The Alchemist

See page titled "Reflection" for my reflection over my sophomore year and my Genius Hour project.

I have found my favorite scene. I am not entirely sure why I like it so much, or why I found it so funny, but I am sure that I thought it was funnier than it was. The scene starts off with Miami police officer Monica running into Miami International Airport looking for other offices to help her find Snake and Eddie, who are attempting to fly to the Bahamas with a bomb capable of blowing up most of the city and killing millions. As "comedic relief" in a story with only humorous parts, we meet Daphne. Daphne, a thirteen-foot python, has caused a riot. Her owner wanted to fly with her loose on the plane, and the Delta airline personnel are telling the owner that is not allowed. As the owner is describing how well behaved Daphne is (she is still loose, wrapped around her owner), she spots two little Yorkshire terriers, Pinky and Enid, in a pet transporter on the ground. Apparently, Daphne is hungry, so she slithers on over and attempts to break into the transporter by wrapping he...

Last night, I finally started to get a real plan for my TedTalk video. I was really struggling with coming up with an intro. After watching the TedTalk examples, I knew that I wanted my intro to be funny, engaging, and show my personality. This endeavor was suprisingly difficult when trying to tie it with learning about photography. ISO, aperture, and shutter speed... Isn't that funny and doesn't it connect to your life too? I was lost, and didn't know what to do to show my personality with what I had learned. I think my midnight planning last night helped though. I finally got an idea; the light bulb was turned on! I connected baking, and how I went from basics to experimenting with recipes, and how that failed miserably with photography because of how critical the details are. When I read it to my mom, who, side note, was not very happy that this was happening at 12:30 this morning, laughed during my intro and said that it was completely me. It's humorous, sarcastic, ...

In one of my earlier posts, I wrote about how Barry goes back and forth between the perspectives of different characters. Even while doing this, there is a surprising amount of interconnected actions that affect all the characters in different ways. This cohesiveness has been easy to spot in the last couple pages I have read. The best example of this involves goats. While Snake and Eddie and their hostages are headed to MIA (Miami International Airport), they make a sharp turn and cut across multiple lanes of traffic, which cuts of many vehicles and leads to eight goats being left free to roam on the freeway. Later, as all the other characters are trying to get to MIA, they end up stuck in traffic or seeing random goats walking around the road. On page 205, Leonard and Henry are attempting to get to MIA, but are getting stuck in traffic on the freeway (because of Snake and Eddie), so they turn on the radio to see if there is any news about the jam, but there is only a conversation abo...

My excitement level is about as high as it can be for someone who has stayed up hours longer than they meant to to finish this project. Because I am not entirely sure how long it will take for my photo book to be created and shipped, I finished it up tonight to (hopefully!!) allow enough time for it to get here. I also needed to make sure I had enough time to make the TedTalk video I sadly have to make once I got it, because I want to not only discuss what I have learned in the video, but also show how I have implemented it. Back to my book... I chose to have an all black background because I thought that it made the colors pop, and there are no embellishments to take away from the details in the photo.There is a total of 36 photos, but 37 if you count my surprise photo at the end that I did not take, it was not part of my project. I even have a nice, little disclaimer to make sure that readers are not confused about that. Compared to last week, this week I got so much accomplished. I...

I planned to get a lot done with my project this week, but sadly I have not done much. Most of my research is done, so all I really need to do now is look up some things I was confused about, change my URLs to MLA citation on my notes document, and practice what I learned. I also have not taken any pictures this week, which is making me very sad. I had planned to go to the park this weekend because we have not had any heavy rain recently, but my aunt came to visit us on Saturday, and my weekend overall was busy, so I did not have time to go somewhere and take photos. Although, to make up for this, I did make my mother promise to take me to the park sometime this week. I need to have more photos to choose from for my book, but, as I said earlier, I also need to practice what I have learned about how to manipulate a camera to get the best photo. I want to try to implement some of the design techniques I wrote about last week, as well. Another thing I have not been able to get done this ...

So far, I am on page 158 of my book, which has a total of 292 pages. If there was one thing about the book that I wish was different, it would be the timing of the introduction of characters. At the beginning of the story, 2 or 3 characters would be introduced at a time. Usually this is not a problem for me understanding-wise, but when this occurred every couple pages, it got a little confusing. For example, in the first 5 pages, 5 characters are introduced. The bartender and a bearded man are introduced on page 4 (but are not named until page 10), and Snake and Eddie, two of the bad guys, are introduced on the next page. At the beginning of the book, this was not too much of a problem, but now that there are almost 20 characters who were introduced practically one after another, it is a little confusing to keep track of everyone and how they are connected to the plot. On a positive note, Barry has an interesting writing style because of the number of characters and perspectives in hi...