Sunday, 30 March 2008

Morse code alternatives

Punctuation+Special signals
Full stop: .-.-.-
Comma: --..--
Exclamation Mark: ---.
Dollar Sign: ...-..-
Colon (:): ---...
Semicolon: -.-.-.
Paragraph: .-.-..
Question mark: ..--..
Apostrophe('): .----.
Hyphen (-): -....-
Slash (/): -..-.
Brackets (parentheses): -.--.-
Quotation Marks ("/"): .-..-.
At sign (@): .--.-.
Equal sign (=): -...-
Underline: ..--.-
End Of Message: .-.-.
Wait: .-...
Break In The Text: -...-
Going Off The Air: -.-..-..
End of transmission: ...-.-
Special Characters
`: .--.-
~: --.--
。: .--.-
Other phrases
Over: -.-
Roger: .-.
See You Later: -.-...-.-..
Be Seeing You: -...-.-.-...-
You're : ..-.-. } No space between dits & dahs. Signal Report: .-....-
Best Regards: --.....--
Love And Kisses (wonder why I wrote this?): ---..---..
Mistake: .....
Special note: Some of these codes are the same with each other, or same with letters. It is a special skill to predict what is going to come next in Morse Code. I can't even do it.

Tuesday, 11 March 2008

The amazing Photocopier part 1

It's amazing how you go in a photocopying room, place the piece of paper into the machine, press a few buttons then you get a load of the same pieces of paper you wanted! Yes I would agree, the photocopier is a pretty good invention. But, you wonder, how does it work?

Well lets start from the beginning. To understand how a photocopier works, you need to learn all the pieces from simple to complex. We start with the special drum inside the copier. Have you ever tried rubbing a balloon on your sweatshirt to create static electricity? Well, that's what the drum inside the copier does. It charges up with static electricity. Inside the photocopier, there's also the toner. It's a very fine black powder which gets attracted by the static-charged drum.

There are three things about the drum and the toner that let a copier perform its magic:


  • The drum can be selectively charged, so that only parts of it attract toner. In a copier, you make an 'image' -- in static electricity -- on the surface of the drum. Where the original sheet of paper is black, you create static electricity on the drum. Where it is white you do not. What you want is for the white areas of the original sheet of paper to NOT attract toner. The way this selectivity is accomplished in a copier is with light -- this is why it's called a photocopier! (I will get to the scanning soon.)

  • Right now, the toner is on the piece of paper. Somehow the toner on the drum needs to get on the piece of paper. So then, something charges up the piece of paper with static electricity. It then pulls the toner off the drum and onto the piece of paper. The toner then turns into a common modern (?) word, ink.

  • The toner is heat sensitive, so the loose toner particles are attached (fused) to the paper with heat as soon as they come off the drum.

The drum, or belt, is made out of photo conductive material. Here are the actual steps involved in making a photocopy:

  1. The surface of the drum is charged.
  2. An acute beam of light or laser scans across the piece of paper that you have placed on the platen's surface. The laser light is reflected from the paper and strikes the drum below.
  3. Wherever a photon of the light or laser strikes, electrons are emitted from the photoconductive atom in the drum and neutralize the positive charges above. Dark areas on the original (such as pictures or text) do not reflect light onto the drum, leaving regions of positive charges on the drum's surface.
  4. A positively charged sheet of paper then passes over the surface of the drum, attracting the beads of toner away from it.
  5. The paper is then heated and pressed to fuse the image formed by the toner to the paper's surface.

When the copier illuminates the sheet of paper on the glass surface of a copier, a pattern of the image is projected onto the positively charged photoreceptive drum below. Light reflected from blank areas on the page hits the drum and causes the charged particles coating the drum's surface to be neutralized. This leaves positive charges only where there are dark areas on the paper that did not reflect light. These positive charges attract negatively charged toner. The toner is then transferred and fused to a positively charged sheet of paper.

I got this idea from http://www.howstuffworks.com/.

Promoting Hamilton

Note: The room 5ians for 2008 will know what's been going on for this project. For more info to those who are non-room 5ians or ex-room 5ians, find out what's up to scratch on http://www.peachgroveroom5.blogspot.com/ .
Ah... Hamilton is going to have some changes these days... Like the intersection on Te Rapa road and Wairere drive (near The Base). It all started as a chaotic, rumpled and muddled roundabout. Cars were going up, down, left, right, forwards, backwards and every direction you can think of. Everyday, there will be over 100 traffic jams (nice on toast). Just because of this one and only reason, the Hamilton City Council decided to take away the roundabout. They replaced it with an intersection with traffic lights, lined with smooth, black asphalt. From that day on, the dirty, messed up traffic jam hell turned to a fresh and improved 50% non-traffic jam place.
Isn't it better to have an intersection that's brand new and not crowded?? :-/

Thursday, 6 March 2008

Being a Room 5ian

I finally can express my feelings about being a room 5ian. What's it like, you wonder. Oh yeah, a bright spark in the 2007 (?) room 5 (?) came up with the word Room 5ians-simply stands for all the people in room 5. Other people who know that bright spark's blogger name can comment. Well, I'm not a room 5ian without Mr Woody, if there weren't Peachgrove Intermediate there won't be a Room 5. If you want to learn more about Mr Woody and Room 5ians, go to his blog on: http://www.peachgroveroom5.blogspot.com/.


Room 5, to me, is heaven. All thanks to Mr Woody, I now have got a class with BRILLIANT classmates, new learning style and more.


Now in room 5, we are starting an inquiry project on HamiltON (promoting Hamilton). We will do a digital story about it for presenting. Creative, eh? Check out what we're doing on our blog. Right now, my group had thought of the key question for the HamiltON project. Our topic is about the pollution in the Hamilton Lake & Waikato River. The key question is: What causes the pollution in the Hamilton Lake and Waikato River, and how does it effect us? My group has three people, including Mech Boy and Jojo. For the project we've been helping each other out ever since (They are quite brainy). We are now dividing the jobs out equally and according which jobs we like to do. For example: Gathering information about the Lake and the River, sorting out which parts of the digital story should be deleted and which order they go into. Our group is now finding info about the Lake and the River.


My classmates are pretty helpful and supporting. Say Bob, he's been... telling everyone what to do when they forget (including me), contributing to group discussions and giving out top-notch ideas. Oh yeah, please don't forget CAPTAIN JACK. Ever since we became buddies, he's never let me down before, always give me support when I'm stressed out, and congratulating me on his blog. Shortcut: http://ygammeter.blogspot.com/. What wonderful classmates I have! :^)

If you were a Room 5ian, you should...



  • Care for your classmates and their properties.

  • Be proud of that you have an awesome teacher and classmates.


  • And most important of all, taking part in the Room 5ian culture (Marshall's point of view).

The room 5ian culture and history... (you should ask Mr Woody about the history) in my opinion, the room 5ian culture is quite simple to learn and get used to. (To Mr Woody: it would help improve our class if we have a class treaty.)


Before we get on with the culture, you might want to ask some 5-W's questions.


Who can be a Room 5ian? Anyone who is a Year 6 that is going to leave primary school can apply for our class. How can you be a Room 5ian? Easy. Just ask Mr Woody or the school office to give you the details. What does a Room 5ian do? Study, help you, guide you, save you (if that's necessary), entertain you... Why be a Room 5ian? Us, as Room 5ians, are 100% toxic-free and we can lead you to victory and everything nice you can think of.


Back to culture- the whole of Room 5ians guarantee you that we will never, I repeat, never do anything bad or inappropriate to anyone. We study hard, play fair and never let you down. All of us can be creative which leads to ultimate thinking and something else.


Go the Peachgrove Intermediate Room 5ians!