A lot has happened in the last month, and I’ve abstained from posting because I didn’t want to hurt my schooling. But now that schooling is over, I can do whatever I want. And that means you get the entire month of June, plus a bit of early July, in one giant post. And yeah, you will have to read on to actually read more.

FINAL EXAMS

Obviously, the main reason I would postpone posting during June is to better prepare myself for the Final Exams. Finals were no joke this year – okay, maybe one of them was a joke, but that’s CP Gov and Econ for you. However, I did well on all of them. All of them except Honors Math Analysis (which, for those who don’t know, is really Honors Pre-Calc). For some reason, even though I get A’s in the class, I can’t seem to wrap my head around taking larger math exams. Hopefully, in the future, this will get better. I have to take the AP Calculus exam next year, which will without a doubt be far more difficult than the Honors Analysis exam I took this year.

Thankfully, taking such an exam leave me exempt from a real final. So I won’t have to worry about being graded on a math final next year – just have to worry my arse off about the midterm.

THE PHYSICS PROJECT

The other reason why I abstained from posting? My all-important Phinal Physics Phroject. I constructed a Van de Graaff Generator, which is an electrostatic generator, along with my partner Steven Van Gordon. It ended up being me doing most (okay, all) of the building and such, with Steve doing the PowerPoint to present it. All in all, I’m very pleased with it. It outperforms the school’s store-bought $400 generators, and it only cost $80 to make.

However, I am most proud of the journal I made to go with the generator. My aim was to make a true engineer’s journal, so that anybody who read it would be able to, in fact, reproduce my steps to creating the generator, or be able to somehow create their own steps logically through reading the journal. I have taken photos of the journal and uploaded them to a directory on the site – you can view them by clicking here. Yes, they are inspired by the Myst journals, but I found that the Myst journals are really just normal engineer’s journals anyway.

The photos, admittedly, aren’t so good. But I had to take them sometime, even if it was late at night in my house, instead of outside on a sunny day. The glare from the flash really hurts the quality of the photo, because the journal is written in graphite, as are the sketches drawn in.

THE DREXEL UNIVERSITY EXPERIENCE

As you may or may not know, I am departing tomorrow for a three-week journey into engineering. I was accepted into a very selective “Mentorship Program” at Drexel University in Pennsylvania. There are roughly two high school students assigned to one professor, and under that professor also work four undergraduate students. Our goal? To work on the professor’s project with him. Mine surrounds the plasma medicine market, and the effects of non-thermal atmospheric pressure plasma on living tissue, bacteria, and possibly cancerous tissue. I am still reading the publications on the matter, so I do not have as in-depth an idea of my project as I should have at this point, but I’m very excited by what I have read so far. It’s shaping up to be a wonderful summer, and this three week project will only serve to make it better.

And yes, Drexel pays for it. It’s free, just because you got in. I’ll be reporting on this a lot more while I’m there, hopefully (God forbid I have time), but for now I’ll leave it at this: We’re working eight hours per day in the lab, from nine to five, and after that we have activities and such, fun stuff. Everybody gets to stay in dormitory suites – I even have my own bedroom, lucky me! Every Monday, I am to report with my partner on our findings, which we shall do through a PowerPoint presentation.

Oh, and I bought myself a wonderful journal for the trip. I’ll be recording everything I do in regards to my project, just like I did for my Van de Graaff Generator project. Except this one will be much prettier.

THE WEBSITE

I already run ZeldaWiki.org, but I never, ever expected to be back running ZeldaUniverse.net. Zelda Universe is an incredible site that I retired from a year and a half ago due to certain conflicts and different views and interests between myself and the people who worked on and owned the site. However, I was lobbied two weeks ago by two of my good friends on the site to re-join. Because it was the beginning of summer, I considered it, and upon one of the webmaster’s request, posted in the restricted section of the forums on the website asking for the staff’s opinion of me considering to return. I was met with 100% approval, and my friend who I ran the site with, Scott, said that he had never stopped wanting to work with me after I left in response me asking, “Would you still want to work with me?”

So, I am now back and running Zelda Universe. I even set up an email for myself, just like old times. I’ve made several improvements and tweaks to the site – many things were outdated or a mess in general. I hope that my return will be a benefit to the site, as it would be a travesty for me to return and screw something up.

I don’t think that will happen, though. I’ve become rather confident in my ability to administer a website.

THE SOUNDTRACK

Yes, I’ve gotten all your emails. I’ll have the Maple Story OST updated shortly to reflect all the changed. But God, to any of you ever stop suggesting where the songs come from? I mean, I get the hint! Don’t stop suggesting, but I get so many of them… like, a bazillion of the same one. Either way, I promised myself I would sort those tracks before I left for Drexel, and I will. Consider it done.

AND SO…

That would be June and early July in a nutshell. I hope you enjoyed it. Just my way of getting you caught up with my life – Jason style.