Harry Potterheads

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OK, those of you who know us well probably won’t be surprised to learn that the entire family is a bunch of Harry Potter fanatics, dating back to when the original books were written and Aunt Sally sent over an early copy of The Philosopher’s Stone from England. Since then, we’ve all devoured every book and movie and spent many family dinners arguing some of the finer plot points and meanings.

Pottermore - Privet Drive

The sign for Privet Drive at the opening scene for Pottermore.

This past weekend, a very big present dropped in our laps: the release of Pottermore, the world of Harry Potter brought to life in an interactive web site from J.K. Rowling and Sony. It has been in beta testing for almost a year, and we’ve known about it for a while, but weren’t allowed into the beta test. But when it came out on Saturday morning, plans were cancelled, computers were fired up and we all dove in.

It’s a Potterhead’s dream. You move throughout the world of Harry Potter, experiencing all the major events that he did, chapter by chapter. You explore the world through different moments, which are the major scenes of each chapter in the story. Along the way, you need to click around to find items like Chocolate Frog Cards or Galleons. There are a lot of important things to find and you need to locate them all to progress to each new moment and chapter. If you get stuck or lost, try one of the many Pottermore walkthroughs on the Internet.

We all blazed through the story pretty quickly. In under an hour. That was are only complaint about Pottermore. There’s not enough of it! You do get some great material that you won’t find in the books or movies, mostly backgrounds and stories about the places and characters. But for now, only Book 1 is available. We’ll have to wait for the rest!

Headed to Hawaii

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After a lot of discussion and debate within the family, we opted to head for Hawaii this year for a fun and relaxing vacation. We thought about a lot of different places to go, including the Caribbean and (for a brief moment) even the remote South Pacific, but after a review of several family vacation destinations, we settled on Hawaii as the best choice.

The past two years with the economy down, we tried the cheap and effective staycation concept. It was a nice way to save money but we all felt that now it’s been years since we’ve had a real vacation, so it’s time to splurge a little. Hawaii is the perfect choice, with plenty of nice beaches to relax on and enough in the way of sports and activities to keep everyone entertained for a week.

Maui Sunset

Sunset over the island of Maui in Hawaii

I think the decision was clear after we looked at some of the photos on the official tourism site for Hawaii. We were sold. We’re going to visit Maui on this trip and avoid the temptation to island-hop. After all, it’s more about enjoying some down time than boarding lots of planes.

Facebook Games

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I haven’t been playing as many Facebook games as I used to. I logged plenty of hours on FarmVille when it was popular and also played a ton of CityVille for a few months, but got bored since it was almost the same game. I then tried some different genres of games on Facebook, like some of the match-3 and arcade-style games. I tried Diamond Dash and Bejeweled Blitz, which were great because they were fast-paced and fun. Collapse Blast is another good one.

But now I’m getting kind of bored of all of them. None of the games on Facebook are as good as some of the regular games that you can buy or download. My favorite casual game is a toss-up between Peggle and Plants vs. Zombies.

Plants vs. Zombies

Plants vs. Zombies is still better than anything you'll find on Facebook.

But I’m still holding out hope for a new wave of better and more enjoyable games on Facebook. CastleVille has a lot of promise. I was reading about it on a CastleVille cheats site and it sounds like the game will have lots of great animation, storyline and characters that you meet. But then again, it might turn out to be just another update to the FarmVille/CityVille click fest. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see how it turns out.