“Then let us be rid of it... once and for all! Come on, Mr. Frodo. I can't carry it for you... but I can carry you!” - Samwise Gamgee

I asked someone what I should write about in this blog, because frankly, I had no clue.  He told me that it would be a good idea to write about Hobbits.  I told him he was being ridiculous, he assured me he was completely serious, so I’ll take his word for it.

            I love hobbits.  To me, they are more than little chubby people who make even me look tall by comparison.  They are the soul of the greatest series known to mankind: Lord of the Rings.  What kind of a person can imagine life without Lord of the Rings?  I certainly can’t.  I remember when I was a freshmen I told someone I hadn’t seen the Lord of the Rings movies.  He returned my comment with a blank, stunned stare.  After taking a moment to recover from his shock he explained to me that if I hadn’t watched Lord of the Rings, my life wasn’t complete.  So I finally set aside three and a half hours to watch the first movie, and to my surprise, my classmate had been right, my life was now finally complete.

I honestly believe that I will never again see anything as inspiring as the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.  I admire Gandalf for possessing extraordinary magic powers, and for remaining loyal to the cause he believes in.  I love how Aragon starts out as a ranger, who then accepts his true destiny as the king of man.  I wish I shared Gilmi’s endurance and uncanny accuracy with a bow.  So don’t get me wrong, all of these characters are stars, but these stars are outshone by the hobbits.

            Hobbits are easy going and relaxed creatures who don’t like adventures.  They prefer to live a predictable day to day village life.  And yet, they are the creatures who embark on the greatest adventure I have ever witnessed.  To the untrained eye, hobbits may not seem particularly special.  They have to magic power, like Harry Potter; They can not harness the power of the force like a Jedi.  Hobbits have one thing to rely on and one thing alone: themselves.  I am just as talented as a Hobbit is, but I assure you I wouldn’t succeed in the Hobbits’ place.  How then are they successful?  It is because they become determined to accomplish a task, and then they don’t stop until they are successful.  Hobbits prove that you don’t have to be something special to accomplish something special.  Hobbits succeed because they choose to.

            And this is why I am sitting here in agony, waiting for the first part of The Hobbit to come out.  I expect that it will be and epic journey, and at the center of this journey, there will be a hobbit, on an adventure, fighting against the odds.

Turtles

Ever since I was a little girl, I have loved turtles. Most seven-year-old girls ask their parents for a hamster, puppy, or kitty regularly. Maybe it was because at that point I already had a dog, a cat, a guinea pig, and a rabbit, but for me, it was turtles.
I would beg my parents to take me to the pet store on the weekends, staring into the tanks where the painted turtles sat basking in the artificial sunlight of a heat lamp or swimming through the water with just the tip of their nose poking out. Every time my parents took me to the Boston Aquarium I would make them see the turtle show with me, where Myrtle, a 70-year-old loggerhead, would swim slowly around the top of the tank and a marine biologist would tell us all about her.
When I was in third grade, my father finally gave in to my incessant begging and ordered me two baby turtles from the internet. When the arrived they were just the size of a quarter. I named them Myrtle and Yertle. Unfortunately, turtles are not good travelers as I soon learned. Myrtle only lived for two weeks after she arrived, Yertle even less. I was devastated.
Still, my love for turtles continued. When I went to Hawaii the next year, I was dreadfully disappointed at not seeing a sea turtle while snorkeling, even though I saw fish of every color of the rainbow darting about my feet. In Saint John, USVI in sixth grade I saw an octopus, but was still upset about not coming across a sea turtle.
Finally, my sophomore year, on a trip to Isla Mujeres, an eight-square-mile island off the coast of Cancun, I got my wish. Although Isla doesn't have much, one thing it is famous for is Turtugranja, a sea-turtle sanctuary. It's not very big, just a squat, dark building with a small pen on the outside and a tank next to the ocean. As I entered the building and my eyes adjusted a I saw two large tanks, each separated into three sections. In the tanks on the right swam three generations of turtle, one in each area. They were a strange greyish color. Upon asking one of the workers, I learned that they were albino! They can't survive more than two weeks in the ocean, because without their pigment the sunburn will kill them. Then he reached into the middle tank, which held a turtle about the size of a dinner plate, and scooped it out of the water. "Quieres tenerlo?" he held out the turtle to me. He showed me how to grip its sides so that its flippers wouldn't hit me. I posed for a picture as it flapped its arms and legs, like a bird trying to take flight. It's an awful picture of me, I look demonic with red-eye and a huge grin because I couldn't contain my excitement.
Then the guide took me outside and back in another door, where he showed me turtles smaller than my fist, some without fins or tails, swimming around in a little tank together. He explained to me that all these turtles were unable to survive in the wild, and that I couldn't hold them because they were so fragile. Next he took me to the outdoor pen, where he handed me a painted turtle to hold as well. He motioned with his hands next to his mouth, telling me I should give the turtle a kiss. I smiled and held it up to my lips - my turtle prince.

Summertime

During the summer I am extremely busy, I work many jobs and try to make sure I keep my family and friends happy. I try to make as much money as I can because I don't have as much time to work during the school year. It is a really hard juggling act that took a lot out of me. 

The most time consuming job I had was working as a camp councilor and mountain bike instructor at Coyote Hill. It was a total of 5 weeks, 3 of which were in Fairlee Vermont at the owners house. The other 2 weeks were split between a day camp at stores pond and a day camp in Randolph Vermont. This is one of those jobs where I expect to get paid but it is not my main concern. I enjoy teaching more than anything, I get in shape and I do what I love to do. I got to meet hundreds of kids and I have a very good relationship with the Owner of the camp. I actually went to the camp starting when I was 7 up to when I was old enough to start teaching. Its awesome, I get paid doing what I love.

Working at Kendal At Hanover as a waiter is a job I have had for over 2 years and I know the staff and the residents very well. Working there has really good life lessons to teach.  Since I work in a dining room that serves food to people who live in the assisted living part of kendal, I have to lend a helping hand to a lot of residents who are suffering from something like dementia or alzheimer's. Working as a waiter seems self explanatory but, my boss always reminds me that the least important thing I do is serve food. She always reminds us that talking to the residents and caring for them is the most important thing. It is obvious that it is appreciated. 

At the end of the summer I got a job at the Hanover Country Club as a club house attendant. I work with some interesting people there and I have fun and the manager at the Club is a very good friend of mine so it works out well. Seeing that I am a bike mechanic I am mechanically inclined and very hands on, I have been fixing a lot of the carts that have kicked the bucket. I really enjoy doing it because it is a learning experience, I like it, and it is obvious that not only do the people who go there like it, but the manger appreciates it as well. 

Right now I am still working at Kendal, still working at the golf course, and I try to keep my bike mechanic knowledge up to par. I do other odd jobs here and there but since I work every day it is hard to find time for other jobs. 

Joe Murphy
no idea how to use the blog... here you go...

           There are many things to do during the winter in New England, but the most invigorating activity is by far skiing. As unbelievable as it may seem the ski was invented before the wheel. Man first used it during the last ice age, yet not to rush down mountains or go off jumps, it was used a survival mechanism. Our ancestors used it escape from predators, or to retreat from binding situations. As you can see skiing has evolved extensively since then, now it is used as a sport or recreational activity.
           Many different families all over America have adopted skiing. That has led to the creation of the ski mountain where people pay to be hauled up a to the top of a mountain and ski down. I would hope that you know what a skiing resort is; yet that is the basic idea.

There are many different styles to skiing that people of all ages can enjoy. Although the there are two main sports based on skiing; racing and freestyle, they are not for all, and that’s okay. If you are just starting out there are many different difficulty options from nearly flat slopes to vertical drops. This makes it easy for all people to learn at the speed that they chose.

Once you get comfortable with you skiing abilities, you may venture into the many other, more challenging aspects of skiing. As stated before one of those options would be freestyle skiing, a mixture of jumps and rails. Rails are basically railing that you can “grind” on by jumping on to them and sliding down. This is probably the most invigorating style of skiing.

Fall

School now seems more "in session" than it was for those first few days when the schedule was off and the freshmen weren't sure if they were on the right floor. Everyone is settling in: our schedules are programmed into our heads and tests loom on the horizon. With these routines comes a new season - one that reminds us with a earlier dusk that it's no longer summer when the days never had to end. Everything seems to matter more because we can't push deadlines and schedules out of our heads without worry. However, there's a positive - at least for some of us. With piles of homework and essays to write come 40 degree mornings and burnt orange leaves.

By October, waking up at six in the morning feels a little extreme and incredibly unrealistic. But in September, I'm awake at six almost by default and the dark blue outside before the sun rises is somehow comforting. When summer is on its last leg and the winds start to pick up, I know my favorite season is well on its way. For a lot of people, it's the foliage that does it. To me, its not so much the scenery as it is the air. The atmosphere seems to change and everything feels clean. Then again, I do start to notice the things that I didn't care about for the past two months. The trees have gotten taller and grass that has been tended to carefully is now turning brown. It seems, ironically, that things are gaining more and more life as September trudges on.

During fall, everything and everyone has somewhere to go. Summer was unstructured and unscheduled, allowing for soft chaos and a simpler life. We have to be in the car on the way to school, in class, at sports practices, at play rehearsal, writing a blog post for English class, and in bed at a reasonable (or not so reasonable) time. Time slows down because most of us don't want it to, and these overwhelming priorities and events don't seem so overwhelming. Fall makes structured time seem less of a daunting concept after the laziness of summer.

When it comes down to the wire, this season's debut in New England is a sight to see. There's a reason for the tourists and the fascination. Our world becomes a warm mix of browns, golds and reds, and the crisp air moves through everything in its path. The foliage brings in a crowd that appreciates the annual colors that we won't see until next year. And while the scenery certainly isn't for everyone, "Lost" from Channel Orange has definitely made the view from the bus window better for me.

David Byrne & St. Vincent – Love This Giant

Looking for new, interesting music? So is everyone else. Here's a collaboration that you probably didn't see coming – St. Vincent, the folk/rock singer-songwriter with the voice of angel, has teamed up with David Byrne, the quirky former lead singer of the Talking Heads, to release Love This Giant. And this album is indeed a giant you can love, as long as you're not afraid to step out of your musical comfort zone.

First, a quick background of the artists. Even if you don't listen to Talking Heads on a regular basis, you've probably heard "Psycho Killer" and "And She Was". They could best be described as an alternative, post-punk, dance-rock group; the group focuses heavily on funky electronic sounds and Byrne's distinctive and occasionally whacky vocals. St. Vincent, meanwhile, is quieter than the Talking Heads but could also be described as bold. Her floating vocal lines sometimes conceal surprisingly sharp lyrics. She plays a variety of instruments, including the organ and theremin, and her producing style often features strings woodwinds. The two musician's experimental backgrounds lend to the album's uncut, clashing feel, yet they both have an excellent sense for what sounds good.

The album starts off with "Who", a single that you are not likely to forget any time soon after you hear it. The song begins with sparse, chaotic horn samples that clash both rhythmically and tonally throughout the intro. However, they instantly and seamlessly mesh into a funky groove just in time for Byrne's distinctive voice to make its entrance. Soon the beat breaks down and St. Vincent makes her entrance with an ethereal vocal line. The most distinctive aspect of this song is the orchestration, which features an enormous variety of instruments and samples that all seem to belong right where they are. This chaotic producing carries on through the entire album, relying heavily on blaring brass and syncopated electric beats.

Highlights of the rest of the album include "Weekend In The Dust", in which St. Vincent lays down a solid melody over a ridiculously funky tuba riff; "I Am An Ape", where Byrne reveals a softer side of his voice that retains the distinction of even his wildest songs; and "The One Who Broke Your Heart", which seems to break into an almost samba-like feel during the chorus. However, every single song is completely unique and worth a listen.

If nothing else, "Love This Giant" is a new sound. The album officially releases on September 11 – I look forward to buying the CD as soon as possible. If you want to listen to it before then, NPR's website offers a free listen-through which I highly suggest. And if you hate it, well, at least you tried something different.

Zynga: Rising star or falling comet?

I will start by personally stating the following. I do not currently like Zynga. I admire them, but I do not generally enjoy their games or appreciate their business model. They have published 15 different "social" games at this point, and with the exception of Words with Friends, their clone of scrabble, I do not like any of them. Zynga however is making quite a decent amount of money, unlike many other internet start ups that actually do useful things, such as Pandora, and that impreseses me.
Zynga has 227 million monthly users. In terms of comparison, WOW, or World Of Warcraft, has 10.3 million subscribers. However, these numbers should not be taken as the same thing. A WOW subscriber pays $15 a month in order to trapeze around Azeroth, while a Farmvillian might pay next to nothing. But now, things get interesting.
The method of distribution for getting money in WOW is fairly simple. You play WOW. You play Blizzard money. That money does nothing more then allowing you to play the game. You might pay some motivatedl kid in China to level your Blood Elf up, and collect a huge amount of gold, but this goes on outside of Blizzards system, and gold farming is its own story.
Within Farmville, you pay to get extra gasoline, extra flowers, extra gold, etc. You pay in order to get a leg up on the competition, who happen to be your friends. At the same time though, you want your friends to continue playing, and this is wear Zynga gets interesting.
Infectious Disease Modeling of Social Contagion in Networks is a paper published by a group from Harverd, based on a long term study. The paper demonstrates that obesity and smoking can both spread similar to virus’s in social chains. However, in the overview, it says something very interesting.

“Information, trends, behaviors and even health states may spread between contacts in a social network, similar to disease transmission.”

Facebook if nothing if not a social network. That's what it is. And it makes a perfect transmission vehicle for the Zynga virus. Or at least it did for quite a while. If you sent a notification to a friend to invite them to a game it would show up and they would see it. They might also see that all of their other friends are playing, and think “Why not?”. They would then play the game just to fit in. This led to the popularity, and the massive spread of the Zynga virus.
But a virus can’t spread by its self, and the game design of almost all their games led to the spread. Players needed a minimum level of friends playing the game in order to unlock further levels of items and land expansion. So players would send their friends invite after invite begging them to join the game.
And people joined. Oh, people joined. They flocked to their virtual farms and mob dens, and spent real money. But eventually, those who didn’t play got angry with the spam invitations and Facebook did something that it rarely does: Actually listened to its users. They redesigned the interface to stop the currant deludge of ads, and Zyngas game virus sufffered for it.

Curantly, Zynga has a pile of money, a huge number of game designers. It might making some more good games, and it might not, but only time will tell.