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Archive for June, 2010
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To celebrate the end of the Teen Summer Book Club, we’re hosting a LAN Party. All teens are welcome to play, just bring in your own computer (including your monitor, keyboard, and mouse) or laptop to play! What game, you may ask? Built by Alientrap, a First Person Shooter known as Nexuiz. Based on the ioQuake3 engine, Nexuiz is the continuation of Quake-based gaming. We have DVD’s of our pre-configured version of Nexuiz that, by default, lowers the quality settings to the minimum to allow older computers to play and blood effects are disabled. Please make sure you do have a DVD drive, we don’t have CD’s of the game.
Each team will include six players and will compete in tournament-style gameplay. While you’re not participating in the team based tournament you can participate in the free-for-all tournament, play on the Wii, or just munch on some of the provided snacks. While you are playing, know that the team-based gametypes that are played will include Team Free For All and Capture the Flag.
Registration is at 10 AM on June 26, gaming starts at 11 AM and runs until 4 PM but may run over. Pre-Registration has already started here. It all takes place here at the Alpena County Library’s conference room.
For information about Nexuiz, head on over to Alientrap’s website here.
We recommend you download our pre-configured Nexuiz package here. Quality settings are set to the absolute minimum to help the older computers by default and can be changed in the in-game settings menu. Blood & gore effects are also disabled by default.
System Requirements:
400 MB of hard drive space
Windows 2000/XP/Vista (32-bit or 64-bit)
Mac OS X 10.4 or better (PPC or x86)
Linux Kernel 2.2 or better with glibc
High Quality/Recommended
- A 1.5 Ghz Intel Pentium 4 chip or AMD Athlon 1500+ or better
- 9600ati or 5700fx or better
- 512 MB of ram or better
Low Quality
- 1 Ghz Pentium III or AMD Athlon
- Geforce2 Video card
- 512 MB of ram
The Road
Review by Amber T.
The Road takes place in a fictional burned America, the land lacking live trees and full of black ashes. Since this story is fictional, it could have taken place in either the past, present, or future.
The main characters in this story are the man and the boy. The story does not reveal their names throughout the entire story, the man just calling the boy “Son” and the boy calling the man “Papa.”
The story begins when the boy and the man are traveling through the woods as they discuss their plans to travel down south to the coast. Along the way, many challenges and victories overcome them.
They keep having unfortunate run-ins with “the bad guys,” and occasionally “the good guys.”
All they have is a shopping cart that they use to carry their belongings, food, water, and some blankets, a pistol, and the clothes on their backs.
Once they run out of food and are beginning to starve, they luckily find a building stocked full with all kinds of different foods, a stove, a bathtub, and a toilet. They are very happy with their new discovery, but they soon have to go, in worry of someone finding their new hideout because of its obvious setting, in the middle of a field.
They leave, wondering what kind of obstacles they will have to overcome next.
Finally, they reach the coast, the ocean full of gray ash and the beaches strewn with old driftwood and lacking the birds that usually scavenge around for food that someone had left behind. They find an abandoned ship and search around on it for things that they may need. When they are just about to leave, they go back to their belongings just to find that someone had stolen all of their things.
They run up the road, searching for the thief, and when they see him they order him to give back their stolen things, holding the man at gunpoint. Once they have everything under control, the man and the boy travel more, the man getting more and more sick as the days go on, coughing up blood.
Finally, the man gives up and he lies down on the ground to die. The boy is lost as of what to do, so he just stays there for a few more days until someone, a “good guy,” sees him and has the boy come with him, hopefully on his way to find a better life.
What’s the Teen Tech Petting Zoo, you ask? It’s not like Baby Farm Animal Day. No real, live, animals to pet. No, at the Tech Petting Zoo, you get to “pet” the new technology!
Yes, that’s right, you get to “pet” or, really, familiarize yourself with our new techy gadgets! On Tuesday, June 15, from 1-3 p.m. , the Alpena County Teen Tech Trainers will be available to show you how to use some of our newly acquired technology at the library. Some of the items on display will be our new large flat screen tv, hooked up to our WII, for which we have two new games – Rock Band and a Lego Star Wars game. We also have two new GPS devices which we are planning to use when we put together our first Geocaching Program sometime later this year. Have you heard about our new ebook service? Well, we also have a Nook ebook reader, so we can show you how to download an ebook to your own ebook reader, or maybe when you see how cool the ebook experience can be, you’ll want to buy your own! We also have an IPod touch, so we can show you how to download audio books, or just all the cool apps and such available for your personal IPod Touch, and we have the Flip Video Camera, with which, if you are a member of the Teen Summer Book Club, we can videotape you giving a short report about the latest book you’ve read and you can earn 10 Grand Prize Entry slips!
So come see us, and bring your friends!
Hey there all you Teen Summer Book Club members and everyone else reading this! (you know, you can still become a Teen Summer Book Club Member and have a chance at winning the Grand Prize I Pod Touch if you are going to be in 7th-12th grade next year – just come sign up at the library and get the rules!):
Remember to come to the library and fill out your Weekly Prize Drawing entry forms. We’ll be doing the first drawing this Friday. One entry for every hour you’ve read! And remember too, for every five hours you read you get one Grand Prize Drawing Entry form!
And even better – if you write a book review for us, you get FIVE Grand Prize Drawing Entries! Below I will post an example that someone has already sent in. That’s right, people have already sent in book reviews, so their names are piling up on those Grand Prize Entry Forms! But you can do it too! I want to see that box crammed full of Entry Forms! Let’s Get Reading Alpena Teens!
The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks – reviewed by Alyssa P.
The book I have finished is called The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks. The book starts off with rebellious Ronnie being shipped off to her estranged father’s home several states away from her own home town, New York, NY. Ronnie’s father lives in North Carolina, so she’s a long way from home. Three years prior to this, Ronnie’s father and mother got divorced, leaving Ronnie resenting her father. She did not talk to him, write to him, or play the piano (which had been his and her passion before this) ever since the divorce. So obviously Ronnie didn’t want to spend the summer with her father at all. As the book progresses, Ronnie starts to warm up to her father a lot more, and as in all of Nicholas Sparks’s books, she falls in love with somebody completely not her type. Ronnie, an all-black wearing rebel falls for all-American Southern, rich-boy Will Blakelee. Ronnie and Will share a wonderful summer, but soon it is time for Will to go to Vanderbilt University. Just before Will leaves, Ronnie’s father is coughing very hard, and when the coughing fit is over, his face is covered in blood. Ronnie and Will take her father to the hospital, where her father finally tells Ronnie he as been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last February, which has metastasized to his lungs and liver. When it comes time for Ronnie to return to New York with her mother and brother, Ronnie decides to stay in North Carolina to take care of her dad, but has a horrible spat with Will. Will leaves for Vanderbilt, and Ronnie hasn’t heard from him for months. Close to Christmas, Ronnie’s father dies, and Will surprises Ronnie by showing up at the funeral. Leaving the funeral much in the same way he came, Will leaves much up for interpretation, such as if he will call Ronnie or not. In the end, a despairing Ronnie returns to New York, missing North Carolina, Will, and most of all, her father. That is when Ronnie does what she swore she would never do–she plays the last song she and her father composed together before he died for an audition at Juilliard. Will surprises her by showing up at Juilliard and says he transferred from Vanderbilt to Columbia, which is in New York, also, so he can be near Ronnie.
Questions about Book Club? Give me a call! Tracy at 356-6188 ext. 14 or 15
