A Rainy Night

Hey everyone, once again, I’ll be doing an activity for the Student Blogging Challenge. This time, I’m going to make a story related to an image, but, you have to finish it. You have to figure out your own ending and whoever I think makes the best, or gets voted the best, will be the official ending of this post. Without further or due, dim the lights, get cozy and enjoy.

“UFO” by Michael Verdi is licensed under CC BY 2.0

A blinding red flash, brighter than any light he had seen had appeared before him. An extreme pain in his mind, suddenly, darkness.

He awoke on a lonely road. The rain hit the ground like boots crunching on a dirt road, a sharp pain in his head, he felt like a million weights had just fallen on him. The man soothed his forehead with his hands, trying to remember what had happened. He searched his memory for any answers, where was he? Had he passed out? He sat there in silence, leaving the rain to make the only noise for miles. He couldn’t remember anything, he could hardly recall his own name. He observed his surroundings for anything to give him a hint of where he was. A road sign, map, anything to ease his confusion. A tap. It wasn’t just a tap from the rain surrounding him. Another, and another. The tapping turned into knocking, and eventually banging. It was coming from the back window, the man grew anxious, perhaps the knocking could be someone out there, looking for shelter, and maybe he could get answers for where he was. However, what if the knocking was something else? His hairs stood up at the chance of something… else. This was it, he could either save himself, or save his sanity. But then he realised, it stopped. The knocking stopped. He felt relieved, should he be? What if whatever was out there was still outside, waiting until he would either go insane or face what was out there.

A loud shriek was heard, one of the windows shattered upon a slender hand reaching through, gripping the man’s shirt. The man let out perhaps the most terrified scream, he didn’t bother to look at what was preventing his escape. He gave the skeletal arm a punch with all his remaining bravery and fury. The creature let go of him, giving yet another blood curling scream. He practically broke down the door, running as fast as he could away from… whatever it was.

Suddenly, a blinding flash, brighter than any light he had seen had appeared before him.

Finish it! Submit your ending in the comments and perhaps you may be chosen.

Commenting Guidelines

First off, I do NOT like this idea of “guidelines”. I believe putting rules about what people can comment is stupid, it eliminates criticism which helps, (unless it’s just pointless speech, like someone criticising it without telling what to improve on) and gives you tips in the future. If you’re going to enforce rules, you may as well just disable comments. You’re defying free speech. But you may wonder, if I am against this, why am I posting it? Well it’s apart of the Student Blogging Challenge, and our teacher wants us to, so I have to. Of course there are some rules that are reasonable, which you will see later on.

Anyway with that rant out of the way, here’s 3 rules that I wish you to follow.

1. Keep it friendly – I don’t want anyone to start a flame war in the comments, keep it friendly and civil, if someone disagrees with you, sure, debate it. But keep it passive debating, don’t force them to agree with you. If you manage to make them agree with you WITHOUT being hostile, you are the true winner.
2. No cussing – This is just a basic rule, and I’m pretty sure the EduBlogs filtering system doesn’t even allow it, but just… don’t swear. Nobody likes it. You’re only making people mad at you, then starting a whole chain of comments being triggered at you.
3. Support your arguments – If you disagree with me or others, give reason to your argument. Don’t just say “I disagree with this, this and this because I want to.” Say WHY you disagree, like “I disagree with this, this and this because…” If you do this, people are more prone to agree with you. If you just say “I hate this.”, people who agree with your point of view will hate or argue with you because they can’t agree with your opinion because they don’t even know what it is. Hey, you might even convince me.
4. Use common sense – All of these rules are in this. This is an education blogs site, so, DON’T SWEAR. This is for helping people, BE FRIENDLY. Debating is good, but OFFER EVIDENCE. All of my rules fall into this. Just use your gut feeling.

Well that’s all the rules I want you to follow. Again, I don’t like the idea of making rules for comments, this was just a part of the Student Blogging Challenge. See ya!

Hey again guys,

Today I’ll be sharing my “review” of the Netiquette Rules, first off, I’ll list what the Netiquette rules are.

1. When typing never write in all capital letters. That is shouting. People don’t like it when you shout at them in person. And they sure don’t like when you shout at them on the net!

2. Don’t plagiarize. Someone spent a long time coming up with their content. When you borrow something from someone, give them the credit. Site their name or their site. Give the site when you have gotten your information.

3. Use proper quotes and always use the whole quote. Don’t take quotes out of context and don’t be selective about which part of the quote you want to use.

4. Don’t gossip and keep personal information personal. Don’t tell stories that you don’t know for a fact to be true. And often, just because it’s true, doesn’t mean that it needs to be repeated.

5. Don’t steal those photographs off the web even if they are a perfect fit for what you need. Chances are they are copyrighted and someone spent a long time putting that together. Get permission and give credit where credit is due.

6. Watch your language. No potty mouths.

7. Be patient with internet newbies. Know that they are just learning like you did once upon a time.

8. No spamming. Remember that spam is unwanted electronic messages or sending the same electronic message over and over. This can get you in a lot of trouble on some sites and as a general rule it just irritates everyone else.

9. If you are using a header (such as in an email) make sure your content really pertains to the header. You must admit it would really stink if the header said something about football, for example, and the email was really about your newest and greatest business idea. Just stay on topic and the problem is solved.

10. Avoid overuse of emoticons. You know… those cute little smiley faces. They really lose their cuteness when overused and tend to irritate people.

So there, those are the netiquette rules. Let’s start with the first rule, sometimes “shouting” is necessary, like if someone is mad, frustrated etc. then I think they have every right to “shout”.

The next rule is basically don’t plagiarise, I can agree with this one, unless it’s like a quote or something that’s supposed to have something from another website or source, keep the text in your own words. Don’t think that you’re safe from detection for any plagiariser detector. There’s no website that’s under the radar or anything. Just do it yourself.

Again, the third rule is essentially use quotes, not just copy and paste the thing if you want to put it on your work.

The forth rule I again, disagree with to an extent. Gossip can be good, as weird as that sounds, because if you don’t know a fact to be true, that doesn’t mean you can tell others what you heard. Many jobs and occupations require “gossip” or facts that may or may not be true, such as a news reporter, theorist, etc. And if something IS true, than you have every right to repeat it.

Next rule, many pictures may be copyrighted, but as long as you don’t claim credit, revenue or something like that, it’s fine. It’s in the terms of fair use.

The sixth rule I can agree with to an extent. Websites that are “formal” or don’t require cussing, usually means don’t cuss. But something like Discord or a chat program are usually okay. Of course, this doesn’t mean six year olds should be going around and cussing everyone out.

The seventh rule is again, true to many. I would know because of my father, who was terrible with a computer and asked me for some tips and tutorials, eventually he got the hang of it and he’s quite good with it. Not everyone is great to begin with.

Nobody likes spam. Nobody. But sometimes spam is vital for other companies to succeed. Spam advertises products that actually might be useful. Of course, there is the other spam. Like sending the same thing over and over again. Nobody likes that spam. Nobody. (Besides the person sending it, who may be laughing his head off doing it.)

This also somewhat pertains to the eighth rule. Usually spam emails (USUALLY! Just broke a rule there. Oops.) contain a false heading to pull the reader in and scam them. This is also the same with YouTube videos, this is known as “clickbait.” Again, just make sure that if you’re going to advertise something, make sure you’re actually advertising said thing.

The last rule… I completely agree with. Trust me, as a School Student with Social Media, overuse of “emojis” are absolutely irritating. This won’t even be that long, just… don’t do it…

 

 

Hey again everyone,

As we know, the internet is a great thing. We can get huge amounts of information within a few clicks of a button. It’s a platform for school students and gamers alike. But everything good comes with a catch, the internet is no exception. The internet can be a tool for criminals, stalkers, scammers and hackers. To have a safe experience online, you need to know how to protect yourself. From using a VPN and/or proxy, to learning how to protect yourself on social media. I will be listing the disadvantages, advantages, and how to have a safe experience online.

Let’s cover the bad news first, while it’s quite uncommon to have anything bad to happen to you, provided you’re being safe and using common sense, it can still happen. You need to make sure you never reveal to much information online, if someone says they’ll buy you something if you give them your account password and such, just think about the situation for a moment. If you give them your password, they have control over your account until you change the password. Even then, they can change the password first, and you may be locked out of your account forever. Trust me, it’s happened to me before. Just don’t do anything stupid, and you should be protected from scammers.

Hackers however, are a different story. Even if you don’t reveal ANY information at all, they may still be able to get into your computer. They can use a password cracker to get into your computer, essentially what it does, is that it goes through every number, symbol and letter until it gets to your password. A good way to protect against this is to use a password encrypter or generator or use two step verification. What THIS does, is change your password every few minutes or hours, making it very difficult for the hacker, what two step verification does is, when someone tries to log in, typically they will have to answer a question like “What was your first pet’s name?” or something along the lines of that.

Next on the line are stalkers and criminals, these two kind of fall into the same category, in fact same with every one of these. But anyway, to protect against stalkers, you essentially have to do the same procedure to protect against scammers, don’t reveal too much information, don’t say anything about your personal life etc. and you should be good to go. However, there are real life stalkers, basically the opposite of internet stalkers. They may find you in real life, THEN find you online, rather than find you online then find you in real life. If this happens, you should immediately notify your parents or the authorities.

Well that covers the bad stuff, now let’s move onto cats riding on unicorns! Of course by this, I mean the positives of the internet. See that word that you have no idea means? Well with a few clicks and copy pastes, you now have an extensive knowledge of said word! The internet can be used a source of entertainment, knowledge and much more.

First off, video games! Whatever your interests are, there’s bound to be a game based on it. Whether your interests are shooters, RPGs, board games, it has everything. Think you’re too “old” for video games? Well get this, there’s a 69-year-old lady who still plays video games. Her favourite game is Skyrim. (My favourite game too.) I’ll link the article at the end if you don’t believe me. Some video games are amazing, the world some developers create are immense and beautiful and are packed with lore and stories. If you believe that you want some fast paced action, try a shooter. If you want to get your brain working, try a platformer or a puzzle game. A good one is Portal, loved those games. Again, anything is possible in a video game.

Moving onto knowledge, despite what teachers say, Wikipedia is great. Sometimes they may not be accurate, but 99% of the information is correct and quite interesting. I actually learned who my ancestor was through Wikipedia. Also, if you’re reading this, you’re using a computer. EduBlogs, Education blogs. Education! The internet is a platform for all, for education, entertainment, everything! But, watch out because some people out there are aren’t afraid of ruining your experience. See ya!

 

69 Year old Gamer: http://www.ksl.com/?nid=333&sid=138536

Hey again everyone,

I’m going to review the “#GameOn” video (link will be at the end of the post) and there will be SPOILERS! I’ll give my impressions on the video and what I learnt from it. First off, we see a group of school students talking about some rude posts about one of them. Apparently someone got a hold of one of their Social Media account and they posted a very rude post. If their account was hacked, I could understand. However, as we see later in the story, she gave her PASSWORD to her. I hope everyone knows your password should be kept secret and known to you only.

Your password is like your toothbrush; you never share it with everyone else. So I didn’t really learn much from that. Shortly after, they display two male students playing some sort of game where you try to blow up “battlecruisers”. Because they are so addicted, they go to bed at absurd hours and forget to do chores around the house.

Again, I hope everyone knows that YOU DO NOT GO TO BED AT TWO IN THE MORNING BECAUSE OF SOME GAME! (Cough cough Sid Mier’s Civilization “One more turn!” Cough cough) So again, I didn’t really learn much from this. Overall, the video is somewhat entertaining, but if you know what you should and shouldn’t share, this video really doesn’t help.

On a scale of how much it helps, or at least helps me personally, I’d give it a 4/10. The video really just emphasises and doesn’t actually help.

#GameOn: https://vimeo.com/108759787