Category Archives: George

GPS Measuring Device

George, Idea Polish Level: 2, My Ideas,

What if you could measure the length of a room without all the hassle of finding a tape measure, getting someone to hold one end down, then moving to the other end of the room? What if all you needed was your phone?

Wouldn’t it be cool if someone managed to make an app or phone functionality that would let you hit a button in the app, move your phone, and the GPS would tell you how far the phone moved? You could stand at one end of the room, hit the button, walk to the other side of the room, hit the button again, and the phone would spit out a number saying how long the room is!

Unfortunately, a quick Google search says that GPS’s are only accurate to 3-15 meters, but maybe there are other ways. I know that phones can detect how many steps someone has taken in a day, so maybe it can use some of that functionality to detect how fast and how long the phone moved and use those numbers to tell you how far it moved.

If not a phone, then maybe someone could invent a device that splits in two and measures the distance between the two halves. Just set them on opposite sides of the room and hit a button to get your answer. They would even work with smaller things like a toothpick; you would just set them closer together. Or they could also work with larger things, like a soccer field. Again, just move the halves apart and push the button.

It would be best if they would transmit information in a way similar to those remote controls that can work no matter where you’re pointing them, so that it wouldn’t matter if something was in the way or not. I bet there’s a way to find the delay between the sending of the information and the receiving of the information, which can be multiplied by the speed of light to find the needed distance.

I’m not sure how practical it would be to make, but I think it would be an awesome invention and would certainly want to buy it.

~ George

For the Strength of All

George, Idea Polish Level: 4, My Ideas, , , ,

One of my ideas has just gotten bigger than any I’ve had before. I call it For the Strength of All. You can find the description and/or sign up at its website ForTheStrengthOfAll.com or you can read the description copied from there and pasted below.

My name is George

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I’m 16, almost 17, I belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, otherwise known as Mormons, and around November 2014 I had an idea.

I was doing my Duty to God (a program for young men in the church), and one of the things it requires you to do is read up on one of the For the Strength of Youth sections, apply it to your life, and share what you learned. So I kept reading and reading the different sections and suddenly I felt the spirit come over me. Different people feel the spirit in different ways, but for me the best way to describe it is that it was almost like a great swelling in my chest. What I felt was that, if we were to live everything in the For the Strength of Youth pamphlet, we would be one of the happiest people alive. “Ahh, if only I could just start living all of this! If only I had enough time! If only it was possible!”

But then I realized something; There is a way you can do this. I counted up how many sections there are in the For the Strength of Youth. 19. Ok, let’s see, 52/19 equals… about 3. So, if on New Year, I were to commit to live one of the principles steadfastly for three weeks, then switch to the next principle for three weeks, I could live EVERY SINGLE STANDARD IN THE BOOK IN ONE YEAR. I plan on living much longer than that. One year is nothing when you think of 20, 40, 60 years of life to live through. This was the fast lane, a quick way to a better me! I had to do it.

After realizing this, I felt a need to share it with others. Before I could do that, however, I had to test to see if it would work. So my family and I, over Family Home Evening, committed to stick word for word to the book’s instructions on Entertainment and the Media until Thanksgiving, which was about 3 weeks away. The experiment was a partial success. It started really well, but the farther and farther from the original commitment the less and less we remembered it. To fix that, as part of my idea I will send out an email reminding everyone subscribed of the current commitment every day for the rest of the year.

While the failed part of the experiment was useful, the success part of the experiment was just as important. One byproduct was that by instigating a one-strike rule for movies and books I was able to train myself to “just say no” to things that drove the spirit away. Even months after the experiment I still feel its effects. It would work! Now it was time to share it with others.

So here we are. I made For the Strength of All so that others and myself can get a jump-start on God’s commandment to be perfect. He wants us to love Him, and the best way to show our love for Him is to keep His commandments. The prophet has said that so long as we are better today than we were yesterday, God is pleased. Through For the Strength of All I hope to help us all become better, happier people, because as I said at the beginning, For the Strength of Youth has many of the keys to HAPPINESS in both this life and the next; the First Presidency itself has promised us that keeping these standards will strengthen our testimonies, bless us with the companionship of the Holy Ghost, and help us be happy.

Thank you for your time. I hope that you will decide to join this, because I can’t wait to see the results, and I hope that as many others as possible will too.

~ George

ForTheStrengthOfAll.com – That all might come unto Him

Interesting Observation: Better Late Than Never

George, Idea Polish Level: 2, My Ideas, , , ,

You all probably have heard the phrase “Better late than never” at least once in your lifetime; if not, well, it’s better late than never to learn it. Either way, a friend recently said it to me, and I was about to reply “yeah, of course, it’s always better late than never,” when I realized something: “What if it was my execution?” :/

Imagine the executioner coming to your jail cell to fetch you; he unlocks the door, binds your hands, and as he leads  you to the guillotine, he says, with an apologetic look on his face, “I’m really sorry that it has taken so long to get your execution set up, we’re usually not this sloppy; but, you know, better late than never, right?”

~ George

100 Words for 100 Days is finished!

George, miscellaneous, Miscellaneous Posts

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.)

Interesting Observation: Happy New Year!

George, Idea Polish Level: 2, My Ideas, , ,

A new year has started! There. That’s a pretty interesting observation if you think about it, so the post must be finished. Sign: ~ George. Done.

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Not really 🙂 As you probably know, it’s a the start of a new year. You can tell because of all the people saying “Happy New Year!” all the time. I’ve said it myself a few times, but I started wondering what we were actually saying when we said “Happy New Year” to people. If you look closely, it isn’t actually a sentence at all, just a noun plus two adjectives. Saying “Happy New Year!” to people is grammatically the same as yelling “Purple Tin Piano!” at them.

Of course, we aren’t yelling “Purple Tin Piano” at them, and of course we mean something more than “adjective adjective noun”. What we omit when we say “Happy New Year” is the two words “Have a”. When we add those words, we get “Have a Happy New Year”, which is a complete sentence. We just drop the verb to make it easier to say. Furthermore, “Have a Happy New Year” is still leaving out a bunch of words. What we actually mean is “I wish that you may be happy throughout the rest of this new year.” No wonder we shortened it.

Anyhow, as if I haven’t said it enough, Happy New Year! (However you want to read it) 🙂

~ George

Quotable/Interesting Observation – The Cycle of Tiredness

George, Idea Polish Level: 1, My Ideas, , ,

If you run too long you’ll get tired and want to walk. If you walk too long you’ll get tired and want to stand. If you stand too long you’ll get tired and want to sit. If you sit too long you’ll get tired and want to lay down. If you lie down too long you’ll get tired and want to get up and run. This is the Cycle of Tiredness.

~ George

My Fourth Santa Theory: Particular Santa (the best of my current theories)

George, Idea Polish Level: 2, My Ideas, , ,

There are many arguments against Santa being real, so I came up with a few ideas that work out a couple of kinks without being too unrealistic.

So here’s my fourth theory: What if Santa actually paid attention to the rule that if you’re naughty then you don’t get a gift? When I say that this is my “best” theory, I don’t mean that it is my favorite. Instead I mean that this theory fits everything I know about Santa better than any of my other theories and also obeys almost all the laws of physics (unlike almost every other theory), with the one exception being that Santa is immortal. I believe it to be the most elegant and simple of the lot, and it just makes sense to me. As with my third theory, if you received a present from Santa this year then this theory must not true, so you don’t have to continue reading.

Anyhow, what if Santa actually cared whether you messed up? What if the naughty list was actually enforced? No one is perfect, I doubt anyone would disagree with that, so why should we all get presents? We’re all on the naughty list, after all, and even if the list is cleared every Christmas it wouldn’t take too long before we mess up and are back on it. Santa has only ever had to give about 33 gifts in his entire life, and they were all to the same person. If only we could all be as nice as that one person.

~ George

My Third Santa Theory: Sorcerer Santa (doesn’t work if Santa still visits on Christmas)

George, Idea Polish Level: 2, My Ideas, , ,

There are many arguments against Santa being real, so I came up with a few ideas that work out a couple of kinks without being too unrealistic.

So here’s my third theory: What if the gift that Santa gives every child doesn’t have to be tangible? That’s the premise, and it can be turned a lot of different ways. I’ll just show one here. Of course, if you received a toy or something else from Santa last Christmas, then this theory must not be true, and you can stop reading if you want.

Santa is a powerful sorcerer who can cast a spell over the entire world in such a way that when it’s midnight wherever you are, you receive his gift: the gift of a good feeling. Or maybe it’s a good dream that he gives you, and if you aren’t asleep then Santa “won’t come”. Or maybe it’s a brief feeling of love for all. It could be all sorts of things, but those are the three that I thought of first. Either way, it would be very hard to quantify what it was that he gave you and whether or not he give you anything at all. Plus, Santa still gets to give everyone a gift.

~ George

My Second Santa Theory: Business Santa (my favorite of my four theories)

George, Idea Polish Level: 2, My Ideas, , ,

There are many arguments against Santa being real, so I came up with a few ideas that work out a couple of kinks without being too unrealistic.

So here’s my second theory: What if Santa doesn’t have to give the gifts in person? So long as the gift makes its way to the child, why should he care if he’s the one credited for it? Whether by the parents, a random stranger, or the child finds it lying on the ground, it wouldn’t matter for him. With that, now the gifts no longer even have to come on Christmas! With that, the gifts don’t even have to be free! Getting rid of the when and how the gifts are delivered frees Santa to actually do his job without killing himself when his multistory tall bag falls on him due to a small mishap.

Most kids get toys for Christmas. Since Santa is immortal (or not, if he has children as in my first theory), he has had plenty of time to build himself an empire of toy makers all over the world. He is indirectly in charge of every major toy manufacturer in the world, and has been for long time. Almost every toy a child receives can be traced back to Santa and his unknown monopoly on toys.

As for the kids who don’t get toys for Christmas or have never gotten a toy at all, Santa didn’t want to leave them out. So he worked and worked put himself at the top of every food, charity, hospital, schooling, and clothing operation in the world. In fact, Santa has expanded his empire to almost every product that is made so that he is continually giving “gifts” to every child in the world. What a nice guy.

~ George

My First Santa Theory: Many Santas (the least realistic of my four theories)

George, Idea Polish Level: 2, My Ideas, , ,

There are many arguments against Santa being real, so I came up with a few ideas that work out a couple of kinks without being too unrealistic.

So here’s my first theory: What if there wasn’t only one Santa? The rest of the population grows with time, so Santa’s would to. Santa has had children, his children have had children, those children have had children, and so on. At this point in time, each city has many Santas who are in charge of their own small group of people, and the rest of the Santas are scattered throughout the world. Each Santa is precisely located so that they can get as many people as possible with the given time. They would still need magic so that they wouldn’t get caught, but they wouldn’t need the millions of tons of presents  for billions of children or to go at the inane speeds that one Santa would need to go to give all of those gifts. He wouldn’t even have to be immortal, because his children would be able to continue his work.

Another benefit of having lots and lots of Santas is that all those movies that show Christmas being saved by one person or the other could all be true. Every year some of the Santas would get caught by police, fall off the roof, get shot out of the sky, etc., and some group of kids, animals, and/or adults manage to save Christmas despite Santa being incapacitated in some way. Who knew all those movies were true the whole time?

~ George