Hello people's. Today I'm blogging about my favorite podcast that I listen to. Here it goes.
My favorite podcast is called Radiolab. The full hour long shows come out about once a month and the shorts out around every two weeks. So Radiolab is basically a show about ummm... Everything. Every show has a topic and the topic is dissected and looked at scientifically and in a full show is normally told in several amazing, thought provoking stories. But don't let the scientific part of it put you off its a great show for all ages and types of people and all the concepts are explained very well. (If there is violent or explicit content one of the hosts will always warn you beforehand.)
Some of the stories are very sad, some of them are very happy, and most of them will leave you thinking for a while. One of the things that makes Radiolab such a great podcast is the sounds. Audio is their medium and they utilize it beautifully. Each show is filled with the most perfect sounds, songs, and moods that go along with the stories and you can picture everything perfectly in your head and they edit everl ything perfectly. They also released a video of one of their live shows and the full audio of the show.
From this you can see that they also use amazing visuals on enormous screens, and huge articulate puppets, and bands. Every show they produce is an experience in itself. I listen to it every time I go to the gym with my phone and earbuds and since I listen it so often I've started listening to their older episodes and have almost listened to all of their full shows.
I highly recommend listening to at least one of these full podcasts. Radiolab from WNYC is hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich and their website is radiolab.org Bye peoples.
By Ashton
The Grey Jack Frost
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Monday, January 20, 2014
The Shining
Hello people's. Today I'm writing more about The Shining. Here it goes.
So from one of my last few blogs I've told you that I've seen the movie and got the book and it's sequel, Doctor Sleep for Christmas. I've already finished the book and I'm over half way done Doctor Sleep. This blog is gonna be about the differences between the movie and the book.
One of the first few differences is another past incident that happens to Jack that makes him feel even more guilty about what he's done on top of him breaking his son's arm. It was when he was still an English teacher in high school and he was in charge of a debate club and he had one kid who was really good but whenever the kid felt like he was going to win he would start to stutter. So one class the kid was debating and started to stutter and after class Jack told him he was going to have to kick him from the club and they got in an argument with the kid saying that Jack sped up his timer. Jack denies that completely in the book when he's going over the story. Later Jack see's the kid slashing his tires with a knife and Jack flew into a rage and almost killed the kid with him ending up with a severe concussion. This is also why Jack was originally fired from his teaching position which I don't think was explained in the movie. As time goes on in the book he changes his story as his guilt becomes greater, saying secondly that even if somehow if he did set the timer ahead it was only by a minute to put him out of his misery and then thirdly saying that he only set it forward one measly minute as the tension rises.
Another one of the more scary differences is the hotel itself. In the movie it's more of Jack going insane and the ghosts in the hotel help him become insane. In the book the hotel starts out as being not as bad just creepy sometimes but we learn that since Danny's shine is so powerful it's making the hotel a stronger and stronger malevolent force and using it's dark past to bring back ghosts and fragments of the past to control Jack and his family. However the hotel still needs Danny for his steam, (explained in Doctor Sleep), and it still isn't powerful enough to seriously injure the family so the hotel starts bringing back ghosts and powerful happenings to guilt rid Jack who starts becoming obsessed with the hotel and it's history, eventually believing they want him and not his son.
(SPOILER) This spoils the ending of both the movie and the book. In the movie Jack is driven mad by everything happening around him and he tries to take an axe to Danny and Wendy, he kills Dick Hallorannn but after a climatic chase through the hedge maze, Danny and Wendy escape in the Snowcat, and Jack with his wounded leg freezes to death outside. In the book, Jack is brought into a party just like he is in the movie and the hotel promises him things using ghosts as its speaker. They end up making a deal that if he brings it Danny then he would get in good with the manager (the hotel itself) and maybe even rise to management status. After giving him plenty of booze from his alcoholic days, (it is unclear whether the hotel was powerful enough to give him real alcohol because the hotel had none when Jack got there but afterwards he is in a drunken rage.), Jack "comes to his senses" and sets off to kill his family this time with a roque mallet. He seriously injures Wendy and Dick and climatically chases his son through the halls cursing and slamming his mallet into the walls. Finally Danny reaches a dead end and bravely tricks his father. He knows that his father is no longer there, that the hotel has pretty much consumed his soul. He voices this to his father and confuses whatever is left of him until the hotel gives up and... SPOILER TURN BACK NOW IF YOU DONT WANT THE ENDING RUINED (or if your squeamish) the person that was once Jack Torrance slowly raises his mallet into the sky and again, and again, and again, he brings it down... On his own face. He slowly turned to his son and horrifying faces of the ghosts are transformed into the bone that makes up his skull revealing that Jack Torrance is truly dead and all that's left of him is with the hotel now. But Danny still has one more trick up his sleeve. Tony, before disappearing for a long time says, " You will remember what was forgotten" and Danny remembers at that time that the boiler hasn't been checked up on and if it's left unattended it could blow up and destroy the entire hotel. Danny tells the hotel and it runs for the boiler screaming and shrieking like something no longer human and Danny, Wendy, and Dick escape before the hotel erupts into flames.
Bye peoples. REDRUM.
By Ashton
So from one of my last few blogs I've told you that I've seen the movie and got the book and it's sequel, Doctor Sleep for Christmas. I've already finished the book and I'm over half way done Doctor Sleep. This blog is gonna be about the differences between the movie and the book.
One of the first few differences is another past incident that happens to Jack that makes him feel even more guilty about what he's done on top of him breaking his son's arm. It was when he was still an English teacher in high school and he was in charge of a debate club and he had one kid who was really good but whenever the kid felt like he was going to win he would start to stutter. So one class the kid was debating and started to stutter and after class Jack told him he was going to have to kick him from the club and they got in an argument with the kid saying that Jack sped up his timer. Jack denies that completely in the book when he's going over the story. Later Jack see's the kid slashing his tires with a knife and Jack flew into a rage and almost killed the kid with him ending up with a severe concussion. This is also why Jack was originally fired from his teaching position which I don't think was explained in the movie. As time goes on in the book he changes his story as his guilt becomes greater, saying secondly that even if somehow if he did set the timer ahead it was only by a minute to put him out of his misery and then thirdly saying that he only set it forward one measly minute as the tension rises.
Another one of the more scary differences is the hotel itself. In the movie it's more of Jack going insane and the ghosts in the hotel help him become insane. In the book the hotel starts out as being not as bad just creepy sometimes but we learn that since Danny's shine is so powerful it's making the hotel a stronger and stronger malevolent force and using it's dark past to bring back ghosts and fragments of the past to control Jack and his family. However the hotel still needs Danny for his steam, (explained in Doctor Sleep), and it still isn't powerful enough to seriously injure the family so the hotel starts bringing back ghosts and powerful happenings to guilt rid Jack who starts becoming obsessed with the hotel and it's history, eventually believing they want him and not his son.
(SPOILER) This spoils the ending of both the movie and the book. In the movie Jack is driven mad by everything happening around him and he tries to take an axe to Danny and Wendy, he kills Dick Hallorannn but after a climatic chase through the hedge maze, Danny and Wendy escape in the Snowcat, and Jack with his wounded leg freezes to death outside. In the book, Jack is brought into a party just like he is in the movie and the hotel promises him things using ghosts as its speaker. They end up making a deal that if he brings it Danny then he would get in good with the manager (the hotel itself) and maybe even rise to management status. After giving him plenty of booze from his alcoholic days, (it is unclear whether the hotel was powerful enough to give him real alcohol because the hotel had none when Jack got there but afterwards he is in a drunken rage.), Jack "comes to his senses" and sets off to kill his family this time with a roque mallet. He seriously injures Wendy and Dick and climatically chases his son through the halls cursing and slamming his mallet into the walls. Finally Danny reaches a dead end and bravely tricks his father. He knows that his father is no longer there, that the hotel has pretty much consumed his soul. He voices this to his father and confuses whatever is left of him until the hotel gives up and... SPOILER TURN BACK NOW IF YOU DONT WANT THE ENDING RUINED (or if your squeamish) the person that was once Jack Torrance slowly raises his mallet into the sky and again, and again, and again, he brings it down... On his own face. He slowly turned to his son and horrifying faces of the ghosts are transformed into the bone that makes up his skull revealing that Jack Torrance is truly dead and all that's left of him is with the hotel now. But Danny still has one more trick up his sleeve. Tony, before disappearing for a long time says, " You will remember what was forgotten" and Danny remembers at that time that the boiler hasn't been checked up on and if it's left unattended it could blow up and destroy the entire hotel. Danny tells the hotel and it runs for the boiler screaming and shrieking like something no longer human and Danny, Wendy, and Dick escape before the hotel erupts into flames.
Bye peoples. REDRUM.
By Ashton
Sunday, January 12, 2014
My multiplayer Minecraft world
Hello people's. Today I'm writing about a Minecraft world that I share with my friends. Here it goes!
So recently I've had computer class for my seventh period class although now its over. :( I had a really nice teacher named Mr. Moore who usually gave us 10-15 minutes at the end of every class to play any school appropriate games. Luckily I was in that class with two of my best friends Ian and Zack. All of us are total Minecraft nerds so I made a Minecraft world and opened it to LAN so that they could join and play on this survival world. There was still one problem though. At the end of every school day the computers wipe everything off except the programs they want on it and everything on the students o-drive. This would mean that every class we would have to start over because MC would stay in our o-drive but the worlds on it would be erased. But Fortunately, USING MY GENIUS 'PUTER SKILLS, I was able to separate the saved world from MC put it on my o-drive and put it back into MC next class!
The adventure had begun! So here's a short overview of the world and what we accomplished in it. One of the main reasons I got back into MC survival non-modded was because of the new 1.7 update. 1.7 adds a ton of new biomes and world gen and I felt it made the exploring factor of MC all the better. So my job was the explorer/adventurer, Ian was the builder, and Zack was the miner and did all the complicated red stone stuff. So I made the world and I spawned in a swamp biome facing an ocean making South the only exploration route without having to make a long, boring boat trip.
I was on the world a couple days before my friends so I started making a house on the beach. It mainly consisted of a pier, mine, and a second level above it.
I would've put in glass windows but strangely for a beach sand was scarce. By the way I was just in creative mode so I could take better pics. If your wondering why the blocks look a little different it's because I'm using a texture pack called Summerfields that I love and you should definitely check it out.
The main mine we use.
Afterwards my friends joined and those were the worst few nights. Most of the time we were holed up, on a hill, back to back surrounded by a circle of fire fighting monsters because we only had one bed and in Multiplayer in order to skip the night everybody had to be sleeping. Yeah, it was pretty awesome. So we bravely fought out the nights and went on crazed sheep massacres every day so we could get wool for beds. After we finally got enough wool Ian and Zack went off to make their own houses 20-30 blocks away from mine.
Ian's house. It started as a small tree house but now it's all the levels it's more of a regular house with a tree under it. ;D
Zack lives in a ravine LIKE A CREEPY MOLE CREATURE ;D kidding Zack.
This is his setup. Small but functional and he's got a large mine too.
One of the things I got lucky with this world was that as soon as I started making the mine stair casing downwards. I ran into some lava and being so close to the ocean it was easy to dig a canal, have the water turn the lava to obsidian, and block the water off again. So as soon as we found some diamonds we made a pickaxe out of it and mined the obsidian for a nether portal! First step to winning the game done.
Before going in the portal.
After going in. We normally have it covered with stone to protect from explosive things but I uncovered it for the pic.
The next step so that I could start exploring was to get all iron armor, an iron sword, and some leads in case I rain across some valuable animals like horses, wolves, or ocelots. I managed to get enough iron easy enough but I needed slime balls and string to makes leads. Fortunately we were in a swamp so Zack easily got some slime balls and my friends were both nice and we pooled our string to make leads. Finally I was ready to explore! It's been a good week in Minecraft time and I've crossed oceans, scaled mountains, and tamed horses on expansive plains.
Unfortunately the class is now over and in order to play multiplayer with my friends from our houses one of us would have to buy a server and I don't think any of us can really do that. But it was fun while it lasted! And just in case I brought a copy of the world home on a thumb drive. Bye peoples and have an adventure!
Bye Ashton
So recently I've had computer class for my seventh period class although now its over. :( I had a really nice teacher named Mr. Moore who usually gave us 10-15 minutes at the end of every class to play any school appropriate games. Luckily I was in that class with two of my best friends Ian and Zack. All of us are total Minecraft nerds so I made a Minecraft world and opened it to LAN so that they could join and play on this survival world. There was still one problem though. At the end of every school day the computers wipe everything off except the programs they want on it and everything on the students o-drive. This would mean that every class we would have to start over because MC would stay in our o-drive but the worlds on it would be erased. But Fortunately, USING MY GENIUS 'PUTER SKILLS, I was able to separate the saved world from MC put it on my o-drive and put it back into MC next class!
The adventure had begun! So here's a short overview of the world and what we accomplished in it. One of the main reasons I got back into MC survival non-modded was because of the new 1.7 update. 1.7 adds a ton of new biomes and world gen and I felt it made the exploring factor of MC all the better. So my job was the explorer/adventurer, Ian was the builder, and Zack was the miner and did all the complicated red stone stuff. So I made the world and I spawned in a swamp biome facing an ocean making South the only exploration route without having to make a long, boring boat trip.
I was on the world a couple days before my friends so I started making a house on the beach. It mainly consisted of a pier, mine, and a second level above it.
I would've put in glass windows but strangely for a beach sand was scarce. By the way I was just in creative mode so I could take better pics. If your wondering why the blocks look a little different it's because I'm using a texture pack called Summerfields that I love and you should definitely check it out.
The main mine we use.
Afterwards my friends joined and those were the worst few nights. Most of the time we were holed up, on a hill, back to back surrounded by a circle of fire fighting monsters because we only had one bed and in Multiplayer in order to skip the night everybody had to be sleeping. Yeah, it was pretty awesome. So we bravely fought out the nights and went on crazed sheep massacres every day so we could get wool for beds. After we finally got enough wool Ian and Zack went off to make their own houses 20-30 blocks away from mine.
Ian's house. It started as a small tree house but now it's all the levels it's more of a regular house with a tree under it. ;D
Zack lives in a ravine LIKE A CREEPY MOLE CREATURE ;D kidding Zack.
This is his setup. Small but functional and he's got a large mine too.
One of the things I got lucky with this world was that as soon as I started making the mine stair casing downwards. I ran into some lava and being so close to the ocean it was easy to dig a canal, have the water turn the lava to obsidian, and block the water off again. So as soon as we found some diamonds we made a pickaxe out of it and mined the obsidian for a nether portal! First step to winning the game done.
Before going in the portal.
After going in. We normally have it covered with stone to protect from explosive things but I uncovered it for the pic.
The next step so that I could start exploring was to get all iron armor, an iron sword, and some leads in case I rain across some valuable animals like horses, wolves, or ocelots. I managed to get enough iron easy enough but I needed slime balls and string to makes leads. Fortunately we were in a swamp so Zack easily got some slime balls and my friends were both nice and we pooled our string to make leads. Finally I was ready to explore! It's been a good week in Minecraft time and I've crossed oceans, scaled mountains, and tamed horses on expansive plains.
Unfortunately the class is now over and in order to play multiplayer with my friends from our houses one of us would have to buy a server and I don't think any of us can really do that. But it was fun while it lasted! And just in case I brought a copy of the world home on a thumb drive. Bye peoples and have an adventure!
Bye Ashton
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Mage Wars
Hello peoples. Today I'm talking about a card game I got for Christmas that quickly became one of my favorite games. Here it goes.
So Mage Wars is a game played with cards on a rectangle cardboard arena.
There is your Mage card which is just a full body picture of your mage with the mage's name such as the Beastmaster.
This mage is The Wizard which is my current favorite.
There is also an info card for each of the four Mages that come in the starter set. The info card show your Mages stats such as health, available spell points, and the school of magic he/she is trained in. The goal of the game is to be the last Mage standing. So there are 6 types of spell cards, equipment, conjurations, creatures, enchantments, incantations, and attacks. Equipment are played as quickcast spells that make your Mage stronger. You can only have one equipment for each location except that you can have two rings.
Equipment
Conjurations are mostly more like structures. Some could work for you to give you more mana, others could restrain an enemy creature, or even summon creatures of its own.
Conjuration
Creature cards are some of the most important cards and once a creature is summoned and active it can makes its own moves and attacks.
Creature
Enchantment spells either strengthen friendly creatures or weaken enemy creatures.
Enchantment
Incantations can do most other magical things in a card game except direct attack spells which obviously is saved for attack spells.
Incantation
Attack
So for your first few games the instructions have a couple decks pre made for you to play but one of the main points of Mage wars is to make your own spellbooks. Mages can have a different amount of points available to make a spellbook but the four starters use 120. So a Beastmaster is trained in the nature school represented by a small tree on the cards and on the Beastmaster's info card it says he is opposed to fire. So if a Nature card has a level of 2 the Beastmaster only has to pay 2 to put it in his spellbook but if it was a water card then he would pay twice as much so it would be four, if it's fire he opposes that so he has to pay three times as much so he would be paying 6 for that card.
One of the two spell books the game comes with.
It's got slots inside for your cards.
So now that you have a spell book finally it's time to play. The first stage is the ready stage. The first step is to roll the twelve sided die for initiative whoever gets higher gets passed the initiative token. In Mage Wars the turns go mostly at the same time but whoever has initiative goes first slightly. The next step is reset where you flip over your tokens so all inactive creatures become active for the next round. Then there's the channel, upkeep, planning and deployment steps. Each Mage has a set channel stat that determines how much mana he channels each channeling phase so if a Mage has a channel of ten and he has 5 mana already then after the channel phase he/she would have 15 mana. In upkeep conditions would take effect like regenerate, or poison ect. Planning is where you actually plan what cards your going to play next round. You take two cards from your spellbook and place them face down in front of you. Most of the time you want to pick a card with an hourglass and one with a lightning bolt otherwise you probably won't be able to play both cards. Deployment is only used if a Mage has a spawnpoint conjurations and then most of the time the spawnpoint could summon its own creature. Next is the Action Stage. First is the first quick cast phase where you would use one of your lighting bolt cards if you could and wanted too. If you do you would flip over your quickcast marker. Next is creature actions. Your Mage has a choice of either using a hourglass card, moving once and then moving again, or moving once and using his quick melee attack.
Other creatures could move once and then again, or move and attack with a quick action. Some creatures have a more powerful hourglass attack which would require a full action. Creatures can attack each other or some conjurations. The main goal for a creature would be to do damage to the opponent Mage and it can do that with a melee or ranged attack. Finally is the final quick cast phase where your Mage could use your quick cast if he/she hasn't already. Melee attacks require your creature to be in the same zone as the enemy. You roll the amount of attack dice specified on the card and add up the results. You can either roll blank which is nothing, a number, or a number surrounded by a starburst. If the number has a starburst it goes through the enemy's armor if it doesn't it could be blocked. So for example you roll 5 attack dice. One of them is blank, one of them is 2, and the other two are starburst 1 and the enemy has an armor of three. So he would block the 2 with armor and the starbursts would go through and he would take 2. For range attacks it would be the same but make sure the target is in range and in line of sight. There's the basics! Be the last Mage standing. You should definitely get this game.
Bye!
So Mage Wars is a game played with cards on a rectangle cardboard arena.
There is your Mage card which is just a full body picture of your mage with the mage's name such as the Beastmaster.
This mage is The Wizard which is my current favorite.
There is also an info card for each of the four Mages that come in the starter set. The info card show your Mages stats such as health, available spell points, and the school of magic he/she is trained in. The goal of the game is to be the last Mage standing. So there are 6 types of spell cards, equipment, conjurations, creatures, enchantments, incantations, and attacks. Equipment are played as quickcast spells that make your Mage stronger. You can only have one equipment for each location except that you can have two rings.
Equipment
Conjurations are mostly more like structures. Some could work for you to give you more mana, others could restrain an enemy creature, or even summon creatures of its own.
Conjuration
Creature cards are some of the most important cards and once a creature is summoned and active it can makes its own moves and attacks.
Creature
Enchantment spells either strengthen friendly creatures or weaken enemy creatures.
Enchantment
Incantations can do most other magical things in a card game except direct attack spells which obviously is saved for attack spells.
Incantation
Attack
So for your first few games the instructions have a couple decks pre made for you to play but one of the main points of Mage wars is to make your own spellbooks. Mages can have a different amount of points available to make a spellbook but the four starters use 120. So a Beastmaster is trained in the nature school represented by a small tree on the cards and on the Beastmaster's info card it says he is opposed to fire. So if a Nature card has a level of 2 the Beastmaster only has to pay 2 to put it in his spellbook but if it was a water card then he would pay twice as much so it would be four, if it's fire he opposes that so he has to pay three times as much so he would be paying 6 for that card.
One of the two spell books the game comes with.
It's got slots inside for your cards.
So now that you have a spell book finally it's time to play. The first stage is the ready stage. The first step is to roll the twelve sided die for initiative whoever gets higher gets passed the initiative token. In Mage Wars the turns go mostly at the same time but whoever has initiative goes first slightly. The next step is reset where you flip over your tokens so all inactive creatures become active for the next round. Then there's the channel, upkeep, planning and deployment steps. Each Mage has a set channel stat that determines how much mana he channels each channeling phase so if a Mage has a channel of ten and he has 5 mana already then after the channel phase he/she would have 15 mana. In upkeep conditions would take effect like regenerate, or poison ect. Planning is where you actually plan what cards your going to play next round. You take two cards from your spellbook and place them face down in front of you. Most of the time you want to pick a card with an hourglass and one with a lightning bolt otherwise you probably won't be able to play both cards. Deployment is only used if a Mage has a spawnpoint conjurations and then most of the time the spawnpoint could summon its own creature. Next is the Action Stage. First is the first quick cast phase where you would use one of your lighting bolt cards if you could and wanted too. If you do you would flip over your quickcast marker. Next is creature actions. Your Mage has a choice of either using a hourglass card, moving once and then moving again, or moving once and using his quick melee attack.
Other creatures could move once and then again, or move and attack with a quick action. Some creatures have a more powerful hourglass attack which would require a full action. Creatures can attack each other or some conjurations. The main goal for a creature would be to do damage to the opponent Mage and it can do that with a melee or ranged attack. Finally is the final quick cast phase where your Mage could use your quick cast if he/she hasn't already. Melee attacks require your creature to be in the same zone as the enemy. You roll the amount of attack dice specified on the card and add up the results. You can either roll blank which is nothing, a number, or a number surrounded by a starburst. If the number has a starburst it goes through the enemy's armor if it doesn't it could be blocked. So for example you roll 5 attack dice. One of them is blank, one of them is 2, and the other two are starburst 1 and the enemy has an armor of three. So he would block the 2 with armor and the starbursts would go through and he would take 2. For range attacks it would be the same but make sure the target is in range and in line of sight. There's the basics! Be the last Mage standing. You should definitely get this game.
Bye!
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