Alex's Journal

A friend pointed out to me a very interesting video that describes the ten dimensions in an easy to understand way using dots, lines and a method that shows you just how each dimension stacks on top of the other. As the same friend pointed out, it’s really quite strange that we only see things as 3.5 on a scale of 10.

You can find the video here: http://tenthdimension.com/medialinks.php. If the page doesn’t load or the video doesn’t work right away, reload the page because they’ve been getting a huge amount of traffic.

This is an amazing song. It’s called Sandmann and it’s by a German band called Oomph!.

I’ve often thought that it is really too bad that the art of handwriting has been slowly disappearing in the past couple of decades. Those born into my generation (1980’s or later) generally have handwriting comparable to an elementary school child’s and there does not seem to be any hope that it will improve. With all of the modern technology of computers, cell phones and other electronics, there does not seem to be a need for good handwriting. Schools, therefore, have begun to drop handwriting as a fundamental ability that students should walk out of school with. I find that to be quite sad.

I ran into an article about the handwriting issue on Time Magazine’s website this evening and found it quite fascinating as it closely resembles the thoughts I have had on the subject. Here is an excerpt:

I can’t remember how to write a capital Z in cursive. The rest of my letters are shaky and stiff, my words slanted in all directions. It’s not for lack of trying. In grade school I was one of those insufferable girls who used pink pencils and dotted their i’s with little circles. I experimented with different scripts, and for a brief period I even took the time to make two-story a’s, with the fancy overhang used in most fonts (including this magazine’s). But everything I wrote, I wrote in print. I am a member of Gen Y, the generation that shunned cursive. And now there is a group coming after me, a boom of tech-savvy children who don’t remember life before the Internet and who text-message nearly as much as they talk. They have even less need for good penmanship. We are witnessing the death of handwriting.

People born after 1980 tend to have a distinctive style of handwriting: a little bit sloppy, a little bit childish and almost never in cursive. The knee-jerk explanation is that computers are responsible for our increasingly illegible scrawl, but Steve Graham, a special-education and literacy professor at Vanderbilt University, says that’s not the case. The simple fact is that kids haven’t learned to write neatly because no one has forced them to. “Writing is just not part of the national agenda anymore,” he says.

The full article can be found here.

I have two semesters left before I graduate from college. That means I will be finished in May 2010. Afterwards I want to teach English or American history somewhere in Germany, but I don’t know how I can go about getting that kind of position. I want to be in Germany for at least two or three years to solidify my German. It doesn’t matter who I teach. A Gymnasium (German high school equivalent) is good or a university or an institute would work as well.

Does anyone happen to know where I could look online? It’s a bit early for it, but I want to start now so I can start directly after I graduate.

I know it’s been a while since I’ve actually posted anything on here. That’s because I’ve had a friend out from overseas and have been quite busy. Now that she has left, I should have a lot more time to post entries.

This is a fun riddle I was e-mailed at some point. I solved it relatively easily:

There are no tricks, just pure logic, so good luck and don’t give up. 



1. In a street there are five houses, painted five different colours.
2. In each house lives a person of different nationality.
3. These five homeowners each drink a different kind of beverage, smoke different brand of cigar and keep a different pet. 



THE QUESTION: Who owns the fish?

HINTS

1. The Brit lives in a red house.
2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
3. The Dane drinks tea.
4. The Green house is next to, and on the left of the White house.
5. The owner of the Green house drinks coffee.
6. The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
7. The owner of the Yellow house smokes Dunhill.
8. The man living in the centre house drinks milk.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
10. The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
11. The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
12. The man who smokes Blue Master drinks beer.
13. The German smokes Prince.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The man who smokes Blends has a neighbour who drinks water.

Good luck!

Well, I’ve posted the eighth and final installment of my Tales of Fate series. I decided to just quickly post them all so I can move on. From here on out, I will be posting better and more normal short stories. I’ve still got several to post and will spend the next several weeks posting them I think. I am still trying to decide on a decent format for posting some of the longer ones. Perhaps I will break them up into several different posts so they are not exceedingly long posts.

I’ve also just finished one of the books I’ve been working on for the past couple of months. Really, I do read a lot, but I tend to read three or four books at a time, meaning that they take a bit longer to read. The book I just finished is called 100 Vicious Little Vampire Stories edited by Robert Weinberg, Stefan Dziemianowicz and Martin Greenberg. As the title implies, it is a collection of short vampire stories. I really don’t know why, but I’ve always found short stories more entertaining than longer stories. It’s possible that my attention span is not up to the task of focusing on a long story. That could also explain my tendency to read several books at once.

During the down time, I’ve decided what I’m going to do is post some of my writing here. Some of it is old and some of it is newer. The older stuff isn’t as good, but I think I’m going to post it anyway. I’ve got quite a bit to post and will start posting them here pretty soon.

I’ve renamed this blog yet again. This time around because the domain name for Und Es Regnet expired and I really see no need to renew it. Because of the change of the URL, some of the images of the older posts may not work. I’ve gone back in the archives a little bit and updated them, but I don’t have the time to update all of the images in every post.

With the new name, I’ve decided to go for a more generic name and one that most of my English speaking readers will actually be able to understand and remember. I chose “Alex’s Journal” because I’ve always kept a journal of sorts on paper and this blog is to some degree an extension of that journal online. Of course I write about less personal things on this blog, but it is, by and large, still a collection of thoughts by me.

I will be catching up on posts here relatively soon. I’ve written some ideas for posts down on paper while this blog was down and will be posting them here shortly.

Again, there is no need to change your RSS feeds because of the wonderful invention called FeedBurner which allows me to change the blog’s actual location without having to change the RSS feed. You will just need to update any bookmarks and any links. Thank you!

I have a new story on the way. It’s finished, but now I just have to proofread it. I will post it here after I’ve proofread it. It’s entirely unlike anything I’ve ever done before. Most of my stories are ghost stories or have a gothic nature, but this one is a futuristic story with a very grim view on the political future of the United States.

I won’t say anymore and spoil it for you. Just know it’s coming soon.