Summer 2014 - Youth Festival

SUMMER TIME! Everyone is excited to be planning out what they will be doing over summer in the sun! This summer there is going to be an event held in California called the 'Youth Festival' on July 25th to 27th for kids all over the U.S. that are from Gujarat, India. In this event there will be so many different activities going on, it's going to be so exciting! The first day will be getting to know each other and more of a bonding thing. Then, there is going to be a t-shirt designing contest, singing competition, and a talent show (which I am performing in with a group of friends). Next day it's going to be a day filled with Garba performances, which is one of Gujarat's more traditional dances. I am also performing in that show with six other girls! Then the last day we will all be going sight seeing, to the beach, and to an amusement park and just hanging out with all the new friends everyone makes!

In this trip the most important performance for us is the Garba because it gets very intense. So the group has decided to do one of our old performances and just revise a couple things in it. Garba is most complicated because it is 10 times more active and energetic than regular dancing. The performance below is what I did with a group of girls for one of our holidays -- Diwali. We are going to use this performance and tweak it a bit so that its good for 7 people and then perfect it for the festival in July! We can NOT wait to be there performing this summer!

Twitter Royalty

In the real world, randomly following people is frowned upon. More likely than not, it will end in a restraining order. But that’s the difference between the actual life and the internet. For some reason, being followed online by masses of people is an increasingly desirable thing. If you haven’t been following where I’m going with this, I’m referring to the social media mega house, Twitter. It has grown dramatically since its start in 2006. Really, its bizarre how a site that’s focus is on followers and hash tags has done so well.

Unlike Facebook, which forces a mutual friendship between two users, Twitter allows people to follow (or not follow) whomever they please.  That, and the fact that friends are referred to as followers makes Twitter users feel more powerful. Kings and rulers had followers back in the day, so do current celebrities. Essentially, people of influence have followers. Now, in this digital age, anyone can feel like that.

The more followers an account has, the more fabulous it must be, right? How do average people become Twitter royalty through mere 140 character tweets? Everyone on Twitter secretly wants a ton of devoted followers. Even those who have more people in their followers list than their following list feel pretty awesome. Sometimes this illusion of power gets to people’s heads. But it’s good to remember, when the phone screen goes black and the computer shuts down, being followed in the real world is considerably less fun...

 

 

 

African Music Stars

 DJ Arafat or Arafat Muana, an ex-disc jockey in "Shangaï" on Princess Street, is a griot, DJ and singer from Côte d'Ivoire who makes music of the Coupé-Décalé genre. DJ Arafat is son of the Tina Glamour, an artist from Cote d'Ivoire.He started his career at a very young age; 18 with the title 'Jonathan' which really sprung him up into the music industry and has been the best and at the top of Ivorian music for ten years now.He is an artist with variety and changes names and styles every time. Though most of his songs are meaningless his fans still enjoy him and the music because they make you dance to his beats. He is also very arrogant but one think he loves is remaining at he top no matter what it takes for him to be there.

My second best star will be Davido,David Adedeji Adeleke, better known by his stage name Davido, is a Nigerian American recording artist, performer, and record producer. In 2011, he co-produced and released "Dami Duro", a song well-received throughout Nigeria.Here with another blooming young talent just 21 years of age and is already making millions and the African continent very proud with his music.i love him because his songs are very good and meaningful and keeps me always in the mood to want to dance.

And lastly but not the least someone who makes me proud of my country Cameroon. Petit-Pays is a Cameroonian musician. By 1996 he had sold over 50,000 cassettes. He is also known as OMEGA, Rabba Rabbi, Turbo and famously Avocat defenseur des femmes. He is looked up as the michael jackson of Cameroon if i may say. He governs Cameroon music for more than 20 years now.

These are the African pop stars who make the African continent proud keep up and love live African music.  

Tesla Motors

The new technology automobiles, Tesla Motors is an independent automaker that are the first  car company to make models that run on battery’s. They also sell other electric vehicle powertrain components. There is no gas involved in these electric cars. In the first quarter of 2013, Tesla posted profits for the first time in its ten-year history.  This major car company gained its first attention around the world when Tesla produced the Tesla Roadster. It is a fully electronic sports car. With the couple models they have, they also produced the Model S, which is a fully electronic luxury sedan. Tesla does not use single- purpose, large format cells like other automakers but they use thousands of lithium-ion 18650 commodity cells. Those cells are small cylindrical battery cells, which are normally found in laptops or other electronic sources. These cars are more affordable and gas producing cars. For the model S the base price was 57,400 dollars and this company plans to produce a car that is only 30,000 dollars soon to be called the BlueStar.   

With all this new technology, Car Company’s are picking up and trying to have Americans save money in my opinion. Americans are still spending a lot of money on gas with non electric cars and it is ridiculous. I think this was a good idea to build this type of cars and also considering that the company is offering electric cars for an affordable price.

Because of all the new technology and the items that are being produced, you cannot always tell how reliable they are. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has investigated the model S because of a response call; fires destroyed two cars. The aluminum shielding that is supposed to protect the lithium-ion battery packs had been pierced by debris.  Americans need to watch out and make sure they do not purchase the first year because it could be a fluke.

social media becoming too popular for our culture

Social media is starting to get out of hand these days I feel like. Popular applications such as Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat is changing and shaping our society into a large group of crazy insecure people. Girls are posting obscene pictures just to gain attention and likes from anyone to make themselves feel better. They don’t think twice about it either, they will post anything. What has happened to morals and standards? Have they completely fallen out the window?

Guys are cheating on their partners on a whole new level and vice versa! People don’t care anymore whether someone has a girl friend or boy friend, that wont stop them unfortunately. I understand people like options, but there is a very thin line between options and just being a player or a slut. (Excuse my language).

People are literally turning crazy over these applications. Girls or guys will freak out on one another if they see a certain person in their Snapchat best friends or if they like someone’s picture on Instagram! What happened to these applications actually being used for social reasons and not some new way of flirting to get with someone? Some people are getting too carried away with these applications and are using them to stalk others and be bullies. I am not saying every girl or guy does this by any means! I am pointing out the fact that these social media applications are starting to take a turn for the worse.

I have had friends break up because their partner followed a certain person on Twitter and Instagram or was snapping the wrong people. It blew my mind! No one can trust anyone anymore because of social media, everyone has trust issues and I wonder why. For the people who don’t abuse social media and actually use it with good intentions I applaud you. For the ones who use it or have used it the way I previously described, then, not to be rude, I think you need to slow down and just think for a minute, is it really worth it?

Windows XP retirement

Computer hackers have been waiting for the day Microsoft stops releasing security patches for Windows XP. It is left open for computer hackers to get virtually anything they want off of infected computers that run Windows XP. On April 8, 2014 Microsoft stopped supporting Windows XP. Now, Windows XP is vulnerable and open to hackers to exploit. Hackers will use exploits and bugs that they have discovered and have been saving to use on retirement day. They have been building up ways to hack into the system for some time now. Hackers can use the 0-day exploits to gain full access to a computer system using XP. This retirement will cost companies millions of dollars. Companies will have to upgrade to a newer operating system or face the threat of hackers. They will be forced to change in order to comply with federal laws like HIPAA, FERPA, PCI-DSS, and more. It’s either pay to upgrade or pay the fine. It was expected that a little over a fourth of computer users are still using Windows XP. This isn’t much of a shock. Many of the computer illiterate won’t upgrade, haven’t upgraded, and don’t understand why they need to upgrade. This will lead to breaches of computer systems all across the world. For example, almost all ATM machines are running on Windows XP. If they haven’t been updated they will compromise the banking information of hundreds of thousands if not millions of people. Hopefully everyone will become aware of this security risk and upgrade their systems.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9241585/XP_s_retirement_will_be_hacker_heaven

Pinterest

The image sharing and scrapbooking site is a visual tool most used by students or adolescents, mainly girls, to collect and share ideas for every possible idea in the world. Pinterest with it's more than 70 million users, 80% of these are women, is a worldwide site that everybody with internet available seems to know of. Pinterest was named the fourth largest traffic source of the world in August 2012, and third most popular, just coming behind Facebook and Twitter. An interesting fact is that 81% of women in the United States trust Pinterest as a source of information and online advice.

Why is Pinterest so popular? Unlike most of the social networking site Pinterest is unique in one way by doing a single thing really well. They have embraced that less is more ethos that propelled this site to the forefront of internet sites. Another reason this is so popular because you can fully immerse yourself into a website that is 100% visual, so no boring reading is required. Lastly, this site is a great way to solve your problems for when your stuck on unique ways to ask people to prom, creating shirts, designing gifts, looking for a funny videos, or even images of traveling around the world this site the solution. On Pinterest you can follow threads that you like or enjoy and get updates from them whenever they post new pictures. For example, Everything Funny is a site on Pinterest that posts funny signs, comics, texts, photos, and videos. Check their profile here.