Girls Life MakeOver (Nintendo-DS)

Have fun with a huge variety of styles and find the perfect look for you and your friends!

CREATE YOUR OWN FACE

- DSi - Take your own photo with the DSi camera.
- DS - Use the in-game customisation tools.
- Use multiple tools to recreate your own face: 100 faces, hairstyles, eyes, lips, noses and ears.

RELOOK YOURSELF

- Experiment freely with different make up, hairstyles and makeovers.
- Keep your best styles in your album.

IMPROVE YOUR SKILLS

- Take on beauty challenges & earn points and rewards.
- Learn new tips & techniques.
- Unleash your creativity in free mode... your imagination has no limits!

SHARE YOUR STYLE AND EXPERTISE

- Share your creations with friends through wireless connection for up to 4 players.
- Use your points to go shopping for new products, either by yourself or with your friends - there are 30 shops in the mall!

DISCOVER YOUR TRUE SELF AND STYLE

- Take advantage of 48 personality tests and expert recommendations.

Sailed on this ship back in 1985 for a vacation with my Dad and brother....

It's loss was very sad...

Thirty-one men had run for their lives from Hurricane Mitch for a day and a half. They sailed north, sailed south, then tacked east and west, back and forth in futility, behind a little island of cover. But it left them in a virtual vise, walled in between 50-foot waves and 100-mph winds where sea and sky merged into a vast howling whiteout.

To the south and west lay the shoals of Honduras and Belize. To the north and east, more of Mitch. Their young captain tried vainly to thread a needle to safety. But as he clung to the helm two Wednesdays ago, drenched and exhausted, the deck beneath him listing a sickening 40 degrees -- his sense of right, left, up or down was likely lost in the maelstrom of foam and spray.

Experienced mariners can tell you what comes next. You want to lie down and go to sleep. When the ship starts falling apart, you are just waiting -- and wanting -- to die.

The Fantome was the $15 million, self-insured pride of Miami Beach-based Windjammer Barefoot Cruises Ltd., a sailing line. Its president, Michael D. Burke, said he started 51 years ago when he got drunk in Miami and woke up the next morning in bleary possession of a $600, 19-foot sloop he dubbed the Hangover. Over the years, his fleet grew to six.

The Fantome itself had a far more regal beginning. It was built for the Duke of Westminster 71 years ago, and Aristotle Onassis later bought it as a wedding for Princess Grace and Prince Rainier. But the princess, foolish girl, left the mogul off her guest list and never got the boat.

Burke bought it in 1969, gave the 282-foot, steel-hull ship a $6 million, four-masted makeover, and registered it out of exotic Equatorial Guinea, a small sliver of impoverishment in West Africa.

The seagoing pros and cons of steel-hull vessels are the subject of Sebastian Junger's 1997 best-seller, The Perfect Storm, the tale of a fleet of New England swordfish boats caught near Newfoundland by Hurricane Grace in 1991: ''Steel is tough compared to wood, don't let anyone tell you different. Steel goes down faster, though. It goes down . . . well, like a load of steel.''

Still, the Fantome was considered a solid vessel, and when its massive sails were filled making way to windward, it was romance in motion, needing neither roulette wheels nor ice swans to seduce its passengers. Breakfast was a Bloody Mary; dinner attire was T-shirt and shorts; passengers dived off the side to snorkel, and climbed back up on rope ladders -- all the simple tropical pleasures that $1,500 to $2,000 a week could buy.

The 32-year-old captain, Guyan March, who had windsurfed in the British Isles from the time he was a young boy, liked to say he wasn't chopped squid either. He had piloted Windjammers since his early 20s, was respected by his crew, and was highly regarded by women for his good looks and sea tales. His brother, Paul, also sails for Windjammer.

I've spent the evening making a PowerPoint for a 'Who's Behind the Nose?' competition at work. This is how I've ended up.

Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover 2002 Deluxe makes it easy to create a whole new you in minutes. (Just try not to take it too seriously or expect any life-changing transformations.) Installation is quick and easy and the program's interface is clean and simple to navigate, once you click around a bit. This not a new program, but a bundle of previously released versions of Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover and Cosmopolitan Fashion Makeover Deluxe.
The first thing you need to do after installing Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover is import a headshot of yourself, either from your digital camera or a scanner. The program comes with some standard photos of models you can use, but that's hardly as fun. Getting the photo right is the most difficult part of using this program. You'll need to make sure you're well lit, you're in front of a plain background, your hair is completely pulled back, all your accessories are removed, and the photo is straight on from the front. Any weirdness will potentially make you look freakish.
The best part of this program by far is playing with hairstyles--there are hundreds of styles in just as many colors. While some of the styles are decidedly awful, many are acceptable and even cute. There are some styles that might be suitable for men, but only if the guy wants to look like a member of the Strokes. The makeup section is clunkier to use and slightly less useful--we found it hard to make any of the makeup choices look natural.
The second disc, Cosmopolitan Fashion Makeover Deluxe, lets you input your measurements, import your made-over face from Virtual Makeover, and try on clothes. However, we weren't even able to import our face, because the two programs were incompatible. The clothes are also relatively , so we didn't see the point in trying on the "daring new looks" the program touts. It should also be pointed out that most of this program seems to be paid for by sponsors, so your choices for, say, jewelry, are limited to the one company that wanted to pay for placement. Incidentally, the box is loaded with so many coupons, flyers, and ads that you might wonder why you're even paying for the product at all.
Though we had a few doubts, we really enjoyed using Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover 2002 Deluxe, and decided that we should never, ever get bangs. Click on "See more pictures" to see how we fared with the software. --Ara Jane Olufson

Create a fabulous new look, with just a click. Try on hundreds of new looks, without risk, with Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover 2002 Deluxe. With Cosmo and your computer you can create a more beautiful you within minutes of loading your photo into the software. From a new hairstyle to adding a beauty mark--it's that easy.
Featuring beauty advice with a fun, irreverent tone, sit back and visualize that hot new makeover you've been dreaming about, but were always afraid to try. See how you look with more than 600 hairstyles in 30 different shades. Make a 3-D image of yourself and experiment with more than 1,000 colors and accessories. Find clothing styles that show off your figure and improve your fashion sense with tips from the experts at Cosmopolitan. Includes a free set of cosmetic brushes.