The Bookwyrm

Happy Birthday!

Today I presented my research project that I've been working on since September at a regional science fair.

They had us set up our posters, two to a table, in a sort of gymnasium or conference or something room in a building at the big college in my city. 

I had been kind of nervous, but not that nervous. I was fairly confident in my presentation, though I'd never actually written it down.

The first judges came for the first round, and my confidence waned just slightly as I presented. My presentation itself felt solid, and I felt I was able to answer their questions well. The first judge complimented my poster, saying it stood out and looked good. But both the first and second ones pointed out a lot of ways I could have improved the research, or at least continued it. They grilled me a little bit, which resulted in the minor confidence loss.

We had a small break, then onto round two. At this point I should mention that all of the students in the high school division (probably about 30-40 of them) were all juniors and seniors from my science focus program that I attend except for two of them. So I was around a bunch of fellow juniors, and in spaces where judges weren't around we discussed and tried to figure out who the judges were visiting the most. I had three more judges come listen to me present for a total of five. They each had good things to say, and only one of them asked as many questions as the first two had.

Afterwards they gave us lunch and some tours of the college campus. Then results.

They gave six awards in the high school division, though in no particular order. And I was one of them! It seemed as though I had impressed the judges. Five of the six winners were from my school (which makes sense), and I was the only junior amongst those five. The rest were seniors.

As we were cleaning up, one of the judges that had interviewed me came to congratulate me afterwards. She got a little quiet and said to me that some of the other judges had said things about my project along the lines of: "If I had been told this was a college sophomore or junior undergrad project at a conference, I would have believed it."

So yeah. I can apparently do science.

Hey guys!

I'm back!

I was in Houston, Texas for a week over spring break and was not faithful to my postings on the Shard. Hopefully I'll be more active now.

Let's see...you probably want an update...

Monday was driving. For 15 hours. In a van with five younger siblings. It was surprisingly tolerable.

Tuesday, we visited a local state park that had alligators. It was interesting to see them in the wild. There were also cool trees with hanging moss that made the place look like something out of a fantasy novel.

Wednesday, we went to the ocean. I've only been to the ocean...what, four times in my life now? It was neat. We saw some Portuguese Man-o-wars (Men-o-war?) washed up on the beach. The Gulf of Mexico is cold this time of year. It's salty. And isn't it nice that we live on a planet with water?

Thursday we went to a nearby island called Galveston island. There was a bunch of cool stuff there. We temporarily rented a sort of tandem-bike-car-thing that we all pedalled around together for about an hour. We visited some neat shops. And we rode a ferry, which was fun, and saw some dolphins.

Friday was my favorite, because we went to the Johnson Space Center there at Houston. I like space, and so I enjoyed this. We did a bunch of stuff, including visit the astronaut training facility there, see a Saturn V rocket laid out on it's side (never figured out whether that was a replica or not), looked at a Space Shuttle that never flew but was still built as if it could have, listened to an astronaut talk about being an astronaut (he'd visited the Mir space station, so that was interesting), saw some other historic things, touched a moon rock, and spent a lot of money. I have a NASA shirt now. It's a problem that I didn't have one until now.

Also on Friday we ate at a Korean barbecue restaurant, which was interesting because they would bring you the meats you ordered raw, and you got to cook them yourself on a grill that was in the middle of your table. It was very tasty.

Saturday was basically the same as Monday.

I also procrastinated a research paper the entire time. Luckily that's basically all done now, I just have to tweak a few things. I'm presenting my research at a science fair on Wednesday, so I hope that goes well.

And that's about it.

So yeah!

Okay, I thought we were done with the PFP madness, but now everyone switching to a cat.

Go to Wikipedia.

Click "Random Article."

Find the first little blue link in the article.

Click it.

Continue doing that for each new article.

Almost all of the time, you will end up on the article "Science."

Or perhaps the eternal loop between "Existence" and "Entity."

Guys...

There are planets out there. Like, a lot of them. Like, so many that our mind cannot begin to understand how many there are.

You could walk on them. Some have water. Some have air. You could feel their grass and soil beneath your feet and smell the scents of their flowers and feel their breezes on your face and feel and see the light of their suns raining down on you. You could feel the water that flows on their surface cool your hands and run down your face as it falls from the sky. You could marvel at the life that they harbor, so familiar and yet so alien and yet beautiful in a way you never knew was possible. You could look up at night and see the light that they catch from unimaginably distant stars and see the reflected light of their suns in the details of their moons. You could find the distant speck of space where the world you came from lived and marvel on how vast and how wonderful and how beautiful the universe is and how precious the worlds that dot it are.

They exist.

We can't reach them right now. Perhaps we never will.

But they exist.

Happy Birthday!

I was worried I had missed it but I didn't!