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Microsoft unveils Edge web browser

The La Plata tornado, 13 years later

On April 28, 2002, an F4 tornado hit the town of La Plata, Maryland, causing major damage to the town, located south of Washington, DC and Baltimore. It was the strongest and most destructive tornado in the history of my state, knocking the Frostburg F4 tornado of 1998 off the top spot.

Disappointed in my Baltimore

The events of the past few days in Baltimore, which I live less than 30 miles north of, has greatly upset me. Never did I imagine that these types of protests and riots would take place so close to my home, in the very city in which I was born. I do not wish to get caught up in any arguments about the situation, but I am very ashamed and also scared about what might be to come in the near future. I do not want to take sides; I just hope that things will be relatively okay again soon. I do not condone this violence in any way and I cannot express my disappointment enough. I only want to feel safe where I live and I wish what started as a "peaceful protest" hadn't erupted into this. This will remain in my mind for days to come.

One decade of YouTube

Ten years ago, the legend of a revolutionary website began. On April 23, 2005, YouTube had its very first video upload, a clip titled "Me at the zoo" depicting one of the site's co-founders standing in front of an elephant at the San Diego Zoo. One decade later, YouTube is one of the world's top websites and one of the leading forces of social media and Web sharing with sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Reddit. YouTube has also been owned by Google since late 2006, which has allowed it to keep a high profile during the majority of its existence.

No music to stream? Guess you'll have to go old-school with CDs

In my drawing class yesterday, nobody had any music to stream on their phones, so we were forced to listen to CDs as we worked. In today's world of online music apps, having to listen to compact discs suddenly seems like such a dated experience. The biggest difference I have realized is that whereas music streaming allows for a theoretically infinite number of songs for your listening pleasure, CDs only have a certain number of songs on them. This meant that the teacher had to change CDs twice during the period. With music streaming, you can just listen to a station over and over and over, or add songs to a playlist one by one and never "run out" of music. Of course, the same limitations of CDs are present to a greater effect in analog mediums like vinyl and cassette, but since CDs are a digital medium like online streaming it makes that "old-school" effect even greater;.

Hockey playoffs!

The NHL playoffs are underway, with 16 teams currently competing in the first round. One of these teams is my Washington Capitals. They are playing the New York Islanders, with the first two games of the series down in Washington. The series is currently tied 1-1 after the Capitals rallied back to win game 2 on Friday evening.

Post coming eventually...

Tornadoes level Illinois towns

A large severe weather system produced several tornadoes in Midwestern states such as Illinois, Indiana and Ohio on Thursday afternoon and evening, One town, Fairdale, in Illinois was effectively destroyed by what was preliminarily rated as an EF4 tornado, that killed at least one person. The same tornado also struck the small town of Rochelle in the northern part of the state. The Chicago metro area got hammered with strong storms, heavy winds as flooding, as did portions of northern Indiana and Ohio, eastern Missouri - particularly the St. Louis area - and southern Wisconsin and Michigan, The same system even dumped some snow and freezing rain onto small portions of Iowa, Wisconsin and the upper peninsula of Michigan. There were also reports of flooding in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area, central West Virginia and extreme western Maryland. More than 100 severe thunderstorm, tornado and flood warnings were issued across the affected areas on Thursday. It was the country's first major severe weather event of the season.

Is Duke's latest national title really a big deal?

Back on Monday, in the NCAA basketball title game in Indianapolis, first-seeded ACC team Duke outplayed fellow first seed, the Big Ten's Wisconsin in a close battle to win yet another national championship. It's safe to say that it was something of an upset, as many people picked Kentucky, who Wisconsin defeated in the Final Four, to win the title for the second time in four years. There was even some controversy as people have accused the referees of making wrong calls against Wisconsin to allow Duke to win. But aside from that, was Duke's win the big deal people are proclaiming it to be? As the ACC powerhouse has won the championship many times before, I would say not really.

Easter

Today was Easter, one of my beloved "candy holidays." Even though I shouldn't be eating that stuff, I just can't resist on a day like Easter. Plus I had Easter dinner and dyed a couple of eggs "with food coloring) and all of that typical Easter stuff. Now I have some of that candy to go eat.

My ponies are back!

Season 5 of the animated show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic premiered on Saturday morning, to the delight of me and other "bronies" around the world. The show had been in hiatus since the season 4 finale around Memorial Day last year. It really wasn't a true hiatus, as reruns of older episodes kept airing during the time and the fifth season was confirmed just a few months after the fourth one ended, but it was still a waiting game from there. Still, our favorite cartoon horses are back and the fandom is happy.

Websites play wide range of April Fools' pranks

The Internet loves to play pranks on April Fools Day, and this year many websites were at it again playing tricks on users. Google provided a link to a literal (and figurative) mirror website that displayed the whole home page and search results backward, as well as the results on every search on each page. The link has actually existed for several years, as have similar sites that allow people to mess with Google. It was pretty low-key compared to Google's April Fools tricks in the past.