Filed under: Essay | Tags: director, Essay, Muse, New Moon, Paramore, review, Spotlight, two, update
Just a very short update, almost finished an essay! That took forever to finish. I watched New Moon yesterday, my review will be coming soon.
Rating: 3.5/5. It stayed close to the book, yet I was a little worried since the director also directed the failed movie, The Golden Compass. Indeed some scenes were clunky, and weren’t smooth flowing. Also noticable- the music, none of it really stood out. For Twilight, it was all about Paramore’s Decode, Muse’s Supermassive Black Hole and Spotlight. Well, at least its breaking records.
PS. Two updates in one day!?! I just saw I haven’t posted my last blog, its been in draft. So happy reading!
My imagination runs away with me, the audience is left breathless.
The next stage is, this..
The difference between both worlds..
Showcase the difference
The feelings erupt spontaneously
The viewer learns about the character’s life.. and they become part of it too.
Filed under: Studies | Tags: internet, plot, Studies, apology, maintain, balance, worry, step, GaiaOnline, Neopets, target market, Gaia, teen, halloween, Gaians, B.O.O., S.I.N., good guys, Neopia, Neopians, Atlas of the Ancients, sidekick, rate
I think another apology is in order. (: I’ve been busy for the past three weeks, just trying to absorb all of my studies. And in doing that, have cut down on my internet usage. It’s this ”balance” that is hard to maintain, it’s going okay.. well so far. I’m just worried that I’ll lose my self-motivation, which leads to not studying, then bad marks and less self-motivation. And its hard to stay out of this whirling, incapacitating cycle that seems to just hover the one step behind me.

Two places I’ve been regularly going into while on the internet, have been GaiaOnline and Neopets. Yeah, yeah
both have similar target markets, yet Gaia has the look and feel of being more suited to older teens. Gaia is currently finishing up its post-Halloween festivities which involves all Gaians (people/users) to choose a side- B.O.O. stands for the Benevolent Order of the Overseer aka. the good guys vs. S.I.N (Sentinel’s Infernal Nation or the bad guys). Personally, I always side with the good guys. ;D A little repetitive, but with the promise of some unlockables/prizes it’s up to the participant to decide if a little time and clicking skills are worth it.

Back on Neopets, they have a new plot called Atlas of the Ancients, set out in chapters (story mode) which lets participants follow the adventures of the good guy hero, his sidekick and smart/damsel in distress to save Neopia and its residents, the Neopians. Not too bad, colourful, bright and engaging- however a little let down due to the simple plot steps. One or two clicks to finish a stage (in a chapter) of the plot. As a Neopian who was around for the Altador Plot (Dark Faeries Plot) which involved timing, and various steps to follow, it was one of the best plots the Neopet’s team came up with. Overall, not bad.. 4/5 stars.
Until next blog post (which hopefully won’t be another three weeks :p) — Sparkles. xx.
Filed under: addiction | Tags: addiction, cyberspace, forget, Holiday, internet, nagging, obvious places, pet, procrastination, self-motivate, sticky notes
Theres only seven days left of my holiday and I seem to be perfecting the art of procrastination. But then again my internet addiction is sometimes so bad I forget important things. Too little time to go and do everything that interests me on the internet. So I stay in my computer chair for most of my day. Longest time I have been on the computer for? Hmm, about 11 or 12 hours, averaging about 6 hours. And I lose track of everything, time, food, people communication.
One way I tackled this problem is to write on yellow sticky notes the night before. Usually some type of advocating to my future self, to do something besides use the computer and internet message. Basically a short, sweet guild trip. I then place the obvious yellow sticky note in a place I’ll see it aka. on the computer, somewhere either on the monitor or on the computer tower, near the on button.
I haven’t developed any other good methods yet which will help drag me out of the immersive cyberspace world. Nagging friends/parents work about 75% of the time, yet two reasons why this method isn’t the best is: ONE: it isn’t self-motivated, which decreases the chance of me getting off the internet and increases the chance of an argument about the computer/internet in the near future. And TWO: The other party must initiate the nagging, which also again could lead to an argument with a parent, spouse, friend or pet that hasn’t recently been fed. (By the way, I don’t own any pets, just to let you know. I barely keep myself in good condition, let alone some poor pet.)
I would love to hear any of your solutions to my problems concerning computer/internet addictions. Leave a comment below!
–x Sparkles.
P.S. Sorry no pretty pictures with this blog post. I promise if I get time to fix it up soon!
Filed under: Polaroid | Tags: affect, athousandwords, breathe me, camera, disturbance, gravity, imagination, missiles, NASA, picture, plot, Polaroid, sia, take over, time, viewer, youtube

I’ve always loved Polaroid pictures, I think they capture an ionic abstract moment in time and preserve it forever. The viewer is then always actively encouraged to then ponder the image, make up any story with their imaginations. As people too often say, “A picture tells a thousand words”.
Even Breathe Me by the singer Sia, uses a bunch of Polaroid pictures in her music clip, to merge moments in her past with her current reality. It’s an absolutely enchanting song, just listen to the words. If you want to watch:
In other news, NASA is bombing the moon with missiles. To find water. Seems like a good plot for a movie/novel, I must say the people at NASA have a lot of time on their hands.

“And at the last possible minute, the missiles were launched into the cloudy night sky. Spotlights flashed around the compound, shadows running away in fleeting glances behind. If everything went according to plan, the moon would be completely destroyed and Earth would turn into the new breeding ground for chaos, which laughed maniacally. And no one would be the wiser, species would flourish, others die out. Yet he didn’t seem to care, the one person who could have stopped all this from occurring. No, he did it for money. Money is the root of all evil, he mused..”
However I was also pondering about the disturbance of the moon. These missiles are going to take out a portion of the moon, when they crash land, sending up a massive dust cloud. Will this have any impact on earth? Or is it an insignificant amount? Will the moon’s gravity be affected and in turn earth’s volatile oceans? Well, for one I will be very interested in what NASA finds out and achieves.
-Sparkles.
P.S. Restaurant City users have risen to 16.2 million, Cafe World users to 10 million users. ;D Will we see a take over soon enough?
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Filed under: 1
I promise to have a new blog post later during the day. Stay tuned.
Filed under: Dream | Tags: Life, facebook, cafe world, Dream, friends, dodgeball, cynical, chances, bigger picture, Holiday, raining, free, information addiction, homework, rain shower
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While I have managed to peel myself away from the addicting Cafe World on Facebook, I managed to catch some sleep and had a rather weird dream. One which involved speeding cars and motorbikes everywhere, a plastic bottle contributing to the materials of a spaceship that was being built and talking to people. I remember thinking in the dream, when I was talking to my friend, how life can throw you many curveballs- study, friends, death, laughter.
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Have you ever felt life was a bit like Dodgeball? You try to escape the onslaught of bright, bouncy red balls yet you know, no matter how much you dodge, eventually you’re going to get hit. Apologies for my inbuilt cynical nature, one friend has frequently commented that I’m always the half empty cup type of person. But its true, the chances of not being hit are so small, that its bound to happen. Well unless you’ve learnt how to dodge effectively. Maybe life is just about being tactful, knowing what to and when to do it.
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Life however shouldn’t just be about focusing on the one goal, it should be about seeing the bigger picture, when we step back.
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Well, anyway its day three of fourteen days of holiday! And I haven’t gotten out much.. (though it’s currently raining), I always want to go out and about when I’m stuck in a predicament, though when I actually get free time to go do anything, I’m attached to my computer connection. That is the downside of having an information addiction, well thats what I call it. In today’s world, we constantly have updated information at our fingertips 24/7, concerning any subject we’re interested in. Fact: One week’s worth of information in the New York Times equaled the amount of information one person would receive in their whole, entire lives in the 1800s. How ironic, I got that fact of YouTube and am trying to get a grip on my information addiction. ;D
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I also should get started on my homework pile too, if only the thunder storm from before came back! Then I could use “hey, the powers out, I can’t do any work” excuse. A sun shower (when the sun appears and it rains at the same time) occurred a few hours ago in my street, it was so pretty. The sun shining from out, under the dark grey clouds and the rain falling in dashes. I really, really, wanted to dance in the rain then. ;D
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Meanwhile, I’m addicted to this song currently, enjoy
;
Filed under: Holiday | Tags: addiction, animal crossing, brain wash, cafe world, cyberspace, facebook, force, Freedom, iPods, nintendo ds, nintendo ds lite, nintendo dsi, obsession, restaurant city, the sims

Apologies for being kind of slack during these last two days, see I’m relishing in two weeks of freedom. And also.. currently addicted to my Facebook page and games. I started playing Cafe Town, woops sorry I meant Restaurant City, erh.. sorry Cafe World, its Cafe World. Similar enough to Restaurant City but much cuter and interesting. You basically cook food, serve it up, customers pay and thats it. I’ve always had an addiction to games such as these, even Animal Crossing and The Sims on the Nintendo DS Lite. Though the Nintendo DSi looks pretty neat as well and how about the new iPods with the inbuilt video cameras?

But I’m not alone with my obsessison- Cafe World users jumped from about 252, 000 yesterday (October 3) to just over 1.5 million in. a. day. WOW. Pretty good for a Facebook game thats was just released in Beta version on September 30 (5 days ago). Then again, I’m not surprised since Cafe World was developed by the brains who also created Farmville. The game has alone, over 50 million players a month. Talk about people’s Facebook addictions, I’m sure if Facebook could just brainwash all those people, they would have enough people to amass an army over twice the size of the current Australian population (which is just over 22 million).
But hey don’t worry about Facebook users becoming an army, why not a country instead? “Over 150 million users, it would be the 8th most populated country in the world” (from http://11thhourbrilliance.wordpress.com/2009/01/07/the-facebook-phenomenon/). But that was only in Janurary of this year, so the figure now should of grown much larger. Such a powerful force in virtual cyberspace, I bet the developers of Facebook games are all rolling around in cash as I speak. I bet the duck in Farmville’s logo is smiling for more than one reason now…

Well they haven’t brainwashed me yet.. oh wait, they already have.




