vrage

The top three comedians who get the most laughs when using twitter.

What is the highest and best use of twitter..? Humor!

1. Stephen Colbert

Stephen Colbert is best known as the host of Emmy nominated hit TV show; Comedy Central’s, The Colbert Report and was named one of Time Magazines 100 most influential people in 2006.

Expertise: Straight for the jugular political satire and guilty of being more O’Reilly that the actual host of Fox news, The O’Reilly Factor.

Top Tweet: “Ira Glass is on tonight. Must remember to not call him ‘Rachel Maddow.’”

2. Diablo Cody

An Academy Award winning screenwriter, Journalist and author, Diablo

Was originally best know for her candid writings of her year as an exotic dancer in her writings; Pussy Ranch blog and her 2006 memoir, Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper.

Expertise: Humor about genitalia and masturbation.

Top Tweet: “Jon Gosselin allegedly cheating — how awesome would it be if he had a secret other set of sextuplets living across town?”

3. Eugene Mirman

Eugene Mirman is a Russian born comedian, writer and filmmaker who is perpetually on tour doing stand-up in a variety of venues across America.

Expertise: Jokes about our failed passenger-train system in America and the things you are better off not saying to elderly people grocery stores.

Top Tweet: “Just got my time machine working. Now I’ll finally get some pussy.”

The latest in a series providing rare film of great musicians from the early 20th century, Bruno Monsaingeon’s exploration of the violinistic giants is full of fabulous footage, although the context in which they are placed sometimes leaves a question or two unanswered. The film is in two parts, The Devil’s Instrument focuses on technique, the physical individuality of players and the dangers of being a child prodigy. Transcending the Violin looks at (literally) fine-tuned issues such as tone colour, the instruments themselves and differences of style. Oddly, The Devil’s Instrument as a title is never explained; the reference to Paganini is brief, and you could be forgiven for thinking that ‘the devil’ in question is Heifetz, who astonished every subsequent violinist into wanting to be him and consequently may be responsible for reduced individuality among modern fiddlers. But the individuality of playing in the golden age is proved in a brilliant montage of the Mendelssohn Concerto moving seamlessly through nine very, very different great violinists.

The sequence on prodigies is moving. Some extraordinary film of the child Ricci performing with all the flair of an adult is balanced by footage of Boris Goldstein and Michael Rabin, teenagers playing perfectly, but with body and facial language betraying their broken spirits. After his nauseating introduction by a showbiz host, Rabin’s eyes scarcely lift, except once, when he glances surreptitiously at the conductor: a dark, frightening, tragic slip of a gaze, hard to forget.

Between excerpts come commentaries by Itzhak Perlman, Ivry Gitlis, Ida Haendel and Hilary Hahn. Perlman is entertaining, Haendel Insightful and Gitlis enthusiastic, but Hahn’s contributions sometimes seem ill chosen. Her remark that Kogan looks ‘panicked’ is mystifying (he doesn’t — he just has a rather strange face — and he merits deeper discussion). And she expected Ginette Neveu to look ‘graceful and feminine’ but found she wasn’t — is this helpful? That isn’t to detract from the all-too-brief film of the phenomenally Intense Neveu herself. It would have been better to include some film of Hahn playing the violin, as she could certainly prove that the golden age of the violin isn’t over yet.

Never mind — the wealth of historical film is staggering: Szigeti, Elman, Milstein, Francescatti, Thibaud and many more. Yet Monsaingeon appears to hold up Yehudi Menuhin as the peak of violinistic greatness: the film both begins and ends with him and the commentators sing his praises unreservedly. On the basis of all the extracts that have gone before, it isn’t easy to accept this implied judgement: my own feeling is that he is totally eclipsed by Oistrakh.

Finally, do try to see this on DVD. The improvement in quality of both picture and sound quality is certainly worth the increase in price.

Hell ! I’m sweating like a pig today…..

……. Oooh! F*CK!!!

PI is a movie about science. A computer scientist is obsessed with finding out secrets of nature by searching for a number which will discover all laws of nature. If you are a physicist or have read “A brief history of time”, you might have come across the term “Grand unified theory”. Max cohen ( Sean Gullette) is on the search for a number which will unlock the secrets of our universe. Below is a review of the movie

PI isn’t about the mathematical constant 3.1415.., representing, among many other things, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diametre. The movie is about the deranged and beautiful quest of one person in search of the truth, the answer to the universe. The plot is a common one in science fiction: a phenotypic “aberration” in the brain causes the protagonist to develop special abilities that makes him sought after and feared. In this particular cases, Max acquires a deep grasp of number theory. With his assumptions, that mathematics is the universal language, that number theory can represent everything in nature, and that there is a pattern in everything that occurs in this universe, he sets about trying to find it in the stock market.

After him are people who are interested in his stock market analyses for monetary purposes, and more strangely, a group of Rabbis who are convinced the same pattern of numbers is the key to their salvation. However, Max is the only one who can understand the semantics of the 216 digit number that is key to the universal lock, a plot device that I thought was truly brilliant. In the end, Max succeeds on his quest, but what he understands is never revealed to us. I was fascinated with the idea of a Grand unified theory where if you understand the laws of nature, you can predict the course of events in the past as well as the future. We might disover laws of nature and soon be able to understand how our planet will behave in future including the course of events which might happen on it.

PI has an obscure plot but it might keep your attention if you have a scientific background. The movie is filmed in black and white and we are always kept wondering what is on Max’s mind who is the lead character of the movie.

I strongly recommend this movie if you are a mathematician or a computer scientist or if you can relate to science and techonlogy. I would rate this movie 8 out of 10.

Here is a game where you can practice your parking skills. It is called parking perfection.

If you are taking a driving/license exam, you can try this game to honor your parking skills. A typical parking game starts with actual scenes just like parking lot where it is sometimes difficult to find space among many cars and you have to find your way in. This is a usual scenario which you must have faced many a times. The game becomes challenging as the levels become higher and you go further into the game.

It is a web based game and takes only a few minutes to play. It is really convenient to play when you are at work or bored and cant think of anything else to do. The only disadvantage is that there is no second chance.. when you crash against a car, the game is over!

If you’re bored with this game you can try other classical games like tetris or super mario brothers.

Sometime ago I heard that high schools were introducing computer programming languages and I wondered if it is the right thing.. I used to think that it might be a better idea to teach basic science and math to high school and students and introduce computing machines later when they finish school. Computers are mechanical devices and they might forbid us to be creative as to create art or music. Although they are useful in understanding laws of nature or for communication with the world, they cannot teach us to be creative yet. It would be a while before we would see artificial thinking machines which can guide us. The current state of AI research is at its beginning.

Teachers should prepare children to think creatively so that pupils wont just apply pure logic to solve real world problems but rather tacke each problem independetly. It might be futile to feed children with object oriented programming languages like java or c++ before they have strong mathematical skills. Maths and computing is strongly related. The more skilled a person is mathematics or logic, the better programmer he/she may become.

Technology is not the key to each and every issue in human life. It might help us lead a better life and is necessary for one to be comfortable but it shouldn’t be introduced until we are ready yet. Some issues are not new: the early and excessive concern about computer literacy too often at the cost of basic literacy. Other issues are familiar but more clearly documented than usual-the inability of school systems to maintain equipment or train teachers once the hardware is in place.

There are some benefits: more efficient record keeping, and better ways to reach children with learning disabilities. But the central message is that computer infatuation has not only drained billions of dollars from more urgent educational needs, but that its misuse actually damages students, turning out a generation of kids with inferior learning and thinking children skills.

What do you think about the whole issue? Drop a line if you can !!

Videogames as ‘games’ is inhibiting their adoption by mainstream society (who relates gaming to children’s activities). From the article: “Things have changed, of course. Video game content now runs the gamut from kid-friendly titles like Curious George and LEGO Star Wars to adult-themed offerings such as GTA San Andreas and Black to the highly socialized online communities of World of Warcraft and Second Life or the largely adult-populated casual game scene of Pogo.

Over the years, gamers and game designers have recognized the artistic and expressive potential of videogames, along with their power to enlighten and entertain players from four to ninety-four. But there are also millions who missed that particular cultural bus.”

Case in point; In your January 2008 issue, editor-in-chief states in his Gears of War review that his “home clunker” PC, outfitted with 2GB of RAM and a GeForce 8800, “barely ran it” I find this odd, because my machine, which sports almost identical stats (2G8 RAM, GeForce 8800GTS, Intel Core 2 2.4GHz CPU) runs the game almost exclusively at 60-pius frames per second, all at 1680×1050 resolution with the highest possible detail settings. Don’t you people even bother to play these games on more than one machine?

Don’t get me wrong, though - I’m not some idiotic Xbox 360 fanboy trying to push for a perfect review of Gears Cm Just pointing out something that seems odd to me. It’s good that you guys don’t get stoned on the massive hype that some of these games push, and I think it shouid stay that way-Complaints aside, I’m enjoying the last few issues of my free six-month trial of GFW….

Keep up the (mostly) good work!

You know what’s sad? This is my first despite the fact that I’ve been a loyal reader since the days of Dune II and WarCroft II: Tides of Darkness (heck. I’ve even looked up the magazine’s Wikipedia entry). So, why now? I’ve got so many things that I’d like to say, but after playing Counter-Strike: Source recently, I concluded that the CS Beta 4 was far superior. The graphics got better, but now the game is 1.5GB instead of 40MB, and it’s not worth wasting your time. The million-plus CS.’ Source players would probably disagree with me, but here’s what I’ve been wondering: Here I am, a professional “adult” in the work force for about four years now. Maybe games haven’t changed so much. Maybe its me that’s changed.

Maybe a marriage, a mortgage, a long commute, a government cubicle, and the process of becoming a soulless adult have al! conspired to take away that childish wonder I had when I first made it to the Xen level in Half-Life. Or when I sat in church designing WarCroft II maps on the back of the bulletin or dreamed up the ultimate weapon-versusheatsink configuration in MechWarrior 2 or got my first knife kill in CS.

But I’m not giving up on computer games yet. For the past decade, I’ve read about how PC games are dying…and they haven’t died yet. Crysis is at the top of my Christmas list this year and I dropped the cash for a DXlO-ready card despite the fact that the $400 could’ve been worth millions in my 401(k) someday, had I invested it. I guess I’m not a soulless cubicle dweller after all. Maybe my priorities are still in the right place.

I was reading wired and came across an article which says that.. a lot of americans use the internet just for fun. It made me think of internet in general and how i started using it. It was in the 90’s and i had used it only to search information, scientific articles or read episodes previews of startrek. Now, a great deal of trivia has penetrated internet. Chatting, porn, blogging and online gaming sites which steal away our time.

Internet is a waste of time, if used casually and you might never know how much time you would spend on it. Internet addiction is a serious thing.. If you’re addicted to the internet, you would spend hours on the internet increasingly to while away your time or just to hang out. It might be worthy to decide on how much time you would spend on a computer when you are hooked on to the web.

One of the earliest uses was to send and receive emails. Now, Instant messaging has hooked most people to their computers, where they type messages instead of using traditional means of communication such as a telephone or letters which were popular for over a century.

I think that internet is a tool and is of great help if used wisely and can be a waste of time if we use it aimlessly. It had helped me a lot in reseaching things which would have been impossible otherwise.

There is a considerable debate on whether goverments should regulate the web or not if you think of china as an example china has banned websites which depict content unsuitable for children. It had also banned many websites and asked search engines to not show any banned results on its website if you seach in china. Google has dropped some entries from its search results and complied with the chinese goverment. Other countries are considering banning websites which might be unsuitable for certain age groups.

What do you think of Internet in general? Do you think there should be control of information people should see or it should be allowed to all irrespective of their age,location and status?