Winter

I’ve been pretty busy lately, mostly doing uninteresting schoolwork. I’m taking a free online database class form Stanford University, which is somewhat time consuming but a lot of fun. I am learning how to query databases in SQL, write XML validation files such as DTDs or XML schemas, design databases in Boyce-Codd Normal Form, or use UML to automatically create data base schemas. The class is over in a few weeks and I will have more time to work on some video projects. I am hoping to do some sort of seasons video from video I have been shooting over the past few months. I will have to see if I have time.

A XSLT transformation that finds all countries that have more than 3 languages spoken within then, then outputs into the below table. (Queries this XML file)

Country	Population	Area	# of Languages
Pakistan	129275664	803940	8
Iran	66094264	1648000	7
Georgia	5219810	69700	4
Macedonia	2104035	25333	4
Switzerland	7207060	41290	4

Last weekend I traveled with my DDF team to Wrangell. Since we had to stop in Sitka on the way, it took us about 26 hours on the ferry to get there. We all slept on the ferry, and got in to Wrangell at 1:15 am. The tournament was pretty fun, and I did okay in all of my events. I tied for 2nd place for an oration I wrote on gay slurs in schools. I won half of the debates that I was in as well, which was pretty good, considering that my partner was relatively new and it was the first time I had every been second speaker.
When we got back from the tournament, there was two feet of snow on the ground in Haines. The day after we got back, it snowed another foot and the wind picked up to 30 mph (gusts to 50). The snow was very dry and powdery, meaning that it blew around quite a bit. For example, I went and walked around through the waist deep snow for a bit. When I came back a few hours later, you couldn’t tell I had made a track. Because there was poor visibility and snow constantly drifting across the road, they canceled school (which doesn’t happen very often up here).

Before                                                   After

I went outside and dug a fort in the snow and just had fun in the snow in general. The snow drifted up two about three feet high against the garage door, so that when you opened it there was a flat, three foot wall of snow. Unfortunately, some of the snow got caught in the door and it didn’t shut all the way. When I noticed it 30 minutes later, so much snow had blown in there there was a 3/4 dusting on everything by the door. I had to spend a half hour cleaning everything off.
My parents are out of town for a few weeks. Michelle, a friend of ours, is watching my sister and I. My parents actually get back tomorrow.

Fall

I’ve been busy with a myriad of projects lately, and haven’t had time to write anything.
It is late fall now, and will probably snow within a few weeks. This is one of my favorite seasons for some reason. I love the mental imagery of a bare, windblown trees and the sound of wind chimes on a dark, windy night. I also love the fall colors, as you can see by my new background.

I am trying to make a movie about fall, but I’ve gotten a bit busy with other work. I am making a short video for Mario Benassi, which he will be showing at a fundraiser for Chilkat Forest Investigators, his afterschool wildlife program. I have only had two weeks to work on it, and it is showing this Saturday, so it has kept me busy.
I also went to the first DDF meet in Juneau about a week ago. I was only in two events, Debate and Excomm, since my partner for the mime I am doing couldn’t come. I got third place in debate (along with my partner), and missed getting into the final debate (between the top two teams) by two speaker points. I also got to judge a spar debate round.
This last weekend I went up to Whitehorse with the venture scouts. Eight kids and two adults came. We camped out at the hot springs there on Saturday. Since I brought my own tent, I got it all to myself, while everyone else had to share. We went swimming in the hotsprings, and then went to see a movie (Real Steel). A few kids went swimming again later that night, but I just took pictures of the steam rising off the pools into the night air. We built a campfire and told ghost/UFO stories that night.

When we woke up the next morning, it has snowed about 5 millimeters. We had oatmeal, apples, strawberries, hot chocolate, and Orange Peach Mango juice for breakfast, then packed up and drove into Whitehorse. There we went swimming at the Whitehorse pool, which has a river pool, a waterslide, and sauna, a steam room, a diving board and a rope swing. Afterwards we went shopping, since that is what most Haines people do when they are in a big city.
I have also been doing some physics experiments lately. We have a pneumatic rocket kit, and we are shooting it off and figuring out where it will go based on known quantities.
We did a experiment inside were we shot the rocket straight up, next to a scale, and filmed it. Knowing that we had a frame rate of 30 fps, we could find how far the rocket went in that time period and thus find its speed. Unfortunately, the rocket went too fast to show up in the camera except as a blur. So, upon a suggestion from the photography teacher, we shot it in the dark with a long exposure and a flash with a strobe function. We found a speed of 80 miles per hour.

We also shot it off outside a a known angle and measured how far it traveled. Then, using some formulas, we were also able to find a speed, although this would have been somewhat effected by air resistance. We found a similar speed to what we found the first time.