by Stone Marshall | Dec 31, 2014 | Awesome Book News |
A seal found stranded 20 miles from the ocean in a farmer’s field has been transferred to a rehabilitation center, where staff have decided to name the animal Dumbledore, after the famed Harry Potter character.
The seal was discovered in Newton-le-Willows, near St. Helens in Merseyside on Monday morning, according to the
Telegraph, after becoming desperately lost and clambering into the field from a nearby brook. A dog-walker stumbled upon the seal, which authorities described as “distressed,” around 9:45 a.m., sparking a rescue operation that included emergency services and the RSPCA.
The animal was transferred to the RSPCA’s specialist seal treatment facility in East Winch, Norfolk, on Tuesday. Alison Charles, manager of RSPCA East Winch, noted that staff had given the seal a new name, based on their current theme.
“The big lad is now called Dumbledore. He is much more settled but needs a lot of vet attention in the coming days,” she observed. “He has horrible thick nasal discharge and still looks very sorry for himself but other than that he is quite lively and quite large so we need to handle him very carefully with our expert team of adult seal handlers.”
Dumbledore suffered a head injury sometime during the adventure that brought him inland, and though staff at the facility are optimistic that the seal will make a full recovery, they caution that it is still far too early to tell how he will respond to long-term care.“He certainly seems lively now, and was pretty listless when he first came into our care, so that’s a good sign,” Charles noted. “Until we get the blood tests back (which will be after Christmas as the labs are shut) we won’t know more about his overall condition.”
The facility names the animals that come into their care according to a popular theme, according to the Independent. The current theme centers around Harry Potter characters, which is why the staff decided to call the seal Dumbledore.
Over the last few years, a colony of seals off the English coast have formed an unlikely bond with a local diver. As the Inquisitr previously reported, several videos of the interactions between Ben Burville and the seals have gone viral.Dumbledore will remain at the seal treatment facility into the new year, as staff caution it will take some time before he is released back into the wild.
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by Stone Marshall | Dec 31, 2014 | Awesome Book News |
Even though the beloved series technically ended back in 2007 when the seventh and final book was published, author J.K. Rowling has had a hard time pulling herself away from the world of Harry Potter and has recently been adding short stories set in the Potter universe to the official fansite Pottermore. This started back in the summer, then another piece was added for Halloween, then Rowling announced that she was going to add a short story a day for each of the twelve days of Christmas. Now that Christmas has come and gone, here’s some of what we learned about Harry Potter and company from the new writing.
All About Inferi
Inferi are the reanimated corpses of dead people, wizards or Muggles, that Voldemort uses as part of his Army to guard the Horcruxes that contain pieces of his soul. In the new information about the mythical creatures of her creation, Rowling explains why she chose not to call the creatures “zombies” even though that’s what they most closely resemble. Partly she didn’t want to invoke the African and Caribbean voodoo tradition from which the concept of the zombie comes and which would be out of place in Harry Potter’s London.
“Lastly, zombies have been represented and reinterpreted on film so often in the last fifty years that they have a whole raft of associations that were of no use to me. I’m part of the ‘Thriller’ generation; to me, a zombie will always mean Michael Jackson in a bright red bomber jacket,” the author wrote.
Snape Is Not a Vampire
Similarly to how she felt about including zombies in her fantasy world, Rowling mostly kept away from vampires when creating the lore of Harry Potter. The writer pointed out that vampires are mostly a folklore tradition from Eastern Europe and that she tried to stick to mythology based in Britain when creating the major aspects of the Potter universe. The only vampire that Potter meets in the books is a character named Sanguini in Half-Blood Prince, who just makes a funny appearance at a party.
Vampires do exist in Harry Potter’s world and he learns about them in his classes at Hogwarts, but he never really interacts with any. Rowling reveals that she considered including a vampire character named Trocar early on, but the character quickly disappeared from early drafts of her notes. The author also used the opportunity while she was on the subject to dismiss a rumor amongst fans that Snape is a vampire. “While it is true that he has an unhealthy pallor, and is sometimes described as looking like a large bat in his long black coat, he never actually turns into a bat, we meet him outside the castle by daylight, and no corpses with puncture marks in their necks ever turn up at Hogwarts,” she wrote to do away with the rumor.
Ghost-Plot About Florean Fortescue
The character Florean Fortescue was the subject of a ghost-plot, or a side plot, written by Rowling that never made it into the final Harry Potter books. Through explaining why, Rowling gave a look into her writing process and some of the difficulties inherent in writing such a massive series with so many characters and so much going on. Rowling says that the character is the owner of an ice cream shop in Diagon Alley who Harry was to meet in the third book, Prisoner of Azkaban.
Rowling planned to use Florean and his deep knowledge about medieval wizards as a way to give Harry clues about the location of the Hallows, as Florean’s historical knowledge would be useful to Potter’s quests for various objects. As she wrote, Rowling made Fortescue get kidnapped by Voldemort’s army with the intention of having Harry rescue him, but the characters Phineas Nigellus Black and Lady Grey ended up being used to convey those clues. “He is not the first wizard whom Voldemort murdered because he knew too much (or too little), but he is the only one I feel guilty about, because it was all my fault,” Rowling wrote.
There Are LGBT and Jewish Students at Hogwarts
The information didn’t come in any of the new writing on Pottermore, but from fan questions posed to Rowling on Twitter. During all the hubbub about Christmas, one fan asked Rowling on the social media site if there are any Jewish students at Hogwarts. Rowling responded by naming one specific Jewish wizard she remembers placing at the school, but also saying there are more Jewish students at the school she doesn’t know by name. Rowling said “But of course” when another fan asked if there are LGBT students at Hogwarts as well. The author finally said that the only belief system she didn’t imagine at the school is the witchcraft-religion Wiccans, which makes sense given Wiccans practice a different sort of magic than Rowling has imagined in her fictional world.
Snape and Potter’s Parents’ Hometown
In order to give more background on some of the older characters in the books, Rowling wrote a little about where Snape and Harry’s parents, James and Lily, came from. Rowling invented the fictional working class town of Cokeworth, England to show that magic can come from the most unlikely places. “Cokeworth’s name is supposed to suggest an industrial town, and to evoke associations of hard work and grime,” Rowling said. Harry visits the town with the Dursleys in The Sorcerer’s Stone when Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon are trying to dodge the letters from Hogwarts, though it’s never made clear in the books this is the place where Harry’s parents are from. The town has at least one large factory, a river going through it, and the small homes of the working class.
The Order of Merlin’s Less-Than-Honorable History
The Order of Merlin is the highest award a member of the wizarding world can receive, with three different levels within it to signify the achievement. The award is given by the Wizengamot, which is sort of like the parliament and court of the magical world. Rowling wrote that while the Wizengamot and the award far pre-date the Ministry of Magic, unfortunately Ministry favorites are far more likely to receive the prize than is fair. Albus Dumbledore rightly received the highest honor for defeating the dark wizard Grindelwald, but Cornelius Fudge also gave himself the same award for a career that many would call into question. Sirius Black’s grandfather Arcturus Black actually bought himself an Order of Merlin by loaning the Ministry of Magic gold.
More on Malfoy
Similarly as she did for Dolores Umbridge at Halloween, Rowling wrote a longer piece fleshing out the backstory of one of Harry Potter’s biggest enemies, Draco Malfoy. Malfoy is Potter’s arch rival at school from the boys’ first days at Hogwarts. Among fans the character has become a bit of an antihero, which was aided in no small part due to the film portrayal by Tom Felton. Throughout their years at school together, Malfoy was envious of the attention Harry received both for his talent and for his famous story.
This most Potter fans would’ve already known, but Rowling fleshes out Malfoy’s confusion in the wake of the events of the final book further. He eventually marries a girl who was raised in a similarly intolerant family, but together they decide not to raise their children to believe that Muggles are scum. This is a big disappointment to Draco’s parents, but they are by that point disgraced to the lowest rung of Death Eaters. Finally, Draco maintains some fascination with the Dark Arts by collecting and holding on to Dark artifacts from his family, though he doesn’t use them. Rowling said she believes he will raise his own son in a much more tolerant manner than he was raised.
“Draco has all the dark glamour of the anti-hero; girls are very apt to romanticise such people. All of this left me in the unenviable position of pouring cold common sense on ardent readers’ daydreams as I told them, rather severely, that Draco was not concealing a heart of gold under all that sneering and prejudice and that no, he and Harry were not destined to end up best friends,” Rowling wrote.
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by Stone Marshall | Dec 30, 2014 | Minecraft News |
Not too long ago, this game made headlines due to its developer Mojang’s recent $2.5 billion acquisition by Microsoft. That’s way more than the price of recent acquisitions like Facebook’s Instagram takeover ($1 billion) and Yahoo’s Tumblr ($1.1 billion). For many over here, it came as a shock because a lot of people in Bangladesh are actually almost completely unaware of Minecraft.
WHAT IS MINECRAFT?
It’s a sandbox game. And it’s just that. You get to do and create whatever you want. Ever wanted to make a replica of your own house but with a 24/7 supply of electricity? Now you can with Minecraft. It’s like Lego for adults who can’t afford Lego. A bunch of survival elements can be thrown in. These involve Creepers which creep up on you and explode. There’s an abundance of spiders, skeletons and fish which try to kill you. Except you kill them and harvest their bones and string to build your castle on their dead bodies. Minecraft is what would happen if you were thrown in the middle of Rangpur with nothing except your bare hands to build civilisation. And if you had the work ethic of 10,000 Egyptian slaves to go with it. Unlike Terraria, which is Minecraft’s 2D action-adventure cousin of the same genre, Minecraft does not have any quests.
WHY IT’S WORTH THE PRICE TAG
According to Satya Nadella, “If you talk about STEM* education, the best way to introduce anyone to STEM or get their curiosity going on, it’s Minecraft.” But there are more factors at work over here. All over the world, kids love Minecraft. A few weeks back, I saw a post in DSD about a woman asking what platform (Xbone, PS4, PC) would be best for her eight-year-old daughter’s requests for a console to play Minecraft. This was after the kid wanted to move out of the Android version of Minecraft on her tablet. When I was eight, the maximum creativity I could express on a computer was on MS Paint and now we have kids everywhere building houses with Minecraft. For Microsoft, owning Minecraft is a statement—it’s about owning the childhood of a
generation.
THE EXTENT OF MINECRAFT’S CREATIVITY
A group of players made a computer inside Minecraft. So to speak, you can create a computer inside a world inside a computer. Although, the Minecraft computer is very basic and can only load 16 lines of code into its RAM, it’s still a feat. Now, for all the Game of Thrones fans out there, a group made an exact replica of King’s Landing. The amount of detail put into the map is insane. A lot of gamers will think that with enough people, an exact replica of Dhaka is very much possible or maybe something less ambitious like your school classroom just as you remember it. It’ll be even more fun if you can get your friends to do it along with you. For some, recreating places from memories can be an extremely rewarding pastime.
MINECRAFT IN BANGLADESH
It took me quite some to actually figure out where the Bangladeshi players are. After doing several searches on Facebook, I finally found the 50 member Facebook group “Minecrafters BD” where I was welcomed quite warmly. Here is a community that has been struggling to play together the video game they love. Their dedication is one to admire and it’s just the thing that often breeds great gaming communities. Every now and then, one of the members host private servers on their PCs but that just doesn’t cut it when you’re aiming for a large community. According to one of the members, Istiak Al Nur Niloy, “It’s nearly impossible to set up a server for 24/7 uptime let alone moderate the server to keep everything in check. We as the hosts have no admin power and no one can keep their PC running 24/7. The servers that we are hosting irregularly at the moment are enough for the community but if a time comes that when we need a 24/7 server we can always rent servers from providers like Atrinos. For now the dream of a 24/7 dedicated server sounds a bit far-fetched.”
GRAPHICS?
There’s another problem when it comes to attracting newer players who’re into flashy games to Minecraft: the graphics of the game are pretty blocky and old-school. But to that, Siam Shafiq, who hosted a Minecrafters BD server at the time, said “Overall with some time and dedication I believe Minecraft can take off in Bangladesh but only if the people judge the game by its gameplay, not its graphics. Based in a 3D world of cubes it’s only normal to have that sort of retro graphics but that’s the entire point.” But then again, if you treat each block like pixels are on a screen, a lot of detail CAN be added to the game if one is patient with the amount of blocks taken.
While Minecraft is taking off globally, very little is done over here in Bangladesh. Some of the players urge the ISPs to host a dedicated server like they do for CoD and Counter-Strike but until the community grows enough to turn the extremely stiff heads of Bangladeshi ISPs, there’s little that can be done; unless you are like Ayaan Manzur from Minecrafters BD and his friends who rent a server for Tk. 400 every month from Singapore.
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by Stone Marshall | Dec 30, 2014 | Minecraft News |
Notch now owns a $70 million Beverly Hills mansion, but we bet he’d rather live in this swank Minecraft recreation of the property…or maybe not. We can’t say what he’d really like.
Last week, Minecraft creator Notch bought a $70 million Beverly Hills mansion before Jay-Z and Beyonce could snag the property. We all stared in awe at the extravagance, but now we can stare at awe at this Minecraft recreation of the home. Notch’s life has started to come full circle; pretty soon his entire life will be inside the matrix.
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by Stone Marshall | Dec 29, 2014 | Minecraft News |
Minecraft has been making a lot of news this year with the game debuting on a number of consoles. One of the biggest news involved Mojang studio being bought by Microsoft.
The game’s 1.6.4 update was recently released exclusively on the Xbox One and Xbox 360.
This move did not surprise many as Microsoft now owns the game and will naturally look to provide updates to its own consoles first.
Earlier this year, the game debuted on next generation consoles such as the PS4 and Xbox One. A subsequent update titled “Horses” was then reported on the way. Then last week it was announced that Mojang, the studio responsible for producing the game, had launched a collaboration with Telltale Games to create a whole new game titled “Minecraft: Story Mode.”
“Story Mode” will follow the formula of other games released by Telltale such as “Game of Thrones: Iron From Ice” and “Walking Dead.” The games concentrate more on solving puzzles and decision making, which will in turn influence how events in the game play out.
As for the 1.6.4 update, it comes with a new “Tutorial World” where players can learn more about the game’s existing and new features. As for the update’s main feature, it involves the addition of horses which players can tame and ride. Additionally the horses can use their own armor.
The update also brings new enemies for the players in the forms of Witches, Wither Skeletons and Bats. Fireworks also make an appearance in this update and they are programmed in such a way that they are launched at certain times during the day.
Cinemablend says Mojang plans to release the 1.6.4 update for Playstation consoles in the U.S. shortly and it could even happen within the next few weeks. Those who have Playstation consoles in Europe have already received the update.
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