TY Camping Trip 2015

I must say that after getting our junior cert results (which fortunately went quite well for me), it was really a very nice experience to go on the camping trip. Not only did I find it quite enjoyable overall, but it also turned out to be a great opportunity to get to know some of the new students (of which there are a good few) in our year, as well as to have a decent attempt at cooking tasty food.

We arrived at the camp site in Lough Dan via some buses.
Our group had perhaps among the largest of the tents, which Joshua had kindly provided.
In our tent were Joshua, Callum, Ethan and myself.

Our tent, as well as being rather large in overall size, had a nice little area of space between the two sleeping areas. I was very pleased to make this discovery, as I had anticipated a shortage in food and decided to bring enough food to feed us all.
In total, this included a small stove, a large coolbox (which later served nicely as a table) and a smaller coolbag of food, plus a third bag filled with cooking stuff (pots, eating utensils, etc.) and a cafetière, along with coffee, tea bags and hot chocolate powder. It occurred to me eventually that the others in my tent had similar plans, bringing plenty of food themselves. I was quite proud of the pancakes, or rather, pancake attempts, that I had made one of those breakfasts, despite the first one emerging quite deformed from the pan.

Although many people groaned, I personally thought that the hike was great. I enjoyed getting that little bit of exercise whilst letting my train of thought drift around and wander. I also got to chat a bit with some of my friends. By night, campfires were often lit, which became the cause of many a deliciously blackened marshmallow.

Eventually, when it was time for us to leave, I had to admit that I enjoyed camping, and I would love to do it again.

Kairos

Our English class had the wonderful opportunity to record our own television show in Maynooth, with the help of the company 'Kairos Communications'. We took on a wealth of different roles, behind the camera and in front of it and it was fascinating to learn so much about the process and the effort that goes into live television. Although our show would not be broadcast, here sure was a lot of pressure knowing that we had to get it all in one take.

For our show, we decided to stick with a fairytale theme. Many people brought in elaborate costumes. I decided to self-depracatingly dress as "Wally", a costume I had left from the year 2011, when Dublin attempted to break the world record for most people dressed together in this way.

 

CTYI Writing Correspondence Course

This is a course which I have just started, involving several assignments which I am required to submit by email over the course of the year. The course is aimed to test participants writing skills by providing a wide range of different assignments, which will test our abilities to write across a wide and varied range of different writing styles.

My first assignment is to rewrite a fairytale from the perspective of a different character, and I am very excited to see what my next one will be.

Web Summit 2015 Trip.

The web summit is an event where significant entrepreneurs from many major companies and organisations attend, tell their stories, and give their advice to people, both young and old alike, about starting a business or organisation, their key guidelines for success and how technology benefited them in this journey to success.

On the night when we attended, there were many inspiring entrepreneurs to learn from. The show opened with young innovator Riley Ennis, of the cancer research group 'Emmudicon'. He started his journey to try and end cancer naturally and safely when he was still in high school.

Then, we listened to two young kids who had created a 'bully bug' device in order to reduce the effects of bullying in their school and schools around the entire country of Ireland.

Most inspiring of all, in my opinion, was the guy who started 'Charity Water', an incredible and inspiring speaker whose organisation has helped millions of people around the world to go from drinking water infected with bacteria and leeches to having springs of fresh, clean water.
After hearing him explain his incredible work, I am actually considering donating my next birthday.

DCG Office Tool

This was one of our earliest attempts to create a virtual object in DCG using solid works.
Apparently, this object is an office tool, perhaps intended to house a pencil.
It does, however, look really rather strange.
We created this object by applying the 'box' function to a simple square, through which we could manage to procure an unsurprisingly box-like shape resembling a hollow cube, with a single face cut away to reveal it's contents, or rather, lack thereof. We made the walls 2mm thick.
Then, with the 'extruded cut' function, we cut two rectangles out of two parallel faces, resembling a pair of doorways in and out. We used the midpoint of the top edge of each face of our box, just to make sure we got our proportions right.
To make it look more fancy yet, we cut two hexagons into the sides of box, to make some lovely windows (extruded cut again).
In the end, I painted it entirely purple, to make it look nice for the photo.

CTYI Early University Entrance Psychology Course.

On Fridays, I go to this course in DCU and I study Psychology.

It is run by the Center for Talented Youth in Ireland, or CTYI (it is often humorously remarked that the t stands for smart).

I have been doing the CTYI summer course for three years, and I really must say that it is truly great fun. The atmosphere is incredible and the material is very interesting and engaging, but most importantly, the people (including the teachers/lecturers) are very friendly and it is easy to find someone to talk to who shares your interest in cool but strange things.

This particular course is aimed specifically towards transition year students and runs throughout the year, on Fridays.
It's great for providing us with a tiny taste of College life. It encourages a sense of independence and responsibility, but also grants a certain sense of freedom.

As for the lectures, the material is very interesting. I find Psychology very fascinating and useful in most areas of life. The irony was quite amusing as some students very visibly drifted off during our lecture on attention. The lecturers are pretty cool, too, especially Dean. They seem almost more than happy to handle questions and discussion on interesting topics.