Today was a great day for me. I got to work on my project for almost 90% of the work day. I really hope we have more days like this, just to work on projects. I was very successful in completing my character for my video game. I downloaded a cityscape from www.blenderartists.com/forums. That was the most time-saving, life-saving thing I've ever done in the MTA program. I plan on taking my character home to work on it tonight. Around two o' clock, Pietra Mueller came into the Technology center to discuss what we are going to do tomorrow. She explained some key facts to us and told us that we will be going out into the prairie to examine plant specimens. After that, we resumed working on our projects for the rest of the day.

Today I was kind of nervous because I didn't know for sure what I could do as a project. I told Karli maybe something in Blender, an open source modeling program. She suggested a simple game that consisted of MTA related material. After several hours of research, I finally concluded that my project will be a video game. The game that I will make will be maze. Working your way through it, you find special coins that tell you about numerous subjects like botany or zoology.

Today is the last day of the first week. For the most part I worked on the computer, but other than that, I went down to Dr. Jonathan Reyman's office and work area, along with the rest of the group to sort feathers. Twenty-six years ago, Dr. Reyman started a program known as the Feather Distribution Project. Over the last several years, the program durastically decreased the price of Macaw feathers over the Black Market.

According to Pietra Mueller, a botonist and polynist at ISM (Illinois State Museum), pollen is produced by only male flowers. Yeah, plants have different genders too. Pollen is produced in the tiny part of a flower known as the Anther. Before I get ahead of myself, pollens' main purpose is reproduction, so it's sent all over your newly seeded front yard to make all kinds of nasty weeds. Pollen stays on the flower until it eventually turns into seeds. On the other hand, those pollen that don't stay on the plant break away. You can tell where the pollen has broke away because there are usually lines or holes in the pollen. There are three main parts of pollen. The inner, mid, and outer parts all make up pollen. The inner part carries the pollen gnetic makeup, the mid part carries enzymes (this is what makes people sneeze when they get it in their nose), and the outer part is a tough shell that protects the pollen.

Today was sort of a work day. I worked on catching up with some things that I might have been behind on. I finally decided what my project is going to be after extensive research. Jason told me to go home and try Maya, a 3D animations software. My two decisions for the project were to either build a computer by taking it apart and putting it back together, using better parts to upgrade the machine, or to learn the concept of another 3d animation program other than Blender. After Jason talked to Grant, I realized that Maya would be a waste of time and wouldn't be worth the effort. Afterall, it isn't open source so I don't see myself using it in the future. After lunch, Tim Cashett visited us and talked to us about entomology, the study of insects. He presented a slide show that consisted of numerous types of insect descriptions and for some of you readers out there, an insect is not the same thing as a bug. As Tim Cashett mentioned, a bug is anything that crawls its way around, sometimes even underwater crustaceans can be referred to as bugs.

Today we had numerous assignments that we had to complete.
we had to download software called plant studio. Plant Studio is a sub-3D plant generator. We also had to use a type of software to improve our typing skills called Typing Tutor 10. We wroked on that for about an twenty minutes. We also had to create a spreadsheet of all things that we downloaded onto the computer on the PDA, then transfer it to the PC. After lunch, we visited Pietra Mueller who lectured us on botany anf palynology, which is the study of pollen. We visited with her for nearly two hours. When we came back to the Technology Center, we had to find a website that explained botany and write a short paragraph about it. The website that I commented upon was the Encyclopedia of Life, located at www.eol.org. It contains several videos that look at earth today and how the species on earth can be saved through the commemorative program known as TED. Ted allows certain people one wish that would change the world. People donate money to the program in order to fulfill the wish. You can sign up for a membership and you can use the site's interactive database to build your knowledge of the plant and animal life in the world. The site also contains other useful information such as FAQ's and press resources which people could use to for things such as school work and studies.

I was absent for the first two hours of the MTA program. After several minutes of catching up with Jason, he handed a computer to me and told me to check the internals that all the pieces were present. After verifying the internal pieces were present, I put the side back onto the tower and began to hook it up. Later, after all the wires were in the right place, I began to install the software but around two o' clock, Hong Qian, a botanist that works for the Illinois State Museum introduced himself in the Research and Collections Center and lectured us about the workings of plants and what a botanist's job includes. After about an hour of lecture, he took the group outside to collect various specimens. They included Morning Glory (Hedge Bindweed), Wild Carrot (Queens Anne Lace), Eastern Redbud, Missouri Ironweed, and Bird's-foot Trefoil. The specimens included a variety of plants from herbacious plants, meaning soft, easily broken plants, and Woody species, which consists of plants that are very hard and usually have bark as a protection agent. When we came back into the center, we identified the plants while Dr. Qian showed us the workings of a plant press. He decided then to show us where he works, his lab, and the area where collected specimens are housed.