Reflecting upon Goals for October

Sometimes you have to aim high with the goals you want to achieve.

At the beginning of the month I posted about the goals I had hoped to accomplish this month. This post will discuss why I did not accomplish some goals while other goals were accomplished.

1. 90 percent or more mastery in Khan Academy Algebra

Although I thought it was going to be a forced grind of waiting, turns out I was able to rise from 77 percent mastery to over 90 percent mastery in a couple of days and I managed to get 100 percent just before the month ended. It helps that I'm really only doing Khan Academy math to review my math skills at every level they can offer. The next step will be completing Algebra 2, then Precalc, then Calc 1 and 2 (or AP Calc AB and BC). Somewhat off topic, it appears that Khan Academy follows the same order as AACPS does for Algebra 1, Geometry, and Algebra 2, but that may just be coincidence.

2. Complete Khan Academy Trig

The hardest part about completing this part of Khan Academy math was solving for x as there were multiple answers unlike basic one to one algebra as answers start to repeat after 2*pi radians/360 degrees. Thankfully I had everything else complete before the month began.

3. 3100 XP in Duolingo Japanese

The hardest parts about trying to accomplish this goal were the fact that I skipped some days and had to catch up and that some of the exercises I'm working on were repetitive in a poor manner. One "lesson" essentially consisted me of answering "I am a student" whether the exercise was a type the translation down, choose word and sound chunks, and other methods. Hopefully the team working on the Japanese course can improve the course in general. In the meantime, it appears that I have some grasp on Japanese grammar, including the use of particles such as wa, wo, and mo.

4. Mario Kart: Double Dash! 100cc All Cup Tour Perfect Score

I could have completed this goal if I spent less time on my computer, but this was more of a goal for having goals sake rather than anything of importance or growth. Wario Stadium so far is my biggest roadblock to getting the 160 points needed.

5. 30 day plank challenge

I actually was doing quite well on this challenge until I had to do the plank for two minutes (somewhere in the middle of the month). I tried the first day I was scheduled to plank for two minutes and I only made it 90 seconds. I conceded defeat as it was late in the day and I wouldn't be ready for another try that day. I'll try again next year.

6. 500 tiny origami swans folded
7. 250 tiny origami swans folded

These two weren't achieved simply because I chose to watch YouTube instead of listen to podcasts in my spare time. Also, I'm not as motivated to fold the tiny cranes as I've already folded one thousand of them before. Though I will still try to fold some tiny cranes and swans before year's end.

8. At least five blog posts posted this month

This was numerically a success, but there were some caveats. Two of the blog posts were basically re-writes of short stories I wrote on paper and two are related to goals for October. Only the math post and the Pusheen cross-stitch post were not thematically related. No matter, I have a more ambitious goal for November and December regarding this blog, so stay tuned! November goals will be posted tomorrow.

A Personal Non-Comprehensive Review of: Pusheen a cross-stitch kit

Pusheen loves donuts and I like cross-stitching

In recent weeks I got my hands on the Pusheen cross-stitch kit and this past week I've been spending time creating the pattern in the above photo. This post will document why I got the kit and how I feel about it and cross-stitching so far.

Why Did I get the kit?

There isn't a long story to go with this, but back when I was living in Reighard Hall at Millersville University last year, some of the freshmen Honors College students engaged in creative pursuits such as knitting and cross stitching. I was interested in trying my hand at knitting and cross-stitching but I was more interested by cross-stitching. I needed to start small so I didn't get over my head and Pusheen beckoned to me. The cute and chubby cat was reason enough to get the Pusheen cross-stitch kit as I love Pusheen.

How do I feel about the kit?

I can definitely say it makes for a solid kit for beginners of cross stitch though I do have a few comments with the specific kit I received.

The first comment is that the needles provided were definitely not blunt and felt more like the sewing needles I used to sew my Boy Scout merit badges onto my sash earlier this year, but that's okay for me as I didn't tear apart the Aida cloth provided.

The second comment is that I sometimes had a hard time untangling the individual strands of a single color of thread. The thread provided can actually be split into six thinner strands but sometimes instead of me taking a single thread and effortlessly removing it from the super-thread, it caused the super-thread to tangle and challenging to untangle.  I can definitely say that it works for the three projects though. 

So far I've only completed one of the three patterns provided by the kit and have many more hours to look forward to in cross-stitching. The booklet provided with the kit was somewhat helpful but I had to use YouTube for visual instructions on how to get started as I am a visual learner.

How do I feel about cross-stitching?

Even though I've had to reattach the thread to the needle even when I had the thread knotted in a way that discouraged slipping, I enjoyed the experience of cross stitching and have ideas of what I'd like to do next after I finish the Pusheen patterns. The first idea is re-doing the pictured Pusheen pattern but with red thread and turning the donut into a Pokéball and the second and last idea I have so far is cross-stitching stuff from Super Mario Bros 3, including a jumping Mario sprite.

Cross-stitching reminds me of picross/nonograms/griddlers and since I enjoyed filling in the picross pictures, I figured I'd enjoy cross-stitching in a similar fashion of filling in the blanks to create an image.

I'd definitely recommend getting yourself a Pusheen cross-stitch kit if you want to try your hand at cross-stitching.

Math and Me

This is a spontaneous blog post in that I didn't plan on writing about this beforehand. I know most of my friends know that I like math, but I figure I can write something mildly interesting out of it.

Math Mountain

Although my dream career is in meteorology, mathematics has been a constant presence in my life since I started school. I remember in Kindergarten the teachers pulled me aside to have me count as high as I possibly can and they had to stop me somewhere around 407 (though with that memory being about 18 years old, is not the clearest). I won't say I'm the best in math, but I've generally had an easy time learning most of it throughout elementary, middle, and early high school. My first real test of mathematical challenge was during my junior year of high school: AP Calculus AB/BC. For the first time I wasn't generally smooth sailing through a math course and struggled to grasp some of the concepts such as finding the slope of a curve at a specific point using difference quotient (finding the limit as h approaches 0 of (f(x+h) - f(x))/h, though eventually I grasped it) and Taylor and Maclaurin series. Thankfully I did well enough on the AP exam, but the ride was just beginning for my journey into math. In college, I went through another semester of Calculus, which was interesting as now I could find the integral of an object in three-space in Cartesian, cylindrical, and polar coordinates, along with having learned some theorems regarding path integrals (said theorems were relevant to my studies in meteorology). My younger self saw Calculus as the peak of mathematical knowledge, oh how wrong I was. During my college days, I learned there was more to math than plugging and chugging numbers. Courses in topics such as Abstract Algebra and Real Analysis taught me about the structures of math and why some mathematical concept works or why lower level math courses can get away with approximate methods. If I had to list my favorite math courses in college, they would be Abstract Algebra, Number Theory, Numerical Analysis, and Math Proof. Though I will have to admit to some bias with Abstract Algebra and Number Theory as they were taught by Dr. B. Ikenaga and he has a reputation as an excellent professor at Millersville. Now that I'm out of school, where will I go next in my math journey? Who knows? I may delve deeper into Abstract Algebra or give mathematical statistics another whirl or have way too much fun with matrices in Linear Algebra. I'll end this post with my opinion: If you can add, subtract, multiply, divide, and count groups of objects such as the fingers on your hand, then you can be good at math.

The Kitakyushu Ken Story

Today's blog post is actually a short story I wrote in eighth grade for Language Arts homework. I did not keep all of the short stories throughout the years, but I did keep a few. Hopefully my future writings about Susheen the cat are better than the stuff I produced ten years ago. All people in this story are fictional and any likeness to actual people is not intended. Also, please excuse any poor writing form in the story, I was in eighth grade when I wrote the story.

Kitakyushu Ken was born under the name Ken Oyama. He was born in none other than Kitakyushu (a city in northern Kyushu, thus the name of the city as Kitakyushu). His goal in life was to be a video game tester for Nintendo Headquarters in Kyoto, but his parents wanted him to be a dentist. Instead, he decided to go with his career path to Kyoto. Here is the Kitakyushu Ken Story.

In school, Ken did well in everything but human science. In human science, eh thought he was at a dental school, even though other things were mentioned (not told here, it is off topic). When his parents saw the report card that year, they stated "Ken Oyama, you will make a game about being a dentist since you don't want to be one. This will be the first part of your carrer." Ken had two choices, live and do as said, or live, run away from his parents, and change his name. He decided to live upon the second choice, thus the name Kitakyushu Ken (Ken is a common name there) and got a job at McDonalds. His parents never went to a burger joint (except for Mos-Burger), so he thought McDonalds was a safe haven, when one day, he saw his parents, he decided to hide in the restroom until closing time. He ended up getting fired and had no choice, but to travel to Kyoto and find Nintendo. Nintendo happily accepted Ken and now you might see him testing new video games (if you are lucky). He did make the dentist game, but he secretly sold it to North American markets.

If you want me to do a 2018 college graduate version of this story, let me know in the comments of this post or the comments of the link to this post on social media and thank you for reading something that I was proud of writing in 2008.

The Adventures of Susheen and Friends Part One: Meow! I'm Susheen

In 2018 I've managed to use a composition book for more creative writing including daily haiku for the year and short stories. This blog post will highlight one of the short stories I have written so far about my plush sushi eating Pusheen cat named Susheen. I apologize for the really short length, I'm not as well versed in written story telling as I am in writing reports. So far I have two parts, both are written in English and the part also written in French.

Meow!

Hello everyone my name is Susheen and I am a chubby gray tabby cat who loves to eat sushi. My hooman says I look like a cat named Pusheen, but I think he's imagining things. Anyways, my favorite sushi is the unagi eel sushi (hooman likes them too but he's smart enough to not fight me for them, though he doesn't help his case by calling me "nubby paws." Although I may seem one dimensional, my hooman knows how I am and will chronicle my various adventures.

Goals for October

First off, thank you to everybody who voted on what my next blog post should be about. Goals for October won so I'll explain my goals for this month.

1. 90 percent or more mastery in Khan Academy Algebra

Why accomplish this goal: Even though I graduated from Millersville University with a degree in Meteorology and Mathematics, I figure that going back to basics can't hurt. Though I made the goal 90 percent or more rather than full mastery as Khan Academy has a tendency to make students wait for mastery challenges, which is suitable for students learning at their grade or class level but is an inconvenience for those using it for review. Current percentage mastery for me is 77 percent.

2. Complete Khan Academy Trig

Why is it different from Khan Academy Algebra? Besides being different "courses", I only have one or two more concepts to master before I complete this part of the math sequence.

3. 3100 XP in Duolingo Japanese

Duolingo has its weaknesses and its strengths, especially with languages that primarily use character sets that are not the Roman Alphabet. I'm using to gauge how much Japanese I know from my limited knowledge. Also it was easier to make a discrete goal about Duolingo than to make a goal about how far to work in a workbook. Hopefully I'll eventually be fluent in Japanese.

4. Mario Kart: Double Dash! 100cc All Cup Tour Perfect Score

All Cup Tour is what it says on the tin, the racers go through all sixteen courses in every cup of Mario Kart. First place gets 10 points per race and I'm aiming for a perfect 160 points. It's a challenge of gaming endurance as an individual cup can be completed around 10 minutes in the 100cc class of Mario Grand Prix but the All Cup Tour takes about 40 minutes to complete in one sitting.

5. 30 day plank challenge

I've yet to complete a 30 day single exercise challenge and figured that planks would be challenging and not boring.

6. 500 tiny origami swans folded
7. 250 tiny origami cranes folded

I've fallen behind on my tiny origami goals for this year and need to catch up fast. Good thing swans are quick to fold. Cranes on the other hand not as much when they are tiny.

8. At least five blog posts posted this month

I promised that I would write more blog posts before the year ends. Also it's been a year since I started and I want to thank all the people who've read my blog so far and I hope I can keep writing somewhat engaging content for at least another year.

So those are most of my goals for the month of October, good luck to me! Also I apologize for the lack of a picture in this post, I couldn't find an appropriate photo that would relate to this post.