Honus Wagner, Unicorns, and Peter McKay

Note/Warning: The following post contains a lot of links. -AP

Source: Baseball Hall of Fame

So for those of you who didn't know it, today was Honus Wagner's Birthday. For those of you who don't know who Honus Wagner was, please drop your laptop (Please not your desktop) on your foot, and then click this link here.

The reason I bring this up is because it is trivia that came to me via twitter, and Honus Wagner was from Carnegie (Originally Chartiers [#TheCarlyntonProject for the win!]). I have somewhat of an interesting connection to Mr. Wagner. His house is across the street from one of my troop member's houses, and my grandfather used to run beer to his house when he was a kid. Just goes to show, when not looking too hard for something, you can find stuff you never know you were looking for.

Anyway, my secret sister Mikaela was texting me earlier when I was gathering my thoughts to attempt to write another post. I at that time, as almost every other Friday, was wondering what to write about. She suggested the existence of Unicorns.

Source: Wikipedia

Unicorns, for those of you in the future who are without knowledge of what a Unicorn is, are magical horses with a horn protruding from its head and, in some depictions, can fly. However, loosely defined, anything with a singular horn protruding from its head can be considered a "unicorn" however it is not what we will call a true unicorn.

My friend Alex recently discovered that he is, indeed, a unicorn. (Again, loosely defined in this case). He has this bump that appeared square in the centre of his forehead. When he had it scanned for tumors or whatever, it turned out that this was actually Just his Skull. When I approached him on the matter, he said that "I could start my own RELIGION now that I'm now a unicorn."

As to whether or not that actually happens (Its just as sketchy as Tarvusim) is to be determined. Either way, know that my blog will be the #1 source for coverage on this Modern Unicorn-Driven Religion.

So Tomorrow is Saturday. Other than being the one day in a week where I can (rarely recently) sleep in and go to WYEP, it is also the one day where I actually read a portion of the paper. I usually just read page 2 (Because Page one is SOOO Mainstream :P ) the comics, whatever seems interesting in the Local News, and this magical column that I discovered.

This column is published once a week by a Ben Avon resident named Peter McKay who writes under the title of "Homemaking". Now, this really almost never has to do with actually making homes, or decorating homes, but rather what really makes up life. He talks about the things that make up life - the little pet peeves, the relationships, the stories that we all share but never publicize.

Basically, for those of you who know who Tom Bodett (again, if you don't educate yourself, then throw a dart at something) is, Peter McKay is a Pittsburgh version of Tom Bodett. If you want to check out his more recent columns, or the sort, check him out at http://peter-mckay.com/.

Sorry no adventure stories this week, but I will go someplace soon! And I will add another Super Special Bonus Blog Thing!

Side Note: From now on I am going to have a tag for blog posts that is "Unicorns"

Super Special Bonus Blog Post Fun Time!

Do I ever use my own pics?
SOURCE: OrthodoxCarnegie.org

So yesterday I was texting my sister (No, not my real sister, but you get the idea... [maybe this is what Jay Scribble means by "Secret Sister" and "Secret Brother"]) and she invited me to church. Granted, I can go to church down the hill anytime I want, but I got invited, so I decided to come...

So this morning I woke up and walked down the hill, over a block or so, down the hill some more, and eventually made my way to Mansfield Boulevard where the church is. I walked into the church, greeted the greeters (Its a bizarre feeling to be formally 'greeted') and then got the reader(My not-real sister's father)'s permission as well as the priest's permission to serve (I'm an alter server, not a priest, or deacon, or bishop, or anything else).

It has been a long time since I have served solo with another priest; and it was, to say the least, interesting. It isn't, at least in my eyes, my "home" parish. That title goes to Slickville, and will forever be Slickville. But it was nice to be able to experience church through the customs of my geographic home parish.

On a side note, the priest was absolutely amazed I walked the five or so blocks to church.
"If your dad and brother are in Slickville, and your mom is in Butler, how did you get here?"
"Um, I walked"
"Woah. Oh, thanks for coming"

Anyway, I stayed for the Parastas, and then attended Sunday for the first time in about seven or eight years. Again, it was a tad taboo for me to go into a church basement, sit with people my age, and discuss what had just happened upstairs. I won't go into too much detail (Feel free to ask, I just am not trying to be a blogevangelist), but it was bizarre to me, or at least foreign. Slickville has an average age of about 75, making my brother and I the youngest "members" of the church (legally and canonically, we can't be members, but again, I am not going to go into detail). Our Sunday School was my mother brother and I talking in the basement of the church about the miracles of Christ, as well as what the parts of the liturgy meant, et cetera. It was very much the same in the content respect, only it wasn't two small children and their mother talking one-on-one.

We later went next door to the hall, where I talked for a while with people I hadn't seen in a while, greeted other people, and then my sister's mother gave the two of us a ride to musical practice.

I am not at liberty to discuss the specifics of the show (See it at Carlynton live April 19-22nd) but basically, we took pictures, sang a little, attempted to dance (Or rather, I attempted to dance whilst the people around me actually danced), and then went home.

Yay, this is something I actually own!

"Going home" was staying at my house for about an hour, and then descending the hill I already had walked this morning to the basement of another church for a boy scout meeting. We discussed upcoming events, and then had some team-building stuff that we went over as well as chain of command.

According to my friend, the girl scouts are a classroom-oriented organization. You are sorted by age group and have one year or so to accomplish a rank. The boy scouts is quite the opposite. You gain a rank by earning it with your own initiative (You can be in the program for six or seven years and be a tenderfoot... we don't encourage it, but you can do it). We are very much boy-led, and its kind of amazing how it all is brought together.

I finished my Sunday by texting my sister and the before-mentioned friend and coming up with a blog post idea. I decided I was going to talk about my Sunday. I texted my sister a name, and that was "Super Special Bonus Blog Post Fun Time!" And she liked it.

PS: Why is Blogger telling me Slickville is not a word... or texting?

#Hashtagging, Texting, and Explaining JayScribble

So I was watching NCIS on CBS (No, they don't pay me to say it, its just what is always on at my house for some reason...) and in the bottom left I saw during like the first two minutes of the show "#NCIS" which to anyone who is unfamiliar with the internet or Twittering (Tweeting? Tweetering?) doesn't know what this means.

Anyway, about Julyish my friend Dave introduced me to this idea of kind of "Tagging" things in facebook, twitter, etc. posts. The idea was, you place a Pound Sign (#) before whatever you wanted to tag the post with, and then people could search the tag and see how many other people had the same tag.

Here a few months ago, I find that I was only a small part of this idea, and that it's on Twitter (Yeah, I'm on twitter, feel free to follow me @AlexPopichak). I also found out that if you go to the web version of twitter, you can click on a hashtag and it'll take you to a thing where you see the Hashtag's search page. I don't think there's anything yet for #The2015Blogger. Hmm...

So on an unrelated note, I have been texting like crazy for the past few weeks. I have found that I am quite good at texting, albeit almost never in a timely manner. It helps a lot that I have a keyboard cellphone, though.

Anyway, my teacher claimed that text communication and internet communication are a step backward as far as communication goes. I have to say I disagree with that. At first we only had talking. The only way to reach someone was to think of something, then form it with your mouth, and then hope they interpret what you really mean. Then we had this thing called writing, with the same aim, only using physical characters instead of words. This made it easier to get a point across, because you didn't need to rely on the telephone (the game, not the instrument) method or be everywhere at once. Now we have texting.

In my opinion, texting is the closest thing we can get to telepathy. It combines the ideas of writing with the words coming straight from the mind. I might be going out on a limb, but I believe I have some form of a point here.

So the next best thing to telepathy or actually being in a place in person (and I hope you'll agree with me on this one) is appearing via video. Jay Scribble and his brother do this once a week.

Anyway, JayScribble did this series in his Vlogbrothers videos back in 2010 regarding the French Revolution. I enjoyed it personally (although he talks really fast) because it got all of the information in your head in a memorable way with visual aid.

So we were studying the French Revolution in class, and I asked my teacher (She prefaced class with "we're watching a video today") if she was talking about some dry half-hour video with a video sheet. She was. So I introduced her to JayScribble and his French Revolution series. I just asked her to take a look at it.

My American Cultures teacher prefaced her class the following day with "We're watching a video series today that Alex found." And then for the next half hour we covered the entire French Revolution a la John Green. At the end of the series she made the comment that she feels that she talks REALLY SLOW in comparison to JayScribble.

I find it ironic that about a month before that, he had created a World History series on a separate channel. You can check that out online at YouTube.com/CrashCourse.

Why I Enjoy College Campuses, and Broomball

So Friday I went to this ice rink to meet with some people from 262 to participate in this thing called Broomball. Broomball is kind of like ice hockey, only its not. You basically attempt to hit a ball (or three or however many Mr. Z throws out) into a net on the other side of the room. You hit it with this broomstick-like thing, oh and did I mention that you're on an ice rink with no skates, but rather either sneakers or hiking boots.

Anyway, so that was what I did on Friday from 10 til about Midnight. I originally planned to rant about this one kid who kept hitting me for no reason, but that runs along the lines of the "This is NOT a Coat" incident. For this reason, I will not be slanderous.

So on Saturday I woke up earlier than my average (ha) Saturday and took a ride to Oakland to visit the campus of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). I went there for a merit badge class and, above all, just to visit Oakland.

There's something magical and enchanting about snow in Pittsburgh. This Saturday brought a lot of snow down onto the campus with a strangely quiet and serene reception. Of course there was a little hustle and bustle about the campus naturally with college students going wherever they were going. I also saw the increasingly snow-covered "fence." Bottom line, its this random fence in the middle of the green at Carnegie Mellon that every year gets painted in the dead of night. After like 60 years or whatever of being painted, its about a foot and a half in diameter.

SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA

Anyway, this green containing the fence, as well as the CMU drama dept's posters proclaiming "Les Enfants Terribles" and "Sweeney Todd" amongst the upcoming attractions has a large drop off cliff thingy to the right of it as you pass between the drama building and the Humanities and Social Sciences building. This drop off serves some importance I assume, but bottom line, there is a building in the middle of that called "Hamershiag Hall" or whatever that has this round thing on top of it that is the sole piece of architecture that CMU is known for. See the picture to the right.

So anyway, this green is high enough and far enough behind that you can look straight out and see simultaneously this circle thingy and the University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning. This was quite beautiful with the snow falling and everything.

No, I didn't take this, but its what I was trying to illustrate.
Source: WIKIPEDIA

Here you have two universities known worldwide for their technology and medicine (CMU and Pitt, respectively) less than a mile or two away from each other.

On my way home, I tried figuring just where CMU ends and Pitt begins. In reality, they are intertwined, with buildings dotted amongst each other splattered all across Oakland. Its an interesting idea, just how two things can coexist like this.

The English Language, WYEP, and School Boards

Again I feel the need to apologize for posting a day late.

So yesterday I took two tests. The first being an American Cultures test which is semi-irrelevant to this post, and the second being an English test. It was a reading/vocab quiz (WHY VOCAB‽‽‽) on the first act of Shakespeare's Masterpiece, Romeo and Juliet which he stole, but that's irrelevant to the point here. There is always an essay to these things; some way for the teacher to pick inside your head, and call your train of thought wrong, or right.

Anyway, he wrote up on the board something along the lines of "What type of literary devices did Shakespeare use to build suspense in the first act of Romeo & Juliet?" I immediately saw room for creativity (along the lines of my before-mentioned toaster story) in citing a bunch of different things, for I would make it my mission as blogger extraordinaire to somehow make literary devices half-exciting.

He then did the predictable move, and decided to come up with a "better" questions. Predictably, he switched it to something along the lines of "Explain how Shakespeare uses dramatic irony to create suspense in the first act of Romeo and Juliet."  This, of course ties into our study of irony which, may I add, we have been studying since the first week of school. I, needless to say, was quite sad, so in answer wrote this lovely simile about how Shakespeare's suspense kind of is like standing in a line at like Kennywood or some theme park to ride this crazy roller-coaster and seeing the loops and stuff beforehand, inevitably having to ride it, as you're already in line, and asking yourself "Why did I do this again?" and the rest of the story is the actual riding of this roller coaster, and the worst part in this tragedy is the fact that you know what's coming.

Today I was at WYEP for their "Teen Center" Now known as Re(imagine) media. I was working alongside yet another gentleman who I've come to know being named, of course, Alex. We were finalizing this news-esque story about the Occupy Pittsburgh movement.

Well, thanks to technology, we aren't done yet. However, we did get together with the rest of the WYEP crew to start work on this crazy "Battle-of-the-Bands"-esque thingy yet to be named. Bottom line, the idea is to take a bunch of local teen-created bands and have them judged and chiseled down to a top 5. These top 5 will perform live and be judged, who will chisel them further into a top 1. Look for more posts on this later... We are also talking about starting a website where we'll host videos, podcasts, and various other stuffs from the Re(image) media project. I will probably be working on this website project, but once again, details will come later.

So this past Thursday I had to fill in for the guy that usually films the School Board meetings. This was incredibly convenient since I needed to attend a school board meeting anyway for a requirement for a merit badge. In the meeting, they talked about various stuff, mainly Stage Curtains, fill in front of the Carnegie Elementary building, and then they got to my favourite part - The Open Forum.

Since the Public didn't want to talk about anything, the board discussed some headlines involving textbooks coming to the evil Apple devices. It was interesting how the board wasn't overly sure what this was about; but wanted to look into trying to do this anyway. I talked afterward with a board member about my thoughts on the topic, being the student that would be on the receiving end of this. I talked to him about how I preferred actual paper textbooks for certain applications, and how it'd be beneficial for history (1984 references) class to have paper textbooks, while technology would be beneficial for certain applications like science class models and things.

He was fascinated that A) I came up to him and B) my position on this. He pulled over like two or three board members (one being the Vice president, the other being the wife of a gentleman who owns a technology company). It just goes to show that if you know how to talk to people, you're opinion can be heard.

My Past Week

It always seems that there is a "theme" or something to each week. Its as if each week is a television episode, in which you are the main character and by the end of the episode you learn something great and wonderful, or are left to fix whatever you broke in the next week.

Then again, it probably is the other way around. Episodes of television were probably modeled after a week of a lifetime; leaving the gaps to be what distinguish who we are... you know, those times that truly define you, those times when you aren't really the "main character."

I have been talking recently with my friends about writing,  and my one friend has been talking about the novel she is working on. It got me to thinking about this whole "main character" idea, and how we all kind of seem pre-occupied with our own lives.

So local news this week was reporting about this new "Facebook for the Neighborhood" thingy. I forget what it was called, but the basic premise is that you can now interact with your neighbors through this magic website. This kind of brings me back to Hank Green's video on SOPA. He talks about the internet kind of being like an infinite street, how there are bad sections of it, and fancy sections, and run down sections. The more people connected to each other, the longer this infinite street gets.

But the thing that irritates me is that THIS IS A VIRTUAL STREET, and albeit the neighborhood idea is great, but why not just knock on the doors of your real neighbors and actually talk to them. I am not condemning the internet, I just think that us internetians need to get in touch with the real world as well as this virtual paradise.

So I conducted another social experiment today. I had this little nametag thing when I went to the Science Center/Sportworks. In anticipation of seeing those "Ask Me About [Insert Product/Exhibit Here]" buttons, I decided to write on mine simply:

Interestingly enough, I was asked by the Science Center people "So tell me about the internet" and I basically said this - The Internet is like an infinite street... and I got some interesting reactions.

One gentleman proposed that we create a new internet... one that has decency and is kind of what the internet is supposed to be - Creative people collaborating and creating awesome things as a result. I was taken aback at that, but I shouldn't have had been surprised. I ran into an Eagle Scout there afterall, and so I was kind of taking whatever was going to come to me over the course of the day.

I believe that is the best way to live life. Live it in segments, and live it by taking in stride whatever happens.

The Bishop Comes to Carnegie, I go Sledding, and Some Other Stuff

I have this habit where I write some amazingly profound three-thinged title, and then get too lazy to write what the actual title was. First off, I'd like to apologize that this isn't my regular post day, but I have been busy doing stuff.

Again Stealing from another site;
Source: UOCOFUSA.ORG

So this past weekend I did a lot of "church-ing". Being the son of an Orthodox Priest kind of puts you in this alienated bubble. You see, my geographical church is in downtown Carnegie, Pa., but in reality I end up going to my appointed church in the center of the Universe Slickville, Pa. The median age in Slickville is 75ish, ergo I am the only highschooler other than my brother. But nevertheless I love it.

SO anyway, I had the chance to go to my geographical church and serve (I'm an alter server and sometimes fill-in reader) with the bishop of Greater Chicago, Bishop Daniel. He's a fascinating gentleman who, if you didn't see him in some fancy robes, you would think him just a regular 30ish gentleman.

It was, to say the absolute least, an interesting experience. I met people who apparently I knew at one point; but had sincerely forgotten. I had last been there about two years ago. It was amazing how many people had just welcomed me as if I had been there every Sunday since I knew consciously what Church was. (Depending on how this gets received, I might blog more about church, but I do not want to offend anyone.)

Anyway, backtracking, the Saturday before this visit I decided to go and sled ride at Carnegie Park. I ran into a former scouting friend Eric. He and I crossed over together, and we immediately recognized each other. Its amazing how paths are crossed and people remember who each other.

I honestly think that in order for anyone to truly appreciate what they have, they must step back and take a look at what you actually have.

Sorry I didn't post much, or about anyone in particular, but I am doing this on my own time; which between musical and WYEP and school and scouts, is QUITE hard to find.

If you want to get in contact with me (Feedback on posts?), I network socially (Tweeting is quickest, @AlexPopichak).

Speeches

STAT: This blog is fast approaching 3800 pageviews! Amazing! Thanks to everyone!

In English class over the past two days, we presented speeches about what we thought were important to us. I picked three rather cliched topics - My writings (This site, WYEP Stuff, newspaper fails), the outdoors (scouting, the summit, biking), and videography (eugh... you lost me).

I gave my (horrid) speech, and then proceeded to listen to my classmates' speeches. I learned a lot about the people whom I pass in the hallways everyday. Granted, this was a scholars class that had grown close due to the smallness of our class and our school, but still we learned of each other.

There were gamers, dancers, indie music (TALLY HALL) lovers, travelers, cheerleaders, basketball players, baseball players, card trick wizard/relgionesque dude, and there was even an actress/artist/figure skater. It occurred to me that the true meaning to high school is CERTAINLY not learning something academically, but to learn about the people and relationships and interactions with those around us. It is only when one walks 10,000 steps in one's shoes that one can begin to comprehend the complexities behind that individual (and WOW is that cliched).

Anyway, I learned things about my class that quite frankly surprised me. I was told once that you are a person who is either creative or intellectual. There is the very small few who are both. She told me that I was both, but I constantly question how creative I am (Considering I come up with ideas that have already been done) and exactly how smart I am (Umm, I still can't find theme in most written pieces... forget finding one in my own). Regardless of my personal situation, there are definitely people in my class who posses the gift of both. Take the actress/artist/figure skater for example. She is perhaps the best novel interpreter (finds crazy literary stuff I can only hope to catch on to) that I know behind, like, professional novelists (shoutout to JayScribble!) and people who read Greg's comics (No Andrew you CANT Read "Carrot"). She also can draw quite well.

The thing that I indirectly stated in my speech is the fact that I absolutely loathe English Class writing assignments. I am one of those bratty writers who want to be completely freeform. You tell me to write a third person story about a magic toaster or something, and I can do it. Tell me that I need four paragraphs, the toaster is unpersonified, and I must use at least seven vocabulary words, then you take the story and squash it.

Finally, never are we given prompts about alpacas or toasters or anything good. It all must have a tie in to what we are doing, use some mechanism of the mind control that education has been instilling into us (umm, when am I going to be given a list of completely impractical vocabulary words and need to work them into, say, a blog post?) and then it gets sent off to be judged by someone.

I digress. Bottom line, I have learned more from my fellow classmates about life and reality in the short 60 minutes of speechifying than I have doing proofs in Geometry, or finding a specific theme in a short story written hundreds of years before I was born.

Literature only becomes irrelevant when one tries to look at it from a modern perspective and try and find modern aspects to it. If you'll excuse me now I am going to memorize some literary terms revolving around literary techniques for a midterm test.

Reading - TFiOS Becoming Legit

NOTE: There will be another post not unrelated to this post coming also today.

My Jay Scribbled copy on mon laptop
avec mon website

So This past Tuesday (Question Tuesday) Jay Scribble (John Green)'s new book, the Fault in Our Stars was released. It has been asked by the author that no one reveal spoilers, ergo I won't comment on plot. I will rather comment on something else.

Prior to the production of his book, John Green decided that he would sign all 150,000 copies in the first printing. You can see the full story as a part of the Vlogbrothers series on YouTube, but the important part is the fact that the first page of each copy is signed.

John Green had the piece of paper inside of your book in his hand, and with him as a part of history. Its kind of amazing if you think of it. The author took the time to sign a piece of paper and shipped it off to become yours exclusively.

Well, I got my copy on the 25 December 2011... due to a pre release error thingy. My aunt and uncle who the year before introduced me to John Green handed me the book... I made a pact not to read it until it became legit - on January the 10th. I looked on the first six pages - Signature, Title, Copyright (2012, making it the FUTURE at the time), dedication, title again, quote, and authors note. And yes, I realize that's more than six pages, but I read NO PART of the book until the day it was released.

I finished it shortly before writing this post, after carrying this hardcover signed book with me 24/7. There was no way it was going out of my sight... minus of course the videolab this morning, but I won't get into that.

The day it became legit I brought it to my 1st period class where there was a girl who I had known to be a fan of John Green's. I showed her the book. She just looked at me. I handed her a book like any good Nerdfighter would, and let her glance through it. I then read it for the next 3 days.

And to be honest, it was a pretty good book.

This, In Turn, Kept the Professor Higher than His Students

Source: Wikipedia
PGH's Cathedral of Learning

That was what our tour guide Jamey told us in the German Room on the first floor of the Univ. Of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning.

I think the Germans get a relatively bad rep for having Hitler (HE WAS AUSTRIAN!) and, well, the Nazis. NOT ALL GERMANS Were/Are Nazis!

Anyway, last weekend I got the chance to go to the Cathedral of Learning on Pitts Campus. The Univ. of Pittsburgh has a beautiful campus (Minus the construction and hospital bustle) and some really unique buildings. The Cathedral has this grand hall on the first floor open to the public and students to study.

Anyway, surrounding this magical hall is a square-ish hallway with large brown doors with a plaque on each door and a coat of arms above the archway. Coats of arms have always fascinated me not for their intricacy or abstractness, but the fact that they are completely and utterly useless. Honestly, when am I going to use my family's coat of arms? I guess that's why I don't have one.

Anyway, when the university was building the building, they needed money to help build it. They told nationality groups (Germans, Greeks, Slovak, Russians, etc) that they would be provided with a room, but they would have to furnish and pay for everything in the room, keeping in mind that this was to
be used as a college room.

Its a unique idea that you cannot find anyplace else. Germans have the idea of a Professor above his class while the Chinese room focused on Confucius's teachings that the teacher can learn just as much as his pupils.

My favorite room by far was the English room. It was modeled after I believe the house of Parliament with more coats of arms (Including Ireland being the Unicorn) . I liked the room for three reasons - The first being that it had a brick from 10 Downing Street (PM's house), second being that its England and modeled after real England, and the third being that it is unexplainably haunted.

So if you get a chance, and you are in the area, check it out.

For the record, this post was written on the 5th, but posted on the 6th as it is Orthodox Christmas Eve. Merry Christmas to all of my fellow Orthodox friends, Christ is Born! Glorify Him!

Oh, and HAPPY 2012!

I Should Write about My Adventures

So my week has been rather busy. Christmas was amazing, but Boxing Day was a tad boring. For those of you who don't know what a Boxing Day is, its a magical day where Canadians and English are supposed to give their servants gifts for working over the holiday, while the masters either play football or (regretfully) shop. Nowadays, there aren't many masters or servants, but there are shoppers.

To anyone following BBC or a national station, you saw a report of people using mace and other various weapons to get past other shoppers in order to get after-Christmas sales. In my opinion, that's quite un-awesome of those Canadians. But what do I know, I am just a Pittsburgh Blogger! All I did was fly a Canadian Flag!

Speaking of being a Pittsburgh Blogger, on the 29th, my awesome aunt (introduced me to John Green [now known here as Jay-Scribble]) took me to her workplace - KDKA Television in Pittsburgh. She took me out to DeLuca's in the Strip beforehand for a breakfast including my Belgian Waffle that was a tad larger than my head.

Following the large waffle, she took me into Gateway Center through the back offices of KDKA into the editing suites. There I met a man named Marty, who was the KDKA master of Final Cut. Apparently what KDKA does is they record tapes, and digitize them into a form for Final Cut and then re-burn them onto tapes for the tape people to run in their master machines.

After talking to the Final Cut Wizard, we ran into the morning anchor Rick Dayton. He talked back and forth with us for a good 10-15 minutes, and then he had to prep for the Noon News. After making our way through the newsroom (running consequently into the producers, Dave Crawley, Ross Guidotti, John Shumway, the Dispatcher, and Satellite man) we took a journey into the Satellite pointy room where a kind man (his name eludes me) showed us how the tape decks work and how using this mounted iPad-looking thing, he points the Satellite receivers so they can pick up the signals live in the studio.

After that, we went into Studio B where they film the Nightly Sports Call and the mini-kitchen for PTL. Finally, we made our way into the control room (Video, as we had just met the audio dude) to watch the opening of the Noon News.

If I thought running WCHS (Morning Announcements) video feed was tough, KDKA's is impossible! They are watching 17 or so different monitors ranging from video bugs (logos in the corner) to camera angles to satellite trucks to CG stuff to the tape room. Needless to say, I was awestruck.

Big Promotion from WCHS, huh? - DavidWov

During the break, we worked our way onto the studio remote-control/teleprompter deck. There, we watched the studio from inside the actual room. During the next break, I actually made my way onto the set, about 20 feet from the anchor and Floor Operator.

After the news was over, I sat in the anchor chair as Rick Dayton recorded the ID Tags (Whats Coming up at 4, 5, etc) And once that was all over, Rick and I posed for some pictures:

Overall, it was a great day. Special thanks once again to my aunt who not only took me there, but introduced me to everyone as well as took these three pictures. Also, thanks to Rick Dayton for putting up with us two


IN THE NEXT BLOG (Scheduled, at least): I will talk about my adventure to the University of Pittsburgh's Nationality Rooms. Oh, and just a heads up: In 2012, I will work on bringing you a blog at least once every week, usually on a Friday or Saturday.

Don't Unplug Me, and the P4A

I was inspired by the lyrics to ALL CAPS's song entitled "don't unplug me" in acoustic version on Grooveshark.com. If you have no clue what that is, you should open a new tab in Explorer or Safari or whatever and type in GROOVESHARK.COM. You can stream music from its website for free, and save it into a playlist. And yes, ALL CAPS is a DFTBA (#Nerdfighters)-written artist.

I haven't posted on this blog in about two weeks. Since then I have been busy on-stage as well as lighting stages. On stage, I have been performing with CHS's Guys Ensemble group. This is perhaps my favorite group to sing with. Honestly, we are there just to have fun.

So our director shows us the drifters version of "White Christmas" in Sheet music form. We all kind of look at her like she is absolutely crazy. She calls for some sort of weird falsetto thing (check out audio from the original here: http://dft.ba/-1gL6) and then two weeks before the concert she utters the words that bring bad mojo to any guy attempting to perform on stage: YOU WILL DANCE. I am going to eventually post a video, but it didn't end great.

Project For Awesome Press Kit Logo

This past Saturday was December 17th. It was the annual PROJECT 4 AWESOME on YouTube. For those who aren't aware, the Project for Awesome is a Youtube initiative where creators of content post (instead of their regular content) videos about Charities that they either support or have taken part in.

To those who say that Youtube doesn't care, boy it does. As of 12/22/2011 at 9:36PM EST, they had raised $71,348.30 USD. This doesn't put into account the fact that DFTBA artist Alex Day is releasing his single with the proceeds going to a P4A charity, and that John Green's new Zombie Novella is going to be released for the money going to the P4A Projects.

Another post coming soon... and sorry if this one didn't make too much sense. In other news, I got a twitter. Feel free to follow me @AlexPopichak. Thanks!

Eat'n Park Blog:Christmas Commercial

Eat'n Park BlogThe Story of the Eat'n Park Christmas Star Commercial:

Visiting with the Occupiers and Education Paradigms

So for those of you who are unaware, one of my recent projects has been working with a Teen Media project at Pittsburgh's WYEP radio station. This past weekend I had the opportunity to visit the Occupy Pittsburgh movement with this group.

So along with the 13 other mediamakers (I need to come up with something better...), I took a PAT bus ride to downtown from the South Side. We walked a block or so until we reached the Occupy movement across the street from the Creche and the USX tower and were given some field recorders and groups to talk to the occupiers about who they were and what they stood for.

After wandering around the encampment around this large bulletin-board style fence around a fountain, it was quite clear that this group was angry with what was happening with America, and were willing to stay indefinitely. It kind of reminded me of a boy scout tenting excursion. So we decided to walk up to a guy and identify ourselves as media people from WYEP. He had a lot to talk about. He was a man who had taken odd jobs: moving boxes, a registered massage therapist, before joining this movement.

When asked if he thought that this movement would help any job prospects when I (or in this case, the girl asking the questions) graduate college, he laughed. He said that he wished that he could say so, but he was being a realist. He thinks that change will come out of this, but nothing immediate.

We also asked what the reactions the encampment had gotten. He said it was mainly positive. He mentioned a time (as did two other protesters) where there had been a few people about four weeks ago that had screamed "GET A JOB" out the window by passing at a high rate of speed, to suggest that they might have been drunk. Others said that they'd join, but they had to work. To be honest, some of the protesters do have jobs (See Below).

Two other protesters talked to us about their thoughts. The one man described himself as "Underemployed." They mainly shared the same views as the first man, but had an interesting perspective coming back and forth from a job (I think the one said he was laid off, but I am not sure).

Afterward, we talked about what we had seen, and who we had talked to. One of the common misconceptions that media outlets had given us was that this was a band of angry homeless people. They were people who wanted the top 1%  of Americans (the rich) to take responsibility and help those below us. They wanted solidarity which, although they have separate political views, we all kind of want.

Later during that discussion we talked about how this ties into relation with education. Education impacts all of us as teenagers, and quite frankly everyone. Alexa (coordinator) pulled up a video that I put up on my share link site thingy (or at http://dft.ba/-1bbV) which talked about how education affects GDP, the future, the economy, politics, etc.

For more info on Occupy Pittsburgh, check out http://www.occupypittsburgh.org/
For more on my adventures at WYEP, I am going to start posting those into a tag labeled "WYEP Teen Center" find it on the sidebar.

WYEP and an Eagle Project

FORWARD:No, BSA National, please don't sue me. Two things A) I'm a scout and B) FAIR USE.

So recently I attended Sam's Eagle project and helped finish off the "TEEN ROOM" at the ACFL. It kind of seems that I am almost always doing some project somewhere indirectly (or directly in this case) involving the Library. I know the exec. director there, the old exec director, the library director, and the kind lady at the front desk that just happens to know everything.

So anyway, Sam's (not my cousin, friend from school, WYEP group person, friend's cat) project is to turn this useless room into something-well, less useless. I helped put in lighting, a couch (NEW COUCH), some chairs, a bookshelf, and a cart for a Wii. Now, of course the Wii needs a television to work properly. So the library lords decide to look in storage and find this monster 39ish inch projection television. So Sam and I attempt to take this monster off of the cart and get it up a flight of stairs into the 100ish year old building. We barely made it off of the cart (this thing weighed like 200 pounds or something). It took four guys (yay, Sam's dad and Scoutmaster Extraordinaire to the rescue) going up a narrow flight of different stairs to get this back on to the original cart. Luckily, it actually worked after all of this jostling.

After that I went to WYEP's Community broadcast center to be a part of their TEEN CENTER. I took a tour of the magical building and learned how to use a professional recording studio... well, kinda. I learned how to work the various microphones and record using Adobe Audition and replay over studio speakers. I proceeded to learn how to use a field recorder and interview people using a magical device called a ZOOM.

So this is going to be a good project. I am bound to blog more here about it; as well as possibly on the Teen Centre's eventual thingamajig.

Finally, I will sound off on the creeper thing on Facebook. They call it "Top Stories", but I find it just a tad creepy. I do indeed talk to some of my friends more often than others, but I don't need those particular people's posts in my face. I'd like to find them myself, thank you.

Wireless Telegraphy, and the DROWSY CHAPERONE

So I get one of those Google Calendar notifications each week to my email address reminding me to post something to my blog every Thursday or Friday. So I sat at my dinner table today thinking... what to blog about? With nothing else fresh in my mind but songs from The Drowsy Chaperone, Coldplay songs, and Vlogbrothers quotes, I was forced to google "random google search thing". Even though it was redundant, surely enough the first result produced a URL generator that took me to Wikipedia's page on "Wireless Telegraphy." Ironically, what had inspired this search was the "random article" button on Wikipedia. I think that Google should look into that.

Anyway, Wireless Telegraphy (according to Wikipedia) is the historical term used for attempts of wireless communication before radio started becoming radio. Now I need to explain how this is relevant.

So recently I decided to audition for Carlynton's production of The Drowsy Chaperone. The play is about a man (Man In Chair) who tells a story about his favorite record from the 1920's, a fictional soundtrack to a broadway show called the Drowsy Chaperone. I got called back for a part of the show-within-the-show's butler. Almost needless to say, I didn't get the part, but it got me to thinking just how far communication has come long before I was even a thought.

Stage shows date back to the Ancient Greeks and Romans as ways to to allow playwrights to convey certain messages or to entertain. Then came along type, then movable type. Over the past 200 years we have gone from telegraphs to now reading my blog on a computer, iPad, or whatever. However, we still act in a play on a stage to entertain. We still sing and dance to entertain others.

Finally to how this is relevant. I am about to embark on an experience at WYEP where I may end up (talking like 3 or 4 years from now) landing a spot on public radio.

It just goes to show you (oh no, I used "you" in a writing piece... where's my English teacher now?) that even though society may progress, we still stick behind the mediums that get us closest to real people.

On Minecraft, and Musicals, and Daytime Television

First off, I decided to write a blog about Pop Culture. I am not 100% sure as to why, but here goes nothing.

I am not a fan of television anymore. I drew the line at NCIS never-ending reruns on USA network. I got fed up and went straight for the internet. Honestly, the internet is a television that you choose your own content (Youtube) and Channels (Also Youtube) and can interact with them. However, sometimes my parents think I am too involved with internet, and force me back into reality. Rule of thumb is that if its dark outside, I'm either on my computer, sleeping, or otherwise doing something of that nature. This leaves me to only be watching occasional daytime television.

Daytime television is really the shows that could never make it primetime, or have too involved a plot for the night dwellers. These shows are what we call "soap operas." These are the most pointless bits of professional production that I have come across so far. And there are MAGAZINES for this stuff! Not only do they assert their pointlessness after the noon news, they also have to invade the stands around where people check out with their bread and milk.

This is a Creeper ^ He says hi
(Source:thinkgeek.com)

Moving right along, one of the most happening thing on the internet and gaming world is something called "Minecraft."  Its this magical little game where one's objective is, well, whatever he/she wishes. I have taken a liking to mooching off of my friend Clay's computer and building this insanely huge railroad thingy (yeah, creative mode, I am just that awesome) that defies gravity and runs into itself and stuff. Otherwise, I don't care too much for building houses with the little blocks and whatnot. I don't particularly understand the fascination of it, but I will keep plugging along at Clay's house with the magical railroad.

I have debated at great lengths as to whether or not to actually get this game for myself. I don't have the time really.

Speaking of not having much time, I am about to audition for a musical. This brings up two things: my lack of dancing skills, and the return to a stage. I haven't been on a stage in front of a crowd performing for about three years. The second isn't much of an issue because I enjoy the stage for no apparent reason. Take for example anchoring the TV announcements when they needed a fill in on Thursday. I enjoyed it being alongside co-anchor DavidWov and Host Clay Bodnar. But back to the first issue. I am concerned that not being able to dance might play a factor in auditions. However, as my chorus director told me - You're a guy, they won't expect too much. Find a girl and have her help you.

Well, that presents a whole other problem with "finding a girl", but not one involving a musical.

Post-Blog: I believe that I have developed a style of writing here. I title a three-topic blog and add a picture of something semi-related and then write some semi-depressing note before a closing that looks semi-optimistic. You like?

Can I Write a Blog Post in 10 Minutes? Sure!

So over the past few weeks, a topic for discussion in my house has been that of the microwave. No, we aren't battling over some 1980 microwave on its last leg or whether or not to upgrade from some magic pot-bellied stove. Our arguments have been over leaving time on the microwave.

My mother likes warming up things (Coffee, Leftovers, My Food, etc). She sometimes decides that the time she put into the microwave is too long. To remedy this, she takes whatever it is out of the microwave, and eats/drinks/serves/cooks whatever on her merry wave. However, the time she usually leaves left on the microwave is about 5 seconds. She just leaves it there until I growl at the bloody machine and clear the timing on it to bring it back to whatever time it is. My question to you would be, what difference does 5 seconds make on toast or soup or coffee??

Much like Tom Bodett, I fancy myself a writer of random essays. So I'd like to (Much Like Him) call upon the great office lords at Black and Decker or Sears or whoever makes microwaves to design the next new microwave oven with a function where if you take the food out (Yay Pressure Sensors) it automatically clears the time on the microwave.

Why did I rant about this? I want to know if anyone else has this issue. Is this a good idea? Probably not. Why would the office lords listen to a high school freshman? I am not sure.

Speaking of listening to a high school freshman, I have recently been accepted into WYEP's (Pittsburgh's vversion of NPR) Teen Center. What exactly is this? Its a course on Radio Production as well as Journalism that the eventual aim is to turn high school teens into local advocates for issues.

This is an interesting project for a few reasons. 1) It gives real teens some sort of training with an aim of getting people interested in journalism and radio production 2) I might end up working as a summer job there (This is a stretch...) and/or 3) Public Radio finally can make itself relevant to people like me by simply reaching out.

To WYEP Listeners, Hello. To Microwave office lords (I like that... I think I'll use that), fix your Microwaves. To everyone else, take a look at my site :)

A Eulogy for A Man I Never Met.

So recently I logged onto my magical Blogger account (Why must they always change designs and whatnot?) and the stat thingy told me that this website has 3000 pageviews. My question is... why? Then again, I shouldn't question the logic of the internet.

SO this past weekend I was in the woods. I spent Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday morning at camp Guyasuta in Pittsburgh. It was sort of a homecoming for me because this is the same camp where I discovered what camping actually was about 7 years ago as a Cub Scout. My experience this time was quite different though in the minor fact that I was an SPL (basically Ruler Of Scout Troop) for the troop that I had just joined 4 years earlier. It was also different in the fact that it was about 20 degrees (Farenheit) overnight as we slept in tents. Please remind me not to do that again.

I emerged from the woods a different person yet again. Its something about fresh air and being a small person in large wooded areas that gives perspective as to what matters to a certain degree. At least, it kind of clears your head.

I emerged from the woods and into my parent's car and after about three or four blocks they said "Im sorry...". I didn't know what they meant until they explained that while we were at camp, Andy Rooney had died.
{Source: Wikipedia}

Rooney was hospitalized on October 25, 2011, after developing postoperative complications from an undisclosed surgery,^[40] and died on November 4, 2011, at the age of 92, almost five weeks after his last appearance on 60 Minutes

So now why does this matter? Mr. Rooney was one of the unique journalists in a dying breed. Walter Cronkite pioneered cable news, and Mr. Rooney the video editorial. In a way, I guess people like John and Hank Green owe it to Mr. Rooney for being one of the first to speak his mind and have other people actually care.

I admired him because he spoke his mind and never cared what others thought. He told it how he saw it and wasn't warped otherwise. I only learned of his existence about a year ago... It seems that every time I discover some relatively old guy that does good journalist stuff (Andy Rooney, Walter Cronkite, etc.) they either retire or die. I don't like this track record. Luckily for me though, I think Scott Pelley is locked into a contract with CBS for the next few years or so.

So thank you to those who pioneered speaking their mind. Thank you Peter Zenger for paving freedom of press and thank you Andy Rooney for being the cranky old guy at the end of 60 Minutes that everyone hated to love.

Questioned Mentality

So a while back I was wondering where I was going to try and lead my friends into for the next video project. We started with a variety show (JSVH) which demanded 4 hours realtime to film and 15 minutes of a viewer's time. Then we stopped for a while and invented a series that required little effort (The Total Randomness Series) and that kind of worked for us, but it wasn't ideal. Then we invented BBC 2 1/2 which kind of worked again, but it is a relatively repetitive format. Then I met a few creative people, and we created the idea I'd like to call "Questioned Mentality".

Screenshot from Possible QMentality Filming

This idea is modeled after our bizarre lives (Write and Film What You Know) and its ups and downs. My friend Alex (xanderqwerty123 on youtube) and Dan (MrXigbar22 on youtube) as well as Clay Bodnar (JSVH, TR series, Lapsing Reality) and David Wovchko are helping bring to life a youtube channel bent on one mission: The most random and Creative short videos all posted to one channel. Thus, we are starting this project within the next two months.

Yes, I did that just to use "thus" in a sentence. For the record, I am optimistic about this. As Isabella  once said "Negative Attitudes Lead To Negative Outcomes." Granted, she was talking about a relationship with a girl, but it still applies here.

My Questioned Mentality

Sanity is defined by what? Some say its an average of everyone else. Others say its staying out of an asylum. Others say sanity is staying out of love, some in. The issue I personally have is that sanity is almost always defined by comparing to someone else.

Do I not like other people? No, I like people... why else would I be writing to people through the internet. I just don't like how the definition of mentality depends on what others think. If I let them be their own person, who are they to call me insane? 

I am questionably mental because of three main things: the way I interact with people, the way I think, and the way I express myself. What would the world be like without Self Expression?

The name Questioned Mentality is derived from the reactions that we (Project Contributors) get when we tell someone ideas. We want the channel to make people wonder if they are sane, if we are sane, and more importantly, we want to try and redefine entertainment.

And, just to throw this in... NO the Kardashians aren't my idea of entertainment. Try Wheezywaiter or Smosh or RayWilliamJohnson or even Meekakitty on for size.

And because this is running through my head right now, check out Paradise by Coldplay from their new album Mylo Xyloto

Local Blogger Reaches Milestone

Hello everyone and welcome to POST 100! I realize that this is only the beginning, so I don't feel like reflecting too much. Over the past two years, I have met so many people, and this blog has really been a great part of my career. We [Me, as well as my readers!] got nominated in 2011 for a CBS Pittsburgh MVB award, and consequently I have met a few new people. I recently was browsing through some of the comments on this site, and found another nominee, 2 Political Junkies. They are local Bloggers, and are quite good at what they do. Either way, I'd like to thank everyone that has helped along the way.

I was watching the CBS evening news with Scott Pelley earlier tonight, and they brought up yet another story about Steve Jobs. As any of my close friends can tell you, I have and probably will always be a PC. My world revolves around Windows 7, Google Chrome, and Youtube. I don't particularly idolize Bill Gates, but I do commend his Philanthropy. However, I will attempt to have my bias leave this post.

Anyway, the story was about how Steve Jobs gave a commencement speech (So did you Pelley) and how he talked not about his successes, but his failures. In life sometimes it is one step forward, and always two steps back. Steve Jobs quoted a magazine about "Stay Hungry, or Stay Foolish" and to a certain degree, I believe that is true. We must learn from our failures to succeed, or otherwise fail in the long run. I must leave this post to design something, but I promise more failure, so in the long run we can succeed.

The News We Kinda Knew, but Never Wanted to Admit

Okay, so a while back, I was in the Pittsburgh MVB contest as a nominee. They never gave me the final numbers, but bottom line, we didn't win. So that was that. The important part was that this blog was nominated, and for that, I'd like to thank everyone involved.

I must apologize for not posting in about a month. This blog has been extremely successful and has been great to work with, I just haven't found the time to rant about happenings around the area, and other randomness.

So in September, Carnegie had its arts/heritage fest on Main Street. I had the opportunity to go on a Saturday and possibly meet up with one of my friends. So I waited for her by listening to the Battle of bands, and then helping them clean up (I never stop being a stage techie). For once, the artist (Yours Truly from Pittsburgh) actually gave me a free download of their newest EP. Thank you Yours Truly.

After that exchange with the people from the Battle of the bands, it had been an hour since I was to meet my friend, and the skies started to open up and rain.

To the friend:

I was able to find cover in the booth for the 9th PA reserves (I did a project with them restoring a monument back in May) next to the library. There, I waited out the rain, and my friend that never showed up.

This brings me to the point in a story when normally people write the moral or "Theme" to the story. However, because I am not willing to get graded by my English teacher as to how correct the moral to my own story was, I will say this: The author wants you to think about perseverance, and to ask you to relate.

The friend never showed up because of other plans. Another friend cancelled on a different event because of other plans. Other plans are not bad, but in order to truly get a grasp on priority, we need other plans.

I want to reach out to whoever wants to reach out to me. If you like my work, or what I do, please let me know. 100% of people who don't talk never start relationships or friends.

And no, I won't comment about Steve Jobs...

The end of the MVB, 9/11, and why thats important.

Okay, so I need to kill all of the links on this site telling people to vote for the 2011 MVB contest because the CONTEST IS OVER!!!! :-) Unfortunately, they won't announce the winners until 16th September 2011. I will be the first (and probably last) to tell you what ends up happening.

9/11/01 - Why We Never Forget
I need not tell anyone what happened because you can read the story here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks. I am not fully ready to prepare a statement on it, but I can share with you a link to vlogger John Green's commentary about the idea of terrorism [see the bottom]. It is horrible, however it cannot be stopped unless people, or society as a whole, can decide to kill it.

To the right is a picture I took at sunset with the American flag flying next to the spinning 9/11 flag. It is kind of like the one I shared last year, only not as symbolic, but as the fact that it is the sunset, but also the promise of a new day.

Regular posts return next week. This is post 98. Post 100 will probably be a vlog debut.

John Green's Vlog: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1cUh3GUMkA&feature=player_profilepage

Off The Internet Stuffs

Okay, so lately I have been working on a lot off the internets, and I am considering starting vlogging (yay, I've tried that all last year!) and I have also been working on the Channel. When I talk about the Channel, I mean two things. The first being WCHS AM (Morning Announcements) and Verizon Channel Local 28. I have tried my hand at designing stuff for both of these. See examples to the sides of these words.

Also, I have attempted to do some philosophical thinking. In other words, thinking great thoughts. Where has that gotten me? Well, literally nowhere. But it does occupy my time.

In completely irrelevant news, I have been watching this vlogger WheezyWaiter. He is one of the John Green clan, and has this (almost)thing called EXPLOSION WEDNESDAY! He's a fun guy, if you want to check him out.

I promise to post about the MVB Contest via a blog or vlog on September 10th (the contest ends the 9th) until then, check out something I have done recently, SUPERMAN III Lapsed!

So You Remember Tally Hall? and notes from a Football Game

So right now, I am keeping my laptop on the network so I can simultaneously burn a DVD of a band performance for Carlynton's Band Director.

Getting past that, this past Friday, I was able to attend a Carlynton Football Game. Normally this means a three hour contest where our home team loses. However, it was quite contrary to that. We won, it took four hours, and I still have to edit all of that for a highlight reel. (I should start working on that)

So, Remember Tally Hall? Anyway, Recently someone posted a video (see it off to the side) of 750 pictures played kind of like in Lapsing Reality, only better. Check it out.

Most Valuable Blogger Contest

So, there are only a few more days left in the contest, and I am hoping that if you are reading this, you'll be nice enough to vote a few more times just for now. I promise to make a vlog if I win. It won't be too exciting, but it will be something.

That'sChurch is DoublePlusGood

Okay, so a while back in the news there was this hugely popular local blog called PittGirl. She got in the news and stuff after some scandal involving the mayor, and apparently started a new blog elsewhere.

Anyway, I was looking through the other nominees in CBS Pittsburgh's MVB Contest. Anyway, this "everything else" portion has some great bloggers. Under my blog (Yay for having a 2 in the name of the blog!) I see this "That's Church" blog. I click about, and it turns out this PittGirl person is the same person as That's Church. Upon further inspection, it turns out that she also watched MONK!

Bottom line, the fact that a high school freshman (yay first day of school!) can be in the same contest with PittGirl, who has a hugely ridiculous local following... just shows the power of the internet.

DoublePlusGood is an expression as used in George Orwell's 1984 to describe something that is better than good, or excellent. Its all a part of this philosophy involving the 'Party' and some other philosophical content I wish not to bore my readers about.

This poster (at left) is a digitized version of my friend Clay Bodnar's poster for 1984. The "Doublethink" wording is in the same font as street signs (Inspired by Cherry Street [details later]). And the three party slogans "war is peace..." is in one of my new favourite fonts called "Typewriter from Hell". I love the internet.

To Read about the MVB and some other stuff click here.

Explaining the MVB, and the Beginning of a School Year.

Hello Followers and people visiting from CBSPittsburgh.com!

So this morning I get an email from CBS (as in Scott Pelley CBS and former VIACOM CBS) telling me that I am finalist for Pittsburgh's MVB (Most Valuable Blogger) contest in the category of "Everything Else".  What does this mean? It means that I am a nominee for something that I did!

Okay, so it basically means that I get to put a magic sticker on the side of my blog where you can click [or at the conveniently located sticker (look at the right!)] and vote for this blog once a day everyday until September 9th, when we see who wins this contest!

So what is the blog about? Well, its basically a conglomerate of thoughts and rants from this game we all call life. I am going to put some links at the bottom of this post for some good examples... but you can browse using the nice tags on the side.

Who am I? In short, I am a teenage web designer, boy scout, and a freelance media artist/writer. 

The Beginning of a School Year.
So now is the lovely point of the year after we inevitably change a schedule based on what we like and actually take those classes. I have already pestered with my eventual English teacher about something trivial. A new thing this year is the fact that I will be attending a bunch of football and basketball and other games filming for Carlynton's public access channel (28 locally for Verizon). This means that I get to go to the press box and stay there for the whole time, and then get my stuff PUT ON TELEVISION!!!!

Finally, freshman year means that some of the people that I have been with in gym classes, and other stuff are no longer going to be the same. Take for example lunch period.... my friends are split 1/2 and 1/2 between periods, meaning this year will be interesting....

Links To Some Good Posts (Note: The older ones are random....)

• Tally Hall, and, well, TALLY HALL!
• About John Green and Some Stuff
• Whining about Gym Class in 2009
• About Taking Over the World in 2010

Tally Hall, and, well, TALLY HALL!

So back in May, my friend Greg tells me about this band called "Tally Hall". I liked a song of theirs, and decided to learn some more. Then he tells me that they are coming to Pittsburgh in August.

Fast-forward to August, and I finally decide that I am going to go with Greg and Clay to see this band. So, a week before we see them, I decide (learning from the John Green accident) to look them up ahead of time to see what they are all about. Their harmony and style is unique, and just, well, great.

Tally Hall as seen from my vantage point... via a phone

Fast-forward to Sunday the 20th. The day we finally go to Mr. Small's Funhouse (its a theatre, not a strip club) and see Tally Hall live and in person. This is a nice little church-turned-music-theatre in scenic Millvale. I decide to update my tumblr live from the place. Heck, we were in the front row!

What you must realize is that the 'front row' of Mr. Small's is right up against a wooden barrier about four feet from the stage, extending in between the megaspeakers. So, in other words, we were right up there near tally hall.

For a sample of some of their made-of-awesome music, click the grooveshark sampler at the bottom of this post. Afterward, they signed my tour shirt... all five of them! Plus BORA, their manager. all of them were REALLY nice, and Rob Cantor (Yellow Tie) asked if I was Canadian (I was wearing my Canadia Shirt)

Listen to some Tally Hall now:

& from the album Good & Evil (I just plain Like this one)



Welcome To Tally Hall (their kinda Theme Song)

I Can't Believe I Have Never Blogged About Canada!

So I decided to reblog some random blog post from here, just to generate traffic to this site, and to show what I do in my spare time. [For the record this is for my tumblr]

In order to decide what to reblog, I plugged the word "Canada" into my sidebar search thing-a-ma-jig. Amazingly, that word has never appeared in my blog before. I don't hate you Canadians, its just that you occasionally slip my mind! So, here goes nothing (really):

Canadian Please
So recently I discovered a Canadian vlogger through watching Elmify on Youtube religiously. Anyway, he posted a music video about how basically Canadians are awesome. You should really go check it out if you get a chance, as well as my other Favourites on Youtube.

We're Going to Canada (in 2016)!!!
This past year, I talked to my friends about going to Canada just as a trip when we were all 19. The plan was to go to Toronto, and have fun in Canada. The only two issues came up with transportation. The first is a small expense called a Passport and the other being a vessel to hold eight people. So basically, a school bus, or maybe just two cars. Another idea was a subway boring straight to Toronto. How we'll surface? Heck if I know.

TRANSITION!

Finally, I am working on some new projects... but those won't be out for a while. I am going to post next about maybe Elmify, Meekakitty, Vlogbrothers, or someone else. Wanna suggest something? Comment or email me at the link under "contact webmaster" or whatever I put at the bottom.

Two Thousand Bloody Views and LapsingReality(CC)

So apparently [as far as all time views go] this website is more popular than my built-from-scratch troop site. Unfortunately, I've been working on analytics with this longer than the troop site. ENOUGH NERD TALKING!

So recently I have been focusing on television and off-the-internet projects (such as Bulletin Board Events) instead of my regular YouTube videos. However, the past two weeks have been quite the opposite.

On Saturday, my friend Clay (BBC Project, JSVH, Total Randomness) decided we should go up to the park. As always, I brought my HD camcorder. That is when the idea for LapsingReality came to us. We decided to take everyday things and speed them up.  [See Bottom Of This Post]

Finally, I filmed a collab video on August 4th. Due to things near my control, I am not posting that yet. Also in the works is a Total Randomness 4. Wow, four already.
 

Lapsing Reality:Park

Mainstreamed.

I guess the point of people being in social media, blogs, YouTube, whatever is popularity. Book authors tour around promoting their newest book so they can gain fame, money, and the surplus money that will allow them to keep touring. Pleasing the public is the twenty-first century average American dream.

People flaunt that they have X amount of followers, or friends or whatever, but why do we do this? Is it purely human nature, but is there an actual psychological reason, a purpose to this madness? For that, I guess the answer is the same as if you wanted to know why people watch Daytime Television or worship celebrities. To this, I turn to fellow Interneteur, MrXibar22 on Youtube.

He tells me that we follow celebrities because in our eyes, they are at the pinnacle of perfection, and that is what we strive to be---perfect.

But in this mess of people attempting to be popular, to be discovered, to be "Mainstreamed" if you will, there are the group of rebels.

So basically there are three types of people:

• The people wanting purely mainstreamed (Close-minded individuals who are exposed to only what society 'likes')
• The anti-mainstreamers who tolerate the pop culture (who prefer the alternative styles) 
• The Rebels who wish nothing but the underground. 

As for me, I am in between the first and second. I like what I like, and not what I don't. It'd be nice to be discovered, but its not what I am looking for. Oh, and here's something new for the sidebar:

Thoughts for a Monorail

So today we decided to go to the local pool because of the looming haze and 90 degree temps in Pittsburgh. Unfortunately, once we get there it starts thundering, so I am forced to be outside of the pool, and talk to one of my neighbors.

Together we (with my chief engineering) came up with an idea that would cut back on emissions, gas prices, and the multiple car crashes that are caused by so many cars.

Can guess what I am talking about (see title)

Okay, so the thought is to eliminate at least one lane in each direction of every major highway and replace it with a monorail line. Monorails were first used in the 1950's, and have been put on the backburner for being considered an actual mode of transportation for the same reason that Amtrak is not used so much anymore. Basically, it runs on tracks.

The question I have is that if you run a high-powered monorail system between larger cities (IE, Pittsburgh-Philly-NYC) and charge based on the length of the trip, then it should pay for itself within 10 years?

While I am thinking of this, the government wants to split spending thirty-seven different ways based on need. Well, if my thought works out the way I think it will, you'll save on DOT costs... and all you really need to maintain is track and cars. As is, some cities like Seattle have adopted monorails, and others like NYC already have subways. Standardize some stuff, and we could save the country money, and have a pretty cool way of getting around.

The pool had to close, and we never got to swim, but we did have a pretty good idea in our heads.

#TheBabyIsMakingOctopusSounds and A Little Bit Of OCD

Okay, first off, I would like to say this is post 94. For post 100 (If I can last that long) I will probably make a vlog. It will be unsuccessful, but it will be here nevertheless. It is kind of a long-running thing with me. First the journalism, then websites, then videos, and now into this mode of not really caring where things go anymore.

So, I attended my first "End Of The Year" Party. It basically was this: going to a friends house, swimming, listening to music, beating each other with plastic things, and then watching a terrible old movie. Honestly, what better do we have to do on a Thursday in June? This party was attended by all of my creative friends (DavidWov, Mistaecco, Clay!), (Minus Youtube's MrXigbar22) and we talked about a little bit of everything. That is where the "#TheBabyIsMakingOctopusSounds" tag came from. It was really a combination of two ideas: hashtagging, and naming folders.

On an almost unrelated note, I have been scrolling the YouTubes Lately with the obsessive VlogBrothering thing and I have also discovered "Elmify". She is a person from a place that is mildly entertaining. She rants about stuff in a way that is slightly boring yet entertaining at the same time. Well, I will be back eventually.
Yours,
Alex.
PS: I shouldn't sign blog posts.

Complete and Unadulterated Randomness

I have been listening more recently to a song called "Iridescent" by Linkin Park. Besides the minor fact that it is used for the Transformers Franchise, it is quite good. Hmm, to think about it, I don't know much about the Transformers Franchise to rant about it *googles, Clicks Wikipedia*.

So it turns out the Film Franchise is directed/produced/made awesome by Stephen Speilberg, and distributed by, you guessed it, Dreamworks and Paramount (VIACOM companies).

As my quick Wikipedia sums up, we can basically link everything to something else. We can all find some sort of origin, a common thread. Almost every Wikipedia article has at least one link. From my brief but extensive experience with wiki-ing (word?) that is quite easy to find a common thread, and to link from one place to another.

So recently I was able to take a ride on a bike trail literally five miles away from my house. I never knew it was there, but I soon learned that it existed, and learned the story of a railroad converted into a walk/bike trail. Every quarter mile or so, there was a bench. On a good percentage of those benches within the first four miles of trail had a plaque from an eagle project. Just going to show how everything is connected.

It seems that if we stop for thirty seconds and smell the flowers growing beside a highway, or the railroad that became a bike trail, we can learn so much more, and make our test of humanity almost studied for. I leave you with the commencement speech that new CBS anchor gave last year: