Animal Crossing

Wow, I have like 2 followers right now. Maybe I should tell people about my blog... Well here's the topic of the day. I've have recently restarted playing Animal Crossing : City Folk. (I started a profile but stopped playing on it for a while) This game is a free roaming game and you're free to do whatever you choose after your indentured servitude with Tom Nook, (the raccoon who serves the purpose of selling and buying items from you) your house is your own and you have a debt to pay. (Tom Nook has strings attached to everything in town) The currency in the game, bells , are coin like items with stars on top, although you can store as many as 99,999 in your pocket (MASSIVE pockets) and 999,999,999 in the ABM machine; not ATM, ABM. (and yes, you read that number correctly) Ways of earning bells,(and ultimately paying off you debts, making your house bigger, and buying items and furnishing) include fishing, bug catching, digging up rare fossils in your own backyard(only in AC, so don't try it) and doing errands. You can also invest in the STALK market. See the twist? Every Sunday, (AC uses real time) this visitor comes over and sells you white turnips, which fluctuate in value, and are the equivalent of stocks, and red turnips, which slowly grow over time and can sell for 16,000 at full size. Well, you can buy turnips at 100 bells each and sell them for 600 bells each. CHA-CHING! Play the stock market. Make money. Be a Bellionaire. Just like the real stock market, stock / turnip prices rise and fall and eventually bottom out / rot. Well, enough about the stalk market. Fishing can be fun and fish vary depending on season, time, where you find them, what the weather is like. the environment of the town, and so forth. You can catch cheap fish worth 100 bells, or rare fish worth 15,000 bells. (like sharks; and you put them in your pockets. Again, MASSIVE pockets) And you can buy a fishing rod for a mere 500. Fruit selling. Best way to make bells. Unfortunately if you plant the maximum amount of fruit trees it would take you like 3 hours to pick and sell all of it. Bug catching. Much tougher than fishing, and also depend on fishing. Some are fast. Some just disappear under the ground. Some sting. The scorpion, for example, stings you so bad that: O:-) will happen. And you then you wake up. Some fly faster than you can run. Some of them, with the constant sound they make, will drive you insane. Fossil digging. Completely safe and sell for a lot. But they're only 3 of them a day. Well, in the village, there is Tom Nook's shop, The Able Sister's Shop, (Clothing) Town Hall, and the museum. (which you donate the bugs / fish / fossils / painting) Every town is different. Some will have a different shaped river, etc, etc.

Let me think, what did I miss : oh, yeah! There's a reason they added the City Folk at the end. You can go to the city and look at the sights, see the lights, and shop. (Wait, that didn't rhyme) Well, there is a fortune teller, a fox who sells stuff on the black market, like rare furniture and paintings. (they could be forged) There is also Shampoodle, a hair styling shop, and the grand daddy of them all: GracieGrace. Guess who it's owned by: Gracie, the french girrafe who designs THE most EXPENSIVE clothing, and furniture. A bed can cost 368,000 bells. I think I'll put of buying those. Gracie herself doesn't actually pop into the store that often, her assistant takes care of day to day chores. In the rest of the city there is an auction house. No explanation needed. Back to town. The neighbours, as well as every other character in the game, except you, is an animal. There are 110 or so possible neighbours, each with random houses, hobbies, and moods. This game is impossible to fully complete, folks, so don't even try. Just have fun with the game and you'll enjoy. wow, looking back at how much I typed, I typed... a lot. Well that's all and there are plenty of other suprises in the game, like fishing and bug catching tournaments. And anyone who has this game, run around town hitting rocks with a shovel until you find the "special one" where bells start popping out of it. You won't regret it and you'll get about 4,100 of them. That's all.

Harry Potter : The Half-Blood Prince

I recently finished the sixth book in the Harry Potter series: The Half Blood Prince and I found it to be an excellent book because it relates to real life in emotions and personalities. It is true that a magical world does not exist, but J. K. Rowling has made it extremely real, using superb detail and providing complex, interesting character who have their own beliefs, dreams, etc. The picture shown here is Daniel Radcliffe, the actor who plays Harry Potter in the movies. Ok, back to the book. It starts during Harry's sixth year at Hogwarts (no idea where they got the name) waiting at his aunt and uncle's house, who have constantly been depicted in the series as being cruel to him. They are not good people, although they are far from the main antagonist in the story is the dark wizard Voldemort. (previously revealed as being Tom Riddle) I think this book is a good one because of its plot: along with Harry's lessons in using magic, he must also meet up with Dumbledore (the headmaster) every so often in the book because he needs to watch memories (which are obtained by pressing one's wand tip to their forehead, removing a "strand" of memory, and placing the memory in a special cauldron called a pensieve) The story also introduced Horace Slughorn, who is apparently one of Dumbledore's old colleagues, to take the position of Potions, replacing Severus Snape, who took up Defence against the Dark Arts. Slughorn is referred to as a clever wizard, although being under pressure from Voldemort has made him (very) reluctant to help Harry or Dumbledore. One of Harry's tasks was to obtain a memory from him, which he did by drinking a lucky potion, then getting Slughorn drunk. (Harry coincidentally won the potion as a prize from Slughorn) Slughorn is not a "bad" character, however, as stated before, will not help, either. During the book, he shows a liking for gold, which he can turn into "oak-matured mead and crystallized pineapple..." This leads me to believe that he enjoys comforts of life. (drink, food,etc) Anyway, the retrieving of the memory led to Dumbledore and Harry set off on a journey to get and destroy Voldemort's "anchors to immortality" The horcrux turns out to be a fake, and upon returning, Snape kills Dumbledore. (it is later revealed, in the seventh book, that Dumbledore's death was planned between the two) Snape is a complex character, loving Lily (Harry's mother) but later going to the "dark side." He later heard of a prophecy which ultimately spelled out the Potter family's doom. (but all that is in the seventh book) The title of the book is because Harry received an old potions book, which had scrawled in it "This Book is the Property of the Half Blood Prince." The prince's tips turned potions into Harry's best subject, due the the large number of improvisations, not to mention the spells made up in the book. I think my favourite part was when Ron swallowed a love potion by mistake, leading him to be obsessed with Romilda Vane, until Slughorn mixed up an antidote, making Ron go from this : =D to this : D= . Oh, wait, I forgot to add a link to a review.http://www.monstersandcritics.com/books/reviews/article_9537.php/Book_Review_Harry_Potter_And_The_Half_Blood_Prince_by_J_K_Rowling

Wow, that took up more room than I expected. Well, this book also starts to introduce romance between characters. Harry seems to have forgotten about his original girl friend, Cho Chang, and started a relationship with Ginny Weasley, Ron's sister. Some other romances are Bill Weaslay and Fleur Delacour, Ron and Lavender Brown, and Remus Lupin and Tonks. It's interesting that as you get further into the series, the books flow from children's books to pre-teens, which is probably due to J.K. Rowling keeping up with the growing age of her fans. All in all, this book is one of my favourite in the series.