I had to write a poem about poetry for IB English. It turned out alright in my opinion. This might be my first piece of poetry worth reading so I’m posting it. Hope you like it. Critique if you wish.
Natural Chorus
With my pen in hand,
I sit down to write my prose.
I scribble the first line,
But crumple the paper and throw it aside.
I am sitting at my desk,
The only light emanating from a lone lamp.
Crumpled paper balls litter the floor
From all the times I missed the wastebasket.
I’m tired, I want to sleep.
But I have to write this poem.
Nothing comes to mind though.
Poetry is hard.
Maybe if I shut everything out.
Turn off the music,
Switch off the light,
Remove all distraction.
I sit in darkness.
The beating of the heart,
The rain tapping on the window,
The ticking of the clock.
The sounds around me and inside,
Create a natural chorus,
From which the words of my poem
Begin to form.
Posted on November 15, 2007 in School
One of the required courses I have to take for IB is called Theory of Knowledge. My teacher describes it as the class anyone can teach, but no one is qualified to teach. I didn’t know what the class was about when I signed up other than that I had to take it, but the answer was right in front of me: it’s about the theory of knowledge.
In Theory of Knowledge, or TOK as we IB savvy people like to call it, we learn about knowledge, to put it simply. We ask questions like…
- What is knowledge?
- What constitutes as knowledge and what doesn’t?
- Where does knowledge come from?
- Are there different types of knowledge?
And we have lengthy class discussions in which we try to answer these questions, and more often than not the topic of religion creeps in somehow. Plato and his allegory of the cave will most definitely come up at some point.
It sounds like a really boring class but it really isn’t. I would go so far as to say it is my favorite. The topics we talk about in class are usually interesting and I often leave the classroom with something to wonder about. I also find myself making vague references to the things we learn all the time. For instance, I’ve made a few syllogisms since we learned about them. Even more weird is that I have managed to apply quantum physics to an activity once. Yay for Schrödinger’s cat.
So what is knowledge? Knowledge is true justified belief. What that means is a long story. We’re only spending the entire school year on the subject.
Posted on November 13, 2007 in School
Jameslao.com turns one year old today. It has been an interesting trip. I didn’t blog as much as I wanted to but I think I did alright. I don’t feel obligated to blog all the time like some so I guess it explains why my post count is rather low in comparison to some blogs.
Reading posts I wrote a year ago is amusing. I blogged about some of the things everyone else did like the Zune and the iPhone. One of my goals now for this blog is to have unique content. I don’t think people want to read stuff they can find on Engadget and the like, nor do I want to rewrite it.
What I think people do like is I’ve been posting a lot more code lately. This is a trend I want to continue because I like giving back to the community. I’ve been using WordPress longer than I’ve been running jameslao.com and I owe a lot the platform. Much of the PHP I know comes from studying and developing for WordPress. The framework for the engineering site I helped develop for Vernier was actually inspired by the way WordPress is designed.
The past year has been interesting to the say the least. Some parts were more fun than others, a lot more actually. But I can say that I learned a lot, about myself, life, friends, school, physics, and IB of course. Here’s to another year of blogging.
Posted on November 11, 2007 in Uncategorized
Check out the post I made at Nukoda.com about what Android means for gamers.
Posted on November 5, 2007 in Sidenotes
