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Birthday Mothers Day and Citrus All In One

So this is my attempt at digital painting. I decided a while back that I would do a series of paintings for my mom for her birthday/Mothers day (which are only two weeks apart). The theme of the series is her with our dog (Maui) going about their daily activities at our lake house. That seems to be where they both are happiest and that is how I like to think of them. I initially started painting them on watercolor paper, but I got so frustrated with the results that I decided I needed to try something new. And here is the first completed piece created completely in photoshop.... enjoy! I will post the rest of them as I finish them.

For those of you who know my mother (ahem, Lainey) please dont say anything to her about what Im up to. I am getting this one printed and will be taking it home to her next week, so until then keep this hush hush. I am fairly certain that my mom doesnt get online for anything uless it is completely necessary, so Im hopefully safe there. If not, Happy Birthday/Mothers Day, Mom!

And finally, since I havent posted to Illustration Friday in FOREVER, I thought that I would make this fit into this weeks topic: citrus. The palette is "citrusy" right? And also, this is a painting of morning at the lake, and I gaurantee that later on this particular afternoon my mom will make margaritas, which are made with lime juice, which is a citrus fruit. So there.

Happy Wednesday!

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Bloons Tower Defense 5 Walkthrough for all the Beginner Levels

Here is a fail-safe walkthrough that will help you beat all the beginner levels on Bloons Tower Defense 5 on the HARD setting.  The strategy will need some tweaking to work for the intermediate, advanced, and expert levels.  This is but one possible strategy to win Bloons Tower Defense on Hard.  I do not use any abilities, farms, or super monkeys.   My solution here is based on the Android version.  For Windows and other platforms, my Bloons TD5 strategy will work very much the same, but there could be some slight differences as I have not tested outside of Android.  Get the Android Bloons TD5 from the Play Store here.

I have played a couple of co-op online games and then realized that a lot of players play this tower defense game without any strategy at all.  They just build and break at random.  Not knowing what works and how to defend to be ready for the next level.

I have tested this strategy successfully on all the beginner levels that were available at the time of posting (monkey lane, 3 times around, north pole, patch, maze, fireworks, brick wall, z factor, park path, the rink, roswell, and space truckin.)

Use the below build order and guide.  I will use the screen-prints on the monkey lane board.  To simplify this walkthrough, I have only built towers in between rounds.

Round 1:  Build a Dart Monkey.    Place the dart monkey close to the start.  The optimal location will be where this same dart monkey can target the track much later on again.   This is a good location for monkey lane: (Hint: click on the picture to zoom in)

Upgrade the dart monkey to Long Range Darts, Enhanced Eyesight, and Sharp Shots.
Go!

Round 2: Upgrade your dart monkey to Razor Sharp Shots.

Round 4 end: Upgrade your dart monkey to Triple Darts.

Round 12 end: Place a Sniper Monkey. For now, this monkey will take car of anything that tried to escape.    I placed it here, but you can place it anywhere as its range will be the full screen.

Upgrade the Sniper to Full Metal Jacket and Faster Firing.

Round 24 end: Build a Monkey Village.  You need to place it so that it covers your glue gunner, and there must be space around it to build cover a couple of Bomb Towers.
I placed it here:


Build a Glue Gunner.   The placing is very important.  You need to place it close to the start, have a big open area - we need space to place a monkey village with lots of towers next to it - and it must cover some track further down.  This is where I place it in Monkey Lane:

Upgrade the glue gunner:  Glue Soak, Corrosive Glue, Stickier Glue.   Change the glue gunner so that it target strong.

Round 25 end: Upgrade the Monkey Village to Monkey Beacon.  This will increase the attach range.
Round 27 end: Upgrade the Monkey Village to Monkey Fort.
Round 32 end: Upgrade the sniper to Night Vision Goggles.  He can now detect and shoot camo balloons. (Hint: This is needed for round 33 with a group of Camo bloons.  The single dart monkey sometimes are not strong enough to take them all out).

Round 33 end: Upgrade the Glue Gunner to Glue Splatter.

Round 36: Upgrade the Monkey Village to Radar Scanner.  This is important so that the towers under the village can take out camo balloons.

Round 38: Build a Bomb Tower under the cover of the Monkey Village.

Upgrade the Bomb Tower: Extra Range, Frag Bombs, Cluster Bombs, Bigger Bombs.  Target First.  In Round 39, upgrade the tower to Missile Launcher.

Round 41 end: Upgrade the Bomb Tower to Bloon Impact.

Round 42 end: Build a Bomb Tower, also under the shade of the Monkey Village.  Hint: If you are not sure if it is under cover, have a look at the range of the tower.  The range will drop when you move too far away from the village.  Upgrade this tower to Extra Range, Frag Bombs, Bigger Bombs, Missile Launcher.  Set to attack Strong.

Round 43 end: Upgrade this new Bomb Tower to MOAB Mauler.

Round 45 end: Build another Bomb Tower, same as the previous one.  Remember to set to attack Strong.
This configuration will be strong enough to take out the blue MOAB balloon that will attach you in round 46.

Round 46 end: Upgrade the Monkey Village to Jungle Drums.  This will increase the attack speed.

Round 48 end: Upgrade the Glue Gunner to Bloon Dissolver.

Round 49 end: Build a Bomb Tower at the Village.  This one I place so that it covers the furthest away track - but still under cover from the Village.  Upgrade Extra Range, Frag Bombs, Cluster Bombs, Bloon Impact, Bigger Bombs, Missile Launcher.  Target first.

Round 50 end: Build a Bomb Tower and upgrade to MOAB Mauler with Target Strong.    (Upgrade Extra Range, Frag Bombs, Bigger Bombs, Missile Launcher and MOAB Mauler).  Build at the Village.

Round 52 end:  Build another MOAB Mauler tower as the previous.
Round 54 end: Build another MOAB Mauler tower as the previous.
Round 55 end: Build another MOAB Mauler tower as the previous.

This is what we have now:

Now, keep on building MOAB Maulers as above as soon as you have enough money.
When you have 8 MOAB Maulers, then build another Bloon Impact with target first.  This tower will really help when the big field of ceramics and camos attack.

At the end of Round 70, I had 13 MOAB Mauler- and 3 Bloon Impact Bomb Towers, all under the Monkey Village.

No more space for towers under the Village.   So, now you can start another Monkey Village and only need to build MOAB Maulers.  You need a couple more to solve the last Hard Round (Round 85).  Upgrade the Monkey Village same as the other one - you will appreciate the Radar Scanner in Round 82!  So, upgrade Monkey Beacon, Monkey Fort, Radar Scanner, and Jungle Drums.

At the end of Round 80:  I am almost ready for the final level!

Round 84 is a tough one.  Some balloons almost made it!  The far-end Bloon Impact Bomb Tower did it for me.

Round 85... a bit easier than 84!  No match for my towers.  I won before this big green machine go half-way.


Hope you enjoyed this walkthrough for Bloons Tower Defense 5.
Please comment bellow and share your experience, tips, tricks, and help.

Available link for download

BREAKING NEWS Agolo hits a student dead in Akungba All lectures suspended

A really shocking news on a Monday morning. Last night a commercial bus popularly known as Agolo in Akungba hit a 200L student of department of microbiology and he has been confirmed dead at Ajex junction :( :'(.

All Lectures are henceforth suspended and mobilisation has started in the school as I write this up, the drive must be dragged out.

Details coming soon

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British Power is all Wind

Britain has decided to go all-out for wind-power. On Thursday, I flew over the massive off-shore Thanet wind-farm - one of the largest in the UK - in the English Channel off Foreness Point. The farm consists of 100 turbines, each over 300ft high, and is expected to power over 200,000 homes. It will increase the amount of energy generated from offshore wind in the UK by one third to 1,314MW. Opened in September, the Thanet wind-farm was built by the Swedish Vattenfall energy company, and increases the number of large scale off-shore British turbines to 436, to be compared with 2,640 based on land.

Not everyone is convinced that wind-power is the most reliant route to clean, renewable carbon-free energy, and it is concerning that Britain is relying on a power source that must be backed up by more constant technologies such as nuclear, coal, or gas, because the wind blows inconsistently, as is its nature. A mere 2% of Britains electricity was produced from renewable sources in 2002, but it is hoped that this should rise to 10% by the end of the year in light of the new wind-power generating capacity.There are further cost issues in upgrading the national grid to cope with power-surges and the need to switch between different power sources.

It should be noted that electricity provides only around one third of the total energy used in the U.K, and the bulk of that is accounted for by heating and transportation, which is supplied by respectively coal/gas and oil based fuels. Hence the UK will have its work cut out if it is to meet a EU target to raise its overall energy provision from renewables from the present 5% to 15% by 2020.

The actualization of an overall wind-power strategy is not going smoothly, however, and the number of new wind-farms coming on-stream has fallen by 30%, in part as a consequence of the recession. There has also been a fall in the past 12 months by 50% in planning approvals for wind-farms in England, a situation that is also reflected in Scotland. There is also considerable opposition to wind-turbines which are perceived as unsightly and noisy, as is reflected by the 230-odd campaign groups that operate across the whole of the U.K.

Indeed, some of these groups advocate nuclear power as a better option than wind, a situation that would have been almost unthinkable ten years ago. It was estimated in 2008 that to meet the U.K. wind-power goal by 2020 would require building one new turbine every day for the next twelve years. Since progress so far has fallen far short of this rate of conversion, little confidence is lent that the nation will be able to keep its promise on renewables.

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