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Important Message: 8/29/2006 Back to School Update

Sorry, again, for the drought of updates to my site. I went about a month without making major changes and additions. I added 2 photo collections from my trip to Germany and worked a bit around the web. The new skin hit some road blocks and the project is postponed. If any CSS wizards can get the "NavLinks" div to display to the left of the logo on my beta site. The dropdowns still don't work in Internet Explorer, just get Firefox, and get yourself a better, safer browser. I am most likely not going to scan all my papers from my 9th Grade binders. I might still add some more pictures from my trip, especially my excursions to Paris and Berlin.

Well 10th Grade starts next week. I am almost done my summer reading. The Poisonwood Bible is looong and seems to go on fooorevverr!!!. I am getting my papers together, and getting ready to go back. My File:10th Grade Schedule.xls is now up online. And don't worry, I will be posting all the info right here at ThePlaz.com

Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--Plaz 18:49, 29 August 2006 (EDT)

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Welcome to ThePlaz.com

the site for all things Michael Plasmeier

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My site contains mostly my homework and projects as well as various stuff from my life.

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2006 Summer Reading The 2006 HHS Summer Reading List I am almost done reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver and The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima. No written work was assigned over the summer. English 9 edit (English) Binder Front Grammar Notes and QOD Lit Vocab Writing Research Papers/Essays Bullying/Hazing Research Paper “The Many Benefits of the Industrial Revolution” Brochure Copy Is Romeo and Juliet still Relevant Today? Is Antigone is more stubborn then Creon? Projects and Lessons Piece of String Short Story Project Comma Rules Lesson Book Centers The Chocolate War Book Center The Chosen Book Center Romeo and Juliet Book Center Short Stories Unit Antigone Book Center Homeworks Parody – The Spy Apprentice Allegory and The Shepherd's Boy and the Wolf Aries: A Sonnet English Language Joke Bildungroman Notes Western Civ edit (History) Binder Main Binder, Part 2 Warmups Portfolio Projects Philosophes Compare/Contrast Slideshow and Essay French Revolution Timeline Germany Unification Timeline Russian Revolution Lesson Group Project Outlines Chapter 6.1 - The Scientific Revolution Chapter 6.3 – Spread of Enlightenment Ideas Chap 9.1 Beginnings of Industrialization Chap 11.2 – Imperialism and Nigerian Case Study Notes and Outline Chap 13.3 – The World At War Maps and Creative Ottoman Empire Acrostic Fictional German Troop Journal Despot Flyer Louis-Phillipe Political Cartoon African Colonies Map I Made Napoleon’s Rise to Power Script Letter from the Editor Re. Industrialization and Imperialism Essays and Reports Types of Government Quiz (answers) Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna Industrialization Group Project World War I without the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand - What would happen? Legacies of the French Revolution and Congress of Vienna SlideShow IPS edit (Science) Binder, Part 2 Research Obstacle Course Unit 1 - Motion Obstacle Course design Sports Video Unit 2 - Forces NASCAR Video Electricity Handbook Unit 3 - HFE Home IAG 2H edit (Math) Entire Binder, Part 2 Solve It Prompt 1 Bee's POW - You Must Be Wrong Math Will Rock My World - Extra Credit Other edit Broadcasting (English) Open OneNote Notebook Note: Works only in Internet Explorer and Opera. Firefox refuses to support MHT. More info Digital Recording (Music) Digital Recording 1 Minisite Health 9 (Health) Binder Inhalant Dangers Poster Alcohol Ad - Spoof Alcohol Ad Intro to Theater (English) Left Pocket Right Pocket Theater News Article A fictional news article to be acted out by another group. Manufacturing (Tech Ed) Image:Plaz Scamatic.doc T-Shirt Idea Songwriting (Music) Left Pocket Folder Right Pocket Folder Music Simple Rhythms First Melody Assignment Second Melody Assignment First Song 2-5 Harpsichord First Song 3-0 Harpsichord First Song 4-0 Patched Melody 3 Bb Major Melody 4 A Major missing? missing? My First Harmony Second Harmony with Triads

Travels edit Over 80,000 photos on Flickr (by date, on a map, on a Geoov map, most popular, tags) Trips/Vacations 2012 January Chicago Trip 2011 End of Summer California Family Vacation 2011 Summer Living and Working in NYC 2011 Spring Break Drive to Montreal 2010 Summer Working in Germany 2010 IAP MIT China Trip 2009 June New York City 2009 Apr MIT Campus Preview Weekend 2009 Spring Break Southern Caribbean Cruise 2009 Feb Boston Visit to Northeastern 2008 Fall Boston for College Visits 2008 Spring Break West Natural Sites and Vegas Revisited 2007 Summer Upstate New York and Niagara Falls 2007 Spring Break Western Caribbean Cruise 2006 Summer trip to Germany 2006 Spring Break New York City 2005 Spring Break Las Vegas 2004 Spring Break Dominican Republic Universities Cornell University Drexel University, Dinner Visit MIT, CPW Harvard College, At Night Northeastern University, Revisit Temple University Penn State University Park UMBC St. Joesph's University, More Kutztown University U of Chicago and Northwestern (Dining Research Trip) Roger Williams (Dining Research Trip) Emmanuel (Dining Research Trip) Boston University (Dining Research Trip) Stanford University of Chicago MIT MIT Initial Visit CPW Arriving at MIT Discovering Product Design FPOP Orientation First Few Weeks October 2009 Central Plant Obama Visits MIT November 2009 E14 Opening December 2009 Media Lab Open House Spring 2010 CPW 2010 Baker House Piano Drop 2010 Athena Cluster Tour Going for 2nd year Around Fall 2010 Baker Waffle Night 6.01 Circuits W1 Maseeh Hall Construction IAP 2011 Spring 2011 2013 Brass Rat Premiere Baker Horizons Party MIT 150 Open House and Piano Drop 2011 2013 Brass Rat Delivery Arriving Back Junior Year Fall 2011 Election Tech Seminar Pumpkin Drop Baker Movie on the Roof Haverford High School Graduation Senior Boat Trip Senior Awards Night 2009 Senior Prom and BLAST Bow Wow Concert 2008 Homecoming Hallway Decorations 2008 Homecoming Pep Rally 2008 Homecoming Dance 2008 BLAST After Prom Mr. Haverford 2008 Team 484 2008 2008 School Prom Expo Independence National Historic Park: Living History Project 2007 SeniorQuoter Group Study Unboxing School Computers 2007 BLAST After Prom 2007 Homecoming 2007 Robotics Annapolis Regional 3/14-3/18/2007 2007 Flyer's Cup AA Championships Places/Events/Daytrips (need to update) Boston 2011 New Years Harry Potter Preview Fall Colors Weekend NYC Boston and NYC Six Flags New England Fenday and Boston Tour Jim Thorpe River Trip Hershey Park Ocean City, MD Dorney Park National Train Day NYC Met Trip Philadelphia Opera MIT Model Railroad Museum of Science in Boston, (Computer History Exhibit) Foxwoods Casino Boston Big Dig Abandoned Manoa School Franklin Institute 2/1/09 Philadelphia at Christmas Time New Manoa School Walkthough 2008 Haverford Township Day Gov School 2008 at Drexel Six Flags and Wild Safari Dave and Busters Tech Events Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination Tecker 911 4/5/2008 Shoot Cape May 2007 Justin's Trip to the UN Washington DC Harrisburg Philadelphia 2007 Auto Show 2/11/2007 Tech/Unboxing/Products Roku Box New Baker Scanner Selling camcorder Lenovo U350 Laptop Palm Pre, Touchstone, Screenshots Disassembled Gel Candle New Dell Inspirion 537 Desktop Prius Taken Apart New External Hard Drive Windows 7 Install T4220 Unboxing, Case, Broken, Broken Again TomTom 130 Unboxing FiOS install Justin's New Wii New HP Vista Quad Core Media Center IKEA Leksvik Unboxing Dell 8200 Open Paper Prius Model Brother MFC 3820cn New Fountain Pictures on the Wikimedia Commons The Château de Versailles 7/4/2006 The Reichstag 7/24/2006 Las Vegas and Hoover Dam March 2005 Disneyland Paris 7/6/2006 About Me edit Michael Plasmeier "ThePlaz" Yahoo APM: Membership and Geo Platforms MIT '13 Management and Computer Science My name is Michael Plasmeier, but almost everyone calls me Plaz. I am a Associate Product Manager at Yahoo - working on the Membership and Geo-related platforms teams. I graduated from MIT in 2013 in Computer Science and Management. I am halfway between the tech and the business world, doing both web development and product development. My interest in doing both started while I was working on GridView, an app I built after 10th Grade that reached 1.3 million users on Facebook. Internships Last IAP, I was a Software Development Extern doing testing in Ruby on the back end at CardSpring. Last summer, I was Product Manager at Disney Parks and Resorts Online where I worked on a project for Disney Cruise Line. Last January, I worked in management/strategy consulting at Altman Vilandrie & Company. The previous summer, I was a web developer at NextJump, an online affiliate advertising firm in New York. Prior to that, I was an extern in the Office of the Chief Scientist at State Street. My freshman summer I worked at Deutsche Bahn, the German national railroad, where I designed the smartphone version Touch&Travel, an app that lets you pay for the train with your phone. MIT At MIT I was heavily involved in classes, usually taking 7 classes a term, while being involved in student government. (I wrote about how I do it in Working out a System.) senior was dedicated to wrapping up requirements. Junior year at MIT I focused on EECS classes, as well as being elected president of Baker House. My second year at MIT focused on management classes. I was also involved in the vendor selection and implementation of the new dining plan. Freshman year, I took core classes and served on the Athena and Printing Committee. (I wrote about just hanging on freshmen year in Learning to Learn.) Websites I built a lot of web projects in high school. My most popular project, was GridView [1], an app for Facebook which lets you add the profile pics of all of you're friends to your Facebook profile. GridView had over 1.3 million users and made me some money. I hosted and produced the video podcast Tecker 911 [2] along with some of my friends. Tecker 911 was a series of 100 5-15 minute shows each which covers a technology topic in a way which is relevant for ordinary people, with a focus towards students and our community. Tecker 911 was also shown on our local public access channel Channel 11. I started SeniorQuoter, [3] an open-source web application for senior quotes collections for high school yearbooks. In 11th Grade, I lead a Dynamic Website Building Instruction and Practical Experience Group Study at my high school. I helped 4 other students learn PHP and MySQL and then I project managed version 2 of SeniorQuoter, the administration interface. Tecker and Conflicter were question and answer services I built in 10th Grade. They never really caught on, but they were the perfect way to learn PHP. Dictionary Robot is something I tarted last year, but abandoned later. In 10th Grade, I was a member of Team 484 and in 11th Grade I was their webmaster. In 8th and 9th Grades I wrote bunch of programs for the TI-83+. Tech My first two years at MIT, I was a regular on The Weekly Spin, a weekly take on tech stories and tech policy. On my Tech page I have had a few pages about Devices I own and other small things that I have built. For example, I also made some improvements for MediaWiki, the software that runs ThePlaz.com and Wikipedia. I made a new skin for MediaWiki and a few MediaWiki extensions Other Accounts I also tag a lot of stories on Delicious. I also have over 70,000 photos on Flickr. I Tweet kinda regularly. I also post things to YouTube. And of course I have a Facebook. It all comes together on my FriendFeed. Tech Stuff edit Tech articles are things I do more for fun, then school. I am really into technology. When I make long blog posts or suggestions I post them here to preserve my work and ideas. My Websites Tecker Tecker 911 Teckcasts Conflicter SeniorQuoter Dictionary Robot GridView MIT Menu Mobile Conard TV Service JPlaz Devices Geologging Laptops Dell 600m Fujitsu T4220 Tablet OLPC XO-1 Lenovo U350 Cameras Kodak CX6330 Zoom Panasonic DMC-FX07 Kodak M1093 IS Samsung HZ30W Panasonic DMC-ZS6 Cell Phones Nokia 1221 Motorola C261 Palm Pre Nexus S MP3 Players ScanSnap S1500 Kindle Touch MediaWiki Tweaks Dropdowns for MediaWiki Memcached on 1and1 with MediaWiki Nuvola-inspired File Type and Edit Bar Icons for MediaWiki FlickrSet Extension Delicious Extension Essays/Thoughts Laptops for Students Article The Quest for the Perfect Notetaking Medium - Summer of 2008 Pro-tablet Learning to Learn at MIT - December 2009 Turning Anti-tablet Various Tech Blog Comments Other SeniorQuoter Group Study Photoshop Elements Experience Miscellaneous edit These are things I wrote for this site, but not required school work or are not tech things. Me My Biography My Nicknames Self-Branding Site Mission Statement MCM Club Personal Philosophies Gov School College Applications School/Town Havertown School District of Haverford Township Haverford High School Haverford Middle School Haverford Robotics Club H-Vision Channel 11 9th Grade Academy Freshmenators Team PowerSchool Games Chocolatier Game Guide On Activism Notes edit You must register (for a free account) to edit pages. My site contains mostly my homework and projects as well as various stuff from my life. I am continually adding stuff. If you don't see what you need, ask me a question, or add it yourself. Just hit "Edit" at the top of the page. Check out the user pages! All site members get their own page too! So don't be afraid to change and add to your page. You can do anything you like! Your user page is at [[User:{{USERNAME}}]]. New server (should be far faster and fix speed issues!!!) and URL scheme (should be shorter and easier to remember) Old links should still work and redirect you to the new site! --ThePlaz 23:58, 17 January 2009 (EST) Please note our General disclaimer Thank you to Michael Gdovin who came up with the domain name. Uploading now enabled for the following file types: 'png', 'gif', 'jpg', 'jpeg', 'ogg', 'zip', 'doc', 'xls', 'ppt', 'pps', 'pdf', 'mp3', 'wav', 'wma', 'wma', 'txt' Please upload responsibly, any inappropriate uploads will be tracked and deleted. ImageMagick now installed for better thumbnails --ThePlaz 17:48, 5 May 2007 (EDT) Browse the web better and safer, as well as see this site better: Get Firefox Good web hosting with 1 and 1 (it's what I use): http://www.1and1.com/?k_id=10309718

Site News edit New Minisites Index Page - I have transported from Geocities, my mini websites from 5th and 8th Grade MediaWiki is now reporting times in the Eastern Time Zone. However, DST time is not taken into account, so currently the times are one hour delayed. --Plaz 14:13, 16 April 2006 (EDT) I have categorized all of school reports. See Special:Categories for all categories, or see Category:School List of work that I have posted the grade I have recieved. See: Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Grade% and Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Grade I got a new scanner! This one is in my room, so it should be much easer to scan papers and post them here. That means more of my work posted on ThePlaz.com --Plaz 19:35, 14 May 2006 (EDT) New Homepage I borrowed from [4] It took my three hours and a little CSS to transfer it. What do you think? Tell me! --Plaz 18:49, 17 May 2006 (EDT) Site now running Media Wiki 1.6.5 --Plaz 18:49, 17 May 2006 (EDT) I uploaded a lot of stuff I did for Western Civ. Only 3 more projects, and I will have all of the typed work uploaded. --Plaz 21:47, 18 May 2006 (EDT) Western Civ Typed Projects uploaded --Plaz 21:37, 21 May 2006 (EDT) I re-arrannged the Homepage by subject. It was just too hard to find stuff. --Plaz 21:37, 21 May 2006 (EDT) I am testing a drop-down menu in the Sitenotice area. So if you see something weird at the top of the page, it isn't working yet. --Plaz 21:37, 21 May 2006 (EDT) I changed around and built a template system using the round (in Firefox) to match the Main Page style and hopefully the new skin I might build over the summer. --Plaz 17:18, 5 June 2006 (EDT) I added new file icons for .doc (Word) files. I had to change the PHP code to get them to display, and then I changed the custom themed file type icons to ones based off Nuvola icons They are like the ones I use on the main page. What do you think? --Plaz 17:18, 5 June 2006 (EDT) I am done uploading all of my typed work from 9th Grade. School is almost over!--Plaz 11:15, 11 June 2006 (EDT) Did you see that at the top of the page. Show/Hide is working!!!!!!!!!!!--Plaz 20:28, 14 June 2006 (EDT) The drop down Nav bar is finally working! I only got some subjects to work yet. Others may come at some point, but are held up because of a bug. --Plaz 18:27, 25 June 2006 (EDT) I changed the redirect page when you type in "ThePlaz.com" to be faster and more handheld and search engine friendly. I also added a CSS rule to make the sitenotice drop downs not appear on handheld and mobile devices. (Hopefully) --Plaz 16:42, 9 October 2006 (EDT) New listing of old site updates, I've posted. --Plaz 17:58, 9 October 2006 (EDT) There may be delays lasting up to two weeks between the day the work is assigned, and the day it is posted because of a backlog. This blacklog is likely to continue because it makes uploading more efficient.--Plaz 17:27, 30 November 2006 (EST)