Dinner at our cousins place

Last weekend, my family and I visited one of our cousins. This cousin also just got a dog and she owns a cat. After we got to our cousin’s rental house, we entered the building. The house looked small when I first entered. There were 4 rooms on the first floor. A living room, kitchen, washroom, and a storage room maybe. There was also the second floor but we never got to see it.

While we waited for dinner to finish cooking, we played with the cat. Unfortunately, we didn’t see the dog yet. After around 5 minutes, our cousin’s roommate came by with the dog. Unfortunately, the roommate couldn’t stay because he had to go somewhere else. We ended up playing with the cat until dinner. Even though the dog was here, we couldn’t let him out until dinner was over. For dinner, we had jumbo shrimp, beef, chicken, and some vegetables.

I was the first one to finish, so I played with the dog. After Kalen finished eating, we took the dog out for a walk. However, it was more difficult than I thought. The dog kept stopping at every bush along the way. Eventually, we turned back when we were a bit past our car.
When we got back, the dog back into the cage. Next, we had some ice cream. Soon we had to go back home.

Overall, I really enjoyed our time there. We got to play with the pets and feed them. The dinner was also good. The dish I ate the most was actually the chicken. In the end, I had a great time.

My Thoughts on IPads

Recently, I have been told to give away my iPad mini. This was disappointing since I watch 80% of my videos on the iPad. After handing my iPad over daddy told me the next iPad would be 50% off. Therefore in this blog, I will be talking about what I think about the current iPads.

The first iPad is the iPad mini 4. It has touch id and many other features. Unfortunately, there are rumors that Apple will stop making iPad minis. It also has the smallest screen and cost more compared to the cheapest iPad. Personally, I probably won’t get this iPad. In the end, I want a larger screen for watching videos not something I can take on the go.

The cheapest option is the 2017 iPad. Starting this year, Apple got rid of the number system for the iPad. Now we just call it the 2017 iPad. If I do get an iPad it would be this one. This is because the iPad has a decent screen size and it’s the cheapest. Overall, there’s not much to say about it. After watching reviews, I found out about its touch id. Other than that there’s not much else.

The final iPad is the iPad Pro. I will definitely not get this iPad, costing around $900-$1600. However, for this high cost, you get a bunch of features. There’s touch id, another set of speakers, Apple pen compatibility, and Apple compatibility. So far, the iPad Pro is the most high-tech iPad.

In the end, I want to get an iPad. However, there’s some reason why I shouldn’t get an iPad. One reason, is I’m saving cash. An iPad costs a lot of money and I only use it to watch videos. The other reason is I probably won’t need it. This is because I have a laptop and iPhone to watch videos with. Overall it was fun looking at Apple’s new iPad line up.

Warframe Part 2

This week, I will be talking about Warframe. I have already talked about this game before. However, a massive update just happened on Thursday. This update introduced many new features and I will be talking about it in this blog.

One of the newest features added to the game is open world. Open-world is an area with one huge map. In this map, you can complete quests, hunt enemies, fool around, and when you move to a new area there won’t be a loading screen. Before this, Warframe was strictly a tileset game. In a tileset game, multiple tiles are connected to form a map. Unfortunately, the tileset will always be enclosed and small. Warframe going open-world fixes these problems.

Even though I’m looking forward to running around in open-world, there are still other features. For example, there will be a ton of new shops, items, and activities like fishing. There will also be a reboot of the Focus system in Warframe. Unfortunately, the Focus system requires me to talk a lot about content unrelated to the update. Overall, the new Focus system “Focus 2.0” will add more depth to a shallow feature. Warframe will also be adding a weapon crafting system. However, there is still little knowledge about it.

With these new weapons, new enemies will be introduced. One of these new enemies are the Eidolons. These are massive enemies that appear in the night cycle of the game. Apparently, these enemies are really tough and are at a boss level. Also, the enemy is related to new Focus 2.0. Maybe we need to use the new feature to beat this enemy.

In the end, I fell like this update will change the game a lot. New content is always exciting. However, I believe this update will also breathe life into older content as well. For example, less used Warframes might find new uses in the game. In the end, I’m looking forward to jumping into the new update.

Moon Festival 2017

In this week’s blog, I will be talking about the moon festival. However, the moon festival isn’t the only name the festival has. Its also commonly knows as the mid-autumn festival and the lantern festival. The festival gets its name from always being in mid-autumn. The festival also has a few legends accompanying it. Some of these legends are the legend Chang E Flying to the Moon, Jade Rabbit Pounding Medicine, Wu Gang Chopping Laurel Tree, and Zhu Yuanzhang and the Moon Cake Uprising. I personally only heard the first legends before searching why do we celebrate the moon festival. After some, researching I learned about the legends and why we have this festival. In the beginning, the festival was supposed to celebrate the summer harvest.

For this year’s moon festival, my family held a moon festival dinner. Some family and family friends were invited to celebrate. The one who actually cooked all of the food was my grampa. He made a bunch of Chinese dishes. Some dishes were beef, fish, tofu, and more. While my grampa was cooking dinner, most of the guest were watching Spiderman Homecoming. Unfortunately, I was upstairs studying for an upcoming science test. Because of this, I didn’t go downstairs until dinner was ready. After dinner, I did a bit more studying and stayed downstairs for a while. Soon we had mooncake and a tofu dessert. Soon most of the guest had to leave because it was a school day tomorrow.

Overall, I really enjoyed the meal and learning about the moon festival. Before this, there was one time in school where I learned about the legend Chang E Flying to the Moon. Unfortunately, I forgot most of it. After researching, I relearned the legend Chang E Flying to the Moon and learned about other legends. In the end, I had a good meal and learned a bit more about my culture.

Blast 2017

This week I had Blast. Blast is an event meant for grade 9s to interact with each other. A few days prior to Blast, the grade 9s got separated into many teams. The teams were divided by color and there were over 14 of them. After looking at the list, I got put into the stripe group with Aaron. The day before Blast, there was a presentation in the cafeteria about the event. During the presentation, we learned about the events and what we needed to bring.

On the day of Blast, I came to school with strips of duct tape on my shirt. This was because we needed to wear our team color to Blast. At school, I put the stuff in my locker and headed to the cafeteria the place where all the teams were gathered. Once, all the students arrived we loaded onto the buses. The ride was pretty short, lasting less than 30 minutes. After we arrived, the groups separated and head to our activities. My groups first activity was a chicken tossing game. We had to throw chickens into hula-hoops for points. The next activity was a marble transporting game. The objective was to move a marble with tubes into a bin. Soon, it was time for lunch. The whole grade had hamburgers, chips, and a drink. Unfortunately, there was a ton of wasps.

After lunch, the grade a game of musical chairs. Each team chose two representatives, the pair would then need to look for an item before time runs out. The last team to retrieve the item would have been eliminated. After the game, the teams separated to proceed with the activities. My teams next activities were the low ropes course. The low rope course consisted of several activities. By the end of the course, it was time to leave the location. Back at school, the teachers who organized the event got a round of applause and the winners were announced.

In the end, Blast was a fun experience. By the end of the trip, I manage to make a few new friends. I also participated in multiple activities that built up teamwork. Overall, I had a great experience with Blast.

Why I was using electronics in my room

In this essay, I will talk about the reason I lied about my I pad charging. There are two main reasons why I did this. My first reason is the urge to watch tv. On the weekend I like to watch a lot of television. However, on the weekdays there’s nothing to do. Usually, I would be doing homework or reading a book. Sometimes, I just really want to watch something I enjoy. For my second reason, is not being able to fall asleep. Since summer vacation started, I’ve ended up going to bed later than my school time. Then when school started I ended up staying awake until 12 o’clock. The two hours can feel like a very long time with nothing to do.

Fortunately, I have a few ways to fix this. My first idea is to put the electronics outside. If I do this, it solves reason number one straight away. Doing this will separate me from any of the electronics, my laptop and IPad will be outside. Currently, I’m using my phone as an alarm clock so my phone can’t be outside. Unfortunately, this doesn’t solve the sleeping late problem. Fortunately, I could try going to bed earlier. If I go to bed at 9 I should go to bed at 11. If I do this hopefully, I will be sleeping at 10 very soon.

In the end, these are the reasons why I was watching tv. I wanted to watch more tv and I couldn’t fall asleep. Hopefully, by using these ideas it won’t happen again.

Programming Progress

Last week, I talked about my first programming experience. This week I will be continuing to talk about my programming experience. Last week, I wrote a blog on my first experience programming. Since then I have learned a lot and on this blog, I will talk about my new knowledge.

Last week, I learned how to use buttons to make images appear and disappear. This week I learned how to label the buttons and images. Labelling buttons, images, or anything in the design area can be helpful in the console area. Labelling will make it easier to recognize the button you need. Later, our teacher told us to make something similar to a dating website profile. It needed to contain a first name, last name, eye color, hair color, and a description. Labeling everything made it much easier to figure out which label we were controlling. The teacher also taught us about string, integers, doubles, and boolean. These four things represented the words and numbers in the code. Unfortunately, by the time I finish labeling everything, it was the end of the class.

The next day, we continued with our dating website. Once, I finished the code and put in my pictures I was pretty much done. Our teacher then gave us the task of making a button that would show another profile. After I finish two more profiles, the teacher showed us how to make subprograms. Subprograms were convenient because we wouldn’t need to keep copy and pasting thing. Once, I learned about subprograms I integrated it into my dating website assignment. By the end of the class, I managed to finish five profiles.

On the last day of school before the weekend, we learned how to make an image move. This lesson was pretty quick, but it was still the most fun of all the classes. Each of the students picked a picture from the Internet. After this, we put in four buttons. Next, we program the violence to move the image up, down, left, and right. Once we finish the controls, the teachers told us to make for more buttons. These buttons would be left up, left down, right up, and right down. Unfortunately, that’s all we could complete in the class.

Overall, I’m learning more about computers every day. By the end of the semester, I would like to make a small game. So far I am having a good experience with programming.

My first programming experience

This week I will be talking about what I have learned in my programming class (ICS). The first few days were not that interesting. We watched a movie called I Robot for two days. After watching a movie, our teacher gave us an assignment. The assignment was that we had to write a short paragraph about what the world would look like if it was no portable technology.

Once three days had passed we finally started programming. To start programming, we had to bring a USB key. This was because the school has blocked the use of programs on school computers. The school was afraid that viruses might be downloaded. Luckily, the teacher told us to bring our USB keys during the first three days.

Our first lesson would be how to make a web page. First, we went to visual studios. Visual studios is a software we could write programs on. Next, the teacher instructed us to choose the programming language C#. After everyone has chosen programming language C#, we entered the design phase. The first thing we did was change the background. We all went to the Internet to find a nice looking background. After we found a background we imported it into our program. Then we put in buttons, text boxes, labels, and picture boxes into the program. Just like the background we searched for images to replace the buttons and other things.

After we finished the design phase, it was time to make them do stuff. The first thing our teacher told us to do, was to program the picture to show up when we click the button. To start we needed to double-click the background. Doing this brings me to the console. I then typed “Picture1.Hide();”. This command will hide the image when the program starts. Next, I double-clicked on the button. In the console, I tried the show command. To show something I needed to type “Picture.Show();”. Now when I start the program the picture is gone, but if I click the button the picture appears.

In the end, I liked my first programming experience. The things I did on my first day was very simple. However, I do hope I learn more and that should happen later on in the year. Overall, I had fun and I hope to learn more.

First day of school

This week I started my first day of high school. In this weeks blog, I will be talking about my high school experience.

On the first day of school, only grade 9 students would appear at school. When I first arrived at RGSS (Richmondgreen Secondary school) everyone went to the cafeteria for an assembly. After a few munites, some of my friends came found me in the cafeteria. Once, most of the chairs were taken the student council made their appearance. After, the introductions from the student council, a welcome from the new principal, and a speech from the board representative, we separated into our HR (Home Room) groups.

Unfortunately, I was not grouped with the friends sitting beside me. However, I did know some people such as Majd or Angela. After being lead to our HR, (224) we took our seats. I ended up sitting in the back of the classroom with Majd. Our first period was French but for our first day, we just received sheets of paper. Most of these sheets are rules and the course outline. Once, all the sheets were handed out we played a game of human bingo. It’s a game where you go around and ask people questions to fill out a sheet.

My next period was “Introduction to Computer Studies”. Luckily the classroom was right around the corner. However, only five other people showed up. After waiting for 10 minutes, A teacher came and took us to the offices. There, we found out we would need to go to room 344. This was because most of the ICS (Introduction to Computer Studies) students were grade 10 and there were no grade 10s in the school today. When arrived at room 344, I sat with some of my friends that didn’t have class either.

Once, the bell finally rang I went to my 3rd period. Normally we would have lunch but since it was a special day the schedule is a bit messed up. Instead of going straight to lunch, we would do our 3rd period first. My 3rd period would be science. In this period, I was reunited with Majd, I also had Aaron and some other people I knew. During the period, we received a ton of sheets. The sheets talked about rules and safety precautions. For lunch, every student got free pizza. After lunch, we had our final period. My final period was Exploring computer technology. In that class, I sat beside Aaron. We again talked about the rules and the course outline. The fourth period was the shortest of the classes. After the class, the grade 9s look at the facilities (for example, we would look at the libraries and outside trail). At 3:35 it was time to go home.

Overall, I had an enjoyable experience. So far I haven’t decided which was my favorite course. I hope to learn more about my classes, school, and classmates over the year. In the end, I think I had a good first day.

My volunteering experience

For the past four days, I have been volunteering at the Richmond Hill Heritage Center. In this blog, I will talk about my experience as a volunteer.

In order to sign up for the job, I went to the volunteer website. At the website, you can apply for volunteer jobs and you can collect your hours. The job I decided to apply for was an assistant at a Dino camp. At the camp, I will be tasked with getting materials and helping with activities.

The first day, was not as bad as I thought. I managed to get my volunteering T-shirt and name tag on the first day. My first task was to hand out coloring paper and to get crayons. Besides handing out sheets and getting materials, I didn’t really do much. The first activity was to have the kids glue sunflower seed on an Ankylosaurus picture. I just helped with handing out the sheets and sunflower seeds. When it was time for the kid’s snack time, I cleaned up the room and help kids wash their hands. After snack, it was time for them to go outside. Fortunately, two of the three staff members were in charge of games. I just had to make sure kids don’t wander around. After collecting my first hours, I went to lunch with my mom and brother.

The second day, was apparently T Rex day. Each day at camp had a dinosaur representing it. The yesterday was an Ankylosaurus, today was a T Rex, tomorrow would be an Apatosaurus, and the final day would be a Triceratops. After, the kids arrive and colored their sheets. A staff explained the differences between herbivores and carnivores. After the explanation, it was time for the activity. That day, they would have to assemble a T Rex skeletons. After the activity, it was time for a snack. Once, snack was over they played a game. The game was called 123 Freeze. One kid went far away with is his back turned. While the other kids would stand 10 m behind him. When the kid with his back turned said 123 the other kids could move. When the kid with his back turned said Freeze, the other kids would stop moving. The goal was to have the other kid touch the kid with the back turned. The Next day would be very similar to the second day and nothing really changed.

The final and fourth day started off very frantically. This is because I miss placed my volunteer paper. Without this paper, I would’ve lost the nine hours I collected over the past three days. After looking around I eventually found it. Unfortunately, I arrived four minutes late. Luckily it didn’t really matter and things continued as normal. The final day was the Triceratops day. First, I handed out the coloring paper, next one of the staff explained what a triceratops was, and finally they did an activity before snack time. The activity was a Triceratops puppet. The kids made it with a paper bag and triceratops cut outs. Outside, they play games like 123 freeze and tag. At the end of the day, I collected my hours and went home.

Overall, my first volunteer experience was easier than I thought. I didn’t have to do that much work and most of it was handing stuff out. Next year, I would probably do the Dino camp job again. Next time I plan to volunteer with some of my other friends. In the end, this was my first hours of volunteering.