Ideal World Book

We made an ideal world book with Peg Gignoux in Language Arts class after reading The Last Cuentista, mine is called Frontier.

Our books also contained stories about what are worlds are, how they function, etc.

My story 👇

My planet, Frontier, is orbiting around the black hole TON 618. My planet is part of a binary planet system, so there are actually two planets orbiting each other, and also, two moons are orbiting the planets. The moons are called Frontier-C-3 and Frontier-D-4. The other planet is Frontier-B-2. No one bothered to give it a cool name because nobody lives on it. Frontier is just above ⅓ bigger than Frontier-B-2. Every once in a while, the moons pass in between the two planets, creating a beautiful image from the ground of the planets. Don’t forget about Maurice.

The terrain on the planet is very mountainous, with mountains stretching for thousands of miles in ridges and valleys worldwide. In the valleys and small openings from the mountains, there are lush green forests with gigantic trees and little animals roaming around the forest floor. Gigantic oceans that cover any part of the world are not forests or mountains.

The forests stretch for hundreds of miles of lush green shrubs, bushes, and leaves on towering trees higher than any skyscraper ever built. The plants are a mix of beautiful flora and fauna, and tiny mouse-like creatures scuttle around on the forest floor in seemingly random directions for no particular reason. Birds come in many sizes, from the size of your pinky finger to the size of an apartment. These birds take on many vibrant colors, such as green, yellow, red, and blue. The birds cause no harm to any world’s inhabitants as they fly peacefully and rest on the canopies of the mega-trees. In these forests, the air is crisp and soothing, and it is accompanied by the slight breeze and rustling of leaves any animals move through them.

Mountain ranges cover thousands of miles of land in mountains higher than any mountain on Earth. In the mountains, it is very cold, along with a strong breeze and thick snow. Almost no animals live up here because the conditions are so harsh on the mountains, but there will be another one of those small mouse creatures every so often. They are different than the ones in the forest because they have adapted to survive the cold and harsh conditions of the mountains. On average, these mountains can be as tall as 15,000 feet to almost 40,000 feet at the absolute maximum. For context, that’s about 480,000 gum-balls. The tallest mountain is called Mount Maurice, the mountain reaches over 39,000 feet tall.

Two major oceans cover almost 60% of the world combined. At the deepest point, they can get to almost 20 miles deep (that’s a lot). The oceans support massive ecosystems of diverse ocean animals, from small schools of fish that inhabit the surface and coral reefs to large spider-like crabs living in trenches at the bottom of the oceans. Along with the mountain ranges above land, some continue underwater into the oceans, creating scenic spots at the top of the mountains where coral reefs are found, and small fish to giant whales inhabit.

On my planet, there are two main sources of energy. The first source is solar energy, which can operate at hundreds of times the efficiency because of the black hole’s accretion disc, which can outshine a galaxy at its brightest. On an average day, solar panels can create upwards of 25,000 tWh of electricity. For context, that’s enough to power the whole earth for a year. The other option is wind turbines, a secondary energy source for when solar panels aren’t producing energy. The wind turbines are only located in mountainous areas about 10,000 feet up, with more powerful winds creating more energy. On a day when all of the turbines are turned on, they can generate upwards of 12,000 tWh of electricity, but on any given day, only about half of the turbines are turned on, producing power that would limit it to 6,000 tWh.

The governmental system is a republic where people elect officials to run the country. Also, at the #1 position in the government, a president represents a political party who got voted in the position by the people. They can serve a 2-year term. When the term is up, there will be a vote on who will be the next president. The vote only happens for one day, and on that day, there is a worldwide off day where everything is closed, except for necessities like hospitals. Many different parties have different goals, so there will always be someone who represents what you want.

Comic Project

A few weeks ago in Language Arts class we did a project where we made a comic from a wisdom tale. If you don’t know already, a wisdom tale is a story that was told in the past that is now in this big book called, Wisdom Tales From Around the World. But, a few weeks before that a illustrator named Brittain Peck came to our school to show us how to draw a story with simple shapes like circles, squares, triangles and many others so we don’t get frustrated trying to figure out how to draw somebody’s hand. 

I chose a story that was told in South America called Paca and the Beetle, the story is about a parrot who finds a beetle that’s going on an adventure. Then a rat like creature called a paca comes along and brags to the beetle about his speed while also telling the beetle that he’s slow. The parrot sees this and challenges them both to a race. The paca thinks he’s going to win so he goes slow but in the end the beetle won because he flew. Another part of the project was the moral of the story. For this story, the moral is to be humble. I chose that story because it seemed a little bit funny and I liked the concept of the story and how it was told. 

Some tips for the apps we used to make the comics like Sketchbook, and Comic Life 3. Some tips for Sketchbook are:

  1. If you have multiple different parts for one drawing put them on different layers

    2. You can change the type of pen/brush/marker your drawing with on the left side

    3. Use the ruler function to get straight lines when needed

   4. Use the symmetry function if you need something to be symmetrical

Some tips for Comic Life 3 are

  1. Make sure your images and title are a little more in the center of the paper than the default is so the edges dont get cut off when printing
  2. Use different bubble shapes when characters are talking to convey more emotion
  3. You can change the color of your title and background to make your comic look more appealing
  4. You can choose different presets for your comic to start with to make your comic look more relatable to what you’re writing.

So that concludes my comic project that was fun, tedious, and practically everything in between.



Planking

Every day from September 25th to December 14th we did a plank which we increased by 15 seconds every week. By the end of it, it was 2 minutes and 15 seconds. If you don’t want to do the math, that’s about seven weeks. For this challenge, we did something called the compound effect. Compound effect is when you have something and then you keep adding to that something, not just replacing it. So, over time if you keep doing a plank and adding 15 seconds every week, it should get easier to do a plank that was once hard. This doesn’t just apply to planks, you can do this in almost anything. To keep track of our planking, we used something called a habit tracker which is just a paper sheet with all the days of the year, and when you plank for one day, you color in the square for that day. (image at the top) On my tracker, the only time I missed a couple of days for planking during Thanksgiving break when the last thing I wanted to do was something related to school. On the last day of the challenge, we ended with the plank challenge. The objective of the challenge was to plank for as long as possible. I lasted for 4 minutes and 10 seconds. I do think I could’ve lasted longer if I knew there was candy involved.

Reading…

Image from Unsplash

Reading’s fun, sometimes, like I would not read at high noon on a Sunday with friends, but I would at like 9:00 if there’s nothing to do. I don’t like reading when I’m forced to do it but I’ll still do it. I enjoy reading when it is quiet and comfy, so not like hard plastic chairs. I don’t like reading when it is not comfy, or my dad is watching Instagram videos at full volume.

Image from Unsplash

I normally read for WAY longer than I mean to read for because I just lose track of time and end up reading for like 40 minutes. I am currently reading Code of Honor by Alan Gratz. It is a book about someone whose brother is a terrorist. I plan on just reading the rest of Alan Gratz’s books, because I think he’s a good author and I don’t like when I have to choose a book, so I just choose one from the same author or a similar book from a different author. When I do read all of an author’s books, or I get tired of a type of book, I just go on Amazon and scroll until I find a book that I think I will like.

 Some books that I would recommend reading are, Tiger in the Sea, by Eric Linder, Projekt 1065, by Alan Gratz & Prisoner B-3087, by Alan Gratz, Although I would recommend Prisoner B-3087 a little bit less because it does get repetitive. I like to read historical fiction. I like it because I like learning about events that happened that I would otherwise know nothing about while also having an engaging story. 





Allies, Mirror or Window?

The book Allies is written by Alan Gratz. It is a historical fiction book about several different peoples perspectives on the allied landing in Normandy, France on D-Day. To start off though, I have to explain what a window and mirror are. They’re not the normal glass ones, in a story a window is a story that shows you a story and not one that you think you have experienced. Meanwhile a mirror is a story where you have felt like you have experienced that story in real life or something similar, and yes, stories can be both.

In my opinion, Allies is a window for me because it is like I am looking at someone else’s story while reading this book and I have never seen, or felt anything close to D-Day in my lifetime. I do not think that there are any details that could make this a mirror if added. This could be different for other people, but it is like this for me.

Eflite Habu SS 50mm, worth it?

The Eflite Habu SS 50mm, or as I will call it, the Habu is a great plane. The Habu is a RC jet with a 50 millimeter EDF (electric ducted fan), it runs on a 3s 2200mAh 11.1v battery with a EC3 connector. 

Assembling the plane is really easy, you only need to screw in nine included screws, two on the elevator, six on the wing, and one for the nose gear. The landing gear slides in very easily and just pops into place, the nose gear gets screwed in. I put my control arm on the elevator to the most inward spot to increase elevator throw, because if you do what the manual says, and put it in the most outward one, you’ll barely have any elevator authority. Also, the plane is small enough where it can fit into almost any car without removal of any part of the plane.

The jet flies great, it has dogtooth seams on the wings which create a vortex of air over the wing so it doesn’t stall at high angles of attack, so to say, if you crash this plane by stalling, you’re really talented. I would not recommend this as a first plane, because normally jets are harder to fly than a conventional plane so the risks of crashing are higher, and nobody wants to crash, but this is a great second plane. You can also hand-launch this plane, using the built in grips on the fuselage of the plane, just be careful not to throw it into the ground, like I did.

Some bad habits of the plane are losing lift on the wing quicker than a conventional plane would, but this is to be expected because this is a jet. Also, it has a shorter flight time than a conventional plane, but again this is to be expected because this is a jet. Other than those I can’t really think of any other bad habits. Although, one thing I really like about this plane is that, IT HAS A WORKING RUDDER!!! Why am I so excited about this, because most other jets in the 40-64 millimeter range don’t have working rudders, but this one does!

If you know how to fly an RC plane and you have shiny jet syndrome and you want to learn to fly a jet, get this plane. P.S, shiny jet syndrome is a real thing, Look it up!



Camp Kirkwood

Our first trip of the year was to Camp Kirkwood that lasted from August, 30th to September, 1st. We left on Wednesday at about 8:45 and got there at 11:00. There were three nice charter buses that we rode on, they were packed with duffle bags. When we got there it was pouring and we got all of our bags into a big pavilion. The camp was huge, there were 8 cabins, a dining hall, a pool, a giant swing, a zip line, a lake and a big bouncy thing called Kanga Jump. Did I mention that Hurricane Idalia was coming right to us? It was raining really hard the first day and there was mud everywhere! The lake even flooded a little bit.

The activities were really fun and were the best part of the trip. Some of the activities were tree ecology, swimming, team building, Kanga Jump, V-swing, canoeing, ziplining and gaga ball where we got to see Bubbles the pot belly pig!

My favorite activity was the Zipline, when you were on the zipline you got to go over the lake and see the other people canoeing! More activities that I really enjoyed were the V-swing, and Kanga Jump. The V-swing was really fun, you got pulled up by everyone else and when you got to the top you let go and you swung really high! Kanga jump is a big blob sort of thing that you jump around on and play games, it got really fun when the teachers came on! The pool was fun too. There was a not so deep part of the pool and a deeper end where you could jump in and get everyone wet! There were also these floating things that spin around and everyone was trying to get on it. The first night we were there we watched a movie and had snow cones, the last night we had s’mores at a big fire and sang songs!

When we started to leave we loaded all of our bags onto the buses and got on and drove home. When we got back we got our bags and got in our cars and went home. Overall, I had a really great time at Camp Kirkwood and I’m sure other people did too.