Hello people's. Today I'm talking about another TV show. Here it goes.
The show I'm talking about today is called Firefly. Firefly was a really great sci-fi show that only had one season a while back. The story is that after we used up Earth's resources we found another solar system. The inner planets formed the alliance and wanted to control the outer planets as well. The outer planets wanted independence but they lost the war.
Malcolm Reynolds is captain of a ship named Serenity. He's also a veteran from the war on the losing side. These cargo ships called Fireflies go around the outer planets doing jobs, legal or not. A ship gave you work and a gun helped you keep it.
Firefly is a great show. The actors on the ship are all great. The crew includes some odd people, an ex-soldier, doctor, trigger happy crew member, a preacher, a companion, and a girl who's just a little off. The episodes are very engaging all through with some being full of action and others offering interesting morals. I highly recommend watching Firefly.
Bye.
By Ashton
The Grey Jack Frost
Sunday, June 15, 2014
Sunday, June 8, 2014
Hello peoples. I'm gonna write a blog today. I don't know what it's going to be about exactly but here it goes.
Quite a while ago I wrote a blog detailing one of my middle school mornings and the music I listened to and it was one of my best blogs. Here is a blog after middle school is over and how things are about me now. Last Thursday was the last day of school and the last day of middle school. I came into the eighth grade very different than how I am now. Same routine different things. This year has been different from my other middle school experiences due to a lot of things. I've experienced new things, I've thought about things I had never considered before, I've had new and stronger relationships with different people, it's just been a very different year compared to my other middle school years. Some things I experienced were very fun, others were not. Every emotion, good or bad, had it's place in that year. All of them very powerful. I had the last day of middle school with new friends, old friends, new music, different outlooks, and very different emotions about a last day of school.
The day was of course very sunny but not hot. Entering the bus in the morning, coming off it in the afternoon, seeing the sky and feeling the air. It felt no different then one of those dark, grey fall days. The sun was not quite as bright, the air was duller, the sounds were less expansive and whispered of things different than other summer days. I spent most the day drawing and writing in various places around the school, the teachers payed little heed to where we went on the last day. There were not many people there due to graduation already taking place the previous day and a few people were not there I would've wanted to. I sat and drew and wrote in my notebook and thought about how middle school changed how I am and how I'll be going in to high school.
I ended the day waiting in my bus room with completely different music that I had been listening to earlier in the year, which as you could guess has become very important to me. The speaker rang and echoed throughout the school, quieter than it had been previously, announcing my bus number. I walked though the halls in my hoodie and empty, hollow backpack, in an empty and hollow school. The lockers were all open and dark inside making the halls appear much less wide than they actually are. I didn't have any more goodbyes because there was nobody else in the school to say goodbye too. I walked outside, took one more look at the school and rode the bus home. Ready for my first year in high school with nobody from the middle school there that I actually cared about.
So I sit here in the car on the highway in the dark, the same place I wrote that original blog so far and short a time away. Listening to very different music, but still loud and filled with hope, anger, and sadness. In the exact same situation, speeding quickly away from old things and into new ones. Bye everybody.
Here's the band I've been listening to called Buke and Gass. My favorite album of theirs is called General Dome and the song I've listened to while writing this is called Sleep Gets Your Ghost.
- By Ashton
Quite a while ago I wrote a blog detailing one of my middle school mornings and the music I listened to and it was one of my best blogs. Here is a blog after middle school is over and how things are about me now. Last Thursday was the last day of school and the last day of middle school. I came into the eighth grade very different than how I am now. Same routine different things. This year has been different from my other middle school experiences due to a lot of things. I've experienced new things, I've thought about things I had never considered before, I've had new and stronger relationships with different people, it's just been a very different year compared to my other middle school years. Some things I experienced were very fun, others were not. Every emotion, good or bad, had it's place in that year. All of them very powerful. I had the last day of middle school with new friends, old friends, new music, different outlooks, and very different emotions about a last day of school.
The day was of course very sunny but not hot. Entering the bus in the morning, coming off it in the afternoon, seeing the sky and feeling the air. It felt no different then one of those dark, grey fall days. The sun was not quite as bright, the air was duller, the sounds were less expansive and whispered of things different than other summer days. I spent most the day drawing and writing in various places around the school, the teachers payed little heed to where we went on the last day. There were not many people there due to graduation already taking place the previous day and a few people were not there I would've wanted to. I sat and drew and wrote in my notebook and thought about how middle school changed how I am and how I'll be going in to high school.
I ended the day waiting in my bus room with completely different music that I had been listening to earlier in the year, which as you could guess has become very important to me. The speaker rang and echoed throughout the school, quieter than it had been previously, announcing my bus number. I walked though the halls in my hoodie and empty, hollow backpack, in an empty and hollow school. The lockers were all open and dark inside making the halls appear much less wide than they actually are. I didn't have any more goodbyes because there was nobody else in the school to say goodbye too. I walked outside, took one more look at the school and rode the bus home. Ready for my first year in high school with nobody from the middle school there that I actually cared about.
So I sit here in the car on the highway in the dark, the same place I wrote that original blog so far and short a time away. Listening to very different music, but still loud and filled with hope, anger, and sadness. In the exact same situation, speeding quickly away from old things and into new ones. Bye everybody.
Here's the band I've been listening to called Buke and Gass. My favorite album of theirs is called General Dome and the song I've listened to while writing this is called Sleep Gets Your Ghost.
- By Ashton
Sunday, June 1, 2014
Hello people's. Today I'm blogging more about one of my favorite book series. Here it goes.
Right now I'm reading the third book in The Mallorean series, the second series in the Belgariad books. I absolutely LOVE this series. I've already done a blog on a lot of this book series so I'm cutting right to the point on what this is really about. Ok so, the main conflict in these book series is that there are two opposing destinies one good and one evil. The force of them colliding all at once would collapse the universe so they fight it out in battles using vestiges of themselves called "The Child of the Light", and "The Childe of the Dark" in battles called events. Most often a person is only child of the light or dark once and then it's someone else. The Belgariad series leads to what's supposed to be the final and largest event that decides which destiny wins. The Mallorean takes place after and reveals that there is actually one more major event to decide the fate of the universe. These were great book series and had a huge following when they came out in the eighties but never got any special treatment like a movie so not many people know about them. My idea is to combine my interests and create a Minecraft mod solely devoted to this.
My idea is that after these events are said and done Belgarath the sorcerer himself is very tired of all of it especially seeing how he was the "caretaker" in most of the entire universes history. The idea is that Belgarath is going to train a disciple of his own to be the "caretaker" of the good destiny to make sure the evil one never wins out. The mod would have its own quest line in a dimension separate from regular Minecraft where it would actually be scale to the Belgariad world. In Belgarath The Sorcerer you see all the different adventures Belgarath himself goes on and this would be similar to that with side quests leading to a final epic quest.
The mod would of course have The Will and The Word, the way the sorcerers use magic as well as you being apprenticed to learning all the other forms of magic. Other mechanics would include a new form of magic I'd make myself where you would be able to imbue magical properties into items to create mini "orbs of Aldur", weapons wouldn't be as much tiered as they would be different with different weapons playing to different play styles. There would also be a blacksmithing system, ships, armies under your own control, tons and tons of stuff. This is of course very ambitious but hey I can dream.
Bye.
- By Ashton
Right now I'm reading the third book in The Mallorean series, the second series in the Belgariad books. I absolutely LOVE this series. I've already done a blog on a lot of this book series so I'm cutting right to the point on what this is really about. Ok so, the main conflict in these book series is that there are two opposing destinies one good and one evil. The force of them colliding all at once would collapse the universe so they fight it out in battles using vestiges of themselves called "The Child of the Light", and "The Childe of the Dark" in battles called events. Most often a person is only child of the light or dark once and then it's someone else. The Belgariad series leads to what's supposed to be the final and largest event that decides which destiny wins. The Mallorean takes place after and reveals that there is actually one more major event to decide the fate of the universe. These were great book series and had a huge following when they came out in the eighties but never got any special treatment like a movie so not many people know about them. My idea is to combine my interests and create a Minecraft mod solely devoted to this.
My idea is that after these events are said and done Belgarath the sorcerer himself is very tired of all of it especially seeing how he was the "caretaker" in most of the entire universes history. The idea is that Belgarath is going to train a disciple of his own to be the "caretaker" of the good destiny to make sure the evil one never wins out. The mod would have its own quest line in a dimension separate from regular Minecraft where it would actually be scale to the Belgariad world. In Belgarath The Sorcerer you see all the different adventures Belgarath himself goes on and this would be similar to that with side quests leading to a final epic quest.
The mod would of course have The Will and The Word, the way the sorcerers use magic as well as you being apprenticed to learning all the other forms of magic. Other mechanics would include a new form of magic I'd make myself where you would be able to imbue magical properties into items to create mini "orbs of Aldur", weapons wouldn't be as much tiered as they would be different with different weapons playing to different play styles. There would also be a blacksmithing system, ships, armies under your own control, tons and tons of stuff. This is of course very ambitious but hey I can dream.
Bye.
- By Ashton
Monday, May 26, 2014
Godzilla
Hello peoples. Today I'm reviewing another movie. Here it goes.
This movie is actually a new one that came out in theaters recently. GODZILLA. THANK GOD. I saw it just yesterday and it was quite good. I'm not gonna spoil the plot but the story is that Godzilla and other enormous creatures like him roamed the Earth when it was much more radioactive and they used that as a food source. Once the earth started to become less radioactive they all went underground or into the deepest parts of the ocean to absorb radiation from the earths core. The nuclear explosions in Japan at the end of WW2 awoke one... The tests in the Pacific afterwards were not tests.... They were trying to kill it.
I loved this movie. Compared to Pacific Rim I liked them equally but I do have a bias from watching Godzilla movies since I was a kid so every time Godzilla let loose his earth-shattering roar I nearly stood up in my movie theatre seat. I guess Pacific Rim was more colorful but some of the angles in this movie are really good and it really makes you feel just how enormous these things are.
(SPOILERS). So there is one time where it feels a lot like Godzilla has died before the climax of the movie. When it seems like he is dying you can feel a little sad just like in the older movies where Godzilla might have died protecting Japan from some sort of creature and the people of Japan always seem sad when that happens. When I was small I always thought that was a little silly but I thought they did it really well in this movie and it makes more sense in this movie because most of it is from a main characters perspective instead of from the monsters it makes it seem more believable why they would feel that way. I also liked how the story followed more like the older movies but still appealed to new audiences.
Godzilla was an epic movie and you should see it now on the big screen. Bye.
- By Ashton
This movie is actually a new one that came out in theaters recently. GODZILLA. THANK GOD. I saw it just yesterday and it was quite good. I'm not gonna spoil the plot but the story is that Godzilla and other enormous creatures like him roamed the Earth when it was much more radioactive and they used that as a food source. Once the earth started to become less radioactive they all went underground or into the deepest parts of the ocean to absorb radiation from the earths core. The nuclear explosions in Japan at the end of WW2 awoke one... The tests in the Pacific afterwards were not tests.... They were trying to kill it.
I loved this movie. Compared to Pacific Rim I liked them equally but I do have a bias from watching Godzilla movies since I was a kid so every time Godzilla let loose his earth-shattering roar I nearly stood up in my movie theatre seat. I guess Pacific Rim was more colorful but some of the angles in this movie are really good and it really makes you feel just how enormous these things are.
(SPOILERS). So there is one time where it feels a lot like Godzilla has died before the climax of the movie. When it seems like he is dying you can feel a little sad just like in the older movies where Godzilla might have died protecting Japan from some sort of creature and the people of Japan always seem sad when that happens. When I was small I always thought that was a little silly but I thought they did it really well in this movie and it makes more sense in this movie because most of it is from a main characters perspective instead of from the monsters it makes it seem more believable why they would feel that way. I also liked how the story followed more like the older movies but still appealed to new audiences.
Godzilla was an epic movie and you should see it now on the big screen. Bye.
- By Ashton
Sunday, May 18, 2014
Deep Blue Sea
Hello peoples today I'm blogging about another movie. Here it goes.
On friday we saw a movie called Deep Blue Sea. The movie starts out with a rather large shark attacking a boat of party-goers who quite surprisingly for a horror movie survive because a guy with a heavy tranquilizer gun managed to shoot it. Turns out this shark had escaped from a research center that floats in the ocean. The research center has been trying to develop a cure for Alzenhiemers by getting proteins from large shark brains, which don't degenerate with age. Well you guessed it pretty soon an accident involving a helicopter and a large storm leads to a group of people trying to survive in a flooding and sinking facility filled with 3 super big super smart sharks.
I thought it was a quite a good shark movie. There weren't any parts that looked particularly fake and there was definitely plenty of action. The movie also doesn't take itself to seriously and lightly parodies other shark movies like Jaws without being a joke movie. The movie also surprises you by not abiding by the who's-gonna-die horror movie rules.
Overall Deep Blue Sea was a good movie and offered some good changes from the regular shark movies.
Bye.
- By Ashton
On friday we saw a movie called Deep Blue Sea. The movie starts out with a rather large shark attacking a boat of party-goers who quite surprisingly for a horror movie survive because a guy with a heavy tranquilizer gun managed to shoot it. Turns out this shark had escaped from a research center that floats in the ocean. The research center has been trying to develop a cure for Alzenhiemers by getting proteins from large shark brains, which don't degenerate with age. Well you guessed it pretty soon an accident involving a helicopter and a large storm leads to a group of people trying to survive in a flooding and sinking facility filled with 3 super big super smart sharks.
I thought it was a quite a good shark movie. There weren't any parts that looked particularly fake and there was definitely plenty of action. The movie also doesn't take itself to seriously and lightly parodies other shark movies like Jaws without being a joke movie. The movie also surprises you by not abiding by the who's-gonna-die horror movie rules.
Overall Deep Blue Sea was a good movie and offered some good changes from the regular shark movies.
Bye.
- By Ashton
Sunday, May 11, 2014
Hello peoples. Today I'm blogging about something I got recently. Here it goes!
So me, my dad, and Alex were at the mall yesterday and we ducked in Fye. I like that store because it's always got horror stuff in it that I haven't seen before that isn't a hundred miles away. While I was there I saw some cool stuff like some large Pacific Rim jaegers and kaijus as well as Dutch from the Predator movie colored like a predator was looking at him with thermal vision. But there was one thing that immediately caught my eye and that was a classic alien figure by Neca. Technically I have one but it's pretty cruddy and a bad paint job and I bought it with its inner mouth missing, not knowing it had one at the time. This one is really really cool.
Here's the box.
It's got the premise of Alien along with a picture of the figure, and a picture showing how a new alien warrior and Hicks are also available. It's like that because Neca releases it's figures in waves of 3. The front of that sheet in the box also make a good poster to put the figure in front of.
Here it is in all it's glory straight out the box.
You can tell it's difference from the alien warriors in Aliens from the head...
Hands...
Feet...
And elbows. Also mine had one of its elbow spikes bent as you can see which is a little annoying.
The figure has a mostly black paint job with some rusty gray in areas. I didn't find any flaws in the paint job on mine except a streak of black near the edge of the head piece that's only present on one side and a white spot on the back of the head.
It's a pretty good paint job with the gloss and everything but I've seen Neca do better paint jobs on Aliens before. Neca kept the improvements it made in articulation and also fixed the joints being to loose. It's articulated at the neck, although understandably limited because of the head and neck being the way it is. It's got a nice ball joint in the chest. The shoulders are ball jointed but rather stiff and the sculpt makes them quite hard to move. It's similar to the neck joint but I feel like they could fix that a bit more. There's also a cut joint right below the shoulder on the arm so you have to be careful not to put to much strain on that. Really the upper arms aren't that great. The elbows are ball jointed and the wrists turn with both those joints being fine. It's ball jointed at the hips but these are also restricted and it would be quite hard to get him into a crouching or sitting position. The knees are hinged above and below the knee caps, ball jointed ankles and hinged claws. It's also got a bendable wire in its tail and a movable jaw and inner mouth that Neca has done quite well with. And I also like the opaque head carapace that you can see its skull through.
You're beautiful.... You're beautiful it's true
Here's a pic showing all my most realistic aliens. Including the newest and oldest (both in movie appearances and figures I've gotten.)
Sent from my iPhone
By Ashton
So me, my dad, and Alex were at the mall yesterday and we ducked in Fye. I like that store because it's always got horror stuff in it that I haven't seen before that isn't a hundred miles away. While I was there I saw some cool stuff like some large Pacific Rim jaegers and kaijus as well as Dutch from the Predator movie colored like a predator was looking at him with thermal vision. But there was one thing that immediately caught my eye and that was a classic alien figure by Neca. Technically I have one but it's pretty cruddy and a bad paint job and I bought it with its inner mouth missing, not knowing it had one at the time. This one is really really cool.
Here's the box.
It's got the premise of Alien along with a picture of the figure, and a picture showing how a new alien warrior and Hicks are also available. It's like that because Neca releases it's figures in waves of 3. The front of that sheet in the box also make a good poster to put the figure in front of.
Here it is in all it's glory straight out the box.
You can tell it's difference from the alien warriors in Aliens from the head...
Hands...
Feet...
And elbows. Also mine had one of its elbow spikes bent as you can see which is a little annoying.
The figure has a mostly black paint job with some rusty gray in areas. I didn't find any flaws in the paint job on mine except a streak of black near the edge of the head piece that's only present on one side and a white spot on the back of the head.
It's a pretty good paint job with the gloss and everything but I've seen Neca do better paint jobs on Aliens before. Neca kept the improvements it made in articulation and also fixed the joints being to loose. It's articulated at the neck, although understandably limited because of the head and neck being the way it is. It's got a nice ball joint in the chest. The shoulders are ball jointed but rather stiff and the sculpt makes them quite hard to move. It's similar to the neck joint but I feel like they could fix that a bit more. There's also a cut joint right below the shoulder on the arm so you have to be careful not to put to much strain on that. Really the upper arms aren't that great. The elbows are ball jointed and the wrists turn with both those joints being fine. It's ball jointed at the hips but these are also restricted and it would be quite hard to get him into a crouching or sitting position. The knees are hinged above and below the knee caps, ball jointed ankles and hinged claws. It's also got a bendable wire in its tail and a movable jaw and inner mouth that Neca has done quite well with. And I also like the opaque head carapace that you can see its skull through.
You're beautiful.... You're beautiful it's true
Here's a pic showing all my most realistic aliens. Including the newest and oldest (both in movie appearances and figures I've gotten.)
Sent from my iPhone
By Ashton
Monday, May 5, 2014
Star Trek: Fleet Captains
Hello peoples. Today I'm gonna write about a game I've played with my dad. Here it goes.
The game is called Star Trek: Fleet captains. It's easiest to play with 2 people but with the expansions it's easier to play with more. In the basic game there is a Federation side and a Klingon side. You start off randomly recruiting ships from the two armadas. The size of the ship is how much points it is and however many points you use determines how many victory points a player needs to win but both players must have the same point total. After you have your fleet of ships and the cards that go with them you lay out the battlefield. The battlefield consists of face down hexagons in any shape you wish and normally your command post at one side and your opponents at the other. Then you place your ships in your command post and the game is ready to begin.
You get 3 different mission cards as well. When you beat these missions you get victory points and in a standard game the first one to 10 wins. You can also gain 1 victory point for destroying an enemy ship or 1 or more points from different missions found in space. The first thing you want to do is make ship adjustments. For instance if I was in a battle I would turn my dial to the highest weapons or shields stats. Next you can move all of your ships. If your ship has an enemy in the same hex as it then it has to roll to successfully move. How far you can move depends on the size of the hex you explored. For example if you have an engines of 10 and the first hex you flip has a size of 5 you can move to the next one and then to the next one until the size adds up to be past 10. When you are done moving you can use an action out of three you have per turn. You can scan, where you flip a hex adjacent to you over so only you can see it and then flip it back, attack an enemy ship if it's in the same square as you, or exert influence on a hex. After you get a certain amount of influence on a hex you can upgrade it to a space station and with more influence tokens you can upgrade it more, and so on. Once one of your ship takes damage it moves from the white normal section on its card to any slot on the yellow alert status. You cannot make ship adjustments to other sections just other clicks in that section. Once your ship is on red alert if it takes one more damage it is destroyed. Once you have a ship destroyed you can recruit more ships as an action from your armada equal to the size you have left. You can also use cards from your hand to help you with systems tests, in combat, or to assign crew members to a ship. Some ships can also cloak and send out decoys so it's hard for me to target them and determine which one is a decoy and which one is not.
Dad and I played recently. I kicked his but. He was the Klingons and I was the federation. I had one powerful ship that I managed to assign Capt. Kirk to who helped with shields and weapons. Next I got Spock on the ship too and his power is that if the ship he was on was to be destroyed he could sacrifice himself for it to remain on red alert. Finally I got McCoy on it too and his power was that if a ship was destroyed he could save all the crew members on it. So pretty much I could use Spock to save the ship and Kirk and McCoy could bring him back to life and save themselves. Sound familiar? We ended the game at 4 to 13. The goal to the game was 10 but if the goal was higher than in the turn that I won I would've been able to get to 13.
Star Trek: Fleet Captains is a great game and I highly recommend you get it. It is a litotes complicated and the best way to learn it is to play it. Bye.
-By Ashton
The game is called Star Trek: Fleet captains. It's easiest to play with 2 people but with the expansions it's easier to play with more. In the basic game there is a Federation side and a Klingon side. You start off randomly recruiting ships from the two armadas. The size of the ship is how much points it is and however many points you use determines how many victory points a player needs to win but both players must have the same point total. After you have your fleet of ships and the cards that go with them you lay out the battlefield. The battlefield consists of face down hexagons in any shape you wish and normally your command post at one side and your opponents at the other. Then you place your ships in your command post and the game is ready to begin.
You get 3 different mission cards as well. When you beat these missions you get victory points and in a standard game the first one to 10 wins. You can also gain 1 victory point for destroying an enemy ship or 1 or more points from different missions found in space. The first thing you want to do is make ship adjustments. For instance if I was in a battle I would turn my dial to the highest weapons or shields stats. Next you can move all of your ships. If your ship has an enemy in the same hex as it then it has to roll to successfully move. How far you can move depends on the size of the hex you explored. For example if you have an engines of 10 and the first hex you flip has a size of 5 you can move to the next one and then to the next one until the size adds up to be past 10. When you are done moving you can use an action out of three you have per turn. You can scan, where you flip a hex adjacent to you over so only you can see it and then flip it back, attack an enemy ship if it's in the same square as you, or exert influence on a hex. After you get a certain amount of influence on a hex you can upgrade it to a space station and with more influence tokens you can upgrade it more, and so on. Once one of your ship takes damage it moves from the white normal section on its card to any slot on the yellow alert status. You cannot make ship adjustments to other sections just other clicks in that section. Once your ship is on red alert if it takes one more damage it is destroyed. Once you have a ship destroyed you can recruit more ships as an action from your armada equal to the size you have left. You can also use cards from your hand to help you with systems tests, in combat, or to assign crew members to a ship. Some ships can also cloak and send out decoys so it's hard for me to target them and determine which one is a decoy and which one is not.
Dad and I played recently. I kicked his but. He was the Klingons and I was the federation. I had one powerful ship that I managed to assign Capt. Kirk to who helped with shields and weapons. Next I got Spock on the ship too and his power is that if the ship he was on was to be destroyed he could sacrifice himself for it to remain on red alert. Finally I got McCoy on it too and his power was that if a ship was destroyed he could save all the crew members on it. So pretty much I could use Spock to save the ship and Kirk and McCoy could bring him back to life and save themselves. Sound familiar? We ended the game at 4 to 13. The goal to the game was 10 but if the goal was higher than in the turn that I won I would've been able to get to 13.
Star Trek: Fleet Captains is a great game and I highly recommend you get it. It is a litotes complicated and the best way to learn it is to play it. Bye.
-By Ashton
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)