Sorry I haven’t blogged in a while, but I’ve been incredibly busy with college. Anyway, as I have said before, I am currently working on a book. I am very excited to say that I am nearing the end I cannot wait to have it finished just because I have never finished a book before (I usually get bored about 10-20 pages in). Since I am nearing the end of my book, I began researching because I would like to get my book published.

To get your book published, you need to have someone edit it and then find an agent and then hope that the agent finds a publishing company that is interested in publishing your book. For someone who is new to this whole “publishing” process and does not have a lot of money, this sounds quite daunting. I know I still have to finish up my book, but I still need to look into finding an editor and an literary agent. I’ve been searching online, but since I do not know what I’m even looking for, I’ve had no luck. I don’t know how to tell if an editor/agent is legit or if it is a scam. If anyone knows of any editors and/or agents, please let me know! I appreciate any and all help.

Today is Thursday which, to most people, means the almost start of the weekend. However, in addition to this, Thursday is Jersday and when it’s Jersday, that means it’s time for a new episode of Jersey Shore!

I know many people criticized this show, but I love it. Let me first say that I am Italian, and my parents are both from Jersey, yet I feel no offense! I didn’t start watching Jersey Shore until last summer when the cast was in Miami, but once I started watching, I was hooked. I love the personalities and I love the reality! Here’s the thing about reality television that most people don’t understand: you’re not watching for the reality aspect of it!

The cast of Jersey Shore is hilarious and always promise an interesting episode. I love Nicole (Snooki) and Pauly D and Vinny are so funny! With that being said, here’s my one of my favorite Pauly D/Vinny moments that was from last week’s episode:

This seriously left me gasping for air I was laughing so hard! For all you die hard Jersey Shore fans, new episode tonight so pump your fists! 10 PM on MTV, don’t miss it!

As you know, yesterday I was sorted into Slytherin. I admit, I was initially shocked and alarmed, (after all, Slytherins get a bad rap), but today I am actually excited to be a Slytherin! Also, today was Slytherin Pride Day on Twitter, so if you have a twitter account, set a Slytherin status with #slytherinpride in it. Tomorrow is Hufflepuff Pride Day on Twitter…

Moving on, I was busy with homework today, but I still managed to find some time to explore Pottermore even further. I read a very interesting back story about Professor McGonagall’s family life and love interest. Additionally, there were a few more interactive features such as potion making and casting spells (though both are confusing to understand at first). I’m very much enjoying Pottermore, but I am a little upset that we will have to wait until early 2012 to wait for the second book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, to be able to be explored.

I cannot wait until Pottermore is officially launched in October so that my friends can sign up and experience the magic. I know that all of you Harry Potter fans will not be dissappointed!

I am a huge Harry Potter fan, an original fan who loved the series before the movies came out. When I found out about Pottermore back in June, I immediately signed up. Then, on Day 4 of the early access chances for beta testing, I was one of the lucky fans who got in. I have been eagerly awaiting my Pottermore email to allow me into the beta testing, and today it came!

As soon as I read the email, I pulled up Pottermore and began the magical reading experience. It is incredible! Pottermore is great for die hard fans of the Harry Potter series and people who have never even read the books or seen the movies.

It starts out on Chapter 1, The Boy Who Lived. How Pottermore works is you see an interactive scene from whatever part of the book you are on. There is a menu that allows you to read information about characters, objects, places, spells, creatures, and more! Some of the items in the menu include a back story and the interactive scenes provide opportunities to unlock more readable content.

Some of the back stories are very interesting such as how J.K. Rowling developed the idea of Number 4 Privet Drive. However, my favorite back story so far is how Aunt Petunia met Uncle Vernon and how Vernon had responded to the fact that Petunia’s sister, Lily, was a witch.

In addition to the online reading, Pottermore has some game like qualities to it as well. The fun really begins in Chapter 5 when you arrive in Diagon Alley and you shop for school supplies. Also, you are able to purchase an owl, cat, or toad, one of the three pets first year Hogwarts students are allowed to bring with them. There are different types of each pet and I bought a barn owl. Later on in this chapter, you are able to find your wand, or should I say have your wand find you? You take a very interesting quiz that helps Ollivander find your wand. During this part, you also learn about Ollivander himself and wand types. My wand is 12 and 1/2 inches, rowan, with a phoenix feather core!

In Chapter 7, the Sorting takes place. You take another quiz that will place you into 1 of the 4 houses, Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, or Slytherin. My favorite aspect about the quizes in Pottermore are that they do not ask obvious questions. Nothing like, what animal would you say represents you? A. Lion, B. Badger, C. Eagle, D. Snake. The questions asked are things such as, what potion would you most like to create? Love, Wisdom, Power, or Glory. Another interesting question was, what creature would you most like to study? Centaurs, Goblins, Merpeople, Ghosts, Vampires, or Werewolves. After taking the quiz, I was Sorted into…

Slytherin. I’m still trying to accept this. I really would have liked to have been placed into Ravenclaw. It’s funny, while I was taking the quiz, I was thinking not Slytherin, not Slytherin. However, as soon as I received my House, the site went down and has not been up since. Maybe since it went down right at that moment, I’ll get to retake the Sorting quiz (hopefully!). But Slytherins are said to be ambitious, shrewd, cunning, strong leaders, and achievement-oriented. And there are worse things then being a Slytherin…I could have been a Hufflepuff (just kidding…a little).

The only downside to Pottermore is that, currently, there is no music or sound effects on the site. I have seen several other Pottermore members comment on this and also, this is only beta testing. Pottermore will most likely add music before it’s official launch in October. And if not, just pull up your iTunes and play the Harry Potter soundtracks in the background. The only other thing is that some of the backstories are lacking. I understand, there’s only so much on author can create and I’m not critiquing J.K. Rowling at all (believe me I love her imagination and creativity). However, some of the back stories are just of certain characters and very vague such as several of the students during the Sorting chapter. For example, you click on one of the students’ names and all that is stated is so and so is a first year whatever. I understand that there may not be back stories to these characters, but then I wouldn’t have posted them on the site. And some of the more intricate characters and items do not have the most informative back stories either. But nonetheless, I’ve still just begun Pottermore, who knows what’s to come!

I’m very excited for the site to come back up and to see what else is in store. Overall, it is a great experience and is magical for fans old and young and even people who may have never before expressed interest in the Harry Potter series. You will definately want to check out Pottermore when it launches in October!

Sorry I haven’t written in a while, but I’ve been busy with school. Anyway, this past weekend I went home for Labor Day and I had a great time.

Saturday, I went to an annual cross country invitational that my high school runs in, so I got to see my friends. But it was weird not running in the race and I actually wished I was still on my high school cross country team (sentimental I guess). Later that night, me and a couple friends went to see Shark Night 3D, which was…interesting. Some of the acting and dialogue were cheesy, but the plot was interesting, yet disturbing. Fortunately, parts of this movie were actually made for 3D. I hate all the movies that come out in 3D, because they’re really not meant for 3D. To me, a 3D movie is when things in the movie actually jump out at you like in Spy Kids 3D or the 3D shows at Disney. Lately, 3D movies are just in front of you, but not really engaging you in the movie. But in Shark Night 3D, there are a couple scenes that sharks really jump out at you, so watch out!

Sunday, I went to a family friend’s annual Labor Day party which was great because I got to see some of my other friends that I haven’t seen since this summer. We left somewhat early because I had packing to do and we wanted to eat a nice family dinner at home before I left on Monday. Before dinner though, I went to the Verizon Store and upgraded to the iPhone 4! I love it, but probably spent way too much money on it because I bought the 32 gigabyte iPhone along with a phone case and screen protectors. I figure it’s better safe than sorry considering I shattered my iPod Touch back in June when I dropped it for the first time ever!

But, now I’m in Pittsburgh and it actually feels good to be back. This past weekend was fun and I got to see my friends. Also, my friend and I recoreded the music for our next video and filmed it. We’re missing 1 or 2 scenes, but hopefully I’ll get them tomorrow so I can edit it and put it up on Youtube sometime tomorrow!

As you may know, I’m in the process of writing a book. I’ve been working on it since the middle of July and I am (or was) about 60 pages into it. However, there was a small dilemma last night…

I had connected my external hard drive to my laptop so I could back up my story on it (in case anything were to happen to it). I backed it up successfully and then went to do some homework.

Later that night, I decided to write some more, but when I clicked on my story, I saw that about 17 pages were missing. Ohhhh.

As it turned out, silly me copied my previously backed up version of the story (which was 17 pages ago) from my hard drive and replaced it on my actual laptop. There I was, freaking out at 11:30 at night because I really did not feel like re-typing my story (also how was I supposed to remember what I wrote on all 17 pages I saved over?). Luckily, handy dandy Google was there to save me! I spent 20 minutes searching for methods to restore a previously saved version of my document before I finally found on that worked!

I discovered that you have to right click on the document and click on the properties button. From there, you click on the previous versions tab and your computer will search for previous versions. Once it has found the previous versions, you click on the version you would like to restore and click…restore!

The only downside is that the only previous version I could restore was from Sunday night, but still, it was better to only be short 7 pages than 17, right? I spent the rest of today typing what I had previously lost and saved it repeatedly. The moral of the story is….NEVER TALK ON YOUR PHONE WHILE BACKING UP FILES ONTO AN EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE!

That’s pretty much all that’s exciting in my life. Oh, I’m going home this weekend for Labor Day, so that should be fun. Me and my friends are planning on making a new video to upload to our Youtube Channel, so hopefully all will go well with that!

As I mentioned, my friends and I like to make movies as a hobby. Well, back in December, my math teacher told us if we wrote a song and performed it for our class then he would give us extra credit (extra credit in math class is always a good thing for me). The only rule was that the song had to relate to what we were learning in math class: trigonometric functions. This was great except I had one issue; I cannot sing to save my life! How was I expected to get extra credit if I couldn’t sing in front of my class. Luckily, I had an idea.

I went home and began writing the lyrics to a math song, which just happened to be a parody of “We R Who We R” by Ke$ha. I texted my friends and asked if they would help me with my song after I had finished writing the lyrics and they agreed. They came up to my house and, with the help of Audacity, I was able to record them singing the math song and then mix it with the actual music of “We R Who We R”. The end result turned out to be a success and we made a music video to show to my teacher. In the end, we had created a (funny?) music video and I had received my extra credit!

Earlier this week, my friends and I had decided to release the video on Youtube. I created a Youtube Channel and uploaded our math music video. If you’re interested, you can watch the video here, and if you like what you see subscribe to my channel! Also, if you’d like you can follow me on Twitter!

PS- I’m the teacher in the video!

I’m new to Tumblr, so here it goes; my first post. My name’s Rob and I am currently a freshman at Duquesne University. Some things I like are music, running, and hanging with friends. I have liked writing since I was little and I’m actually working on a book. Me and my friends also have been making videos for around 5 or 6 years; just another hobby of mine. I’m no actor so I just direct and film them. Sometimes our videos are funny and sometimes they’re just stupid, but everyone has their own opinion. I’m also into nutrition and I have been living vegetarian for a little over a year. That’s pretty much everything you need to know about me. I’ll most likely be incorporating my interests into my blog posts so if you don’t like what you read, then don’t follow me. If there’s anything else you want to know about me, just ask!