The Eleventh Day of Awesome: HI LOL

So, there was no wi-fi in Switzerland. Sorry. Happy Christmas?

On the eleventh day of awesome, this here wiz presents:
Eleven awesome updates
Ten pets a-playing
Nine pictures taken
Eight books for reading
Seven things to do
Six cakes a-baking
Fiiiive videee-ohhhs…
Four epic mounts
Three cool things
Two festive poems
and a post excusing her absence…

So yeah, here are my top 11 game updates in 2011. (Get it? 11 in 2011? Like, 2011? Yeah? … I know, that was awful.)

1) Subscriber benefits
It pays to… um, pay. Monthly. Or yearly. Either way, I know that, being an extremely forgetful and somewhat lazy person, I have most certainly exceeded the backpack limit. And even when the limit is extended I’ve done it as well. Eh…

2) Celestia
I know. It’s technically late 2010. And I haven’t been there. But it’s underwater.

3) Roaming mounts
I’m going to be honest – the thing I find coolest about this is that you can have a random pair of wings flapping around your house. And it’s slightly weird, but totally awesome. Also, giant sea turtles making friends with baby sea turtles. Awhh!

4) Wand Stitching
YES! I was extremely happy to hear this. I mean, the Baron’s Staff of Command looks nice, but those 50 hit myth blasts or whatever they’re called are so initiate. Now I can have power pips and fun stuff too! YAY!

5) Cleanse Charm pip change
Look, I’ll be honest: Cleanse Charm and Disarm are some of the best things about being a storm wizard, especially when you’re trying to knock through a bunch of balance mobs with Tempest and they’re like “lolnope, weakness time!” and where normally you would be “dang and blast, I’ve trapped ‘em all and I only have storm wand spells” you can go “HA HA sucks to you, ZAP, there goes that weakness.” I always have one of these in my deck. Always. So costing one less pip is a big improvement for super awesome diviners everywhere.

     6) Reintroduced emoticons!
     Where would we be without our trusty friend semi-colon dash P, eh? ;-P

     7) WYSTERIA
I love Wysteria. Mental, I know. But it might just be my third favourite world. (Marleybone, guys. Then good ol’ Wizard City.) I mean, you can hardly beat a Hogwarts-imitation school populated by magical pigs, can you?

8) Teleporters.
SO USEFUL, guys. SO USEFUL. No running around everywhere in the house. Just zip, and you’re there. And you can move between houses. That’s like, really super cool and also convenient.

9) The ability to feed your pet random stuff.
Here, Rocky! You just eat this lamp post. And this rug. And this bubbling cauldron. And I get gold! Good boy! Who’s a clever little Storm Hound? Now, would you like a little park bench as a snack? That’s right, nom nom nom. What a clever little boy you are!

10) Music player!
This is awesome, especially as in my house, as you may know, I have rooms based on several worlds and such, so in the Marleybone room you can hear Marleybone music and in the Krokotopia room you can hear Krokotopian music and in the MooShu room you can hear MooShu moo-sic… OKAY I’M SORRY.

11) Zafaria
“But you haven’t even been there, yet, Alex! Heckhounds, you haven’t even been to Celestia yet. Or really gotten anywhere in Dragonspyre.” That does not mean, however, that I cannot appreciate the mother of all wizdoodles, which was spawned from Zafarian ideas. Come on. ANGRY TRIBAL GORILLA WITH STICK THING FTW.

Annnd that’s all for today—and a happy new year, folks!

Diviner OUT!

The Tenth Day of Awesome: I WANT IT

Come on, admit it. There is NOTHING more awesome than this guy. (Except maybe the pet rock. Oh, the pet rock was incredible.)

On the tenth day of awesome, this here wiz presents:
Ten pets a-playing
Nine pictures taken
Eight books for reading
Seven things to do
Six cakes a-baking
Fiiiiivee videee-ooooosss…
Four epic mounts
Three cool things
Two festive poems
and a post excusing her absence…

Right, so, today I wanted to introduce all of you to my pets. (I’m going to say it now: they’re all still babies and I haven’t trained a single one. I tried, temporarily, but then I was busy and W101 was all about questing and… maybe I’ll get around to it some day…)

This is Chase, who is quite clearly a black cat that I got at Halloween last year. He’s awesome. (Note: do you think black cats are unlucky in the US? Because we think they’re lucky, yay, Chase is lucky.)

Say hi to Dexter! He’s a sunbird, I think. It might have another funny name… Yes, a Firewing. I can’t remember where I got him… It might have been in Krokotopia…

This is Lady Xena, a “utility dragon” which I’m fairly certain came from some sort of giveaway. (It’s funny how you can tell which ones I’ve changed the names of and which ones… not.

Hunter’s a heckhound – the standard Krokotopia model – you know, the one you buy from the mander in the place… I’m not going anywhere with this. But he’s cool.

I lied when I said they were all babies. Midnight’s a TEEN danger hound. Yeah, that’s right. TEEN. I got this dawg from a giveaway from W101 Central ages ago, so now they’re pretty rare, I reckon.

This is Lexi. She’s a storm snake. I got her fighting some boss in Marleybone yesterday, so she’s the newest addition to the clan.

I challenge you to find a worse name for a boar knight than “Miss Lucky”. Go on, try it. Have fun with that.

Spencer the sea turtle probably wins the adorable prize. Aw, look at him. Titchy little thing compared to, uh, Miss Lucky, or Lord Cassie. *wince*

And finally, I give you Rocky, my faithful Storm Hound companion since forever. (Well, since I first bought Crowns.) He’s the awesomest of all the awesomes there are.

So, that’s all… one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine… Wait, nine? Oh, I nearly forgot.

Meet Blue the snowball, everyone! WOO! SNOWBALLS! SNOW!

So…  guys? Did anyone see this?            (Yes, I’m doing thirteen too.) I’m not sure if I’ll be able to post tomorrow – I’ll be driving through France in order to get to die Schweiz, and that means a day in the car. On the bright side, Sherlock marathon! Doctor Who marathon! Harry Potter rereads! On the downside, no internet. :( Don’t worry. I’ll be back. But for now…

Diviner OUT!

The Ninth Day of Awesome: PIKTCHAS

On the ninth day of awesome, this here wiz presents:
Nine pictures in-game
Eight books for reading
Seven things to do
Six cakes a-baking
Fiiiiivee videee-ooooosss…
Four epic mounts
Three cool things
Two festive poems
and a post excusing her absence…

Why hello, friends! I will now remedy that little list problem… by posting PICTURES. And narrating them. Because I’m  that cool. Basically, this is what I did today.

Well, firstly I decided to go questing in MB. This resulted in some frustrating situations.

Like this one. And this was because of TWO elemental shields at once. I mean, come on – who does that?

So, for some light relief I logged onto Nat’s account and did this, before attempting Katz Lab to do something that they sometimes call… “farming”.

I wanted a robe, and all I got was this lousy screenshot. And I lost my only fire dragon treasure card. And then I died. Sadness ensued, but then I tried again with Nat (with proper gear this time…) and we won! I got a pixie pet which I forgot to take a picture of.

Then we did Big Ben. ‘Twas fun. And now I finally understand what Meowiarty comes from. (What? I had a Sherlock marathon yesterday – y’know, the BBC version that’s super hilarious and absolutely brilliant in every way? Yeah, that one.)

Oh, and I did all that because I was finishing the book quest, which I, like, finished so I’m pretty chuffed in actuality. (What a fantastic word.)

In addition to which, as I was completing other sidequests… I’M LEVEL 45, now! That used to be close to the top. Now it’s just over half way… haha. I feel like an old-timer here.

Oh, what’s this, you ask? Well, that’s just proving how I bought 60000 CROWNS just, you know, because it’s Christmas and all…

And the ninth picture? That’s coming. (I haven’t finished decorating my Christmas room!)

Diviner OUT!

The Eighth Day of Awesome: Books lol

HELLO I’M DOING SOMETHING COMPLETELY UNREMARKABLE FOR MY 100TH POST HOW ARE YOU?

On the eighth day of awesome, this here wiz presents:
Eight books for reading
Seven things to do
Six cakes a-baking
Fiiiiivee videee-ooooosss…
Four epic mounts
Three cool things
Two festive poems
and a post excusing her absence…

Whoa, the list is getting kind of long now. This is exciting. Today, however, I am going to keep a promise – look this is a post about books! – and also break one. This is another list. Sorry! :( I’ve been busy. But it’s all good fun,  no?

(I’m going to point out here and now that some of the books I’m mentioning are definitely not E for Everyone, but, well, if you are under, say… twelve, and reading my blog, then a) HI! How are you? Do you like cake? Yeah, me too! Friends? Friends. and b) Um, go look at Emma’s awesome hundredth post. It’s cool, and there’s a massive cake in it! Byeee!)

So… Let’s start with the obvious and work up to near-obscurity. My favourite books:

1) Harry Potter. (our queen, JKR) What, you thought I wasn’t going to mention this now that all the films and books are done? Ha, there’s still a teensy weensy chance that perhaps point three of a person out there hasn’t read this series. If that’s you, then I am not even joking when I say tell me your address and I will send the whole series to you. It’s necessary.

2) Percy Jackson. (Rick “TROLL” Riordan) Yes, I know, I’m still in the obvious range here. But these books are so good. AND there’s the new series, Heroes of Olympus, which is totally worth checking out, if you like PJaTO, which you should. (I was not, however, impressed with the film. Dear, dear me. How much of the book did they read?)

3) The Kane Chronicles. Basically, ditto.

4) The Hunger Games. (Suzanne Collins) (I’m getting there, alright!) Yes, you need to read it before the movie comes out. You must. You must. Jump to it! I really respect Suzanne Collins for not just marketing it as another Twilight, because the politics, warfare, and action are so much better than a pretty dull love triangle that I have zero interest in.

5) The Chronicles of Narnia. (C.S. Lewis) Another very British thing, but I have much love for Narnia. And the movies. Ahh, the movies. The best film adaptations of a book series I have ever witnessed, honestly. I’d recommend reading them in publishing order, though – you appreciate the ‘first’ one more with a better understanding of the series.

6) A Series of Unfortunate Events. (Lemony Snicket) It is possible you might have read these. They came out a long time ago, but this was one of those series that I read avidly from the ages of eight to twelve, right up to having reading races with another boy in my class at the time. (I won all of them. Ha.)

7) Alex Rider. (Anthony Horowitz) I’m gonna bet that not all of you have heard of this one – I think it’s bigger here than it is in the US, like PJaTO is bigger in the US, and I’m not going anywhere with this sentence. Brief (ten-word) synopsis: teenage spy saves the world many times in nine books. Nine really, really incredible books. They’re not only exciting and fast-paced, but also mega-interesting because Horowitz has packed a ton of information about stuff – from nuclear reactors to mining to bull fights – all the way through the series. And they are so good. Every single one. (Don’t bother with the film version of Stormbreaker, though. It’s a bit iffy.)

8) Pretty much anything written by John Green. I must say I have a particular soft spot for An Abundance of Katherines – but a warning to you defiant younger readers (Emma’s post is still waiting…) – this is where the warnings kick in. And out in January is The Fault in Our Stars, which is looking pretty awesome from the first two chapters that have materialized online… DFTBA.

….Annnnnnnnnnd that is all for now, so

Diviner OUT! (for the hundredth time eeeeee!)

The Seventh Day of Awesome: Conquering boredom

On the seventh day of awesome, this here wiz presents:
Seven things to do
Six cakes a-baking
Five videos
Four awesome mounts
Three awesome things
Two festive poems
And a post excusing her absence...


Hello, internet! You know, I'm not doing so badly at this regular posting lark. I'm posting quite late today because it has been a big, big day! (Forever Day, obviously.)

So, I was thinking. I have three long weeks of Christmas holiday stretching in front of me as far as the eye can see. (It's metaphorical, right? Yeah.) And I don't like holidays, because sometimes they get boring. There's nothing to do! But wait! Yes there is! And here are some excellent things to do if you get a spare day during the holidays.

Again... a list. This is getting boring, isn't it? Tomorrow will be better, I promise.

1. Bake cookies. Or a cake. Or cupcakes. Or-- never mind. What? It's fun! I mean, I cannot cook to save my life - I burn almost everything (maybe I'm a little pyromancery...) and if I don't, I undercook it. But there is something so awesome about eating cookies you made all by yourself, even if they taste a little... funny. Not that I would know...
2. Go outside. This one's hard, especially for people like me, who spend approximately 80% of their free time staring at a computer screen in the safety of their bedroom. All that... fresh air. So terrifying. But sometimes it can be fun! Take a pet for a walk! Climb a tree! Jump on a car! ... On second thoughts, maybe don't do the last one.
3. Read a book. Yay, books! I love books! (Soon to come: a post on recommended reading. Yeah, I've had that one in the works for ages, but I haven't had time to implement it properly yet.) 
4. Write a story. What? Why...Why are you looking at me like that? It's not like I have a story I should be writing instead of telling everyone to jump on cars... Nope. Definitely not.
5. Draw pictures. Unleash your inner creativity! Get a paper and crayons and attack! With the power of art! Yay! Draw! Magic! Fun! What will you create? A dragon! Or a rocket ship! Or a goat with a jet pack! The possibilities are endless! So endless, in fact, that I have felt compelled to end every sentence and fragment in this section with an exclamation mark! Yay!
6. Fill out pointless internet surveys! Yeah, I've done that. I've spent hours on that. Hogwarts house quizzes are always good (Ravenclaw), and myers-briggs personality type indicators. (INTP, is me.) Or tell me 10 random facts about yourself. Yeah, awesome.
7. Play Wizard101. Well, what else could I possibly finish off with?

Diviner OUT!

The Sixth Day of Awesome: WHAT DO THEY KNOW???

It's like they could read my mind! One day, a post on epictastic mounts, the next...

BOOM.

Right. Yeah. CHRISTMAS!

On the sixth day of awesome this here wiz presents:

Six cakes a-baking,

Five videos

Four epic mounts,

Three awesome things,

Two festive poems,

and a post excusing her absence.

Okay, some of you might have seen that and thought "OMG CAKES NOMZ." Unfortunately, I haven't worked out a way to get cake onto the internet. (If I had, I would both  be rich and you would be eating cake.) Instead, I decided to talk about W101-related cakes that would be super-awesome. (If I had my tablet, I would draw them, but I'm at my grandparents'...)

I'm in a really random mood today, which is why this post is so...weird. XD

Naturally, like the last four posts, they are numbered in delightful list form.

• ONE: Ninja pigs.
  So iconic, so striking, so absolutely mega awesome! I can picture this one. And it's like bacon, because it's pigs, but on a cake, so cake bacon... bacon cake... I don't know. YOU DECIDE.
• TWO: Stormzilla.
  Me? Biased? Never.
• THREE: Ravenwood logo.
  It's not quite as iconic, but still awesome.
• FOUR: Wizard101 logo
  Well, it's THE logo... Not very original, admittedly, but still...
• FIVE: Heckhound.
  Of all the non-storm spells there are... This one is definitely the coolest.
• SIX: Your school symbol.
  I know it's kind of weird, but I really really like the spell trace symbol things for each of the schools. They're absolutely brilliant and I just love the designs - especially the storm and star school ones. These would be good on cupcakes, I imagine.

Annnnnnnnnnnddddddd I gotta go, so

Diviner OUT!

The Fifth Day of Awesome: Things of the Internet.

On the fifth day of awesome, this here wiz presents,
Five videos…
Four epic mounts
Three awesome things
Two festive poems
and a post excusing her absence.


I know – I missed a day again. Well, two. I’ll post twice today to make up for it. I mean, I'm going to have to get cracking seeing as I'm kind of going to Switzerland this year... So...

Anyway, I was looking around the internet in those two days of absence and I rediscovered KingsIsle’s YouTube account, so I decided to show you the top five videos I found.

NUMBER 1

This is hilarious, honestly. If you haven't seen it, you're missing out big time.

NUMBER TWO

Yeah, let's be honest - they're all hilarious really.

NUMBER THREE



Malistaire is your father

NUMBER FOUR



I'm going to be honest - I laughed all the way through this one. That voiceover is hilarious.

NUMBER FIVE



AAAAAAANNNNNNNDDDDDDDDDDD the obligatory Christmas one. Happy holidays everyone!

Diviner OUT!

The Fourth Day of Awesome: Oops…

I don’t have time to catch up with yesterday’s, so I’m just carrying on where I left off.

On the fourth day of awesome, this here wiz presents:
Four mounts I wish I had,
Three awesome things,
Two festive poems
And a post excusing her absence…

I’ve got to make this quick. And I’m going to point out that most of these were from Google images, because, well, I don’t own them.

MOUNTS GO:

1) Bengal Tiger

I like tigers. They are awesome. And they RAWR.

2) Meowmodon

 

Discontinued. I remember when this first arrived in the Spiral, and I really wanted to get one, not only because it was a freaking awesome white tiger, but also because I believe the crowns spent on it went to charity – so, double the awesome!

3) Swift Shark

 

I think I got one of these in the test realm, but can’t find the picture anywhere. :( Either way, I like sharks. (Except when they kill baby birds, like in Trials of Life which we were watching in Biology today because it was the end of term, and that was quite sad.)

4) Sea Turtle

Come on, who doesn’t love turtles?

Diviner OUT!

The Third Day of Awesome: Things that are awesome

On the third day of awesome this here wiz presents:
Three things that are cool,
Two festive poems,
And a post excusing her long absence.


Three days, guys! Three!

Anyway, hello and welcome to the third day of DIVINAWESOME. (See what I did there? See? See? Yeah.) There are three awesome things that I've found out about that all happened during NaBlogHiatusMo, and I'm sticking 'em right here.

AWESOME THING 1:

You guys know that I live on that weird tiny tea-infested island in Europe, right? And in W101, that can mean I'm at a bit of a disadvantage:

• Not many people play it at the same time as me because they all live on the other side of the world. (I'm trying to change this one.)
• Some British spellings aren't accepted in text chat. (See: colour, flavour, favourite. Open chat helps, though.)
• I can't get gift cards. Sad face.

As sad as this is--- WAIT, WHAT'S THIS?! An Epic Bundle? Online? DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS? I can have a gift card! I can have a gryphon mount! And an Epic Fantasy Castle! And Epic Gear and--how freaking awesome is this? Answer: totally awesome!

AWESOME THING 2:

The world is much better for having a leopard pet. ADORABLE. WANT.

AWESOME THING 3: I managed to make it three days without going completely insane!! Ha, just kidding. I was completely insane anyway.... MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. HA. Ha. Also I'm in german just now and I it cake, yaaay! I might be slightly hyper.

Diviner OUT!

The Second Day of Awesome: Poetry!

On the second day of awesome this here wiz presents:

Two festive poems,

And a post excusing her long absence.

HEY! (that makes two days, oh yeah)

I'm not much of a poet. ("That sounds like Alex wrote it," to quote myself on my own prophecy.) I won a school poetry competition (the theme was atrocious, though) this year. The prize was a £5 book token. But when I hear about poetry competitions with this as a prize, I simply can't help myself.

(If you're interested, here it is: HERE.)

So I present to you, as promised in my little poem (you like what I'm doing there, huh?) two (yes, two) festive poems (one's a haiku but whatever), for the second day of awesome:

ONE:
'Twas Christmas in the Spiral, when not so long ago,
A thaumaturge was asking where she could find some snow.
"We make it in our lessons, but it never ever stays -
I wish that we could find some snow so we could run and play."
Greyrose paused and thought a while then realised she knew:
"Go to old O'Doyle and he'll tell you what to do."
And soon the thaumaturge was munching where the white snow gleams.
(Christmas is the time the gobblers share their jelly beans.)

TWO:
Spiral snow season,
It's best to stay alert, as--
Argh! Evil snowman!

Right, that enough awesome for today? I think so.

Diviner OUT!

P.S. I know, I'm doing this a day later than each one being released. I'm going to blame it on time zones. (It's mostly just me being lazy.)

The First Day of AWESOME: Is the plural of moose "meese" or what?

On the first day of awesome this here wiz presents:
A post excusing her long absence.

I'M BACK GUYS!

So... I did it! I won NaNoWriMo. Whaddayaknow? Genuinely, I am really proud of myself. But YOU GUYS. :D :D :D What was better than winning NaNo was you guys saying it. Slightly cheesy, but nonetheless awesome. You're all wonderful.

That said... The story's not going online. It's not getting published. In fact, I'd go as far as to say it's pretty much irredeemable - but that's okay. I'm not the best at writing, and while NaNo was a brilliant experience (who knew I could actually do that when I can't even blog regularly?!), my novel is nowhere near ready for the internet to see it, and I'm not much of an editor, if I'm honest, so, for a good while at least, it's staying put. At the bottom of my 'Stories' folder.

Anyway, since then I've had three controlled assessments, two projects, one maths exam, one saxophone exam (merit!), and two concerts (one of which involved me playing three times in the space of five acts, no exaggeration). Just a little bit to keep me busy, I suppose. So I haven't posted for almost a month... Oop...

HOWEVER.

In the nick of time, I found out that the Twelve Days of Wizard commences... TODAY! (By the in nick of time, I mean twenty minutes ago.) So you know what I'm gonna do?

I mean, other than celebrate by reinstating the MSPaint Christmas Header?

No?

I'm blogging every day again!

Now, I'm not saying that this is definitely happening. Heck, I still have a week of school, after which I'm headed to Wales for the weekend. But I'm going to do my best to post every day, even if it's just to say how lame I am for having a one-line post every other day. Still! It's gonna be fun, right? Right?

Exactly. Now, I'm going to go and edit that little Xmas header and eat a mince pie. Nom.

Diviner OUT!

P.S. Is it just mooses (moose) (meese) (mice--no) you have for Christmas? We have reindeer. You have reindeer, right? (If not, you're missing out BIG TIME.)