), I want to specialize on the fields that interest me the most.

Interestingly, I thought about these fields and decided that I don’t want to try to teach about computers or Web Development. Although I do love Web Development, for me it is a tool, the way I will be able to reach millions of people. Instead, I really like languages and math. My favorite class at school now is Pre-Calculus! I can’t wait to take Calculus next year! Math is like the glue that binds the world together.

Therefore, I am going to start working on this big project, one that matters so much to me, on learning languages (first). I envision it as integrating web resources and SRS power, which really does work! It’ll definitely help me accomplish my language learning as well. In a way, the project is for me, but I will also release it to posterity, so that everyone can benefit (which is what I want in the end, to incite others to want to learn and understand the world around them!)

So, from now on, no more dailies! Instead, I am going to focus my full attention towards this project. Hopefully, I’ll be able to post snippets of code, or things I find out.

Dailies have definitely served their purpose. They have helped me realize three mayor things:
1. I love ColourLovers (I use it until today… it is very cathartic!)
2. I hate design (and I don’t want to be a web designer)
3. I like PHP. Yay!

So I’ll go at it! Wish me luck peeps!

Thanks

Today in class we say this video:

It made me think. What I am doing here is some sort of diary. Although I don’t write everything that goes through my mind every day, or what happens to me, I write what I find most important. Sometimes maybe I feel sad or something, but I know that in a day or two I’ll be fine again. However, when I get inspired or motivated, I think those times I must record it, so I understand what happened, and I can reread it later and reflect.

In a sense, those who read my posts can know me better than people I see every day. I think this is the side of me that I like. The side that tries to remain positive, that wants to be optimistic, the side that is deeply passionate about whatever I do.

Because of that, I just wanted to say, thank you if you have been reading. Writing this blog and doing the daily projects I have learned more about myself than what I learned last year. And this is only 3 months in! Imagine what I will be able to learn throughout the year!

Anyways, thank you again!

Palettes and Dreams

Even though Palette month was last month, I still keep going to ColourLovers, where the community is both warm and fun, and I also relax while making the palettes. Trying to communicate feelings with colors is difficult, but it is also rewarding
I’ve made what I like to call my “dream” collection, where I try to put my various moods into the palettes, which usually have to do with my dreams, goals, resolution, etc. All of the things I feel (and want to feel) at this moment So I thought I would share it with you guys!

Color by COLOURlovers

A lot of people have liked this. Personally, I love it, it is like what I am feeling now. I wasn’t in a bad place before, but it was like I was laying dormant inside of myself. The red is the first breath that I take, the first beat my heart produced. I think this came through when I found a purpose I wanted to follow. After all, if we don’t have a purpose, aren’t we merely zombies?

Color by COLOURlovers

Of course I do!

Color by COLOURlovers

This one is inspired on a picture of Vladimir Kusch. The end is soft earth and water.

Color by COLOURlovers

Hope can be cool colors too. Relaxing.

Color by COLOURlovers

And blue can be really sad. Sometimes my heart is sad.

Color by COLOURlovers

But then it returns to determination. It must be determined! No matter what, I must keep going.

Color by COLOURlovers

The road is far ahead! Keep going!

Color by COLOURlovers

This last one was inspired in Kimi ni Todoke. But I identify with it

PHP

Today I started PHP.
It is awesome!! I’m loving it already, specially since I can understand a lot of what the parts of the language mean (string concatenation, boolean, operators…)
Of course, I started with the really easy stuff. Here is the tutorial I followed.

I ended up making 5 really small programs. Check them out:
//000.php

<?php echo ‘Hello World’;?>
Output:Hello World

//001.php

<?php

$name = “Selene”;

$mission = “To learn”;

$doItFactor = “I can do it”;

echo “My name is $name. $mission is my mission. <br>Can I do it? $doItFactor”;

?>

Output:

My name is Selene. To learn is my mission.

Can I do it? I can do it

What is cool about PHP is that I can actually use the variables inside of the string without needing any concatenation. In Java, you need to do: System.out.println(“My name is ” + name  + “. To learn is my ” + mission + “\nCan I do it? ” + doItFactor);

PHP is just awesome :3

//002.php

// As you can see, I try to do math in the String. That doesn’t work.

<?php

$seleneAge = 16;

$mariaLauraAge = $seleneAge – 2;

echo “Selene is $seleneAge years old. <br> Maria Laura is $mariaLauraAge years old. <br>

Maria Laura is $seleneAge-$mariaLauraAge years younger than Selene. “;

?>

Output:

Selene is 16 years old.
Maria Laura is 14 years old.
Maria Laura is 16-14 years younger than Selene.

//003

//Here, I try to do the logical thing and do the math in another variable.

<?php

$seleneAge = 16;

$mariaLauraAge = $seleneAge – 2;

$ageDifference = $seleneAge – $mariaLauraAge;

echo “Selene is $seleneAge years old. <br> Maria Laura is $mariaLauraAge years old. <br>

Maria Laura is $ageDifference years younger than Selene. “;

?>

Output:

Selene is 16 years old.
Maria Laura is 14 years old.
Maria Laura is 2 years younger than Selene.

Not surprisingly, it works perfectly.
However, I give it another go using the concatenation operators (which is ‘.’ I just find that funny)

//004

<?php

$seleneAge = 16;

$mariaLauraAge = $seleneAge – 2;

echo “Selene is $seleneAge years old. <br> Maria Laura is $mariaLauraAge years old. <br>

Maria Laura is “.$seleneAge-$mariaLauraAge.” years younger than Selene. “;

?>

Output:

-14 years younger than Selene.

Well, obviously that wasn’t the way to go.
I’ll give it another try tomorrow. I suspect that I was wrong in the way I used the string concatenation. Well, tomorrow we’ll see!

I love php so far

Blergh

Today I feel so… blergh.
Like meh, this word can mean a total ambivalence, some sort of… annoyance at everything, or perhaps it is not knowing how you really feel so you get annoyed at the world and at yourself. That is how I feel. Blergh. Like I don’t really want to do anything :/
How annoying.
Anyways, today I’ll think of how I can start with php, so that’s cool!

Blergh.

Offer

Hi! Just a few announcements.
Tomorrow, I start again with the daily, only this time I’ll be focusing on PHP and web development in general.
Also, I’ll be working on my school’s alumni page! Awesome, right? We actually don’t have an alumni association, so I’ll be helping the counselor build it.

And finally, I’ve been having some ideas… I would like to do some youtube videos about Spanish. Nothing too complicated or anything, but simple things that might help others learn or understand

And I’m offering for free English to Spanish or Spanish to English translations! Yup, just leave me a comment and we’ll talk

I’ve missed doing translations… I worked on two (unofficial) translations for the last two Harry Potter books and it was so fun! I think we did the whole thing in a week or two.

Talk to you later!

Explanation

Today, I’ll try to make more sense of the explanation I offered you yesterday. I think I have found what I want to do in the future, what I want to devote my life to.

Throughout much of my life (which, admitedly, hasn’t been that much) I was always jumping from idea to idea, from future to future. At first, I wanted to be an Egyptologist, and I learned the names of all ancient Egyptian gods, as well as all the history that my little brain could hold. Then, I wanted to be a gurmet, and know all of the tastes in the world. After that, I wanted to be a book critic, then celtic historian, a programmer, and, finally, a web developer.

I’ve come to realize, the world is full of stuff I want to do, replete with things I want to learn, to understand. I don’t want to merely memorize facts (a radian is used for trigonometry), but instead to understand them, realize why they were created (a radian is the distance traveled divided by the radius of a circle). This is my aspiration in life, what I wish to accomplish: I want to understand all that I can of the world and myself.

Lately, I’ve come to realize that I quietly have geared my interests towards this major purpose. I have discovered a great love for languages. What are languages? Essentially, aren’t they ways to communicate information, ideas, feelings, thoughts? Just imagine, right now I know Spanish and English, which grants me a pretty huge resource of information. However, there are so many things that either t hey are not availiable in these languages or simply lose their meaning once translated. As I’ve mentioned before, different languages conjure up different feelings for me. Imagine, if I know more languages, not only do I have access to more information, to more people I can learn from, to more things I can understand, but I have more feelings availiable that I can express. I have said before, with Spanish I can express passion, and the dark feelings inside of my heart, que son como las palabras de la tierra humeda, del arbol dormitando en el bosque. Son los sentimientos que se acurrucan en los petalos cerrados de las rosas, y sueñan en olvidadas madrigeras… English, on the other hand, is the language I use to express reflections, the language I use to think with words, to detach myself from emotion and analyze and understand myself.

As for Web Development, it makes sense. In my opinion, our world today has created a great deal of wonders which Arthur C. Clarke described so eloquently:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Of all of these amazingly advanced technologies, there comes the internet. Now I know some people disdain the internet. Indeed, it has some really negative sides about it, including the end of privacy, the end of just being able to “disappear”. However, the fact is that it has opened up for us an entire new world. Not only that, but it has helped us understand the world we live at today. In just a few minutes I can see things which I am probably never going to see in real life through a youtube video, or talk to people in Japan or Ukraine. I can take classes on very specialized subjects, and get information regarding obscure historical incidents -in short, I find it simply amazing.

If I can participate in this phenomena of shaping this information, helping others also receive it in a way that they can understand it, I think that I will have fulfilled my purpose of learning and understanding, as well as given back to the world and our society.

Because of that, I want to help shape this information. I want to create someplace where people can learn. I don’t know how I am going to do it, but I want to help people learn and understand. That is what I want to give to the world, what I am ultimately giving to myself.

So there you have it! My passion, my dream, and my goal, all together! I honestly think I will be able to make it. If I have enough perseverance, strength, and passion, then I will be able to accomplish it.