Alright, I know it has been a while. Consider my disappearance something similar to a summer break. School is back in session now… oh wait… I don’t go to school anymore. Now my life is get up, go to work, come home, make dinner, do dishes, play some World of Warcraft, go to sleep, and repeat. Doesn’t really give me a whole lot to write about here. Two days ago I bought a new video game to fill my few hours of free time.

SimCity Societies came out a while ago now. It’s the newest game in the SimCity series. I started playing this series way back when SimCity 2000 was new. Back in SimCity 2000, the player really did serious city planning: laying out pipes, putting down electricity poles, and zoning out residential, commercial, and industrial blocks. And… for a time, that was fun. But it was always the water that made you mad. There was never enough water to support your city. Or at least, that was always my problem. My problem also might have to do with me being 9 years old. At that age, planning for how much water a city needs might be a bit more challenging.

SimCity Societies is nothing like that. It is a whole lot more like Roller Coaster Tycoon. You have 6 societal resources to build up and spend, including culture, education, and authority. There’s also money and electricity. You build streets, houses, stores, and businesses of various sorts. The city can be a tiny farm based town, a metropolis of skyscrapers, or an authoritarian state similar to 1984, or Equilibrium if you saw that movie. The city I’m working on at the moment is a mix of everything. Some districts have mansions, others have dive bars. I think my next goal is to create a small town type city with farms and country roads.

The best part about SimCity Societies: free play. I LOVE games of this nature that come with free play. Unlimited money and supplies to run your city with. Sure, part of the fun of the game is unlocking awards, winning trophies, and dealing with the challenges that a major city might face. I have to admit though… I’m doing… well… really well with my first city. I have $250,000 in the bank, tons of resources, and I can’t seem to spend the money fast enough before the next days money comes in and I get $50,000 more to spend. Yes I certainly hope to unlock many trophies with this city. But this is all beside the point. The point is, in free play, I will be able to create a city exactly as I see it. Exactly as I want. With all of the trees and fountains that I desire. I just know I am going to really enjoy free play once everything is unlocked.

This summer has definitely been a great summer for movies. The three I will discuss: Wall-E, Hancock, and The Dark Knight.

We can surely count on a hit movie every summer from Pixar. Wall-E is no exception. I found this movie to be incredibly adorable. Many people commented on the lack of dialog in the movie. Honestly, when I was watching it, I hardly noticed the lack of conversation. The movie was really well done, and really clever.

Hancock… I want my 2 hours of life back. The movie had such promise going in. If I had gotten up and left after the first hour of it, I would have been totally satisfied. The second part of that movie was just terrible. As soon as the plot twist occurred I was like, “This movie went from awesome to the worst movie ever in one second.” Now, I have talked to other people who thought it was… okay, but no one has really said they liked the movie.

The Dark Knight. Sorry, Batman, but you don’t make it to the top 5 favorite movies of all time. I thought the movie was excellent, but I think I liked Batman Begins more. I am of the opinion that the first movie was styled differently. I felt that Gotham City in the first movie was portrayed as more of a fantasy type city, one that you couldn’t pick out on a map. In The Dark Knight, Gotham was a whole bunch of scenes of Chicago shown in day light. I liked how Gotham was dark and scary in the first movie. Part of the story in the second movie is that Gotham has become worse, so I felt that showing the city in day light counteracted that. Now, did this ruin the movie for me? Absolutely not. I still really enjoyed the movie. Definitely a summer hit!

I started my new career shortly after graduating from college. My one month off was my last summer vacation ever. Now, I work full time. And so, to make working worth it to myself, I decided to buy myself a little graduation present. For the past year or so I have been eying new digital cameras. I really had no good reason to upgrade my current one. The one my parents bought me as a present years ago really is a nice camera that takes great quality photos and does almost everything that I want. At the time that they purchased it, the camera really was quite small. Cameras since then have become significantly smaller. For this reason, and this reason alone I decided to buy a new camera.

I bought a Nikon Coolpix S550 (in blue). This camera has a lot of functionality that I really liked. First, it has VR electronic image stabilization. I really liked this feature because I have hands that shake terribly. People are always asking me why my hands are shaking. This feature should reduce some of the blurriness that I have seen in other photos. Second feature, blink warning. This camera will tell me if someone blinked while I take a photo. This will definitely save me from being very disappointed later on. Third feature, it’s a Nikon. Personally, I am of the belief that it is best to buy a camera from a camera company. Nikon has been making real cameras for a long time. I feel that as they discover new technologies, ones that were once state of the art for them filter down to their lower grade cameras as an added bonus. Nikon is known for making some great cameras, so I figured my new digital camera would benefit from this. Finally, this camera is really tiny, and I just love tiny things.