My money's on the goat

Unless it's a fainting goat...

I can trust Essjay Ralston with my secrets

Essjay Ralston
She's my girlfriend. A lot of it has to do with mutual trust, but there is the fact that she doesn't know a whole lot of people that I know...

I've never been to the Black History Museum

I just haven't had the opportunity yet. I'll get there eventually.

I want a magic fruit tree!

The Magic Tree

I would want my magic tree to grow magic fruit. Why? Because it sparkles and tastes like sunshine dust. :P

Chakra Test

Ok, so I just took an internet quiz that is actually quite extensive and unusually accurate. It is called the "Chakra Test." It can be found at THIS location. My results were as follows:

Root: open (50%)
Sacral: open (25%)
Navel: open (38%)
Heart: open (44%)
Throat: over-active (75%)
Third Eye: open (56%)
Crown: open (56%)

Those pecentages go from -100% to 100%. Here is a compiled description of my personality according to the site:

-You feel grounded, stable and secure. You don't unnecessarily distrust people. You feel present in the here and now and connected to your physical body. You feel you have sufficient territory.
-Your sexual and sensual feelings flow freely, and are expressed without you being over-emotional. You are open to intimacy and you can be passionate and lively. You have no problems dealing with your sexuality.
-You feel in control when asserting yourself in a group. You have sufficient self esteem.
-You are secure with love, kindness and affection. You are compassionate and friendly, and you work at harmonious relationships.
-You tend to speak too much, usually to domineer and keep people at a distance. You're a bad listener.
-When it is open, you have good intuition, insight, and visualization. You may tend to fantasize.
-You are wise and are one with the world. You are unprejudiced and quite aware of the world and yourself.

The only thing that I was not so happy with was the "bad listener" part. I like to think that I am a good listener, though I haven't received a large amount of feedback in this area. Leave a comment with your quiz results!

~ROBO~

Cellar Door Is Back!

Hello, my faithful reader(s)!

It is confirmed that my friend's blog, Cellar Door, is back up and running. You should check it out if you like to hear people complain. ;)

I have archived the entire thing (minus the comments) on my hard disk so that if my good friend Travius decides to delete it again, I will still have access to this very important psychological information.

~ROBO~

One day I'll roll in a forest-green Honda Element.

For some reason, the forest green Honda Element really apeals to me. I would love to have the all-seats-folding-down feature, plus the flat top would be perfect for solar panels. A lime green lamborghini would be great too.

Here are some pictures from my brother's wedding. I am in one of the composites. Where's Waldo? Haha... funny, right? No? Oh well, here's the link. http://poeticrealityproductions.blogspot.com/2009/03/rainy-day-winter-wedding.html

~ROBO~

Puer Aeternus II

This is a powerpoint I made for my English class about the Puer Aeternus archetype. I added a password to help fight the ever-raging battle against plagiarism.
http://www.2shared.com/file/5432224/39379238/Puer_Aeternus.html

~ROBO==1337~

My money's on the pack of hyenas, NOT on the wimpy gorilla.

A pack of dogs is obviously going to be stronger. A single hyena's jaw can exert 1700lbs/sq or pressure. That's the same amount of pressure a small car would put on the ground if all of its weight was condensed to the size of a silver dollar. Imagine tens of these sets of jaws fighting against one measly gorilla... The answer is obvious, I'd think.

The next scene features

My next scene would be intermission. :)

Oh, for three more hours

I would probably spend half of that time working on schoolwork and/or playing with my rubik's cube. The other half: sleeping. Duh :D

When the rescue ship comes, I'll tell 'em: I'm fine, thanks

I think that it would be wonderful to be self-sustaining in this fashion. As long as I had somebody to share my life with (preferably of the opposite gender), all I would want would be a Bible from that ship. Then I'd send them on their way.

Leave a party if you see Drugs show up.

Drugs show up.
Two reasons. First, I don't want to get my ass kicked into jail. Second, your body is God's temple. It shouldn't be poisoned with harmful substances.

Certain Ex-Girlfriend shows up.
Nobody likes awkward social situations, and most everybody has that certain ex that they really don't want to be around anymore.

He Is Risen!

Happy Easter to both my Christian and non-Christian readers! I hope you can all rejoice in this glorious day.

I knew before I even went to my blog to write this post that it was going to come out in a very strange way. I was looking at my good friend (let's call this one Kathleen) wearing a lovely white dress and holding a small bunch of pink flowers, and I thought to myself, "She is going to look absolutely beautiful on her wedding day." I imagined her walking down the isle, veil over her face, with the first Satie Gymnopédie playing in the background. The visualization struck me so immediately when I saw Kathleen that I was stunned for a moment by how beautiful she looked right then.

The strange thing is that I have never thought about her in that way. It was not in the least bit a sexual attraction. I haven't experienced any serious romantic connection with Kathleen at all, though there is definately the potential. It simply surprised me that I would get such an extremely strong Theta signal from my subconcious, something that has never happened to me in any form.

I intend not to take this too seriously, but I just wanted to share that strange vision with everyone.

On another topic, a lot of my ADD symptoms have been coming back. I am going to start doing my breathing exercises before school now. I might even start using an alarm clock so I have time to do such things. I'll post a detailed description of the exercise later for anybody who could use something other than medication to contain their distractive tendencies.

~ROBO~

Presbycusis?

I found a very nice vocabulary word while shopping on ThinkGeek.com (specifically, the Annoy-a-tron 2.0): presbycusis. It is a noun referring to the hearing loss in elderly people in the high-frequency sound range. Presbycusis is what makes the "mosquito noise" ringtone so popular amongst us younguns: the old people can't hear it.
Immediately after I read the word, it reminded me of the protestant denomination called Presbyterianism. The word was derived from presbytery, a name for a group of Elders (presbyters) that govern the church. These words and presbycusis (hearing loss) are all etymologically derived from the Greek word presbys, meaning 'old man.'
Wait, so Presbyterians are a bunch of old men? Well, that actually sounds about right.
A few more words that come from the same Greek root are presbyopia (farsightedness due to old age), priest (a holy man), and Presbytis (a genus of lanky Old World monkeys with big, bushy eyebrows and prominant chin tufts).

~ROBO~

If I could tame a wild animal

Baby panda learning to climb

I would love to have a panda as a pet. It would be even greater to genetically modify one to be the size of a large hampster. You could have a big cage with some mini-bamboo forests, and you could even have a little river flowing through the cage :D

My chin stitches scar

I'd rather not share my emotional scars :)

I have a long scar across the bottom of my chin. I got it when I was five and playing tag on the playground. I climbed up the slide and fell off, falling to the ground and busting my chin wide open. We got it stitched open, and I looked like I had beard hair for a while. :D

I get my news from the Internet

It is unlimited. The more it grows, the more powerful and influential it becomes. The more influence it has, the more opportunity it has to grow. Newscasters have their own opinions, but the internet has ALL opinions, even the unusual ones. It has information from all areas, not just the easily accessible ones.

I could eat nothing but Mexican food for a year

I would have to say that Mexican food would serve me well for however long I'm forced to eat it. It tastes great, it is fairly healthy, and it is quite plentiful. It is not varied much, but that's ok. I don't mind. I would want to have a few different types of drinks, i.e. fruit juices, but I could live with limonada y bebidas frescas. Aguas frutas wouldn't be half bad to try... I'll remember that for when I move to Spain after I become insanely rich.

God is someone I admire

God
He's kinda omnipotent, omniscient, and all that jazz. I don't look up to any human as an example because we are all broken. I look up only to somebody worth looking up to.

In Response To 'Cellar Door' - Philosophical Ramblings

Alright, well. Well well well.

In response to some recent comments made by a friend, I feel compelled to spill out my brains concerning my personal beliefs and my soul. :D



I really do try not to have any expectations at all about the future. If my expectations are right, then I don't get any more joy than being surprised. If they're wrong, then that just makes people sad, doesn't it? I just think that since the future isn't in our hands, it shouldn't be heavy on anyone's heart. In the same way, the past should not worry anyone. I found this one out the hard way. If a person is to blame for some occurance, worrying isn't going to help anyone, especially not himself.



There's my philosophy on hope. As for my own motivation for love affairs, there is a bit to say about that too.



In order for two people to be successful in a romantic relationship, they must have a connection on four levels: spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical.

The spiritual connection is love. If there is no love, there cannot be understanding nor romance nor compromise. Nothing more to say about that. Emotional connection is the ability of two people to experience intimacy.(Not physical intimacy; emotional intimacy. We'll get to the physical part in a second.) Mental connection is the similarity and/or compatability of ideas, opinions, thought, and decision-making processes. This doesn't mean that they have to be the same; far from it. The less actions of a couple will conflict, the more of a mental connection there is. Phyiscal connectedness is a very important and intrensic part of any relationship. It is by no means what a relationship should hang on; that is why it is listed last. (That is also something I found out the hard way... d'oh!)



I have a friend, I believe his code-name is Tom, who did not approve of me feeling a connection with different women all at the same time. I think that it is quite natural to have feelings for more than one person at a time, especially during the adolescent years. However, it is not ok to act on all of those at the same time. I understand that now. I have a physical connection with a girl commonly called Chick, a spiritual connection to someone we'll codename Winde, and an emotional/mental connection with one we'll call Sara. While I have all of these connections, there is not one person who shares all four strong bonds with me in both directions. If there was, this person would be my twin flame. I suppose most people would call this a soulmate.


That's about it of my philosophy. More later, perhaps? Yeah, probably. Tune in next week for another exciting episode of "Philosophical Ramblings!"

~ROBO~

Random Picture

This is a chop I did for an "add 1 thing" contest on PhotoshopContests.com. Wonderful site; definately worth checking out if you're into image manipulation or not.

~ROBO~

New Personal Best!

I was speedcubing today, and I got the amazing (for me) time of 53.88 seconds! I was videoing and everything! It was great. I added titles, plus some background music from the wonderful French artist Yelle. I took a screenshot of the cubetimer, even though I didn't use the scramble that they gave me. I suppose I'll also post the video... Blogspot won't let me save the vid here, so I'll just post the Facebook link.

P.S. Yelle, I know I used your music without permission, but it is not for financial gain, so please don't sue the poor highschooler.

~ROBO~

Boids Model for Visualbots

Alright, here is my take on the Boids model as promised:

Public SwarmRange As Range, WanderRange As Range, TimeRange As Range
Public SwarmingBugs As Integer, WanderingBugs As Integer
Private Sub World1_OnSimBegin(ByVal World As World, ByVal Bugs As Bots, ByVal Cells As Cells)
 
    World.Random.Seed = 115
    World.Screen.Bounds = vbtWalled
    World.Screen.Resize 900, 400
    World.Screen.SetScale -1800, -800, 1800, 800
    World.Screen.Color = vbBlueGray
    World.Screen.FadeRate = 0.04
    World.Screen.FadeMode = True
    Cells.Hide
 
    RandomLoop = 0
    RandomNum = World.Random.Real(-20, 20)

    Bugs.Create 100
    Bugs.Shape = vbtTadpole
    Bugs.Shape.FillColor = vbRed
    Bugs.Shape.BorderVisible = False
    Bugs.Size = 50
    Bugs.Pen.Color = vbtLightBlue
    Bugs.Pen.Width = 5
    Bugs.Pen.Down
 
    Bugs.Tags.Add "align"
    Bugs.Tags.Add "converge"
    Bugs.Tags.Add "separate"
    Bugs.Tags.Add "velocity"
    Bugs.Tags("velocity") = 1
 
    Bugs.ViewField.Radius = 150
    Bugs.ViewField.Span = 360
    Bugs.Speed = 25
 
    'define Excel ranges to store results
    Set SwarmRange = ActiveSheet.Range("Q1")
    Set WanderRange = ActiveSheet.Range("R1")
    Set TimeRange = ActiveSheet.Range("S1")
 
    ActiveSheet.Columns(SwarmRange.Column).Clear
    ActiveSheet.Columns(WanderRange.Column).Clear
    ActiveSheet.Columns(TimeRange.Column).Clear
 
    SwarmRange.Value = "SwarmingBugs"
    WanderRange.Value = "WanderingBugs"
    TimeRange.Value = "Time"

End Sub

Private Sub World1_OnSimStep(ByVal World As World, ByVal Swarm As Bots, ByVal Cells As Cells)
 
    Dim Bug As Bot
    Dim ClosestBug As Bot
    Dim Neighbors As Group
    Dim TurnDirection As Double
    Dim AngleToPoint As Double
    'Dim RandomLoop As Integer
    'Dim RandomNum As Variant
    'Dim RandomChange As Variant 'for quadratic change in RandomNum
    SwarmingBugs = 0
    WanderingBugs = 0
 
    'random number generator - change RandomNum every 500 steps
    'uncomment this block and line 130 and Dims above.
 
    'If RandomLoop >= 5 Then
    '    RandomChange = RandomChange + World.Random.Real(-20, 20)
    '    RandomNum = RandomChange + RandomNum
    '    RandomLoop = 0
    'Else
    '    RandomLoop = RandomLoop + 1
    'End If

    'gather information
    For Each Bug In Swarm
 
        Set Neighbors = Bug.GroupNear
        Bug.Tags("align") = 0
        Bug.Tags("separate") = 0
        Bug.Tags("converge") = 0
     
        If Neighbors.Count > 1 Then
            Bug.Tags("align") = Neighbors.Avg("Dir") - Bug.Dir

         
            Set ClosestBug = Bug.Closest

            If Bug.DistTo(ClosestBug) <> 100 Then
                Bug.Tags("velocity") = (Bug.DistTo(Neighbors.Centroid) + Bug.DistTo(ClosestBug) * 0.5) / 20
            Else
                If Bug.AngleTo(Neighbors.Centroid) > 300 And Bug.DistTo(Neighbors.Centroid) > 100 Then
                    Bug.Tags("velocity") = (Bug.DistTo(Neighbors.Centroid) + Bug.DistTo(ClosestBug) * 0.5) / -20
                End If
            End If
         
        End If
                         
     'count, coloring, and stray behavior
     ' - add to SwarmingBugs and WanderingBugs variables
     ' - color Bug red if alone, green if in group
     ' - if alone, make Bug turn randomly and adjust to normal speed
        If Neighbors.Count < 2 Then
            Bug.Color = vbtRed
            Bug.TurnRand -20, 20
            Bug.Speed = 25
            WanderingBugs = WanderingBugs + 1
        Else
            Bug.Color = vbtBrightGreen
            SwarmingBugs = SwarmingBugs + 1
        End If
        
    Next Bug
            
    'action loop - change direction based on composite behavior
    For Each Bug In Swarm
        If Neighbors.Count > 1 Then
            TurnDirection = Bug.Tags("align") + Bug.Tags("separate") + Bug.Tags("converge") '+ RandomNum
            Bug.Turn TurnDirection
            If Bug.Speed < 1000 Then
                Bug.Speed = 25 + Bug.Tags("velocity")
            Else
                Bug.Speed = 1000
            End If
        End If
    Next Bug
    
    'set the values to be used in data recording
    TimeRange.Offset(World.Sim.Time).Value = World.Sim.Time
    WanderRange.Offset(World.Sim.Time).Value = WanderingBugs
    SwarmRange.Offset(World.Sim.Time).Value = SwarmingBugs
    
    'move Bugs
    Swarm.Step
    

End Sub

(In case you haven't read my previous post, this code was written for the VisualBots Excel add-in. It's completely safe, plus an easy yet powerful way to use BASIC programming.)

This is actually version 5.3. I plan to condense this a bit, get rid of the orphans, and reorganize it so I can have a v6. Enjoy!

~ROBO~

VisualBots

I want to pay my tribute to a fantastic program made by the Waite family called VisualBots. It is an agent-based addin for Microsoft Excel that runs off of the built-in Visual BASIC compiler/interpreter. The program is free for download from this link. I have modified their flocking example program (a crude adaptation of the BOIDS flocking model) to include a speed modification, and I have renamed it into bugs instead of birds. I will post the code this afternoon.

~ROBO~

---BLANK---

Sorry, deleted post :(

~ROBO~