It's October, Which Means A Lot Of Things Will Be Happening

Happy October, everyone!

The reason for this post is that I have a few announcements to make about things happening here on this blog:

1. NaBloWriMo
Can't forget this event. Basically, it's a challenge to write a post for every day of October. Yes, that's right, every single day. I did it last year, and had a lot of fun coming up with topics each day: this year, I'm going to try to be a bit more organized, though you will see some random posts crop up during the month. Or maybe just something along the lines of "I can't think of anything to say . . ."

2. The Rule of Three Blogfest


You've probably heard of it by now, but if not, this is a blogfest where writers post on Wednesdays/Thursdays throughout October (four posts in all) based on a writing prompt given by the hosts--but the setting has already been given to you to work with, called Renaissance. I'm really looking forward to writing/posting mine; I've got ideas for my characters from the first prompt already, which will go up next Wednesday.

3. Pay It Forward Blogfest


Sign up, and list three blogs you recommend on October 14th. I love meeting new bloggers, so I'm excited for this blogfest.

4. An interview with author Elliot Grace


If you don't know Elliot Grace, you have to go check out his blog and follow him. He's one of the most interesting authors around, and I will be interviewing him here on October 26th. Watch for it!

5. The Inheritance Cycle Re-Reading Challenge


This is a really good Fantasy series, and Christopher Paolini has finally finished the last novel, which will come out November 8th. Hooray!

6. The Insecure Writer's Support Group


Wednesday, again. I'll have to post double on that day, because that's also the day the Rule of Three Blogfest begins--these blogfests seem to be trying to thwart any plans I make. :P

7. Rachael Harrie's Third Writer's Platform-Building Campaign


There's a third challenge to come on October 17th, so of course I will be posting that as well. (If you haven't read my entry for the Second Campaigner Challenge, it is HERE.)

. . . and I think that's it.

Finally.

Do you have anything planned?




-----The Golden Eagle

Reflections On The A-Z April Blogging Challenge

Arlee Bird at Tossing It Out (one of the co-hosts of the Challenge) has organized a "Mega Post" for people to link up and share their thoughts on the A-Z Challenge. And since I was going to post about what I thought of the challenge anyway, I signed up for it!

Overall, I have only one negative point to make about the Challenge.

It took up a lot of time.

Of course, a time could have been saved if I'd pre-written more of my posts before April began, stuck to a better schedule, and had a better method of getting around to new blogs and commenting on them. For most of the month I just tried to get around to the people who commented on my blog and keep up with a few blogs I already followed, although I did manage to get to around 1000 participants. (I'm still going through the rest of the list.)

Now for the positives:

I met a lot of new people. Not only did I have fun reading and commenting on A-Z Challenge posts, I got a lot of comments myself and gained around 80 followers. That's one of the highest number of followers because of participating in a challenge/blogfest, which is awesome.

The posts were great--there were topics from dreams to hope to writing to songs to animals to science to you-name-it, and even when there were duplicate subjects, it was interesting to see how people approached it with their own ideas/thoughts/opinions.

I also learned a lot. About effective (and, ah, ineffective) ways of blogging, and I learned more about the things I posted about. I hadn't heard of Ziziphus zizyphus until I posted about the plant (it's jujube, by the way), or thought so much about Schroedinger's Cat (there really should be a better analogy), or known about Montreal's RESO (man, I want to go there now), or known that the acronym for laser should really be loser (for Light Oscillation by Stimulated Emission of Radiation), before I did the challenge.

So, in short:

Negatives:


Took up time.


Positives:


Met new people, found great blogs, learned about blogging, and learned from (and had fun!) writing my posts.


Conclusion:


I will definitely be doing this Challenge again next year.

(Presuming I'm around, of course.)

*****

What about you? Did you participate this year? If so, do you think this challenge was worth participating in? If not, would you consider doing it the next time around?


-----The Golden Eagle

A-Z Blogging Challenge: I Stands For: Ice

***An unfinished version of this post accidentally published this morning. My fault, because I meant to say 12:00 PM, not 12:00 AM. Sorry about that. Just another reason why a switch should be made to 24 HOUR TIME. It would make life so much easier. Anyway, I'll rant some other time (that's hopefully in 24-hour!)--on with the post.***

I've already covered Cold (go HERE to read that post) but ice is a very different state of matter.

(SOURCE)

Essentially water frozen into a solid state, ice is the "most abundant of the varying solid phases on Earth's surface". The most common phase transition (i.e. the most common way ice forms) is when water is cooled to 0 C/273.15 K/32 F at standard atmospheric pressure, depending on which temperature scale you use. It can also form without going through a liquid state, such as when vapor turns into frost.

(SOURCE)

Ice is officially considered a mineral. Its crystalline structure is based on water molecules, which consist of  covalent bonds between oxygen atoms and two hydrogen atoms. Weak, adjacent hydrogen bonds between molecules control much of the physical properties of water and ice.

(SOURCE)

The only non-metallic structure known to expand when it cools, frozen water is 9% less dense than liquid water. This is because the hydrogen atoms have a slight positive charge, and the oxygen atoms have a slight negative charge, and the solid hexagonal structure that forms because of their bond takes up more space than when water is moving freely in liquid state.

(SOURCE)

Ice is one of 15 known crystalline phases of water. Besides I_h, which is your usual frozen water, there is:

Amorphous Ice (ice without any crystal structure).
Ice I_c (ice where oxygen atoms are arranged in a diamond shape, produced at temperatures of 130 and 220 K).
Ice II (ice with a rhombohedral crystalline structure, formed by compressing I_h at 190-210 K).
Ice III (ice with a tetragonal crystalline structure, formed by cooling water to 250 K at 300 MPa--MPa stands for megapascal. One megapascal is one million pascals, and a pascal is one newton of force per square meter).
Ice IV (ice in a metastable rhombohedral phase. (Metastable means in a state of equilibrium, but easily sent into a lower energy state with only slight interaction.) It is formed by heating amorphous ice at a pressure of 810 MPa).
Ice V (ice in a monoclinic crystalline phase, and the most complicated of all phases. It is formed by cooling water down to 253 K at 500 MPa.)
Ice VI (ice with a tetragonal crystalline structure and formed by cooling water to 270 K at 1.1 GPa. GPa stands for one billion (thousand million) pascals.)
. . . and for the other phases, go HERE.

(I couldn't resist sharing an eagle sculpture. SOURCE)

*****

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice
http://www.word-detective.com/howcome/waterexpand.html
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/chemical/waterdens.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_(unit)
http://www.sensorsone.co.uk/pressure-measurement-glossary/mpa-megapascal-pressure-unit.html



*****

Thoughts on ice?


-----The Golden Eagle

400th Post And The Versatile Blogger Award

Yes, this is my 400th post!

*takes a moment to grin and dance about in happy circles then realize how ridiculous that looks and regain composure*

I thought about what to do to celebrate the occasion, but nothing spectacular really came to me . . . there are a lot of awesome blogfests happening already, and I'm afraid I have no brilliant ideas at the moment (why do all the good ideas come to me when I don't have paper around on which to write them down?).

So I have decided to ask YOU to ask me questions on anything (well, almost) you'd like to know about me.

Old trick in the book, but I always find it fun to know more about the bloggers in the 'sphere, so it seemed to me like something to try.

They can be all kinds of questions from writing-related to silly to philosophical to complicated to . . . well, you get the picture. You have 7 days to ask (and you can come back with more in case something strikes you) since I'll be answering everything one week from now.

(If you don't feel like asking, no worries. This is for your benefit, you awesome readers who have suffered through hundreds of my posts by now. :P)

*****

I would also like to accept the Versatile Blogger Award from Trisha at W O R D + S T U F F.

Thank you so much for awarding me, Trisha!

I've already listed 7 things about myself before, and awarded people . . . so I hope you'll forgive me if I skip that part of the Versatile Blogger Award.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!


-----The Golden Eagle

NaBloWriMo

There are a lot of these "Na-something-Wri-Mos" aren't there? Most famous of all being the National Novel Writing Month in November. But I have decided to participate in NaBLOWriMo, the October event just for bloggers.

The objective? Post every day in the month of October with no breaks.

I thought about doing NaNoWriMo and trying to write 50,000 words in November since I met (and exceeded) the 30,000 words in 30 days challenge in June. I almost had 50,000 words that month, actually. But since my book needs a whole lot of work as it is, and I think editing, revising, and restructuring has got to take a bigger place than, it has right now, I've decided against trying for NaNoWriMo. Maybe next year. Also, for some reason, it feels like I'd be doing a disservice to my book if I tried to rush myself and came out with a lot of junk in the process. Junk doesn't do anything for anything.

Therefore, when I saw the NaBloWriMo icon on Alex's blog and also noticed that Cruella was participating, I thought: Well, I'll do this instead!

I suppose you have surmised by now that you're going to be reading a lot of me in the month of October. I will, however, try to make it more interesting than just "Yo." Because I could make every post in that month "Yo." since I believe that would fall inside the posting parameters. The only problem is that "Yo." would be, in a word, BOR-ING. And so I am thinking of things to post about to complete this challenge.

What have I come up with? I've thought of a tutorial I could do, (it's profile-related; you know, that issue where if someone clicks your follower icon but the link to your blog never loads?), I've got some book reviews I could do, (TBR pile: Get. Over. Here.), there are some other things happening, (like book release dates), and I've got an idea for Halloween. (Um, maybe you don't want to know the details of that last one.) And, of course, there is life. Life is unpredictable. There's always something cropping up that I could elaborate on and post about. Right?

But I WILL try to post in October. I will. I shall. I can. I'll schedule things and expand them as time goes by, just to make sure that something will pop up for every day of the month.

What about you? Are you going to participate in this NaBloWriMo?

-----The Golden Eagle