Geoffrey

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I Survived the Borden Murders

Introduction

For the Stranger Than Fiction Unit in Humanities, I read the book The Borden Murders: Lizzie Borden and the Trial of the Century by Sarah Miller ~~while managing to not die from boredom~~. The book is about a murder case that occurred in the city of Fall River during the late 19th century. Specifically, the murders of Andrew Borden and Abby Borden. The book talks about the murder itself, information collected on the case such as the testimonies given by key people, the legal processes of the case, and additional pieces of information. This book focuses especially on Lizzie Borden, the daughter of Andrew Borden and the main suspect of the crime.

My Notebook Pages

During the book club, I had to keep track of my thinking in my notebook. Here are some of my pages.

In this page, I compiled my evidence to support my claim that the enforcers of the law were very unprofessional during the Borden Murders. This page is the longest page I have, because the author seemed to really want to get that point across.

In this page, I focused on the other side of the story: the pieces of evidence that makes Lizzie Borden look suspicious. The central idea of this page is “Lizzie Borden was suspicious”, and I found lots of evidence to support that.

In this page, I looked at the information related to the newspapers, since the newspapers played a huge role by influencing the public’s opinion on the case. This notebook page is short because most information related to the newspapers of Fall River are presented as Fun Facts in the book.

Conclusion

I found this book rather repetitive and kind of boring, especially in the law-related sections of the book since not much happens in court. I would mostly recommend this book for research instead of casual reading, since it contains lots of information but does not feel interesting. Well, thanks for making it to the end of the post!

The Gospel According to Geoffrey

December 16, 2021 / Geoffrey / 0 Comments

The Gospel According to Larry by Janet Tashjian is a book about Josh Swensen, a teenage prodigy, who posted blog posts on anti-consumerism under the name “Larry”. When Larry becomes famous, Josh has to deal with the repercussion of fame. The theme “Be yourself” is commonly repeated throughout the book with Josh questioning who he is allowing others to see him as.

In my opinion, this book is one of the worst books I have ever read. There is no action, no drama, or anything interesting at all. The characters are hard to relate to while also lacking in detail. The author’s style is also awfully boring: the book is basically a description of a sequence of events.

I am Apparently 90% Humanist

October 15, 2021 / Geoffrey / 1 Comment

Is Geoffrey A Humanist? by geoffrey.liu

Stealing Words from the Page | Found Poem from “Thank You, M’am”

September 9, 2021 / Geoffrey / 0 Comments

This found poem came from page one of the short story “Thank You, M’am” by Langston Hughes. This found poem shows the events that happened between a boy, who is the protagonist of the poem, and a woman, who is the antagonist. The found poem depicts a Character Versus Character conflict: the boy attempts to steal the woman’s purse but fails, and instead of obtaining a stolen purse, he gets caught by the woman. The woman then proceeds to interrogate the boy about his actions.

Made with Canva

Original image from Unsplash by Tetiana Padurets. Image modifications by me.

Circuits Final Summative Assessment Blog Post

June 17, 2021 / Geoffrey / 0 Comments

For the final Circuits summative, I made a game. Here’s my process of creating the project and my reflection on the summative.

Planning

The Outputs and Inputs: I used five LEDs in my plan: two sequence LEDs (both green) and three status LEDs (yellow, red, and green). The inputs are the A and B buttons.

The Code: Nothing happens until the player starts the game by pressing A and B at the same time. The game would randomly generate a sequence of left and rights (represented with 0s and 1s in the code), and then display the sequence with the two sequence LEDs. The A and B buttons will have to be pressed in the right order for the player to win. If the player wins, the green status LED lights up, and otherwise the red LED lights up.

The Circuit: The left sequence light would be connected to port A4 of the CPX, and the right sequence will be connected to A3. The three status LEDs (yellow, red, and green) would be connected to A5, A6, and A7 in order.

Here’s an image of my plan:

Changes to the Plan

I removed the status LEDs from the plan. This is because the status LEDs are not very important: they don’t add much to the general project, despite requiring three LEDs to be sewn, which I thought was a waste of time when considering what it does for the project. My project stayed true to the plan otherwise though.

Making the Project

The majority of the project was spent on coding and debugging, due to the more complex code needed to make the project. There was a problem: MakeCode did not have wait until condition and repeat until condition blocks, which is what the concept was based on. I had to create a workaround with on event and wait until event blocks that was very delicate: the code would probably break if one block activated half a second slower. It took a while to get the timing right (there was weird reactivations of scripts, and other details that took a while to fix). After that, the rest of the time was spent on sewing the two sequence LEDs in place. Here are some images of the process:

First LED Sewn

Second LED Sewn

The Final Product & My Reflection

Front side of the final product.

Back side of the final product (the stitches and sewing is shown here).

My final product looks rather bland: it does not have any decorative stitches or pieces of felt. I thought about adding letters in felt that says “DEFUSE” below the CPX, a guide to the game on paper pinned to the project, and a lighted string on the CPX to make it look like a bomb, but there wasn’t enough time. In other words, if I had more time, I would add on to the the visual aspect of the project.

In this project, I learned how to sew and make circuits with the CPX (the concept of a common end for multiple separate circuits confused me a bit at first). I also learned how to use the CPX in general. In the future, I think I probably would not be doing much with CPXes, but if I did, I would probably make some more code-focused projects.

Circuits: First Project for Sewable Circuits

May 6, 2021 / Geoffrey / 0 Comments

Share Your Product:

This project is a Minecraft creeper bookmark. I chose the creeper design because I like Minecraft (it’s one of my favorite games). I am proud of this bookmark, because it’s the first e-textile circuit I made that ever worked. The other designs (An Among Us Crewmate & a planet) were not chosen. That is because they were more complicated, with more measurements. Both also had round edges, which is harder to cut out compared to sharp edges.

This is my process of creating the bookmark (with images):

1. Develop and plan
For this stage, I designed the ideas and created the prototype after one plan was approved.

Here are some photos of my prototype:

2. Create and improve:

In this stage, I created the bookmark itself.

Here are some photos of the bookmark:

Share Your Learning:
I learned a lot while working on this project. I learned the reason for my previous practice circuits to not work: I used one thread throughout the entire circuit. I used one thread for the positive path and one for the negative this time, and it worked. I also realized that I need to use normal thread to tie the other 2 tabs. That ways, the battery holder doesn’t flop around or fall off. For me, the first tab was really hard to tie the thread on to, because the battery holder was not already secure. I managed to do it after after a while though. Another thing that was really hard was the planning process. I spent too much time drawing the scale drawings, which ate away one class that was meant for creating the prototype. Here are my plans:This is the plan for the Creeper bookmark. It was approved.
This is a plan for a planet pin.
This is a plan for an Among Us Crewmate.

Humanities Argumentative Essay Reflection

January 5, 2021 / Geoffrey / 0 Comments

This is an reflection for the argumentative essay I wrote for Humanities.

Two things I did well:

• I feel like my arguments were logical and well-structured.

• I feel like I used the right arguments and evidence for the purpose of persuading others.

Two things I can improve on:

• I feel like I can improve on the introduction because they weren’t as detailed

• I think my conclusion were too short and weren’t very thought-inducing

I feel like this essay was a nice essay. Perhaps a bit rushed, but still good. Some evidence were not cited because they were never planned to be part of the essay, or I just forgot to add the citations to my planning document. Some places were a bit too short, others too long. Some places were hard to understand. Some places were too concise and didn’t contain enough emotions. But still good, because my arguments were good and persuasive, and it sounded good.

Master Lego Builders: Car With a Purpose

November 24, 2020 / Geoffrey / 0 Comments

This is my final result for this lego project. It’s a racer and I built it out of lego technic pieces.

Reflection:

How do you feel about your final product?

I feel that this project is nice (partially because I made it, I guess).

What would you change if you had more time?

I would probably focus more on the details if I had more time, because I did not have a lot of details.

Are you proud of what you made?

Yes I am. I spent a lot of time trying to get the shape of the vehicle right. In fact, the back part alone part took an entire lesson! The result was worth it though.

Pictures:

Here’s a picture of the racer (I made a mini-person. They’re on the seat right now):

Another picture (the seatbelt is unstrapped and the person is besides the vehicle):

Creature & Habitat Lego Challenge | Master Lego Builders Enrichment

November 11, 2020 / Geoffrey / 0 Comments

This is my creature (I didn’t have time to build the habitat). It’s a robot.

Image:

Some strengths of this creature are:

• Wheels can make the creature move fast

• Can receive signals (See the antennae on the head?)

Two things I would improve next time:

• I would probably add more details. Right now the creature is just a box with wheels and a head.

• I would ma a habitat. It might another planet, or maybe a factory.

Drama Around ISB Drama Project

November 4, 2020 / Geoffrey / 0 Comments

Here’s my Drama Project video.
Click this to go to the DragonTube video

"The important thing is not to stop questioning." - Albert Einstein