Board Games

Recently, board games have begun to get more and more complex. Where you used to find Candyland or Monopoly, now you'll find The Settlers of Catan, Agricola, or 7 Wonders. With a whole sleuth of new games to choose from, they aren't just for kids anymore! Here's a list of some of me and my family's favorites.

1. Android: Netrunner This two person card game puts the players in a dystopian future, ruled by huge corporations. One player, the corporation, attempts to put their plans into motion with their secret agendas, while the other player takes the place of a hacker extraordinaire called a Runner and attempts to hack the corporation's computer systems.









 2. 7 Wonders In 7 Wonders, players compete to build the most successful civilization, focusing on several ways to expand their cities. Will they become a huge cultural center? Build architectural masterpieces? Make groundbreaking scientific discoveries? Or perhaps shove their way to dominance with a powerful military?










 3. Agricola Although this game takes a while to master and even longer to play, it's tons of fun (Plus, you can recreate all the items as tiny clay animals!) Players take the places of farmers and try to rake up the most points by breeding animals, expanding their farm, and planting crops.






4. The Settlers of Catan With numerous expansion packs, The Settlers of Catan is a fast paced (Not! The average game takes about two hours) game where players build settlements, cities, and roads to settle the untouched island of Catan.

Now, for a tried and true, not so new finale,

5. Magic

In this card game (OK, OK, maybe I did say this post was going to be about board games, but hey, card games are fun too!!), players become powerful wizards and summon magical creatures like powerful gryphons, elven warriors, and deranged hermits who summon massive squirrel armies, while casting spells, in a battle for supremacy.

So, what are your favorite board games? Comment below!

Lists

I've realized that my posts on here leave much to be desired. I created this blog intending it to be a place for me to share my thoughts, but I've realized that, when I post on here, it tends to be just a collection of Doctor Who/ Sherlock/ Harry Potter pics. Therefore, I've decided to make 3 changes to this blog, starting today.
1. I'll try to post at least once a week (Note the word try. I'll be homeschooled this year, so I'll be working much harder.)
2. My posts will (almost) always have some... substance? Is that the word for it? I won't just be posting random pics anymore.
3. I'll post for a wider audience. It won't all be Doctor Who/ Sherlock/ Harry Potter themed (Although you can expect quite a few of Doctor Who/ Sherlock/ Harry Potter themed posts, still)
Now, for today's post. :) I got this from Musing From Neville's Navel, and although I hope to do some better posts later on, here it is.

Top 5 Favorite Animated Movies

1. How to Train Your Dragon
2. Up
3. The Pirates
4. Finding Nemo
   
5. Brave

Top 5 Favorite Superhero Movies

1. Avengers
2. That's pretty much the only superhero movie I've seen...
3. So...
4. Same here.
5. And her

Top 5 Favorite Comedies

1. Elf
2. Muppets From Space
3. Anything Muppets, actually
4. The Princess Bride
5. I'm not sure what else to put here, actually.

Top 5 Favorite Movies as a Kid

1. Finding Nemo
2. Milo and Otis
3. Babe
4. The Aristocats
5. Anything with lots of talking animals

5 Worst Movies EVER

1. Alpha and Omega
2. Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith
   
3. Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace
4. Star Wars II: The Clone Wars
5. The Lion King (Although I did like the music)

Top 5 Book-to-Movie Adaptations

1. The Fellowship of the Ring
2. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
3. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I
4. The Return of the King
5. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Top 5 Movies You Were Most Excited to See in Theaters

1. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
2. Harry Potter and the Half- Blood Prince
3. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I
4. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II
5. Hmmm... I can't really think of any more.

Top 5 Cutest Animals in Movies/ TV Shows

1. The Ewoks from Star Wars
2. Adipose from Doctor Who
3. Doug from Up
4. Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon
5. Did I mention the Adipose?

Top 5 Favorite Actors/Actresses (in terms of acting)

1. Martin Freeman (The Hobbit/ Sherlock/ The Pirates)
2. David Tenant (Doctor Who/ The Pirates/ Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire)
3. Catherine Tate (Doctor Who)
4. Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock)
5. Hmm... I can't think of anyone else. Maybe Billie Piper from Doctor Who?

Top 5 Favorite Actors That Bring Out Your Inner Fangirl

1. I don't fangirl.
2. I like actors for their skill, that's it.
3. Got it?
4. Same here
5. And here

Top 5 Favorite TV Shows

1. Doctor Who
2. Sherlock
3. Merlin
4. Wolverine and the X-Men
5. The Ultimate Spiderman

Top 5 Favorite Male TV Characters

1. The Doctor (Doctor Who)
2. John Watson (Sherlock)
3. Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock)
4. Arthur (Merlin)
5. Captain Jack Harkness (Doctor Who)

Top 5 Favorite Female TV Characters

1. Morgana (Merlin)
2. Gwen Merlin)
3. Martha Jones (Doctor Who)
4. Donna Noble (Doctor Who)
5. Rose Tyler (Doctor Who)

Top 5 Favorite TV Animals

1. Animal (Muppets)
2. Kermit  (Muppets)
3. Gonzo (Muppets)
4. Fozzie Bear (Muppets)
5. K-9 (Doctor Who)

Kelpie

Inspired by the capaill uisce of The Scorpio Races

THE SCORPIO RACES!!!!

 

This book was recommended to me numerous times, but it was just now that I finally decided to read it. Based on the description from the back cover, I figured it would be yet another semi-hunger-games failed dystopian romance-  but it isn't.

In The Scorpio Races, water horses- based on kelpies from Celtic mythology- compete in a deadly race that truly puts the rider's skill to the test. Water horses (capaill uisce) are not your regular horses.True kelpies, from Irish and Scottish mythology, are faery horses that live in lakes and sometimes the ocean. They lure people- usually children- into their home and eat them. The Scorpio Races modifies this myth slightly to fit the story- they live in the ocean off the coast of a small island and occasionally come on land searching for food.

Puck is a feisty girl- and a brave one. The first girl to ride in the races, she even enters on her island pony instead of one of the capaill uisce, all to save her home.

Sean belongs to the sea and has a fierce connection with a capall uisce named Corr. In a desperate act, he vows to win the races and earn the money to buy Corr and save the horse from its owner's vengeful son.

Together, they win the races- and create a very memorable story that's hard to forget, with a wonderful ending.

Rating: 9/10

The CA Capitol Building

We went to visit our state capitol building today as a field trip and I thought it was pretty cool. Here were some of my favorite parts.

• I found out that the CA government is based on English parliament. The carpeting in the Senate is red, to show the British "House of Lords" and the carpet in the Assembly room is red because of the "House of Commons", because the commoners had to sit on the grass.
• The people who built the building wanted to be recognized, so they found secret ways to be recognized. One put a tile in the floor on backwards, and another one carved his wife's name (Rita) in the plaster.
• Both the Assembly and the Senate were dominated by Democrats (Which Assembly member Connie Conway, who we met on the trip, seemed pretty ticked about.) I found it interesting that the microphones they use have stickers on them to represent their political party- Republicans are red and Democrats are blue.
• The Senate is more traditional. They vote and do roll call by voice, while the Assembly uses technology.
• The Senate is half the size of the assembly.
• The Assembly members feel very strongly about wrestling.

The Hunger Games Word Cloud

I used this as part of a project my class did when we read the Hunger Games.

How to Read/ Write Gallifreyan

I found out how to write in Circular Gallifreyan!
Here are some instructions from a Wiki Page about it

Circular Gallifreyan is a standardized version of the written Gallifreyan language as seen in Doctor Who. It was standardized by a fan, so it is not officially sanctioned, but it looks terribly cool. You can read a guide to Gallifreyan online or just read The Honey Badger's guide below.

Legal Note!
Doctor Who and Gallifreyan are © BBC, and this alphabet is © Loren Sherman.

Getting Started

If you're reading this guide, that's probably because you found the original guide a bit too confusing. If you haven't read the original guide, I recommend you at least give it a shot - after all, that comes direct from the source and I'm just interpreting the rules.

Letters

Consonants

Consonants take one of four forms and are modified by one of five different designs. In the chart to the left, you can see the four basic forms along the left side and the five modifications along the top. The dot modifications are included within the circle of the letter while the line modifications extend outward from the circle of the letter. To get a better idea for how each letter looks, to the right is a complete set of Gallifreyan consonants.

When writing out a word in Gallifreyan, it is done based on English spelling with the exception of the letter C and a few phonetic letters (CH, SH, TH NG). Since 'C' makes either a 'K' or an 'S' sound, we use those letters as replacements Here are some examples of Gallifreyan spelling exceptions:

• 'Cat' would be written as 'Ka T' (don't worry about that a, we'll get to vowels in a second)
• 'Sauce' would be written as 'Sa U Se'
• 'Thing' is written as 'THi NG', not 'T Hi N G'
• 'Shale' is written as 'SHa Le' not 'S Ha Le'
• 'Change' is written as 'CHa N Ge' and not 'C Ha N Ge'

Consonant designs, that is, the dots or lines that differentiate the consonants, do not rely on placement or size to distinguish. So long as the appropriate number of lines or dots are placed on that consonant, then it is correct. More on this later.

Vowels

Vowels are a bit trickier. Vowels are either attached to the preceding consonant or they float on their own - either way they are smaller circles than the consonants and have slightly different rules.

In the diagram to the left, you can see how each vowel looks both attached and unattached to a consonant. 'A' is written as a small circle just outside of the main line of the word. 'E' is a small circle either centered on the line of the word or centered within any full-circle consonant. 'I' is a small circle with a line extending towards the inside of the word, either centered on the line of the word or centered within any full-circle consonant. 'O' is a small circle that rests inside the line of the word when it stands on its own, and when attached to a consonant it rests bisected on the inside edge of the letter. 'U' is a small circle with a line extending towards the outside of the word, either centered on the line of the word or centered within any full-circle consonant.

A vowel does not have to be attached, and can stand on its own at the writer's discretion. As a general rule, however, a vowel should stand on its own if you want to elongate a short word (for example, 'T H E' might be put instead of 'T He'). In cases where a word starts with a vowel ('E Le P Ha N T' for example) or you have two vowels in a row ('Re A L' for example), a vowel will need to stand on its own because it has no consonant to attach to.

Words

Words in Gallifreyan are based around circles. A word begins at the bottom of the circle (that is, the part of the circle closest to the bottom of the image/paper) and proceed anticlockwise around the word. An example can be seen to the right.

Notice both attached and unattached vowels in action in this word. You also have two letters, 'P' and 'Ha' which are connected by lines. Since both 'P' and 'H' have two lines, we can draw those lines connecting the two letters. This does not have to be done, so long as both letters have two lines, they are written correctly. 'N', you can see, has a single line which is extending beyond the circle of the word. So long as lines do not intersect with letters that should not have any additional lines, they can extend as far as the writer wishes.

Sentences

Sentences are essentially just words made up of words. Just like a word, they are based in a circle and you read them starting from the bottom and then proceeding around anticlockwise. Punctuation can be added along the edge of the sentence circle. Sentences are contained within two circles, the inner of which you place the punctuation around, and the outer which is simply a containing circle.

The three dots in the outer circle are an exclamation mark. This and the rest of the punctuation marks can be seen in the table below. Sadly, there does not seem to be a comma available at this time.