meh

Server's currently up here, but I haven't put up anything useful yet. the computer its on is so slow that I may just use it to host extra files that I can't put up here.

but now to homework, and the Student Newsletter(which should be out tomorrow).

Duh

spent hours troubleshooting why I couldn't access the server.
found out that the network plug had worked itself loose.

computers!

didnt post yesterday because i was busy working on the 2 old computers that I just got and doing homework.
so far I've got an Apache HTTP server running on one of them using Red Hat 9. I'm still setting it up to work with this site, but so far things are going pretty smoothly(and slowly, since the computer is a 200Mhz Pentium 1 with only 64MB of memory.

First day without a post

Yesterday was my 'stor brör's birthday.
I didn't post anything, but it was still a day with plenty of stories to tell.
there was a science fair at school, and though I did not have a project on display, I used the time as well as possible, though it was a bit boring at the end.
Here is probably the most exciting story of the day. it is, like all other stories I have put up on this blog, true.
Paul, as he has wished to identify himself, accomplished another amazing feat which I am amazed that he has not been suspended for. he brought a new, empty computer case to school to show it off. a commotion started in the room he had it in, a teacher came, and told him and everyine else in there(a lot of people) to get out. She didn't have a key to lock the door, so she simply put chairs in front of it to show that it should be kept closed and went to get another teacher to lock it.
Paul, of course, ignored this and, about 5 minutes later, i saw him barge into the room with a younger kid, apparently to show it off to him. he left the door open and, less than 10 seconds behind him, the teacher and another teacher came to lock the door, and kicked him out again. this time they locked the door so he couldn't come in.
Paul, not to be deterred by this, found the other door into the classroom, which was blocked up by a bookcase. he somehow got in, unlocked the door from the inside so other people could come in, and locked the door behind them.
witnessing this and knowing of the dangerous things that Paul has an affinity for getting himself into behind closed doors, much worse locked ones, it was much to my relief that a teacher came a few minutes later and 'busted' him once more.

on other horisons, Mr. French, the computers teacher, also agreed to give me a free old computer that was junk to the school. I hope to be able to use it as a server.

check out the comments on this post for more information.

Penguin on ice

Did this one quickly this morning before the bus came. If there can be penguins on top
of an iceberg, why not on the bottom too? I've seen a lot of pictures of crowded penguins on an ice floe, so shouldn't the bottom be prime real estate?




And plus, since the penguin pictured happens to be Tux, this could be the a new distribution: Iceberg Linux. There's more to it than first meets the eye.

Forgot my flute at school!

today I bought my flute to school, as is usual on Tuesdays because I have a lesson after school.
but after school, I went all the way to the subway, took the train to T-Centralen, switched trains and travelled 3 more stops before realizing that I hadn't taken my flute from my locker!
what's more, during that time, I had a conversation with Johan about about musical instruments, including his trumpet(which he had the whole time) and my flute, which I didn't notice was missing until over 5 minutes later!
due to a miraculous display of parental timing and cooperation, as well as my practiced art of running up and down stairs with a backpack on (i have to do it every day on the way into and out of school-if you're in my class, you know what I mean), I arrived at my flute lesson on time. tired, but on time.

Later, I got sidetracked while doing homework and ended up reading a couple of chapters of Robinson Crusoe.

the Chip of Doom!?!

Yes, this is a real potato chip that was found in an ordinary bag of chips. the image has been left unmodified except to put the words in.
Genetic Modification?
the end of the world?
ideas, anyone?

Snow!

the first half of winter was pretty wimpy before this(except for an early false start), but it finally snowed a coupla inches(more than a coupla cm)!

the downside: the lake is now snowed over as well, and not as good as before for skating until they plow part of it.

not much today.
thought about putting up more on the Newsletter story, but don't feel like writing. I guess I'll start editing, then. or maybe doing some homework. or maybe I'll just go and have a cookie.
nah.

SAT

took the SAT this morning. it was ok. in the last section, according to my calculations, 50% of the questions were just plain dumb.
didn't do much else today besides play the game of Life in spanish with my brother and Dad. I was grumpy in the afternoon from (literally) sitting around all morning.

eventful day

English class was very interesting today.
just before the class, a chair broke when Johanna, a chronically unucky member of our class (she recently got hit by a car that didnt stop at a crosswalk), sat on it. according to our teacher, it was probably caused by people leaning back and rocking on the chair, weakening the legs. now I see the light of all of the parental and teacherly warnings against leaning back like that.
I also signed up for the International Award today during lunch, before English class. it should be an interesting set of adventures to embark upon this year.
at the beginning of this lesson, V got mad and started yelling (or something) at Arnold, who was standing on the other side of the room.
"what's wrong," the teacher asked V.
"A's annoying me! he keeps on annnoying me. every time i look at him, he just starts annoying me!"
"I'll talk to you two later."

Also during lunch, something happened involving someone we shall call John (same non-john person from the Newsletter story) and a few other people. I won't go into much detail, but when he came into English class, he was holding a pack of ice to his forehead. (please don't take offense, man, I'm just telling the truth)
"what happened?" we asked.
"um... I ran into a door in a funny way." says John.
On a few occasions I have suspected him of telling little fibs like that, but normally don't say it out loud. this was one of those times that I didn't.
a few minutes into the lesson our principal came into the classroom, asked the class a few questions about the incident involving John's ice pack and lunchtime.
eventually, he sent John (and maybe a few others, don't remember) down to his office to wait for him.
as the principal was leaving, our teacher, jumping on the opportunity, asked him,
"while you're here, could you take these two(A and V) with you and have a talk with them?"
it turned out later that John's injury had been caused by getting a drumstick thrown at his head. according to one account, he was knocked unconcious by it for a number of minutes.
must've been a pretty hard throw, or at least a heckofa heavy drumstick!

this evening, I also finally talked to Marina, the daughter of my piano teacher from Brazil.

Subway problems

busy day today. I woke up late due to pressing the wrong button on my alarm clock.
after school, I went directly to swimming. I was late to swimming because of a delay on the subway -- apparently one track was out of service so they had to juggle the trains full of people back and forth between stations. after swimming, Mom and Dad picked me up directly to go play tennis. I had left my tennis shoes at school, so I played in my socks. Aaron met us there and we played doubles, Mom and I versus Aaron and Dad. Mom and I lost the set, but only by a couple of games. I'm starting to remember my tennis skills from Brazil. my coach, Hymie, always kept repeating to hold the racket head straight, don't open the racket head, hit the ball in the front, down to up, etc.
I remembered that and, guess what, it worked and I had many more good hits than I had during last week's game.

today I started working on the 4th edition this school year of the Student Newsletter.

MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) Report

it was cool. I am happy to report that I am now a member of the MRI club. I only had an MRI of my head, so my experience will be different from many other peoples'.
Description:
Before going into the MRI room, I had an IV(intra-venous thing) put in to make it easier for the doctor to inject some 'contrast' later(so that the blood vessels show up better on the scan).
though I used to be creeped out by the idea of having a semi-permanent port put into my bloodstram, it turned out not to be so bad. the feeling when it is put in is just like getting a normal shot, but it lasts longer because not only does the doctor have to put a needle in, he/she also has to stuck a long, thin tube about an inch or longer into your bloodstream. the process is pretty painless besides a kind of stinging sensation for a second, though it feels a bit weird.
After the IV was inserted, it was time to go into the MRI room, the room with the giant machine in it that the MRI is done in. No metal objects are allowed in here-they would immideately get pulled into the machine like a duck into a jet engine.
in the MRI room, you lie down on a platform with earmuffs(like the ones used on the tarmac at airports, except all plastic) and a kind of weak clamp is used to stop most accidental head movement. the earmuffs are connected to a sound system by plastic tubes, allowing you to hear music and/or the doctor speaking to you. the platform, with you on it, is then slid into a big tubular hole in the machine.
in my case, the scan was broken down into 5 parts: two 4-minute scans, two 3-minute scans, and one 6-minute scan. between each section there was a short break in which the doctor checks on the results of the previous scan(to see if it has to be done again) and checked to see if I was ok. before the last, 3-minute section, the platform was slid out of the machine so that the odctor could inject some contrast dye in through the IV.
the best part of the scan was the sounds that the machine makes. they are different for each section of the scan, but always consist of repeating rhythms of hums and tones. the noises are very comfortable, though sometimes piercing, to listen to through the earmuffs. in fact, I fell asleep a couple of times during the scan.
here is a good page with lots of info on MRI scans(the pictures are very similar to the machine I was in) and samples of the sounds they make. The sounds sound much better from inside the machine, though, because it comes from all around you and the machine vibrates a little bit with the sound.

number 1 tip: keep still during the scan. if you don't, the whole section will have to be done over again. but if you really like the sounds and want to keep hearing them, I guess you could fidget a lot.

MRI

good morning.
Today I'm gonna be late to school because I'm getting an MRI to check on some bad headaches I've been having lately.
they're probably just sinus stuff and possibly migraines or something, but the doctor said we should get an MRI done just to make sure.

the Student Newsletter: Part 1

As you may already know, I am a co-editor of the Stuent Newsletter at my school. We put an issue out about every month. until today, our Crew consisted of only 9th graders. but finally, we got a few people interested from other grades. Ironically, the founder of the Newsletter, our previous 'editor in chief,' quit today also.
It's a pretty lengthy story about how he came to be the editor and then not the editor and then not part of the newsletter.

It all started last school year, in the beginning of 2004. The person in question, who we will call John, had a brilliant idea to create a student newsletter. I must admit, as Paul's best friend at the time, that I was very sceptical about wether the idea would work at all. however, plenty of other 8th graders came along with Paul ant I to create the first Newsletter team. we voted on Louise to be our editor, and Louise appointed John as her co-editor, along with me. the year passed without much event (we got 3 issues out), besides John's title being changed to Project Manager from co-editor, scince he did not actually do any editing work except for a couple of comments here and there, but he only helped organize meetings, give helpful comments here and there, and generally sit/walk around looking important.
Louise, the editor, left at the end of the year to a different school. Before leaving, she appointed Carro(not her real name) and I to be the Editors for the next year, with Carro being the 'yelling editor', who keeps everyone roughly in line(not literally), and me being the editor who does most of the funneling of people's work into the newsletter using Microsoft Publisher. this decision was supported by the rest of the crew, as far as I can remember.
However, sometime during the summer break, Loiuse apparently changed her mind and decided to appoint John as the Cheif Editor above Carro and I, scince she felt his initiative was needed to keep the Newsletter together.
This caught very much by surprise when I returned to school and found out.

Beep Beep Beep
blogging time is up for today.
to be continued: I really have to do homework NOW.

ME

I haven't said much so far about the longish-term me. incase you haven't noticed, the previous posts are all short stories of one boring sort or another. so...
where to start.
I live in Sweden. It is dark in the winter and the people all speak a language that, with all due respect, sounded hilarious when I got here. it was like they were all speaking Martian or something.
Scince then I have pretty much gotten over it, and have made a dent or two in the language barrier. It kind of slows things down that the Swedes almost all speak English. It may seem like that would make it easier to learn Swedish, but the truth is that it discourages people from learning the language because they think they don't need it and they don't get enough practice.
So it is even harder to communicate with the few people here who don't speak English.
I have lived here for 1 and 1/2 years.
before this I was living in Brazil. maybe I'll post some stories from there later.
before Brazil, I lived in my home country, the U.S.A., for 4 years. In Fox Mill, Herndon, VA. before that, I lived in Japan. Before that, I lived in the U.S.A. for less than a year. Prior to that, I was born.
so that's my life so far in a nutshell. or seashell. or maybe turtle.
That's my life in a turtle.

headache

School today wasnt that bad. in the morning, we had English and Spanish. in Spanish my group presented our play. we have been working on it since before the break. It is about a group of girls who are invited to a restaurant by the owner of the restaurant(me). the restaurant has just opened, and the owner has the idea that the restaurant would attract more customers if it's not empty. When the girls arrive, the owner serves them many "exotic" and disgusting dishes, such as spam a la Cheetos.
After getting by by feeding much of their food to a street dog when the owner has his back turned, the girls eventually leave by making up a lie that they have caught a cold.

Thing of the day:
Headache rhymes with milkshake.

Morpheus on Truck version 2

Morpheus Gets another big surprise!

Morpheus on Truck version 1

Morpheus gets a big surprise!

first few images

Yoda Enters the Matrix.
yeah. first image upload!
if you look closely, you can see that this is actually just a larger version of part of the image below.


The Matrix: Reversed. Neo runs from Agent Smith. I eventually gave up on making the backraound fit well, and did a sloppy job. oh well.


The Matrix: Regurgitated Movie Poster. I did it as an art project. I would post my .doc description of it, but I can't upload files at the moment. I need my own server to do that!


this Hello thing that I'm using for uploading images seems to be working pretty well. It seems like a pretty roundabout way to upload stuff, but it's working so far. it is annoying to put up posts with multiple pictures in them, like this one. you have to first upload the images into seperate posts, then go in and manually consolidate them into one. since it's free, I do sense an air of spyware, but... We'll find out.
either way, free image hosting is definitely a good thing. Google is behind it, of course.

Sunday.

Sunday already.
Mom gave Dad a night at a hotel for Christmas, so they'll be staying there tonight, and won't be back until tommorow morning. I wonder what they're doing... probably stuff they haven't done in years. cool.

This morning I got Aaron to come to swimming practice with me. the pool was empty because everyone except me is at a swim meet. after the last meet, I decided not to come to this one. too much wasted time for just a few events(races). about 2 hours to get there by car. then hours of waiting. by the time it's your turn to swim, you want to go slow instead of fast so that you'll get more swimming time for your waiting time. after your swim, more waiting. and I would have to swim hundreds (of meters, instead of 50s) at this meet, which probably means that I wouldn't be signed up for a medley or butterfly. that leaves me with 3 events, about 3 and a half minutes of swimming, plus warm-ups. even if I could swim as soon as I got there, It would take 4 hours to get there and back, so I would have more than an hour of travel for each minute of swimming. get my point? maybe not, but that's ok.

not so much homework to do, but I should be doing it anyway.


Still haven't tried the image uploading thing or the IP thing. maybe I'll try those now. or start my science homework. It's about DNA, but I'm not exactly sure what I'm supposed to do because I was at the nurse's office during science class on friday. I got a soccer ball kicked in my eye, so now I have a black eye, or maybe even two, scince it was such a hard hit.

First Post

Hi!
This is my first attempt at a blog, and I expect it to be completely inactive within a month or so, especially if I can't get picture uploading to work. I should be putting up some of my Photoshop work if the tools to put it up turn out to be practical at all. I would like to put everything on my own web server and site, but I don't have a static IP address.
I'm working on it.

P.S. found a coupla nice sites for taking care of the IP problem:
www.no-ip.com
www.dyndns.org

but I still don't have a computer here that can be dedicated to being an always-on Web server. so it looks like this Blog still has a chance (for now).

on the photo-uploading front, I found out that you need to download and install a program for uploading photos to the blog. I guess I should try it.
not tonight.