Xatal

Normally I like to post quite frequently, but these past few weeks have been a bit busy!

I’ve been trying to take care of a lot of odds and ends around my house, including cleaning and rearranging my room. I’ve been doing some of my summer reading for college, and I’ve been spending a lot of time with friends. I leave in about two weeks, and I’m trying to make the most out of the opportunities I have to see these people while I can. Who knows how much I’ll see them next year.

My host went down for a bit on Thursday, and my traffic took a fall from that. Oh well.

I intend to write some good posts these upcoming days, hopefully one (or more!) will tickle your fancy!

In 2005, the California state legislature passed a bill for stricter nutritional guidelines on foods that could be sold at public schools. The new policy took effect during my sophomore year in high school, and I noticed an immediate difference in students reactions around my school.

Before the policy went into effect, a major income source for our student government was from the student store. There we could buy sodas, chips, crackers, and other snacks for rather cheap prices. Vending machines around campus were always properly stocked.

California has strict nutritional requirements about what schools can offer for lunch.

However when the new standards kicked in, snack bar sales plummeted. My old high school has an open campus lunch, and often vendors will come right up to the school boundaries to sell food to students during lunch time. Immediately, these vendors started selling all of the foods that the school no longer could. Students that couldn’t drive flocked to these like wildfire, and students that could drive went out to lunch more often.

Because the student government primarily used food sales to stay financially alive, they ended up in a massive debt when the sales dropped. School and class activities were cut down to bare-bones celebrations.

Twice a year, our school also held a food fair: all of the clubs would sell some sort of food. Of course, the clubs were held to the same state regulations. This greatly limited the types of foods that could be sold, meaning many foreign foods had to be substituted for healthy alternatives. So much for cultural awareness.

The biggest problem with the nutritional guidelines is that the only foods that can be sold rarely taste good. As a kid, taste is most important. If I’m eating a chicken sandwich, I want it to taste like chicken, not some healthy junk that tastes more like rubber. I didn’t receive discounted lunch, so my choice was simple:

Do I spend $2.25 and buy an awful school lunch, or do I go to Taco Bell and get a couple of burritos for the same price? It was really a no-brainer.

In the end, the stricter nutrition guidelines hurt much more than they helped. A lot of this was caused by our school having an open campus at lunch. What would have happened if we had a closed campus?

Keep reading »

It’s impossible to ignore, and you can’t escape the sad feeling that comes with it.

I’m talking about the unusual light weight of your wallet after you spend money to get gasoline. Due to the high costs of gas these days, it’s really unfortunate.

Getting gas does not have to bankrupt you. Source

Teenagers are hit the hardest by it because we have such a small income, whereas adults have more money and gas costs take up a smaller percentage of their expenses. Of course, tips for cutting back on gasoline costs apply to everybody.

The massive increase in gas over the last year is caused by an increase in the cost of oil. While there isn’t a whole lot we can do to alter the price of gas, there are some ways to help reduce the amount we spend on driving. The biggest way is to simply become more aware of how you drive and how you use the gas that you have. Here are some good suggestions that have really helped me out since gas prices have gone up: Keep reading »

After several years of speculation that they were working on one, Google finally released their own web browser today. Named “Google Chrome”, the browser is a fast new browser.

Screenshot of Xatal using Google Chrome

This browser adds yet another alternative choice to Internet Explorer, and it will be exciting to see just how big of a part Google Chrome plays in the future of the Internet.

So far, I’m fond of the interface. Having the tabs above the address bar will take some getting used to, but other than that the interface is pretty simple.

I’ve noticed that the browser is lightning-fast, especially when it comes to JavaScript, something that Google was striving for.

Google also put each tab into its own separate process, meaning that if one tab crashes, the rest will keep running just fine.

As for my take on it, I like it quite a bit so far, but it will take quite a lot before Google Chrome beats out FireFox as my browser of choice. I’m too accustomed to my extensions. However I’ll definitely keep an eye on this interesting new browser to see how it develops.

For anybody hunting for quality free software, Google Chrome is definitely worth trying out.

You can find out more and download Google Chrome here. You also might want to check out a comic Google put up talking about the browser and how it works.

I’ve given you some helpful hints for finding a job during the summer, but once the school year starts you may have to decide if you want to keep your job or not.

Many jobs and/or the hours you work are seasonal. Your job may only have needed someone to fill the 8AM-12PM shift, and now that you’re back in school, you’re not going to be much help.

But for many jobs, you can continue working even once school starts. The decision is whether or not you want to. Obviously, having a job will give you money, but with school starting, you’ll also have less free time. It’s an important balance. Keep reading »

Fantastic Contraption
I’ve been playing this thing nearly nonstop all weekend. It’s really an interesting game: Using your knowledge of physics, the tools they give you, and your own innovation, you must move the pink block you start off with into the goal zone. While it sounds educational, it’s really just plain fun. Once you get the hang of the game, it’s neat to see what kind of creative designs you can come up with.

A sample contraption that shoots the pink ball into the goal zone

You can use rotating wheels to help move the block, you can use rods to attach to wheels or your block. You could build a giant tower or a giant cart. You can create separate machines.

A lot of these can be solved very easily using just a wheel or two and a rod, but I think the more elaborate and creative machines deserve some extra props, if only for the large amount of creativity it takes to make some of these.

Ever since I saw this posted on a forum, I’ve seen some really interesting and creative designs. I made a post showing my favorite 50, and here are some more of my favorites that might help give you ideas:

1. A clever pulley system
2. A well-crafted catapult
3. Actually, why even use the catapult? Just use the environment.
4. A spider to walk over everything. It’s like something from your nightmares.
5. Rolling the giant ball to get there
6. A simple but clever design. This is one of the hardest levels, solved so easily.
7. Using two separate machines
8. An extremely elaborate machine. This is perhaps the most impressive I’ve seen.

Also pretty entertaining to watch are when they just plain don’t work.

1. This one shows how the water bonds can break if they have too much weight attached.
2. And sometimes they just go crazy. Check this one.
3. A clever design that just couldn’t make it.

I tried my hand at this and came up with solutions for all of them. I’m not an engineer or rather creative, so none of mine are anything incredible, but I like watching these two run:

1. Using two separate machines to roll the ball where I want it.
2. Counter-weights can be a huge help.

Try your hand at it, let’s see what you can come up with! I’m warning you, though, it’s really addictive!

Alongside the SAT, the ACT is a major factor colleges use to determine whether or not you should be admitted. For colleges, these test scores are a way to compare you to all students who apply. While the scores aren’t everything, they are definitely important and it’s crucial that you do your best.

You do not want this to be you at the ACT :)

If you’ve never taken the ACT before, chances are you’re a bit nervous. You’ve probably heard of kids taking a Saturday morning. If this is your first time taking any standardized test needed for colleges, you’re probably even more nervous and unsure of what you’re in for.

Don’t worry, this post will give you the rundown on what to expect when you first take the ACT. While the test might be a bit intimidating, if you take it seriously, you can come out of it with flying colors. Keep reading »

My old high school was one of the only ones in the area that had an ‘open campus lunch’.

Our high school used to be crowded, with around 3,000 kids. Our school wasn’t built for even two-thirds of that, so there was no chance of accommodating that many students at lunch time. As such, there was no choice but to have an ‘open campus’ at lunch.

An open campus allows kids to leave the school during lunch, just so long as they’re back in time for class afterwards. You could go anywhere: out to fast food, back home briefly, walk to a local store, wherever.

After arriving at high school from middle school, the thought of an open campus lunch was probably the coolest thing I had ever thought of. I remember my first lunch at high school, I walked to a local market and bought some food. I felt so grown-up.

With an open campus lunch, the big thing was always having your license and a car, even moreso than normal. Once you had both, you had the freedom to go wherever you wanted during lunch. Of course, once everyone else fond out, they would pounce on you like wolves to try to be taken out to lunch.

With so many kids leaving campus though, you can imagine the traffic around the school and the crowds at restaurants. If you didn’t skedaddle to leave campus after 4th period, you had to face enormous lines and risk being late for class.

But if you were lucky enough to be early, there was plenty of time to arrive, eat, and make it back without being late.

Unfortunately, eating out becomes expensive, as well as the gas to get there. By the end of my senior year, I was tired of wasting money and actually ended up staying around on campus a lot more. I was surprised how empty the campus was.

At one point, the school board tried to end open campus. A new high school (one with a closed campus) had been built that, in theory, would have lowered the amount of students enough that we could now accommodate all of us at lunch. The truth was that the parents of the new school complained because their kids couldn’t leave at lunch, so the school board wanted to stop receiving complaints.

But the students fought it like there was no tomorrow. We housed sit-ins at our school to show them how bad of an idea it was. Virtually every teacher and administrator agreed that it was a terrible idea. I spoke with the superintendent personally to tell her what a terrible idea it would be.

The school board held more meetings to ‘reasses’ the idea, and in the end, open campus won.

Having an open campus was a great opportunity as a student to learn how to manage money and time. Even though it was almost closed, students were glad to finally be seen as mature enough to handle themselves during the lunch hour.

Has anyone else ever had an open-campus lunch at high school?