This Week in Daily Show

After a tough week of studying, it’s fun to try and see what’s going on in the US by watching The Daily Show. Well, it seems that the United Nations had a big conference on climate control in NYC, which didn’t seem to amount to anything concrete changing. Jon Stewart did get to interview former Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, who was promoting his new book, The Governor. The interview was pretty interesting, but if Blagojevich wants to get vindicated (if he deserves it), it sounds like he’s going to have to wait until his trial, when the prosecutor should release all the wire tapped phone recordings for the world to judge. Only time will tell, but if any of his recorded dealings indicate that he was inching for personal gain (in fund raising, future political positions, etc.) then he’s sunk.

Also, out of left field, prominent Democratic party (including President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton and Vice-President Joe Biden) fund raiser Hassan Nemazee was accused of orchestrating a $300 million Ponzi scheme… why is this story not getting more coverage?

Enjoy

Dany

Get a gander at the newest Ponzi scheme from Hassan Nemazee

Here is the 3 part interview of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich

Rod Blagojevich part2

Rod Blagojevich part3

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

It might seem like a late review, but since I am currently in Grenada, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is still in theaters here and I just got back from watching it tonight. It’s OK though, I was a very late comer to the series in general, I only started the audio books this summer. This is the 6th movie in a franchise of Harry Potter films since 2001 and the first thing that is easy to notice is the amount of maturity it the visual effects over time. This is most advanced looking Harry Potter film. It helps that most of the film is cloaked in shadows and darkness, but the digital water and fire effects, things that used to be hallmarks in difficult to recreate visual effects were spectacular.

The 6th Harry Potter book along with the final book were my top two favorites from the series. I though they were the most mature and compelling of the bunch. I have not liked the films as much as the audiobooks, but a movie not living up to the original source book isn’t grounds for a bad movie. The movie itself has to be good or bad on its own (not considering the book) or better/worse than the previous movies, in my mind.

Let me just say, if you have not seen any of the preceding Harry Potter movies or books, just skip this film, as a stand alone film, my guess is that it would be extremely confusing since it does not do a great job of introducing a lot of the tertiary characters. Now, for most people, this is not a problem, because they wouldn’t go out to see the 6th film in a series without seeing any of the previous films. In relation to the other films though, I do think that this is the best of the 6 movies. There may still be a plot problem or two, like why does Dumbledore HAVE to drink that liquid, why not just dump it out?… it’s tough though since this was a problem with the source book, but there were certainly enough changes in the story from the book that solving this problem could have been done as well. The film does set up the final two films very well though.

I liked the way this film handled evolving relationship between Ron and Hermione and also that of Harry and Ginny. Oddly enough though, my favorite character throughout the films is Snape, Alan Rickman is great, even if he isn’t nearly as slimy or short tempered as his character from the books. I didn’t like his shushing Harry scene below the tower towards the end of the film (it didn’t feel like it worked) though.

Previous Harry Potter Movie quick reference dvd reviews:
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone – 2/5 stars
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets – 2/5 stars
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – 4/5 stars
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – 4/5 stars
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – 2/5 stars

Thanks to Boopis on Garena for the above pic.

Enjoy

Dany

Sharing My Insanity

I thought you’d appreciate the crazy… I wanted to order some minor electronics to help me build an LED circuit (a capacitor and a timer), which totaled $3 and change, but when I saw that the shipping charge alone was over $6 and the fact that RadioShack.com has a similar deal to Amazon (free shipping on $25+ orders).

So, I went sifting though the Radio Shack site for some other things that I already was going to buy to bump it up to $25. I started with everything on my Amazon wish lists (ex: Hellgate: London and Soon I Will Be Invincible) and got nothing, but I then started looking at video games and stumbled on Lego Star Wars The Complete Saga… I had wanted to get the game for a while, especially since the only real knock against it that I had heard/read was that it was not very new or different from older versions of the game, but since I have never played any version of the game, I figure that I’ll fully enjoy it all for the first time.

So, I ended up getting a $49.99 game that I wanted so that I could avoid $6 shipping on a $3 item.

Just thought I should share the insanity with you.

Dany

Free Access to Encyclopædia Britannica Online 2

Well, a few weeks ago I told you about how to get free access to Encyclopaedia Britannica Online and I had to post an update. I just received an email from the Britannica team and was able to set up my free access for the next year.

So, as an update I will start interspersing links to Britannica (instead of something like this or this) along with the usual suspects of regular informational links that I’ve used (wikipedia, imdb, citizendium).

Make sure to let me know what you think by posting comments about the addition of these new links quality wise.

Thanks to SEWilco for the above picture.

Dany

Wine Library TV Conan O’Brien

Most mainstream podcasts seem to come out of the west coast, but Wine Library TV is made daily out of NYC and tonight, the host of Gary Vaynerchuk held a viewing party tonight for his Late Night with Conan O’Brien viewing party for his second appearance on Conan’s show.

It was a blast watching Conan with Gary (who hosted the event) and a few dozen of his NYC upper east side fans at Bounce. I even got two free glasses of wine out of the whole affair (one red, one white) and I don’t normally even like the vino, I’m more of a beer guy myself.

It was a total blast at the Gary Vaynerchuk viewing party, I HIGHLY recommend subscribing to the high energy daily Wine Library TV (subscribe here). Oh, buy his book 101 Wines here.

Thanks to NY Magazine for the above pic and thanks to Gary for the AWESOME night!

Dany

Free Access to Encyclopædia Britannica Online

Free access to Encyclopædia Britannica is now available online for “online publishers.” What does that mean? Well, it means that anyone who writes regularly (bloggers, webmasters or any writer) should be able to access this new offer without paying the $70/year subscription fee.

I wanted to test this out, so I went to Encyclopedia Britannica’s registration form and filled it out. Hopefully I’ll find out soon how this turns out. If I get access to this, it will mean I can add free links to Britannica’s pages with relevant content, instead of depending so heavily on Wikipedia. I don’t know how long it will take to get access to this though, since they claim to look over every single registrant for this offer.

Thanks to the amazing Buzz Out Loud (subscribe here), it was their 707th episode that brought this to my attention, yeah that’s right, they’ve released over 700 episodes already! They ROCK! Also, thanks to NowSourcing for the above pic.

Dany

JC Hutchins Interviews Scott Sigler for The UltraCreatives

Two of the biggest podcast novelists come together in the latest episode of JC Hutchins‘ show, The UltraCreatives, where he interviews extremely interesting and… creative people in the tech community. Some of his previous amazing interviews were with Mur Lafferty, Guy Kawasaki, Jason Calacanis, but this week, he interviewed Scott Sigler! Sigler is probably THE best known podcast novelist. He has released at least five books for free as free audiobook podcasts (Earthcore, Ancestor, Infection [now called Infected], The Rookie, The BloodCast short stories and is currently releasing chapters of Nocturnal) on a week by week basis.

Sigler is releasing Infected in bookstores on April 1st, preorder a copy or 9 now at Amazon, it is totally worth supporting a great author who understands his fans and who keeps releasing great stories.

Thanks to Tee Morris for the above pic. Also, get JC Hutchins‘ novel 7th Son here.

Dany

Escape Pod – Homecoming at the Borderlands Café

The story published in the most recent Escape Pod (a science fiction story publisher) called Homecoming at the Borderlands Café is about a half hour long and extremely interesting to listen to.

It’s based on an alternate reality where the conservative American Confederacy had been successful in seceding from the American Union, but enough time has passed after the sececesion that there is no more slavery… but there are other problems (on both sides of the border).

The story as well as a subscription (or just get it through iTunes here) to the weekly publishings are free to listen to. These are great short stories. Take a few minutes and check it out.

If you enjoy this story, you’ll also want to find the little known movie C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America, a movie with a similar theme, just with slavery still intact and where the Confederacy won the Civil War.

Thanks to Maximum Fun for the above pic.

Dany

The Bourne Parody

It took me a while to warm up to the Bourne movies, the third installment really sealed the deal and now I’m a fan of all 3 Matt Damon films.

While watching Attack of the Show though, this Bourne Parody does a great job of combining some of the best Bourne scenes with a blast from my childhood past, Where’s Waldo!

Dany