Welcome to Pottervilla Academy’s online presence.

I’m Jonathan Potter, an aspiring expert computer programmer/web designer/computer generated images-animations artist. My other interest is music. At Christmas time, I self-published a CD of piano music, entitled A PotterVilla Christmas, which is available through www.pottervilla.net/cdsampler. More recently, I participated in a solo and ensemble competition through the St. Johns, Michigan based Home School Music Association, more often referred to as HSMA. They rehearse every Monday night in Lansing, so Dad and I (they let the parents play) have to leave home about 5:45 to get there in time to setup. The season of festivals, Late winter and spring, especially February and March, are busy regarding music. The S&E festive was two weeks ago Saturday, last week was a ministry performance at a nursing home, and next Friday is the district band festival. State S&E is a week from the festival. When that finally comes, I will be compete with both a piano and trumpet solo.

I am an active participant of our local church, Ainger Bible, preparing for and running the video projector, and playing the offertory every other week. Average attendance is 60-80. On Thursday night, I help at AWANA, our children’s program, with their game time.

Working with a lady from Tennessee–Miss Cindy, who also has a blog–I am learning web design and programing. She has her own business, and a heart for teaching. I also am building a website for my aunt, www.lacycreekgrowers.com, where she sells plants from her nursery. Right now, the site is not at that location, but should be by the first of March. Mostly, I have been using HTML, CSS, and PHP, but should be getting into javascript and ajax soon. When I get the chance, I work on computer graphics using a program called Maya. It has a free edition, with nearly all the features of the professional edition. I also have been learning visual basic.net, though not so much recently, since I have been programing in other venues.

When I’m not busy doing something else, such as on Sunday afternoon, I enjoy playing strategy games on my computer, which I have triple booting Windows Vista, XP and Ubuntu Linux. I built it myself, using a GForce 8800 GTS320 graphics card, an E6750 processor, and a NVidia 650i motherboard. If those numbers don’t mean anything to you, don’t worry. (my brother Matthew says “you’re in good company”).

For academic work, I have mainly been doing writing, along with my music, although advanced physics and trig–which I’m almost finished with–are also technically on the list. When I get the chance, I may publish some of my news articles here.

With that out of the way, I was looking for a way to have an easily modifiable news page for my aunt’s website (here it is) and had been working on a website with my apprentice work that had used a blog, so I set this up as a trial. However, I liked the idea of having a blog. Matthew reads a lot of blogs, some of which are listed with the links. He is really getting into the agrarian future, but I hope to have him inform you about that himself. Anyway, I figured why waste a good blog, so I kept it.

Today has been a pretty normal Wednesday. Mom’s Wednesday morning ladies prayer time started at nine, and since there wasn’t going to be a meeting at church, the pastor’s wife came. As per usual, it ran well past it’s alloted ten o’ clock. After sleeping in–a habit I’ve gotten into recently–I received and finished several assignments from Miss. Cindy during breakfast, then did my bible reading and verse memory. We’ve finished (sort of) the book of Colossians, and dad did Philippians, now I’m starting work on Ephesians. So far, it’s not going the best, but I hope to gather together some steam some time soon. Next off was typing my writing papers for editing, which I had written yesterday at the dentist and are due on Thursday. I guess that’s tomorrow! Then it was off to piano, practicing all major scales, a Bach two part invention, and Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. I didn’t do too well at district on piano. Although I got a one, it was made up of the lowest grades you can have and still get a one: two B-‘s and three A-‘s. So, I’ve got some work to do to get ready for state.

Next, Matthew and I watched a Hogan’s Hero’s during lunch, which has become a Pottervilla tradition. After that, it was off to the trumpet, plugging away for the HSMA required hour of practicing. Shortly after I finished, mom’s first piano student of the day came, and I went to working on the afore mentioned news page. Somewhere in between finishing that page and finishing this post, I took a break for supper. We had a lively discussion comparing the ratios of money poured into a school with the academic results. Mom is reading a book on the subject, of which I know not the name.

I’ll try to convince Mom and Matthew (dad doesn’t have the time) to post something soon.

Signing off,

Jonathan