URL Change

I warned about this on Tumblr but I forgot to mention it here.

My previous URL was Disociative.Blogspot.com - and while I kinda liked it, no one had any idea what it was supposed to mean. Because I'm interactive with people on Tumblr now (which, being linked to this blog, I figured should always share the URL), I wanted to change my URL to make it easier to read and understand.

The new URL is PagesOfKenna.Blogspot.com. I decided to add my name in, since it's always a bit awkward trying to remember the names of Tumblr users, when their URL is all you generally see. It's pretty simple and self-explanatory now, so there's no need to try to explain what the name means.

I don't think this change will cause too much conflict, since everyone following me is probably doing so through Google's Blogger account system or from my constant updates on my unlinked Facebook account - hopefully this will actually make things better, since the name is easier to remember.

New Classes (again)

Spring semester has finally started up again here in the desert, so here comes my obligatory 'new semester' overview. We've had quite a long break between Fall and Spring semesters (in the past I believe there was a short Winter quarter in there, but with budget cuts that's now gone), and I know I'm not the only one who's pretty relieved classes are up again. Break is nice, but when I'm not looking for work I'm sitting around the house with nothing to do.

My schedule this semester is pretty full; I'm trying to make up for having a pretty meager selection last Spring. Not only am I at the college for a longer period of time this semester, but I'm also having to familiarize myself with parts of the campus I've never been around before.

Avast! These be Strange Waters!

 Aye, and they'd have to be, too; today's tide bring in one of the best holidays ever: International Talk like a Pirate Day! That's right, landlubbers, ye heard it here. It's the one day a year dedicated to the fierce, rogue, sea-loving pirates, when everyone around the world can affect an accent and dress up for school or work (assuming, of course, you've explained yourself to your captain).

I'm pretty bad at Piratey lingo, so I wont even pretend to try to keep it up for long.

Vacation Time

This is a short update to you guys know that I'll be out of town for the next two weeks with sporadic internet access and probably minimal time to write. I'm hoping to be able to post at least one blog each week, and there are a couple of things I want to talk about (including a review on Cowboys and Aliens and a book I've been reading), but I can't make any promises. I'd suggest subscribing to my RSS feed or, if you have a Google or Blogger account, 'following' my blog to see when I update with new posts.

I hope you are all having a wonderful summer, and I'll be back to regular thrice-a-week updates when I get back!

What's Up With...? (July Edition)

...The Pepsi Challenge Not Working?

If you've ever watched TV, you're probably aware of the blind taste tests that Pepsi started back in the 70s, called the Pepsi Challenge. Essentially, they'd set up a table somewhere and have random people taste a cup of Pepsi and a cup of Coca-Cola, without labels, to see which one they preferred. Most people agreed that Pepsi tasted better, and the blind test was considered a success for Pepsi.

Except that Coca-Cola's sales didn't go down - Coca-Cola sales had been and continued to be higher than Pepsi's. Pepsi marketers were baffled; they'd scientifically proven that Pepsi was better, but people were still buying Coca-Cola. When actual scientists repeated the Pepsi Challenge, they got the same results, so they decided to see what happened when people knew what they were drinking. The same people who, on a blind test, said they preferred Pepsi, on a labeled test said Coca-Cola was better.

Kenna Moon's Emmy Nomination: Anna Torv

The Emmy Award nominations were announced last week, and I'm starting to wonder who did the nominating. I wouldn't consider myself at all qualified to make a decision on something like this - I have a handful of shows that I watch regularly, which I've managed to keep to less than seven before this year, and I can only state my opinions on the shows that I am seeing. I can't say which shows last season were the best in whatever category, as there are several dozen I have absolutely no experience with.

If I did have any nominating powers, however, there's at least one nomination I would have been totally comfortable making; for Best Actress in a Drama, I would definitely have chosen Anna Torv, who played FBI Special Agent Olivia Dunham on J.J. Abrams' sci-fi drama Fringe.

Your Sunday Best

People used to wear hats all the time, and up until about fifty years ago, it was practically a requirement for a proper woman to wear a hat when she went somewhere nice, especially to church. Since then, hats have sort of fallen out of fashion, and many people don't know what the hat-wearing etiquette is. In an effort to re-popularize hats, my mom and I have taken to wearing hats in our church meetings (actually, we're really just wearing them for the fun of it).

This started about two months ago, right after the Royal Wedding. I'm not British, but the wedding was kind of a big deal in the world, so we sat down to watch a recording of the 5-hour news event (we fast-forwarded through 3 of those hours). I had fun watching all the hats, which one of the news anchors said was a mandatory accessory for all the women going into the chapel for the wedding.

Don't worry - I will not wear a hat like this. Ever.

Sometime the next day, a friend of ours on Facebook asked, rhetorically, why women didn't wear hats to church anymore, since they're so fun. My mom saw that and thought, 'well, why don't we?' That Sunday, she dug out one of the few hats that we owned and donned it while we went to our church meetings. She wanted to get something started, so that eventually it would be normal for the women to be wearing fashionable hats in church (significantly more modest and less ridiculous than the hats we saw at the Royal Wedding, of course).

Research Essay - Pluto

Last fall, for my final in my English class, I was assigned to write a research paper on any topic I chose. I had to have an opinion about what I found out, so I guess it was a double research-persuasive paper, and after going over several possible topics, I finally decided on one that I felt the most passionate about: whether or not Pluto should still be considered a planet.

I'm no scientist, and my opinion on the matter really has no credence, I understand, but I have done a lot of research on the subject, and I was pretty proud of myself for writing this. We turned our papers in on Finals day, and never bothered to pick it up from his office later, so I'm not sure what grade I got, but I passed the class and my professor complimented me more than once on my writing skills. I know a few people were interested in seeing what I wrote, so I decided for today's blog to publish, online, the final copy of my Pluto essay. Citations have been kept intact, and the photos were added just for this blog.

What's up with...?

...the Diving Bell Spider?
The tiny Diving Bell Spider lives underwater. Seriously. They build bubble-shaped webs that are condensed enough to trap oxygen but malleable enough for them to be able to poke in or out and grab water insects to feed off of. I'm not making this up; here's the Wikipedia article, an article from Discovery News, LiveScience, and the New York Times.

And a picture!

Not only that, but their webs work the same way fish gills do - the oxygen from the surrounding water leeches into the web-bubble while the carbon dioxide leeches out into the water. Over time the spiders have to rise to the surface to restock their air supply, but they're able to live completely in the water.

Discovering that this spider exists was the single-most disturbing news I'd had in a good long while. Spiders are bad enough as it is; their long legs are creepy, and while I don't mind looking at them (preferable in a container), I can't help imagining them crawling over me, sucking my blood dry. Imagining that happen unbeknownst to me while I'm peacefully swimming around at the beach, thinking all is right? I know, logically, that this spider is tiny and would be hiding from me, but I can't help thinking nature has some cruel, evil trick in mind with these things.

...James Tate and the Prom ordeal?

Manual Entertainment

I really need to start writing some more blog rough drafts in advance. I only have one semi-ready, and it would require me to download some pictures off my camera (which of course requires me to find my camera, first).

Today's the third day of Summer Semester at Generic Local Community College. I take the bus there and back (about a 20 minute ride), so I get to experience the great desert outdoors, something that never happens during break, or the days I happen to not have class. I don't have a car, nor do I have my driving license yet (we were all very late with it, in my family), so I'm also getting my exercise, walking home from the bus stop - almost two miles away - while my parents and their vehicles are at work.

The first day of the semester, I left my keys at home. I was in such a rush to get out the door, making sure I had all my books and knew where my classes were, that I decided I wouldn't lock the door behind (left Dad to do that for me) and didn't even realize I'd need the keys to unlock the door later. Luckily, my mom works at an elementary school between our house and the bus stop, and she just happened to be heading out for recess duty when I called her cell phone to ask if she had hers.

When I got home and recovered my complexion (my face gets a bit red when I'm exhausted from exercise), I posted on Facebook:

"Not that I'm complaining, but why isn't it 100 degrees outside? Stupid global climate change means I no longer know what to expect from anything! Next, they'll tell us we don't have to pay taxes anymore, and we'll have a ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE!"

In the Southern Californian desert, in June, it's kind of expected to be really hot. I know I've mentioned this in a blog before, but it's been unseasonably cool this year. I figured, if a hot summer is no longer guaranteed, who's to say that anything in life is certain anymore, even death and taxes!? Of course, it's still in the 90s here, with a cool breeze, so elsewhere in the world they'd say it's pretty hot, but in a bona fide desert, we're used to 100 to 110 degrees (Fahrenheit) and hot air blowing.

It was hotter on Tuesday, and I remembered my key. Today, I forgot my key again. I got all the way to the house before I realized I needed to turn back and get mom's from the school. This blog is a bit later than I expected because of how tired and annoyed I was when I finally got into the 82 degree house.

Along with the start of Summer Semester, this week is also E3 - Electronic Entertainment Expo! It's an annual trade show of video game related technology and hardware, and a major geek fest! All the major companies give presentations on the work they'll be doing and releasing in the next year, and tech companies show off some of the newest, highest quality technology for people in the industry to see and get ideas from. Only people in the gaming industry are allowed to attend, so normal geeks who want to go have to get engineering degrees and get hired by a developing company.

Last year was the first year I actually watched one of the presentations; namely, Nintendo's. I was surprised by how fun it was - these aren't boring, 'here's some numbers and things to expect in the future' presentations, they're exciting, humorous, of geeks for geeks by geeks. Yesterday was this year's presentation by Nintendo, where they unveiled their new Wii successor system. Unfortunately, I had a ton of homework to do, so I wasn't able to watch it live.

As soon as I finish this blog, however, I'm going to go over the the E3 website and watch the tape. In case anyone's interested, I'll write my feelings on what happens as a blog post for either tomorrow or Saturday. I may also watch Sony's presentation, depending on how I feel.

It's Magic!

I've long been fascinated with science, even if I haven't shown much interest in intense study in the field(s). Being a layman, I'm particularly interested in fields of new study, such as microbiology, astronomy, and Quantum Mechanics. Scientists are breaking grounds in these areas of study that could only have been speculated about some time ago. In my opinion, Scientific discovery is like magic.

Magic, for thousands of years, has been a supernatural power, a fictional or mythical art of special people doing impossible things. But a lot of the things described in old legends are now possible. We can open doors and 'magic tomes' by speaking to them, we can watch moving pictures in our local newspapers, we can create and hold fires in the palms of our hands - we can even fill a room with light just by clapping.

I think I remember those commercials mentioning magic explicitly.

Golden Week

In Japan, around this time of year, four major national holidays fall within a seven-day period of time known as Golden Week. The entire week, if my research is correct, became in itself a holiday and break time.

I have to confess - whenever I type "Golden" I accidentally add an extra 'e' and inadvertently spell out "Goldeen," the pokemon.

Weekends permitting (Which they kind of aren't, this year), Golden week starts on April 29th with Showa day. April 29th was originally Emperor Showa's birthday, from December 25th, 1926, to his death in 1989. After his death, the holiday was changed to 'Greenery Day', a Japanese Earth Day, in honor of the previous emperor's love of nature. I'm not too familiar with Japanese politics, so I'm not sure how he was viewed as a person, though I know he was emperor during the second world war, and that he met with many foreign leaders, including the Queen and President Gerald Ford.

Greenery Day was then moved to May 4th sometime around 2005-2007 (I guess the law was passed in 2005, but didn't take affect until 2007). April 29th became Showa Day, a day of remembrance.

May 3rd has been Constitution Memorial Day since the Japanese Constitution was established in 1947. I'm not sure why it's "Constitution Memorial" and not just "Constitution" day (the 'memorial' makes it sounds like they're remembering an old constitution'), but perhaps that's just a nuance of the Japanese language.

Children's Day is celebrated by hanging Carp-shaped wind socks for each child.

 May 5th is Boys Day, or in recent years Children's Day. It's a very old holiday, going back to around 600 A.D., and traditionally meant to celebrate the family's boys and bless them with strength and courage and what-not. Girls Day, more often know as the Doll Festival, was celebrated March 3rd, on the other hand. In recent years, Boys Day has grown to include Girls as well, and is now a family Children's holiday.

Because the Japanese are smart and wise, any day that falls between two holidays is also declared a holiday. May 4th, in that case, right between Constitution Memorial Day and Children's Day, was also a vacation day. With the emperor's birthday just earlier in the week, the ingenious Japanese Board of People who Decide Things decided to make the whole week a celebration. Now May 4th is a real holiday, Greenery day, and there are four official holidays for Golden Week.

Golden Week, from what I understand, has always been a bit celebration, so I hope the Japanese people are still able to celebrate this year, even with the recent tragedies. Our hearts are with you!

National Short Story Month

Happy wedding day! May is National Short Story Month! Or maybe April is. It's a bit complicated - let me explain.

November is [Inter]National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo for short). It has been so for years (since 1999, to be exact) and was started up by a guy named Chris Baty who wanted to write a novel in a month just to see if he could do it. It's centered around the non-profit website (though they do have a shop and accept donations, etc.) which encourages people to, in the month of November, write a 50k word novel (approx. 1667 words a day). It's meant to get people to start writing, so at the end of the month they can start editing a work they may otherwise have never written.

Since NaNoWriMo got started, several spin-off 'Writing Month's have popped up, including Script Frenzy, Blogging Month, July Novel Writing Month, February Album Writing Month, Poetry Writing Month, and others. One of these spin-offs was National Short Story Month, or NaShoStoMo, a lesser known-about idea that someone, somewhere, started.

It originally was held in May, among the maybe-100 people who knew about it. The idea was to write one short story a day, of at least 200 words (which, if you didn't know, is about two good paragraphs). By the end of the month, participants would have 31 new short stories ready to edit, adjust, and send off to magazines or contests or whatever.

It wasn't well known, so it didn't really catch on with anyone, until this last March a popular blogger found out and posted an article urging his readers to participate. Since he posted it in late March, however, everyone got the idea (himself included, I believe) that NaShoStoMo would be in April. He had maybe 100 good followers, who decided to join him in the Short Story-Writing mission, which about double the amount of NaShoStoMo participants. They used Twitter to communicate and report their successes (#NaShoStoMo).

That's where I came in. Though I don't have a Twitter account, one of my brothers does, and he called me earlier this month asking if I'd ever heard of this. I hadn't, and I did some research to see what was going on. The idea seemed wonderful to me, especially since I really enjoy writing short stories, and haven't written enough. I was confused, however, with the conflicting dates in the past, and eventually found out the reason.

It turns out, April is also Script Frenzy (100-page script in a month) and National Poetry Month (poem-a-day). If NaShoStoMo catches on as an April activity, that'll make three semi-major writing challenges in one month, a little more than a single month can handle, in my opinion. So, in an effort to [hopefully] increase its popularity and push it back into May, I've decided to join in. Of course I'm also joining to increase my skill, but I'll be blogging about it regularly and trying to get the word out.

As far as I can see, the only other writing challenges in May are an alternate NaNoWriMo and National Crime Writing Month (NaCriWriMo?), neither of which should conflict with NaShoStoMo since alternate 'NaNoWriMo's can be done any month, and Crime writers might not be interested in short stories anyways.

So wish me luck in May! I've got a few ideas already, plus a 'writing kit' from Writer's Digest I was given months ago to give me inspiration. I don't plan on posting my short stories online, since I'll want to get them entered in contests or published, but I will let you know how I'm doing, and ask for encouragement. I'll see you in May!

The Art of Gaming

Posting a Shadow of the Colossus screenshot now, so I'm not tempted to write five paragraphs about it later.

In another bout of pro-video game blogging, I find myself drawn to one of the more obvious feats of skill required to make a good game: the artwork. I'm a big supporter of the idea that the art doesn't make the game great, the story does, but the artwork definitely can have an impact on our opinions and expectations of a game. If we see more, we expect more, and if we see less, we expect less.

What makes video game artwork so exceptional, in my opinion, is the fact that it has to be fluid (like the music). A movie or TV show may have amazing special effects, and look better than any game can, but whoever put those effects together knew exactly what they were animating, how all the scenes would line up, and how it would appear. Video game programmers have to predict the player's possible movements, and animate every possible step your character could make. And any game programmer worth his mettle should be able to make it look good, too.

Screenshot from Capcom's Okami - not an artist's rendition of the game, but an actual moment as the player pauses to take in the scenery.

Commenting Changes

I was told last night that someone wanted to comment on a blog post, and was unable to do so. I can't figure out what the problem might be, so until then I'm changing the way comments function.

Previously my comments had been embedded below each post, so that when you clicked to view and post a comment, the website would take you to bottom of the post's individual page. I liked this because it makes comments more fluid and easy to access, in my mind, but apparently other bloggers have been having trouble with this working for everyone.

I've changed comments so they now appear in a pop-up window. I'm generally not a fan of pop-up windows, because a lot of people (myself included) have pop-up blockers that may not allow it to appear easily, and some browsers display pop-up windows behind the window currently in use. However, from what I read from other bloggers, the pop-up window comments allow all readers to comment without trouble. I've also removed the word verification feature for unregistered commenters, as I'm typically not a fan of those either, and I think I can moderate my own blog without the computer's help.

So, while a bit more awkward, comments should be accessible by everyone now. If you have the time, please try leaving a comment on this or any other post, to test out the pop-up system and make sure you have access to the comments. If there's any problem, please email me at Kengirl01@yahoo.com, with the subject line "Blog Comments," explain what happens when you try to post (and if you're getting any error message), and leave your browser and version number (Example, I'm using Firefox 3.6.16). I'll use this information to try to figure out what the problem is and fix it.

Thanks for your time!