Oregon- what happened?

January 26, 2017January 26, 2017 Owen H

On November 19, 2016 we left for Oregon. During our trip we went to several different places in the American State known as Oregon. I’ve all ready talked about most of what we did in Oregon, so click here to see that post. This trip wasn’t technically a field trip. It was actually a field study. A field study is when you are doing most of your classes outside or just out of a classroom. Because we were nowhere near the classroom, the entire trip was a field study.

Some of what I didn’t talk about then was the Oregon advertisements that we made. We had to make three ads; one business, one tourist, and one advocating for tsunami safety. My business ad was for a Thai restaurant called Nisa’s Thai kitchen. My tourist ad was supposed to be for south beach, but since it was raining really hard on the day we were meant to go to the beach, we were then supposed to make an ad for cannon beach. Finally, my advocacy ad on tsunami safety, I chose to make sort of a grim ad, cause I’m most scared of tsunamis here in Vancouver.

I made these ads using an app called Keynote, and I took most of the photos myself. I did get some really helpful critique from my peers and parents, which helped a lot. If I could do anything different next time it would be to possibly get better photos. I think that some of these photos are a bit…iffy compared to what they could have been.

One part of the trip that I would like to bring up was the science estuary study. In this study we had to find ghost shrimp, and see if they had an infection. I just want to say that these shrimp were terrifying. Imagine a giant spider, that SWIMS. I would rather go to the moon without training than have to do this study again. My drawing is a little bit less terrifying.

Finally, the last part about our trip was that we had to make an iBook about what we did over the trip. The ‘frame’ was given to us by Mrs. Willemse, and we filled out the rest during our trip. This book included parts about thanksgiving, Black Friday, the giant rain storm on the second last day, etc (actually the last one wasn’t originally in the book, we put it in after south beach was canceled). After we made this book, we put it onto the google drive. Mine is simply called “Going coastal”

There you go! A blog post on what we did in Oregon. I had a lot of fun and would like to go back, except go back to the estuary lab. Thanks for reading!

Augustus Caesar body bio project

January 19, 2017January 26, 2017 Owen H

Augustus Caesar! He was a very powerful man in Ancient Rome and had a very impactful life on both Rome and the large area around it.

We were put into a group and had to make a “body bio” of him. A body bio is a cutout or trace of someone filled with symbols and few words. In my group was Daniel, Raina, Luca J., Maggie and Myself. We actually made two traces, one of Daniel that didn’t give us enough room on the page, and one of me that did give us enough room.

All we did to make the bio was trace myself, draw and cut out different symbols that relate to Augustus’ life, cut out the body and glue the symbols onto the body in spots that relate to the symbols and there importance to Augustus. I learned a few really cool things about Augustus that you may not know. The first thing is that he had many different names. Throughout this post I have been referring to him as Augustus Caesar, but when we were told to work on this project he was called Octavius Caesar, and that’s not even his birth name. His birth name was Gaius Octavian, and when he was adopted by his great uncle Julius Caesar, he became Gaius Julius Caesar Octavian. After that he dropped the “Octavian”part of his name, which then became his nickname! So yeah, this guy had a lot of names. He’s like the roman version of Poseidon, except that’s Neptune, so maybe not.

If I could do anything different next time, it would be to make more meaningful symbols and to make sure we have enough paper to fully trace which ever person we are tracing, or change the traced person to fit the paper.

-Heart. The heart represents the love he had for Rome and Italy.

-Bread and Fish. As he was a roman emperor, he had a lot of money, allowing him to eat a lot of good food, such as bread and fish.

-Sword. The sword represents the power that he had, and the militaries that he commanded.

Growth mindset-what is it?

January 15, 2017 Owen H

Throughout the year in our Maker class we have been working on a unit about growth mindset, and you may be wondering “what is growth mindset?”, well I’m going to tell you. Growth mindset is something one can have for just about anything; if you are willing to work on something no matter how challenging or how may times you failed, if you see failing as a chance to learn from you mistakes, if you are willing to to whatever it takes to achieve your goal, then you have a growth mindset.

Growth mindset is the opposite of a fixed mindset. If you have a fixed mindset, you are not willing to work hard or keep trying, and you need someone to tell you you can succeed. For example, if you say “I’m bad at sports and I’m never going to be good at them” you have a fixed mindset about you sports ability. But if you have a growth mindset about you sports ability, you might say ” I’m bad, but I will strive to get better and I won’t give up”.

One recent assignment we had was to make a long term goal and put it on to a selfie of ourselves. My long term goal was “By working hard and doing my best, I will complete whatever challenge I have”, and I decided to be silly and take a really cheesy selfie to put with my goal.

During this project I learned that making a long term goal can be really hard. I wanted to have a goal that was broad, specific and not strict, so I have to really think about how to word my goal and what to say with it. If I could do anything different next time I would take a different selfie and maybe make it less cheesy or just take one outside.

(I don’t own any of these photos except the last one)

Why I like tofu

January 13, 2017 Owen H

One of my favourite foods in the world is tofu. I don’t know why i like tofu so much, but i do. When my mom makes it, she usually make it with teriyaki sauce or apricot curry sauce(not spicy, obviously), and she makes enough for us to have seconds later, or for me to have for lunch the next day.

I’d say that tofu is probably in the top four of my favourite dishes to eat, along with lemon chicken, California roll sushi, and cheeseburgers. I really like it either in miso soup, or by itself with rice and sauce.

Tofurky, a tofu turkey. Something I was not expecting to see today.

RANDOM FACTS ABOUT TOFU!!!
Tofu is actually a really good source of protein because it is made out of soy beans.
To me, tofu is similar to a potato because of how many different ways tou can cook/use it. You can fry them, boil them, put them in a soup (10 points if you get that reference).

Overwatch for Christmas!

January 5, 2017January 11, 2017 Owen H

Christmas has come and gone and I got some really good things from it. One of those being Overwatch. I wanted this game for about a month, and boy has it been fun.

For those of you who are wondering “What is Overwatch?”, Overwatch is a Class-Based Team-Oriented First-Person-Shooter. It doesn’t have a story mode and the objective changes based on the map. Currently there are 4 different modes, Escort, Control, Assault and Assault/Escort.

At the beginning of the match you pick a hero to play as, and each hero is in one of four categories. These four being Offense, Defense, Tank, and Support. Offense heroes do lots of damage, defense heroes are excellent at stopping the enemies from capturing objectives, tanks soak up damage for the team, and supports will, surprise surprise, support your team by healing them or giving them more max health.

After playing for some time I have determined that my favorite hero, or my “main” is Junkrat, a defense hero that blows stuff up! His basic attack launches a grenade that will explode after a certain amount of time or after hitting an enemy. I also play Roadhog, one of the most tank-like heroes with 600 health, self heal an hook that brings enimies closer to you, and a shotgun that deals tons of damage up close. Lastly, I also play a lot of Lucio, a support hero with really good A.O.E. healing and speed boost. To put that bluntly, he just needs to exist to be helpful.

So far there are 23 different heroes to chose from with another soon to be on their way, and I want to get better at all of them, but the ones I want to get better at the most is either McCree or Soldier:76. This is because these two are in the offense category, and I’m not very good at any hero in Offense. Another reason is because these two are some what easy compared to other offense heroes, like Genji or Pharah who both need a lot of skill.

Google Year-in Review!

January 4, 2017January 11, 2017 Owen H

The Google Year-in Review was made by google to show us what the most popular search trends on google of this last year were, and after watching it I would like to point out parts that I didn’t recognize.

The first ting I didn’t recognize was the scene with the man wearing the “free hugs” shirt. This man was standing in front of a line of police men, and appears to be part of the “Free Hugs” group of people. These people go around busy areas with signs or shirts with “Free Hugs”, and they will give free hugs to anyone who wants one, for any reason.

Another thing that I didn’t recognize was the rocket landing on a platform in the ocean. I found out that this is the “SpaceX” program, and after looking into it, it seem really cool. The people behind SpaceX want to make fully reusable space rockets, to save lots of money for space travel once the rockets are built.

One thing that I found surprising was that Pokémon Go was a part of this video. Even though this was released on July 6, 2016, I would have expected to see it on the YouTube rewind video instead. This is because, to me, it feels like something that would be searched on YouTube instead of google.

If I could make a year in review about my life in 2016, it would include my graduation, the official adoption of my cousin Howie, my aunt finishing her chemo therapy, and other events like Christmas and my birthday.

My two year old cousin Howie, making me lunch. Yes, he is cutting a cabbage with a knife while frying it on a table.