Spring Break!

Spring break is coming up and I am so excited! My parents, my twin and I are going on a six day road trip, just the four of us! My other sisters either have to work, have school, or are going on a trip of their own. On this six day trip we will be going to many places. We will leave from Layton on Saturday morning and then drive through Nevada on our way to California. We will spend the night at Lake Tahoe, exciting, I've never been there :) Then we will make our way to northern California where we will visit the redwood forest and down to southern California where we will do many, many things. After we finish in southern California we will make our way back to Layton, stopping in Las Vegas, where we will be staying at the Luxor. This will be so much fun because I have never really been to California, other than one quick layover on our way to Hawaii. It will also be different because I have never gone on a trip without my other sisters. So it will definitely be different. After the trip I will try to post lots of pictures of our adventures. I have been to Las Vegas. We went one weekend just spontaneously with my mom and my sisters. It was a lot of fun. We stayed at the Excalibur and went to the M&M factory, went to the Rainforest Cafe, went to this fountain display near the Billagio, and even went inside the Bilagio. We wanted to stay this time at the Bilagio but they were completely booked! Not even one room was open. It is crazy. I am way excited for this trip. I love to see the world and I love to take pictures, so I will certainly be bringing my camera with me. This trip is about 2194.33 miles, that is a very long trip.

I am hoping that I won't get car sick. That would really suck considering that we will be riding in the car for most of the trip. Just the first day is about an eight hour car drive, probably not stopping anywhere. Good thing I will have a lot to do, I have a book that I have to finish by the end of spring break, so that will be a big chunk of what I spend most of my time doing. This is a completely new experience that I am lucky that I get to have, and I get to spend it with my family. I will try to post another blog while on the trip about what I have seen so that you can see what I get to see. I want you to be able to see all of this too, since you can't go on the trip with me :P Well see ya! (wow, my family is having a really weird conversation right now..... you don't want to know) I'll post pictures later!

Great Expectations Literary Analysis

Another boring post I know, but it's the end of the week and I don't always have time to reminiscence about things I did when I was little. So have fun reading this if you want to.

Pip lives with his sister, and her husband, Joe. Pip has always wanted to be just like Joe, but then something changes; he meets a girl named Estella. Estella isn’t very fond of Pip, but Pip is in love with Estella. Estella doesn’t like him because she thinks that he is very “common”. This causes him to have Great Expectations. Pip doesn’t want to be common anymore, he wants to be part of the highest social class that he can; he wants to be a gentleman. This is one theme of Great Expectations; society and social ranks are the basis of life.

“Miss Havisham beckoned her to come close, and took a jewel from the table, and tried its effect upon her fair bosom and against her pretty brown hair. ‘Your own, one day, my dear, and you will use it well. Let me see you play cards with this boy.’

 ‘With this boy? Why, he is a common labouring-boy!’

 I thought I overheard Miss Havisham answer - only it seemed so unlikely – ‘Well? You can break his heart.’

 ‘What do you play, boy?’ asked Estella of myself, with the greatest disdain.

 ‘Nothing but beggar my neighbor, miss.’

‘Beggar him,’ said Miss Havisham to Estella. So we sat down to cards.

 It was then I began to understand that everything in the room had stopped, like the watch and the clock, a long time ago. I noticed that Miss Havisham put down the jewel exactly on the spot from which she had taken it up. As Estella dealt the cards, I glanced at the dressing-table again, and saw that the shoe upon it, once white, now yellow, had never been worn. I glanced down at the foot from which the shoe was absent, and saw that the silk stocking on it, once white, now yellow, had been trodden ragged. Without this arrest of everything, this standing still of all the pale decayed objects, not even the withered bridal dress on the collapsed form could have looked so like grave-clothes, or the long veil so like a shroud.

So she sat, corpse-like, as we played at cards; the frillings and trimmings on her bridal dress looking like earthy paper. I knew nothing then of the discoveries that are occasionally made of bodies buried in ancient times, which fall to powder in the moment of being distinctly seen; but, I have often thought since, that she must have looked as if the admission of the natural light of day would have struck her to dust.

 ‘He calls the knaves, Jacks, this boy!’ said Estella with disdain, before our first game was out. ‘And what coarse hands he has! And what thick boots!’

 I had never thought of being ashamed of my hands before; but I began to consider them a very indifferent pair. Her contempt for me was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it.

 She won the game, and I dealt. I misdealt, as was only natural, when I knew she was lying in wait for me to do wrong; and she denounced me for a stupid, clumsy labouring-boy.” Page 62-63, Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

This passage is significant to the book because it tells you Estella’s first impression of Pip. That first impression that she made of him determined the course of the whole book. Her calling him “common” is what made him want to change; in that short amount of time he fell in love with her. If Pip had not met Estella then the book would have been completely different. Pip would not have had his Great Expectations. He would not have had a benefactor and he would not have become a gentleman.

The imagery in this passage tells you what the room looks like that Estella, Miss Havisham, and Pip are in. It describes Miss Havisham’s never worn wedding shoes and her worn wedding dress. He says “She must have looked as if the admission of the natural light of day would have struck her to dust.” This describes what Miss Havisham looks like. This shows the theme because Pip enters this huge mansion of Miss Havisham and when he gets inside it is all covered in spider webs and everything is dusty and discolored. She has a high social class but once you get inside you wouldn’t entirely believe so. Her high social status allows her to waste all of these materials at her expense.

When Pip is narrating this passage of the book I think that he is kind of in wonder and sad. He is in wonder because he is in this huge unfamiliar mansion and there are these shoes that have never been worn, that used to be white, that are now yellow, that are covered in dust. I think he is sad and shocked when Estella starts to say that he is so common. He has never thought of himself like that before and it makes him desperately want to change himself.

The theme that society and social ranks are the basis of life is displayed by this passage. Pip hears what Estella says to him and immediately wants to change his social rank. He wants to be less common. This is the first thing that really sets his whole life in motion. It is kind of what leads to his getting a benefactor, because it made him want to be better.

This first meeting at Miss Havisham’s set the pace for the whole book. It changed the way Pip looked at himself and everyone around him. It gave him his Great Expectations. Society and social rank are very important in life and Estella certainly makes it so that Pip wants to be higher in society.

The Double Helix

Hey, I know my post is late again.... The end of the term is extremely stressful and it's hard to have time to do everything. But hey! I'm posting now aren't I? Enjoy my book review on DNA 
Imagine that you are just on the verge of discovering the structure of DNA. Something that has never even been thought of before. You suggest that the structure could be a double helix; no one believes you though. This was the story for James D. Watson. Francis Crick and he worked together on the secret of DNA.
James D. Watson is going to college to get his PHD. While studying he meets Francis Crick. Together they both start working on discovering the structure of DNA. They work with Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin; during their research they come across many difficulties that slow down their discovery of the structure of DNA. In the end they come up the the double helix. It fits all of the equations and after some time it is quickly accepted, but not until they build a model. These are the main discoverers of the DNA structure.
Originally this is not a book that I would have read on my own. Seeing as I don't care all that much about DNA, and I really don't read science books. There was one problem that really bugged me in this particular book though, the grammar. His spelling is okay, but his grammar is atrocious! The other issue I had was that it was just a story. There was nothing interesting in this story, at least not to me, a 15 year old girl who usually reads mystery stories. This book was okay, it was his telling of how the structure of DNA was discovered so I guess it is not meant to be interesting, it's meant to tell how this came to be.
"It was certainly better to imagine myself becoming famous than maturing into a stifled academic who had never risked a thought." The thing I did like about this book was some of the quotes, like the one I just quoted. He went against what everyone told him to do, he even lost his funding in pursuit of this. That is something that inspires me. Going for what you believe in even when every one is against you. "A goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid." I like this quote because it is so true! In this book it says that the reason many of the other scientists who had been studying DNA for a long time didn't discover it is because they weren't open to the idea of a double helix. They thought that it was to unsteady and thought that it had to at least be a triple helix.
I would recommend this book to any one who wants to understand more about DNA, specifically and scholars, or scientists. When reading this book I learned a little about a lot of topics such as, chemistry, biology, physics, engineering, and crystallography.This book was okay, but I will NEVER read this again.

Creatures

Hey guys, sorry my post is late, blogger was having issues and wasn't letting me post it. When ever I tried to type an error popped up saying that what ever I was doing could not be completed. Then it deleted my post, so I am going a different direction with this one than I was going to. So enjoy :)

When I was little I used to play games on my dad's computer all the time. He would always have new ones when we went with him so we were always excited. There was one game that I played on my computer though that I absolutely love. Any one know what it is? Any one? No takers? Well, it was Creatures. In Creatures you get to raise your own Norns. They are these cute little dudes that can do a lot. You get to raise then and they can speak, you can name them, and more. Once you name them and teach them how to talk, if you have more than one they will talk to each other. Mine mostly tend to say: "Cody stop that" or, "Cody push gah" Gah would be the word that they use for a certain toy or machine. Over time as they grow up and explore you can unlock new tools to help you evolve your creatures. They become very independent as they get older. It is the coolest PC game that I have ever played (other than fable). It is so detailed and kind of realistic.

This is what the game looks like. That little window on top is where you choose which eggs you currently want to hatch and want to raise.

I'm not quite sure which version of the game this is from because I haven't reached this place. Basically though the layout for each game is the same.

This is a Norn. Granted, this is a more detailed picture of one than would be in the game. It still pretty much shows what they look like, cute right?

It is a kind of old game but it will always be very fun to me. I grew up playing this game and recently saw a picture of something that looked like a Norn and made me want to play this again. Believe it or not, but it is actually a fairly complicated game. You have to know how to work the interface and what each button does. Even raising your Norn is difficult. You can teach them right from wrong and if you don't... well, who knows what they will turn out like then.

This is closer to what the Norns actually look like in the game. I've never put one on a boat, but I do know that they make that face.

You can actually interact with them and make it so that they follow your cursor. Some will actually become so entranced with the cursor that they won't look away. This is what the hiding cursor button is useful for. It makes the cursor transparent so that it doesn't appear to them. This game is very entertaining. I no longer have the full version, seeing as we lost our disk. My favorite version was always Creatures 2. Check it out, it is a lot of fun :)