A HEALTHIER Halloween?!?

Okay, so you know that it is Canadian/American/Somewhere Else Halloween. And even though you just AREN'T allowed to not give out candy, there are things that you would not believe are so bad for you. Read the list below, and be sure to save that candy for..... something else.

Butterfingers. They are sssoooooo good, but what gets stuck in your teeth is almost impossible to get out and with every bite I can feel diabetes coming on. Per regular-size bar it's 280 calories and 10 g. of fat. It also has a ton of hydrogenated oil, which can keep you at risk of heart disease.

Tootsie Rolls. Now, when I saw this one in the list, I nearly cried. I love Tootsie Rolls so much, but in 6 small pieces, there's 140 calories and 3 g. of fat. Not so good....

Old Dutch chips. This actually surprised me a lot. I thought Old Dutch was pretty good for you, but apparently not. 265 calories and 14 g. of fat in 25 chips. I also think that it won't be much better in any other type of non-health chip.

Cheezies. The Humpty Dumpty brand of cheezies is 290 calories and 15 grams of fat. If that's the information to the Humpty Dumpty ones, I don't think I want to see the info for Cheetos.

Sticky Candies. This is Laffy Taffy, Caramel and even Pop Rocks. There is no doubt that those all all bad, but I just knew I had to put in an extra reminder. Thankfully, nothing on this list is in MY bowl for Halloween.

So if you have any of these candies, I suggest you dump it and buy Skittles and Nestle bars. 

Happy Halloween. 

Eco-Friendlier Skiing

So, I'm a HUGE fan of skiing, and when I saw an article of eco-friendly ski equipment (unfortunately, I bought regular skiis and boots 3 weeks ago). These things you'll hear about have a more high-tech design, but are also good for the environment.

So Salomon made these new things called Sick Sticks. They're $600 and are some of the only boards that work really well in deep powder (impressive). It is also made from bamboo laminate.

Here's a new type of hoodie now from Pantagonia. It's fairly good-looking, and made from 20% recycled polyester. It's completely warm and won't start smelling bad even after you're done skiing or boarding.

Kingwood Skiis are next. They're very stylish, narrow, flexible and long, so they're very good for speed and moguls (my favourite). They are pricey, but good, and comes with bamboo cores so they're nice and smooth.

So those were the highlights of what you can expect in the sporting goods stores soon. These are all good for the environment, convenient, good quality, maybe a bit pricey but I think it will be worth it.

Halloween Costumes for all those Procrastinators

So, Halloween is coming up this Monday, and for the procrastinators who still have no idea what to be, heres some ideas on what to dress up as.

Amy Farrah Fowler. This is what I was being for halloween, and can only really work on a girl. Just get a skirt, brown wig, big glasses, collared shirt, ugly shoes and a plaid cardigan. Always carry a really neutral look, and always throw out some of Amy's own "BAZINGA"quotes. Maybe you could even convince someone to be Sheldon, or Penny.

Vampire Zombie Ninja. This just came to me out of the blue, but I thought "What's more epic than that??"  All you really need is messed up hair, green-ish skin, fangs and a torn-up karate suit. Genius, right?

The Robot-Guy in all the LMFAO music videos. You know, that random dude break-dancing and partying, he always has that gold box on his head. This one might just be the easiest costume. Paint a box gold, put some paper circles for eyes, tank-top or t-shirt and skinny jeans, maybe those dollar sign necklaces, it's simple!

Nothing, and pretend you're someone else dressed as you "Oh, I'm not Bob, I'm Teddy dressed up as Bob".

So those are a couple of ideas, feel free to check Google for any more ideas, but whatever you do, DO NOT wear regular clothes, put on pointy ears and say "Boo, I'm a cat", that just crosses a line.....

Make your own iPad Cover

Okay, so just a little while ago I was talking about the upcoming iPad, so I thought that this article I found was suitable. It's cheap, easy and fun! So for all you viewers with an iPad or other tablet, you should read on.

So there's lots of designs you can do. There's 8 different designs, so I'm just going to talk about my favourite design: the Handcrafted Fabric Case. It says in the article that it's a bit more difficult and takes a bit longer than the other designs, but if you can work your way around a needle and thread, it's fine. You can use lots of different fabrics, like an old blanket. The good thing that I really like about it is that you can basically choose whatever pattern you want, and if you want, you can get some fabric paint and add your name or designs you like.

So if you want to see the videos on how to make the different cases and types of cases you can do, go to:

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2w4U8F/www.treehugger.com/files/2011/10/8-diy-ipad-covers-that-are-cheap-easy-and-stylish.php

National Sweater Day

So I'm a huge contributor to the World Wildlife Fund, my family donates to them and I become part of almost ALL their fundraisers and events. And this is a pretty new event that WWF has, called "National Sweater Day". It's a day in February where people save energy, turn off their heater, and put on their favourite sweater. This is the sweater I will wear

This is my favourite sweater. This photo quality isn't great, but I was using my computer's camera

The point is for people everywhere to save energy. The aim is that everyone will think more about turning their heater down (maybe even off) and putting on a sweater, which can save TONS of energy across the globe.

So the date is February 17th, and I hope you'll all turn off the heat for the day and put on your best face.... and sweater!

The iPad 3 Production

So, people are starting to think that the iPad 3 is coming to stores JUST after the iPhone 4S, because Apple's believing that millions of iPad 3's will be sold this year, so they want it to get on the market early.

Rumours are spreading saying that the iPad 3 will come out (or at least the prototype) early 2012. Rumour also has it that the new iPad will have a better quality camera, an HDMI port, and better compatibility with PC and other devices.

The latest so far, the iPad 2

Now, am I excited about this? Not particularly, but the iPad and other Apple devices sure are popular, so what the hell. There will likely be more information coming out about it, but until then you can go to time.com/ to get TIME Magazine's news on the iPad 3.

Epic Meal Time

They make your dreams come true, and then they eat them....

Well, at least that's what they say. If you don't know, Epic Meal Time is these videos of a group of guys preparing strange food, which in the end actually looks really good. One time, the guys bought every part of a lamb, and in the end, assembled it all to actually LOOK like a lamb.

Well, I haven't seen very many videos from them, but the ones I DID see I loved soooooo much! I just learned that they're Canadian, too, so that's a bonus.

Now, Epic Meal Time is very famous, their videos are constantly the top videos on Youtube. The have a site, but I'm afraid it has almost NO information. You can "like" them on Facebook or "follow" them on Twitter if you like, and also go on Youtube to check out their videos (their food is likely really fattening, but also really good!)

Will Ryan Gosling be Canada's Next Prime Minister?

Okay, so I was looking around for what to do my story on, then (thank god, Sympatico) a headline caught my eye. It was "6 Reasons Why Ryan Gosling should be Prime Minister". So here's 6 reasons. I hope you enjoy:

1. He knows how to play the part (from being a political figure in "The Ides of March"

2. He's a really good actor (apparently Prime Ministers need that for negotiating)

3. He's a caring person (??)

4. He travels alot

5. He knows how to mobilize youth

6. He would great on a coin or bill (I actually agree with that)

Okay, well if those were the reasons, why can't I be the Prime Minister. I'm afraid that Sympatico is starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel.

I only browsed a little, so if you want to read the whole thing (maybe you'll understand this better), you can go to:

http://inmovies.ca/Galleries/Articles/Gallery_ryan_gosling_for_primeminister.htm?feedname=photo_gallery_movies_ryan_gosling_pm&pos=6&nolookup=true

The Onion- America's Funniest News Source

Okay, maybe it isn't as funny as the old "Weekly World News-The worlds ONLY reliable News", but this ALMOST comes close. "The Onion", I don't know why it's called that, but it's a website that is actually pretty good at looking like a REAL news site, but they just make joke articles. Now a week or two ago, I was watching the news, and apparently Obama had noticed a tweet from someone called "The Onion", saying something about a major terrorist attack.

Well, Obama freaked out and started calling around to look in on this. Then came the "GOTCHA" moment when he realized it was all a hoax.

So I found this pretty funny. I'm looking at this site now, and the first headline catching my eye is "Joe the Plumber running for Congress".

So if you want to check out World Weekly News: The website, go to:
http://weeklyworldnews.com/

If you want to go for second best go to:
http://www.theonion.com/

The Flip Review

I was thinking of what I could BEG my parents to get me for my birthday party. Then, I realized that I am in desperate need of a new quality video camera. Then I was just checking Consumer Reports and Google and such, then there was the Flip. I thought that I remembered ads for it on TV so I tracked down the site to learn more. What I saw blew. My. Mind.

It was on SALE. I'm all for sales (I must admit I'm a little cheap). For the bigger Flip Video (Ultra HD), it was usually priced in-stores between $130-$160. You can buy it online right now for $80, with FREE SHIPPING. So I went straight-forward with ordering it, then I even found out that you can put your own photo on it for your design. This was my camera:

I decided on a butterfly wing pattern. But then I thought "I have heard some good things about it, but I'll look into it more". I read tons of reviews, all good. I watched amateur videos on Youtube filmed from it, and I gotta say, when they say "HD", they really do mean HD!

So it's supposed to come in a week or two, and I'll try it out and post any videos I took to show you how well it works.

Fliptoast (I don't get it either)

So I have a Mac, and almost everyday I'll take 5 minutes out of my time to visit the App Store. I only ever get free apps so if I don't like it, I just won't use it anymore and there was no money to waste. But while typing random things in a search box, I was able to find Fliptoast. I never heard of it, so I clicked on it. All I saw was a picture of a piece of toast with Facebook's trademarked "F". It also said "Free" right under the piece of toast so without bothering to read what it does I decided to install the app and figure it out later.

It is actually a pretty cool app, how it works is you can always be on Facebook without an opened browser all the time. All it is is a small toolbar in the corner of the screen where you can click a button to upload a photo or video, update status or chat with someone. Also there's a part of it that will let your notifications pop up in bubbles and you can easily "like" or "comment" on what people have said (sometimes that part gets out of hand. It's annoying, so you can shut that off if you like).

I think that the point of the app is so that Facebook isn't getting in the way of research or homework you're doing. It's not the coolest app out there, but it's worth it. It's FREE anyways! And I'm not sure how it would work in an iPhone, Blackberry, Android or Windows Phone, but it definitely works on a Mac.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

So this is Canada's Thanksgiving Weekend, and in order to celebrate I thought that I would post something that happened to do with Thanksgiving. So, thanks to Sympatico.ca and their strange headline news, I was able to find something for the occasion! This post is all about how different countries celebrate Thanksgiving.

First of all in Africa many people dress up in masks and costume and dance to celebrate the ending of the "rainy season". There's no rain in africa to begin with, but I won't judge.

Australia has an apple festival that goes on for 4 days, and based on the photo I'm looking at, there's a lot of fireworks and running around like a maniac.... fun....

Next is India, where surprisingly, Thanksgiving is actually pretty popular. Thanksgiving for them is thanking God for the various things that the people are given. The picture is a little odd though, there's a goat walking on top of an old man.

Israel has an 8 day festival to celebrate their own Thanksgiving (about Moses travelling the Desert for 40 or so years).

In Korea there is a festival for all the Koreans to reflect and respect their elders, there's apparently a lot of partying and pigging out too. Cool.

Over in China there is a HUGE festival where all these little booths are held up for people to buy food and jewellery. Some booths even sell entire pigs, yum!

Vietnam has a mid-august festival that they call the Children's Festival, and folklore says that the parents were so busy that they had left their children to play alone, which brought along this celebration.... what nice parents!

So there you have it. These are the "Thanksgiving" Celebrations across the globe. Personally I prefer the good-old fashioned Canadian thanksgiving dinner, but that might just be me. If you want to read more you can just click/ Copy and Paste the link at:

http://travel.sympatico.ca/PhotoGalleries/articles/thanksgiving_celebrations_from_around_the_world.htm?feedname=PHOTO_GALLERY_TRAVEL_THANKSGIVING_AROUND_THE_WORLD&pos=1&nolookup=true

Welcome to The Next Level

So this is my improved blog. I decided it would be so much easier to do a slightly different direction in my blog and do things that might even be actually important to me. So here we are!

This blog is now about different issues you may have read in the newspaper or heard on the news, or maybe you would soon realize I'm just stealing all my topics from TIME magazine. But I will try hard to take a different look on the subject (I can't afford the fines for plagiarism).

So I hope you enjoy my posts, as well as your option to look into the Daily Puppy, play with artificial fish and post my blog on Facebook or Twitter instantly. I also just got Bloglovin' too, I don't really know what it is but feel free to add me on that too.