In which we return to school

Happy New Year!!!

I hope everyone had a safe, enjoyable holiday.

Today was the first day back to school after a long, two-week break. The truth is...I had...a very small breakdown the night before, because I was so nervous. But! I recovered! And I'm honestly glad to see everyone again.

In ICS, we got the first part of our Culminating Activity - the Mosaic Project. It's not so much a mosaic as a...puzzle, sort of. Each of us must write a professional article on some aspect of computers (there was a list of possible topics given). I chose to do Trojan Horses in general at first, because the actual idea is genial! I give credit to the Greeks for thinking it up. Of course, Trojans can do a lot of damage to your computer, as well as your privacy! Moreover, I had, for some reason (most likely because I watched too many crime shows) an affinity to the technological side of solving crimes. So! This was, without a doubt, the perfect topic for me!

In the end, I narrowed it down to Remote Access Trojans (RAT), which gives the creator of the Trojan access to your computer. All the information saved on your computer will be available to him or her - which, as you know, is a blatant breach of privacy.

This is a very interesting topic, though I have qualms about finding a suitable picture.

Nevertheless, I look forward to it!

---This next part is about my Winter Break, so you don't have to read it. It's just me rambling on about how great RF2, Durarara!!, and Baccano! are, really.---

Speaking for myself, I didn't get to finish my notes. It's my own fault, though. I had held off playing video games for so long I couldn't help myself, so I took advantage of the break to catch up on those long five video-game-less months. It was fun, because I was playing Rune Factory 2, a JRPG about living a life on the farm in a world with caves filled with monsters. It has a four-month calendar, and - surprise, surprise - I was nearing the end of "Fall". With "Winter" quickly approaching, I set a goal to celebrate New Year's Eve and New Year's Day in the game on the corresponding days in real life! With a lot of non-stop gaming, I managed to do it! Yes!



Natsume makes the best games! RF2 is my favourite game, and RF3 came out in English last January. I have yet to play it, though. I'm planning to start either during March Break or Summer Vacation.

And...this is huge. I finally finished watching Durarara!! (animated by Aniplex). It's amazing. I would definitely recommend it to you. See, the story is told, in a way, backwards, so that all the events in the first 23 episodes will make the last (most epic) episode make sense. After watching the final episode, I can summarize the entire series (probably) - something I couldn't have done before. As I'm sure I've said repeatedly, my absolute favourite character is Shizuo Heiwajima, the "Strongest Man in Ikebukuro". He's the tsundere type, that's probably why. *smile*

Durarara!! (c) Ryohgo Narita
This is a pretty good cast picture - the best one I could find, actually.

Anyways, I was so completely enchanted by Durarara!! that I decided to watch another anime that was originally a light novel written by Narita-san: Baccano! This one is about a "Cure-All Elixir", a potion that grants the drinker immortality. Most of the characters aren't on the side of the law, but very likable. For example, Jacuzzi Splotz, a petty thief, who pulled on a large amount of courage to rescue the passengers of The Flying Pussyfoot (a train). Then there was Chane Laforet, the woman who would do anything - even kill - to protect her only family, Huey Laforet. And finally, we come to my favourite characters (in order): Firo Prochainezo and Luck Gandor. They are part of different mafia families situated in New York, but they're also childhood friends, so the families are on good terms. Firo is so innocent, loyal, kind and amiable; but he can be very dangerous when he needs to. Luck is also sort of tsundere (not really). I can't very much elaborate on his personality, though, because he wasn't featured much in the anime.



Firo Prochainezo is at the very bottom right, in the green suit. Beside him, with the reddish-orange hair, is Ennis, a homunculi. In the middle, with the sword tattoo on his face, is Jacuzzi Splotz. In front of him, the little boy in the brown suit, is Csezlaw Meyer. To his left, the woman with the blond hair, is Nice Hollystone. The woman in the black dress beside Nice is Chane Laforet.
On the top, starting from the left: Miria Harvent, Isaac Dian, Vino, Lua Klein, Ladd Russo
Baccano! (c) Ryohgo Narita



Baccano! was so amazing that I cried at the end, because it had, well, ended. It's unfortunate that the anime only had thirteen episodes, plus an extra three episodes for the OVA. Aw, man, now I'm sad again.

I can't say which one is better - Durarara!! or Baccano! I just know that they are both very good stories. I even compiled a playlist of all the openings and endings of these two animes. If anyone's interested, here it is:

• ROOKiEZ is PUNK'D - Complication [DRRR!! OP2]
• Yuuya Matsushita - Trust Me [DRRR!! OP1]
• Theatre Brook - Uragiri no Yuuyake [DRRR!! ED1]
• On/Off - Butterfly [DRRR!! ED2]
• Kaori Oda - Calling [Baccano! ED]
• Paradise Lunch - Guns & Roses [Baccano! OP]

Guns & Roses is a really nice song, even though there are no words to accompany the instruments. Calling is a beautiful, slow song. It's very lovely, and I do recommend it to anyone who's interested. The others are addictive, but they're more on the rock/pop side.

I plan to read the entire DRRR!! and Baccano! light novel series. There's over fifteen books, but I'm commited to it. Seriously. This is why I love Baka-Tsuki.

On another note, I finally found time to reply to my good friend on FF. I also started a Kuroshitsuji fic for Zarin-dono. I've turned Sebastian into an assasin and Ciel into the second-in-command of a mafia family. Please don't kill me.

Ah! Well, that was the longest blog post I've ever written, I think. I'll shut up now. *sweat*

Good luck with culminating, minna-san!

Mata ne!

---

Translation Notes:

tsundere [t-soon-dae-ray]: A term used to describe a person who acts tough, but is actually very kind on the inside.

yandere [yahn-dae-ray]: The opposite of tsundere. A term used to describe a person who acts nice, but is actually very mean. An example of this is Yuno Gasai from Future Diary (Mirai Nikki).

In which Pearl works on Repetition Assignment 8

Huh...I almost forgot to write this...
After I got back home, I started reading Percy Jackson: The Last Olympian, since it is due on Monday. I wanted to finish it tonight, so I could spend the rest of the weekend working. Unfortunately... I almost always read lying down, and most of the time I fall asleep either in the middle of doing so or right after I finish. And lo and behold, I woke up (just in time) to do this! *sweat*

Although today is Thursday, there's no school tomorrow, as it is a PD Day. Mr. Arkin calls it our "undeserved" long weekend. Heh.
I wonder why they call it a PD Day? In middle school it was called a PA Day, which stood for Professional Activity Day. I think. So what does the "D" stand for? Hmm...

Anyways, back to computer class. Today we were assigned a new project, one that (surprisingly) has to do with HTML. Because we all had problems with getting our codes printed on time, Mr. Arkin is asking us to do a research project on at least two different types of printers and present our findings in a table. Of course, it's much more elaborate than how I just explained it.

The web page with the instructions makes the aforementioned assignment sound pretty easy, but - and yes, I'm speaking from experience - I know this will probably be what I'm working on for the majority of the weekend. *sigh*

On another note, we were supposed to do a modified version of Repetition Assignment 8, but I finished that in class. And I managed to print out the code - just before school ended, too!

Ah! I just realized...because tomorrow is a PD Day, we aren't going to have Studio 218! What a sad thought...

Have a good (long) weekend, everyone! I won't be writing again until Monday.

A short blog entry? No! It's killing me...

Mm...today's blog entry will be incredibly short. (To my dismay!)
It saddens me. I love long blog entries, stories/fics, series, news articles, letters, etc.
Maybe because of my inability to shut up when writing? I even try to make my fics at least 1000 words long!
...Is that a bad thing?

Well, like I said, I finished my superpower autobiography yesterday. And...
I lied. I'm sorry. *seppuku*

I actually changed some things in it today. Again. Heh...no one's perfect, right?
Well...yeah, as to what I changed: the margins of my web page. Mr Arkin said that margins are usually written in percentages. So I had to alter them.

Then...I waited for Randi to finish fixing up her autobiography. When she was finished, we finally got to the peer marking stage! I was actually pretty nervous. I absolutely despise getting marks. I mean, what's wrong with doing this just for the sake of learning? There don't have to be tests! They just stress students out!

Come on, I'm not the only one saying this! ...Right?

Anyways, that's all for today. (Look how short it is! *cries uncontrollably*) Tomorrow's friday, which means...Studio 218! I want to contribute...but I have no way of knowing if the music I have is..."good"...or not. Lisa, one of my friends (in another class) said that she volunteered to be the DJ - and she's playing the Sr. Band CD from last year! (We went to the same school five years in a row, and we're still together even in high school! Can you say "BFF"?) Ha! My response: "Self-promotion! Yay!"

Right. I'll shut up now. Okay! I can't wait for Studio 218!!!

"The first shall be the last"

"The first shall be the last"

That was the quote that Mr. Arkin put up on the board today. Why? Well, I was confused at first, too, but then he explained it to the class. Since today was Grade 9 Day, we were the only class he had the whole day! In other words, we were his first class as well as his last one! (Oh, oh, and did you know that it came from the Bible? I sure didn't!) Ha, well, enough of my rambling. Let's get to what I did today.

Mr. Arkin finally assigned a due date for our Superpower Assignment: Friday.

Ah, it doesn't affect me that much, since I pretty much finished everything a week ago. Now, I'm just putting the finishing touches on it. One thing that Mr. Arkin cleared up today that was incredibly useful for me was how to link to directories "above" the one the file I'm editing is in. (I'm referring to the hierarchical file structure) Nngh...I had forgotten that ".." means "one directory above" (or something along those lines). I feel so stupid...especially because I've used FileZilla pretty much every day, and have seen ".." every time I used it.

I spent most of my time today making sure I used special character entities consistently and appropriately. Then I made sure my spelling and grammar were correct. When I was absolutely positive that it was fine, I checked the marking scheme to see if I missed anything. Unfortunately...I did. Although I am, er, slightly confident that I will get a good mark, I'm missing something. My images aren't visually integrated.

This was a problem before, since when I first tried to do so, the HTML Validator claimed that there was an error in my coding. However, even Mr. Arkin couldn't figure out why, and suggested that I put each image in a paragraph of its own. And...it worked! Now...I'm not sure what to think, or do for that matter.

Other than that...I think I'll be okay. I'm drawing my illustrations at this very moment (literally!) and I'll be replacing the ones I currently have with my own pictures. Ha! Take that, stupid websites who don't indicate whether their image is copyrighted or not! (Oh...I feel sort of pathetic) Heh...anyways, back to work I go!

Frustration!

Ah, yet another passive class.
We continued working on our Super-power assignments today. But, as I've already finished mine, I decided to add the valid HTML and CSS buttons at the bottom of my page. I ended up tweaking them a little, to make the web page look more presentable.

Mr. Arkin taught us some shortcuts today. I use the "Alt+Tab" shortcut a lot now. (Actually, one of my friends from my old school taught me how to do that, but I forgot) Ha, I admit that they're very useful!

Argh! I just tried going to my website, but it didn't work!
This is strange, because it worked before. It was perfectly fine yesterday!
My index page shows up, but when I click on the link to my Super-power assignment, it gives me a 404 (Page not found). I'm really frustrated right now. I also have other homework I need to finish, but if I have time after I'm done, I want to fix this problem.

Hopefully I can do that tonight. If not, then I'll be sure to ask Mr. Arkin about this tomorrow.
(Argh, it's so bizarre! I'm so sure I didn't do anything wrong...)

Mm, today's entry is quite short, isn't it? Ah, well, we didn't do much anyways.

Mission: Accomplished

I did it! I finally did it!
Remember how I said that there were still some problems with my super-power assignment HTML? Well, now it's fixed! And...all my HTML is valid! Both my Index Page and Super-power Assignment are valid!
I'd leave it as it is right now, but I want my images to be centered. I'll try using the the specification thing Mr. Arkin taught us in class today.

E.g.
CSS:
p.superpower
{
}

HTML:
<p class="superpower">

Except...with images. Hopefully it'll work! However, after I write this blog I will work on my English homework, then go back to school for Curriculum Night. When I get back, I'll try to work out the CSS needed to center images.

Oh! And there was something else, too...
In class today, I tried putting the little "HTML validated" icon onto my web page, but there was something wrong with the HTML for that! So, I just took it out. If I can't figure it out tonight, I'll have to remember to ask Mr. Arkin about it tomorrow.

The last thing I want to talk about is completely unrelated to CS, but I just really wanted to say this:
Silent Reading is awesome! Because of homework, I don't usually have time to read (unless it's during a meal). So when I found out that Vic Park reserves twenty minutes especially for reading, I was ecstatic!

Well, that's all I wanted to say for today. All we really did was work on our super-power assignment. Ah, anyways, I'm looking forward to tomorrow's class!

Validating HTML is a pain! But...it feels so rewarding when you succeed!

Now, today was a shortened day, so we only had an hour to work on our super-power assignments.

Yesterday I quickly wrote an Index page for my website. Today, I validated it. At first, I had a problem, but after I read it over, I found out that I had forgotten to put an arrow bracket! Then I felt stupid.
But I fixed it, and the HTML for my Index page passed the (dreaded) validation exam! (Ha, I'm exaggerating a little, but I got pretty frustrated trying to figure it out.

Now, when it came to my super-power assignment HTML file, I got extremely frustrated. I used the template, but after that, the validator kept saying that it couldn't check my file! I asked Mr. Arkin about it, and he told me that there was something wrong with Line 24 and how to fix it.
But even though I followed his instructions, it still wouldn't work! So, Mr. Arkin said that he'd help me figure out the problem, and to email the file to him via Wikispaces. Thank you, Mr. Arkin! Hopefully I can get it fixed and validated before I go to sleep!

Because of the validation process, my opinion of HTML went down quite a bit. But now that I understand the problems, I don't feel that way anymore. Of course, personally, validating my HTML is the most dreaded part of this process.

After I finish writing this, I'll check my Wikispaces inbox to see if Mr. Arkin replied to my message. I'll also update my Index page so it links to my Super-hero assignment (validated or not!). Then, of course, I'll have to revalidate it. I pray that it doesn't fail!

Oh, yes, another thing I have to do...is learn how to center images in CSS. I wonder when Mr. Arkin will teach us that...I hate how unruly the pictures look when they're not centered...

Time for some serious work!

Ah, there's not much to say today.
We continued working on our Super-power assignment. Since I was fooling around with different colour schemes yesterday, I didn't really decide on one. So, today, I looked up a list of HTML colour codes to create a design that I was happy with, yet still professional. I stuck with my original idea - using analogous colours. I just needed to figure out which ones! I actually wanted to use pink, blue and purple; but when I tried it out, it didn't look as good as it did in my head. I'm not a big fan of red, yellow, or green; so I decided to use blue as a base colour. I ended up using different shades of blue and purple. I'm glad I didn't stray too far away from my original idea.

Last night I typed about half of my essay out, so I copied the text into my HTML file (Index.html) in class. When I previewed my web page, it looked really nice! (Well, in my opinion, at least)
Then I checked the marking scheme to see if I needed to include anything else. And...surprise, surprise! Apparently we need to add in links and image(s) as well! I groaned, but eventually accepted this and moved on to find a decent picture for my super-power, teleportation. When I did, I saved it to my Home Drive and worked on creating internal links. I managed to get quite a lot done!

Tonight I will finish typing out my Super-power essay, and then apply it to the HTML spreadsheet I wrote. Then I will add external links and an image (or maybe more than one, if I can find another good picture). Hopefully it's not too late when I finish this. If it isn't, then I'll download Filezilla so I can upload my work onto the class website. (Argh! I better not forget the password!)

On a side note, the supply teacher for yesterday and today, Ms. Ecker, was incredibly friendly and kind. Although she didn't do much except supervise our class, I really enjoyed her presence. She had a great sense of humour!

A fun day of experimenting!

I have to say, today's class was the best one so far!
Mr. Arkin crammed three days worth of lessons into one period yesterday so we would know what to do today. At the time, I was feeling extremely overwhelmed and, well, not happy at all. But today's class made up for it - yes...I had a lot of fun today.

We were told to preview the Super-power assignment two days ago. When I did, I just skimmed over the main page. Last night I actually read the whole section on Website Design. I actually found it really interesting! I tried experimenting a little last night, and when I succeeded, I was so happy I jumped up and cheered! ...Unfortunately, it was 1 A.M. and my mom yelled at me for doing so.

Before I went to sleep, I conjured up some ideas about my super-power in my head, praying that I would remember them when I woke up.

Computer Science was my first class, so I (grudgingly) marched upstairs, dreading the amount of information I might have had to absorb today. (Since I was so tired, I had forgotten that we were actually going to work on the Super-power assignment) However, when we actually started working, I found it really fun to do!

At first I was feeling a bit crazy, so I chose random colours that would stand out for the text and background colours. As fun as it was, I think I might have made my eyesight worse, since the web page was blinding.
Ha, that was amusing. (Am I sadistic this way? I just said that I enjoyed making my eyes hurt.)

After my crazy streak was over, I set out to (seriously) write a web page for my assignment. I already created a format that I'm pretty happy with, so now all I need to do is write out the essay. Then I can copy + paste it onto my HTML file and upload it!
Which reminds me, I need to download Filezilla. (It's a free program that allows you to upload files onto the web, as far as I understand. I need to reread the FTP brief on our class website.)

So, after I post this up, I'm getting back to work on my super-power assignment! Let's see...first I'll write that essay, and then I can continue working on the HTML and CSS. After all, what's the point of a web page without any content?

On another note (which isn't really related to the assignment), my password got reset! *cheers*

A fast-paced, yet enjoyable class

And so, the second day of high school is over!

Today's class went at an extremely fast pace, since Mr. Arkin would be away tomorrow and on Friday. I was doing my best to follow along, but I think I might have missed a few things he said that were important.
He taught us some basic knowledge about HTML and CSS. Although I learned quite a bit, there were some aspects of the lesson that I was familiar with. For example, the fact that, although a start tag has no slash in it, the end tag did.

I took lots of notes (and hopefully I didn't miss anything). I'm exaggerating, but I was in quite a frenzy, and it wouldn't have been surprising if there was paper flying everywhere. Anyways, despite the fact that I almost went crazy trying to cram all this knowledge into my head, I really enjoyed today's class.

Like I said, I learned a lot. The thing that stuck in my head the most was that HTML was for the content of the page and CSS was for the format. I had worked with HTML before, but I had no idea what CSS was, so that really interested me.

Mr. Arkin also covered FTP. This was the part that confused me the most. (I think this is because he went over everything else so quickly, and my head was already spinning. At one point, I blanked out...I regret that, since I'm pretty sure what he said was very important.) I understand that we're going to have to create our own websites, but I didn't really understand anything about the Mirrors. So, I have a couple of questions for anyone out there who might be able to answer them:

1. What exactly is a "mirror"? I know that you do all your editing with your mirrored file (is that what it's called?), but I'm not sure what it really is.
2. Say you have a file up on your website, but you want to edit it. After you edit the file's mirror, do you just upload the whole file onto the website again, or do you have to change the parts you edited directly on the Production Copy?

That's all the questions I have for now, but being as computer-illiterate as I am, I'm sure I'll have more later on. Hopefully I don't inconvenience anyone.

On another note, I (regrettably) forgot my password to my Student Account, so I'm desperately hoping Mr. Arkin will reset them tonight!

Oh, and we got lollipops in class today! I'm so happy!
Ah, well, that's all I have to say for now! I'm looking forward to tomorrow!