Another Constellation Video

Here is a good constellation video. First it explains a bit about the origin of constellations, and then moves on to more technical stuff (why we see them, etc.), and last reminds you to read up on your Greek mythology so you know why the constellations are named after the characters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXeEAQtC75g

Raptors

Raptors is a fun tag game to play with lots of people (average elementary class size) and a big area (we use our school soccer field). I'm not sure why it's called Raptors, because it's actually just normal tag, but it's really fun. Unless you don't like running. Here are the rules:

• There are 3 types of people: 1s, 2s (or Peace), and 3s.
• 1s = People who chase 2s and try to tag them.
• 2s = People who run away from 1s and try not to get tagged by them.
• 3s = People who were 1s and quit OR people who were 2s and quit OR people who weren't playing in the first place.
• The game starts with one 1. The first 1 is decided at the before the game when all players run towards a visible object reasonably far away (eg. a shed on the edge of a school property). The last player to reach the object is the first 1.
• The 1 counts to 50 (or another number) with their eyes closed and then after counting starts chasing and tagging 2s. The 2s become 1s and try to tag other 2s. Etc...
• The game ends the last 2 is caught. That player becomes the new 1 for the next game.

Origami

Here are three good, simple sites that teach origami with easy instructions.

• http://en.origami-club.com/ This one has animation instructions as well as big, clear pictures, however, some of the instructions are hard to follow and/or inaccurate. And many of them don't look very realistic..
• http://www.origami-instructions.com/ Big pictures, although sometimes it's hard to tell which picture the instructions are referring to. Also you can submit your own photo of origami! Or search for something.
• http://www.origami-fun.com/ Lots of helpful categories, including Origami Paper, Origami Survey, Subscribe, Origami for Kids, Your Origami, Origami Folding Tips, Search, etc.

Please remember to use origami paper or other thin flimsy paper, or the folding will get really hard and messed-up near the end.

Wild Alberta Expo

Last Saturday our class represented our school in an expo hosted by the AWA (Alberta Widerness Association) at the base of the Calgary Tower. In total we raised about $300 I believe. We also sponsored four of my classmates to race in a Tower Climb. To see the race results go to http://climbforwilderness.ca/results.asp#runners.
The amazing thing is (well two amazing things)
1) We were the only school that participated
2) We won the overall prize for the best expo display!!
About a month ago four of us and our teacher plus her daughter went to a Calgary Tower Mural Painting Competition. Below are links to see our Mural.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/55762680@N03/5625817591/
http://waterengnet.com/2011/earth-day-celebration-calgary-tower-climb-an-update/ The painting at the top beside the title is it.
Amazing, no?

Reliable Information About Space

Well, all my posts have reliable and accurate information (at least on the day I published it), but these sites are mostly from NASA and CSA so they should confirm everything.

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/ Easy-to-understand information about the planets, solar system, etc.
http://www.nasa.gov/ National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
http://spaceflightnow.com/ Includes live coverage of space shuttle landings.
http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/default.asp Canadian Space Agency.

The 39 Clues

Did you know that America is believed to be named after the feminine version of Amerigo Vespucci (a Spanish explorer who lived at the same time as Christopher Columbus)? Now you do. I only just found out today after I read part of the book Vespers Rising, which is part of the awesome series The 39 Clues. This series is for kids (but not the really young because it involves killing, injuries, frightening and fighting scenes, etc.) and is fantastic.

Summary:
The main characters Dan and Amy Cahill find out they are part of a very large and self-conflicting family (Cahills) and embark on a race around the world (with their au pair Nellie Gomez) to find 39 clues (ingredients) that, put together, will make a serum that will make the drinker very powerful.
Tell me if that was confusing. And I know it's a run-on sentence. And has lots of brackets.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerigo_Vespucci or http://library.thinkquest.org/4034/vespucci.html for more information on Amerigo Vespucci.
See http://www.the39clues.com/ or http://39clues.wikia.com/wiki/39_Clues_Wiki for more information on the series 39 Clues.

The Constellations

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AskaziHAseA

Above is a really good video about the stars, constellations, and the universe. Astronomical information in general.

And if you're wondering why I'm putting so much space-related stuff on here all of a sudden, it's because our class is studying Astronomy in Science.

My New Profile Picture

Did you see my new picture of me? Of course you did. Way better than the last one, I think. Which one did you like better?

An... Interesting Constellation Video

Here is a slightly strange video about the constellations. It's pretty accurate (I think) up to the end, where there is a totally fake constellation called "Al Roker", who is some meteorologist guy, so I don't know why that's there. Unfortunately this video is from Google Videos which is going to remove all its videos on April 29 (why?!) so I'm not sure if this video will sitll be viewable after that. And the guy that published this video was called MoldyToaster which is a pretty uncommon name.

Buttons!!!

Here are some buttons I made with CoolText! They link to sites my classmates, friends, family and I have made. All buttons by CoolText.com. If you have any sites that you think I should make a button for, please email me or comment on this post.

http://mathandbytes.blogspot.com/


http://whereintheweb.webs.com/


http://lifewithstupidity.blogspot.com/


http://www.thetrickgoogle.webs.com/


http://storiewriter.weebly.com/


fakoco.webs.com

A Button

Behold! The amazing, non-working big red button! (Well, I think it's big, although I have no idea how to control the size.)
I made the button with cooltext.com which has pretty much a million different button, logo, etc. varieties and fonts. Try it! Although you have to sign in with a Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, or OpenId account. This button directs you to the CoolText website.


Image by Cool Text: Logo and Button Generator - Create Your Own Logo

A List of Demented Laws

 After I posted A Demented Law (right before this one), I researched some other weird and out-dated Canadian laws. Here are some of the stranger ones (they are seperated into Federal, Provincial and City Laws):

Federal

• You may not pay for a fifty-cent item with only pennies.
• Citizens may not publicly remove bandages.
• It is illegal for clear or non-dark sodas to contain caffeine.

Alberta Provincial

• You cannot paint a wooden log.

BC Provincial

• It is illegal to kill a sasquatch.

New Brunswick Provincial

• Driving on the roads is not allowed.

Quebec Provincial

• It's illegal for margarine to be the same colour as butter.

Fort Qu'Appelle

• It's illegal for a teen to walk Downtown Main Street with his shoes untied.

Coburg

• If you have a water trough in your front yard it must be filled by 5:00 a.m.

Guelph

• The city is classified as a no-pee zone.

Kanata

• A purple door can get you a fine.

Oshawa

• It's illegal to climb trees.

Ottawa

• It is illegal to eat ice-cream on Bank Street on a Sunday.

Toronto

• You can't drag a dead horse down Yonge St. on a Sunday.

Uxbridge

• Residents are not allowed to have an Internet connection faster than 56k.

Beaconsfield

• It is considered an offence to have more than two colours of paint on your house.
• You may not own a log cabin.

Montreal

• The Queen Elizabeth Hotel must feed your horse for free when you rent a room.
• You may not wash your car in the street.
• You may not park a car in such a way that it is blocking your own driveway.
• "For Sale" signs are not permitted in the windows of moving vehicles.
• Cars parked in public places must be locked, and their windows must be down to less than the width of a hand.
• One's rear license plate may not be protected by glass or plastic.
• You may not swear in French.

Outremont

All exterior painting jobs require a permit for colour.

And I'm not sure where this law is from, but you must use your hand to signal while turning, however you must also keep both hands on the handlebars at all times! Oxymoronic!

Resources:

www.lufa.ca/news/news_item.asp?NewsID=7235

http://www.helium.com/items/1106704-dumbest-canadian-lawsstupidest-laws-in-canadacanadas-dumbest-laws

forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/4821071447/m/.../p/2

http://smartcanucks.ca/weird-canadian-laws/

http://www.strangecosmos.com/content/item/143929.html

http://chatterboxforum.com/index.php?showtopic=139701

http://www.dumblaws.com/laws/canada

A Demented Law

Have you heard on the news (well, this might only be applicable if you listen to Canadian news) that some guy is trying to get in to jail on purpose? There's this demented old law from the 1920's (there was a period of time called the Prohibition Era in Canada when you couldn't drink wine or something - not that I would ever want to drink any in the first place) that states you can't bring wine from BC into Alberta! Weird. And apparently Terry David Mulligan is planning to break that law, and he's planning to inform RCMP in advance, plus have it videotaped! :) You can see the details here:

http://m.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/wine-makers-see-red-over-prohibition-era-law/article1980933/?service=mobile

You know how Google's homepage sometimes features a cool doodle, something like
this? Well, you can view all those doodles at
http://www.google.com/logos/!
The site also features Doodle History, a list of all the previous doodles, and more. It it is also a good way to learn about history. :)

Astronomy Picture Of The Day

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Click the link above to see a beautiful new astronomy-related picture every day! It also includes a short description of the picture.

369 Shanghai Palace

This is the best restaurant I visited on my trip!!! It's a Chinese restaurant (sort of obvious) in Anaheim (which is where Disneyland is actually located - for some reason I thought it was in LA - anyways...) that is both the best-tasting and authentic Chinese food I've ever eaten. Although I have eaten at other Chinese restaurants with tasty food as well, this didn't make me feel sick like most other restaurants do. And it has such amazing food!!! I ate there two times and still enjoyed it very much. If you ever go to Anaheim, YOU MUST PAY THIS RESTAURANT A VISIT!

La Jolla Seals 2

Second video of the La Jolla Cove Seals series!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBkRlivCmmA

Here are some of the sculpture pictures I took! They are all outside the USS Midway Museum.


Sculpture of a head

 A WWII Memorial
                                      

The other side of the WWII Memorial

A famous sculpture, although I have no idea why

The guy at the front with the microphone is Bob Hope, and the rest is a crowd of cheering people

La Jolla Cove Seals

Here is the first video of some seals on my trip to La Jolla, California! Three more to come!
If you can't see it try using the link here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cnyUAodj5A

Where We Went

Here are the parks we visited:

• Legoland!
• Disneyland
• Disneyland California Adventure
• Getty Centre
• San Diego Zoo
• Sea World
• USS Midway Museum
• La Jolla Cove

Here are the food places we visited:

• 369 Shanghai Place
• Yogurtland
• Cafe Coyote
• Akbar
• J-Wok
• Yunnan Cross-Bridge Garden

Here are the hotels we stayed at:

• Assorted Best Westerns
• Assorted Holiday Inns
• Quality Inn

I'll elaborated on the individual places in seperate posts.

Yogurtland!

Believe it or not, there actually is a Yogurtland! It is a chain store/restaurant that sells frozen yogurt in so many flavours you can sample that you'll be pretty much full before you buy anything! Most of the stores are in USA (sad) so I visited the stores multiple times. It is so awesome! And the yogurt is very inexpensive so it is a good deal too. I like their Plain Tart Yogurt the best. It's not really plain at all! And also there are toppings (gummy bears, berries, sprinkles, etc.) that you can add to your yogurt. The crushed graham crackers taste amazing with any yogurt flavour. The yogurt is payed by the weight. Visit yogurt-land.com for more details.

Fattag

Fattag is a cool painting app on the iPod touch. Here is the website-ish/profile. http://fffff.at/fattag/ And here is general info about the publisher. http://fffff.at/
It's sort of like graffiti paint and you can change the colours too.

Back From California

! I am back form California! Sorry that I did not post on my blog at all during my trip, but there was too much to do and see that I was kept busy the entire time. I will have the pictures and videos I took on here soon! See you!