Stuff To Do

“That season, whatever you call it, often feels more like the new year than the New Year itself.” — “A Short, Welcome Season” by Verlyn Klinkenborg

Seasonal beauty

In search of autumnal beauty, I’ve been walking far away from my house lately to see a remote part of town deep in the woods. I once walked there with my dad and my sister, but it wasn’t yet fall. He claimed that it is one of the most beautiful places when the leaves turn red.

I’ve decided to walk there once every day to check on the leaves, and also for exercise.

Walks in the forest

I once learned that Benjamin Franklin loved to go on long walks in the forest to think. I think that if he had a computer he would do otherwise.

But if I had long walks in the forest, I would perhaps do it more often. However, this brings me to an interesting problem.

Photographs

Should I photograph the forest at its most beautiful moment?

If I did so, how can I know which day will be the most beautiful? When will it not get any redder? When will it turn brown?

So, my conclusion is that I should either not take a picture, or I should only take one. I suppose the point of this journey is to get me away from the digital world, so I think that I won’t bring my phone along for now.

In addition, is the beauty from within the forest really the same as the beauty once it is extracted and projected onto a screen? I think not.

Reading party

My English teacher, Ms. N, likes to take our class to reading parties on Fridays. A reading party is exactly what it sounds like: everyone sits down outside and reads.

I once took my eyes off the page and looked up at the sky. It was a cloudless day. I noticed an interesting gradient in the blueness of the sky. As I kept looking, I felt that I was trapped under this blue dome, yet it is so vast and unreachable.

The gradient of the sky abruptly stopping at the building probably gave it that effect, but when I took a picture, that effect just wasn’t there.

A related song:

Bedtime geometry

Edit from 2023 November: I guess I never wrote this section??? Well, I don’t know what I was gonna write so I guess I’m not gonna write it.

Wait, I just realized! Go to the newest post!

Project idea app

I have an idea for an app that tells the user an interesting and productive thing that they can learn every day. I would call the app “doer” since people would learn to do stuff.

For every thing that is done, the user gets some points, like either one or two points would probably be good. It would probably depend on either the fundamentals or the specifics. I would like to do something unique, so I think that the fundamental skills should get two and the specifics using the fundamentals should get one point.

As an example, learning how to cut videos and put different videos together in some video editing software would be a fundamental skill worth two points, while making a video using that skill afterward (like a history video) would be one point.

Generating ideas

As for how project ideas are generated, I think that it would be randomly selected from a database (I think having categories is a good idea).

And as for the sourcing of ideas, I would probably have a section in which people can submit their own ideas and then the people running the app would confirm it.

I would store all the data on Firebase and then the app would probably be written in Flutter, although I am interested in learning React for mobile apps.

Preliminary ideas

For biology, learn about the process that involves RNA, DNA, and proteins. For taxonomy, learn about the PubMed tree database that keeps track of related animals.

Juggling, pen spinning, faster typing, breath-holding, whistling, and jumprope could go under misc.

For English, maybe reading some passage and keeping track of the tone and the mood.

I also have some ideas for specific problems like figuring out how wide your field of vision is without being able to use special tools like calculators or rulers. I would require the answer to be in terms of the length of something like footsteps only.

Also, figuring out what direction a cloud is moving just by measuring the angle that the observer is looking from, the altitude of the cloud, and the trajectory of the cloud as viewed in 2D by the viewer. This is interesting because the z-axis is fixed so it is actually possible to see where the cloud is going.

Texting habits

I think people picking up the texting styles of other people is very interesting. They say that people become like their friends.

Syntax

One thing that changes is the length of sentences. I once had a friend who texted really short messages and a complete thought would take up the entire screen. I once used this style in a Twitch chat and people told me to stop spamming, so there are some disadvantages.

But, I really liked how it let me think more about what I was going to say in many parts at a time.

Problematic

However, now that I think of it, I mess up my speech every day, probably because I can only think of five words at a time, which is a pretty big problem.

Flourishes

Some people like to type dramatically by changing the capitalization in the middle of words so that it looks weird, other people like to do ALL-CAPS, and others enjoy repeating the same letter.

I guess it depends on the type of person, but I personally don’t like the mountain-like capitalization.

Emotes

Pictograms and hieroglypics have made their way back into our vocabulary; notably:

• Crying laughing face
• Skull
• Otter
• Yawning face

I don’t use them that often, but I definitely use them more than I did before.

However, I use stickers a lot because they are more personalized and cute.

I know some people who use typed emotes, which I’ve found to be better in some situations because they can be more general. However, that’s only for the horizontal ones typed with a “:” or a “;” and then a mouth.

Conclusion

As Verlyn Klinkenborg wrote in his 2000 opinion for The New York Times, “This is the time we should take off from work—only we never do—to watch summer and fall collide, to feel the sharp nights and the warm days, to walk through a garden that is ripening and dying all at once.”