Week 10 Planning: Desolation

Andromeda Galaxy (Wikipedia)

The story takes place in the distant future, told from the perspective of the lead pilot of a transport convoy taking a shipment of goods to another galaxy. They're travelling through space at thousands of times light speed but it's been 4 days of constant travel already. The pilot makes calculations based on fuel remaining and figures that they can switch the compression device (a device that crumples space around the ship to travel faster than light) to overdrive to more quickly compress space, burning off extra fuel and making it there faster. Though dangerous as the ships carry a lot of momentum, the pilot trusts the autopilot systems to calculate hazard trajectories and navigate them out of harms way. Activating the device, the pilot sits back for a few minutes until the ship strikes an object, knocking the pilot out.

The pilot wakes up to the red flashing of error lights, messages and beeps and sirens going off indicating a multitude of failures across the ship's systems. He checks his navigation terminal and finds that the ship overshot the galaxy by some 36,000 light years. He worriedly checks for the closest outpost and finds that it's over 10,000 light years away. He switches his destination to the outpost and attempts to activate the compression device. It fails as he realizes the ship used up all its main fuel while he was passed out, aimlessly travelling at max speed. He only has enough fuel to sustain life support for 2 weeks. Despite knowing the futility of it, he broadcasts an SOS message out into the void as he stares at the galaxy behind him, which seems so close that he could touch the stars in it.

Bibliography: The Sandy Road from The Jataka Tales by Ellen C. Babbitt

Reading Notes: Jatakas Part A

Eagle Nebula (Wikipedia)

I think I'd like to do a story based on The Sandy Road. Basically a couple of traders travel across a desert to a neighboring country. They carried more than enough provisions for the trip but after the navigator realizes they're close, he suggests they dump the provisions. After this, the navigator takes a rest and the oxen walk in a big circle. They wake up and find themselves where they were a day ago and panic for water, eventually finding it under a rock in the ground. I think it'd be neat if I could do a similar story in space. A transport convoy would carry extra fuel for a trip and realize that they're going to be late if they don't hurry. They figure to jettison the extra fuel they don't need and take a shortcut through a wormhole. Unfortunately the stress this puts on the ships cause the pilots to black out and autopilot to take over and eject them from the wormhole. They carry on and wake up to systems alarms. The lead transport pilot switches navigation to the closest outpost station and discovers it is 42 light years away while the ship has switched to emergency power, with only enough fuel to sustain life support systems for a few days.

Bibliography: The Sandy Road from The Jataka Tales by Ellen C. Babbitt

Week 9 Review

Mad Magazine (Class Announcements Blog)

I used to love reading MAD magazine, but I haven't read it in a couple years. Except for today, since I received a copy of the latest issue for free, coincidentally on the one of the creators' birthdays. Spy vs Spy was always my favorite part.

It was pretty interesting to find out that purposeful emoticons went back to the 1880s and have existed digitally since 1982. Kind of funny how formal they were with it, and how they used :-). Would have been interesting if they could have included the origin of some other emoticons like XD or (´･ω･`) though.

Wikipedia Trails: Medusa to Votive Offerings

I went on the class Twitter and the first thing I saw was a link to an article about Medusa, which I figured was interesting enough to be the start for my Wikipedia Trails this week.

Classical Greek Depiction of Medusa (Wikipedia)

Medusa: Medusa was a Gorgon who was made into a monster by Athena, turning those who looked at her into stone. She was eventually beheaded by Perseus, who was armed with equipment given to him from the gods.

Perseus with the head of Medusa (Wikipedia)

Perseus: I wanted to know what Perseus did after slaying Medusa, and it turns out he gives Medusa's head to Athena so she can place it on her aegis.

Lemnian Athena (Wikipedia)

Aegis: The aegis was a shield or an animal skin owned by Zeus but occasionally borrowed by Athena which would roar during battle and produce storms when shaken.

Ancient Greek Votive Offering (Wikipedia)

Votive offering: Medusa's head was apparently a votive offering to Athena, which is to display or donate an item to a sacred place for religious purposes.

Learning Challenge: Sitting Article

Chair in use (Wikipedia)

Though I knew that prolonged sitting was bad for you, I didn't know that it was as bad as the article says it is. The article has good advice to get up and walk around or stretch every 30 minutes or so, and I think I'll take that advice. Maybe not as often as 30 minutes though, since sometimes I get into 'focus mode' and end up doing stuff for a long time. I'm still young though, so I should be fine not stretching or moving too often.

Article: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/09/04/547580952/get-off-the-couch-baby-boomers-or-you-may-not-be-able-to-later

Growth Mindset: SMART article

Wooden Art Palette (123RF)

I think I came to the same realization as the article explains a few years ago. I like the acronym they presented though, SMART. S for Specific goals, M for measurability of those goals, A for achievability of those goals, R for relevant goals, and T for time-bound goals. A good goal incorporates all of these and leads to success. I think I first came across this in the realm of drawing, where without clearly defined goals you end up procrastinating or getting nowhere. For example. having a goal of "I want to be as good at drawing as this person" as your sole goal isn't going to do your any favors because you don't have a path to reach that goal or a time limit set. Deciding that you want to get better at hands and that you'd draw, say, 20 hands a day for a week is a more concrete goal that requires you to work as soon as you start. These kinds of goals get you much farther.

Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/18/smarter-living/how-to-stick-with-new-years-resolutions.html

Tech Tip: Reverse Image Search

Susanoo slaying Yamata-No-Orochi

Week 9 Story: Oasis

Oasis (Wikipedia)

Our story begins with four brothers on a trek back to their desert village. They had gone to trade goods with travelers rumored to be staying a neighboring village who came from faraway lands. But as the brothers discovered that this rumor was false, they immediately headed back in anger and disappointment.

The wind swept across the endless desert plains, whipping the sand up and obscuring the light of the sun. The oldest brother was in the lead and he motioned to the rest to stop for a break during this sandstorm. It was, after all, very dangerous to keep moving through the desert without direction. The brothers took this chance to take stock of their belongings.

They laid out their supplies in front of them. An ornate lever-action rifle with twelve rounds of ammunition, medical gauze, fire sticks, salted meat to last them four days, but only enough water to last them two. The youngest brother realized their folly: they forgotten to resupply at the neighboring village in their anger. As their situation was now dire, they were forced to press on through the storm.

30 hours passed before the storm cleared. The brothers started bickering over the direction of their travels, each arguing for a different direction to head in before the eldest made his decision final. Additionally, the brothers miscalculated their water intake, failing to take into account the extra hydration needed because of the salted meat. Their jugs were empty. Still, they march on, hoping for a miracle.

6 hours passed as day became dusk when they saw a patch of greenery in the distance. It was surely an oasis, they thought. As weary as they were, they sent the second youngest to fetch water from the pond, as he was the last to drink from the jugs. The rest waited. And waited. And waited.

The brothers grew impatient and figured that he was drinking the water himself the entire time, the oldest brother instructed the second oldest to scold him and go fetch the water. Again they waited until the oldest brother angrily decided to go there himself, leaving the youngest to wait. He hears a  crack in the distance, then another, and three more after that. The youngest brother chose not to wait any longer.

He found his brothers laid down in the water, but while approaching them a voice commanded him to stop. He heard the commands but did not understand them. But rather than coming to the aid of his brothers, he walked straight up to the oasis out of delirium, hoping to finally quench his thirst. He touched his lips to the water and drowned the very core of his soul.

Author's Note: So this is a story based on the lake story from the Mahabharata, where Yudhisthira and co. meet with yaksha. The yaksha kills everyone for drinking from his lake but Yudhisthira beats the yaksha in a riddle contest of sorts and so the ones that were killed got revived. This story is supposed to be in the 1800s, though there aren't many clues to that besides the lever action rifle. I originally planned for the story to stick to the original plot with the youngest brother saving the rest, but I decided having him fall victim to the oasis would be more interesting.

Bibliography: The Mahabharata by R. K. Narayan

Reading Notes: Krishna Dharma Mahabharata Part A

Fireworks (Wikipedia)

What stood out most to me here was the Martial Exhibition chapter. It was a very detailed account of the events, starting with Arjuna focusing only on the wooden bird's head in the distance, his fearlessness when it came to acting for his master, and him receiving the brahmastra. I found it odd though that the stadium was constructed in such a fast manner. I might make my story more fantasy-like with magicians instead of the princes and a mage instead of Drona. Instead of having them shoot targets while riding chariots, I could have magicians hitting clay pigeons flying around, making them explode into fireworks. Arjuna's introduction was really stunning, he's presented as the best warrior to ever live, clad in golden armor and with a demeanor that supports it. I don't think I'll change much with Arjuna's demonstration of elemental mastery. I think I'll end the story a bit after Karna enters, introducing Karna as some other kind of magician, whether a necromancer or sorceror, something that distinguishes him from the others. I could actually make him a more dark-arts aligned magician, that could be interesting. In that case, the princes would be using holy energy and chants for their spells.

Bibliography: Mahabharata by Krishna Dharma

Review Week 8

McHumor Comic (Class Announcements Blog)

I chose this image because I thought it was pretty funny and I feel the same way. Losing that extra hour of sleep really seems to affect me... I could hardly get out of bed this morning.

And I chose this video because I occasionally enjoy watching SNL. Haven't seen this skit before though, it was pretty funny. Could have been more melodramatic.

Wikipedia Trails: Hate-watching to Stranger in a Strange Land

So I picked up a new word from the Class Twitter: "Hate-watch", and I had no idea what that was so I started with it.

TV News Simulation (Wikipedia)

Hate-watching: Hate-watching is a neologism for watching something despite hating the content. I don't really get the point in watching stuff you hate.

Neologism (Merriam Webster)

Neologism: I got here because I saw it was one of the first words in the article and I wasn't familiar. It turns out a neologism is a word or phrase that's just beginning to enter common speak, but it isn't fully integrated yet. I wonder if hate-watching is considered fully integrated now that it's in the dictionary..

Stranger in a Strange Land (Flickr)

Grok: An example of a neologism, first used in the 1961 novel "Stranger in a Strange Land". It's been defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as "To understand intuitively or by empathy".

Also Stranger in a Strange Land (Wikipedia)

Stranger in a Strange Land: The book "Grok" was used in. It details the story of a human male who was born on Mars and raised by aliens. He returns to Earth, where theocracy rules and World War III had already occurred. The Library of Congress put it in its list of 88 books that shaped America.

Learning Challenge: I wish my teacher knew...

Chalkboard (Eagle Country Online)

I read "What Kids Wish Their Teacher Knew" by Donna De La Cruz.

I think this article brought to attention a very good idea. Having these anonymous forms for kids to fill out ends up in some really eye opening responses. It shows that a lot of kids go through some rough times and are often hindered by them. This kind of activity encourages people to minimize assumptions about other people and increase empathy. A good way to practice compassion while respecting privacy is, of course, to throw out any assumptions you might make about someone. I haven't participated in anything like this, not as far as I can remember at least.

Growth Mindset: Growth Article

May Company Building (Wikipedia)

I read "7 Key Maxims Of A Mindset Focused On Growth" by Martin Zwilling.

The article applies growth mindset to managing a company, interestingly. It introduces some familiar concepts, such as success through taking bite sized chunks of work instead of trying to do it all at once. I didn't know that growth mindset was so compatible with being an entrepreneur, but it makes sense in retrospect. I'm not quite ready to start my own business and become an entrepreneur but it's always a possibility, and if I end up doing that I'll keep these tips in mind.

Tech Tips: Browser Bookmarks

Bookmark (Flickr)

Surprisingly enough, I haven't been using bookmarks at all. I usually just type stuff into my url bar and choose a suggestion instead. I can see how bookmarking can be really helpful though. I might keep separate folders for stuff like artists websites and manga since I can forget about those pretty easily and it'd be nice to have them organized.

Week 8 Progress

Graduation cap with degree (UConn)

I'm pretty happy with the progress I've made so far, I have a bunch of extra credit work done to fall back on in case I get really busy. My weekly routine isn't so great, since I get most of my work done over the weekends. My favorite assignments are the Wikipedia Trails ones, since there's a lot of interesting stuff that I learned from doing them.

For the second half of the semester I'm hoping to keep on doing the extra credit and try to get my workload more spread out across the week.

Week 8 Reading and Writing

The reading assignments are working pretty well for me overall, but I did get really busy last week and had to skip a reading. My favorite reading was the Ramayana, it felt a lot easier to follow than the Mahabharata and everything seemed very memorable. My reading notes help a lot, to the point where I have them open while I'm writing my stories as reference. I discovered that looking up stuff on wikipedia when coming across unknown things in the readings gave me some useful background information. I'm pretty happy with my class project so far and I still think my greatest accomplishment was writing that rhyming poem.

Tar Seep (Wikipedia)

I chose this image to go with, not because I liked the image, but because it's associated with one of my more creative stories that I had a lot of fun writing.

Thinking forward, I think I'll keep up what I've been doing so far, but maybe I should do my assignments earlier so I don't have to block out multiple hours for them on Sunday.

Week 7 Review

Stage of procrastination (chibird)

This still happens to me even though I've been working on my time management... Sometimes stuff just kind of falls on you and you skip to stage 4, you know?

I thought this video served as a a really interesting background to how English spelling and pronunciations were developed. It's interesting to know that our pronunciation and spelling of 'colonel' came from two different languages.

Wikipedia Trails: Cave Paintings to Acidosis

I saw a post about cave paintings on the Twitter stream, and it seems like an interesting topic.

Cave Painting: Prehistoric paintings on walls that date back to around 38,000 BC. Shows a variety of subjects, such as various animals and hand stencils.

Finger Fluting: A type of cave art created by coating a finger with moonmilk and tracing it along the walls.

Moonmilk: Limestone precipitate that's white and creamy, researchers aren't certain how exactly it's formed

Acidosis: A condition that causes increases in acid in the blood, moonmilk was a supposed cure for this, having no adverse health effects.

Learning Challenge: Time Management Article

Stopwatch (Wikipedia)

I read 'Being Busy Is Killing Our Ability To Think Creatively' by Derek Beres

What I knew going into this was that distracting yourself was a bad thing for productivity. I didn't know that distracting yourself and being busy all the time could deeply affect your creativity, but it makes sense in hindsight. The article gives some suggestions on how to disconnect from all these things making us busy, such as taking a long walk or doing stuff that isn't that intellectually demanding. I think I'll take a few sporadic breaks everyday from now on and turn to my canvas so I can keep my creativity up.

Week 7 Growth Mindset: Random Growth Mindset Cats

Growth Mindset Cat Meme (Growth Mindset Blog)

I chose this one because I think chess is a really good representation of putting in effort and learning. The more you play, the better you get. You refine your strategies and learn to predict a couple moves ahead, becoming a better player. The cat in the picture isn't playing right though.

Growth Mindset Cat Meme (Growth Mindset Blog)

I chose this cat because it reminded me of a school fieldtrip I took where we met a pottery artist. I learned how to make a pot on a spinning wheel and after it was fired they had us paint them. I ended up making something that resembled blue and white porcelain but instead of having detailed art it was just stripes and instead of being elegantly made it was a little lopsided. It's probably because I skipped the planning and designing process and went straight at it.

Meme Generator Tech Tip

Button Meme (imgflip)

Pretty self explanatory, right?

I used imgflip.com to make this.

Week 7 Story Planning: Oasis

Oasis (Wikipedia)

Thinking over it, I think I can do a story about a group of men wandering the desert who get lost in a sandstorm, happening upon an oasis. I think I'd have it in the late 1800s, with one of the men armed with a lever action rifle. during the sandstorm they lose a lot of their supplies which ends up making them go two days without water. In the distance of the endless dunes that make up the landscape, they see a small patch of greenery and conclude that it must be an oasis. The men are tired and slow, so they elect the least tired man to go over there and fetch water for the rest. The man who's elected heads towards the oasis while the others wait. He gets to the oasis, which shines a brilliant blue in the desert heat. Eager to quench his thirst, he gets ready to drink out of it when he hears a commanding voice that seems to come from inside his head. The voice tells him not to drink because answering its questions, but he discounts this as a hallucination from thirst and drinks anyways. He dies. The group grows impatient as in the original story and send another man out, figuring the first guy was just drinking water until now. He finds a corpse but is so taken by thirst that he doesn't think about it before the water in front of him, he ignores the voice too. The rifle wielding man then goes over and finds his friends dead. He hears the voice and fires his gun wildly into the air out of anger for his fallen comrades. He angrily drinks the water and dies. The last one heads over after hearing gunshots and he's asked questions. The questions are similar in that they're riddles, but they're more familiar to a western audience (What gets wetter as it dries? What's black and white and red all over?) He answers thousands of questions and just before the man passes out, the voice manifests as a djinn from the oasis. He congratulates the man for his perseverance and resurrects his fallen friends. After this he gifts the men with the boon of unrecognizability, as in the original. Though in this ending, the men think to themselves what use it would be to them, and conclude it's more of a curse.


Bibliography: The Mahabharata by R. K. Narayan