Summer 2011: A Review

Okay, so I know summer isn’t really over yet, technically. But to me, it seems like it is since I have no more plans or days off until school starts. Not to mention, its been getting cold at night, I even had to scrape the frost off my car’s window this morning on my way to work AND  Also, when I was driving home after work, I noticed that some of the trees have been

Autumn in British Columbia

starting to yellow/brown/redden already.

Don’t get me wrong neither, I like fall. It’s a pleasant season, not too hot or too cold and British Columbia is absolutely beautiful with it’s magnificent autumn colours.

J’aime le Canada! Vive le Canada!

Oh, and don’t forget! My birthday is in the fall too! October 25th! I actually know a lot of people with birthdays around then. Even just at work, there are two people born on October 26th, and another born on the 24th.

Anyways! Back to my summer review.

It wasn’t my most adventurous summer I’ve had, just one vacation that would probably be the highlight of the entire summer, even though it was just at the beginning. That would have been my two week roadtrip across my wonderful province and country with my Cali G.

Some other highlights would include yesterday with the whitewater rafting and jumping off that cliff; Going to Vancouver to visit with one of my best camp friends; Catching another amazing Bon Jovi concert; The purchase of VIP Ke$ha tickets feat. LMFAO; Camping out at my nieces 13th birthday party; Getting a nice raise at work; Hiking to Moul Falls and the Trophy Mountain Meadows at Wells Grey Park and; lots of awesome summer movies.

I’m sure I’m missing something in there too, that I’ll probably think of later and kick myself for not adding.

A Shot Of Me This Summer, I'm One Scary Dude!

In the whole though, it was pretty enjoyable of a summer, with lots of smiles and I got to make a tonne of other people smile as well. With that said, I am actually looking forward to starting classes on Wednesday, September 7th. I have some really interesting classes and it should be fun learning about the subjects.

As for next summer, I’m not sure what the plans are yet, but I started saving and preparing already. It’s going to be an amazing one and I’m going to make sure to have some very adventurous plans and see lots of new things. Today I even got out of the house with my sister and we went to all the schools around town with the dog collecting all the pop cans and beer bottles. Heck, we even got our inner bum on and looked in the garbage cans. Going to cash them in tomorrow!

“Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.” - Napoleon Bonaparte

Tyson Trepidations.

Life “Under The Dome”

It’s been a while since I stayed up late just to finish a book, I actually think the last time I did that was last summer when I read Michael Crichton’s Pirate Latitudes. But that’s what I did last night. It ended up being a little past two in the morning when I finally finished Under The Dome, by Stephen King.

I haven’t read too many books by Stephen King, but from what I did read, I was a little confused on how I felt about his writing. He always seemed to have something crazy or insane going on that you could never really predict. Sometimes things just ended up much too far-fetched in his books than I would have liked (hence my mixed feelings). But there’s no doubt he’s an amazing author none-the-less.

In a way he reminds me of kid in a candy shop with his writing, just by the way he seems to always have something going on, even in the slower parts of his books (which sometimes don’t exist). I think the one thing that makes him such a good writer though and what I like about his style is that he knows exactly how to frustrate the reader with the events that occur throughout his work. He is no doubt, a literary genius.

As I said though, I did finish his book, Under The Dome, last night (More like early this morning) and I was quite impressed.

It made an impression on me to say the least.

I got the book for my birthday last October from my parents, and started reading it that night. I didn’t make it very far before realizing that I wouldn’t have much time to get through such a thick book efficiently with my busy schedule. So I stopped reading and put it down until I could find more time to get through it. It was a fairly big undertaking, being one of the longest novels I’ve read (killing many trees at 1072 pages), so I waited out the busy school year before starting the book again.

After reading just the first fifty or so pages on my birthday though, I knew it was going to be a great read and everytime I looked at the huge novel on my desk, I would think to myself, “I can’t wait to read that!”. Finally did, after such a long wait too.

I found that Under The Dome really was an amazing book and everything I had hoped for. It was constantly eventful, creatively brilliant, extremely intriguing and compelling, and very frustrating (in a good way, if that makes any sense).

The elephant of a book featured an entire town in Maine, called Chester’s Mill. It was the quaint sort of place where everyone in town knew each other and was fairly tight knit. So with that said, there was an entire towns population that Stephen King had to play with for the novel, which he took with imagination and in quite a smart manner. Of course though, there were some characters that stuck out more than others as being more of the novels main characters. Some of these characters featured an ex-military officer, a journalist/owner of the newspaper, a power hungry town selectman/used car salesman/drug lore, a thug turned sociopath and a physician’s assistant turned full out town doctor.

As a quick synopsis, the book is about a mysterious dome that drops down over the town of Chester’s Mill on a nice mid-October day. As the novel continues, there are various attempts by the military to break through the dome, all the while, the towns second selectman is working to gain control of the entire town in a power thirsty attempt to become the inspiring leader everyone looks up to and follows. But there is a small group of individuals against that, fit with the task to take control of the town by the United States government. This stand off basically starts a war between the two sides, one with a lot of trickery and manipulation. The novel features several climaxes with tonnes of unpredictable turns and twists that really kept me reading and is one outstanding book.

It’s not just about the psychology of being stuck under an invisible dome neither, feeling like a bunch of ants under a magnifying glass. It really demonstrates the impact people have on the environment as well by showing the deteriorating air quality coming from the small town due to human foolishness and an increasingly thick layer of grime had been forming on the dome.

Even though its a huge undertaking, being such a long book, I think its a great read and would suggest this novel to anyone looking for excitement that will keep them guessing and make them think about the possibilities of such an event occuring.

I think the thing that made me really connect with the novel was the fact that I live in a town that resembles Chester`s Mill. We are basically the same size, have a lot of the same businesses and share a similar community view. Sometimes I even wonder if that happened in my town, what part would I play if any?

I think out of all the characters, I would be similar to that of Scarecrow Joe’s stance. He was kinda working behind the scenes but fairly smart, able to work things out logically and plan in a high stress situation. I think that’s something I would do. I’m not the type to just sit around and wait to see what happens, but I’m also not the type who likes to get noticed a lot, so behind the scenes would my specialty, along with my quick thinking. Or so I think anyways.

I also know, that if it were my town, the air would get thick extremely fast with all of our pollution and stupid people everywhere. But in the end, I think we would definitely work things out better than those of Chester’s Mill, especially since we don’t have any really power hungry citizens. Then again, you know what people are apt to do in a situation of that calliper.

But I hope that someone else shares their thoughts and maybe even inspire somebody to take on Under The Dome by Stephen King.

 

“A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face.  It is one of the few havens remaining where a man’s mind can get both provocation and privacy” – Edward P. Morgan

 

Tyson Trepidations.

My Top 10 Apps For iPad

At the start of the summer I wanted to spend some money and get myself something a little extra for working so hard during the school year and treat myself for not really having a life.

In the long run, I decided to go with an iPad 2.

Now, a couple months later, I have many many apps downloaded and developed my personal favorites that I happen to access all the time.

Just as a side note as well, I have bought five apps since getting my iPad and of the five, four are featured on this Top 10 list.

Here they are:

1. GarageBand for iPad ($4.99)

The first of my bought apps, GarageBand pulls up into number one. It was basically like love at first sight when it finished downloading (Which seemed to take forever, being over 300 MB). I find myself on this app constantly, creating new songs and testing out new sounds, it actually makes me wish I stuck with learning the piano, so I could make more complicated sounding keyboard and piano parts. But it really has a tonne of different sounds to check out and play with. Of course it doesn’t feature everything that the full Mac version has, but it has quite a lot to offer as an iPad app and entirely compatible to the full version. Most definitely worth paying for, super fun and awesome for anyone, even if you don’t have any music background.

2. Hospital Haste ($6.99)

This one’s my all-time favorite game to play on my iPad thus far. Its crazy hectic and you really have use your brain fast to decide what you do with the patients and in what order. To quickly sum up the game, you play as Nurse Sally just starting off in the doctoring world and working for different hospitals while you earn money for your own medical clinic. It features many different hospital issues and methods of treatment along with a very well thought out scoring system that makes you have to make decisions based on attaining a better score. Not to mention you have to be fast! The last thing you want is a patient leaving in disgust because your too slow. It really is a hectic and crazy game, but that’s what makes it so fun.

3. Tower Madness (Free)

Coming in as number three is another wildly hectic game. Tower Madness is as simple as building defences to protect your 10 sheep from being abducted by alien invasions. It really is a crazy and random idea, but the levels are build so specifically and extremely well thought out that you have to use your head in deciding what the best arsenal set up would be to defeat those pesky aliens. As you go along, the game gets harder too, there are more and stronger aliens introduced and even some that are impervious to a number of different weapons. I’ve spent many hours playing this game in planning my defences against those aliens! Well worth the download especially being free.

4. Friendly for iPad (Free)

This app is for Facebook and after trying many different ones, I found this one was the best, especially now that they added Facebook chat into it (not like I actually use it though…). There’s not too much to say about this app except that its Facebook in app form with a great layout and its super easy to use, making Facebook even simpler as it is.

5. Words With Friends (The Free Version)

There is a payable version, but I’m not sure what the difference is besides taking out the ads, but the ads really aren’t that bad compared to many other apps and games I’ve tried. This game is extremely simple though and highly comparable to Scrabble. Its a word game that you can play against friends, Facebook friends or anyone random as well. Each letter is worth a certain amount of points (The more difficult the letter the higher its value) and there are many places on the board where you can gain double letter, triple letter, double word and triple word bonuses. So you actually have to think what words you play and where you play them. You get seven letters at all times, but there are only 104 letters in total, so once that capacity is reached, the game is over (unless someone resigns). The nice thing about this app is that you can come back to it anytime and play when you can, so you don’t have to sit there waiting for the other person to play their word.

6. Dead Space for iPad (Got it for $0.99 on special, but $4.99 regular)

After playing the original Dead Space for the Xbox 360, I just had to get this game. I was a little skeptical how good it would be though. I couldn’t imagine how the controls would turn out and wasn’t sure if the graphics would be ok or not. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that the graphics were actually really well done and the controls weren’t bad at all once I got the hang of it (and it didn’t take all that long neither). The great thing, though, is that it serves as a prequel to the original game and kinda gives a little bit of a back story. Otherwise, it is just as the other versions, an intense and creepy third person shooter that is extremely satisfying for the horror lover.

7. Worms 2 ($0.99)

I used to play this game all the time as a kid on my PC! So when I saw it in the apps store, I just had to buy it and probably would have still if it were more expensive. It’s a really fun game to play where you have a small arsenal of worms that you use to battle other small arsenals of worms. You get dropped off at a level randomly spaced apart and go through each worm, one at a time, attacking the other teams with a huge variety of different weapons. With that said though, you still have to think a little bit since the wind can alter where some of the weapons fire. Plus it’s a little bit harder since all the other teams seem to be mostly after you. Tonnes of funny and a cute little game that is definitely worth the small price.

8. Kobo for iPad (Free)

This is one of the reading apps for the iPad. There’s also iBooks and the kindle app that are really popular, but after trying them out, I felt that this one was a better choice (even though Kindles are better quality than Kobos in my opinion). All three of the apps have something like a thousand free books to choose from as well any popular book that you can pay for as well. Not only that, but a good number of the books are actually a lot cheaper to buy in the app than going to the book store and buying them. The Kobo app also allows you add friends (Although I don’t have any still…), lets you create custom bookshelves, and creates a book cover specific to you and the type of books you read. Plus it has some nifty achievements, including some that can be quite challenging and fun to obtain.

9. Twitter for iPad (Free)

Again, there really isn’t much to say about this one. Its just the official Twitter app and has many of the same functions as the web browser version (except you don’t have to worry about the Fail Whale in the iPad app). It has a great layout and a super simple to use interface. Feel free to follow me, find my profile from the Twitter widget on the right hand side.

10. Science 360 (Free)

So this app is pretty awesome when I’m bored, in a wise mood or just geeking out again. It has tonnes of HD photos and videos with all kinds of science news and topics to go with them. Since everything is HD though, the app can sometimes be a little slow and use a lot of memory. But once inside, you’ll see that it has a really neat interface. It basically is in a 360 shape and when you move around, its like your on the inside of a circle and every turn has something new. The great thing too is that when you click on a picture or video, it will make sure that one doesn’t show up for you again. Wicked cool app for a science fanatic.

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square hole. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do” – Apple Computer Inc.

Tyson Trepidations.