OddballGreg - Ridiculous Pain Remedies

Ah, dentists. Nothing screams out pain and terror like having an automated drill stuck in your mouth.

If you happen to be human, which you probably are, then you are most likely familiar with the unfortunate sensation that is pain. You've probably also gone to some interesting lengths to deal with it. Lets talk about that.

Right now I'm sitting typing with one hand while I attempt to pretend that the right side of my mouth is not driving me crazy as two of my teeth compete to be where my gum is. The sensation is comparable to taking a flap of skin from anywhere on your body between a pair of pliers and applying significant pressure for about half a day at a time. (For added pleasure, chewing on that side of my mouth is comparable to clamping the aforementioned pliers down as hard as possible.)

So as you do in situations like these, I thought it might be humorous to browse the whimsical internet in search of some mystical pain remedy, considering my anti-drugs stance with life. (I don't like the idea of addictions, and thus only take pills as an absolute last resort.) Of course, me being me, I can't think about a single subject, and researched the cures they have for ALL kinds of pain.

What did I find? About everything you'd expect to find on the internet. Hanging magnets from your ears for headaches, botox injections, homeopathy (pffffft. Good for the placebo effect.), meditation, sniffing apples, swearing, dreaming about sex, and probably thousands more ridiculous cures that you can think of. Sure there may be credence to some of these solutions, and perhaps some of the more herbal solutions such as cloves soaked in whiskey have some founding, but for the most part, I found exactly what I expected to find on the internet when googling anything with the term "Ridiculous" in the bar:

Basically, anything anyone decided was funny, worth reading, or effective click-bait to gain view for their website. Too bad my mouth still hurts. I think I'll go back to dulling the pain with measured doses of rum and coke until my next dentist visit. I'm sure he'll understand.

In any case, that's about all that's worth mentioning. If you don't think you've heard enough ridiculous remedies, click this link and wait for your brain cells to start commiting suicide. That should cure you of that. On the other hand, if you happen to have any effective pain rememdies, do be sure to let me know down in the comments below, or via Facebook/Twitter. We here at TCSA love to hear your feedback (And pain cures). And of course, if you enjoy finding out about awesome stuff on the web and world then do please be sure to like the Official TCSA Facebook page and/or follow us on Twitter using the associated buttons on the bar to the left to get all the latest posts as they're published. Also, do be sure to share posts you enjoyed with your friends as it helps us out a great deal. Regardless of what you do, I thank you for having taken the time to read this post; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again soon.

Rest easy my friends.

OddballGreg - 10 Humorously Strange YouTube Videos

This adorable still was taken from here. It's impossible to not feel happy when you see this fluffy critter.

Sometimes, I spend my days doing productive things like learning how to make games, or learning how to design websites, or learning how to write better blogposts. Other days I watch ridiculous video's on YouTube and wonder why I haven't gotten anything done?

So, naturally, I'd make a blog post about the things that made me not write a blog post. Makes sense right? (Of course it does.) So without further ado, here are 10 Humorously Strange YouTube videos that I think are worth mentioning for some reason.

1. "Pink Fluffy Unicorns Dancing On Rainbows" by FluffyMixer

This one should be obvious if you're a long time reader of the TCSA blog. Why? Because I have a massive Unicorn obsession for no apparent reason, and find this song extremely adorable. Few things are as effective at brightening my mood as this rather strange song is.

2. "[SFM] Off Limits" by an0nymooose

You ever have those moments of pure: "What the hell did I just witness?" This extremely strange video made with the Source Filmmaker left me in a state of open-mouthed stupor before cracking up into a laugh that clearly dictated just how strange this video is. As they say: "Boredom Kills."

3. "asdfmovie" by TomSka

Technically a series of video's rather than just one, the asdfmovie's have done several things, not the least made me question my sanity as well as that of my friends as we continue to quote these infernally odd skit's, years after we first saw them. If you like strange people, simply say "Hello Mine Turtle" to people when you meet them. If they reply "Hello" in a squeaky voice, they are probably fairly odd.

4. "Defuse On The Fly CS:GO [SAXXY 2014]" by Deviant Picture Films

This one makes the list for taking what seems like a completely serious setting and making it completely ridiculous without you realizing it. Counter Strike matches typically involve the terrorists placing the bomb at the site and defending it. The mental process that must have gone into: "What if we put the bomb... on a chicken?" is surely a wonder to behold.

5. "GUNMAN STYLE - (ASIAN WESTERN PARODY)" by Jervey Hou

Gunman Style? That doesn't sound similar to any hit YouTube song releases by South Korean pop stars from 2012 does it? If it does, I can't remember. Of course, Asian cowboys and blue eyed Ninja's brawling to a western themed parody of Gangnam Style is already funny, but when you have water pistol gunfights and dramatic self-sacrifice by fake-mustache wearing teddy bears, this get some what strange quickly.

6. "Dot Dot Dot (Official Video HD)" by Ricepirate

Perhaps only humorous if you've ever seen the Newgrounds comment section, this particular video was made due, from what I can gather at any rate, due to the maker laughing hysterically at the awful grammar of a strangely outraged gamer who seemed disgusted at the features of one of the game submissions. In any case, Ricepirate's delivery is sure to have you laughing as you question why on earth someone would bother getting so worked up over a free game.

7. "Neg's Urban Sports: Urban Sprinting" by Silmano

While technically not the property of Silmano, I'm pretty sure if someone had a problem with this video being on YouTube they'd have said something. (Which they haven't, since it's been on YouTube longer than I have.) Copyright aside, one probably questions just how bored you have to be to intentionally make mall-cops chase you in the name of Urban Sports. Or trying to smoke as quickly as possible before a bouncer chucks you out of the non-smoking establishment. Or just acting like a complete mong to make someone move away from somewhere. (Those are some of the other Urban Sports from "Neg") Either way, it's pretty funny to watch him try.

8. "Team Fortress 2: Heavy sing Baby(Feat. Scoutacris)" by Reznov's Channel

Hey, I heard some Canadian kid did a cover of this song. (Teehee) Jokes at Mister Beaver *cough* Bieber's expense aside, anyone familiar with the Team Fortress 2 characters will likely find this rendition of Baby strangely amusing.

9. "How To Use a Public Restroom" by Schmoyoho

Ever made a friend in a public restroom? Me neither, but apparently it happens... musically, with woman in the male restroom trying to access the Wi-Fi while the uncomfortable visitor sings about the bathroom's acoustics. Quite simply, this s*** is weird. It's also oddly funny in that: "No bloody way" sort of way.

10. "The Assumption Song - Oney Cartoons" by OneyNG

A song I remember from back when I was in Primary school, this song is a guaranteed corruption o' meter for your mind. Do you know what comes next? If so, then this song is probably going to be stuck in your head for a while as you giggle mischievously at just how hard the creator tried to make the innuendo's obvious. 

Of course, there are probably thousands more absolutely strange and funny videos on YouTube that you probably (hopefully?) think are worth mentioning. If so, do be sure to let us know down in the comments below, or via Facebook/Twitter. We here at TCSA love to hear your feedback. And of course, if you enjoy finding out about awesome stuff on the web and world then do please be sure to like the Official TCSA Facebook page and/or follow us on Twitter using the associated buttons on the bar to the left to get all the latest posts as they're published. Also, do be sure to share posts you enjoyed with your friends as it helps us out a great deal. Regardless of what you do, I thank you for having taken the time to read this post; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again soon.

Enjoy the videos my friends.

OddballGreg - The Adventures Of A Programming Novice

The first header image to ever feature 2 images in one. WOW! Also, great drawing skills no? Teehee

Programming is not hard. In fact, programming is, for all intents and purposes, designed to be as easy as possible for the programmer. What is hard, however, is actually learning everything you need to know to do it. Let's talk about that.

A few blogposts back, I spoke about the fun I had learning HTML, CSS and Javascript online. This, interestingly enough, spurred an interest in expanding my knowledge of programming and scripting and led to what has been a very interesting week of learning since that post. (It has also been somewhat frustrating, but i'll get to that in a second.)

So what exactly have I been doing in all this time? EVERYTHING. In these past few days, I have tried my hand at PHP, VB, Java, C, C++, C# and Python. (I have in the past tried out Ruby On Rails and Lua of course.) What's interesting though, is that none of these languages can actually be called "the best" or "the worst", as they all have their pro's and con's to use in various situations and circumstances.

The most interesting thing to note is that these programming languages are, in most cases, designed to be fairly intuitive in their design. As I said in my Web Design post mentioned earlier, one of the most integral parts to understanding why you're supposed to do certain things in a programming language is understanding why it was designed that way. (For me at any rate, parrot (or "rote") learning has always had a cumulative success rate of "almost failure" for me, as shown by my 40% maths pass at the end of High School. Fun fact, I can do calculus and circle geometry perfectly, since those were the things that were properly explained in their use and design, unlike the 'here's the formula, do this" approach everything else was give.) But I digress, a lot of my time was taken up reading the thought process that went into the design of these programming languages.

Now, while I'm not going to spit out the definitions word for word, the programming languages I listed above are what they refer to as "High Level Languages", which were designed for the purpose of making it easier to create larger and more complex programs, while maintaining a relative degree of cross platform portability. The reason for this is that a computer cannot actually read these language by default. If you have any knowledge of programming, you probably understand that you need a "compiler" in order to make the code that you have written into something that the computer can run. The reason for this is that the compiler takes the code you've written and translates it into "machine language" which your CPU and can understand and perform.

Allow me to just reiterate what that implies: before there was C++ and Java and etc, people were writing programs directly in MACHINE LANGUAGE. Trust me, learning a high level language is far preferable to writing out "10110000 01100001" just to say that "A= 97"(Though there was also Assembly Language, but that had it's own caveats like only working for the CPU it was written for.)

That considered, it can still be a somewhat steep learning curve to climb before you're programming things yourself. The hardest part of learning is figuring out the syntax, which is fairly unique to each language. (Similar made languages like C, C++ and C# do not apply.) Take the following C++ code for example:

  // #include "stdafx.h"
  #include <iostream>

  int main()
  {
  using namespace std;
  int x;

  // print the value of x to the screen (dangerous, because x is uninitialized)
  cout << x << endl;
  }

"int main()" is the main function of the program being told to initialize. Inside the curly brackets, the code is effectively telling the computer its using "namespace" which allows it to use the "cout" and "endl" functions, which are effectively "Console out" and "end line" respectively. They are functions that affect what is going on in the console as you run the program. (If you don't know what a console is, you're likely out of your depth by this point and wondering why you're bothering reading this. I applaud you making it this far though.)

In any case, the ironic thing is that a common saying on the internet is to start programming with Python, as it is a far more literal language and uses terms like "Print" instead of "cout" and various things like that. Perhaps I'm weird, but I found C++ to make more sense than Python due to how C++ is written, and promptly decided that Python wasn't really worth the effort yet. Maybe later I'll try again, but I think i'll go with what makes sense to my brain for now.

Funnily enough, the most frustrating part of this entire ordeal was not, in fact, learning how to write in these convoluted languages, but actually just getting the necessary programs to efficiently write and compile them. In a conversation I had with my good friend @yestinj about Web Design, who comically pointed out that my first mistake was that I was writing javascript in the first place, it was suggested that I check out getting and IDE, or Integrated Development Environment.

What does an IDE do you ask? It basically makes your life as a programmer as easy as it can. IDE's come packaged with compilers for High Level Languages, plugins and addon's, and are designed to make the code easier to read and write so that you make less mistakes and as such write a better program. All in all, good programs to have... provided they work as intended. In these past few days, I have installed Netbeans, Intellij, Notepad++ and Microsoft Visual Studio in order to test out their uses as IDE's.

The verdict: if you don't need to program (hobby and professional interest does count as a need), and have a short temper, steer clear. Netbeans, which came lauded for being open-source and highly effective for what it does, was perhaps the buggiest thing I had ever tried to install. 10 Error logs generated just from me trying to install the program, a further 50 in my repeated attempts to get it working in any way once I finally got it installed.*facedesk* While probably a good program and my issues a isolated incident, I cannot actually tell you if it's worth using since my 3 hours of troubleshooting were rather ineffectual, and Netbeans remains useless on my harddrive.

By contrast, Intellij was the most miraculously functional IDE I tried to install, (if you consider that Notepad++ is not technically an IDE), taking all of 5 minutes to run and go. Plugins, options for use of many languages beside Java, and a clean and efficient design made me quite impressed with Intellij, definitely worth exploring if you are researching IDE's.

Notepad++ is not actually an IDE, though does have a fair couple features similar to them. Technically a writing program, Notepad++ is useful for it's numbered line editor and support for High Level Language syntax in which is highlights the aspects of and helps you to write in any chosen language. While perhaps not overly useful for writing code like C++, this is a Web Designers dream in my opinion. Just thought I'd mention it for that if nothing else.

Finally, we come to Visual Studio from Microsoft. Common opinion on Visual Studio is that it's not the best IDE you could use, mainly because it's buggy. In all honesty, I don't think anyone would fault you for avoiding it, if just to avoid downloading it at a snails pace. *facedesk* The original VS Express 2010 download is only 80mb... which proceeded to download at 0KB per second and only finished 24 hours later... Consider me irritated. Then, having done that, the very first program I try to compile, the longtime "Hello World" gag that almost ever programmer has done, fails to compile because of one of those aforementioned bugs. Cue a 400mb download of a service pack.... at 0kb per second. While homicide is by no means a funny subject, I think I was seriously considering it by that point. 3 days later, I was finally able to start using Visual Studio Express. It's not terrible, and is clearly designed to be simple to use, especially for a native Windows user. Too bad it's such a pain to get to that point.

All in all, it has been a rather fascinating experience in these past few days with regards to expanding my knowledge about how computers function, and look forward to researching and learning more about it all as time moves forward.

Of course, I'm sure I've probably done or said something stupid in this post or my efforts, and as such, fully expect to be told such. If you're someone who wishes to do so, or simply have some questions about anything I spoke about in this article, then please feel free to tell us down in the comments below, or via Facebook/Twitter as we here at TCSA love you hear from you. And if you happen to have any friends who are interested in computers or learning programming, consider sharing this post with them. I'm sure they'll appreciate the thought. Better yet, if you yourself would like to read more interesting articles like this one, consider liking the Official TCSA Facebook page and/or following us on Twitter in order to get all the latest posts, as they're published. Regardless of what you do, I thank you for having taken the time to read this article; hope that you have/had and absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again soon.

Happy programming my friends.

JovialJMan - 100 Posts Special

"Because writing 100 posts is comparable to having a birthday... right?" - OddballGreg
"Who brought the 100 candles?" - JovialJman

98 Days ago (on the 18th of June), we started writing daily blog posts. Today, we've written 100 posts, (imagine that ...) Let's talk about some of the interesting things regarding the journey here, and crack a few jokes too.

Did you notice that there are more posts then days? (I didn't until yesterday). The reason for that is the fact that OddballGreg published 3 posts on one day, (I think he got a bit too excited ...) There have also been 2 days which the post were a bit too late and were not counted and indexed for that day; Greg's post yesterday ,being one, as he had no internet access (I am sure he facedesked when he realized that he could not post it on time). The other being Greg's Blogging Music post which went up at midnight but was seen as the next day.

This is my 19th personal post , and boy has it been a strange journey here. I have had the very kind help of Greg, to help improve my writings, and he has said it has improved, (let us know in the comments if you agree or disagree). Ideas are limitless but when I have to think of a post for a day, then all the options seem to disappear, like magic, (somewhat strange for a novice magician)

TCSA has been going for 38 days, if you start counting from Greg's last Storytime Sunday, which, of course, I do, (that is over a full month of OddballGreg and JovialJman's joint ramblings on TSCA, (who would have thought it's been that long).

On 30th of July 2014 OddballGreg achieved 1000 total pageviews, (OddballGreg was all by his lonesome then). Today we are sitting at ± 2600. What an achievement! I would like to thank each and every one of you who have shown your support. Thank you.

Let's recap on some of the post that has seen a fair amount of attention (their page views are accurate as of the 23rd of September) :

The Magic of Performing Magic (75 views)

This was my 4th post and a somewhat follow up to my first post, The Disillusion Of Magic, which was recommended by a dear friend of mine, Clinton. I am rather passionate about the topic, which I really think shows in the amount of views it has gotten. It is my favorite post I have written so far as it allowed me to talk about a favorite pastime of mine.

Parkour and Muscle Damage (60 views)
"A story about a younger me jumping around on things, swinging on things, and hurting myself like you would expect. Also, turns out that parkour is still really fun even though I tend to hurt myself. I quite enjoyed telling this story about my usual bad ideas, and was quite proud when Parkour South Africa shared the article on their Facebook community."-OddballGreg

Tabletop Roleplaying Games (44 views)

"I may be a nerd, I may play Dungeons and Dragons, but so do a ton of other people in world, even though we have computers and videogame consoles. People really enjoyed reading this article, and I really enjoyed writing about a really awesome hobby. In fact, perhaps Jerome and I will write an article about the escapades of us playing DnD eventually." - OddballGreg

Statistics (And The People That Believe Them) (37 views)

"You probably still believe statistics, but since they make up such a large part of our lives, we can probably let you off the hook for that. Apparently, a fair percentage of people like reading about the potential statistics have for being wrong, but hey, percentages can be fudged now can't they?" - OddballGreg

The Truth About Spongebob (34 views)

This post was one that was recommended or suggested by my sister. I was struggling for an idea on the day and she said Spongebob is a representation of the 7 deadly sins, and thus the post had formed. I was still learning how to write a post with more accuracy so Oddball had to help a bit with that one. While doing the research for that one I came about a fair deal of other cartoons and their supposed connotations.

With the top page views as they are, if we were to speak about Spongebob giving magicians statistics of Role Playing games, after his accidental muscle damage from parkour, would that be the most popular post so far? maybe, (let us know down in the comments, what your idea would be for a popular post). Geocaching (Glorified Treasure Hunting) is less then a week old, but it has already climbed to the 6th position of the most viewed post. It goes to show that if the right audience is achieved, the amount of views should go up, and since there are people out there ,that I know of, that would like to start or already have started Geocaching they find it somewhat interesting and share it with others.

We have had views from many different places, here is a list of some; The United States, South Africa, United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, Netherlands, Turkey, Canada, Kenya, Italy, Ireland, France and the Philippines. We have a very diverse audience but it is scary to think that we have gotten a few more view from America, than South africa, they represent about 44% and 41% of our total pageviews respectively.

Do you have any thing that you would like us to talk about, or have any questions, please ask away down in the comments, over Facebook or on Twitter. Thank you for taking the time to read today's post. If you know of anyone that you think might like the blog, please share this with them, as I am sure they could find it of some interest. If you would like to see the newest posts as they are published, please like us on Facebook and/or follow us on Twitter. Thank you for your support and I hope you have/had a wonderful day. I shall write again overmorrow

Enjoy National Heritage Day (aka. National Braai Day) tomorrow buddies.

OddballGreg - Reddit ("Front Page Of The Internet")

Welcome to http://www.reddit.com/, front page of the internet, also the new cause for my sleep issues and general lack of time.

Reddit, "the front page of the internet", and the new reason why I'm suffering from sleep deprivation. As a community based media website, Reddit has become a very large part of the internet for the way it allows like minded people to gather on the internet around any variety of subjects.

A couple of days ago I took it upon myself to explore Reddit, (as you've probably figured by now I hope.) Also, a couple days ago, I knew what it was like to have free time. Too bad Reddit is actually such an unexpectedly fun website to be on, in a variety of ways, and is unfortunately sucking up my life as badly as YouTube was/is. But before I get to that, allow me to explain what exactly Reddit is.

Reddit is something of a social media website... loosely. It's not quite like Facebook or Twitter which are centered around the people you choose to friend and follow, but instead is based upon what is referred to as "Subreddits" which are essentially self-maintained communities based on specific interests, hobbies or just general things. Do you like making websites? Perhaps you'll enjoy the /r/HTML subreddit, or if staring at confusing tags and words on a computer aren't you thing, maybe you enjoy /r/books instead? Or if you simply enjoy a funny story of some REALLY bad luck, perhaps /r/TIFU is more to your liking. (Today I... *cough* "messed" Up)

Regardless of your interests or choice in humor, Reddit has an absolute wealth of information if you look in the right places. My personal time sinks have been in some very unexpected places ranging from /r/Space which discusses everything to do with the "great unknown", (*cough* nerd), to the hilariously psychotic musings of /r/AskReddit as they pose the question: "How would you dispose of he body?" (I'll give you a hint, the winner is the guy that already works in a crematorium.) There's also my new favorite place on the internet: /r/PhotoshopBattles, in which the inhabitants enjoy taking the time out of their days to do things like make a cat catching a butterfly do some very funny things. (Pictures Below)

"Oh... MY BUTTERFLY!"

"I will mention that this is humor and in no way disrespect to anyone's religion or beliefs."

I thought it was kangaroos that did the boxing?

Yeah no... I'm sure you can appropriate any terrible pun you like to this image without my help.

 In any case, apart from being rather terribly funny, Reddit is also an absolutely wonderful place to discuss things with like-minded and experienced individuals. In my case, the ability to research how to do various HTML aspects and seek help when necessary has been extremely useful once or twice. In addition to that, there's also AMA's, (Ask Me Anything's), which are commonly hosted by notable people in the world so that people can get the straight answers that they want on any specific subject from someone who knows about it. Some of the people I really enjoy watching on YouTube like Quill18 and Michael Steven from Vsauce have hosted AMA's of their own on Reddit. (Too bad that was before I knew what Reddit was actually about.)

In any case, if I seem distracted from now on for some reason, I'm probably browsing Reddit or laughing at ridiculous photoshopped images... or... you know... Space stuff. (Teehee) Do you have a favourite subreddit that you think is really awesome, or simply think that I have too much time on my hands, then be sure to let us here at TCSA know down in the comments below or via Facebook/Twitter as we love to hear from you guys. Better yet, if you have some friends looking for a great and near boundless website full of communities and information, then be sure to share this article with them as I'm sure they'll appreciate the info. Of course, if you would like to read more articles like this one yourself, then do be sure to like the Official TCSA Facebook page and/or follow us on Twitter using the associated buttons on the bar to the left so that you can get all the latest posts, as they're published. Regardless of what you do, I thanks you for having taken the time to read this post; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again soon.

Happy Redditing mio compadres.

Storytime Sunday - Blue Moon Rising By Simon R Green

Hello and welcome to Storytime Sunday; the day of the week where I try out the reviewing of a book, and then hope that I didn't spoil anything overmuch.

The book cover is probably the property of Simon Green or whoever published the book. I'm not sure which. (also, notice there's a unicorn in the art... Teehee.

As always, my want for adventure has me ever wanting to try new things. As a result, I decided I would like to do one of my typical informal reviews of the book "Blue Moon Rising" By Simon R Green, which was suggested to me by an absolutely wonderful person I met recently. I'll try not to spoil it.

Blue Moon Rising a medieval fantasy story written by Simon R Green which follows the story of the Prince Rupert, Princess Julia, A Dragon and the character that effectively sold me on this book, Prince Ruperts trusty  yet sharp-tongued unicorn steed in the lands of the "Forest Kingdom". (Seriously, a talking unicorn with a keen wit. What more reason do you need to read a book?)

First and foremost, I suppose I should say that this is actually is rather good book. I am a frequent reader of books, but am notorious for putting off my finishing of them if they do not interest me sufficiently. I finished Blue Moon Rising's 377 pages in roughly 3 days, beside all my usual blog writing and my other strange machinations. So take it that the book is fun, unique and original enough to keep my interest firmly held. (Seriously, when you say one more page at 11PM and find yourself reading at 3AM, it's probably a good book... or you're an insomniac.)

With that in mind, I'm going to attempt to describe the aspects I liked about the book, namely the aforementioned fun, originality and uniqueness. When Simon Green wrote this book, I find it highly likely that he was as tired of the same, worn out tropes in fantasy novels and stories as I am. Between pointedly discarding the idea of a perfect knight riding on a majestic quest to slay a dragon, to having a dragon who's horde is nothing more than a collection of butterfly's, it's clear that he was enjoying breaking all the tropes that are commonly found in stories which revolve around a character going on a quest to rid the land of evil.

Perhaps something that further lends itself to the book, the characters themselves are very much outside of what I would refer to as "Cookie Cutter" in terms of personality, with each character feeling well established and motivated. Perhaps a work of effort or talent, but no character feels like someone you would have read about or thought of in another story, lending an aspect of unpredictability to their actions which makes reading further all the more enjoyable.

And of course, creativity goes a fair way into making this book fun to read, while perhaps nowhere as complicated as reading The Tale Of The Malazan Book Of The Fallen, enough effort has been put into creating a new mythos and history for this book to use in it's world, making it that much more interesting to read as you learn about the events that made the land into what it is, and the characters into who they are.

As such, all in all, Blue Moon Rising is a fairly entertaining book with some interesting twists, a fair deal of fun and humour, a good style of writing that left little feeling under or overdone, and a talking unicorn. Despite some occasional pacing issues, Simon Green is sure to have you enraptured with this tale of magic, friendship, love, and more than a few cheeky nods towards common tropes in fantasy novels and stories. (And a smart mouthed unicorn. You cannot forget him.) I would highly recommend this book to anyone that enjoys fantasy stories, or simply books in general.

In any case, I hope that you have perhaps found something new and fun to read now, or perhaps enjoyed finding out what I thought of the book. (Teehee) If you enjoyed the review, and would like to see me do more like it, make sure to tell me so in the comments section below, or over Facebook and Twitter as some like to do. If you have any bookworm friends who need something new to read, perhaps consider sharing this review with them so that they can perhaps also enjoy Simon Green's lovely stories (And the unicorn. Very important!).Of course, if you would like to see more articles like this written by me, be sure to like my Facebook page and/or follow me on Twitter so that you can get the latest articles, as I post them. Regardless of what you do, I thank you very much for taking the time to read this; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again tomorrow.

Farewell my friends.