The Ones About School

I’ve resorted to making train puns. *sigh*

So, I guess I’ve given away what this post is about. TRAINS!

In class, we’re studying the Industrial Revolution. So, Mrs. Willemes decided to give us an essay on the railroads and his they affect the Industrial Revolution. Simple, right?

WRONG

We had to make a visual essay. Videos, moving images. Voice overs.

I hate the sound of my voice on tape, I sound like a nort. Is nort a word?

Oh. Not what I meant

Hey this is like the title! I shouldn’t get derailed here….

No, stop it Ruby you look and sound like an idiot.

So we did the thing!

Its up there, the big box. Watch it. Or not, this is a bunch of text, not a police officer.

Well, as you saw the beauty, I think some explination is required.

So, I was sick on the day Willemes assigned this. Not ideal, so I had to text her during the thanksgiving long weekend asking her ‘what’s this essay thing about’? Yes, I can text my teachers

So, we had to make an essay with three causes and three consequences involving the railways in he industrial revolution. Here’s draft 1:

So then we did critique. Willa told me that I needed to have a bit more information, that the typing sounds were a bit too loud, along with the music and that I actually need to include the causes. So I did!

So you saw the final product up there, I hope you enjoyed it. Pretty much it’s about how the railroads impacted the industrial revolution. It got things from A to B faster, it helped the economy and it helped bring people from different parts of Britain together.

Anyways, that pretty much concludes this blog post! It wasn’t a complete train wreck….

Okay I need to stop

I’m going to go cry into a slice of pizza

Why is there a gif for that. Help me

Read ya later,

Ruby

I’m back for another blog post. Though this one isn’t about my summer, or revolutions. No, this one is about something quite cool (not that my summer wasn’t awesome)

This is about steampunk

Now, for those of you reading this who may be confused, Steampunk is a style of literature and an actual subculture which started in the 1980’s, based off of books that involve a Victorian-Era based place with steam run machines. Quite a lot of gears and fancy metals

 

Thats an example of Steampunk outfits on some awesome people and a steampunk projector. As you can see, it’s a lot of gears and metal and Victorian based clothing. Pretty awesome.

**Side Note: A great example, if you’d like to see more of the clothing, would be the music video to The Ballad of Mona Lisa by Panic! At The Disco. Just click that link there, the lead singer wears some Steampunkish clothing. The song is also good

So, I had to dive deeper into this awesome style. Well, Willa The Fabulous gave me the idea.

Does the Steampunk style have anything to do with the Punk style?

And I did.

So, for this idea, I decided to look up the style of dress that Steampunk and punks wear. That’s when I realized something

The gothic style of clothing is very similar to the Steampunk style. So I added that in. I drew three different types of dresses. One Punk, one Steampunk, and one Gothic. And, if I do say so myself, they turned out awesome

(From left to right, Steampunk, Gothic, Punk)

The hair was an extra touch that I wanted to add in because otherwise they’d be bald. Not that bald girls aren’t awesome, but I like drawing hair.

So, I compared the similarities to these dresses

1: Corseted

As you’ll notice, all three have those weird strings going around the front. That’s called a corset, pretty much in the olden days it kept your waist small. In the Steampunk dress, you’ll notice that it actually is a typical corset. Since the Steampunk style is based around the Victorian era, World War I, that would probably be the purpose, to keep your waist looking thin, or to help fit into the dress. In the gothic dress, along with the Punk, I don’t think it’s there to keep your waist thin, but most likely just there for decoration because it does look cool

2: Boots

The boots on all three of these models are all about thigh or knee high, usually to protect the legs. But you’ll notice that the Steampunk one has heels. Heels were originally worn by men in old France to A) look fabulous, B) used by horse riders and C) worn by butchers to avoid stepping on blood. I’m assuming here that this model wasn’t a butcher, so probably wore them to seem taller.

3: Laces/Layers

All three of these models have quite short dresses, the gothic one being the longest at knee length. You’ll notice that they all have laces on their skirt, most likely for decoration. There are over the kinds of lace, all with different pattern. Lace doesn’t actually serve a purpose on the dress, but all three styles seem to use it for it to look interesting. The layers on the skirt tend to vary. It’s safe to say there is probably a few layers underneath the Steampunk dress to make it stick out like that, where as the Punk and gothic layers are all visible to make it look more appealing.

So, to answer my question, I think that yes, the Steampunk style does have to do with it the Punk style, in the clothing at least.

I hope you enjoyed this post, a third one will be coming up in the next week!

Read Ya Later

Ruby

You thought you got rid of me. Hah.

So Summer’s ending. I hate to even think about it, it makes me cringe. But it’s ending. Which means it’s time to look back on the good old summer days and cry because it’s not happening for another year. So let’s go before I regret this.

I went to Europe! Europe is that place where they say things strange and Britain left it. But my trip there was great. I went to Ireland for three days first, and then to Italy for TWO AND A HALF WEEKS. Yes. I am blessed with these wonderful opportunities. But let’s go look back on my trip and by the end I’ll be buying a ticket to live in Italy.

Day 1: We got to the airport at 11:40. We took a taxi and the driver talked about how bad Rogers cellphones are and Pokemon Go [which I am in love with]. So, nothing too bad about getting the airport early, right?

Our flight was at 2:30

Thanks mom. So we went through security [which I will always hate because I’m always scared they’ll drag me into one of those interrogation rooms and ask me questions which I don’t know the answer to] and then got to the gate. With three hours to spare. We got A&W, and the lady behind us asked what poutine was. And then I realized I’d be deprived of poutine for three weeks. I almost cried. So we got on the plane, and headed off to Dublin!

So we got there, and I counted about 20 hares in the airport fields. It was ridiculous. So Ireland is about eight hours ahead of Vancouver. I tried to sleep on the the plane, but I didn’t. So my entire family was exhausted for the entire day, as for us it was 4:00 am in Vancouver when we landed, and it was noon in Ireland. Augh. So we met my Granny Finola at the airport

And we went off to the small town of Skerries. Skerries is a half hour drive from Dublin, and is the town which my dad grew up in. It’s quite a beautiful place.

We took the first day to tour around Skerries. I had Ribena, which is only the best British drink since tea. We toured around the harbour, and had ice cream from a place called ‘Storm in a Tea Cup’. Which makes really good ice cream, by the way. We went back to my Granny’s house, had dinner, and went to bed at 6:30 out of exhaustion.

Day 2: We went into Dublin. Now, two things you need to know about the Irish. Point 1: Rule are just suggestions. The best example of this is when we went to get on one of the double decker tour buses. Really interesting and educational, I’ll tell you about it later. But so we go up to the guy who sells the tickets, and we’re all like ‘yeah four tickets. Three adults, one youth’. And the guy takes a look at my sister, and asks how old she is. ’16’ she said. The guy nodded. ‘Yeah. Now you’re fourteen, you go free now’. Ireland is great, man. Anyways, point 2: They run on Irish time.

Pretty much if you tell someone you’ll meet them at 2:00 in Ireland, they’ll get there between 2:00 and 3:00.

So, we got on one of those big tour busses

And we were off around Dublin. Our tour guide who narrated the tour was called Patty. Like he could,not get more Irish, he might as well have been eating potatoes and Guinness. We went past quite a few cool places, including a college. Nothing too fancy about it, right? Wrong. There was a funny story about it. The founder once said “over my dead body will a woman educate herself at my college”. He died, and that same year the first woman was sent to learn there. Huh.

Fun Irish Fact: St. Patrick, contrary to popular belief, didn’t drive the snakes out of Ireland. There was never any snakes in Ireland, he drove out Paganism, represented by the serpent, and brought in Christianity, the main religion in Ireland nowadays.

We went past the Guiness factory, which we didn’t go into as no one in my family drinks at all. If you’ve been living under a rock and don’t know what Guiness is, it’s pretty much the world’s strongest beer. It’s close to black in colour and is quite strong. Not that I would know

Once we were done in Dublin, after getting off the bus and enjoying the sights and all the Irish things and having ice cream for dinner [oops] we got back, and relaxed at my Granny’s place, then went to bed.

Day 3: This was the day that my Granny finally said something about the weather. Usually, it’s awful in Ireland. Raining, cloudy, cold, miserable. But the three days that we were there, it had been 25°-30°. Yeah, we hit a good spot. So on the third day was all about historic stuff. Now, when I say historic, I don’t mean 18th century buildings. I mean older than the Stonehenge and the Egyptian Pyramids

Newgrange, Ireland, EU, Planet Earth. Built around 3200 BC. It was actually a device built by the ancient people who worshipped the sun as a god.

How it works, is during the winter solstice, the sun will shine through the passage directly and hit the back wall. Our best guess as to why the peoples of old, old, old Ireland did this was because they worshipped the sun, and they feared every year that the sun gods would leave them and plunge the world into eternal darkness. This device proved that the gods would rise like the sun and not leave them in the dark. And we got to enter it. The outside looked like this

We entered through the hole on the bottom, and it was so small even I, Miss. 5ft, had to duck to fit in. It was really cool. My mum, being the typical tourist, insisted she took a photo of me sitting outside of it.

But that was cool. After that, we went to my dad’s old college! It was an all boys school, where my dad and his twin went. Yes, they got in trouble a lot. They even had a golf course! Like, what? The building itself was quite impressive,

But then you saw where the priests lived.

An actual castle. Yes, there were priests. It was a religious school, very Catholic, very strict. So my dad didn’t do well there. There was this really cool tree arch where people used to hand out in the hide form studies sometimes. So probably the best school ever [sorry Seycove!]

We had dinner at a place called ‘Stoop Your Head’ and had the best chowder ever.

Day 4:

I woke up at 12:30 at night. Thanks universe! So I was laying there, questioning life for about 2 and a half hours until my mum came in. We were supposed to leave at 4:00 am, which no one was happy about, to go to Italy. We got up, and got all packed up. We opened the door for the taxi…. And it was pouring rain. The day before we got to Ireland, it had been awful. We got there, and it was the best it had been all summer. The day we leave, the heavens opened. It was great. The flight to Pisa was only about two hours, so we got there in no time.

And we were in Italy. One hour ahead of Ireland, shaped like a boot, makes the best pizza, pasta, and leather. I was happy, to say the least. So we got off the plane, and my dad tells my family to stay, and he and I went to get the tickets to get a train down to Florence, where we were staying. No, I didn’t see the leaning tower.

So we get to the ticket stand, and my dad asks the lady which is faster, train or bus. The lady, who obviously didn’t understand two words he had said, prints out some tickets, says “you take bus” and holds her hand out for money. So we took the bus to Florence. I slept through most…. Okay all of the bus ride. I was tired!

So we get to Florence, and we call a cab. Things you should know about Italian driving: it’s terrifying. People walk in the streets, there are more people walking than driving. So being in a cab is awful. He almost mulled over three bikers and two hundred people. So we got to the hotel, and we realized something. Italy is hot! Seriously, it was 35°. So we got into the [thankfully air conditioned] hotel. The people at the front desk were great, showing us everywhere good to eat, where to go, and gave us a thing to fill out about breakfast.

We got into the room, which was also great, and unpack. Then we look at the breakfast menu. It was all normal stuff. Orange juice, bacon, eggs, coffe, fruit salad, cake. Wait a second….

Yes. One of the options was cake. So I naturally decided to have cake for breakfast. As you do in Europe. So we went out for lunch, and had it at a nice panini place

For first Italian food, and it was great. It was giant, but great. We went onto the Ponte Vecchio, which sells a bunch of jewlery and watches and stuff. My dad said “be natural” and tried to take a photo of me. Well… I’m not a natural human being.

But if you can see at the top of the phot, there’s what looks like a tunnel. That’s where all the aristocrats walked so they wouldn’t get muddled up with the peasants down below. Italians were petty, wow.

So then we went to the Piazza Signoria. It was really beautiful, with quite a few statues and a large clock tower.

So inside of there, we got Firenze Cards. Pretty much, this allowed us to skip the lines in every museum, art gallery, anything touristy in Florence. I know, awesome. So we got into this place, but we didn’t get to see much, as there was a choir performance on. My mum and sister stayed for that, where as my dad, my Granny and I went back to the hotel for a bit. We went out to dinner, and I got a new iPad case!

Day 5: Our breakfast came:

Yum

We met up with my cousins, Amy and Aoife [pronounced Ee-fah] and my Aunt Aisling [pronounced Ash-ling] and Uncle David [you should be able to pronounce this I hope]. We went into the Uffizi Gallery, which had really impressive works of art

We also went to the Duomo. This was an issue. So we got in the long line up… And we weren’t aloud in. No shoulders showing, and nothing above the knees. We did get in, after buying scarves. It was worth it to get it. Though I didn’t take any pictures, as my dad had his phone and he waited outside with my sister, who didn’t want to go in.

We had dinner at a pizza place, and took this wonderful photo without my knowing

This is why you tell me when photos are happening. |:/

Then we had ice cream. Italian ice cream is the best, I can promise you. Though, we went to a really expensive ice cream place on accident. 9 euro for one ice cream. And there were seven of us having ice cream. You can imagine how much that cost. I’m not doing the math, use a calculator.

Day 6: We went to more chapels, which I didn’t take pictures of.

Yes. Leave it to Ruby to go to Italy and not take pictures. So any evidence that this day happened was lost. But we went to a few more churches, including a mosque, which was really cool. This was also our last day in Florence, which was sad. But we got this wonderful view of the Ponte Vecchio

Day 7: We had to say goodbye to Florence. 🙁

But, we rented a car, and drove down to the small town of Bucine [Boo-chee-nee]. We had coffee, and I discovered my love of lattes. We were one of the first people at the wonderful house, which had a giant pool. Then it started

The Week of Family

This entire week just sort of melted together. In total, our house [rather castle] had 20 people in it.

 

Thought the Week of Family we had a lot of time in the pool

 

We went on a ‘scenic adventure’. Also known as my dad seeing some sort of castle in the distance and trying to drive to it. We got to a small town… And took a picture in someone’s backyard.

It was a nice yard, to be fair.

On I think it was the second day, we found a bat on the ground! My cousin Orla insisted on keeping it alive. For size reference, the piece of fruit was maybe an inch and a half long

And…. I died my hair!

We also recreated a photo from thirteen years ago! It was really fun to see how everyone had changed

So, after a well of lounging around by the pool, it was time to move on. See you again in four years, family! 👋🏼

Day whatever number we’re on now: We left for Sorrento. No, not the car. The place in Italy, home of limoncello and black pasta. It was great! The first day we roamed around the shops mainly, and had a pizza dinner in a semi-fancy restaurant, wearing shorts and tee shirts. Let’s play find the tourists.

Day after the last one: We went on a boat cruise! It was really fun, seeing as I love being on boats. The boat itself was nice

And the driver was a fun guy. We went swimming twice, and my parents got dunked underneath this water fall that was supposed to bring good luck.

We stopped off in Positano, which was super hot. But we saw a chrurch with a set of stairs out of the Godfather

We got back on the boat, went swimming again, and then stopped off on the Amalfi Coast. It’s a beautiful place, really. We went into a shop that sold homemade paper, which was interesting

Then we went home

Day before the last day: This was probably the highlight of Sorrento for me. We went to Pompeii. For those of you know don’t know, Pompeii is a Roman city that was covered after a volcano exploded and killed everyone. Fun fact: the volcano let out no lava. What happened was the city was covered in gas which asphyxiated them all, and then they were covered in volcanic ask which solidified over time. A bit like Atlantis but on land. At-land-is…

Yeah that was bad. But we went there, and it was SO HOT. But it was interesting to learn about it. We actually got to see one of the bodies

The Last Day: We left our hotel 🙁 and went to Rome. It was a long ride, about three hours, but we passed the time

So we got to some, and got on one of the tours busses. We toured, it was fun, and we got off and had ice cream. By then it was about 4 pm already. We say Vatican City, though we couldn’t get inside because we didn’t have the proper wear. We had dinner, and took the train back to our hotel for a nice sleep before getting up at 6:00am to leave

And that was my trip! I think that’s one of the longest blog posts I’ve ever written…. Wow. But I hoped you enjoyed, if you made it this far. And, I look forward to writing to y’all this year!

Read Ya Later

Ruby

Blue Sky Projects. Pretty much, a project where you can do and make anything you want.

I was so excited to do this one. I had sticky notes all over my wall for ideas, and billions more in my head. Maybe something around Harry Potter? Maybe a stop motion? Maybe both! I was so pumped. And then…. The news came.

It had to be around a problem. My world crumbled. There went literally ALL OF MY IDEAS! I had to think of something completly new!

So I started to think of problems. I handed in my first one, which was about making a video about stereotypes. That was denied because it was a research project, not a design project. Denied

Then I decided to do a video explaining Tae Kwon Do. But that already existed. Denied.

Maybe a DIY SnapBack tutorial? Nope, not a big enough problem. Denied.

Come on, there has to be something. A video explaining how maybe some science fiction could be real? Making an iPad case? A quiz app? A new type of pop? NOTHING WORKED!

And then, it came to me. A nozzle to put on milk jugs to stop people drinking out of the carton. I was a genius! IT WAS FINALLY APPROVED!

But, here’s the downside. I had TWO WEEKS to pull it together! So, myself, being the procrastination queen, did the entire thing the night before. Okay, not the entire thing. But I made the video the night before.

That’s my project. It’s a nozzle made out of plastic and a bite valve [from a camel pac] which keeps milk fresh and you can drink out of the jug without getting a cup or being unhygienic. I really enjoyed doing this, and I look forward to next year, where we’ll be doing HARRY POTTER THEME

Well, that’s all folks!

Read ya later,

Ruby

iBooks. You’ve probably read one at one point or another, unless you live under a rock

But they are really cool. And, as you know from My last post, we’re doing a unit on relegions. To refresh, we’ve been studying them, and we’ve been put in groups to study two relegions. A Western [which should be Eastern] Religion, and a New World Relegion. So, I was [stuck] partnered with Adam and Calum. We studied Confucianism and LDS, and I found out a lot about it.

Then we had to make an iBook on relegions as a class

Yeah. My world exploded. How do you even make an iBook? What? What!

Awkward Wat lady appeared. Anyways, we had to write an iBook. The first thing was all about roles. Who would do what, because we couldn’t all work on one thing at once.

There were writers, who wrote the physical text, videographers who worked on the videos to go in, the poets who worked on the poetry to go in the book, the illustrators who worked on all the drawings and edits, the widgeters who made the widgets, and the graphic designers who pulled the entire book together.

I personally was an illustrator. Along with Ryan Dent and James Seed. We did some pretty damn good drawings. Dent and Seed worked more on the main drawings, where as I made the pages. But I did this pretty damn good drawing:

Yeah, I’m proud of that. We did many illustrations, and I made pages. It was good. I don’t have many complaints for this one, besides Seed taking an entire class to draw one, non detailed drawing. We was probably gaming. But yeah!

That really all for this post

Read Ya Later,

Ruby

The Renaissanse, meaning rebirth. That’s our newest unit. It’s actually quite entertaining. For history, that is. The main, driving question for this unit was “How did the Renaissance affect our western worldview?”. We had to answer this in a visual, and a paragraph explaining said visual. But first, we had to research a Thinker, an Artist, and a Scientist or Mathematian. So, I chose:

Lovato Lovati. Mainly because his name sounds like Demi Lovato. But he did some cool things. He invented the barometer. Pretty cool.

Torricelli. Okay this guy also has a cool name. It sounds like some sort of pasta, which is cool. He was a scientist, and invented Torricelli’s law. It’s long and complicated, so I won’t explain it.

Raphael. The artist, not the ninja turtle. He painted some cool things, nothing about turtles, I found to my dissapointment.

So, once we had researched those guys, we had to answer the big question. I made a poster explaining how the Renaissanse influence our western worldview. It looks like this:

Lets do a quick run down of this. So pretty much it’s someone embracing all of the three major things that came out of the Renaissance. Thinkers, Artists and Scientists. But, that’s not all. If you look in the background, you’ll notice that the triangles go from grey to blue, showing that the Renaissanse really brightened up our worldview.

That was a lot of symbolism. And seriousness. I don’t like it.

Aaand the gif isn’t loading. Great. Well, as always…

Read ya later

Ruby

So, this is a two-part post! Yay. The unit that we’ve just come to finish is about…… *drum roll* quilts.

I know what you’re thinking. “What?  What kind of unit would have to do with quilts?” Well, surprisingly, it’s a Mythology unit.

Here’s the thing. In the olden days, before they had books (I don’t know how they lived through boredom) there were drawings to tell stories. Some were more literal, for example:

 

See, is clearly Obama showing stuff about hope. But, this unit wasn’t about that. Our quilts are telling a story. See, we had to make an entire civilization. We is my group. There’s Sofia:

Robbie:

(I don’t know why this is upside down)

And William:

We made a civilization called the Yurekians. They’re an underground civilization .I could either spend hours typing it out, or just show you the Who What Where When Why:

 

So yeah.  It’s pretty much about these two kids, Isosceles and Yureka, who go to the underground the find Isosceles’ phone, and get lost. There’s a giant earthquake, and Isosceles, Yureka, and some people who went looking for them get trapped undergoing. They slowly go insane and start a civilisation. But if you want a small summary, here’s what out squares look like, here’s the graph of that:

 

To get a more thorough look, you’re gonna need to look at part two.

But I really liked the project. It was fun thinking up out own myths, and learning about Roman and Greek myths. And learning how to sew was fun, besides the fact that Quinn stabbed me in the thigh with a needle

So, see ya in part two!

Read ya later, alligator

Ruby

 

This post is about a reflection on our latest unit, on advertising. It was a fun unit, and we learnt how companies scam you into buying their products…. That sounded better in my head.

Anyways, at the end of the unit, we got to make three advertisements. Back story here: we went on a trip to Oregon for a week. Three things I learnt: US money is confusing (Obama, colour code your money). Americans have giant portions. It’s ridiculous. And third, apparently we have an accent? What does a Canadian accent sound like? I’m getting off topic

So, we had to make three advertiments based on our trip to Oregon. One ad about a natural landscape, one on a business, and one about advocacy. I tell you know, making three ads that look professional are hard. So, my first ad was on the world smallest harbour, Depoe Bay. First, we made drafts and then went to the final copy.

First draft.

Cringe. I don’t know why I thought this was good. I got totally roasted by Mrs. Willemes on this. So I totally re-did it multiple times and

Yeah. Not any better. I mean, I bit, but not very. So I completely re-did it once more for my good copy, so….

This one is my favourite if the three, hence the fact that it’s my final copy. The photos are really pretty, if I do say so myself.

Next was the business ad. This first copy…… No. Just, no

Now, I only changed one thing about the ad in the next version each draft. See if you can spot it

So, apparentally it’s flip’ good. Because it doesn’t deserve to be Flip’n. But it does actually have good food, despite the smell….. So I improved this

Yeah. So Flip’n chick’n is a good place, I really advise going there. Not only do they have buffalo wings, but also do shaved ice and deep fried pickles.

Then there was the advocacy ad. I chose to talk a it’s catch and release. Pretty much its if you’re fishing for sport, release what you catch because otherwise you’re a level 10 butt. So, I made an ad about it. Side Note: it was originally blue, then I changed it to yellow, but I lost the blue version. 🙁

 

So this is my ad. Originally the red text was an accident, but my friend told me it was good, so yeah.

I really liked the advertising unit. It was cool to know the different techniques used for advertising.

Read ya later alligator,

Ruby

First blog post! Yay!

Okay, blog posts aren’t that exciting, but still. So, today we found out we’re going to do an entire unit on Star Wars! And first thing we did: do a quiz to see which character we were. And I got….

What.

What.

What.

What.

Okay, let’s break this down for my reactions.

“Tortured and disconnected from human affection“. Okay, so a lot of the time I say I don’t care, and most of the time I don’t, but it’s not that I don’t have affectation! And tortured? No way!

“You are the Empire’s most feared villain” Nope. Yes, I try to be intimidating, as being 4’8″ isn’t the most scary thing in the world, but I am not feared. Maybe by a few people, but not the Empire.

“The galaxy has been cruel to you, so you have little remorse about turning to the dark side” Back up the giant truck. The Galaxy has done nothing to me! I am a sweet innocent little child! Okay, so I might be a bit pissed off from time to time, but that doesn’t mean life is cruel! And Dark Side? Hahahahahhaha no.

“Those who doubt your power will do so at their own peril” No! I mean, if anyone doubts that I’m strong I might punch their arm…. Okay so maybe a bit.

So I guess I might be a bit like Darth Vader. But that doesn’t mean that I am evil.

Read Ya Later Alligators,

Ruby