(Above you can see the spooky edits I made to both my profile picture/blog favicon and my personal Discord server's icon for this year!) UPDATED: I wrote this in the morning, but now, in the evening, I updated it at the bottom :)  Hello, everyone! I know I haven't posted in a long, long time. A lot has happened since mid-July. For one, school has continued (in-person, kind of) through hybrid school for many people where I live. I was hybrid for a short amount of time but am now back to remote. Many, many exciting things have also happened. The article I wrote with the fantastic team at Curious Science Writers got published! It's about using wearable smartwatches to fight smoking addiction, a problem that likely affects at least someone you know in your life, like a family member or loved one:  https://curioussciencewriters.org/2020/10/26/going-from-ismoke-to-no-smoking-with-wearables/ .  I know I've talked about technology constantly on my blog, but this article is more...

Hello guys, this is Arca, and as yet another last-minute blog post to almost wrap up March Blogging Madness, I will talk about what things I did today. So, I woke up in the morning at near 7:30 AM and ate breakfast at around 8:30 AM. Then, I played too much more Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker , beating Chapter 2 (which I thought would be the end), but nope, apparently there's a Chapter 3 now! I never expected to play so much of this game in only a matter of two days, but if there is indeed a Chapter 4 I don't think I'll be playing it. I'm not in a 100% completion mindset at all, I'm just trying my best to beat it efficiently. The game is not difficult... like, at all, even if some puzzles take longer than others if you mess up by falling off a ledge or not realizing that there's a goomba right behind you. After I realized I should take a break already, I started to read my book instead. I am currently reading Warcross by Marie Lu, which I borrowed from a li...

Image credit: Microsoft/Mojang As my childhood crumbles and fades away, I have had to say goodbye to many of the things I formerly held dear. Angry Birds? Irrelevant. Gravity Falls? Ended 3 years ago (yeesh, time flies). Google+? Shut down. Hotel? Trivago. But one of the biggest phenomenons that defined my childhood was the game Minecraft. The first version of the game was released exactly a decade ago on May 17 (two days ago, this post is slightly late), and know I guess I know why adults constantly say that they "feel old" whenever an aspect of their childhood is brought up. To think that Minecraft , of all things, was released 10% of a century ago... it's hard to wrap my head around just how much of my life it has been around for. This post serves as a sort of trip down memory lane of all the things that Minecraft has done for the lives of me and other kids worldwide, as well as a reflection on what made it so special and what exactly is next for the game. I, ...