Kalen Lu

Last night my family and I went to Auntie Tina’s house for dinner. We brought some cookies as a Christmas present. When I got there I just sat on the couch until Nathan came. Nathan brought his new gaming laptop with him so I just watched Nathan play some games until we had to eat dinner.

We had pasta with chicken, salmon on cucumber, salad, chicken wings, and some other foods. Since I didn’t really like most of the things available, I ate mostly the pasta and some chicken wings. The pasta was really good though with all of the chicken mixed into it. The chicken wings tasted like normal wings that mommy would make just with a different sauce.

After dinner, I went back down to the basement with Nathan and watched him play some more games. Then he let me play some games for a while, but then I just started playing monkey in the middle with a ball in the basement.

Soon after, we had desert which was tiramisu, chocolate lasagna, and other things that I don’t remember. I also didn’t eat most of the desserts so I had the chocolate lasagna which was crushed Oreos at the bottom and Cool Whip and some sort of chocolate cream with the Cool Whip.

Overall I had a good time there the only thing that I didn’t really like was some of the foods, since I didn’t eat most of them.

This weekend my family and I went over to our neighbor’s house to have a party. I knew most of the people so when I got there I went down to their basement with my brother and my friend Nathan. We mostly played Minecraft on our handheld devices until dinner. When we heard that it was time to eat we all went upstairs. There were a lot of things to eat, but I mostly ate curry chicken with potatoes and rice. The curry was really good and I would have it again. Once we finished eating my brother, Nathan, Nathan’s friend Ryan and I went back to our house. There we played games on the Xbox 360. We played Rock Band, Halo, and some other games. After playing for a while we went back to Nathan’s house and played some more games on our devices in the basement. Eventually, some people started to leave, so soon I went back home and said goodbye.

Overall I had a good time, but I still don’t know exactly why we had the party in the first place.

This weekend I built my own gaming PC with the help of my Dad.

I have already made a post about the computer and the parts before if you want to look at them. I wanted to build the computer so I could play some PC exclusive games and also get better FPS (Frames Per Second) First I decided to install the CPU chip into the motherboard along with the CPU cooler. After installing the CPU chip and taking the CPU cooler out, I accidentally smudged some of the thermal paste when picking it up. Luckily I didn’t smudge too much of the paste. After, we install the RAM (Random Access Memory) Installing the RAM was pretty easy. We just had to open the two slots then firmly pushed the RAM sticks in. Although this was easy we had trouble starting up the PC and found out I didn’t seat one of the RAM sticks properly. After we installed the RAM, we put in the power supply which was also easy. We just pushed the power supply into a slot in the case and then screwed it into place. After the power supply, we installed the motherboard to the case which took a while. Once we did that, we installed the hard drive. We had to fiddle with it for a while, but eventually we got it to fit inside the drive cage. After that, we wired all of the parts to the motherboard. We then installed Windows 10 and we had finished the computer.

Now I can play my games with more FPS and some other games I couldn’t previously play on my Mac Mini.

This weekend I tried out animation using a free animation software called Pencil2D.

Since I haven’t done animating before, I just started animating black and white stick figures. The hardest part I found when animating the stick figures was making them walk. When I try to make them walk, it doesn’t really look too good, because it is in 2D. When I move one leg for one step and the other leg for the other step, it still looked like the same leg is moving forwards every time. The same thing applies to when I try and make the stick figures run. However, when I make a character fly across the screen I found spacing the images of the character farther apart looked better than putting them close together.

So far, I have only made 2 animations. My first one was very short. My other one was a bit longer. Both of my animations are under a minute long but I spent more than an hour to create my second one. I will keep on trying to make longer animations though.

In the past week, I have agreed with my dad to build a gaming PC for playing video games. My dad has agreed to subsidize for up to $1000 for half of the total price of the computer parts. I have chosen the parts according to how much money I have or how much money I will get from Christmas. The parts needed to create a working computer are a power supply, a computer case, a hard drive or SSD, a processor, a motherboard, some sort of cooling system, RAM memory. Those parts will create a computer when put together properly. For a gaming computer, you would probably want a graphics card which is what usually makes a gaming computer different from a normal desktop or PC.

First I had to find a motherboard that would accept the same processor and RAM memory that I was getting. So I chose a decent motherboard for around $60. I chose the graphics card, which is the most expensive part, by seeing how much memory it has. I want to make sure that the amount of memory it has is still relevant in the next couple of years, and if it could handle the games that I want to play.

Next, I looked for a processor. I was originally going to get an Intel Core i3, but some of the newer games require 4 cores where the i3 only has 2. I finally decided to choose the Intel Core i5 6400, which is least expensive of the latest i5 but still has 4 cores.

For storage, I was originally going to get a 1TB western digital mechanical hard drive, but I ended up giving that to my brother and my dad is going to give me his older hard drive which has about 500GB of storage.

For RAM memory, I found a pretty good deal for x2 4GB sticks of RAM until I found out that it was DDR3 RAM when my motherboard only runs DDR4. I found another two 4GB RAM sticks, but they were a bit more expensive, but at least they work.

For a computer case, I found a case that came with fans and also had some drive cages. Finally, I found a 500-watt power supply by EVGA to power the whole computer.

I ran into a problem however after buying everything that cost less than $75. I don’t have enough money for my processor and graphics card. Luckily I had an old graphics card in my old PC that I stopped using since the 13th of March 2015 at around 8:15 PM. This old card is still better than my current computer that I am using right now. Still, however, I am $2o short.

My plan is to wait until Christmas to get the money for my processor. So that was how I chose the parts for the PC that I am going to put together in the next couple of months.

Yesterday we went to Pheonix Resturant for brunch. A little later after I woke up Daddy told me we were going to Pheonix for lunch. I lied in bed for a few more minutes and then woke up. I found out that Daddy and Mommy were going to the car dealership. After I found that out, I went on my computer until they got back. Once Mommy and Daddy got back, we got in the car to go to the restaurant. When we got to the restaurant, we had to wait for a while until we got a table. When I sat down I noticed that the floor beneath the table was really slippery which was kind of annoying. Mommy and I agreed to share a chicken leg, fries, and a bread box filled with ice cream and fruits. After most of the food had come we were wondering why Jason hadn’t received his meal yet. When we asked one of the waiters, they said that they didn’t take his order, so then we asked them to take Jason’s order again. After a little while, his food came, and then when we finished our main meals the bread box came which was really good, since the inside was buttery and the ice cream made it cold and warm. The chicken and fries were also really good. I would go there again if I could, mainly for the bread box though, because this is the only place I know that serves this kind of desert. Overall I had a good experience besides the slippery floor. If you were to go to Pheonix restaurant I would recommend the bread box filled with ice cream.

That was my review on the brunch I had this Saturday.

This weekend we held Doris’ Birthday Party at Archery Circuit. At Archery Circuit they have bows and arrows with marshmallow shaped tips, dodge ball, and Nerf guns. First, we did archery which we played a few games like, VIP where one person is the VIP for a team and if the VIP gets hit the game is over. We also played elimination and infection. Then after we had lunch which was pepperoni, Hawaiian, and cheese pizza with apple juice and water. We then sang Happy Birthday to Doris and ate cake. When we finished eating we were supposed to play dodge ball, but we ended up playing with the Nerf guns. The only problem with the Nerf guns though was that their Nerf guns weren’t very good and their Nerf darts were really old and had been stepped on. After we finished playing with the Nerf guns some people left. After everyone gave their birthday gifts to Doris and had left we finally left the building.

Overall I had an okay experience, but I have already been there for one of my friend’s birthday party before. The Nerf experience wasn’t very fun though and I would’ve rather played dodgeball instead but it was alright.
That was my summary of Doris’ birthday party.

This weekend Jason, my Dad, and I made a test video for an assignment where we would read a speech and then merge parts of the different videos together. First, we had to find a spot in the house to film, which we chose to use the hallway. Then we used an adjustable stool so that we could make sure even though we were different heights we could make it so that we would all be at the same spot. We then filmed each other reading the whole speech. Then my Dad edited the video and cropped the outline, so when the video was all edited it was basically each of us taking turns saying the lines. That was how we made the video for an assignment this weekend.

Last weekend I made an Enderman farm in Minecraft on our Minecraft server. An Enderman is a 3 block tall hostile entity in Minecraft. I created the Enderman farm as a way to get experience and enderpearls, which can be used for enchanting items and teleporting to places instead of walking.
The farm uses an Endermite which has 5% chance of spawning when an enderpearl is thrown. The farm requires an Endermite to be spawned from an enderpearl because the Enderman will try and kill the Endermite. After the Endermite was spawned I named it using a nametag so it would not despawn. Then I put it in a minecart so it couldn’t move anywhere. I then made a 43 block deep chute that had open trap doors over it so they would fall down the chute trying to kill the Endermite. The reason why they fall down the chute is because the Enderman thinks that the trap door is a solid block they can walk over, but in the game, they actually just fall down the chute. I then made a tunnel down to the bottom of the chute. The reason why it is 43 blocks deep is because the Enderman have 40 hitpoints each. An entity takes fall damage at a minimum of 4 blocks, so that means when the Enderman hits the ground it will only have 1 hitpoint left. That means that you can hit the Enderman with anything and it will instantly die. When an Enderman dies it gives you experience points and a chance of dropping an enderpearl. Then I finished fixing any mistakes I may have made and then my Enderman farm was done! That was how I created my Enderman farm last week.

This weekend I went to a friends birthday party. When I got to the house there were already some people there. This was supposed to be a costume party although I didn’t wear a costume. It wasn’t required to wear a costume. Since I didn’t feel like wearing a costume, I didn’t.

We were mostly just talking at the beginning of the party, and then when we figured out that there were snacks, everyone just started talking around the snack table. When all the bowls filled with the popcorn and chips were gone, we went to play a little bit of fuse ball, but we didn’t play for long. After, we played one round of bingo while eating more snacks. Once the bingo game was over, we played lots of games of hide and seek until the pizza arrived. We all ate some pizza and then played more hide and seek until it was time to eat cake. Everyone had 1 or 2 slices of cake and then we went back to playing even more hide and seek.

Soon some people started leaving and there weren’t too many people left. Eventually, I left the party and went home. Overall, I had a good time at the party. Although it was supposed to be a costume party not too many people were wearing their costumes by the end of the party.