“Did you hear that?…”

Hello again beautiful world! I have returned with more juicy tidbits of the tech world for all of you to enjoy. So relax, grab a cup of your favourite beverage, and enjoy the ride!

On my last post I talked about screens and their variety. While it’s really nice to have a huge 3D high def TV blasting bits of colorful goodness to your eyes, if you don’t have a good sound system to complement it, then your experience is only half fun! If you truly want to have your socks rocked off, then you need the boom to go with the bang(no pun intended).

If now you’re thinking, “Awesome! I want a rockin’ sound system! But where do I start?” Worry not, for good ol’ Phil is here to help you out with that one!

There are different sound setups for many different systems. You might want them for your Xbox, PS3 or Wii. Or you just want it for your TV and movie player or computer. Heck, maybe you just want some really good headphones to go with that fancy music player you got for Christmas!

If you want that truly rich, movie theater sound, you need a 5.1 or 7.1 speaker set up. That means that you have 5 or 7 speakers set up around the room you want it in, and the “.1” is for the subwoofer. That’s the black box that usually sits on the floor that goes boom when there’s a big explosion in the movie. The way it goes is this: Three speakers at the front and two at the back if its a 5.1, or three at the front, two at the sides and two at the back if its 7.1.

When it comes to price, it all depends on the brand and quality speakers. If you’re getting a bargain basement setup, don’t expect the crisp clear sound of Obi-Wan’s lightsaber clashing with Darth Vader’s in their epic duel in Revenge of the Sith. But hey, even that is better than using the tacky paper ones that come with the TV.

When it comes to brand, pay attention to detail. If you’re an audiophile like me, anything coming from Bose, Infinity Kappa or Klipsch is a nice addition. If your budget is a little tighter, anything from Logitech is good, and mind you their 5.1 setups are usually THX and Dolby Labs certified. That means you’re gonna get awesome quality sound from whatever your watching!

If what you’re looking for is just for your mobile private listening pleasure, then look for Philips, SkullCandy, or Sony headphones. If you really wanna blow the cash on a pair that’ll last and will spoil your ears forever more, then go for Bose or Sennheiser.

That’s it for now my fellow geeks & geeketes! Stay tuned for more interesting updates from moi, your gracious geek host!

Au revoir!

Aloha fellow Burn Brighters,

Welcome to my first official review! If you haven’t been keeping up with recent posts, then you’re probably thinking, “Who the heck are you?”; and you should definitely check out my intro (which I only worked a short three hours on!). But if you have, then you should already know that I’m the new kid on the block. I was chosen as your teen blogger, and I hope to bring more humor and fun into Burn Bright with my reviews. I hope you follow me throughout my journey, and oh yeah, please keep your hands and feet in the ride at ALL times!

The lucky book that I’ll be reviewing for you all today is Tighter by Adele Griffin. This is the first book that I’ve read from her, but she also has two other novels, Sons of Liberty and Where I Want to Be.

There is a good and bad side to everything in this crazy world of ours, especially pills and medication.  Pills are great! They relieve pain, stop allergies, loosen muscles, and even make you fall asleep if you’re having trouble doing so. But in some cases, such as Jamie’s, taking too many can become addictive and very dangerous.

Everything started when she ripped some muscle tissue while clearing a track hurdle. The doctor diagnosed it as a major lower lumbar strain. Instead of going to her therapy sessions, Jamie decided popping pills would be a lot simpler. When you first get to meet Jamie (the main character) she’s actually right in the middle of stealing medication from both her parents and siblings. Since she won’t be home for half the summer, Jamie thought it was a good idea to stock up.

After moping around for the first half of summer, Jamie’s mom decides to get her a job. She’ll be leaving New Jersey and going to a small island called Little Bly to live with an old friend of her mother’s. Jamie’s job is to babysit his daughter, Isa. When she finally arrives and settles in, everything seems normal. A normal house, a normal island, with normal beaches, and like any other normal little town, everybody knows everyone and gossip spreads quickly.

When taking Isa and her older brother Milo to the beach, Jamie notices the way people look at her. She thinks it’s probably because she’s not a local, until Isa tells her about Jessie, her old babysitter who passed away in a plane crash, along with her boyfriend Peter. Besides sharing similar names, Isa informs Jamie that she and Jessie looked alike and that the stares were probably the result of old emotions having been stirred.

Throughout her stay Jamie feels like someone is watching and following her at various times. At first she’s not very sure who. Could it be Peter, Jessie’s boyfriend, who also passed away in the same plane crash? Did Peter cause the crash? It can’t be him, he died over a year ago. Are ghosts real? Could Jamie, Isa, or Milo (Isa’s older brother) really see them? Or are the pills just getting to Jamie’s head?

But there’s also a cute local boy named Sebastian, who Jamie starts to have feelings for.

Even though I really loved reading Tighter, I didn’t like the ending very much. Towards the end, it felt like the author was in a rush to finish the book. There were just too many loose ends that weren’t tied up and left me questioning things. During the story, Jamie has this nagging feeling that someone is watching her, and she suspects that someone is Peter’s ghost. After finding some clues in various places in the house (missing tiles on Isa’s fireplace, a J carved into a chair) Jamie wants to do her research to find out what really happened to Jessie and Peter. She even looked through his Facebook, reading all of his private messages. But we never find out what really happened.

Besides that, I really found myself enjoying Tighter, I usually don’t like books with ghosts in them, but even I have to admit it was really good! 😀

Tighter—Adele Griffin

Published 10 May 2011 by Knopf Books for Young Readers

Paperback, 224 pages

Hey Everyone!

I have great news. After having braces for almost two whole years, from October 2009 to now, I’m getting them removed. School starts on the seventh of September, and I was lucky enough to get an appointment for the sixth!! Im sooo excited!! Well, besides the part where I have to get up at seven in the morning…I could do without that. Getting braces was the best decision I ever made, I look like a completely different person!

When you look at me now, you see a happy teenage girl, with not even one care in the world. But it wasn’t always like this. At one point in time throughout my life, things changed…life changed, and that made me who I am today. I stopped worrying what classmates thought about me or what I enjoyed doing, in MY free time. I stopped trying so hard to fit in and make new friends. I became independent, confident and strong.

Brace Face, Train Tracks, and Metal Mouth, are nothing new; I’ve heard it all. School can be rough and people can be mean. But if someone called me that now, I wouldn’t care. I’m not the one wasting my time (where I could be reading) on making fun of someone’s appearance, who I know nothing about or what they’ve been through.

After middle school, I needed a change to go along with all of the other changing I was doing; in appearance. I decided on growing my hair out longer, getting braces and losing weight. Before I did though, I promised myself never to go back to the way I was before.

This huge step in my life, was for me, not because of what someone thought or said. After growing out my hair, losing 20 pounds and getting braces, my social life has grown, and I feel a lot healthier and better about myself. Even with these drastic changes, people (especially girls) still have something to make fun of me for, that will never change. People will always judge you.

Starting at High school I got to meet new people, people who were more like me, people that were more accepting. Besides just having a great family, now I have great friends and an awesome boyfriend. I get to do what I love; go to football games, blog about books, and read like crazy.

No matter how much you change, people will still find something to pick on or make fun of you for. So why bother with them? Why care about what that person thinks about you? Do what makes YOU happy, and stop caring what other people have to say about it.

Melanie has always been drawn to story telling and can’t remember a time when she wasn’t creating a story in her head. Her early stories were adventures with fairies and dragons and sword swinging princesses. Today she continues to spin tales of magic in lands near and far, while her cat sits on the edge of her desk and supervises. When she’s not writing, you can find her pretending to be other people with her local community theatre groups.

1. Your latest novel, Ward Against Death, explores the world of necromancy. What a fascinating subject. What first got you interested in that idea, and can you take us through the process of developing the story around that theme?

Thanks so much for inviting me to share with your readers today. I first got onto the idea of playing with the preconceptions of necromancy from a role playing game. I used to game a lot in my teens and still do every now and then. In this game you can play different kinds of characters including a necromancer. However, necromancers, those mages with the ability to control the dead, are often the villains of the story or game and it doesn’t help to have completely evil character in your party (you don’t tend to get much done or one of your members kills you.) Which brought me to the question: in what situation would a necromancer be good?

At the same time I saw Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow and loved Johnny Depp’s portrayal of Ichabod Crane. He was quirky and endearing and determined… and he got the girl! I wanted Ichabod to succeed at the great challenges he faced. The idea of that type of character, of a guy just trying to do the right thing and deal with unusual circumstance, combined with the question about in what situation would you find a good necromancer generated my hero, Ward.

Ward is an average Joe (if your average Joe could bring people back from the dead). He wants a nice job and a comfortable life. Unfortunately for him, his family’s business is necromancy and his other career option (physician) ended badly when he was caught digging up corpses to perform illegal necropsies. Ward isn’t evil by any means; he just has this family ability, handed down from generation to generation.

From there the idea just kept growing. What if necromancy wasn’t bad at all? What kind of use would a world have for necromancy? And so Ward’s job now involved bringing people back from the dead for a short time so people could say goodbye (called “wakes”), which started the plot rolling with the question: what would happen if you woke someone from the dead and they insisted that they were murdered?

And that’s how the book ended up about necromancy.

2.       Melanie, you’ve said that you’ve always been drawn to storytelling. What is it about storytelling that you love so much? What are some of your all-time favourite stories and why?

I love the adventure and the magic of storytelling. I love how you can be transported to a different world and meet different people. And I love how just telling a story, can brighten someone’s day, or make them forget about their trouble for a little while.

Choosing a favourite, or a few favourite stories, is really difficult. There is, however, one story I always seem to go back to. Mercedes Lackey’s Magic’s Pawn. It makes me cry every time I read it (even though I already know what’s going to happen), but I think that’s because something within me resonates with the hero’s struggle. The hero is different from his family and friends in so many ways and his struggle to learn to understand and accept himself is fraught with terrible circumstance. I think we can all relate to feeling like an outsider at one point or another in our lives and this book just clicks with me on that level.

3.   I read that your cat supervises your writing activities. I love that! What is it about authors and cats?

LOL. I have no idea. When I was 4 or 5 my family got a cat from the shelter. I got to name her Muffy (that’s what happens when you let the five year old name the cat). Maybe my parents knew I was going to be a writer. When I moved out, a friend’s cat had a litter and I agreed to take one—she got a much cooler name, Trinity.

Two Christmases ago Trinity died and I thought I’d never get another cat. She had been a great companion and I really missed her. But then we started getting mice in the house. The first time we’d ever seen a mouse! And after attempting to get rid of the unwanted visitors we decided a trip to the shelter for another mouse deterrent was in order.

We brought Kali home, haven’t seen a mouse since, and I can’t imagine ever being without a cat. I won’t stop missing Trinity, but I’m so glad we invited playful, affectionate (and mouse deterring) Kali into our house.

4. Which of your fictional characters Burns Brightest in your mind and why?

It’s a real toss up between Ward and Celia. I love being in Ward’s head because he really cares about doing the right thing. It’s so important to him and he’ll make these decisions that someone else would think were crazy in order to do the right thing. But on the other hand, Celia has the grittiness and practicality that I love. There’s the right thing, and then there’s the right thing that won’t kill you. Although, in truth, it’s really the two of them together that I love.

Connect with Melanie: Facebook / Twitter @melaniecard / Goodreads / MelanieCard.com

N.B this is a YA/adult crossover novel, suitable for older teen readers