Virtual Earth

A sixteenth birthday is always special. A 16-year-old is a class on his own – he or she is no longer considered a child, but is not an adult quite yet. This makes the planning for the birthday party hard, since you wouldn’t want it to look like a children’s party, but you don’t want it to be too “adult” as well. Here are some sweet 16 birthday cake ideas that you can use.

Since the celebrant is young, color themes should also be young. Cake colors should be light, such as cream, pink, yellow and peach. Light blue shades as well as lilac and lavender may also be used. The colors and cake design must match the theme of the party. A layered fondant cake with pink or peach flower trimmings is ideal for parties with a costume ball theme. Celebrant can look like a princess with a balloon pink gown and tiara, and guests would wear costumes.

Another cake idea for the princess theme is to make small cupcakes and put them in a multi-layered cake stand. Trim them with little flowers made of icing. When arranged well, the cakes would look like little pots of flowers in a flower garden. You can use one color, or mixed pastel shades of pink, yellow and light orange. This cake would also be perfect if the party has a ballerina theme. A fairy theme would also be nice, with guests carrying wands and wearing shimmering pink wings.

With small round cupcakes, put colored frosting on top and arrange them so the cake would look like bubbles or balloons. This would look cute for a children’s party theme, where guests can dress up like little kids. Instead of round cupcakes, you can also make square or rectangular ones, and decorate each with colored frosting to make them look like tiny gift boxes. With a little creativity, have fun with a frosting bag and create patterns to simulate gift wrapping paper and ribbons. Or you can decorate them to look like little colored trucks or cars. This cake idea can be used for any party theme.

For large parties, 16 photo cakes can be arranged to make a photo album cake. Photos of the celebrant from age 1 to 16 can be placed on each cake. Wouldn’t it be fun for guests to see how the celebrant has grown and changed through the years?

So the next time someone turns sweet 16, finding birthday cake ideas should not be that difficult. You can browse through the internet and find pictures so you can show them to your baker. At this day and age, virtually any cake design is possible. So use your imagination, and be amazed at where it will take you.

Interactive screensavers present us with yet another brilliant screensaver for your Windows-based computer. This one is sure to get those astronomy lovers enthralled, and anyone else who wants to have such an intricately detailed, fully three dimensional screensaver on their computer. The Earth 3D screensaver combines advanced graphical technologies and photorealistic artwork to form an exceptionally detailed scene of the Earth as seen from an orbital view. A must have for anyone who wants to have such an impressive and awe-inspiring image on their PC.

What’s more, unlike many of the free, very cheap or older screensavers out there, it also takes thorough advantage of your graphics card, though you do not need to have an especially powerful PC to be able to run it to its maximum potential. The screensaver is optimized for greater resolutions, allowing you to get the best out of your monitor whether it is a flat panel or an older CRT monitor. It has been programmed to run on any edition of Windows, from Windows 98 and right up to Windows 7. It will work on both 32 bit and 64 bit machines as well.

Amongst its plethora of features, this lovely new space screensaver not only provides you a great view of the Earth as viewed from orbit, but also gives you day and night cycles, with the sun visible in the back drop. In the areas of the planet in night, you will be able to see the lights of the larger cities. This makes it really look like the same thing you would see from the International Space Station, or indeed, exactly as Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space, would have seen it.

The Earth is a wonderful and colourful object in the universe and with the weather patterns such as clouds and storms all clearly visible from space, this screensaver also uses these features for improved realism and brilliant effect. The background of stars is also impressive, showing you how the night sky looks from outer space, without the atmospheric and light pollution on Earth to cloud the view.

The screensaver certainly offers quite a beautiful and inspiring panorama, bringing to life the final frontier. It will work flawlessly on any resolution, though the better the resolution that your monitor supports, the higher quality the scene will appear. It does not have great system requirements, but you will need to have a machine that has a video card supporting Pixel Shader 2 and you will need to have DirectX 9 installed on your PC. This should not be a problem for the great majority of computer users.

To look at some screenshots, take a visit to http://www.rixane.com. Here you can also see more information about the other screensavers that this organization has on offer. You may also download trial editions if you are not yet convinced. The Earth 3D Screensaver only costs a small sum of .95, but it is a small amount to pay for something so artistically and amazingly rendered. Undoubtedly one of the best and most photogenic screensavers you can find, it is well worth taking a look at it now.