Asking questions.

So.... Nicole and I decided we would write a list of questions for each other because we both like answering  lists of questions. You can read the ones I wrote for her and her answers on her blog the link to which should be on the top right side of this post.
Anyway, to business.

1. If you could live in any book what book would you chose? Oooooh uuummmm.... I would have to say Lord of the Rings although the Door Within is pretty cool too. 





If you had to choose one movie in the world to watch which movie would you pick? Second Hand Lions.






If you could swap places with any person (living or dead)which would you swap with? I don't know, I like being me pretty well.






Favourite Ice Cream Flavour? Mint Chocolate Chip.






Favourite drama you've been in? Tumbleweeds!






Least favourite character? (movie or book) Lord Denethor, Steward of Gondor. That is one character  that drives me nuts.





Favourite Villain? Professor Moriarty.






Have you ever wanted to eat an ice cream cone without the ice cream? No, its better with the ice cream.






Who was the last person you spoke to? Mom.






Favourite art tool?(pens, pencils, etc.) Black Pens are cool.






What do you want to be when you grow up? An 3D animator or 3D designer and or a Rancher. Either one would be amazing.






Sunshine or rain? "All sunshine and roses......"






Cheese or sprinkles? Cheese Grommet! Cheese!






Editing or Animating? I love them both! I'll go with Animating though.






Boys or stinky socks? Not stinky socks.






Thor or Captain America? Uhhhhhhh, well.... I'll have to go with Cap until I've seen the movie Thor and can make a slightly more educated decision :P






Laptop or Tablet? Laptop is better at everything except apps.






Skillet or Owl City? Owl City.





Books or Movies? Books are amazing.





Hats or socks? Hats are better.





Horses or Cows? Cows.





Camping or Historical Sites? Oh, tough one.... I would have to say camping though, but camping near historic sites would be beyond awesome.





Do you read my blog? You have a blog? Just kidding, I do, it makes me laugh.






Cheese or Carrot Cake? Both! Together! Carrot Cake would be better though.






Cooking or cleaning? Well, I like to cook in a clean kitchen and eat after I've cleaned. But I would rather cook than clean.






Would you rather be a librarian or a diver? Librarian, less chance of getting drowned or eaten.






Boromir or Theoden? Theoden, King of the Riddemark, every time.

Well that was fun for me, I hope that wasn't horrendously boring for you readers.

Prussian Schooling

I learned something interesting a few weeks ago. In the 1880s Prussia had the highest literacy rate of any European country and thus the Prussian schools were used as a model for schools in the U.S.A. and likely Canada.

So now I’m sure one of three thoughts is going through your mind:

1, “You kinda just misspelled Russia there……”

2, “Yeah? So what?”

3, “I KNOW!”

Well if you’re thinking number 1, no, I did not misspell Russia, I spelled Prussia correctly. You see Prussia was a militaristic empire based in Germany from the 1500s through the early 1900s. And when I say militaristic I mean they ruled the roost with one of the most fearsome armies in Europe. So now you’re thinking “What on earth does this have to do with school?” Bear with me, I’m getting to that.

So into this militaristic country comes Napoleon Bonaparte. And he whips them. Big time. This humiliating defeat gets the Prussians looking at ways to improve their military. Ah hah! Mandatory School! So the Prussian school system is born, complete with standardized nationwide tests. But how is this going to improve the military? Well in a word; indoctrination. You see the perfect soldier never questions authority they just go in and get the job done. A mandatory, government run school was the perfect way to make sure all those potential soldiers got the pre-training (brainwashing, indoctrination, whatever) they ‘needed’. And all these mandatory schools meant that everyone learned to read, giving the Prussians some of the highest literacy rates in the world.

Now let me point out that if you’re running a country and you’re population can’t read, it makes you look bad. So seeing those Prussians with such a high literacy rate made every one think “Hey! They must be doing something right!” Which was how it came about that the Prussian model was used in the U.S.A.

And now we get to the important question. So What? Who cares if the Americans used the Prussian model? Why does it even matter? Here’s why; every government in every country around the world is insecure. People are awfully strong when they all get ticked off, and more than one or two governments have gone the way of the dodo bird when the people got fed up. So how do you keep the people satisfied? Well the method that most governments would like to say they follow is that they do what the people want, but that’s hard and people can be so demanding! One way that allows the government to pursue it’s own goals is to keep the people suppressed and ignorant for as long as possible and hope they get used to it. Another more peaceful method, used most notably by Hitler before and during WWII is to indoctrinate the people as much as you possibly can.

Now let me just say that no matter where you got your schooling you still got the indoctrination, all those ‘Adventures in Odyssey’ about war were about how heroic it is to be a soldier fighting for your country right? And all those history textbooks written in the USA had an awful lot to say about how wonderful the constitution was. And heck, even the fact that your parents shared their faith and opinions with you could be classified as indoctrination. And it wasn’t all bad was it? Because your parents gave you their ‘opinion’ that it was wrong to hit you don’t go out and clobber people, at least not where everyone can see. And because you’ve been trained to believe freedom of speech is important you like to share your opinions.

Proverbs 22:6 says that you should “Train a child up in the way that he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.” So while you’re a child you absorb all the training people give you and when you grow up you will act on that training. All I’m saying that maybe there should be serious thought going into where that training will come from. And maybe it shouldn’t mostly come from the government.

Lego Stop-Motion again

Yes I know, I just posted one of these. This one is different though because I finally found a website with royalty free music to use! So here is my first ever Stop-Motion video with sound:

If you are interested, this is the site I used for the music: incompetech.com/music/royalty-free

If you are wondering what programs I used, I used  Windows Movie Maker (which usually comes installed on PCs) to assemble the video and Jellycam to take the pictures through a webcam. 

You may notice I have links in my text now, I have been doing an online html coding course through a website called Code Acadamy and I am testing out what I have learned so far :)

Another Lego Stopmotion

Here is a new Stop-motion video I made last night with Lego.

Macbeth

I studied Macbeth in English this year, and I have a couple of thoughts now.

 

1.      Letting other people rule you can lead to mistakes you will regret for the rest of your life. Macbeth was very reluctant to go through with the murder of his king. It was mainly his wife’s influence that drove Macbeth into the deed, but he cannot be entirely innocent. Despite all his hesitations Macbeth caved to his wife and allowed her to convince him into the murder. We all choose how much influence others hold over us.

 

2.      Sometimes you just have to trust people, but that doesn’t mean go into it blindly. Duncan the king trusted the Thane of Cawdor completely, Cawdor turned out to be a traitor. All the same Duncan trusted Macbeth and all the other characters, even though the Macbeths end up murdering him I think Duncan was one of the happier characters of the plot.
      Macbeth is a little too trusting as well. Macbeth puts complete trust in the prophecy of the witches, three people he knows nothing about, which eventually leads to his death.
       Banquo on the other hand is suspicious of the witches and Macbeth but he never acts on his suspicions.
       Malcolm, I think, is the smartest character in the plot, at least on the issue of trust. Malcolm doesn’t trust Macduff immediately but once convinced however Malcolm commits to trust by taking Macduff into his confidence.

 

3.      Crazy is an overused word these days. “Everyone has a mental disorder” they say, ‘I’m crazy and It’s cool’ we say jokingly to our friends. Then you read Macbeth there are some genuinely crazy people there. By the end of the play your thinking ‘Macbeth is a NUTCASE, he is literally crazy, not a little teenager/young adult crazy, not crazy busy, actually mentally insane. It’s subtle but it’s sad. We watch the fall of a respected man into murder and finally madness and we walk away with the feeling that it could have been us, it could still be us. My mom thinks that it takes a certain level of insanity to take someone else’s life, I think I agree.

In closing I walked away from Macbeth wondering if the sanctity of human life is as sacred as we want it to be. I walked away wondering how I would handle taking a life. I walked away wondering how much to trust people. I walk away from Macbeth with the conviction that there are some lines that cannot be crossed and other lines that are not as solid as I would like them to be.

 

Quest For Camelot

I watched this movie with my siblings so much when I was little. We loved it, then we watched it yesterday; lets just say the magic has worn off. Before I go any farther, be it established that I like Quest for Camelot. If nothing else we just laugh at the lameness of it.

Okay, now we’ll get to the review part of this post. The villain is quite mad which is always amusing and the songs are mostly good, although a few seem severely out of place. The plot is decent, if underdeveloped, and there are a couple of great lines. However, the makers didn’t really seem to put much time into perfecting the animation (We noticed the bad animation even when we were little). Plot, conflict, and character interaction are sub par as well. Suffice it to say there are some glaring mechanical errors. It’s hard to tell what age group this movie is geared  towards as well. The lack of character development and generally limping conflict point to a very young audience, while some of the half attempted themes and the scariness of the villain point to an older one.

In my opinion then, "Quest for Camelot" isn't a bad movie, if you are prepared to give your skeptical side a rest, if you aren't then prepare to be dumbfounded at why they bothered to make this film at all.

In conclusion then, I wouldn’t recommend this movie unless your in the mood to either poke fun at a badly made video, or to watch a decently scary villain strut around an otherwise lame group of characters. 

Or if you are like me you can just watch it for the songs. :)

A Stopmotion Movie

I downloaded a free stopmotion program a few days ago called JellyCam

This is the animation I made. It was kind of spur of the moment so the plot is't great :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H_4TvfH9Xw&feature=plcp

Wire Rings

I was looking for something to do today so I looked up wire rings. I made these;

 

This one's just some copper wire scraps from the ring below, I wrapped one piece twice around my finger and wrapped one end over the other to secure it. I had a shorter peice as well so I wrapped it around too.

This one I made first and used a shell fragment I picked up on a beach in Greece the other day.

 

Here's the link to the tutorial I found. I modified it slightly as you can see.

 

http://www.ehow.com/how_4826269_make-wire-rings.html

 

Try to make the ring a bit bigger than you want it to allow for the wrapped wire. I didn't so the ring doesn't fit as well as I'd like it too.

 

Cheerio!

 

MJM