Paradox Highlights
Welcome to Paradox Highlights, the part of this site where I shout out things that I'm passionate about. Consider it the equivalent of a Wikipedia page's "See also" section.
New content is periodically added to this page. Sometimes there may be a blog post about it. Typically, if I make a blog post expressing my love for something, I'll put it here.
BeepBox: make music online
From the website: "BeepBox is an online tool for sketching and sharing instrumental music." Simple as that. BeepBox is an easy-to-use online DAW that I think is one of the best ways to get into music composition. I've used it for years and watched it come from being a simple chiptune editor to a fully-functional composition tool.
Here are some example compositions, made by me and members of the BeepBox Discord server. Most of these use forks of BeepBox, such as JummBox or Pandora's Box.
- The Only Thing They Fear is You (Genesis Cover), by me, made in JummBox
- Radioactive Paradise, by Arthurlxs#4270, made in JummBox
- Jacked Toad Neo, by answearing machine#7108, made in GoldBox
- Aren't We Stars?, by skee.c#4324, made in BeepBox
- Ghost Train, by [x]#8973, made in Pandora's BeepBox (ever want to use samples with BeepBox?)
BeepBox has a little bit of a learning curve, but not as much as other DAWs. Try it out today!
FIRST Robotics: engineering for everyone
A Global Robotics Community Preparing Young People for the Future (from the website)
FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is a non-profit organization that offers some of the world's largest youth robotics programs: namely the FIRST Robotics Competition (grades 9 - 12), the FIRST Tech Challenge (grades 7 - 12), and the FIRST LEGO League (PreK - grade 8, available at three different levels). I've now done two years of FRC at my high school (written in 2023) and it has been both the best extracirricular activity and engineering experience I've ever had. It's hard to understate how much I love FIRST Robotics.
FRC plays a little bit like Battlebots; if that's combat sports, then this is ball sports. Every year, teams (of which there are >3,300 active as of 2023) are presented a game where they team up with two other teams in order to score the most points. For example, in the 2023 game Charged Up!, the goal is to transport cones and cubes from either the floor or human-operated terminals to a grid of rods and shelves (for cones and cubes respectively). Seems simple enough, right? Here's the fun part: there are no instructions, manuals, full kits, or anything of the like. You have six weeks to build the whole thing from the Kit of Parts (one or more totes of items given at the start of a season) and anything else they can buy, fabricate, trade for, donate, reuse, or otherwise procure. You then go to two competitions per season and show other teams what you can do with it, and hopefully score some points on the way.
FIRST changed my life, and I'm dead serious about that. Anybody with a team available to them should give it a shot, even if it's just for a season or a month or a week. If you're still skeptical, I highly encourage you to read this CNET article and watch the Disney+ documentary More Than Robots.