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~ George
Category Archives: miscellaneous
100 Words for 100 Days is finished!
From September 15th to December 23rd I participated in the 100 Words for 100 Days challenge from goteenwriters.blogspot.com. It’s a website meant to help teens write novels, but I didn’t have any book that I wanted to write at the moment so instead I worked on this blog. The rules were that you had to write 100 or more words every day, but you could miss one day a week and one week in the total 100 days.
I am glad to announce that I finished the challenge and did so with 19,063 words written. Now, over the last few months I haven’t posted anywhere near 19,063 words, but there’s a reason for it. If you had to write 100 words each day, which would you do: start a new post and quickly get to 100-300 word, work on a previous post (which involves re-reading it) and probably get to 100-300 words, or publish a post and get maybe 10-20 words in as you edit stuff and clean everything up? Clearly the first and second one, and more often the first than the second. The result is that I have over 30 drafts waiting to be read over, added to, polished, and published.
The contest is over, but I have decided to continue the challenge. However, I have revised the rules a bit; the new rule is that everyday (with one day a week off) I can either write over 100 words, or I can publish a post. For example, I’ve written this post today, getting 278 words in, and tomorrow I’ll review it, polish it, and publish it. Despite probably not getting 100 words in, I’ll still count the day off because I published something. This way hopefully I’ll be able to start making my way through that mountain of drafts that is waiting for me, and you’ll get more content.
Thanks for reading!
~ George
(p.s. I got 49 words out of revising this the next day, and 24 of them are in this sentence. As I said, not very many.)
Merry Christmas!
As you celebrate Christmas, always strive to remember the true meaning behind it.
~ George
101st Published Post!
This post gets us passed the landmark of 100 posts!!!!! Whoo Hoo!!
It’s fun to write these, and thanks to whoever is out there reading these for, well, reading them. I write in hope that someone else finds what I have to say is interesting, so even if it was fun I might not write if I didn’t think there would be readers. Of course, I’m not the only one writing posts. My dad (Steve) also writes, despite not being able to commit as much time as he would prefer. Nevertheless, this whole site is thanks to him. Thank you Dad! Now we just need to get my sisters and mom writing… 🙂
Up Next: 201 posts!
Merry Christmas!
~ George
(BTW, if you could post something in the comments it’d mean the world to us. A special occasion like this deserves a comment, right? Right? Right????? Good, I thought so 🙂 )
Rose’s Birthday Gift: Lyrics Book
Rose just had her birthday, so I needed to come up with a birthday present. About two 2 months ago I realized that she likes singing all the time, but rarely knows more than a few spots of a song. So thus the idea of a lyrics book was born. I copied the lyrics to 28 songs that she enjoys singing into a single document, categorized them, and added page numbers. I got almost all the lyrics from www.azlyrics.com, although a few of the lyrics are from other sites. If you use it, I’d recommend printing it in booklet form (or at least double-sided) if your printer has that function, otherwise you’d use a huge amount of paper. Also, there are some known errors in the transcription of some songs, so it is likely that most of the lyrics aren’t 100% like the actual lyrics of the song, but in general they are correct. Here’s the download: Song Lyrics
Also, here’s the Table of Contents (copied from the first page of the document):
RADIO SONGS:
“Happy” – Pharrell Williams – page 2
“Demons” – Imagine Dragons – page 3
“Radioactive” – Imagine Dragons – page 5
“Really Don’t Care” – Demi Lovato – page 6
(feat. Cher Lloyd)
“Brave” – Sara Barielles – page 7
“The Monster” (Clean version) – Eminem – page 9
(feat. Rihanna)
“Counting Stars” – One Republic – page 10
“Roar” – Katy Perry – page 12
LEMONADE MOUTH:
“Somebody” – page 14
(performed by Bridgit Mendler)
“Determinate” – page 15
(performed by Bridgit Mendler & Adam Hicks)
“Here We Go” – page 17
“She’s So Gone” – page 19
(performed by Naomi Scott)
“Breakthrough” – page 21
TAYLOR SWIFT:
“Shake It Off” – page 23
“Our Song” – page 24
“We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” – page 26
“You Belong With Me” – page 27
“Love Story” – page 29
OF MONSTERS AND MEN:
“Little Talks” – page 30
“Dirty Paws” – page 32
“Mountain Sound” – page 32
FUNNY SONGS:
“Where’d My Wood Go (500 Chunks)” – Element Animation – page 33
“The Saga Begins” – “Weird Al” – page 35
“Everything Is Awesome!!!” – Tegan and Sara – page 37
(feat. The Lonely Island)
RIGOLETTO:
“The Melody Within” – page 39
“The Curse” – page 39
“The Melody Within/The Curse” – page 40
“April Child” – page 40
~ George
How To do tan^-1 on a calculator
First off, I’m assuming that your calculator has three things: a “tan” button and a “tan-1” button. You do not have to know where the “tan-1” button is, but if it is a scientific calculator then it probably does have it. I’m also assuming that you know what the “tan” and the “tan-1” buttons do, so this will not explain that.
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Your calculator should have a button labeled “tan-1”, although usually you have to hit the “2nd” key and then the “tan” key. If you are using the calculator that comes installed with Windows 7 (at least I’m pretty sure that’s where it comes from, if someone could verify that please) and already have it set to scientific calculator (hit the “view” button in the top left corner then select “scientific”), then you hit the “Inv” key (short for “Inverse”, I think) and the “tan” button will turn into “tan-1”.
Also, make sure that the calculator is set to degrees (or radians), because it is extremely frustrating to get the wrong answer and have no idea why. To set that there is often a button that says “DRG”, with which you can cycle through degrees, radians, and gradients, using arrow keys if your calculator has them. On the Windows 7 calculator there are three buttons in the top left, beneath where the output is shown. Click the one labeled with what you want.
Finally, if you already know how to get the “tan-1” button but don’t know how to type it in, most fancy calculators (the $10+ ones) require you to input the items in the order that you would write them (e.g. type “tan-1” then “500” then “/” then “1001” then “=”). However, almost every other calculator that I use (including the Windows 7 one and calculator apps) do it similarly, but certain functions (such as square root, log, and tan) are done after you finish typing the expression (e.g. type “500” then “/” then “1001” then “tan-1” then “=”).
Of course, all of this also applies to the “sin”/”sin-1” and “cos”/”cos-1” buttons, but I was specifically asked about the “tan-1” button, so that’s what I went with.
~ George
The Scientific Ideal World
After reading this comic, I’ve been trying to find a site that has a scientific opinion on what the “ideal world” would be, but all my Google searches keep coming up with people philosophizing and talking about good people, or talking about dictatorships trying to rule the world and make everything “perfect”. If anyone could find a link to a site, article, video, etc., the approaches the question from a scientific point of view, please post it in the comments. I will continue looking for one, and when I’ve found one I’ll make this a real post. Thanks!
~ George
To Do List
I’ve wanted to have a public to do list that could show various things I want to change about/add to the site, so here it is. I will cross off things as I do them, and at the beginning of every month I’ll remove the checked off items. Making the to do list in the first place was the first thing on it 🙂
In no particular order:
Make a private to do list for myself for things that wouldn’t make sense to others and/or apply to future posts?- Find all the places I use the underline to separate topics and make the underline longer (sorry if that makes no sense to anyone besides me)
Add an “About Us” page- Decide on the Idea Polish Level of Interesting Observation: Social Norms, Story Idea: Benedite, Time-Based Game (Tag?), and Type-able Lewis Dot Structure.
- Add a featured image to each post
Make a section/page for things I find online that aren’t “Certified Brilliant”Find a way to make “Certified Brilliant” work again- Add a category for my favorite posts?
- Make a “Change Log” that includes links to posts I made before I started using change logs
- Find the site mentioned in The Scientific Ideal World
- Go through all the posts and make sure that the links function properly
- Finish the To Do List 🙂
~ George