Trailerhead!!!

Welll.... I am about to talk a lot about some of my favorite music.

Trailerhead
Immediate Music is a production company that specalizes in trailer music, you know, the loud stuff with all the screaming choirs and large percussion... Due to a big fanbase they decided to release a CD of their music to the public and then I bought it because I am a huge fan of this sort of music. Unfortunately to please the pop music fans they sort of screwed up some of their songs with techno beat and synths and poop. But a lot of the songs are really beautiful. Below I will be reviweing each of their songs just to give a feel of their nice songs.

Prometheus Rising
I'm not sure if this is just because of the title, but this song reminds me of something large exploding or something.
It starts out with a very well done synth beat, which sounds like something grand is going to happen, not sure what. Then a heroic but dark melody blasts through with the horns. The strings begin playing as the monster breaks free. Slowly but surely it breaks its bonds and begins destroying everything in sight. missiles are fired, silence. Then, surprise! It's back! More destruction. More retaliation. End. The titan has won.

An Epic Age
Dramatic Entrance. Chuck Norris is walking in slow motion towards the camera. Pauses. Zombies quietly creep out of the darkness. Suddenly, a sword appears and he strikes them all down. More appear, and are dispatched as son as they come. Then, the army of monsters part and the Zombie King comes out. Epic battle ensues between the two, steel clashes on steel. Then, finally, it's over. Chuck Norris won.

Lacrimosa Dominae
Someone makes another dramatic enterence and yells something like "You were the chosen one!" Cut to armies marching towards one another. Battle ensues. The heroes begin dueling, In a moment of strugle, the hero almost gives up but pushes on and defeats the enemy.

Serenata Immortale
This song is by far my favorite on the album.
It sounds like some people passionately in love in a dystopian world. This song is their final struggle against the forces of evil, and their fall. Ya sorry if that sounds corny, but this song alone is worth the $12 that Amazon wants for the album itself.

Imperitum
The hero is being chased by an angry zombie.
This is one of the songs with the crowd-pleasing overused pop beat. It's not my favorite, but you may disagree.

Trial of the Archangel
This song to me sounds like nothing less than the world ending at first slowly, then finally climaxing as the hero runs to escape the earth being pulled into itself behind him. Boom.

Prelude to Paradise
Angels are singing and then they start breakdancing.

The Reluctant Warrior
All implications from the title aside, to me this sounds like the fall of the hero. He is engaged in a duel by his best friend and is morally ripped apart by the choices. At first the light side shows for a moment, but it is consumed again by darkness. The duel intensifies, climaxes. The hero has been lost.

Spiritus Omnia
I don't really like this one. It reminds me of the Greek Pantheon dancing the disco.

Fides en Lucius Dei
I think this one can be explained by the lyrics I found translated on Youtube:"Shelter [lit. shadow] of Right, Shelter of the Cross, Lord shelter us, (in) the Light of God
(Our) Faith willingly (given), Faith (made possible by Our) Lord, Sing (out loud) in worship [lit. Holy Mass], send it (forth) (in every) tongue
Praise (this) Life, Guide (to Thy) Promise, Praise (this) Life, Guide (to Thy) Truth
The Grand Fellowship of the Faithful [lit., the Great Mass], Faith Truly in the Lord, Praise Christ, Sent (to us) in God."

Shield of Faith
A final, desperate chase, the hero vs. the villain.

Onward to Freedom
Definitely one of the best songs on the CD.
An army is marching towards a dictator's castle. They are grimly determined to overthrow the king and create peace. Firget the battle scene, they're pretty sure they're going to win and not afraid to try.

Emoyrean Mercenaries
See description for Lacrimosa Dominae.

Generations
This song is very relaxing, which is odd considering the other type of music on this CD. It reminds me of a fleet o boats sailing towards a new world.

Age of Discovery
This song is pretty different, it is also one of my favorites.
I first heard this when reading 3001: Final Odyssey. It completely fit the book, in that it sounds like a progressive, revolutionary utopian new world full of technological wonders and such.

Thank you for taking the type to read all this crap, (or not) and I hope that you enjoyed this amazing album of wonderful music.
More reviews coming soon, hopefully all won't be this pointless!

iOS 5 beta Revue

Hello Revüsters!

It has been a while since I’ve posted, but today I’ll be talking about the new iOS 5 beta!
Upgrading to iOS 5 was a bit of trouble. It took many hours, but it worked!

Right in the beginning, I have to say iOS 5 is completely amazing. I’ve discovered many features, but not all the 200+ Apple claims to have put in. If you’re an iPhone owner, it won’t be a challenge trying to get used to iOS 5. Even if you’re not an iPhone owner, getting used to the new feel of iOS is a piece of cake.

Now to start revuing some the features the iOS 5 has to offer.

This is the Notification Center. This is amazingly useful. There’s no more annoying pop-ups (you can change that if you want for certain things) and it alerts you in a way where you don’t have check the notification ASAP. You also get updated local weather and a stock market ticker. Not too crazy about the ticker, but the weather is really useful for me.

Reminders is also a great app to have. It’s basically a todo list, but it’s more than a todo list. You can be notified at what time you want the app to remind you about something AND a location you want to be reminded at. Isn’t it great?

There’s also Twitter integration into the actual iOS. It’s actually really cool because it can check your contacts to see if they also have a Twitter.
(Make sure to follow me @applezme !)

What’s cool about the new mail app is now you can bold, underline and italicize parts of your email. This is really interesting because instead of trying to make you POINT with capitalization you can B/U/I.

The last thing I’ll be talking about- the camera.

Now you can take pictures straight from your lock screen to never miss those moments.

In the camera app, you have the option to turn on the grid option to help you align your pics. Another special feature I found out was when you take a screen shot, it keeps the screen shot in that orientation. As you can see, I had my iPhone in landscape and when I took a screen shot, it stayed in landscape! This was really awesome to find out because it was a real hassle to show screen shots sometimes.

Everything is all fun and perfectly working, right?
Think again.

Even though there are so many awesome things about iOS 5, we still have to consider it’s still in beta testing. I know a few things have been a little frustrating for me (safari opens then crashes, takes a while to sync, not all features such as wireless syncing are working, etc.) but I just put them to the side.

Overall, iOS is an ok OS as of right now, but I know future release will address these issues.
If you want to update to iOS 5, I only recommend it if you have lots of free time on a day and willing to be open for crashes and bugs.

Until next time, Revüsters!

My Life Is Average (site review)

For those who don't know, My Life is Average (MLIA) is a basic posting website. It features people talking about their not so average lives. One recent post is as follows "Today whille skiing I was humming the batman theme song. When I was at the part where I was about to yell BATMAN a person on the ski lift yelled it. I have found my soulmate. MLIA." Sometimes, when observing others doing something "average" the MLIA message at the end will be replaced with HLIA (his/her life is average,) OLIA (our like is average,) and TLIA (their life is average.) I would recommend this site to all harry potter nerds, anti-twilight fans, and geeks. This site is not recommended for you to use if you don't have free time (because the site is addicting) and don't enjoy reading (in which case you suck.)

http://mylifeisaverage.com/

Until next time Revusters!

-A. Platypus

Revue...Gadgets-HTC Sensation 4G

The HTC Sensation 4G...one of the most anticipated Android phones of 2011.The Sensation is one of HTC's first phones with a dual-core processor, clocking in at 1.2 GHz and it comes with the new Sense 3.0, HTC's custom UI.The Sensation 4G is HTC's best multimedia phone of 2011, promising an instant sensory overload.

Spec List:

Processor	Dual core Qualcomm® Snapdragon™, 1.2 GHz
Operating System	Android™ platform (Gingerbread)
Internal Memory	768 MB RAM, 4 GB Internal Storage (1 GB user addressable)
Display	4.3” (diagonal) qHD(540x960 pixels)
Network	GSM/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
GPS	GPS/AGPS
Camera	8 megapixel autofocus camera with Dual LED flash
Connectivity	Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi®: 802.11 b/g/n, 3.5 mm audio jack, SDHC capable microSDcard slot (8GB card inc.)
Battery	1520mAh LiIon
Dimensions	5" (L) x 2.6" (W) x 0.44" (T)
Weight	5.2 ounces

With a 1.2Ghz dual core processor primed for the nation's largest 4G network, you can multitask apps, games and gadgets, and download massive movie files without catching a single glimpse of the dreaded buffering bar.

With a streamlined unibody aluminum design, infinite ways to make it yours and an 8-megapixel camera on board, it’s got every detail covered and every detail captured.

With a massive 4.3" qHD touchscreen, everything you watch - every color, motion, movie, game and Android app - literally jumps off the screen in pixels

The HTC Sensation 4G will be available on T-Mobile for 199.99 on contract or 549.99 off contract.

UpdatR- Breaking news from Apple!

It was just announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference that Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, has unveiled upcoming updates that will be available to Apple users. Today, Jobs first announced the new OS for Macs, Lion. With Lion, users with a MacBook trackpad are open to new gestures to let us say, move to a different application.


Apple also announced that it will be launching a new cloud service, iCloud, a service letting users upload and store their music online. iCloud would give users a chance to access all the music they love from their libraries online for their iPhones, iPads and Wi-Fi-capable iPods, without having to connect them to their home PCs to transfer songs.




Stay in touch with UpdatR! 

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua

"There are all these new books out there portraying Asian mothers as scheming, callous, overdriven people indifferent to their kids’ true interests,” Amy Chua quotes. She should know, because hers is the biggest: “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” a well-packaged, readable book about the art of obsessive parenting. In truth, Mrs. Chua’s memoir is about one little narcissist’s book-length search for happiness.

You might wonder how this is possible. What kind of mother throws her 3-year-old daughter (Lulu) out in the snow? ("You can't stay in the house if you don't listen to Mommy.") Or complains that her family's pets aren't smart enough? ("They were unintelligent and not at all what they claimed to be.") Or, most memorably, makes her daughters' music lessons so tiring and intense that one daughter (Sophia) even leaves tooth marks on the piano?

Ms. Chua claims that this is the essence of tough Chinese parenting, as opposed to the lax Western kind. What does she mean by Chinese and Western? She is of Chinese descent, but she grew up in the American Midwest. She became a law professor and teaches at Yale. She and her husband, another Yale law professor, hired a Chinese nanny to speak Mandarin, though she doesn't speak it herself. Mrs. Chua grew up as a Roman Catholic, but her daughters were raised as Jews.

So she admits to using the term “Chinese mother” loosely—so loosely that even a "supersuccessful white guy from South Dakota (you’ve seen him on television)” told her his working-class father was a Chinese mom. And what she uses “Chinese mother” to mean is this: driven and hell-bent on raising certifiably Grade-A children. Ms. Chua was not about to raise slackers; she wanted prodigies, even if it meant nonstop, punishing labor. “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” chronicles Mrs. Chua's demanding, scolding and screaming. It describes endless piano and violin sessions that she supervised, while her own schedule of teaching, writing and dealing with students goes mostly unmentioned. And it enforces a guiding principle more reasonable than all her yelling suggests: “What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you’re good at it.”

Personally, being the daughter of a somewhat-demanding "Chinese mother", I would have to disagree with Amy Chua's views on parenting. Sure, she raised some darn successful children, like Sophia, who was invited to Carnegie Hall at age 14 to play the piano, but there's just something so wrong about the way that her parenting methods are stuck in the ground. Mrs. Chua may have gotten very lucky with her first daughter, Sophia, a goody-two-shoes (:D), and obviously very talented and hard-working, however, her second daughter, Louisa (Lulu) was very different. Amy acknowledges from the start that Lulu is the "rebellious" daughter, and her parenting only drives Lulu into a deeper corner, where she feels that the only thing she can do is rebel. (I like to think that I have some first-hand experience with this.)

Not to mention, I know many parents that are not "Chinese parents" by Mrs. Chua's standards, yet their kids seem to be just as successful, if not more. I know one child who was allowed to attend play-dates, keep up an instrument like guitar or drums, and still play at Carnegie Hall at age 15. And I know other children, who's piano practicing was never forced onto them, and they can still learn to enjoy music without having to worry about any rabid-eyed parents hovering over their backs whenever they are practicing.

But I'm not here to criticize. Amy Chua is definitely a very successful person, I can't argue with that. And her two children and husband are also very prestigious. But there's something that bothers me about the way that she represents the cut-out, steel-willed parenting as something completely "Chinese" and completely positive. No doubt, ever since my mother read Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, I've been suffering a bit more of the yelling and the "WHY CAN'T YOU BE LIKE _______", and that might be what is affecting my "objective" review of this book. (Not to mention, I began reading this book just to get a taste of the "crazy woman" that managed to convert my mother into another "crazy woman" :D).

All in all, the book was very humorously written, and very readable. I would recommend this book, and I would also recommend keeping in mind that not all "Western parents", as Amy Chua defines, are unsuccessful. In fact, if there's anything that I must disagree with this book over, it would be the way that Mrs. Chua groups everything into black-and-white, and her definition of "success". But go ahead and check out this book, it seems to have been super duper popular recently (my library bought 8 copies). Mrs. Chua's self-awareness—she knows she's not Mother-of-the-Year material—is much of what makes this book readable. Oh, and also the way she talks about her dogs is awesome:

“My dogs can’t do anything—and what a relief. I don’t make any demands of them, and I don’t try to shape them or their future. For the most part, I trust them to make the right choices for themselves. I always look forward to seeing them, and I love just watching them sleep. What a great relationship.”

(Not to mention tigers are beast.)

But then again, I might not be the most objective reviewer of this particular book.

So it goes, Revusters!