Account Compromised

It was about four days ago that I noticed that I couldn't access my email account— I simply couldn't log in because my password was incorrect.

At the time I didn't worry much because I was using a computer that I have never used before, and I thought that it was just a problem with the browser or the Internet files. Also, I didn't really need to check my email at the time, so I simply forgot about the matter.

Then, today I finally decided to check my email again, and for once more I saw the your-password-is-incorrect message. This time I was more startled because I was using another browser, and I have seen my mother logging into her email using the same browser.

So after making sure that the caps-lock was off and re-entering the same password for about five times, I came to the conclusion that my email account must have been compromised. It was the only logical explanation to this problem because the password was never changed by myself.

Anyway, for the next ten minutes, I was on the password-retrieval process. I was required to enter my alternate e-mail address, and it took me about six tries before I entered my actual alternate-email address because I have registered too many email accounts that I could not remember which one was chosen as my alternate email.

After that, I saw a message saying that for security reasons, I had to wait for at least 24 hours before I could go onto the next step in the password-retrieval process. Great. Now I can't do anything until tomorrow.

So, hopefully when I go onto the next step tomorrow, I will be able to successfully get my account back. I have quite a lot of valuable information and contacts in that email account, and it'd be very inconvenient if the account is lost. Also, the account name of this email is the best name I could possible get, so if I lose this account I would have to take a name that is not as great as this one.

Ahh! I don't want to lose this account!

All Done!

Just this morning I wrote my math exam, which means that school is officially over for me. Yay!

However, this doesn't mean that I will have an empty schedule. During the next two weeks, I am going to be on vacation, and when I come back I will have to attend a summer school for one month.

Anyway, I am glad that grade ten is done and that it's summer vacation now. I can finally take a good rest and not worry about school at all! Actually...no. I still don't know my exam marks as well as my final marks for math, chemistry and history. However, I don't think I did too bad on the exams, and even if I didn't do well on them, grade ten marks don't matter. So these are not a huge concern for me.

In the mean time, I am excited for grade eleven. In grade eleven almost all courses will be enjoyable because almost all of them were chosen by myself (and my parents). Also it'll be a fresh start so that I will be able to set new goals and (hopefully) achieve more. I hope that this summer will allow me to recharge myself and get me prepared for the next school year.

Also, if anyone happens to visit my blog regularly, I probably won't update it during the next two weeks because of the vacation that I'll have.

Percy Jackson & the Olympians

The fifth and last book of the series

A few days ago, one of my classmates saw me reading Eragon by Christopher Paolini. Eragon is a book about dragons and dragon riders, and since it's a fantasy book, she asked me if I have also read other fantasy novels.

I said no. Well, it wasn't entirely true, because obviously I have read the Harry Potter series before. However, usually when people ask you about the fantasy books that you have read, they are looking for fantasy books other than Harry Potter because Harry Potter is simply too famous.

Anyway, since I have read no other fantasy book, I couldn't talk about them, so I asked the classmate about the fantasy books that she read.

So she started talking about Percy Jackson & the Olympians, which is a pentalogy related to Greek mythology. She explained the settings and general background of the series, and described the story of each book in detail.

Since it was a few days ago, I couldn't remember what she said exactly. However, I do remember that from her description, the books didn't sound bad. Therefore, I decided to make this post so that I won't forget to read them in the future.

One more thing, I looked up the books on wikipedia, and was glad to find that their covers weren't ugly at all.  And since I quite liked the cover arts, I decided to include them in this post.

Ugly Thoughts

Yes, I know the title sounds very appealing and it sounds very intense. However, the information is quite personal and the thoughts are pretty ugly, so I don't feel that I should openly post in onto the Internet. Therefore I have encrypted this post.

(In case you want to know what this post is about, it's about me being mad at one of my classmates. That's all I can reveal)

Note: This post has been encrypted.

Encryption Program

For the posts that contain things that I don't want others to see, I have encrypted them with my special encryption program so that only I will be able to decipher the code.

However, if for whatever reason I lose the code of my encryption program, I will not be able to decipher my posts. So I decided to post my code onto my Blog as well. So yeah, this post really is just for me...

Trends in the Periodic Table

There are many trends in the period table for you to predict a property of an element, and in this post I'm going to talk about four of them.

Atomic Radius

Atomic radius is the mean distance between the centre of the nucleus to the boundary of the electron clouds. It increases as the group number decreases, and increases as the periodic number increases.

Ionization Energy

Ionization energy is the amount of energy that is needed to remove an electron from an atom. It increases as the group number increases, and increases as the periodic number decreases.

Electron Affinity 

Significant Digits

By definition, significant digits are digits in a number that are meaningful. They are digits that contribute to the precision of a number. Consider these two measurements:

• 5 cm
• 5.000 cm

The two measurements may seem the same. However, the second one is much more precise because it has three more significant digits than the first one. For the first measurement, it can very well be 4.51 rounded up to 5, or it can be 5.49 rounded down to 5. On the other hand, the second measurement can only range from 4.995 to 5.005, and it has much more precision. 

In the second measurement, the three 0s are significant because they contribute to the precision of the measurement. 

So when is a digit insignificant? Well, the zeroes in this example are insignificant:

• 0.01 m

The zeroes in this number are insignificant because they are merely there to show that the number is less than one, and if you express this number is scientific notation, you'll get 1×10^-2 metres: the zeroes will be gone!

Rules to determine whether a number is significant: