2K13

Today we are going to have a look at the new basketball games, NBA 2K13, which was released on October 10, 2012. NBA 2K13 was executive produced by Jay Z. The sound track of the game would be perfect and high quality. Also, Justin Bieber is in the game.

The NBA 2K13 cover athletes are Blake Griffin, Kevin Durant and Derrick Rose instead of Michael Jordan for the last two years. There are many new features in the game. First of all, signature skills are introduced. The skills would increase the abilities of player when activated. Also, a shoe creator is introduced which means users could create their own shoes. The new LS control is introduced which allows users to perform different kinds of dribbling.

I would say 2K13 is really good and IGN gave a mark of 9.1 for it. The biggest problem currently is PC users in Oceanic would not able to enter the game and a message says “wrong disc inserted” would pop up.

I have contacted the SecuROM, they provided a temporary solution for it. And we may able to exchange a working disc after October 15. Hope you enjoy it and the below is the link from SecuROM.

https://support.securom.com/pop_nba2k13.html

PetPet station：Zebra finch

 My sister wants a pet so badly, considering she cant take a good care of her goldfishes, it is not possible to buy a kitty which she loves the most. So my dad decides to buy a birdy for her. I dont know how my sister finds out the information about Zebra finch.Zebra finches are fun and easy to have in your home.  They are a pleasure to view and their soft chirping is soothing.  Whether you want only one pair to keep you company or you want to be a breeder with many birds, Zebras are a joy.

Zebra Finches originate from Australia. Zebras live in open grasslands with some bushes and trees.  They live in dry areas over most of Australia.  They live in groups and eat mostly grass seeds.  They build their nests in bushes out of grass, straw, feathers and anything else they can find.  They lay 3-6 eggs and both parents participate in raising the young.  The currently accepted taxonomic nomenclature for the Zebra is "Taeniopygia guttata castanotis".

Zebra finches live to be 4-8 years of age.  I have heard of birds living to 10 and 12 years old, but I think this is rare.

Males: The normal male bird has a gray upper body and wings.  The belly is white.  The beak and legs are a red-orange color.  On each side of the head is a cheek patch.  There is a 'tear drop' mark under the eye.  This is a brown/tan/fawn color commonly called orange.  The flanks/sides of the bird just below the wings, is a chestnut (orange) colored area with white dots.  The chest is black and white stripped like a zebra, hence the name zebra finch.  A truly beautiful bird!

Females: The female also has a gray upper body and wings with a white belly.  The beak and legs are the same red-orange color but not as deep color, lighter.  She has a black 'tear drop' mark under the eye.  The most noticable differences between males and females are the cheek patches and the chest striping.

The white Zebra finch is rare as the normally Zebra finch is generally gray. My sister bought 2 Zebra finch. One male named Anthony and one female named ChiChi. Both birdy are very shy and do not tend to close to human being. It was diffcult for me to take photos but i managed to do that eventually.

If you like Zebra finch like my sister, i highly recommended that you buy these from north paramatma or western sydey, because the price for Zebra finch are varies depending where the shop located. My sister bought for 10 bucks each from the shop located at north paramatma as our location shop(Hornsby) charges for $40-50 each.

(as my dad told my sister, as she gets birds now, she cant go elsewhere for more than one day, as the birds are not like goldfishes, Birds need feed regularly. guess what my sister said, she told me it is now my responsibility to take care of these birds when they were away, ><. thats not fair !!!)

The Cherry Festival

Young is the Cherry Capital of Australia.

The vibrant and progressive town of Young, located on the south west slopes of New South Wales, is gearing up to host the 63rd National Cherry Festival this December. This year the festival will also be helping to celebrate "Australian Year of the Farmer".

The three day celebration will include quirky and colourful festivities including the National Cherry Festival Street Parade, Cherry Festival Carnival, cherry pie eating championships, animal nursery, shearing competition, cherry pip spitting competition, live music, celtic tattoo spectacular, Hilltops Wine Expo, Young and Region Farmers Market, fringe events and much more.

The first cherry trees were planted at Young in 1847 by Edward Taylor and in 1878 Nicole Jasprizza started conducting grafting experiments to produce a "good cherry".

By the 1890's Flourens, Napoleons, Bigarroux and Marguerite had all been developed and Mr Jasprizza kept grafting old varieties until he had 7,000 old cherry trees, 3,000 young ones and 5,000 in the nursery stage.

At first cherries were sold locally but when the railway opened, Young's early cherries captured the Sydney market. By 1908 15,000 cases were being consigned annually and the 50 pickers for the season, picked until 4pm daily when they packed to catch the evening train for Sydney where the cherries were sold the following morning.

Horror Movie

If you are the fun of the horror movies, then the Paranormal Activity should sound familiar to you. Paranormal activity is a symbol of the new type horror movies, Oren Peli –the director of Paranormal Activity use the simplest scenes that discover the deeply  fear  inside our hearts.

 

Ask yourself, what makes you feel most terrified from the horror movies? Is the answer will be something that never happened to you? The answer will be absolutely no.  The stuff makes you terrified in the horror movie will be something related to your real world life, in another way, you may found the story inside the horror movie could happen to you, or the scene of the horror movie is similar like yours living envrioment. That’s how people realized that Paranormal Activity is the scariest.
 

Paranormal Activity did not show the bloody or creepy stuff, but it could awake the original fear of everyone. That’s the reason why Paranormal Activity 1 only cost $150,000 to produce, but earned nearly $108 million at the U.S. box office and $194 million worldwide .Paranormal Activity 1 ‘s main shoot area was a simplest house, Katie and her boyfriend Micah just moved into that house. Katie claims that an “evil” presence has haunted her since childhood and believes that it has followed her to their new home. Each night , Micah mounts a Sony HDR-fx1 on a tripod in their bedroom to record any paranormal activity that might occur while they sleep. That’s how the story goes.

Now is the time for the paranormal activity,try to watch that by yourself!

Dominoes, the art of toppling

I think everyone has saw videos of dominoes before. It is really interesting to see the toppling of domino pieces.

Let’s first talk about the brief history of dominoes. It is said that the dominoes came from a casino game in ancient China. The card was made of bones. After spread to Italy, some people started to stand the pieces and that is the origin of modern dominoes.

We are not going to talk about the card game of dominoes, but the domino toppling. And the word domino effect came from this activity.

First of all, let’s have a look at one of them.

I should say it is not only a way of entertainment, but also the work of art. That is the work with great concentration and persistence. Most of the work would take days to build up. Another interesting thing is people are playing human mattress dominoes as well. The new record with the most people involved is the one in Shanghai, China with 1001 people.

Here is the video.

I hope you enjoy it and if you are interested in the dominoes, you can try to build your own work. 

Mahjong Game!!!!!!

Today, I really want to introduce a traditional Chinese game ---Mah-jong to everyone! In China, Mahjong is a very famous and interesting game that suitable for everyone! It’s commonly played by 4 people. It’s easy to know how to play it ,but it will be hard to be a good player.

The video I show it's the best evidence of how popular of mahjong!

Every time, I go back to my hometown to spend the Spring Festival. We definitely will play Mahjong, it’s like the traditional of my family, I believed there are so many families like mine!

Let’s introduce how to play it!

The game is played with a set of 136 tiles based on Chinese characters and symbols, although some regional variations use a different number of tiles. In most variations use a different number of tiles. In most variations, each player begins by receiving thirteen tiles. In turn players draw and discard tiles until they complete a legal hand using the fourteenth drawn tile to four groups and a pair.

 

Nowadays, not only Chinese play Mahjong, but also the foreigner people find it is a very interesting game to play.

I highly introduce everyone who interested in Mahjong to spend some time to look this website .
http://www.blackdragoncafe.com/journal/2008/12/18/how-to-play-sichuan-style-mahjong/comment-page-1/

The Canberra Flower Show

The annual Canberra Flower Show (Floriade) kicked off soon. Canberra flower show began in 1988, and Canberra was built to celebrate the bicentenary of Australia founding City Diamond Jubilee from concept originated Large Flower Festival Flower Show and local decennial the world renowned Keukenhof. The annual flower show held in Commonwealth Park. Flower Show is not only a local event, but also attracts people and flower lovers from other parts of Australia and around the world come to watch the show. Only for last year, nearly 38 million visitors came to Canberra and brought considerable benefits to local tourism and retail.

In this Australia's biggest flower festival, countless flowers bloom to make the spring of Canberra lively. In September and October, the Commonwealth Park flowers bed scented like a huge canvas flower pattern painted over and added infinite color into this season for the open green space and local Botanical Gardens in Canberra. At the same time you can also enjoy the flowers blooming bucket Korea, getting around the bustling bazaars and food stalls, and participate in workshops, exhibitions and live concerts. Learn gardening, watching movies in the flowers under the floodlights, or walk along the path of the Flower Festival (Floriade Trail) are also good ideas to enjoy the festival. 

Brand new Sydney Aquarium - Sea Life

If your family is looking for a great fun for the long weekend, why not bring your kids to the relaunched Sydney Aquarium. Sydney Aquarium has rebranded as Sea Life Sydney Aquarium after a $10m investment from the Merlin Entertainments Group. The brand new Sydney Aquarium can now come face-to-fin with the world's largest variety of sharks and rays.

With more than 70 exhibits of 700 species and 13,000 animals in 8 million litres of water, it is one of the world's largest aquariums.SEA LIFE Sydney Aquarium is also home to Australia's best-known marine animals, including the platypus, little penguins and dugongs.More than 300 animals were moved to temporary homes during the refurbishment.

 There are 14 newly themed areas, including the Tropical Bay of Rays, Discovery Rockpool, Mangrove Swamps, South Coast Shipwreck, Dugong Island and the new Shark Walk.Shark Valley is dominated by a 20-metre blue whale skeleton among the ruins of an ancient Lost City temple.

What make event better is that you can now enjoy save up to 30% off standard walk-up prices for single visit tickets and make HUGE savings with combo passes! If you are the exiting annual pass holders, you are entitled to save over 50% off the renew memership price.

If you are interested, please visit the following link to find out the great price for the

Sea Life Sydney Aquarium at http://www.sydneyaquarium.com.au/tickets/ .

As part of the adoption project, you can adopt an Animal at SEA LIFE Sydney Aquarium and help save Australia's threatened species and habitats.

Your donation of just $50 in support of the Sydney Aquarium Conservation Fund* (SACF) will be used to fund projects which protect and restore the population of threatened marine and freshwater species and their habitats. Visit this link to find out more : http://www.sydneyaquarium.com.au/protect/adopt-an-animal/. 

(photos credited to SMH and sydney aquarium website)

Channel E wish you have a beautiful and enjoyable holiday. See you next time.