Living in Silver Spring

Essentially this is a video of my sister and I going and playing around at a park near our house.  Most of the shots we are in the little children's garden.  I wasn't really sure how to capture what it was like to live in Silver Spring.  I mean, I don't live near Tacoma Park or Downtown Silver Spring or Rockville, so it's not like I can just go there and film the people and what not.  And a day in the life that doesn't include school involves me lazing about all day.  I was going to include some shot's of me playing indoor soccer, but it would have been difficult to film there.  (and we lost badly to the team we played, so I'm not sure if I want to show that on film....) So sorry British kids, a day in the live in Silver Spring means going to a park to film a video about what it's like to live in Silver Spring.  I think the British kids should make videos of what it's like to live in England so we can watch.

I filmed this with my mother's DSLR, with a regular lens.  It was really hard to try to figure out what I wanted to do, for the aforementioned reasons.  It was also hard to find good music for this.   Somehow I ended up with French gypsy jazz.  I also had a ton more footage that I wanted to include, but the time limit would not let me.   I also kind of panicked because free music archives started glitching, so it wouldn't load for a while, and I was faced with the possibility that I would have to find my CC music elsewhere.  To be honest, this was probably my least favorite of the individual video challenges, mostly because I wasn't really inspired by it.  I did get a fun day with my sister out of it though :)

Mr Mayo for our next challenge, can we do a short film/trailer like thing? Or maybe a silent movie?

Fun facts:
We did not make that snowman, we found it.  It was really cute.
My sister's head is okay.
At the end of the video, I slip and fall.
I tried filming the day that it snowed, and I broke a tripod. Like literally, it snapped in two.

Lessons Learned From Failing

Let me tell you all a little story, harking back to the long past days of 6th grade.  It was the first essay of middle school, about a lovely little book known as Watership Down.   I worked really hard on it, I had read the book, taken notes, tried to remember the discussions in class.  After proudly turning it in, it was returned to me with a big fat D written in the margins of all my hard work.  That was the worst grade I had ever gotten at the time and I cried when I told my parents about it. 
Fortunately, I was not the only one to do horribly, and she gave us the option to re-write it.  Going over my essay I came across a few key mistakes.  My thesis was horrible (in fact I don't think there even was one) and there were several problems with my introduction sentences and what not. That was lesson one. Then I edited it, and would have gotten 100%, had it not been turned in late. Lesson two. 
With every bad grade I've gotten, I've learned far more than I have from my best essays.  Bad grades sting, but at least you get comments back that help you improve.   Good essay's get comments inserting commas and then "Good job" at the end with a smiley face. Bad grades help you get to the good grades and you learn far more from them.  Believe me, it makes me happy to get smiley faces, but I don't learn how to be a better writer because I am already there for that essay.    Now this would not be a problem  at all until it comes time to analyze these writings for a little thing known as coversheets.

This year there is a new rule requiring all portfolio entries to be A's.  I think this is a bit ridiculous for a couple of reasons.

Reason One: Not everyone get's A's. Plain and simple.  If everyone got an A on every assignment, this would not be a competitive program.   So students who did well on the valuable assignments that belong in portfolio's can complete them fairly easily, while the equally smart student who got a B has to search through their less portfolio worthy assignments that they got an A on to find something to use.

Reason Two: B's are still good grades.   Ms. Cullen told us at the beginning of the year not to expect A's, that they are something to work for.  Mr. Grossman liked to remind us that B's are not the end of the world, and for most students it is a fairly good grade.   And what about the student who gets an 89% on an assignment? Clearly they did the assignment well and understood it, and it was only a few points away from being A worthy.   Good grade,  but somehow not good enough for a portfolio?

Reason Three (and by far the most important reason of all): Students learn from mistakes.  Now, it might not be wise to submit a failed essay as a portfolio coversheet, but what if they really did learn from the assignment.   Their coversheet would be all about what they could have done differently, how they are going to improve and also focusing on what they did well (however few things that may be)  You learn more from why you failed then trying to examine why you did well.

Basically what I am saying is this. The portfolio coversheets are meant to be used as a tool to help us analyze our growth as students and writers.   If the point is to document our progress, yet we only include A assignments, then the portfolios are not a very accurate portrayal of our actual growth as students.  In order to succeed as writers, we have to understand how and why we failed in the first place. B, C, D and even E grades have a place in our portfolio.

Windows 8 Is Kinda Great (sometimes maybe, I'm not sure)

For Christmas I got a lovely new Dell laptop, complete with the brand new Windows 8.  When I first got it, I hated it, but now I am starting to get used to it.   Such is life I suppose.

-bad +good
-No start button, replaced with start screen
This is perhaps the worst part of Windows 8.   The usual start button that we all have come to know and love and been replaced with a start screen, something akin to the home screens for android phones and the new Surface.  Might work well for a touch screen, but I'd rather be able to pop up a relatively unobtrusive menu than go to a whole other page to open something.
-Lots of ad like promotions.
When you first get Windows 8, they quite handily provide you with quick apps for Amazon, EBay, Bing, and Kindle. These apps can be hidden, but seriously, do they really need to be that blatant in their advertising?
-Very flat and 2D.
Some of you might remember the days of Windows Vista.   Previous feelings about Vista aside (I have to admit I kind of liked it) it had a sort of 3D effect to it.  The scroll bar sort of popped out, there were shadows behind windows, and check boxes also had a bit of this effect to it.  All of that is gone in Windows 8.  Most everything is a flat color box.  No shadows, nothing.  It makes it feel a little bland I have to admit.
+Sleek
What was a negative above, also kind of turns into a positive. The consistent flatness gives it a very unique and sleek look.  It matches somewhat the new Google themes.  I like consistency.
+Colorful
Colorful can barely begin to describe it.  Mostly in the insanely brightly colored menu screen, with an array of colors for each app.  The colors actually put you in a good mood, so while you are complaining about Windows 8, you can look at all the wondrous (great adj. people should use it more often) colors and feel somewhat better.
+Dynamic
One of the funnest parts about Windows 8, is how dynamic it is. To close an app (not something like a browser or word) you simply drag the top part of the window to the bottom of the screen.  To know the time quickly, adjust settings or to quickly find an app, you simply need to hover in the corner of the screen and it will show you quickly.

Most of these changes were to make Windows 8 on a computer as similar as possible to the Windows 8 on a touch screen tablet such as an Android phone or the new Surface.  All Microsoft needs to do to make me happy is to bring back the start button, or at least create a setting where one could choose between a start screen and a start button.  A start screen would obviously work better on a touch screen, but not so well on a computer.

Just a little side story: While me and my father were shopping for a new laptop, we came across the one I have now, and seeing the Windows 8 start screen, attempted to swipe the screen with our fingers, assuming that it was a touch screen.
"Why isn't the touch screen working?"
We realized it was not a touch screen, and the worst part is I knew it was not a touch screen from previous research, but clearly that part of my brain decided not to work at that moment.
In our defense, there were a lot of touch screen computers and convertible tablets about.