Baby

Say hello, readers, to my new child: Roger Luke __________(my last name), a.k.a. Roccie. I ask you, what better project for a school elective than taking care of a paper maché baby? Roccie enjoys sleeping, burping, crying and learning Newton's laws of physics (I know how to raise an educated child.). I predict that he'll go to Harvard, but who knows? I wouldn't mind if he picked Yale or Princeton. He's the only baby that has debuted on the internet for the first day of his life. At least, the only one I know of. Anyway, I think this project is the start of a beautiful friendship. At least... for the weekend.

Aw, he's so cute in his little blanket.

Camera

I'd like to make a note to people using digital cameras out there. Ever had one that slowly loses power until it stops working entirely? This is a common problem among digital cameras. I wanted to put it on this blog because it has a very simple answer, and my family had trouble with cameras before we learned it: you must use rechargable batteries. Lithium are good, but Ni-Mh are the best. It seems obvious, but many cameras don't even mention this on the packaging, and it is essential for them to work. After a few uses, most digital cameras will stop working with regular batteries. Hurray for working photography.

Valentine's Day

Hello everyone, and happy Day After Valentine's Day. I'm writing this because I forgot to add in a post on the actual day, but reading it a day late will probably make you remember the holiday even better. Personally, I think Valentine's Day is a little bit silly. I mean, if you don't have someone that you are romantically in love with, then what's the point? Another excuse to eat candy? And also, romantic love is not bound by one day; it comes when it comes. Why would you restrict your flower-buying to one day? Buy them on the day that you are in love. There's no point to giving your date a gift if the only reason you're doing it is because you think you should. I mean, I'm not saying that you shouldn't buy your date flowers on Valentine's Day. I just think that romance is too much of a variating feeling; you can't expect it to come on a specific day.

Today

Today. It was a very important day. Why? Because it was not, in any singular way, similar to yesterday. Maybe you have the same job you did yesterday as you did today, but the events of that job were different. No matter what happens, the knitty-gritty events of each day will always be different. No two days will ever be the same. We will always have variation, and this is what makes life unpredictable. Without variation, we would hold all of the cards in our hands. We would control more than we are capable of being responsible for. It is our job to learn that we can only control our actions and responses, and not only give up any attempts to control the actions and responses of others, but to never be angry or stop trying because we cannot control what we cannot control. Take what is in your power and act on it. Stability comes from knowing the bounds of your own power.

Break

By the way, sorry to all readers about the four-day break between posts, and the general slow-down of my posting rate over the past week or two. Don't worry; I feel confident that I will return to my usual vigor and keep it going.

Vancouver

I've been pretty excited lately about the Vancouver Olympics. For those who watched the opening ceremony last night, I just have to say that it was about a million times better than China's ceremony last year. Or Salt Lake City's, for that matter. Canada rocks.

I'm saddened by the story of the man who died on the luge - it's a terrible tragedy, especially for someone who had worked hard to get to the Olympics. A track that runs six seconds faster than usual in a sport where a half-second is a big deal is just too much.

Anyways, this Olympics is going to be a good one. I think my favorite sport overall is the long jump on skis - I actually don't know what it's called, but I think that's it. That's the sport I would do if I could pick one.

Television

I've recently realized that there is really hardly anything on television that I'm interested in. I can sum up, in a pretty short list, pretty much all the shows I watch on TV:

1. The Office
2. Everybody Hates Chris
3. Very rarely, Bonanza.

That's pretty much it. Anything else is just me turning on the TV and watching because I'm so bored that I don't care what's on. Generally that means the Disney Channel. Woo-hoo.

I think that television in general has fallen since it first appeared. Think about all the old TV shows we had: Dick Van Dyke, Get Smart, Star Trek (although that isn't quite as old), Bonanza... the list goes on and on. Modern-day shows just aren't that good anymore. We have fallen to a level of poor quality in pretty much all adult TV. Ah, well. I guess that's life.

Morse Code

Ah, hiding in a little cove, sending flashing light signals across a harbor to a hidden viewer. I'm not doing that, but it would be neat to be able to if it was ever needed. My point? Morse code is pretty cool.

I can't help loving Morse code, because it's made with dots and dashes. Because of this, you can signal it with whatever you want. You can use a light. You can use sound. In a book that I read, one character even did it by flicking his eardrum, as if he were fidgeting. And I'm sure some readers have heard that story of the guy who was trapped on a ship, and was rescued because he blinked out "torture" in Morse code with his eyelids.

Er, sorry for the morbid story, but the point is, if you can come up with a system with one thing representing a dash and the other a dot, then you can use Morse code. And that makes it awesome.

Super Bowl

I had a great time watching the Super Bowl tonight. Such an awesome movie. The story of how a bowl is dropped into toxic fluid, and mutates into... SUPER BOWL! Faster than a falling water droplet, he rescues dropped food before it splatters to the ground. The maid will never have to sweep again! Have no fear, Super Bowl is here!

I'm just kidding; I watched the football game like everyone else. There is most definitely not a Hollywood movie about a super-powered bowl, at least not one that I know of.

The Worried Golf Ball

Observe. This little fellow is what I like to call, "the worried golf ball." Why is he worried? I don't know. Perhaps he's afraid that he'll be put on a tee and smacked by a golf club. Or maybe he wonders why all of the other golf balls don't have googly eyes. Maybe he is pondering the meaning of his existence, and his lack of understanding scares him. At any rate, he is most definitely a worried golf ball.

For Children?

Hola, people of the internet. As you read a blog, scrolling up and down on a pixellated screen, I write on a blog, scrolling up and down on a pixellated screen. Who benefits? Well, you, because you get to read a blog, and me, because I get a hobby.

I think that some people, be them teens or adults, limit their reading only to "adult" books. Maybe they think that reading a children's book will make them look silly, or that they are too old and should be reading only adult books. But from my experience, all of the books that I consider good rest upon the kiddie shelves. The exception to this is some of the classic novels, which I enjoy reading, like, as I recently mentioned, The Adventures & Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. But I find that most modern day adult novels are not, when speaking of sophistication, very much on a higher level than children's books anyway. Picking up an adult book generally does not mean that the literature will be richer. And in fact, I believe that if a writer creates an adventure story without age in mind, but desiring it to be appropriate for anyone to read, and gives it a level of intensity of, say, the National Treasure films, then there is an extremely high chance that it will be put on the children's shelf, simply because it is an enjoyable read that does not overly try the nerves, or a person's integrity. However, its audience will be limited to children nonetheless, because adults will not be willing to pick up the book.

Now think of the grand exception to this rule. Can you guess it? Harry Potter is a children's book, but it was read by millions of adults. What broke the child-only barrier for this multi-million dollar series? Look at the cover of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. What does it look like to you? It looks sophisticated. I can't quite put a finger on it, but something about the covers of the Harry Potter novels put them on a more acceptable level for adults. In fact, I admit that as a third-grade child, I found the covers of this series to be very unattractive, and would not have given the books a chance had they not been so popular, while adults were reading the books all around me. Anyways, the point of this very long post is that the cover of a book, and whether or not people feel as if they are breaking their "cool factor" reading it, has a big influence on its success.

Morbidness

Here lies James, author of King James blog at http://www.jamesblog02.blogspot.com/. He died a terrible death - the death of writing too many blog posts at one time. We hope that he will live on forever in our hearts. It is with great strides that we must move on from one person to the next, as some will pass away in our lifetime, and none last forever. He was a well-loved person, and his name...

Just kidding, I'm not dead.

Semi-Interesting Post

Oh yeah, check out this amazing picture. You see, lots of people take pictures with their cameras, but I have now taken a picture of a camera. Astounding, is it not? I congratulate you if it gives you a deep and philosophical insight into graphic perspective. It doesn't? Ah well, at least you got to read a semi-interesting post.

On Logical Deduction

Ever since I started reading The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, I've been trying to invoke Holmes' powerful use of deductive reasoning in everyday life. The thing that makes those stories so amazing is that although at a first glance the case appears impossible, Sherlock Holmes can always solve it using simple and understandable logic, which he proceeds to explain before the story's end. I think, reading these stories, that Arthur Conan Doyle had an immense understanding of how genius rests in simplicity, and how often the most intriguing cases are not solved because the most important points are overlooked. Sherlock Holmes can take a case that most people could not solve, and, without knowing any more information than the reader, logic out the answer on the simplest of terms. It makes me wonder what I have overlooked in my own life so far, myself not having such an intense power of observation.