I am a Chumash

[Mom sez:  this was a class assignment, to write about your day, in the first person, as a Chumash Indian.]

My age is 10.  My name is Grey Buck, and the year is 1612.

Suddenly, my aunt, Brown Doe, is screaming in my face, “WAKE UP!” with her feces breath.  Better start my chores.

I zip out of my ap and go collect some stones, pound them into points and drill holes in them.  My brother, Brown Buck, comes to me and says, “Here are your sticks! Hurry up, because they’re rebuilding the chief’s ap!”  I drive the sticks into the holes and start hacking off branches of a willow tree.

Just when I deliver the wood to be dried, a canoe came down the stream and somebody yelled, “Let the trading begin!”

I gather up my shells and gemstones and rush to the caravan.  I quickly trade 31 shells for a basket of obsidian arrowheads. Later on, I will sell those within my village.  I then trade 6 pieces of granite for a bowl and grindstone. Later, I collect about 10 acorns and ask my brother to dry them. After they are dried, I shell and grind them and give them to my uncle, Brown Dog, and…wait a sec…I don’t know what he does with them.

Haiku

[Mom sez:  writing a Haiku was a class assignment; the topic was Alex’s choice.]

I’m in boring school.
I so do not belong here.
Let me out right now.

 

“Who’s Stronger than a Dragon?”

[Mom sez:  Alex had a writing assignment at school.  The teacher provided “chapter 1” of a story with the above title and the characters Ungle Ingmar (a dragon), Walter (a villager), Burna (the bearded villager), Matilda (villager), Berta (villager), and Coconut (dragon).  The students were each asked to come up with a chapter 2 of the story in progress.  This is Alex’s.]

…but just then, a banana cream pie appeared over Uncle Ingmar’s nose and fell face down!  SPLAT!

“Hmmmmmmm, tasty,” he says.

“Halalueijia!  It’s the Hazmat Guy!”

The Hazmat Guy comes flying out of nowhere and yells, “BOOGIE BOOGIE BOOGIE BOOGIE,” and uses a chicken gun at Matilda, who then turns into a pineapple.

“MATILDA, MY SHNOOKAFUZUNIS!!!” yells Uncle Ingmar.

“Too bad,” said Coconut, “She mixed a helluva martini.”

But just as before, a Hazmat Guy came flying out of nowhere, yelling “BOOGIE BOOGIE BOOGIE BOOGIE,” and shooting a chicken gun, this time at Uncle Ingmar.

POOF!  He then turned into a giant banana cream pie.

“Wow,” Coconut said.  “Him, too.  I sure hope that doesn’t blow up.”

But of course, it blew up, leaving behind quite a considerable mess of bananas and sugar.  And of course, another random thing happened.  A voice said, “DANCE PARTY’S OVER!” and a bunch of janitors came and swept up.

“Oooookay,” said everybody remaining (besides the janitors).

The End

MINECRAFT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while, but I’m playing Minecraft all the time!

Minecraft is a game where there’s a world, or multiple worlds, made up of blocks.  A lot of people think the graphics are crappy, but that doesn’t really matter right now.  Minecraft is a game of trying to survive in a world where you have nothing, but you can collect resources over time.  Your player’s name is “Steve,” and the main point of the game is just trying to survive, but the thing everyone likes to do most in Minecraft is – obviously – mining!

There are a few types of things you can mine in the beginning of the game.  The two main things you can mine  – once you get your first pickaxe (which is usually made out of wood) – are stone, cobblestone and coal.  Coal is used for making torches and putting it in a furnace.  Cobblestone is good for making tools, weapons and stuff, and it’s a basic construction block.  Stone is used to make buttons, weight-activated switches called pressure plates, and they’re also normal construction blocks, like cobblestone.  When you mine stone, you get cobblestone.

You start out at dawn, and as the day goes on, it will become evening.  But it’s a good idea to have armor and a sword ready, because there are zombies (called mobs) coming out as it gets dark. Zombies are normal foes – they just bump into you to damage you.  When you kill them, you get food.  Skeletons are like zombies, instead they don’t bump into  you.  They shoot arrows at you.  When you kill them, you get a few bones and a few arrows.

Something you should really know about is a creeper.  It looks like a stick with a green head, and it’s always frowning.  If you get too close to them, then they will blow up.  When you kill them successfully, then you get gunpowder.

What I like about Minecraft is that each time you create a world, it’s never the same – it’s always a randomly-generated world.  It’s fun because it’s always changing.    You can also change the game by getting texture packs, which change the art of mincraft.  So if you’re getting tired of the default looks, you can download a texture pack and it won’t look the same; the art will be different.

There are also mods, which are bigger changes than texture packs – they change the way you play.  They can add new things to the game, they can change things in the game, they can take things away from the game, and so on.  Some mods are packs of mods, but you install them normally, like a normal mod.  Some mods are also incompatible with each other – so if you have one mod and try to install another, your game may crash if you have mods that weren’t made by the same person.  (You can get a lot of mods, texture packs and things like that at PlanetMinecraft.com. )

One of the best things about Minecraft is that you can play with other people.  While in game play, you can press escape and there will be a button that says “Open to LAN. ”  This means that other people who use your internet server can join your world, so you can play with your friends.  If you want a permanent LAN world, it’s called a server. I don’t know how to make it, but my dad does.  Anyone who uses the internet can use the server if they type in the IP address.  And even when you’re not playing, other people can play on your server.  To access a LAN world or server that you’ve already set up, click “multiplayer” mode.  To type in a server IP address, click “add server” and then “server address” and then type in your IP address.

——–

What I discovered in Minecraft today:  if you have the mod pack “hack-slash-mine” and you hit a chicken with a wooden sword, your game will hang.

Coming Soon: Awesomeness Defense

Awesomeness Defense is a new tower defense game on the Packed.com factory. The reason why it says “coming soon” in the title is that the game is not done yet – I’m making it!

Tower defense games are about protecting your base from enemies that come in, and you protect them with towers that you put along the path they’re coming on.  My game has a few custom pictures uploaded, and all the default towers and enemies from the website.

The way you play tower defense games is before the first wave of the enemies coming on the path, there’s a menu that has towers on it.  You place these towers anywhere but on the path (unless there’s an instruction to put them on the path) and when enemies come along, they turn toward the enemies and start shooting.  And if you have enough enemies and you have enough towers, the enemies will get destroyed and you’ll get money.  Every tower costs money.  If you don’t have enough money, you can’t get that tower.  And if you can’t get that tower and there’s a strong enough enemy, you may lose a few lives (you always have multiple lives).

My tower defense game isn’t stupid, isn’t crazy and just has a bunch of things.  (By crazy I mean like Bloons Tower Defense and PacMan Tower Defense, where they’re so small you can’t even see what’s happening and the enemies just come like crazy without stopping, and you only have like two lives.) I wanted to make my own game because all the other games seemed too strange.  I wanted to make something normal and cool that other people would like too.  And since I’m pretty good at tower defense games myself, why not try making one?

The Kidolean System

I made up a new cash system called Kidoleans, so me and my friends won’t have to spend our real money on each other.  What we use it for is we buy and sell things between each other, instead of real money.  For example, at garage sales I will price some things in Kidoleans.

There are a few types of Kidolean bills. The first one is rewards.  It’s the best but most rare.  Since we price tiny, almost worthless toys so low, I’d just make up one kind of bill that is worth that much and you can trade it in without really buying.  The second kind is standard,  It’s just the basic kind that we trade for normal toys and goods and so on.  Then there’s value types.  They are worth a few of the standard Kidolean bills, so you don’t have as much change in your pocket.  And the last one is under-value.  You need like three or four of those in ones to make one standard Kidolean bill.

I named it Kidolean because the system is between three friends, and we’re all kids, of course.  So it’s basically a system between kids.  The “olean” part seems to be a kind of standard thing at the end of money names (e.g. “Seems-olean” (from “The Seems” books) and “Sims-olean” (from the Sims games)).  To see what they look like, see the photo of the first official Kidolean ever made.

Emergency Response Unit (ERU)

Like Transporter, ERU is a medical rescue game.  Except you don’t control the vehicle with arrow keys and all that stuff.  You just have to click a few buttons and then your vehicle is on its way.  And you have to manage quite a few vehicles at the same time.  There are different jobs to do on each level.  Some are clearing away debris, some are helping people get well.  Some are finding missing people.  Some are clearing away road blocks.

The only vehicle that at all times cannot be on autopilot is the airplane or helicopter (sometimes helicopter, but never airplane). Because you can’t just send down an airplane to the nearest sick people or people who need supplies.  You need to actually be the pilot and then just let any supplies just parachute down from the plane to the people who need them.

The good thing about ERU is that it’s very easy to help people.  The bad part is when you have to clear away a roadblock – people are there trying not to let people into that sector or area.  So sometimes around there you’re going to hear some rifles and guns and stuff.  But you’re not going to see anyone shooting, just some orange flares.

What I don’t like about it is there are so many jobs to do at once and new ones keep popping up.  And when you’re flying the airplane there are about eight jobs to do and you’re still flying the airplane and you just delivered supplies.

It’s very fun because it’s practically managing a business and you’re helping people and you’re just doing so much stuff in it – it’s just really useful to me.  You can find this game at http://www.mofunzone.com/online_games/eru_emergency_response_unit.shtml  I would give this game a 53 out of 10.

 

South Beach Parking

South Beach Parking is a parking game where you’re a substitute for the valet parker that had an accident with a shark.  If you bump into the tiniest thing or make the tiniest mistake – see, you can’t park anywhere but the red-lighted space – and it only gives you 50 seconds to park one car, and an extra 5 seconds after you park it.  Then the next car comes, and so on.  It’s kind of hard.  It doesn’t end until you fill up the whole lot.  Then you have to empty the cars out.  It’s really hard to drive because all the cars are a bit too fast on the sand.  The cars that you drive in the game are a red VW Bug, an orange Ferrari, a green and white VW Bus, and a blue sedan with a giant sunroof.  When you make a mistake, a little white circle shows where your car crashed; you fail that turn, and have to start all over again.

Trainz Railroad Simulator 2004

Trainz 2004 is a game where you make your own city, basically, but the most realistic thing is the trains and track.  It’s a virtual world, that doesn’t have other players in it.  You start out with a blank model train table, and you can make it bigger if you want, and you can make mountains and valleys, volcanoes (but they’re all inactive).  It starts out the ground color is gray with a giant yellow grid.  So you click on the tab “Paint,” and there’s a bunch of colors for your ground so it looks like real ground and not just a giant grid.

The game comes on a disc, so you can’t find it on the internet.  But there are also some extra downloads you can purchase for it.  The awesome part about it is there’s no money limit, so you can just free-play the whole time, and that means you can do whatever you want without spending anything.

 The tabs to put stuff down are Topology (to make terrains), Paint (to color your ground, Tracks (to lay tracks) and Bridges, World (to set your weather and time and water color and things like that), and Tools (to help make things easier).  Oh, and before World is Objects, to put down buildings and stuff like that.  And last but not least there’s Trains.  Which is obvious – you just select any train you want.

My favorite locomotive is the Monkey Port 8464 switcher/snowplow locomotive.  It has a humongous snowplow in the front.

There are all kinds of train cars you can think of, for all different railways, and some of them are narrow gauge and large gauge and stuff like that.  They even have a maglev train, it’s so awesome.  And there’s no limit to how many locomotives or train cars or B units that can be on your train.

There’s two modes in Trains.  One makes individual locomotives and train cars and puts them together.  In the other, you get a premade train without a locomotive and cars and put them together.  Except you get two locomotives when you get a high-speed passenger train in that mode.

What I like about the game is that you just make your own city and what you would want for your dream city.  Also, there’s four different views that you can choose to view your train.  One is from inside the cab, two is you can look at it from the outside.  Three is tracking view, as if you place a satellite somewhere over your city.  And four is free roaming – you can get away from your train and let it do its business while you go to another train and drive that.

What I don’t like about the game is that it has really cheesy effects – what I mean is when you crash, it’s really cheesy.  Because if you hit a bumper, you fly off the track, but your locomotive and cars will stay together.  Tracks hover off the ground, and you can go through buildings and you can build a track right through a road without a crossing and cars’ wheels don’t turn.  It’s so cheesy in some ways.  But it is one of my favorite games ever because of all the good reasons and at least you can build a lot of stuff!

I would rate this game googleplex out of 10!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Mom sez: there are many different year versions of this game.  Many can be found very cheap these days on eBay, if you don’t need the most recent one.]

 

Neon Race

Neon Race is a game in which you’re a sports car.  There are normal cars that you want to avoid smashing, and then there’s enemy cars which you can smash right through.  There are 16 different tracks, and when you’re done with the whole game, you can play it again, but this time you’ve unlocked the super car, which is white and goes much faster and it’s much better at everything.

Cars you don’t want to smash are red, and cars you want to smash are purple.  You get nitro if you smash into a purple one, but if you smash into a red one, you lose nitro.  You can also get nitro by driving without crashing into any red cars.  Or you can get full nitro if you collect a Turbo coin.  The coins are Turbo, Rampage (which lets you smash any car for about 30 seconds), Repair (which fully repairs your car) and Cash, which gives you abut $150.  And you can buy upgrades with this money.  Oh, I forgot to tell you that if you smash into a red car, you also lose a dollar.

What I like about the game is that it’s about just driving, and there are cars that are basically your enemy and you can smash them – it’s fun!  The bad part is you have a time limit to each level, and the time level gets lower as the tracks get longer and there’s more red cars than purple cars. I don’t know how you’re expected to win when there’s so many red cars and nitro that lets you go faster than full speed!

I’d recommend the game for ages 6 to 10, and I’d rate this game about a 7 out of 10.