Friday, September 2, 2011
I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords
Technology was created with first and foremost the goal of helping people, and it has done that job splendidly. Just about everything we do has been facilitated by technology, from the alarm clock in the morning to the late night television shows, heck the keyboard I'm typing on right now is technology. Helpful as it is, more and more people are now relying on technology to solve the most basic of things. At the rate it's going, the future could be a place where people are whipping out calculators to find out what is 6 plus 7. It's kind of like a double-edged sword, making our lives easier, yet always carrying the danger of necessity.
But to some people, that is all technology do for us, to make us lives easier, and I can see why they would hate it. But to other people, it opens up a treasure trove of knowledge and information. It connects the entire world, allowing events from all over the globe to be recorded and shared, in turn exposing us to perspectives in a way never possible before. If I had to choose one thing that had the most impact on my outlook of life, it wouldn't be movies, it wouldn't be books, it would be the internet. If it wasn't for the internet, how else would I have known that just last week, a 24 year-old father died of a toothache because he didn't have insurance? Or that a man in North Carolina got his legs broken by a cop, then was sent to jail because he wouldn't stand in court? This kind of information gives me a new viewpoint of current issues, something I certainly would not have experienced if it weren't for technology. Getting rid of technology is not the solution, but perhaps letting go of the reliance on technology and instead finding a healthy balance between it and real life is.
Though as dangerous as technology may be, it has nothing on ninja bear.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
The negative effect of technology on society
How technology HURT me
Reluctantly, I relinquish the cell phone and sulk for the last three minutes of class. At the sound of the bell, I politely explain to Ms. Perry that I was checking my grade in HER class. Her abridged response to get out of her room and she was taking it to the office. Madame was already my least favorite teacher, and I would be stuck with her one more year for AP French. I was furious, even though she had every right to confiscate the phone, and convinced my mom to get my cell phone back. One would think that this would have been an educational experience for me, but I did not catch on. Over the next week she confiscated my phone two more times. The Henry Clay electronic device policy is that after the third confiscation, the phone will be kept until the end of the school year. With my mother's help, I convinced Mr. Nochta that I would not bring it to school for the rest of the year, if he would give it back. My relationship with my French teacher was no longer peaches and cream and I could no longer have my phone at school. A valuable lesson was learned, but my electronic device did hinder me.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
I love x rated content and illegal music
Monday, August 29, 2011
About Alex

Sunday, August 28, 2011
Assignment 2: iWrite

In 1976, Steve Jobs became a co-founder of Apple. 35 years later he is retiring and putting his enormous company into different hands. His departure does not just mean a promotion for Tim Cook, the new CEO, but a major shift in a company that has been a key player in technology innovation in the 21st century.
- Has technology affected you in a majorly positive way? What happened?
- Has technology ever inconvenienced you or hurt you? Maybe technology got in your way, slowed you down or even literally hurt you? Have you seen technology have a negative impact on society?
- How would your life have been different if you'd grown up 20 years earlier? How would you interact with others? Do you think your relationships then would differ from your present relationships? Which time period would you prefer and why?
- How often do you use your ipod (or phone or whatnot)? What is your perfect playlist for ____ (fill in the blank - it could be your perfect playlist for a sunny day, for a road trip, for thanksgiving, etc.) Choose 5 songs, note the song and artist and why you chose this song.
I Arrive!
Thanks to Henry Clay i've found a lot of great friends who I can share my interests in, and that's just WONDERFUL. That's my favorite thing about school, having great people to be around. Most people I know are great. If you're reading this, chances are 9/10 you're also great. Things are great. Academics are extremely important as well, and being in the academy is a great opportunity to learn things. I usually go on rants a lot, it took a couple rewrites to turn this post into this instead of a long rant about the history of Kamen Rider and Super Sentai. That happens a lot with me, unfortunately or not.
For my link? The site I visit the most. Yeah, it's 4chan but it's not THAT kind of 4chan you're most likely thinking of. The /toy/ board is generally very nice, and they're a good community especially for collectors such as myself. Yeah (safe warning, I am not responsible for what you see on this page and you're clicking on it at your own risk. It's not /b/ 4chan, but it's still 4chan)
I'm just a kid but they calling me the man- Mac Miller

I'm not sure how to start this off without being boring but i guess it goes something like this... Hello! I'm Braxton DeCamp and I am a Junior at Henry Clay High school. I went to The Lexington School since Pre-Kindergarden to 8th grade, and since then have been at Henry Clay.I try to get involved in in and out of school activities and hate to be stuck at home. I have one sister named Elise who is a Junior at Centre college in Danville, and she went to Henry Clay for her Junior and Senior year and Sayre her Freshman and Sohpomore year, and she actually had Mr. Logsdon at one point during those two years. My favorite subjects in school are math and science. This year I am going to attempt to get all A's but it definitely will not be easy. I have my license and drive to school everyday. I am a very outdoorsy guy and love to kayake, mountain climb, and hike; I plan on joining the outdoors club this year after sadly not being able to join last year.
Hello World!

I don’t really know how to begin this, so I’m just going to start somewhere. I don’t tend to put these things off, but I’ve decided to wait and read some other posts before writing mine. Without further ado, here’s my first blog post. I’m assuming these things are more of a stream of consciousness, so forgive me if I randomly switch subjects.
Hello! I’m Chris Chow, and I’m the younger brother of my family. I was born in Los Angeles, and moved to Lexington when I was three. I also have two cats, Leo and Caroline. They’re from the same litter and are the two cats in the picture. They are two and a half years old, and are partially-outdoor cats. An interesting fact about me is that I’ve traveled outside of the country many more times before I could walk than I have after. However, when I do travel, I really enjoy the experience of being in an airport; maybe it’s because it’s such an interesting experience, but it’s probably because I’ve watched too many movies. Whatever it is, I’ve always wanted to travel the world.
Something else noteworthy is that I’m an avid fan of computers. I’m not just a fan of video games, but computers themselves. I’m interested in how they work, how they’re put together, and how to program them. For instance, the computer that I’m writing this blog post from was custom-built by me. Contrary to the media’s perspective on things, it’s all just a matter of buying the parts and putting them together with some screws. I generally order my parts from Newegg or 3BTech.
Now let’s move on to more random facts about myself. I am currently/will be participating in the following: The Henry Clay Orchestra, The Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras, Spanish Club, and volunteering at the Village Branch Library. As hinted by the previous sentence, I play the violin, and have been doing so since the fourth grade. I haven’t quit orchestra yet, unlike certain people (who are aware of who they are), and I intend to continue playing, at least as a hobby, for quite some time. I’m an avid reader of fiction novels of any sort, as long as they’re interesting and are a part of a series. It always irritates me when a good book idea is never finished, never fleshed out completely.
Speaking of pet peeves, here’s a mini-list of mine:
1.) Before you ask, no, I am not Chinese, Japanese, Korean (South or North), Vietnamese, Thai, or Mongolian. I am one-half Taiwanese and one-half Cantonese. While China insists that Taiwan and Hong Kong are a part of it, I’m going to disagree because A.) They both have separate dialects that are spoken there more than Mandarin and B.) They both have separate currencies from the Chinese Yuan.
3.) My hatred for poor grammar extends so far that I had to use two whole numbers for expressing the same pet peeve. I’m not going to continue elaborating about how much I utterly despise this, but if you just remember to put in that comma or apostrophe, the world will become a better place.
Moving on to the more relatable bits of information about me. Classical music is such a large genre of music, but some composers who are higher up on my list are Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, and Chopin. I don’t really mind newer music, but I particularly enjoy movie soundtracks by Hans Zimmer. I also enjoy the usual “geeky” movies, like the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Star Wars, among other things, but I also do watch more serious movies. I’ve also been watching an abnormal amount of TV these last few months, and I’m blaming Netflix. Some TV shows that I’ve been watching are Chuck, Psych, Scrubs, White Collar, and Doctor Who (feel free to click the links to read more about them).
Well, there we have it. More information about myself in one location than can be found anywhere else. As you can see from the various links that I’ve added, I’m fond of using Wikipedia, but mostly for general information on something and news. As time winds down, I’ve realized that I probably spent too much time writing this and thinking about it than I needed to. Well, spending a lot of time on something to make it good is better than hastily creating some shoddy work.
That’s about it. Now it’s time for an abrupt ending.
slacker people, teaching other slacker people, to not be slackers
http://www.fmylife.com/

And I just said, "Dude, your perspective on life sucks".
Needless to say, the situation may become all the more disastrous due to my current state of mind. I am currently writing this on a sugar high, because… it seems to be the only state in which I can accomplish much of anything.
I'm Olivia. And if it were up to me, this is all I would share with you today. But this isn’t the case, so I must continue. I like all members of the class Gastropoda, old books, and ellipsis points. I will always overuse ellipsis. I don’t speak coherently when I talk to you personally, therefore the transference of that will be evident here.
I know the name of nearly any Pokemon up until those released after 2007, I can tell you quite a bit about the Giant Cuttlefish, and I am a total music freak. I have minimal hoarding tendencies- I collect books, teapots, stone figurines, candles, vinyl records, and anything regarding the Muppets. I cried when I saw Salvador Dalí’s Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, my favorite song is “Fake Plastic Trees” by Radiohead, and one of the crowning moments of my life was when I beat Monkeyball 2 for the third time.
I’m really into Biology and Psychology (not too original, I know). Every Saturday I work at a community garden and chill out with some DJs and Biology majors at UK. Most DJs I’ve met slightly resemble garden gnomes and love vegetables. Who knew?
I’m totally addicted to the shows Monster Bug Wars and Into the Wormhole on the Science Channel. I’m sorry, but watching a Bulldog Raspy Cricket kick the crap out of a Whistling Tarantula is just SO COOL.

I am also hopelessly in love with the movie Ponyo. Don’t judge.
I’m terribly involved in clubs this year. At the moment, I am the President of Psychology Club, part of the administration for Go Green club, a member of Outdoors Club, FCCLA, Anchor Club, Y-Club, and Beta Club. I will also be working at a youth drop-off center downtown and hopefully participating in some fundraising walks this year.
I wish I was a Boy Scout.
Now back to the part where I’m still typing this. The night before it is due. At about nine in the evening. And I can blame it all on these three beautiful time-wasters:
http://www.cakewrecks.com/
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/10/god-of-cake.html
http://www.weebls-stuff.com/
Did you appreciate my picture? I thought so. Elliot's image evoked... inspiration.
My name is Aaron and I like stuff.

Okay so yes, my name is Aaron Meek and I do indeed like stuff. Most everyone who will be reading this knows me to some extent, but if you don't then I am about six and a half feet tall with
Hey, I’m Luke Yurkoski.
I enjoy many facets of this thing called life. I love music, tennis, snowboarding, traveling, movies, art and the outdoors.
I listen to all kinds of music. I love Rock, Classic Rock, Indie Rock, Classical, Metal (not screamo), some Rap, Alternative, Folk, Jazz, Rag, Funk, Funk Rock and just about everything in between. In addition I play guitar, piano, and drums (well, kind of). Playing and listening to music is not so much of a hobby as it is an obsession for me. I devote a good portion of my free time either playing or listening to music. Needless to say, music consumes my life.
After nine years of baseball, I quit. I do admit that my years spent in Little League were some of my best. All sports are boring at times, however I feel baseball reaches a level of boringivity (made-up word for dramatic effect) that cannot be matched. So, I switched to tennis. In tennis, a player is engaged in every point. It can at times be boring to watch, but is never boring to play. In addition to tennis, I enjoy a pick-up game of basketball, football, and ultimate Frisbee.
My current favorite website is Pitchfork, which is a website devoted to the cotemporary music scene. It is the best place to find new music.
http://pitchfork.com/
And the name Yurkoski is Polish.
DNE EHT
A "Little" About Me!

One thing I love to be is involved, wherever I am. I would definitely describe myself as someone who hates sitting home and doing nothing. At Henry Clay, I am involved in the Academic Team, the Young Republicans, Student Council (I am junior class Vice-President!), the Latin Club (which I am President of!), I used to be in the Symphonic Band, and I am involved in the drama department. The spring production of "Wit", where I was a student with eight lines (!!), was my theatrical debut. Pretty exciting, right?
Purple Elephants

Life has been found on other planets! Read on!

In case you're wondering, yes that is a picture of me.

I digress.
My name is Augustus Logsdon. I would go by my nickname Gus, but our teacher, Mr. Logsdon, to whom I have no relation, insists that Augustus sounds cooler. Who am I to argue? I didn't major in English; I haven't even been to college. I hope to soon though, which is why I plan for good test scores and straight A's this year. Of course, plans don't always follow through. For example, in seventh grade, I told myself that I would end my habit of procrastination. Tragically, I put it off until the next year, and repeated the process annually. I have since given up, and I still can't break the habit as evidenced by this last minute blog entry. I finished my summer reading earlier than usual, but that's about all I can say.
In fact, I only did that because I had nothing to do in Florida. My family vacationed to a secluded peninsula on the peninsula (peninsula-ception?) for one full week. The allure of the top dollar beach only lasted for about three days, and then we realized that everything fun was an hour's drive away. Don't get me wrong, I felt nice and relaxed, but there wasn't much to do except read and browse the internet (on a side note, you should really check out reddit. It basically aggregates everything interesting on the internet and covers every subject ever). I wished, like I always do, that I could just stop time and stay there, but alas, school was slowly creeping up through my schedule, and the time had almost come to enter junior year. In fact, if I could stop time right now and take a break from my homework, I would absolutely do it. Stopping time is about the most all around useful super-power in my opinion. If you could do that, you would effectively be able to teleport anything anywhere, at least it would appear that way to an observer, and do whatever you felt like to it.
I think that tidily sums up my "get to know me" blog entry. Hopefully, I answered any and all questions you may have had, but I know that's not true, so I present you with an ultimatum. I will tell you anything you want to know if you do just one thing; ask me questions. I will be more than happy to respond.
Annie blogs about things: The comic: The musical

So. I seem to be finally getting around to doing this blogging assignment(and evidently I'll be bisecting multiple innocent infinitives along the way). The only problem is, well, I'm rather confused about what to put here! But let's start off with the basics, shall we?
My name is Anne Summers. I am fifteen years of age. I've got two older siblings, both of whom are in college, one of whom is just starting college this year. My father is a history professor at UK, and, if I'm not mistaken, later this year, in US History, he shows up briefly in a documentary about Grover Cleveland. Assuming we actually watch that this year. We might not. I am heavily involved in a great deal of fandoms, but primarily Homestuck. I draw a lot, as people who've gone to elementary or middle school with me may know.
Despite the fact that I honestly should start thinking about this, considering how many times my mom asks me about it every week, I don't really have a very clear idea of what I want for my future. Well, okay, that isn't entirely true. I know what I want to do, I just don't know what I should do. For a long time, I've wanted to be an cartoonist of some form, but certain circumstances don't really facilitate that. Cartoonists don't get paid very much, and I've heard that it's incredibly difficult to find work as one. However, my parents have suggested that I become a lawyer, which is an idea that I'm not terribly fond of. I mean, sure, if I'm good enough, it's possible that I'll earn a lot of cash, but the job, to me, just sounds like it would be rather exhausting, and my rhetoric would need great development. (Also, my speech, considering that it's apparently very difficult for people to hear me when I'm talking normally.)
Let me make a rather lame segue here: this summer, I began going to speech therapy. But I also went to two other continents! The first trip was one for the Sister Cities program, which links Lexington to towns in Japan, France, Britain, and Ireland. (I went to Japan.) While in Japan, I stayed with a host family. They kind of spoke English. A little. It was understandable, most of the time, and I am exceedingly honored that they went to the effort of trying to learn it. I kind of spoke a little Japanese, as well. My family was apparently honored at that, too. Those of you who were in classes with me last year may remember that one time in March when I brought an exchange student to school. I was able to meet her and her family again, as my host family and her family were close. In Japan, our group went to three different high schools and visited the English class in each, where we were kind of used for training. Also, we made takoyaki, which, despite the fact that it is basically octopus chunks in balls of batter, is really good! On one of the days, my host family went to a samurai-themed amusement park, where I acquired lots of souvenirs. (It wasn't an amusement park like Disneyland is an amusement park. More like...one of those places where people recreate frontier life and wear period-appropriate dress.) There were other places I acquired souvenirs at, as well, like the aquarium and the soy sauce factory, but this paragraph has continued on for quite long enough.
I also went to Europe this summer. The main motivator was the fact that my brother was performing in the International Sousa Concert Band, but another strong factor was the fact that, strangely enough, my cousin and grandmother has planned to go to Europe around the same time. We spent about fourteen days in Europe, beginning in Florence and ending in Paris. In Florence, the architecture was absolutely gorgeous. There were multiple museums full of statues and Italian Renaissance art, as well as many churches. (Also, like in Venice, there were gelaterias on almost every street corner.) Following that, we parted with my cousin and my grandmother, and went to Switzerland. Luzern was first. In Luzern, we climbed up the Alps, which were full of mist. Imagine a giant, low-flying cloud. That's essentially what we were stuck in through the majority of our hike upwards to the lodgings. We weren't worried, though, because all around us, we could hear the sound of hundreds upon hundreds of clanging cowbells. (Apparently the mountain climate is good for cows?) The way back down was much more difficult and painful than the way up, and not for any emotional reasons. We kept getting lost, and eventually found a trail composed of nothing but extremely steep steps for about a mile. By the end, even hearing the mention of the word "steps" would cause someone to break into tears. Following our alpine ventures, we headed to Lugano, where we intended to hear 2 out of 2 of the band's concerts. We ended up hearing 0 out of 0, thanks to sloppy planning and bad weather. (I got to hear an excellent Queen cover band in place of the first concert, at least.) I also acquired the best chicken sandwich ever from a bakery, and I got the most exercise I've gotten out of the entire summer there (LOTS AND LOTS OF UPHILL WALKING). After that, we headed into VENICE. My advice: If you ever go to Europe in the summer, don't go to Venice then. It is incredibly humid (duh, water+heat=humidity) and filled with tourists(this might be a year-round thing). Being filled with canals, the main method of transportation is boat. Alternately, you can go across some of the many bridges. Venice is set up very nicely and filled with tiny alleyways. It's very easy to get lost there, although getting lost there is certainly not a bad thing. Venice has two specialties, shopwise: masks and glass. If you've ever seen those masks with feathers and sparkles and such on them, you should know what a typical Venice mask looks like. As for glass, there are shops that have tiny figurines of glass in almost any form: ballerina, musician, snail, rabbit, swan, frog, fishbowl, cat, practically anything you can name. Then we went to Paris, where we went to the Louvre and saw the Mona Lisa. In my opinion, seeing the ol' ML wasn't really worth it. It's no big deal. Seeing the numerous Dutch/Flemish paintings, on the other hand, was TOTALLY worth it. Partially because we didn't have to fight our way through the crowds in order to see the paintings.
Oh wow, I've written a lot here, haven't I?
After a lot of consideration, I've (sort of) figured out what my favorite website would be. My initial idea was that MS Paint Adventures was my favorite site. Unfortunately, I'm not entirely sure what sort of "rating" it would garner. Perhaps PG-13, considering how many characters end up dying. So, after a lot of careful consideration and elimination, I finally decided that my favorite website is TV Tropes. It's a website that functions as a pseudo-wiki, without using the standard wikia template, and it has information on thousands of different forms of media. Webcomics, films, literature, video games, animation: it's basically got it all. Furthermore, the majority of the pages are dedicated to cataloguing different conventions in media. Plus, it's a very easy way to lose four or five hours of your day.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage (go ahead. type something into the search bar. have fun.)
(Just a reminder: It's Annie Summers. I don't know how to change my blog name. Whoops.)
Hope I Don't Rant to Hard

why did I wait so long to do this?

Hey guys, I'm Haddon. Feel free to call me Haddo because that's what people seem to call me now. I'm looking forward to junior year; it's going to be pretty fun. I was born here in Lexington but moved to Hawaii when I was nine. The picture is of the sun setting over downtown Honolulu near Waikiki. I've had the honor of meeting leaders from many countries when they visited. I learned how to play the ukulele while I was there. I actually took a class during school and I love to play it. Even today I still teach myself new music to play. People get a kick out of hearing some of the names of streets from around there. There are some what we here call "normal" and then there are the cool ones (ie Makalapa Drive Kamehameha Hwy, Liliu'okalani Hwy) The best name is the name of the unofficial state fish, Humuhumunukunukuapua'a (or you can just call it the trigger fish). I have my sailing license over there too, if that means anything. It would take me pages to explain what all went on while we were over there but to put it simply...it was awesome. We lived there for 3 years and go back to visit friends every other year. I went to TLS for 1st-3rd grade and the 7th and 8th.
Fun Facts About Logan

first blog ever

Hi guys, my name is Allen and I'm the youngest in my family. It certainly wasn't too fun growing up being the youngest but now that my brother and sister are off to college I have the house to myself basically.
Here's a little history about myself. I was born in Taiwan and moved to America when I was four. I lived in Massachusetts and Iowa before I came to Kentucky, so I never really grew up in one place. One thing that moving around made me realize was that I really liked traveling. If I ever get to the point in my life where I either retire or make enough money to do fun things, I would travel the world. I like going on vacations to different places like Asia or Europe and just eating all the different foods is really fun.
This year I've really started to try to be less lazy about things in general and start to actually do work. Now when I look back on last year, I realized I wasted that year doing absolutely nothing productive. For my junior year, I've joined several activities including EAP, outdoors club, and beta club. What I'm really good at is violin though. I started playing violin when I was 7 and I really liked it. Then I started thinking that playing it was pretty dorky and I practiced with minimal effort for a couple of years. It was only until this summer when I've really started getting back into my music and realizing that I'm really good at it and I shouldn't quit (mentally). I went to a music summer camp this year and it helped me focus in on what I need to be doing and be more disciplined in what I do.
If I could have a superpower it would be either the power to read minds or to stop time just because those two powers can be used for serious situations or if you were bored and wanted something fun to do. I want to say that my favorite website is facebook not because I post a bunch of things on it but because it's the website I go to the most. Also I go on it to play hold'em poker which I really like doing but am not legally able to do with anything of monetary value. So instead I am going to choose a website that I like to go to if I want to laugh which is http://perfectlytimedphotos.com/. It is a bunch of funny pictures with even funnier captions that you can contribute to if you wanted.
SHALOM
Have to do this before I forget
