We Got an Egg!!!!!

So, I was doing homework in my living room on a nice Tuesday afternoon when I hear a thump on the window. It was my brother trying to get my attention. He was holding up an egg! I thought it was I trick but when I came down, it was an egg! I was elated, ecstatic, I was so excited that we had finally gotten an egg.

We were expecting the hens to be laying soon and Tuesday was the day! Surprisingly, it was actually a very moderate-sized egg, it wasn’t small, or soft shelled, or had two yolks. It was an amazing egg! Then, after one started laying, two more started laying also! It seemed like the first layer encouraged the other two. The next day, the same one layed again but we found a different egg from a different layer. (This was the second layer.) The egg was a darker brown and had specks of lighter brown on it. I do not currently have the picture myself so here is a picture of an egg they laid later.

A beautiful egg laid by the chickens. Photo taken by me.

The two layers continued to lay until on Sunday, a third joined. But, this chicken did not seem ready yet because we got a soft shelled egg meaning that it is not ready yet. Here is a picture of the soft egg.

As you can see, I can push the shell inwards without it breaking. Photo taken by me dad.

Then about 5 days after the first egg, the forth came. But like the third, it was not ready because it only laid a yolk. This is extremely normal though. My family and I are extremely excited for the fresh eggs! We just started them on layer pellets so they should start to lay more consistently soon.

May 12th Cubing Competition!

I have just gotten back from my first ever cubing competition! I mentioned this in my Feliks Zemdegs post and I was super excited for it. I was only able to participate in 3×3 only but I still had a blast solving, and meeting lots of new people at the competition. Here is how the day went.

My dad and I drove up the night before to avoid waking up at 3:00 AM in the morning to drive there on Saturday.

Late night adjustments at the hotel.

Driving to McAdenville!

 

We stayed in a hotel and drove there on Saturday from a much closer distance. We parked and walked up to the small YMCA building that the competition was being hosted at. I sat down at a table and did some solves. After a few minutes, a few other kids joined me at my table. There were about 70 competitors. I talked with the kids at my table and learned that they were some first timers also. We practiced together and tried each others cubes. There was a really quick solver at my table and I got to try one of his cubes I have always wanted. I was in 3×3 heat one so I got to do my solves very early on. I did five solves and I averaged 44 seconds. For me, this is really bad but it wasn’t horrible. But, I did get a 31 second solve which I was super happy about. I didn’t move onto round two but I still had a great time. Here are some of my solves my dad got on video.

My 12th Cubing Competition! Video 1 from DA MS Student Council on Vimeo.

My 12th Cubing Competition! Video 2 from DA MS Student Council on Vimeo.

My final thoughts are that competitions are a blast. You get so much practice, experience, and you get to meet and talk with tons of new people. If you can solve a cube using the beginners in under two or so minutes, you should definitely go to competition. There were even parents solving it in like 1 minute and 40 seconds and they were still having a fun time. As a matter of fact, the day after this competition I signed up for another competition in June! My goal for the June competition is to get at least one sub 30 second solve and get a sub 40 second average. I also am doing 2×2 at this competition and I am really excited.

My Evaluation of My Blog


Over the past school year and the ten weeks of the Student Blogging Challenge, I have done a lot of blogging. I have written about various topics and issues. Now, that the time for the Student Blogging Challenge is almost up, I will evaluate my blog.

Since March and the start of the SBC, I have written 14 blog posts on a variety of topics. 7 posts, were for the SBC and school, but the other 7 were based on my own interests. There were also lots of blog posts before March that I wrote. Of these blogs, my most popular blogs were the Update On the Chickens post and The Feliks Zemdegs post. These were viewed and commented on the most.

Here are some statistics from my blog. I have had 145 visitors! I never expected to have so many people seeing my blog and I was very happy about this. I also had four different countries being The U.S, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. I was really happy to see the diversity. For comments, I had 13 comments not including my responses to comments. I liked seeing people liking my work, but also giving my constructive criticism or asking questions. Again, I also loved seeing diversity in the comments from different parts of the world. The most popular post comment wise was definitely The Update on the Chickens Blog Post(Link up above). It got eight comments!

I have been focusing at lot on my blog and visitors. Now, I’m going to talk about me visiting and commenting on other blogs. To start I visited and/or commented on blogs from, England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Norway, and America. Wow, that’s a lot of countries! It was great to see ideas, opinions, and posts from people all around the world. Also, I loved visiting other blogs. Almost everyday, I would visit on at least 2 or 3 blogs. Like I said, I loved to see different posts around the world. In total, I visited roughly, 150, to 200 blogs.

Now, lets come back to my blog. I tried to make my appearance and widgets very welcoming and user friendly. I also made sure it was mobile friendly. I did this because it will deter readers if your blog is really messy and non user friendly. I have 13 widgets, most of which are to help people find their way around the blog and find posts they like. Some examples; I had a list of categories and tags. I also had archives to find blogs and other things similar to this. But, I also just had some fun ones like a flag counter, avatar, and blog buddies around the world. Speaking of which I have 5 links to other blogs all from different countries. I also had links to class blogs and the SBC.

My blog. Screen Shot taken by me.

An Audit by My mom:

I asked my mom to do an audit of my blog and asked her the following questions.

What were your first impressions of this blog?
What captured your attention?
What distracted you on the blog?
What suggestions can you give me to improve my blog?

These were her answers.

My mom was impressed by the amount of posts and visitors for my blog. She thought that the layout was very clean and she liked my avatar. My avatar and my titles caught my mom’s attention and she thought they were really engaging. She also thought that the tag cloud was a little distracting on my side bar and maybe could be minimized or taken away. My mom’s final thoughts and suggestions were that maybe I could add more pictures to my posts.

In conclusion, I feel pretty good about my blog. I could maybe have made a little bit more of a prettier theme and had some longer posts (Although recent ones are longer). But, I feel like my blog is mostly good. I really appreciate all of you who have visited my blog, commented, and put me on their blogrolls because it really motivates me to keep going and keep writing.

-Happy Blogging,

Ben

GLSEN Day of Silence

GLSEN, pronounced “Glisten”, is a national organization that spreads awareness and hosts events to help the LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer) population in schools. GLSEN stands for Gay, Lesbian and straight education network. Nearly 4 in 5 LGBTQ students don’t see positive LGBTQ representation in their curriculum, nearly 9 in 10 experience verbal harassment, and almost a third miss school for feeling unsafe or uncomfortable.(GLSEN.org) As I said, this event was national. It took place on Friday, April 27th. I found this out from a friend in my class the day before the event. She said she was participating, so another one of our friends and I decided to join her in the day of silence.

It was really hard and not to mention, weird not talking. But, even when it was hard, it felt so good to be doing the day of silence. I have to admit, some words did slip out, but I corrected myself and continued the silence. When people asked I what I was doing, I gave them a card that I had printed out so I didn’t have to talk. In all, it was hard, but very rewarding at the end.

How was this excepted by my community? Many people accepted my cause. My teachers were completely on board with my cause. Students supported me throughout the day. Some even asked if I was okay because they thought I was sad. This really motivated me to get through the day.

But, some didn’t except my cause. Some people advertently, and inadvertently disrespected my cause. This made me really sad. After coming home, I have to admit, I just sat in my room and cried a little bit. It really discouraged me but, I knew that I had to keep going despite the people that tried to put me down. I knew that I had to stand for this cause and it didn’t matter what the people thought that were discouraging me.

This event happens every single year. The next day of silence will be April 12th, 2019. If you would like to register yourself, friends, or your school, go to this link. Thank you for reading.

GLSEN day of silence. GLSEN.org

How Much is Money Actually Worth?

To clarify, this post is completely based on my opinion. There are many other views on this topic.

A lot of people say, “Money, is worthless. Other things will get you way farther in life.” Wow, what a cliche thing to say. I bet some of you are saying that, maybe, others not. First to clarify, I do KIND OF agree with this statement, but there is a whole other side to this argument about money, and its value. In this post, I’ll be writing about money, and how much I think it’s actually worth.

First of all, let me talk about how far you can get in life if you have a boatload of money. If you have a ton of money, you can buy a big house, a fancy car, and a bunch of other fancy things and gadgets you probably will never need, but will you be happy? Like seriously, you probably have all the things in the world, but probably didn’t get that money doing something you love. Now, you are stuck doing something you don’t like and aren’t happy.

Now, let’s look on the flip side. What if you are super happy, but not making enough or no money? At least your happy, but you probably won’t be super happy. I say this because you probably won’t be able to get a house, food, or water.

So, as you can see, how much money is actually worth is complicated. I think, that money isn’t really worth that much, but it is worth a little. Looking at money from an economic view, it’s worth a lot. But, from a view of being happy, it’s not worth too much. They are polar opposites. This brings me to my last point.

What I think is that you have to strike a balance between being happy and doing something you love, and also making enough money to be able to get food, shelter, water, you can donate, and many other things. If you strike that balance, it is the ultimate way to be happy. Not too much money, but also not too much devoting all your time to being happy. In the end, I think that 70% needs to go to being happy, and 30% going to money.

So in conclusion, money is worth a little. It has some value but not as much as you think. I say it has some value because you can’t get very far without it, but also you don’t need too much. It’s definitely worth something, but not much.

Here are some other views on this topic:

I feel like both of these websites make really good points.

Money. Pexels.com

An Empathy Experience

For the past few weeks in LA class, my class has been reading the book, A Long Walk to Water, by Linda Sue Park. This book is separated into two parts, one, about a boy named Salva who is an internally displaced person who later became a refugee in Southern Sudan, 1985. The second part is about a girl named Nya (Knee-Ya) and about her troubles in 2008 to get clean water. Our class did a project which was an empathy experience to put ourselves in their shoes.

My project was mostly related to Nya, and involved limited water and walking while holding water. I walked around my yard for 20 minutes while carrying a bucket of two gallons of water. I also walked around barefoot while doing this. Then, if it was too heavy, I would have to drop some. (I did have to!) What I had left was what I had to drink AND use for the day.

Me walking around my yard carrying the water barefoot. -Photos taken by my dad.

Before the project, I was thinking, “This is going to be a piece of cake! No problemo.” Let me just say that is not how it went. At first, I could barely get the bucket off the ground. I eventually did but after that it just got harder and harder. I did end up having to drop some which made it a little easier but, if I dumped too much, I wouldn’t have enough water for the day. It wasn’t too hard for the day, although it was very tempting to just go get an ice cold glass of water from the fridge.

This project really made me look at the big picture. I did this for a day, but I could barely imagine, doing this every day, for the rest of my life. But people do have to do this every day. Every day, people get water for hours, preventing them from doing other things like getting an education. It really made me appreciate having running water for showers, brushing, drinking, and so much more. And I just don’t know how I could do this every day.

 

It’s National Help a Horse Day!!!

Today(April 26th), is national help a horse day. This is one of the many days of the year that people celebrate. But what is Help a Horse Day?

Help a Horse Day, is a national day that recognizes our faithful, four legged companions, horses. Horses have helped humans so much for a long time but yet, some are still not treated properly, or don’t get any love. I love horses and used to ride. Horses do so much and are just great companions to have. So this sounded like a great thing to write about.

What can you do for Help a Horse Day in the future?  This day is an opportunity to help, raise awareness, or even just give a horse a treat. You could make a donation to an equine organization, or spread awareness by teaching people about horses being neglected and abandoned and ask them to help. Because all around the world, horses are still homeless or neglected and that’s not right. People need to start to make a difference. I sincerely hope, that on next Help a Horse Day, that you will do something to help.

Our faithful companions, horses. Pexels.com

Our Heroes!

What is a hero? A hero can be a lot of things. It doesn’t have to be someone with super speed, or insane strength. It just has to be someone who has impacted you. To me a hero is someone who is generous, kind, and devoted. My hero was a veterinarian I shadow named Dr. Cindy. I choose the, because she is kind to me, helps me along, and is always there for me.

The hero book project, was a project that my grade did. First, we had to choose a hero we wanted to write about. We would then write a small book about them. Then, with the help of the artist Peg Gignoux, we created our hero books. The books consisted of an outer scene of our hero, and you can open up the book and find a secret inner scene of our hero. Then on the next page, there was extra space for our written part of the book. We made all the illustrations with colored designed paper that we made before the book making.

Ms. Gunoux helping us with our books.

The most rewarding part of the process was staring with a bunch of paper, and then turning it into an illustrated picture made completely out of colored paper. It was just really nice to see everything come together and comparing the start and end result.

On the flip side, the most challenging part of this project was when you have to start the scene. It is really hard to figure out where to start. I have found myself just sitting over a blank page with paper in one hand and scissors in the other for a few minutes not knowing where to start. But once you start, it starts to get much easier.

I will be sharing my hero book with my hero, probably by going to her house and letting her read it. I will let her keep the book because she is the hero and she should get it.


Here is my hero book and some pictures of my book:

 

What makes a hero? Being devoted? Being generous? Being supportive? I think all of these traits make a hero, and that is why Dr. Cindy Eward is my hero. Dr. Eward was born on May 24, 1970, in Ottawa, Canada. She is the oldest of four siblings. As a child, she rode horses, swam, and did kayaking. She knew she wanted to be a veterinarian when she was four years old. For elementary and middle school, she went to Hopewell Glashan and her favorite subject was biology. Then, she went to Glebe High School and very much enjoyed chemistry and finished one year early in the 12th grade. When she was 18, she participated in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, Korea as a kayaker. She went to Ontario College and went on to go to vet school. Dr. Eward graduated and later got certified as a veterinary surgeon. She loves helping animals and owners and is still working as a veterinarian today.

Heroes are devoted. They are always there for you and help you when you need it. Dr. Eward is always there for me and I strive to be like her. She always helps me answer my seemingly never-ending lists of questions about vet school and my future. But not only is she devoted to me to help me learn, she is also devoted to the animals. Dr. Eward does so much for the animals and owners she works with and will do anything to help an animal, even if it means helping the animal move on to a happier place. She will do so much to help an animal like performing intense and hard surgeries. Sometimes, she works with animals that could be potentially dangerous and with exotic animals. Once, Dr. Eward worked with a bear! She always strives to do everything she can for an animal. Dr. Eward is undoubtedly the most devoted person I know.

Heroes are generous. They are always looking for ways to give their time, their knowledge, and their experiences. They also are always looking for ways to help their community. Dr. Eward once worked with a therapy huskie that was helping two children with a neurological problem and the family had barely any money. The huskie was important to the family and especially the children. The dog had an orthopedic problem that would be expensive to heal. The children really loved the dog so Dr. Eward and the practice she worked with did the surgery for free. She is always helping the animals and people she works with and will do anything to positively impact their lives. Dr. Eward is also very generous with her time. When I ask to shadow, she always lets me shadow and is always there to help me. If this doesn’t make her one of the most generous people, I don’t know what would.

Finally, heroes are supportive. They are always there to support. They are uplifting and love to help. Dr. Eward is, without doubt, one of the most supportive people I know. Dr. Eward is supportive because she is a mentor to me and helps me with learning things about my career. Also, Dr. Eward always answers my questions and gives me advice. When kids have lost a pet, she is one of the people that supports them and helps them understand that their pet has moved on to a happier place. Dr. Eward will always support an animal and help them. She is always helpful and uplifting and she will always be a mentor to me.

Dr. Eward is devoted. She is generous. She is supportive, and she is a million other great things that I can’t put on here because there would be so many, this book would turn into a novel. Dr. Eward has had such a huge impact on my life and on so many others, and I will never forget the things she has done for me like encouraging me and helping me plan my future. I strive to be just like her and she is always a mentor to me. She is devoted, she is generous, she is supportive, she is encouraging, she is uplifting, and she is so much more. And that is why I call her my hero.

My hero book. Photos taken by me.

How Feliks Zemdegs Broke the Rubik’s Cube World Record(4.59 seconds) and Tutorial on how to solve.

Feliks Zemdegs, is the world’s fastest speed solver. He holds many world records and recently broke the 3×3 world record and solved a Rubik’s Cube in 4.59 seconds! This post will tell you how he did it.

First of all, lets start with how Feliks solves the cube. Feliks uses a method called CFOP. CFOP is an advanced method that solves first, a cross on the bottom layer, then solves the first 2 layer (f2l), then it orients the last layer (OLL), and finally moves around the pieces of the last layer permutimg it (PLL). This method is used by top speed solvers and has broken many records.

But what makes Feliks Zemdegs so different? As a cuber myself, I ask this a lot. First, Feliks can do at maximum, 12 turns per SECOND. It’s crazy. He is also very proficient with very little pasues. And finally he practices. He has been cubing for ten years now and really has an aptitude for it. He has broke countless records and is an inspiration for me, and many cubers.

Feliks Zemdegs at a competition in 2013.
Attribution: Lembasts at English Wikipedia

 

Why did I make this post? I made this post because I love the cube. My personal record is 28 seconds and I use the same method as Feliks called CFOP. I am going to a competition in May and will be making a post about it! My personal goals are to practice and learn new algorithms to the point that I will be sub 10 seconds and go to many competitions.

Fun Facts!

The largest cube is a 33×33!

There is a World Cube Association (WCA) which hosts competitions (I am going to one!)

The fastest time a 3×3 was ever solved (Unofficial) was 3.85 seconds but it doesn’t count because it wasn’t in a competition.

There are 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possible combinations for a 3×3!

The Rubik’s Cube is 40 years old.

 

How to Get Started With Solving

Now, I’m not going to put a full tutorial in here. That would be more of something for a video. But, If you are interested, I can direct you on how to get started. Here are some steps.

1. Get a Rubik’s Cube, if you just want to know how to solve it, get a Rubik’s  brand. It is the original but it is not the best but that doesn’t matter for just learning. (If you ever want to speed solve, don’t get a Rubik’s brand.)

2. Find a good tutorial for the beginner’s method (On Youtube). I recommend Noah Richardson’s beginner tutorial.

3. Deside whether you want to get faster.

4. If so practice.

5. If you ever want to get really into it, learn CFOP (the advanced method), this is what I did after about a month.

 

Thanks for reading the blog! I hope you enjoyed it! Comment down below if you have ever solved the cube or if you are into speed solving. Also, if you want more info on the subject, ask your questions in the comments!

-Happy Solving!