Pandora

   First off, before I get this article started let me state my apology for being absent in my posts for a while. Last weekend, as stated in my previous post I was away on a short vacation for Valentine's. The only reason why I've been quiet now is because of my day-job. My little vacation had some consequences with my boss that have been resolved with some extra hard work.

   Pandora. This has helped me a lot the past week so I decided that my re-entry post should be all about it. Basically, if you don't know about this already, is that its a streaming website for music. You name an artist, song, or genre and it plays songs that are similar in taste to what you pick, but it will not play the song you choose. That would be against some intellectual properties laws that prohibit giving away free music, this is sort of their way of getting around that. Its really a great service, the ads that play every few songs might be annoying, but it really is a great service. If you don't pay for it, you can listen for free for up to 40 hours in one month, if you reach that limit however, you can pay 1$ to listen for the rest of the month with unlimited time.

   If that isn't your fancy, you can always pay the 36$ for one year, where you get unlimited listening for any device (if a phone + data charges of course) with no ads and a cool desktop app so you don't have to run Pandora in a browser. I personally use this, and I love it. I have around 40 or so stations each with their own flavor for what I feel like listening to, and I can always make another one if they don't fit the mood I'm in. The reason why I love this so much? Gaming or working, this breaks the silence or repetitive sounds with some good beats to liven things up a bit, and give things a refreshing taste. Not only that, but it helps time go by quicker when working and personally, music helps me concentrate. Another plus for Pandora One is that it also has a higher bit-rate for higher quality streaming, that can be used in the desktop app or the web browser. Either way, pay or for free, Pandora is a fantastic way to make things go by quicker if you need them to. Its a fantastic internet radio for when you don't have the CD's for the genre, and you need to listen to something. Its even great for finding groups that you otherwise might not have heard of, you know, like ones out of the country?

Valentine's Day

Hello everyone. I hope you all had a fantastic Valentine's day as I did. I'll get back to posting new topics tomorrow. I've been gone since Friday on a Valentine's retreat with my special someone. Hopefully your Valentine's holiday was as good as mine.

Minecraft

Minecraft, a game with no victory condition that you can pick of for about 20$. So why is this interesting? Well the trick is to make it interesting. This game is really hot among a lot of people because of the creativity you can show through building an infinite amount of designs through various blocks in the game world. But this requires work. You can't just summon up the blocks required to build the thing you want to build, you have to mine it out of the ground just as if you were really trying to find the resources to build something, and if you want to make something with a rare material get ready for a grind, because some of those materials are very difficult to find. The rarest of these materials being Diamond. Only found 20 or so blocks above the bedrock (the deepest you can go so to speak) in very rare patches, that can take hours to find if not done in an efficient manner. But this might seem to easy for you. So it gets harder. The day cycles just in the real world...

Zombie, Creeper, Skeleton - Left to right. Note: This is an alternate art picture, this representation does not reflect in-game graphics. Image is the property of its respective owner. I do not claim this as my own. Not included in this picture are spiders. Another monster that was recently given the ability to climb over walls.

Meet the Zombie, Creeper, and Skeleton. These monsters spawn only at night, or in dark places such as deep caves. The Zombie is your basic melee monster, it will seek to hurt you by eating your brains. The Skeleton uses a bow to try and kill you, probably the most likely to kill you of these monsters. Next, the Creeper. The creeper is what can readily be described as a suicide bomber as it will try to kill you by blowing itself up, and anything around it. Finally, what I consider to be the least likely to kill you, are spiders. They're jumpy little buggers that have the pesky ability to climb up and over walls. Seek shelter at night, and have a roof, and you'll be fine against these creeps. Build by day, mine by night. Whatever works for you, and if you have the time and the patience, great things can be achieved. From building towers, to castles, to ships, and roller coasters the only limit to what you can build is your imagination and the work you're willing to put into it. But be warned though. This game is an amazing time sink, and you won't realize how much time you've spent on it until seven hours have passed. I know that's the case with me. My flying lava encased castle of doom.

This is a screen shot of an in-game object that someone built. If your a Trekie, you might recognize this as the U.S.S. Enterprise-D, because that's what it is on a to-scale representation of itself in the Minecraft game world. The screen shot doesn't really give it justice, but this thing is ridiculously huge.

Origami

I know you've probably heard of this form of art before, but have you ever bothered to try it? I'm a huge fan of origami because of the creativity some people can use with it. I've seen Star Wars origami, animal origami, just everything origami. If you can imagine it, you can make a paper craft from it. Its a neat little party trick too. You might not believe it, but some people are easily impressed with a little origami, especially the girls. Sure, it might be difficult to learn but who wouldn't want to be able to make a tank out of a dollar bill?

 Whats even more interesting about this is how people think they can't do it. All it really is, is folding paper into complex designs. Are you saying you can't fold paper? Now granted some designs are far more complex than others and may require a little bit more dexterity than others, but even then its still just folding paper. The only limitation to being able to doing something like this is yourself. I urge you to just try doing a little origami, and if you don't know how there are many many websites that will teach you how, there are even youtube videos if that's easier for you. Even if its just one or two designs to learn, its still a cool little part trick that you can impress your friends with. Remember, people are far more interesting when they have the ability to do more than someone else can. Most people can't do origami, so make yourself a better person by learning just a teeny tiny bit, add that in with other things you know other people can't do and you're already making yourself a more interesting person to be around. Make your world more interesting by making yourself more interesting. All it's going to cost you is a little bit of time.

Yes, this is Origami.

Shadows over Camelot

I recently had the pleasure of playing this wonderful board game and I must say I was quite impressed with it. Basically, 3 to 7 people can play this at a time. The quirk however is that you're not really playing against a player, you're playing against the board. The game is designed to where you're supposed to fight back the evil forces using your knight (the more famous ones from Camelot's lore.) There is one player who is at random designated a traitor who is fighting against the players with the board, and if done right the game can be very exciting. Although the rules may seem complicated at first, the rule book and experienced players can very easily describe the game's content. For newbies, the play of a traitor doesn't have to be involved for surprisingly enough, fighting the board alone can be difficult in itself. So you might be asking yourself by now, how does it all work? Well each turn a player must do two things, a corrupted action, and a heroic action. Corrupted actions basically play for the board, you must sacrifice a life point (you start with four, and can go up doing certain things), or add a siege engine (once there are 12 on the game board you lose), or draw a black card which can do many various things.

The game can be very confusing when first introduced, but given one or two games, it becomes second hand. So if you ever get the chance to play this wonderful board game, give it a try. Board games are a dying breed in comparison to video games. But its good, and fun to spend some time off the Tele and around the table with some good friends and family.

Miracle Berries?

In short its a fruit that when comes in contact with taste buds, it alters them in a way that makes sour things taste sweet, pretty cool right? They've been on the Earth for centuries but they're just now starting to make an impact on the world with their new-found popularity. So much so that they've been converted into tablet form.

They're a growing sensation among people. Instead of doing just a party, they take these little babies and have taste testing parties. Just for some info, they're derived from a plant whose scientific name is Synsepalum dulcificum, originating in West Africa. So the next time you hit up a party maybe you should think about buying some of these tablets to make the party all the much sweeter. I personally have an order being shipped to me from ThinkGeek a fantastic website for little things like these.

Let's get it started...

Hello hopefully future subscribers.

This is my blog. Here I'll bring up things that interest me in an attempt to share them with the rest of the world. Hopefully this blog is successful, as I think many things that there are to enjoy in life can be as large as a movie production company to tiny little doodles on paper. I think that in order for the everyone to appreciate these things though they have to first know about them, and a lot of people don't ever experience things because they never hear about them until its too late.

I hope to change that with my blog. I hope that I can bring you information about some things you would probably never have heard about, or even seen that could possibly be interesting. These things will vary from video games and movies to board games and lights. For something to be interesting all it takes is to wonder about what it is.

So even if you may have heard of something I blog about before, share your interest in it with everyone else. If you haven't ask some questions and I'll try my best to answer them. If you think I should post more about something in particular, let me know and I'll try my best.


So thanks for listening! I hope I can bring you entertainment in what interests me. Just so you all know, I'll mostly be doing one post a day because it will be easier with my current lifestyle then trying to do multiple posts a day. It might change on the weekends though depending on what I'm doing.