Slimming Down Posts

I've started going through some of my earliest posts.
It's pretty funny reading some of the earliest stuff that went on on the blog. ^-^ Back when other people posted regularly.
Staaaaare
O__O
O___O

^-^'
So, I've deleted a few posts already.
Mainly just stupid ones of me trying to figure out why my computer wouldn't post pictures to the blog. I tried not to delete posts by anyone else (though I did delete a few of Ellen trying to help me figure out all the picture stuff. Sorry, Ellen).
I'll continue looking through some older posts, but I probably won't get rid of too many more.
Though some day, I might go through a hyper delete. I'll see.

Clearing Out

Something I've been thinking about for a long time, but haven't done anything about yet.
I really want to go back and delete a bunch of my old posts. A lot of them area really lame and pointless.
Maybe I should go back and delete just a few right now. Once I get started, I'm more likely to continue.

I finished re-writing my statement for the grad program. I put it off for a long time. --_--
I should probably take it to school to have someone look at it though. I'm not sure what sort of stuff schools look for in these statements.

A Brief Reprieve, and Curses

So, finished the big test yesterday. I spent the entire day beforehand studying, and several evenings before that to boot. I actually have a couple of the scores already, but I have no idea what they mean. XP they sound good though, I hope.
I'm taking a class this semester, which will make the grad program easier once accepted (and I better get accepted, considering how much money I'm spending to take the class and that stupid test. >:l ).
And I really should be working on my statement for the application... but I think I'll slack off tonight and try to finish this chapter of my fanfic.

Oh, and after months of no ideas, I finally discovered some exclamations and curse words that I can use for my stories. I guess being in band, surrounded by music, helped me think of them? (Probably not, but it sounds nice). Now that I've got the hang of it, I can probably think of some more too. It helped reading descriptions about the explanations used in the Pern series. I checked out the guide to Pern from the library. I like books that explain how fantasy/scifi worlds work. I have a few of them. They're excellent reference and source for ideas. And they help you see what holes need to be filled.
Tomorrow is the first day of the creative writing class that I took last semester. The second semester works different from the first. I'll actually be able to focus on parts of my story to submit. Hope to get some helpful feedback.

Energy Plot 6: Bringing it all Together

After all that rambling about the different types of energy and their pros and cons, I'll start tying everything together in ways that can relate to stories.

With all of the energies I've discussed, none of them is the "right answer." The only reasonable way we can power our planet is to use a blend of all of these different energies. Though fossil fuels won't always be available.
And with a blend of energies, we use far too much energy in our modern lifestyles. If developing countries start using as much energy as more developed countries use, there may be no sustainable way to power the planet.

The future is a great place to play around with energy. Even if you're on a different planet or dimension, you should have an idea of where that energy comes from.
In one of my creative writing classes, someone wrote a future story, in which food and supplies of every kind were very scarce. But they had more than enough energy to go around. I asked about this, but the author had no answer. He hadn't really thought about it.
If you're far enough in the future with enough people, there's not going to be any fossil fuels left. Your people will have had to find a more lasting way to power their homes, and get from place to place.
There's a lot of power centered around energy companies. Fossil fuel industries have amazing power and influence on the government, and will do their best to destroy competing industries, like renewable energy. There's plenty of ways you could make use of that if you're writing about government.
There may be an energy shift going on. Some of the first cars were run on renewable energies, until fossil fuels convinced them to switch over to oil. Or maybe people are trying to switch back to renewables, like so many are today.
You can also set your story in a world that no longer has easy access to energy. Maybe only the top people can use energy, while most everyone else is left without? The Nausicaa manga uses this some, with most of the technology knowledge lost, and no real way to replicate it anymore.
What happens if the major source of energy for your people suddenly vanishes? No cars, lights, medical equipment, TV, anything. That would be bad.

And you can go with a totally fun and different route. Look at Monsters Inc.

Who's used energy plots?
Monster Inc

Studying... Again

So, in order to even apply for the elusive grad program, I have to take a big expensive test next week.
Which means I have to study.
Sigh.
It seems to be mostly math and English. But I haven't taken a math class in a long time. Gotta brush up on algebra. At least algebra was easy for me. Unlike pre-calc.
Siiigh. But if I'm studying, I can't write. --_-- I'm at a good part too.
Stupid expensive tests.
Hopeflly it will be one of those pushover tests. Hopefully.

But today Dad and I got back from a brief trip to the Sierras. Yesterday morning we saw wild horses. And like many of our other encounters with mustangs, it was pretty spectacular.
Wow. This morning I was climbing all over the granite boulders up in the Sierras. And now I'm studying for a pointless test and lobbying for letters of recommendation.

Thank you for visiting this post in which I whine about school.

Wanna Go Back

I want to go back to Japan.
Especially Nagasaki. For several reasons. It's not one of the huge tourist areas. And Ellen's apartment was in a great place - between the river and the beautiful mountain. And that great shopping street was right next to her building. And Iojima Island was soooo pretty. I want to go back and look for more beach glass. At a seashell store near here, they were selling unusually colored pieces of beach glass for really expensive. I should show them my collection of Japan beach glass. XD
And I miss how easy it is to get places in Japan. Japan's public transportation is sooo great.

So, I thought I'd discuss some of the unusual little things I noticed about Japan.
Just for fun. ^-^
Ellen, can you do one of these too? Since I'm sure you know dozens more little "oddities" about living in Japan.

The first day in Kyoto, I was walking around in a tank top. And I suddenly noticed that I saw NO bare shoulders anywhere. So I started looking around, seeing if anyone else was sleeveless. Then I saw someone without sleeves and went "Aha!" But it turned out that that person was a foreigner too. So, yeah. Apparently in Japan, people don't go sleeveless. Which I find odd, for a few reasons. First of all, it can be crazy hot there. And also, some anime girls are pretty scantily dressed... So cartoon girls can walk around in bikini tops and stuff, but real people don't even have bare shoulders.
Lots of cats. Wild cats, wandering around. Apparently people feed them all the time. Still, it seems like they should have some sort of spay+neuter program. All those cats are probably pretty bad for the songbirds. Most of the cats wouldn't let you get too close. But one guy with a bad eye wanted to snuggle for a while.
The wild animals were all pretty tame. Birds would just stand there as you walked up to them. Even bugs seemed pretty calm. I guess people in Japan don't chase wild animals or anything.
Oh, and they have these interesting cafés, that kind of work like vending machines. There's a little machine out front, and you pay and push the button of the meal you want. A little ticket comes out, so you hand it to the people in the café, and they give you your food.
And whenever you went to a place that sold noodles, you heard slurping. Slurping is polite. It's supposed to help you taste the noodles better. I tried to slurp. But I never did slurp as loudly as the people around me.
I started getting a little hand cramp after using chopsticks so often. >-< I've used chopsticks many times, but never as often all at once.

A Long Siiiiigh

Get home in the evening and think I have a few hours to work on my story.
Only to realize that I really have to start working on my grad program application...
So, goodbye, free time for writing. TT^TT
Somehow the website for applying here seems really unorganized compared to the other one I tried out for. Everything you need to know is scattered all over several different, unconnected pages...
Maybe I'll stop soon and try to get in at least an hour of writing.

Energy Plot 5 - Hydro, Biofuel, Hydrogen, and Geothermal

I should probably try to wrap up all these energy summaries.
Let's see if I can plow through them all.

Hydro
There are many different ways to use hydro power. Tidal and wave power aren't as well known. It involves setting up generators to harness the motion of the water - either by the rushing of the waves, or capturing water at high tide and releasing it. If these are designed and placed well, they can be a pretty good, clean, and safe source of energy. If they're designed badly, they could hurt or kill sea life and damage habitat.
Dams are the more common method - blocking up a huge river and letting water run through the generators to create power. It's a pretty clean method of generating energy, and it also provides a nice big reservoir for drinking water and recreation. Dams can also provide flood control for areas downstream. Plus, once the dam is built, it pretty much runs itself. So it's great for developing countries, if someone helps with the initial building costs.
But they have a lot of downsides.
They block fish from migrating upstream. They can build "fish ladders" to help fish get around them, but these aren't very successful. Dams are one of the many reasons the salmon populations are so horribly low right now - it prevents them from getting to their spawning grounds.
Dams don't last forever. Older dams are better off taken down than kept up. Eventually time will weaken them, and increase the risk of that dam breaking. Which would be a disaster for anyone downstream. And another problem that builds up over time is silt. Sediment washed downstream and builds up against the dam. All that silt is actually what creates many of the beautiful beaches along the coast. When that silt is trapped behind dams, it can't get to the oceans which means that beaches start to get swallowed up by the ocean.
And dams require a lot of space. All of that forest behind the dam will get flooded out. This can destroy some pretty beautiful habitat - like the Hetch Hetchy valley, which is described as being like a second Yoseimte. Any people that lived in that area will be forced to move. The Three Gorges Dam in China displaced thousands of people. Those people didn't want to move, but that's just too bad for them.
Here's another strange thing you can do with hydro power. If there's a solar plant nearby, you have a lot of energy during the day, but none at night. So you can use solar energy to pump water UPHILL into a reservoir. And then when night comes, you can let that water run back down hill again to produce energy at night.

Biofuel
Biofuel is basically just burning organic material to get energy.
So, that's great. Burn up some of our garbage so we don't have giant landfills all over the place. But not all garbage should be burned. Some things when burned release really nasty stuff into the air. Like plastic. Plastic's not good to burn.
You can also use ethanol and other refined fuels, which can be used in cars and such. It's a heck of a lot cleaner than burning fossil fuels. But it still does produce air pollution, and it doesn't hold nearly as much energy as fossil fuels.
Unfortunately a lot of the time, plants that are grown for fuel are not grown in an environmentally friendly way. I'll do a post about agriculture later on, but let's just say this for now. Burning corn fuel is cleaner than burning oil. But if the corn is grown at a farm that uses a lot of pesticides, fertilizer, heavy machinery, etc, all of the energy and resources that made the ethanol will be more destructive to the environment than if you just burned oil.


Hydrogen
There's a lot of hype about how hydrogen could the the "energy of the future."
So I'll just come right out and say it.
As of now (and as far as I can see) it takes more energy to create a hydrogen energy source than that energy source will actually provide.
But hydrogen produces only water as waste. So, if you use solar or something to create hydrogen batteries, that could be an efficient way ro run a car or something. But only if you use a renewable, clean energy to create those batteries.

Geothermal
Pretty much the only energy that doesn't come from the sun. You build a plant and use the heat from underground to generate power.
This is a pretty good source, but it's only available in certain areas.
The plants do take up land, but that's true with any kind of plant.

Ok, now that I got all this stuff out of the way, I'll discuss how it can be used for stories.

Price of Learning

Sigh. it's that time.
All the student loans have been coming back to haunt me.
Sooo jealous of my parents generation, where it was maybe, $50 dollars for a semester of college.
How has the student costs gotten so screwed up? #@$%!$!@ government.
They make it paying off the loans really complicated too. I though it was just one bill that I had to slowly pay off. Then another bill arrived from a different loan place. Now I'm wondering if there are others there that I'll have to worry about too... Especially since I don't know where to find out the total amount of what I owe (since it seems to be split up between at least 2 loan places).
And if that's not enough, I thought I'd paid off all the credit card stuff from Japan. But the same day I got that surprise student bill thing, Mom said that another credit card bill came from Japan. I guess I spent some more money after the cut-off date for the previous bill?
Gaaah! I hate money. And I hate trying to figure out who the hell I'm supposed to give my money to.
Guess what's going to get much worse if I get into that grad program?
That's right. Debt.
Wonder how far plushies will get me...
And I really wanted to try to get a PS3 so I could play Ni no Kuni. TT^TT
Not to mention I'll probably want a Wii U once more games come out.