My name in...

Binary:
01010011 01101011 01111001 01101100 01100101 01110010 00100000 01001100 01100101 01110111 01101001 01110011

Hex:
53 6b 79 6c 65 72 20 4c 65 77 69 73

Character Codepoints: (alt+__ to type)
83 107 121 108 101 114 32 76 101 119 105 115

Base64:
U2t5bGVyIExld2lz

(source: http://www.paulschou.com/tools/xlate/)

Facecake or Face Salad?

Homecoming 2008

This last week was homecoming week. Tuesday through Thursday were spirit days which included dress-ups for "Nerd Day," "Robot Day," and "Neon Day." Riley won the school wide Rubik's Cube competition on Nerd Day. On Thursday we had a cross country meet at Toro Park which was very hot and tiring, and I got about the same time as the last Toro meet. Yesterday concluded the week with a pep rally in the gym with music, guest speakers, competitions, and a really random video of a hypnotized Billy Breaker holding all the football players hostage.

After school yesterday was the homecoming parade which we played in for band. We marched down to Pine Street in a straight line while the percussion section played drum cadences and the rest of us did a horn swing with our instruments. Once we got to Pine, we got into the block formation and played alternating school fight songs: PG Will Shine, Go Big Red, and Red and Gold, broken up by a cadence in between each song. We went down to Lighthouse Avenue and then back up to school on Congress.

Today was the homecoming football game against Robert Louis Stevenson School. For the first time, we actually got to stay for the whole game instead of leaving after 3^rd quarter. Before it started, I went over to say hi to Tijmen, who was selling candy and pom-poms with other people from the middle school band. During the game we played the usual Hey Song, Go Big Red, Iron Man, and the other usual stands music. For the halftime show, we played Beethoven's Fifth, Roll Over Beethoven, which the dance team danced to, and Escorpión. Before the second quarter began again, they announced the homecoming king and queen. Our team won 34 to 6 against the Stevenson Pirates, continuing our league winning streak.

Youth Group Movie Night

Last night Michael and I went to the church Halloween movie night in the Youth Group room. After eating pizza and talking about random things, we voted on a movie. Unfortunately, I had seen all of the choices. My vote was for Firefly, but the vote turned out to be for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It was still quite enjoyable, even though this was the fourth time I'd seen it.

A completely random Halloween picture:

Monterey Sports Car Championships

This morning was another volunteer session at Laguna Seca for the championship sports car race. Once again, we checked and sold tickets at the "B Road" entrance. I worked there for about four hours beginning around six in the morning. When we got there, it was still completely dark and the moon was out. Crowds started coming in around nine or so. Sam Pontarolo and his family were in charge of the station, and others there were Michael and Mackenzie Ryan and Andrew, Michael, and Thomas Paxton.

A photo I took of the moon in the morning...

Roughrider Invitational

Yesterday for cross country we drove up to Fresno for the Roughrider Invitational in Woodward Park (sponsored by McDonald's, oh joy). I rode in Coach Watkins' van with a group of sophomore boys: Matthew Shonman, Leif Swenson, Alec Guertin, and Peter Sujan, as well as Casey Reeves from my grade. The car ride lasted about three hours, and pretty much all we did was listen to assorted music brought by Alec and Leif. The first thing we listened to was a CD called Shake It Up! With Fruits and Veggies, an album recorded by some LA teachers about eating fruit and vegetables. It was completely absurd and funny in a sick way, with songs such as I Wanna Eggplant and Bananas for Bananas. After finishing that album, we moved onto more sane music such as the Beatles.

When we arrived, we had a couple of hours to walk around and watch the middle school races. The course was only 2.2 miles, but the fact that it was about 90 degrees made it a lot harder. The frosh/soph girls went first, and Isabella got a medal for 17^th place. My race was next, and I got somewhere around 16 minutes. Alex Shramm got 2^nd place.

Once we had time to rest, we drove back down to Los Baños where we ate dinner at a Basque restaurant called Wool Grower's. After dinner we played tag in the park across the street and then drove back to PG, getting back around 8:00.

Making a Custom Photoshop Brush

Today I figured out how to make a Photoshop brush out of a custom picture. I used an old Hoppie picture that I came across in my folder. Here's how:

1) Select the part of the picture you want to use. Dark parts will be more opaque, light parts will be more transparent. Use black to create a completely opaque brush.
2) Go to Edit » Define Brush from Selection...
3) Name the brush and save it.
4) Go to "More Options" in the brush tool.
5) Adjust settings the way you want.
6) Change the size to the way you want.
7) Under the brush selection, go to "Save Brush..."
8) Name the brush, save it, and delete the original brush.

Lovers Point Beach Wildlife

An outing to Lovers Point Beach today turned out to be a great chance to get some photos of the wildlife.

First we went to the tidepool area and looked at the sea stars and hermit crabs. Unfortunately, the sea stars didn't photograph well but I got some nice ones of the crabs...



There were a ton of seagulls hanging around the park who were so used to people that they would not fly away. I got only 2 or 3 feet away from this gull to take this photo:



Finally, on our way to leave, I heard cries of "Seal!!! Seal!!!" coming from the main beach. A seal came up all the way to the edge of the sand where all the people were before it got frightened and swam away. This photo was from above on the pier when it was first coming toward the beach:

October Break (Q1 Summary)

After countless weeks without any breaks, October break is finally here.
Here's a summary of how this last quarter has been...

The first quarter so far has been quite difficult compared to middle school, especially with Honors classes and such. Band has been enjoyable although marching is not my favorite. Playing at football games has been nice, especially the night games. Geometry is pretty good, with the normal math class routine observed since 7^th grade, revolving around homework and notes. The homework is not that much and very easy, which is a nice change since in past years about ¾ of my homework has been math. This year, that ¾ is from the Honors English and History classes. English is quite enjoyable during class, and my 1^st quarter base group, Ellis Smith, Jane Rudy, and Mikey Cho, completely owned our group assignments. However, both classes have a ton of homework which often involves worksheets of 10-or-so questions that each have to be answered in a well-developed paragraph without the use of is, am, are, was, were, because, or numerous other words that I previously would use all the time. The History tests are probably the hardest tests I have ever taken.

Biology is very fun; we do many labs and in-class discussions and periodically have "dialogs" where we talk about things like politics. We also go on "nature walks" around the school observing things like deer and acorns. Spanish has a lot of hands-on activities such as the art project we recently did. We just finished swimming in P.E. and have moved on to Ultimate Frisbee, among other things.

An "alternate" picture of our mascot I've seen around the school periodically:

Cross Country @ Pacific Grove

Today was the first of our small cross country meets at home in PG at Rip Van Winkle open space. We went against King City and for the girls Santa Catalina school as well. It was another small meet so all the boys ran together and all the girls ran together, rather than by grade or Varsity and JV. To my surprise, I saw Tijmen's sister Emma there, apparently friends with Coach Watkins' daughter Michelle. The course was 2.4 miles through the shaded dog park area. Despite being a hot day, it was quite cool on the shaded course which was a very enjoyable change. Alex Schramm got first place for boys and Emily Marian got first for girls. Quite a good day for the Breakers.

I didn't bring my camera so I thought I'd put this picture up, of a sign on our Railroad Run put up by a lumber company on the side of their building:

Tomato Plant

This was a project for Spanish today in which we were to reproduce a piece of art done by a Spanish artist. I did Picasso's Planta de Tomate, or "Tomato Plant" (see image at the right). We had the full class period to work on them. I used Prismacolor pencils which are really good colored pencils that are easy to mix with. Unfortunately, we have to present them to the class this Friday. Presentations, I do not like.

The final Tomato Plant picture:

Photoshop Ship

I got the idea for this Photoshop creation from studying slave ships and the Middle Passage in History. I haven't figured out what to call it yet...

PG Invitational

A while ago was the North Tahoe cross country meet, which I was unable to attend, where the team went to Tahoe and stayed with their team and then competed the next day. Last night, the Tahoe team came down to Pacific Grove for the same occasion. We held a spaghetti dinner in the home-ec room and then went to see the movie Eagle Eye as a group at Lighthouse Cinemas.

Today we had our invitational meet, with the teams from North Tahoe, Greenfield, and others. Marching band was supposed to play today at the butterfly parade at the same time, which would have been really hectic trying to make it to both. However, Mr. Hoffman had to make an emergency trip to Orange County, so the event was canceled.

The course went from the high school, around the baseball fields, and into the Rip Van Winkle Open Space. It was a lot easier than other courses because there weren't many hills and the weather was nice and cool. It even lightly rained at one point. There was a race for each gender of each grade. Since we went second out of eight, I spent the next few hours cheering on the rest of our team. There was a snack bar set up with Gatorade, Vitamin Water, bagels, chips, Cup Noodles, and other refreshments. Isabella Fenstermaker and Alex Schramm both got first place in their categories, and Casey and Addison got 4^th and 6^th. My time was about 23 minutes for the 3-mile course.

Cross Country @ Greenfield

On Thursday we had a cross country meet at Greenfield, CA. We left school right after lunch, consequently missing biology, and drove for an hour on the bus. We arrived quite early apparently, so we had over an hour of free time in Oak Park, the location of the start. The course was very challenging and consisted of a levee that went out into the fields with the wind blowing really hard, followed by a sandy hill run. JV and Varsity boys went first, followed by JV/V girls. We got back to the school around 7pm.

Dinner for Marcia

Tuesday night was a goodbye dinner for Marcia Lockwood, the associate rector of St. Mary's. Almost two hundred people were at the occasion. The first hour or so was a general social time with hors'doeuvres such as crackers with brie. Next, we ate dinner, a lasagna with salad followed by tiramisu, and then there was a slide show presentation and some gifts. Donations from people were pooled to buy her an HDTV as a parting gift.

Bubbles in a sparkling water glass: