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City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments trilogy)
Cassandra Clare
Margarent K. 27th March 2007
496 pages
3 out 5 (rating)

Review:

This is my first time writing a book review and this review will contain some SPOILERS. Lately (before my exam period), I had read a couple of books or should I called ‘novels’. Normally for now, I would choose adult type of fiction novel to read. In the past, I have read novels like Dan Brown’s stunning work of novels, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (it is a thrilling fiction novel about Dracula living secretly in this modern century) and many more. Out of my curiosity, I had read this trilogy, ‘The Mortal Instruments‘, which is young adult (teen) fiction fantasy genre. Actually I’m a fan of those vampires, blood-sucking night creatures, type of story. In my young days, I used to love to read ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘, based on the hit tv english series.

Back to the topic. City of Bones is first book for the ‘Mortal Instruments’ trilogy story. The second book is called ‘City of Ashes‘ and final book is ‘City of Glass‘ which will release on March 29, 2009. It is under young adult (teen) fiction genre. The story mainly about angels and demons as in the Bible. How Nephilim were borned in this world. Nephilim are the offsprings of angels and mortals (human). The mortals or normal human beings cannot see Nephilim, unless they find out themselves or Nephilim reveal to the mortals. Let’s talk about the author a bit. Cassandra Clare is a big fan of ‘Harry Potter’ novels, previously she had wrote a fan fiction, ‘The Draco Trilogy’. It is a big hint on how this trilogy is going to be like.

Warning Spoiler Alert!!!

The protagonist is a teenage girl, Clary Fray, who lived with her mother, Jocelyn, in a normal modern New York city. Clary encountered a mysterious murder incident in a particular club, a group of teen-alke warriors were tried to kill an innocent boy. No one (in the club) saw that incident, except Clary herself and the the body disappeared once the boy was killed. Clary tried to figure out what the hell it just happened to her. She managed to find out the truth of herself and the group of warriors, which known as ‘Shadowhunters‘. ‘Shadowhunter’ is Nephilim, the offspring of angel and mortal. Jocelyn (her mother) had gone missing once she tried to find out the truth of herself. She learnt about the Nephilim or ‘Shadowhunters’ with the help of the same teen-alike warriors (encountered in that club). She had no choice but teamed up with the ‘Shadowhunters’ in order to search for her missing mother and uncover her own darkest secret of her family. Along the way, she had fallen in love with one of the ‘Shadowhunters’ members, Jace. Unfortunately, her love was a disaster and sinful. Soon, she discovered her own family secret, which is her father, Valentine, was villain in the world of ‘Shadowhunters’ and man who captured her mother. Valentine wanted to create a brand new world of ‘Shadowhunters’ by using the ‘Mortal Instruments’. With the mortal cup (one of the mortal instruments), Valentine can create his own army of ‘Shadowhunters’ from the children of human being. In the end of this book, Valentine did not success with his plan yet but he had succeed escaped. The story will continue in the second book, ‘City of Ashes‘.

Pro:

• Thrilling along the way
• Harry Potter fans will love it
• Creative concepts and ideas for the existence of vampire, werewolf and etc.

Con:

• Predictable plot and twists
• Lack of some detail facts about the world of ‘Shadowhunters’. 
• Too many ‘lucky’ strikes, protagonist is able to kill the deathly monsters, although she has not in combat training before.
• Protagonist should be in some combat training in order to be able to handle the dangerous situation

In conclusion, this novel is cheesy to read, especially for teenagers. It has a lot of ‘Harry Potter’ similarity. For an example, the main city of ‘Shadowhunter’ is well-hidden with magick spell. I like the most is how she uses the ‘angel and demon’ elements to create the existence of vampires, werewolves and etc. Unfortunately, majority of twists I have managed to predict it, since in the third chapter. I give it 3 stars out of 5. Be sure to check my review on the second book, ‘City of Ashes‘. The second book is much better compare to the first, ‘City of Bones‘. I have a feeling that this trilogy will be made into movie soon. Hollywood really out of ideas lately. 

Spore Creature Creator will release on 17th June 2008 (Full version US$9.99 & free limited version), which is tomorrow. Somehow, there’s a leaked version on the internet. This is why I can write this entry. Spore full game will be release on September 7th 2008(North America), September 5th 2008 (Europe).

Updates: Now you can download SPORE Creature Creator Trial at here.

Spore is a multi-genre “massively single-player online game” under development by Maxis and designed by Will Wright. It allows a player to control the evolution of a species from its beginnings as a unicellular organism, through development as an intelligent and social land-walking creature, to levels of interstellar exploration as a spacefaring culture. - wiki.

I am quite surprise that the creator is NOT similar like the sims 2. It is way more powerful compare to the sims 2 creator. Sadly, this leaked version is only 25% of the full Spore Creature Creator. One of the big different is user can test out the creature created in the test environment. User will have a full preview of how the full game (Spore) is going to be.

The game engine or game style is similar like the sims 2 creator. There will have three main section, building your creature (with parts such as eyes, mouth, legs & hand, weapons and etc), painting your creature (with rich texture and various of colours), and testing your creature in the test-lab environment.

Building your creature is a pretty fun section. It is similar style like sims 2, where you can adjust the part sizes and etc. Spore lets you create more in your own taste. You can adjust the size of your creature by dragging. It is a fun experience.

Painting your creature is not so great. Probably due to the leaked version fault. It is quite limited and I can’t paint in a very specific area, let say only the eyes section. It has a feature(a list of predefined paint libraries) and you can select that paint style to apply to your own creature.

Testing your creature in test-lab environment is pretty cool experience. Sadly, your creature only allow to move within the test-lab environment (inside a circle compound). There is a similar taskbar like the sims 2. There are some interactive actions. These actions will able the user to view your creature react. For example, user click the jumping action. user’s creature will jump accordingly. There is also a feature to let user view how user’s creature interact with its child/children. Other than interaction part, it allow user to capture the screenshot or video. User has the option to mail the screenshot to friends or upload the video to youtube. It’s a great integration. One last thing, it can create your creature avatar in .gif format.

Last couple of months ago, Kuching just had a so-called-donuts shop, Big Apple. It was very popular especially in the KL (Kuala Lumpur) there. It was superb-duperb packed/crowded. Big Apple (Donuts & Coffee) is opened in tHe Spring, again. As usual, it is superb packed with those desperate people. *nah, i weren’t one of them*

I went there because of my sister, after watching Phua Chu Kang performances. Thanks to her, I waited for like 15minutes. Hell yeah~!!! *If I’m not mistaken, that day was a week or so since it opens* The below is a list of the donuts available.. Yummy

Donuts are selling like hot cakes, oops hot donuts. The staff are hell busy like bees. Hmm, reminds me of ‘Bee movie‘, it is a great 3D animation movie and with great humor.

Sadly, Big Apple is a very small place. It is not like ‘Starbucks‘, where you can sit down and enjoy your meal or drinks. Not all donuts are nice to eat. Some i feel ‘kena’ cheated by the cool name given. Fark~!

Below is what I have bought. As you can see, the left hand side are yummy, whereas right hand side are worst and yucks, especially that ‘Pink Panther‘

Based on Sneak-Peak-at-Adobe-Max, Photoshop Express is really impressive. Sadly it is just ”great”, not thaaaat “greeeat”. Just yesterday ago, Adobe just release the public beta of Photoshop Express.

Photoshop Express - It is a web-based application as well, AKA RIA. It is targeting especially for teenagers or bloggers.

It is free to register as a member and 2GB space will be provided for images storage. The website is fully secure like any online transaction site. It is integrated with facebook, photobucket and picasa network, so that user can use the existing images from those website without uploading them again in Photoshop Express. Before using it, it requires flash version 9 in order to work.

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This is not new to the mac users. By default, Mac OSX can only read NTFS but cannot write due to Microsoft issue. As far as I know, no other platform can write in NTFS except its own platform (Windows)

Anyway, currently there have two solutions. Both of them are under 3rd party softwares/applications and still consider under beta stage as well. First is NTFS-3g, which is firstly developed for Linux platform, since it is open-source, so some guy ported for Mac platform. Second is Paragon NTFS for Mac, which is developed by the company of Paragon Software and it is not free.

I have not test/use Paragon NTFS before, but according to the source, there have plenty of good comments, such as great performance. It cost about USD29.95. Personally, I think it is a waste to fork out that much of amount, unless you are doing some business or running a company. For personal usage, NTFS-3g is good enough.

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