The Sink – Synopsis

This is a Khmer New Year inspired creative writing project.

Bob arrived in Cambodia for one of its biggest national celebration, the Khmer New Year. He saw what the city had to offer and went to its Bon Phum. On the third day, he decided to take a boat trip up to Siem Reap to spend time in Angkor Songkran. The boat is halfway there, and Bob had so far enjoyed the trip. The sight, the wind, the fish, the people, they’re just incredible. Suddenly the floor tilted left and right and before he knew it, the boat was starting to sink. Bob passed out and woke up in a strange bed. He’s somehow breathing underwater and his pair of legs are replaced by fish tails. “He’s awake,” someone called out from outside of his room.

During my KNY, I went on a free boat ride and I also read about the Sinking of MV Sewol, a South Korean ferry. That’s what inspired this story.

Poseidon?

Poseidon was the god of the Sea, earthquakes, and horses. Although he was one of the three supreme gods, he spent most of his time in his underwater palace. His power were those related to the sea including storms, earthquakes, lightning, water manipulation, etc.

The god of the Sea was the son of Cronus and Rhea, brother to Hades, Zeus, Chiron, Hera, Demeter, and Hestia. He was also the father of the famous hero Theseus and the husband of Amphitrite, the goddess of the Sea.

At birth, he was swallowed by his father Cronus, along with his other siblings, but was later freed by his brother Zeus(as an adult) to join the war against their father and the other titans.

Poseidon is always seen holding his trident in every depictions. He’s often portrayed both in painting and films(ex. Percy Jackson) as an older white-haired man with sea-green eyes(inherited from his mother Rhea). Horses are also the symbol of Poseidon because he is well known for creating them.

He was also the protector of those travel across the sea. Sailors prayed to the god of the Sea for a safe voyage, “sometimes drowning horses as a sacrifice,” according to Encyclopedia.

Poseidon was also known for his wrath and cruelty. When angered, he was said to have used his trident to create earthquakes and storms that shook the entire Earth. As an example, after returning from a decade-long Trojan War, Odysseus blinded the Cyclops Polyphemus who was Poseidon’s son. In retaliation, the god of the Sea caused a ten-year delay in his journey back to Ithaca and sent storms that caused the loss of most of his men and ships.

To conclude, Poseidon was a really powerful god that sailors and those who were affiliated with the sea prayed to. Although sometimes he can be nice, he’s often depicted as a short-tempered god who can be really cruel when being crossed as seen in Odyssey. Just like other Greek gods, Poseidon is more of a powerful immortal human rather than an infallible god.

Works Cited
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Poseidon.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 12 Feb. 2018, www.britannica.com/topic/Poseidon.
“Poseidon.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 15 Mar. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poseidon.
“Poseidon • Facts and Information on Greek God Poseidon.” Greek Gods & Goddesses, greekgodsandgoddesses.net/gods/poseidon/.

Bangkok – Robotics Trip

‘VEX Robotics Competition, teams of students are tasked with designing and building a robot to play against other teams in a game-based engineering challenge,” VEX robotics as described by VEX themselves.

This is the perfect place to compete, learn and collaborate. Students design advanced mechanisms, test crazy ideas and code complex control systems.

I’ve really learned a lot from the 125+ hours I’ve spent on this project. 

NIST Robotics – Battle in Bangkok 2018 – Qualifications and Finals Matches

PS: I am the guy with the light blue sleeve at the bottom left corner.

Sex Sells on Impulsive Products

In today’s world of advertising, it’s no secret that sex sells.

“Advertisers use sex because it can be very effective,” said Tom Reichert, professor and head of College of Information and Communications.

A study published by the University of Georgia that looked at 3,232 full-page ads for sexual content from Playboy to Time and Newsweek to Esquire from 1983 to 2003, discover that the numbers are on the rise. Although, “female models were more explicitly dressed in 2003 (49%) than 1993 (40%),” 78% of the them were sexually clothed.

“Our findings show that the increase in visual sexual imagery over the three decades of analysis is attributable to products already featuring sexual content in ads, not necessarily widespread adoption by other product categories,” Reichert said. “Specifically, alcohol, entertainment and beauty ads are responsible for much of the increase.”

The findings reveal that sex is commonly used to sell impulsive products(unplanned purchase), not so much high-risk ones, namely: “banking services, appliances and utility trucks”.

Why does sex sells?

“The lower levels of brain activity from ads employing NI(non-rational influence) images could lead to less behavioural inhibition, which could translate to less restraint when it comes to buying products depicted,” said UCLA’s Dr Ian Cook, who published the study results in the Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology and Economics. The discovery supports the theory that preferences for purchasing goods and services may be influenced by many factors, including subliminal messages within advertisements.

Researchers claim that seeing an attractive man or woman stimulates the area of the brain that makes us buy on impulse, bypassing rational thought. Four good-looking women with their backs turned showing their buttcheeks to advertise short jeans was found to have a stronger influence on us than, for example, the same short jeans hanging in a closet.

The next time you are in line at the store, be aware that advertisers put your brain on “impulse mode” and you might not actually want that bag of Doritos.

Works Cited
Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, & Economics.
Pappas, Stephanie. “Sexy Advertising On the Rise.” LiveScience, Purch, 6 June 2012, www.livescience.com/20773-sexy-advertising-increasing.html.
Reichert, Tom, and Courtney Carpenter. “An Update on Sex in Magazine Advertising: 1983 to 2003.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, vol. 81, no. 4, 2004, pp. 823–837., doi:10.1177/107769900408100407.

https://scstylecaster.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/girls-butts.jpg

IELTS Prep

It sure has been a couple of crazy weeks. Along with 4 other students, we were chosen to try out the IELTS test so the school has an idea of where the senior cohort are at. We’re spending about three hours a day using online resources, both free and paid for, to best help ourselves. To graduate, we need at least a 5.5 and I am not aiming to get anything below that.

AP Computer Science Course

Advance Placement Computer Science is a computer science course that focuses on object-oriented programming and algorithmic thinking and development using Java. This course is offered by College Board as an opportunity for high schoolers to earn credits for a college-level computer science course. Here’s a snapshot of my Lab 5 which allows the user to input two strings. The program will-then check if the characters are all valid (space, a to Z, and %). The character % will be replaced by the second string. For example, if the user input, “This is %”, and “awesome”. The program will output “This is awesome”.
 

 

The Landlady

Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected were published in 1979. We read two of these short stories as part of our Nefarious November unit. We asked each other thoughtful questions and created PACE(Paraphrase, Answer, Cite Evidence, Explain) Responses. Below is my PACE response to one of the story, “The Landlady”, about foreshadowing.

Dahl uses the device of foreshadowing in the story “The Landlady” to tease and give clues of what’s about to happen to his readers. One example from the narrative, “There were no shops on this wide street 40 that he was walking along, only a line of tall houses on each side, all them identical.” This piece of narrative hints to the reader that something is not right by talking about strange identical houses, and the fact that there were no shops along the street. Another part suggests to the readers that somehow, something suspicious is going on because she clearly knew Billy was there since, as soon as he rang the bell,  “the door swung open and” she “was standing there.” In a different part, the author uses the phrase “terribly nice” to describe the landlady. This is hinting the reader that something out of the ordinary is happening. To conclude, the device of foreshadowing is used to create anticipation thus intensifying dramatic effect.

 

Augmented Reality Workshop

What is AR?
The word augmented means having been made in greater size or value. Augmented reality is mixing the virtual world with the real world. Here’s an augmented trailer by Microsoft HoloLens.

AR Workshop
My friends and I joined a workshop hosted by an expert who introduced us to using Unity 3D to make AR application. He used Vuforia and a tutorials package to get us introduced to Unity 3D and AR application in general.

AP Statistics Preparation

AP statistics is such an interesting subject to me. To think that the so many relationships and associations in the world can be described with numbers is fascinating. I’ve learned about data analysis, outliers identifications, and even model creations to describe relationships between two variables. For example, one can collect data on the relationships between ice-cream sales and outside temperature, and create a model for it. Based on the model, we can see how strong the relationship is using correlation equation and be able to predict the number of ice-cream sales based on the outside temperature.

Physics Lab

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This is our first lab this year. My team and I need to use the provided materials to find out the coefficient of static friction between the slope and the box. We record the angle where the box starts to slide and use it to calculate the coefficients of static friction.