MIDTERM QUESTION ON NEWSGROUP LINKS

So for the newsgroup/forum links, is everybody trying to write 50 words still? That seems unnecessary for some of the links because they are exactly what they are titled. Let me know what you guys are doing... I will email Synthia and if I found out before Tuesday I will post again.

Question regarding midterm

So I'm working on my midterm project. I'm focusing on copy right laws and intellectual property rights. I've gotten my links or most of it and got my HTML to work but I am sort of confused as to the "news group section" do we give links or do we just give the group name. That is confusing if anyone can clarify that would be great. Thanks !

        Hao Yuan Li 

Thursday's lecture

Thursday's lecture on podcasting and internet radio was pretty interesting. It was really cool to see how internet radio actually worked; it cleared up some misconceptions I had, especially about podcasting. It's really pretty tight that anyone can have their own station on the internet instead of the traditional radio broadcasts that are 98% corporately controlled. I'm really interested to see the state of radio broadcasting 20 years down the line.

feb.12-14 class

class this week was quite informative... i learned about podcasting through garageband and i always thought it was made by apple.. next weeks presentations would be another informative session.. -- Sandy L

2/14 Podcasts

This week's lecture was on internet radio and podcasting. I was surprised how simple podcasting seemed to be (basically just upload files for download) as I was under the impression it would be far more complicated.

Compression Tests in Audacity

I'm doing Ogg and Mp3 comparisons for my midterm project, and I've been doing some basic tests in order to see compression/size comparisons. I thought I'd tell the blog if anyone wanted to do the same.
Audacity can generate various sound waves and noise patterns. I decided that a good way to test the codecs would be to generate sine, saw, and square waves and see how compression formats compared. The idea is that these are pure sound waves so they will present a challenge to the codec because they are so simple and difficult to compress.
One of the most interesting results I came across was the sine wave. Here are the results in size comparisons for a 30 second 220hz sine wave:

WAV: 2.5 MB - Uncompressed
FLAC: 947.9 KB - Lossless compression
MP3: 469.8 KB - Mp3 Lossy
OGG: 45.3 KB - Ogg Lossy

This was quite surprising because ogg has achieved over 10 times the compression over mp3.

Anyways, I thought some might find this helpful or interesting. I'm excited to hear all the projects on Tuesday and Thursday.

2/12 class

The lecture on EQ was pretty interesting. I'm glad that my classmates that are knowledgeable about the topic are given the opportunity to elaborate on it more, and make corrections. I am pretty much done with my midterm project, I just have to describe what's on the websites. My HTML isn't really fancy, and I was having trouble with the coding, but I just looked up what I didn't know on google. I'm interested in seeing the presentations, and what everyone else is doing.
Corrine Lee

Online Radio and HTML Code Site

I found the lecture on online radio interesting. I had no idea that people could use the internet to host live radio shows. (I always thought that stuff needed to be prerecorded to go on the internet)

For anyone still working on their HTML pages, I found this site that has various basic HTML codes. I hope you find it useful.
http://www.webmonkey.com/webmonkey/reference/html_cheatsheet/

Time for a weekly update.

I haven't gotten a chance to start reading the new chapters we've been discussing in class (chapters 5 and 6 I believe), but I'm actually kind of excited, because the material we've covered in class seems really interesting.

In regards to my midterm project... I still have about ten-ish links to go, but I think I know what I'm going to be looking for for those. (As of a few days ago I wasn't sure what websites I could use to fill that void, but after class on Thursday I've got some ideas.) I'm having trouble finding newsgroups on my subject, though. (JavaScript and Flash movies) I've got a few of the basics like the official JavaScript newsgroup and the official Macromedia Flash newsgroup, but I don't know what else I should be looking for. I have the weekend to figure that out.

I'm bummed I didn't get to attend some of the tutorials/workshops, but I hope that I can change that before the end of the quarter.

My Topic on the Midterm Project

Hello, I just wanted to post the topic for my midterm project. My project is going to be on Modern Rock music, primarily focusing on the genre of Alternative Rock/Dream Pop and Garage Rock Revival. It has always been my interest to exploring deep within the rock scene, and to have a thorough, introspective analysis of the sub genres. I apologize for declaring my topic so late. I was having trouble deciding what specific sub genre I want to focus on. However, after thinking about the choice I have to make over and over, I decided to do all of them!

My website will mainly be a Compare-and-Contrast on the sub genres I have given above. I will incorporate the historical aspect of the genres and its relation to earlier bands. I will also include the inspirations behind the music of my chosen artists, including the Smashing Pumpkins, the White Stripes, and Feist.

-Kel Alexander Young

Jambox testing

let's organize a legit band (drums/bass/guitar/anything else), figure out a song to play ahead of time, and then see if we can accurately reproduce the song with each musician or group of musicians in a different location.  is that the idea?

midterm project

i was also wondering how i would burn my project onto a CD and do i really need to put it on a website? i'm also having trouble finding forums/ newsgroups. if anyone could help, that would be great.

Jambox

I was really excited to hear about the new Jambox thing, and am really interested in beta testing it, especially over internet2. I wonder how well, and how fast it is going to work, and how it works for that matter.

midterm project

my midterm project topic is drumnbass and i finished it today and i think it turned out pretty good, i'm happy with it, but i am having trouble figuring out how to burn it to a cd.  can someone help me with that?

samantha waxman

server

Does anyone know about the server will will need to post on? This is probably answered in another blog.  Also, how long should I strive for for the presentation?  5 min good?

Brandon Caruso

Tuesday Class

Thank you for addressing the midterm more, I was a bit unclear before you went over it in class. Also, I agree with miles, a bit of hands on stuff couldn't hurt.

Brian Pybas

html On Mac

Hey Everybody,

I've started on the midterm and I seem to be having some trouble. I am working on Text Edit (on Mac) and every time I save the file, even if I include the ".html" file extension, the page comes up as code instead of the desired content. I know the codes is correctly entered because I get the desire result on PC. Does anyone know why I can't get the page up correctly on Mac?

Thanks,

Dan Englander

Sibelius!!

Hey gang,
I was wondering if anyone could possibly hook up a version of Sibelius (preferably, since I have experience with that one) or Finale. If anyone knows of any other good composition softeware and is willing to share then that would work too. Right now i have this program called Guitar Pro but I can't seem to figure it out for the life of me and I don't think it has nearly as much capabilities as Sibelius.

tuesday's lecture

I found the optimization lecture this tuesday very interesting. I have done some live music mixing before and so i know a bit about EQ and effects, but I've never really done any recording or preparing tracks for the web, so it was interesting to see how the two approaches compare. I just wish that we could do a bit more hands-on stuff in class--I know that we will be employing these techniques for our final project, but it seems that that is the only time we will use it, and i would like to really learn this stuff. just a little practice would be nice, but i suppose that can be done o my own time. Overall, an informative lecture.
-Miles

Internet Radio - Pandora

The coolest internet radio station I've come across is Pandora. Instead of playing back a predetermined playlist, you tell it a song or artist you like and it starts playing music that's similar to the seed you give it. You can give every song it plays a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" to further tweak your 'stations' taste. You can also add additional seeds to a station at any time, and can make as many stations as you like. You can choose to share stations you've made with friends and search for stations that other users have chosen to share.

I find its a great way to discover artists I haven't heard and great when you want to put a certain kind of music on but don't want to spend time making a playlist. It uses the Music Genome Project to choose what songs to play based on the station's seeds and how you've rated what's already been played.

Pirating Software

Regarding Friday's discussion:
My introduction to music was through Propellerheads's Reason 3.0 software. I've never had any formal musical training and most of my first attempts at music were pretty awful. After some practice, some musical theory books, some new speakers, a new sound card, a midi keyboard, and even more practice, I feel that my production skills have increased. I still don't consider myself to be where I want to be in terms of skill, but without a bootleg version of Reason, i would have never been able to afford to even learn. Once i feel that I have something good enough to demo or sell for profit, I'll be sure to purchase a legitimate version of the product beforehand.
I don't see the need to spend $400 dollars though, on something i'm just screwing around with. It's like going to guitar center and trying out all the guitars...even the really expensive one you know you can't afford, but it looks so cool that you know you want to buy it someday... you know, when you're a rock star. Anyway, if it turns out that i just plain suck at music and never release anything for the masses, I'll be glad i didn't waste $400, but while I'm in the privacy of my own home, who cares what I'm learning?

Real-Time Streaming Protocol

I got interested in the RTSP after Synthia spoke about it on Tuesday.

Here are the main points of interest based off my research:

-Does not actually handle the streaming of data but instead of state of the stream.
-Basically lets you control the playback of a stream server-side.
--> Example: You can stop/play media on a server that affects everyone listening instead of simply starting and stopping playback on your computer.
-Has 6 commands:
--DESCRIBE: Simply gives a description of what is playing.
--SETUP: prepares the server to play a file.
--PLAY: Begins playback of a file from the server.
--PAUSE: Pauses playback from the server.
--RECORD: Can specify another server to record the data.
--TEARDOWN: shutsdown a media stream.

Downloading

In reference to Friday's discussion.  I've done my fair share of illegal music downloading, from Kazaa to Limewire to Albumbase.com which was recently shut down.  It's almost ironic because I would like to work for the music industry someday, whether I am a musician as my dream, or working for a label.  And this illegal downloading takes some money away from both of those.  I've convinced myself that I'm just a kid and now a college student that doesn't have the kind of money to pay for the thousands of songs I have taken.  What I prefer to do to support the musicians I am fond of is by going to their shows when they come in town and purchase their merchandise which, when I wear it, is almost like advertising for them, and could be considered another form of support.  It's been about four months since I've downloaded any music because Albumbase.com, which was very useful, was shut down and I've been too lazy to go find another site to pirate from.  In this time I've purchased some hard copies of CDs, terrible right?  I don't think it's right to steal music from someone but to be honest I don't think I'll stop anytime soon, and plus even a musician in the purest form should just want his or her music to get to people's ears whether or not they make millions off of it.

microphones

Ive been really stoked to do some actual recording lately with audacity. My built-in mic on my computer wasnt picking up the full range, and in class we've been talking about mics. so i went on Ebay and found some cheap dynamic mics that plug right into the computer. With my computer's amplifier program, the sound is amazing...well worth the 10 bucks on ebay.
I've been recording a lot of new stuff from drum and guitar parts to spoken word....its been really fun.

So it's been a while....

because for some reason I couldn't log into the Blog for the longest time so I finally just made a new account. Anyhoo- I will post a real blog later but for now I'd just like to talk about Tuesdays class and the note that was going around along with the sign in sheet. We're not in highschool anymore people. If you have something to say to Synthia get the balls to approach her about it instead of resorting to childlike behavior and maybe then we can actually fix or change something instead of just being rude to someone with no regards to their personal feelings. I'm not saying I didn't agree with what some comments on that note had to say, but I'm sure we can go about finding a resolution in a more mature manner.

♥Sarah Reyna

Interment Radio and Podcast Lecture

I thought it was very cool to learn about the internet radio. It's something I've just always had on my computer cuz of ITunes, but never really thought about how it worked.

I also find it helpful when the slides have a breakdown of the definitions of key terms. I think that style of lecture (although somewhat tedious) can help better prepare for the "vocabulary-style quizes" that so many people complained about (but that I thought wonderfully concise and to the point).

Also, about downloading audio programs illegally, I think it's up to the individual to make that decision (morally or whatever), but I just want to make sure that people are careful about where they get the program or who they get it from, as downloading stuff like that illegally can potentially mess up your computer or other apps you may have on your computer. That's my two cents on that.

Hope everyone's doing well on their midterms. I'm looking forward to seeing some of the final outcomes in class.

Pirating Software

I would just like to use this space to discourage anyone in the class from taking up the below offer of a cracked copy of Fruity Loops as it is unethical and detracts from the overall quality It is shameful that such behavior can be openly associated with a University course.

I am not trying to be a stickler here - I know we are broke college students, but stealing software is not the way to go. I understand that this is acceptable behavior for our generation it seems, and many people have made valid arguments in favor of open-source and free software. But the fact is that it costs money to make good software, and none of the worthwhile audio applications currently available would exist without a significant investment and paying customers willing to support small start-up companies. If you aren't willing to spend the dough then you do not have the dedication to make good music. I know you probably don't agree, but it's the truth.

Y'all need to man up and throw down some money on your software, otherwise you are playing yourselves.

A neat HTML code

A found this neat code on page 260 of the textbook. It allows you to play a different song on your webpage each hour. I have typed it up for your copy/pasting convenience. All you have to do is replace the file names (and the site name) with your own file names. If you replace the word MIDI with MP3 and the corresponding .mid with .mp3, it will play MP3s instead of MIDIs. Enjoy!

EDIT: It seems that the post absorbs the HTML code... Well, it's still located on page 260.

"I'm on an Internet Radio"

I learned a lot about streaming audio that I didn't know before this lecture. Thank you. My only question is where does XM radio fit in to the world of internet radio, because I heard that you could get XM feeds via the internet.

IInternet Radio

Internet Radio

Today's lecture on internet radio was really informative. I have little to no experience with internet radio and and the lecture today presented the topic in a super cool, fun, and interesting way! My mind was blown! I am curious about the legal implications of broadcasting copyrighted material over the internet. I know that at KZSC, a "non-commercical, educational" radio station, we are not bound by many copyright restrictions in our broadcasting. I'm wondering if a non-commercial internet station could take on a similar status.

-Dan Englander

2-13-08 Internet Radio Lecture

2/12/08

Today’s lecture on Internet radio and other various types of steaming audio was really interesting. I really like internet radio because you never hear internet radio. Before this class I’ve only heard internet radio maybe once or twice. I thought it was really cool because you can listen to different types of music from around the world. I was searching on Winamp and found various types of Jazz, Techno, Electronic music, and different types of rap from different places. Internet radio allows you to listen to various artists and it is just something new.

One thing I noticed while working on the midterm project was that not all the links I got were useable. A lot of the links I found were the same website just on a different domain. Also some webpage’s lead you to file sharing information but in the end the information they have is not even sufficient. For instance, I searched illegal file sharing and I came up to about.com or something and after I looked at it, I found out that they had just this dinky little paragraph. Also I am sort of unsure of what you want us to find for newsgroups. I remember you saying we could use forums and etc but I’m not sure, could someone clear this up for me? Thank!

-Charlie Lui

Last Week

I'm sorry for the late post but I just got a new computer and have been having trouble setting it up. But I wanted to comment on Aphid's lecture last week because I found it very informative and I have been really curious as to how and why there are bans on certain music on the internet. He was very knowledgeable and showed some very good videos to back up his presentation. On another note, I am note one of the ones presenting my midterm and was wondering if there were any ideas out there that could help get those points. Thanks.
Jeff H.

Last Week's Classes

I just wanted to say that I enjoyed listening to our guest speaker, Aphid. I think copyright issues are really interesting and it is amazing just how greedy people can be! The system definitely seems to be very abusable by corporate interests and should be reformed. It's really out of control and the worst part is that when these things actually do make it to court, we all have to pay for it through our tax dollars. It's an important issue and I wish everyone was really aware of it. Thanks for having Aphid come talk to us!

Previous classes

So far a lot of the classes have been really interesting and have helped me progress as an amateur electronic musician. I really enjoyed the lecture on Garage Band and have been playing with it ever since. I wish that we could have gone more in depth with it though, because the general overview just seemed too general. It would be cool to see someone who knows garageband really well show some us some tricks and other things not too well known; like bringing in clips from other songs and messing around with those, etc. I have also been playing around with audacity, recording clips of my voice and importing them into iDrum, this drum machine program, and turning them into beats. I think the lectures have definitely increased my interest in these topics.
I am also not too sure how I did on that quiz. It threw me off being so short, leaving much less room for error than I had hoped. I look forward to the next week of classes
-Aidan Christie

Woody Guthrie Restoration

I found this article that I believe relates to the class. If it doesn't, then I'm sorry I posted it.

A team has recently restored a 1949 bootleg of one of the only know live performances of Woody Guthrie, writer of "This Land is My Land". The recording was recorded on a long wire that was decaying and broken in some places. The process used to make the restoration closely relates to Chapter 4 in the textbook and the differences between before and after can be clearly seen if you open them both in Audacity. Its really interesting to look at the two compared side by side because you can see how he normalize the sound in places, cleaned up the sound too, and removed noise.

This also brings up the notion of copyright because, being a bootleg of a live recording. However, it is now one of the most treasured items of that time. Food for thought.

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20080209/mathtrek.asp

Garage Band. Still.

Hey all,

Been awhile (unfortunately) since I last checked in with the Blog side of the class… Last time I was still learning Garage Band, and now well, I'm still learning Garage Band. I have to say its a wonderful tool.

I've found a good way to start conceptualizing where you can go with a song is to import chunks of other songs (that you never ever use  in a final draft because they are copyrighted!… of course) and try to recreate them with the tools you have. Its considerable more challenge than free style and has helped me get a sense of structure into new work.

A question for those that use this a lot, anyone know a good site for Garage Band mods? I know there are a lot of sound expansion packs for it, but google has proved unreliable.

Thanks, 

Best,

Bill.

Fruity loops

Well, over the weekend I finally bit the bullet and downloaded Fruity Loops, just so that I could see what kinds of things I could do with it. The learning curve was much steeper than I ever anticipated, though. It took me two days of fiddling around with it to get to a point where I could make a song with multiple parts (the secret is in the 'show playlist' option which allows you to create tracks and have a good amount of control over where they appear in the song).

Anyway, once I got to the point where I was able to work with the music, I decided to start on my final project. I put 6 hours into it before I realized that I pretty much have to keep working on it until I've finished, because Fruity loops does not save my work unless I've slammed down (enter ridiculous dollar amount here). So, now I'm at the point where I am slaving endlessly on this damn song, and then recording the playback and saving that version with a different program once the song is at a part that I particularly like.

I'm pretty happy with the way the song has turned out so far, but my roommate hates it. I hope we won't lose points on our final if the song doesn't align to the taste of the graders.

audio piracy

the lecture was VERY helpful i thought. im amazed at the quality of guest speakers we have in this class. its a real treat.

quiz

i'm not sure i did so well on the quiz. i studied for quite a bit the night before, but i felt that the amount of material we could be quizzed on was very great, and the length of the quiz was very short, making for a very difficult quiz.

The Garage Band/Recording Lecture

Thank you for letting me and Bryce get recorded on Garage Band. As a student in Music 167, it gave me a chance to see how dynamic mics pick up sounds that are spun around a microphone, and not just sounds positioned at certain angles. I am working with drum recordings in 167 using Shure BG 4.1's, SM 57's, and Rode NT3s. I am beginning to see how certain angles and certain positions over the skin of a drum, and the bottom of a drum will give slightly different recordings.

The lecture on Audio Piracy

Thank you for holding the discussion on audio piracy. I was amazed to see just how much other students knew about the laws, and the stories of bands working under labels of large corporations. The discussion was very informative.

Last Week's Classes

Well, I feel a little mixed about last week. On the one hand, the guest lecture was AMAZING - his topic was part of what I'm covering on my midterm (intellectual property rights on the Internet, particularly pertaining to podcasting/downloading radio theater), so his comments and information made for a valuable basis. Of course, seeing as how that's due in just a few days means I'll soon have to put my money where my mouth is...

Just to touch on the test; I find my sentiments lie with the majority here. I psyched myself out about it, and then when confronted with only ten questions, found myself so flabbergasted that I probably got several questions wrong just from overconfidence. Still, that's what the project is for, right?

On that note; I'm still a little confused as to how to go about finding newsgroups. Anyone have any suggestions?

- Zach Huselid

Posting Guidelines

Folks: Synthia here. Some of the posts have been quite good - people are telling about what they are doing in the process of completing assignments, and/or efforts to improve or understand course materials. Bravo! Those posts will receive full credit for the week.

Posts that focus upon personal anxieties in connection with course content or materials, and without saying what you are doing to improve the situation, will not receive full credit.

This blog is meant for a discussion of activities in the completion of the course, not for expressing feelings about the course content or personal performance, so please don't expect to get credit for those kinds of posts.

Guest+Test

Sorry this post is so late(not really late yet, but still...) but I've been swamped lately.

The guest lecturer was once again very good, I thought the use of a historic-based movie was clever, and a nice breather after his intro speech. I also enjoyed listening to the stuff about creative commons, it was very interesting, although I'm not sure I fully grasp it even now.

The night before the exam, I was freaking out because for any exams I've had previously on pink scantrons turn out to be around 150 questions long, and extremely difficult questions at that. When I got to class on thursday, and Synthia Payne was talking about 30 minute intervals for students to leave, I was getting really really nervous. But when I was handed my test, it was only one sheet of paper, with only ten questions. For 17.5 percent of my grade (quizzes are 35% if I remember correctly, though possibly 30), there were only 10 questions to cover what we'd gone over for the past 5 weeks in lecture and in the reading assignments. Roughly 2% of my grade is going to be determined by each question on this quiz, and that really really worries me, not because I think I did poorly(although I might have) but just because the weight of five missed questions on the quizzes could push me down a letter grade. I've never had a class where the pressure on an exam is that intense, it took me a really long time (for 10 questions) to finalize which answers I thought were best just because I was worried about the magnitude of it all. It was very intense, and I have a feeling a lot of people may have failed it by breezing through it to quickly, though I could be wrong(they could have been highly advanced students). I'm hoping that our instructor will give us some sort of hint as to how the grades are looking tomorrow during lecture, and as to whether or not there will be a curve or a longer quiz next time to balance this one out a bit. I just don't think 10 questions could possibly accurately protray how much you've learned throughout the class, but again, I could be wrong.

Anyways, I'm very nervous about how the quizzes turned out (of course) and anxious to hear any word of what the distribution of grades is so far. I'll be checking the website(again) after this post even though I don't really have time to be compulsively checking every hour. ^^;;

QUIZ

I don't think I did so hot on the quiz. The questions were pretty specific. Oh well. But I am certainly looking forward to ninjam sections.

P.S. I am still unsure about where I well upload my notepad document to.

Quiz

The quiz was very short. I feel it was two short to encompass all the aspects of the class we have covered so far. Granted, short tests can be used effectively in other situations, but for a midterm quiz worth a hefty proportion of our grade bothers me a lot. I could have known 8 of the questions and still only received a B-. I'll stop complaining now and just pray I did well.

The lectures are great, keep em coming.

3rd post

The test was a bit tricky, I would have preferred it to have a little bit more questions, so that each question wasn't weighted so hard.  The documentaries we watched on Tuesday were pretty cool, I learned a lot about copy right that may be useful in the future...  Creative Commons seems pretty interesting, I might do that with my music cause I could care less who uses it.  

-Adam Navrozally

February 5th and 7th

Tuesday's class was really cool, Aphid knew his stuff and presented it in a really interesting way. His C-Span project was pretty sick for being on such a dry subject. I was really intrigued with the clips and anecdotes he took from the band Negativland; sucks that they had so many legal problems. I've really been enjoying this week's topics on copyright infringement.

Thursday's quiz was not what I expected at all. The fact that it was only ten questions was a surprise and while I didn't think that it was too hard, it had some pretty obscure stuff on it that I wouldn't have understood at all if I hadn't had experience with these topics before. I'm also a little confused on my project- I'm collecting my links but I'm not exactly sure where to go with them. When is this due, how is it due, what exactly are we doing here? I hope we go over the project in class this week.

Week 5

It was great having the discussion after the midterm and how it tied into the guest lecture on copyrights and ownership laws. The fact that the gray area surrounding these laws is so big means that this will be an important topic now and in the future.

Guest Lecture on Feb. 5th and Synthia's Expansion on That Topic

I enjoyed the presentation given on Tuesday by the guest lecturer immensely. However, I still felt that he did not address the issues of P2P file sharing programs until Synthia explained the controversies involved in such programs on Thursday. Nonetheless, I still considered the guest speaker's lecture very intuitive and well-analyzed.

Thoughts about last week, the test, the mid-term project, etc.

So... I thought that Aphid Stern's presentation was witty and informative. I felt that he had a real grasp on his subject, and the discussion that opened up concerning copyrighting laws was really enlightening.

The test... Well, I thought it was going to concern the book, mainly, since the notes were kinda subjective... And I'm pretty sure I bombed it.

Actually, truth be told, I'm really not confident about anything in the class at this point. Sure I have a few links for the mid-term project, but I feel like I've done nothing and I have no real picture of what I should be doing. As for the final project? Well, I think that it's probably going to completely fall apart in front of my face because, in order to properly do, I'm going to have to put my faith into the hands of other people, and people just have a common tendency to completely flake out, especially where music is concerned.

So, I pretty much feel like I'm screwed, right now. I just don't think anything is sinking in, and I don't know why. =/

Midterm Success

I didn't think that I was going to have too much fun with the midterm, but honestly, learning how html works and all the different possibilities for creative design has actually been fun. The outcome will still probably be pretty simple since I'm still learning, but I'm still pretty proud of all the stuff I've figured out to do. I also want to thank the people who've put up fun and helpful links. I know she said to avoid doing that, but I think it's a great idea and really helps fill out the blog.

I also just wanted to post that I totally appreciated the brevity of the quiz.

K, that's all!