delayed again

The schedule I'm trying out right now for my blog is writing every morning but then again once school starts up we'll have to figure something out. Speaking of which, remember when I said hopefully school won't be delayed due to COVID worsening? I mean our trip already got canceled because of it but well, school got delayed a bit too LOL. So we were supposed to start on the 10th right? Now we start on the 13th and it'll be virtual until the 18th. Plus we're going to have to go to school to do a COVID test too so if anyone comes out positive they might not be able to go in person on the 18th either.

So I was wondering if this is a good thing or a bad thing? On one hand, I should be happy that I have a few more days off but then again, the AP tests aren't going to get delayed just because our classes got pushed back. So then technically we're the ones getting the short end of the stick here since we actually have less time to learn the material before the test. Just some thoughts I had. 

Furthermore, writing my blog now day after day reminds me that I haven't really done any Membean recently. Maybe I should get on the grind again LOL. However, recently I've learned that using a ton of really advanced vocabulary may not always be the best when the reason you're writing is so people can understand you well. If your audience was more formal then more formal language is obviously necessary. 

Yesterday was also Three Kings Day, also known as Epiphany, basically, 3 men came and gave gifts to Jesus when he was still an infant. This day also marks the end of the Christmas season so now we're back. I don't have that much today actually so I'll just leave it here.

a little info on muscle memory

This is the bad thing about writing your blog the next day because after sleeping everything you did yesterday sort of feels like a dream. 

I remember back when I used to be really dedicated on Nitrotype and would type like 200 races in one sitting LOL. So I revisited it yesterday and typed 119 WPM first try which is amazing since my highest ever is only 127 WPM. The way they calculate WPM or words per minute is that they average every word to be 5 characters so it's just (the number of characters you type in a minute)/5. So if I got 127 words per minute that means I type 635 characters in a minute or 10.6 characters every second. That's insane. But the thing is, when you're typing, you rarely focus on what the next letter is going to be but rather your brain already knows certain patterns that are common and executes those patterns instead of letter by letter. 

Now, this leads to my next topic, muscle memory!! So I did do some research and I watched a few videos on people explaining it. The first video was a guy talking about how it applies to playing the piano. Basically, the term muscle memory itself is a bit misleading since muscles themselves do not have memory. Instead, a part of your brain called the cerebellum allows you to control your motor skills to complete complex tasks such as playing a sonata for example. Over time, after 300-500 repetitions of the same thing, your brain gets accustomed to the particular sequence of muscle control required to do the task and it stores it somewhere so it can be fetched with ease at a later date. This is also the reason why learning how to ride a bike takes less time than learning how to play a sonata from memory since 500 repetitions of cycling take way less time than playing a complicated piece 500 times. 

However, is muscle memory really a good thing when it comes to piano? Well, the answer is yes and no. See, without muscle memory playing a 1-hour concerto would be virtually impossible because you'd have to memorize every single note and the order in which every single key is played. A tiny distraction like a cough in the audience or a flash from a camera could be enough to completely throw you off and make you mess up. That's where muscle memory kicks in. It ALLOWS up to a certain degree of distraction and even your hands play by themselves the correct notes like a machine pre-programmed to do so. Albeit muscle memory is awesome in that sense, it would be a mistake to completely rely upon it. You still need to keep a part of your brain focused on where in the piece you currently are because if you don't even know that much then you could very easily skip past half of the piece and go straight to the ending or somehow loop back to the very beginning. Aaaand I won't deny that it's happened to me before but at least not in public LOL. 

Lastly, since muscle memory is used to build these programmed sequences of motions, you can build really good habits but also cement bad ones after enough repetitions. That's why it's extremely important to correct what you're doing wrong before it becomes a habit. Okay, that's all I have for you today. Seems like today was more of a lecture than an update on my life post but I enjoyed it LOL. cyaaa

research results

Hey there, we're back! 

So today was pretty nice and I'm going to talk a little about what I researched for the project. 

The main thing I researched today was infinite scrolling. Now, what exactly is infinite scrolling? Well, basically it's quite a simple app feature that just allows you to keep scrolling down and down with an unlimited amount of content showing up on your screen. This change proved to make users stay consuming content for longer periods of time since it has the effect of a bottomless bowl. There was research by a professor in consumer behavior that yielded results showing that people having soup from self-refilling bowls actually consumed 73% more than those with regular bowls. 

Basically, the reason behind this effect is that before your brain even has the opportunity to react to your impulses, the system makes it so that it feeds you more automatically. That's what hooks you and makes it really hard for you to escape the loop because there's seemingly no end. If you think about it, really sharp minds such as those working in Silicon Valley, dedicate all their time and work solely to making you addicted to their apps. And sure enough, it works on a huge amount of people. 

So then, what can we do to stop getting hooked? What you could do first is to dismiss triggers. If there's no trigger to get you hooked in the first place then obviously you'll be reducing the time spent on social media. An easy sure-fire way to do so would be to turn your notifications off so that you're the one who decides when and where to open your applications. 

Now, what happens if you turn all your notifications off but still get into the loop of endless scrolling after opening up the app? The next method would be to set pause-reminders that serve as wake-up calls informing you that you should take a break after a long time on the app. The reminder will be able to interrupt the infinite scroll cycle effectively and could save you lots of potentially lost time on mindless consumption of the limitless content out there. 

Lastly, you could set up feedback nudges that show you how much time you've been spending on the platform lately and this could help you gain an understanding of whether you should mind your time more carefully or if you're happy with what you're doing right now. 

So that's all I have for you today, see you later!!

auto-pilot

Mmm, so last night I fell asleep too fast so I wasn't able to write my blog, therefore here I am to catch up on the missed post yesterday.

Recently I've been writing schedules to organize my time during the days of break in order to maintain some sort of productivity. By doing so I was finally able to do some AP Euro annotations during break LOL otherwise I probably wouldn't have remembered or have done it. Additionally, I wanted to get some more school work done so that when we do go back then I'll be a bit more relaxed and not have to be running from deadline to deadline for every assignment given. 

Now, one of the school assignments I need to finish is this Spanish group presentation on the negative effects of technology on society and the specific frontier that our group landed on was social isolation due to tech. Oh, and I have Pen in my group which is really cool and I think he's already done some research before we even knew about this project for another class so we already have some information and sources thanks to him. Personally, I do think this topic is really interesting just because of how much time technology consumes from us in this day and age, especially during the pandemic. That's gotten a bit better now though but nevertheless, screens still take up a portion of time that sometimes we don't even realize it's taking. 

Aside from that, I'm doing a few hours of math a day to keep up the grind and also some piano to keep my pieces from leaving my memory LOL. Honestly, I don't even know how remembering pieces on piano works, sometimes I don't even know what note comes next but my hand just plays it by itself without needing my brain to tell it where to go. It's pretty insane. That's why I think muscle memory is really cool but at the same time, it feels like I don't have complete control over my playing because it's kind of just operating in auto-pilot without me. Actually, maybe I'll do more research on that and report to you another time on my findings of muscle memory and how it works. 

Anyway, I got the inspiration to write again so expect to be able to see a new post up every day... i mean every night. 

the trip that never happened

Another day, another post. I think I'm starting to get the hang of the routine now. 

Okay, so as I said yesterday, I'll talk a bit about our trip that was supposed to take place. We were supposed to leave on Christmas day, the 25th of December, and we would come back today morning, the 2nd of January 2022. That way we would be able to celebrate the new year in Canada. 

So due to the Omicron variant of COVID, the Canadian government required a PCR test that was taken within 72 hours of the flight. We had asked this lab just minutes away from us and they told us we would be able to take the test at their lab on the 23rd of December in the morning. We didn't think much of it at the time and we just kept on with our other preparations such as buying clothes for the winter. 

Then the day rolls around and we get to the lab only to find out that they ran out of PCR tests. We then consecutively went around to around 20 other labs only to get the same answer every single time, "We have no more PCR tests". Although we were rejected all those times and were prepared for the worst outcome whenever we pulled up to a new lab, it was nevertheless still disheartening to hear it again. At the end of the day, we couldn't manage to find a single place to do our tests and we were told that PCR tests had basically run out throughout the entire island. 

The following day would be Christmas Eve and labs don't open so there was no more chance. That's how we ended up canceling the trip we had planned so long for. A little background information is that at the time Puerto Rico was really being hit hard by the virus with the numbers of positive cases rising exponentially and people were in heaps to get tested if they had it too. Furthermore, the fact that it was the holiday season and a lot of people probably had to take the test to visit their families too most likely affected the result as well.

Anyway, starting tomorrow I think I'll start going out of vacation mode and take things more seriously. After all, there's only one more week left till school starts back up again. Will we have to go back online due to the increasing amount of cases? I have yet to find out the answer to that and the headmaster of the school has not sent out any info notifying us of this matter either so I assume it should still be in person unless the situation significantly worsens over the next week. 

Oh, and when break started, I made myself a to-do list for tasks to complete over the break. To be honest, there's quite a lot of work left and I haven't really accomplished as much as I'd have liked to by this time. However, you gotta start somewhere, so here we go. Buenas noches.

traditions

Okay, we're back at it. 

Last night, we were invited to a friend's house to watch the fireworks go off at midnight. All around us, there were loud flashing lights going boom boom boom in nearly 360 degrees. What really caught my attention was the duration of the fireworks, the cost is around 30 dollars for every 30 seconds worth of fireworks, so a dollar a second basically. And these aren't even fancy ones with all sorts of designs, just plain old fireworks. 

The fireworks coming from one particular home lasted around 10 minutes or so. From 5 minutes before midnight to 5 minutes into the new year, that's literally 6 thousand US dollars just bursting into flames in the air for entertainment. The things people do for some fun LOL. Mmm, although I do think that tradition is a big part of why fireworks are set off year after year. 

Anyway, today in the morning we decided to go for a drive around some beaches in the vicinity. I was the one driving btw, first time this year heh. It's honestly quite a scenic route, lots a greenery, a great place to learn how to drive too since it's just one road and not much complex situations with crossroads and cars coming from different directions. Amittedly, it isn't my first time driving down this road either, in fact, I've come here enough times to memorize how to get to and back home from there. It's a little tradition of our own to buy some local fried foods at the small shops on the roadside and we eat it while enjoying the view. 

We got back home and I attended my last TA session of this class I had signed up for. Originally I was going to take this class while in Toronto, Canada but some complications regarding COVID made it so that we had to cancel the trip at the last moment. I'll talk about that tomorrow though since it's already quite late today. Then, I ate my first dinner of the year LOL, nice steak and a spicy dish too, and then it was about time for the closing ceremony of the camp. The camp is basically where they give all the classes, but I only chose to take one of them. 

The ceremony itself was kinda boring for me since it was mostly the demonstration day to the parents to show them what their kids have been working on for the past week in class but my class is just lectures so there isn't anything to show. The other classes all yielded projects or skills that can be presented, y'know? There's probably a better way to word that, some skills are more tangible than others, they're easier to see and to show. Others, meanwhile, are more hidden and work behind the scenes. 

After the ceremony, Psi had planned a group call for us to attend. A workshop on his interpretation of the meaning of life LOL. I must admit, it's definitely an interesting perspective and one that I've never thought about so I appreciate him talking to us about it. Oh and recently there's a new addition to my name collection, welcomeee Mahi!! She's new to the school but she's nice and outgoing, also Rama's girlfriend! Anyway, that's about all the time I have for tonight so I'll be seeing you tomorrow. cyaaa