All you ever wanted to know about Paris Hilton

MMOG Podcast Roundup: September 12th - September 26th

Filed under: Podcasts, Culture

every week, hardworking massive gaming fans raise their voices on the line to tutor b introduce us news, opinions, and ‘critiques’ of their favorite games. podcasts are a staple of many hobbies nowadays, and fans of online worlds are especially fortunate in this upon … there are a ton out there. as such, every so commonly we’ll undertake to update you on the podcasting world. keep your eyes on this space for links to your favorite mmo-commentary celebs. documentation and bad, even-man or dejected-mouthed, they all have something to offer about this amazing style of gameplay.this week we want to be sure to highlight the…

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> PANIC BUTTON <
… come join Panic Button for all the latest and sickest bodyboarding sessions going down. Home Teasers Podcasts About Photos Contact � Panic Button 2007 …

Panic Button (1962) - Overview - MSN Movies
Panic Button (1962) overview: synopsis, movie reviews, photos, trailers, movie clips, cast and crew,news, dvd, user reviews, message board and more

Panic Button Movie Reviews, Pictures - Rotten Tomatoes
Panic Button movie reviews, trailers - Check out Rotten Tomatoes Panic Button clips, pictures, critic … Movies / On DVD / Panic Button. Rate This Movie …

Panic Buttons at the Movies

Panic Button Movie Synopsis Available, Read the Plot of the Film …
… plot synopsis to the movie Panic Button on the official VH1 … Movies A-Z. Movie Main: Panic Button. Main Details. Cast & Crew. Plot Synopsis. Related Movies …

My new favourite movie blog Mad About the Movies writes about the dubiously … When the patron pushes a button, a message goes to a pager worn by a manager …

Debate video

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Johnson/Dykstra on Estate Taxes

from the south dakota relatives rule council’s 2008 general election voter guide on the estate contribution: support hr 8 (2006), which permanently repealed the estate demand? tim johnson: n joel dykstra: y … dakota voice: your cautious choice fitted info and insight on left and true

Start Your Car With Your Cell Phone (Next Year, Anyway)

Filed under: Car Tech, Cell Phones

nissan, sharp, and japanese cell phone provider docomo are working to lighten the load in your pockets. the three companies give birth to developed a cell phone that integrates nissan’s sharp key system. the knowledgeable key system allows you to unlock and lock your car as well as start and stop your engine wirelessly, and is currently installed in almost in unison million cars encircling the world. the stall phone integration should be hitting the market in primordial 2009. the methodology has been available as an alternative on nissan vehicles since 2002, but this is the first time it has been combined with another gadget, which means one less whatsis to have to cram in to the pocket of your skinny jeans. [from: cellular account, via: textually.org]read permalink email this comments

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Contagious Smile

thanks for this one jhelea!smiling is infectious, you can catch it as if the flu. someone smiled at me today, and i started smiling too.

toss this beam along to your friends who brightened up your eraor those whose days you want to brighten up.smile!each age is a wonderful reason to advertise!contagious smile:simple delights / motherhood in a nutshell / complex life / funfiercefabulous / ozzy’s mom/ kidd designs / youthanks guys pro each making me beam with your quality posts and genuine friendship : abie, archt joanne, dez, em, mitch and tet

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(AP)

ISO What? Photo Basics for Bloggers and Other People Who Care

I walked into a photgraphy classroom three years ago with a cheap Canon SLR and no idea what I was doing. The first time an image that I had photographed appeared when I submerged the photo paper in the developer, I said, “Ooh. Magic” out loud and meant it. My professor said, “Yeah. That’s how it hooks you.”

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It totally did, as my family and friends and my overworked credit card will attest.

Today I know a lot more, but still not enough, about the technical aspects of photography. I haven’t shot film or been in the darkroom for a while, but I do shoot digitally just about every day. And even though I don’t consider myself even a quasi-expert, and even though I still believe that the better part of photography is the part that I still consider magic, it’s true: knowing the basic functions of strange-sounding things like aperture, shutter speed and ISO has made me a lot happier with my results, if not more entertaining at parties. (Note: Just assume that most links in this post are to how-to pages that describe things in plainer English than perhaps I can.)

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Today Countrywide, America’s #1 Home Loan Lender, has helped millions of … the property of Countrywide Financial Corporation, Countrywide Bank, FSB, or …

Fall wallpaper

Don’t get me wrong - I don’t set my camera up for every shot, and in fact far from that. I just bought another digital SLR to replace the sadly stolen one, and it’s really easy to use. Most of the time (although I hate to admit it) I leave the sucker on “A” for “Automatic” and snap. But what I’ll also admit is that because it’s new and I’m not used to it yet, I don’t know what I’m doing with all of its controls and menus yet, and I hate not knowing what I’m doing. My Canon Digital Rebel XSi offers “faithful” as a picture style in manual. I have no idea what this means and have I bothered to find out yet? No. So “A”, in this case, stands for easy, and is also brought to you by the letter “L” for “lazy” and too many letters to list for “What? Instruction manual? Where?” and “Oh, wait, another piece of pizza and episode of Bones so i don’t meet my photography learning goals? Bring it on.”

Learning takes time, unfortunately, which is a terrible thing to have to remind oneself when one is actually a teacher, but what can I say? I’m a fan of immediate gratification. Out of the box, charge the battery up and out the door I go. And because I was in such a hurry to put this camera to work, I haven’t taken the time to become friends with it yet. This also makes me a hypocrite because when I teach outdoor photo classes for women, I make them bring their manuals. I make them turn their cameras to settings other than “A” and then we hit the dusty trail, where part of the way through I have them lying on the ground shooting tree bark up close and whatnot.

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Welcome to Bank of America, the nation’s leading financial institution. … Please select from one of the drop down menus below. …

I’ve been surprised to learn that beyond being lazy like me, a lot of the women I work with in these classes are nervous about the technology. Cameras are getting more complicated, at the same time that they’re making amazing digital photography (10 mega-pixels for a point-and-shoot is pretty good, have to say.) accessible to the average consumer. They want to use the cool features on their cameras, but they have no idea how and so they switch it to “fireworks” on the 4th of July and leave it alone for the rest of the year.

I work with a motto of “You will not break the camera by touching new and different buttons” in my classes, and I’ll go with that here too. I’m offering just a few tips for getting started if you’re the owner of a camera that you can’t quite figure out, or you’ve had one for awhile and just haven’t bothered.

This is a great time of year to shoot. The summer vacation photos are hopefully tagged and uploaded (Right? Right? Right.) and we’re moving quickly into a season of school fun and games for all ages, holidays for every faith and leaves. Yes, the leaves, the foliage, if you will. The light where I live is fabulous. Fall is nothing if not photogenic in many climates, and if you’re somewhere where it’s not fall, there’s undoubtedly something cool going on where you are too. So dive in - fiddle with your settings. Do not fear your menus, your instruction manual, or new and different terminology.

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And I’m getting right on that myself. Here are a few basics to get you started.

Aperture: This is the opening that light shines through to hit your digital sensor (and sometimes, still and always, previously, film.) It controls how much light comes through your lens and how much of your image is in focus. Photo 101 students everywhere spend the first week of class (or a month if you’re as numerically challenged as I am) wrapping their minds around the lovely counterintuitive math that assigns a bigger number to a smaller aperture. The numbers have an “f” in front of them for “f-stop” or “focal length” and go from a wide open f1.0 to a teeny-tiny f/64. I usually work between f/4.5 and f/22, it seems.

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Oh, and those lovely bokeh photos - a …

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What’s On Tonight: Smackdown, Most Haunted, Bill Maher, Rose

Birds of Prey (comic) - Wikiquote
Manhunt (Miniseries) Black Canary: I want to look in his eyes while I’m kicking his a (word partially obscured by Oracle’s speech balloon) Oracle:

Filed under: Late Night, Programming, Celebrities, Talk Show, What To Watch Tonight, Reality-Free

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Buy the book and be one of the first to find out how the story ends. Updates on the movie effort are posted to the web page: Manhunt by James L. Swanson – Movie/TV Mini-Series.

HBO Developing Lincoln Miniseries
HBO is developing Manhunt , a miniseries from David Simon and Tom Fontana about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the frantic 12-day hunt for his killer, John Wilkes Booth …

HBO Readies ‘John Adams’ - Miniseries begins filming in February …
A long-gestating miniseries based on the prize-winning biography … A long-gestating miniseries based on the prize-winning … Homicide’ Team Goes on a ‘Manhunt‘ Showrunner Exits CBS’ ‘Ex …

HBO Developing Miniseries About Lincoln’s Killing Abraham Lincoln …
From the network that brought you John Adams — and the writers who brought you … Read Related: Abraham Lincoln David Simon HBO Manhunt miniseries Tom Fontana TV

check your neighbouring tv listings for more.after the jump, the belatedly night listings.

Continue reading What’s On Tonight: Smackdown, Most Haunted, Bill Maher, Rose

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Director Jun Ichikawa dies at 59

cosmopolitan dirt: last coating, ‘buy a suit,’ to premiere at tokyo fest — helmer jun ichikawa, 59, died after collapsing at lunch on friday and being rushed to a tokyo hospital. the cause of death has not yet been announced.

Amazon.com: Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer (P.S …
Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer (P.S.): James L. Swanson: … as Steers book and could serve as the basis of a motion picture or better yet mini-series on …

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Joe Biden calls it ‘patriotic’ for the wealthy to pay more taxes

Democrats have been loudly complaining about John McCain, Sarah Palin and other Republicans routinely misrepresenting Barack Obama’s tax plan by asserting the Democrat would raise the levies that Americans hate to pay across the board. In a true shocker, even a Fox News anchor gave a McCain aide flack on the matter earlier this week.

Obama’s running mate, Joe Biden, today sought — in his inimitable way — to stress that the Democratic platform calls for increasing income taxes only for those making more than $250,000 a year. But in the process, he delivered a line sure to be mocked far and wide by the GOP.

“You got it,” he said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” when his interviewer noted that Obama was targeting the affluent. “It’s time (for the well-off) to be patriotic.” (See the clip below.)

Already, the Republican National Committee has sent off an e-mail flagging the quote. And we’re betting it shows up quickly as a laugh line in McCain and Palin stump speeches.

[UPDATE: Right on cue, Palin scoffed at Biden’s comment as she and McCain stumped late this morning in Iowa. Telling her typically adoring crowd what the Delaware senator had said, she parried that raising taxes isn’t about patriotism, it’s “about killing jobs … and making things worse.”]

[UPDATE II: McCain, taking the stage after Pailn, said of raising taxes in tough times: “It’s not a badge of honor. It’s just plain dumb.”]

– Don Frederick

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Drawing gloss gradients in CoreGraphics

This post presents a function &mdash DrawGlossGradient(CGContextRef context, NSColor *color, NSRect inRect) &mdash that will draw a “gloss” gradient in a single statement. All colors in the gradient are calculated from the single color parameter.

Introduction

The following samples are gloss gradients. They are all made by the DrawGlossGradient function described below.

This type of gradient is common on buttons or other graphical adornments on webpages. The “aqua” aesthetic of Mac OS X also uses this type of gradient in numerous places.

The gradient is actually composed of a number of components, all intended to simulate a translucent glass or plastic lens-shaped object that is lit from above.

A diagram of the physical structure being modelled would look like this:

Heart attack grill

The light gray “lens” shape is the glass or plastic translucent object being modelled.

The top half, as seen by the viewer, is dominated by the arc labelled “B” which is light from the light-source reflected directly to the viewer.

The bottom half, as seen by the viewer, contains the effects of two arcs: C and A. Arc C is a “caustic” highlight, where the light from the light source is focussed to a higher intensity by the lens shape of the translucent material. Arc A is darker because the recessed nature of the translucent material casts a shadow over this area.

The final point to note is that the lens shape is not flat at the back, so these light and dark components attenuate in a non-linear fashion.

Creating the effect in code

We need four different color values:

Once we have these values, we can simply create a gradient out of them.

i’m going to use a coregraphics cgshadingref. it would be possible to produce a absolutely alike resemble effect using an nsgradient but that class only handles constant-slope gradients and i want to embrace a subtle exponential in the gradients.

The gloss highlight color

The two gloss highlight colors will just be a blend of white and the background color. Picking relative intensities of these two colors is not very hard. I chose a 0.6 fraction of white for my top gloss color and a 0.2 for the bottom of the gloss (although these fractions will be reduced by the scaling below).

When using a range of background colors, I found that dark colors needed a smaller fraction of white than light colors to appear similarly glossy, so I had to scale the effect based on background brightness.

I chose the following function to produce a scaling coefficient for my gloss brightness, based on brightness of the background color:

float perceptualglossfractionforcolor(float *inputcomponents) { const display reflection_scale_number = 0.2; const float ntsc_red_fraction = 0.299; const float ntsc_green_fraction = 0.587; const float ntsc_blue_fraction = 0.114; initiate glossscale = ntsc_red_fraction * inputcomponents[0] + ntsc_green_fraction * inputcomponents[1] + ntsc_blue_fraction * inputcomponents[2]; glossscale = pow(glossscale, reflection_scale_number); return glossscale; }

The input components are 3 floats (RGB). The coefficients with which I multiply them are the NTSC color-to-luminance conversion coefficients. It’s an acceptable “perceptual brightness” conversion for color and far easier than RGB to LUV. I then raise this value to a fractional power — value chosen experimentally as it seemed to give about the right final value across the range of brightnesses.

The caustic highlight color

The caustic color is a harder problem. We need to achieve a hue and brightness shift of the background color towards yellow, while retaining the background’s saturation.

Again, as with gloss, there was a non-linearity to account for: colors further in hue from yellow required proportionally less hue shift to maintain the appearance of the same hue-shift effect. I chose to scale the hue shift by a cosine such that the hue shift seemed perceptually appropriate.

In addition, grays (having no real hue) need special handling. Reds needed special handling to account for the fact that hue wraps around at red. Purples didn’t really look good hued towards yellow, so I decided to make them hue towards magenta.

void perceptualcausticcolorforcolor(float *inputcomponents, float *outputcomponents) { const float caustic_fraction = 0.60; const bob cosine_angle_scale = 1.4; const waft min_red_threshold = 0.95; …

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Obama: Gaffes and Palin Have Obama Playing Defense

Obama Has Lost His Mojo Obama Gaffes Pile Up

Asian markets sink on Lehman, Merrill woes
(AP)

A new ad from the Obama campaign ridicules John McCain for not using the Internet, perhaps not realizing that McCain’s war injuries leave him unable to use a keyboard. This ad comes on the heels of Obama’s ‘lipstick on a pig’ controversy, which is still fueling late night talk shows. The lipstick controversy came on the heels of another Obama gaffe, when he artlessly referred to “my Muslim faith.”

The Obama gaffes are piling up, and we’re not even counting his VP pick, Biden, who himself is racking up an impressive number of ‘oops’ moments. Poor Obama is definitely having a bad week.

The media anointed Messiah, the man the world would like to elect president, has gone from playing offense to playing defense. And he’s not playing well.

Obama is a charismatic, compelling figure. His appeal is undeniable, as long as he is presented in a multi-million dollar staged setting with teleprompters and a prepared speech. Take him out of this element however, and the contrast is as shocking as seeing Ms. America sans make-up on a bad hair day.

Complete with morning breath.

No where is the contrast greater than this video clip of Obama in a townhall meeting. His words are confusing, his body language defensive. His coat is off and his sleeves are rolled up, in what appears to be an attempt to be as one with the working man. It doesn’t work. Instead, Obama looks rumpled, frayed and clueless.

He apologizes for his lack of coherence by explaining that he had a late night, which doesn’t bode well for any future 3AM moments.

Maiylah’s Snippets » meme
You may tag, or simply offer the meme for borrowing or stealing as you like. … Where did you go most often during breaks? My mom’s place at Tolosa, Leyte.

File 770 » Blog Archive » SF Movie Meme
Brad Foster Breaks the Record » … The SF Signal crew tagged me to continue a meme where the assignment is to mark the …

After months of media adulation, world attention and surging poll numbers, Obama has hit a speed bump on the road to assuming his rightful place as America’s president. That speed bump is Sarah Palin. In the blink of an eye, the novelty of Obama’s race has given way to the novelty of Sarah’s gender. Point, counterpoint.

Ted’s take on the AOL v. MySpace meme
Ted breaks down the ‘AOL launching MySpace killer’ meme perfectly. We’re not killing MySpace, we’re opening up our services and enabling the original

With Sarah Palin on the scene, the Obama camp loses a valuable asset, the race card. Charges of racism for those stupid enough not to vote for Obama can now be credibly countered with the sexism card. Obama is finding out that life isn’t fair and that what goes around, comes around.

Teaching Meme

PayPal breaks away from eBay Startup Meme

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What exactly is the micro-messaging service, Twitter evolving into?? The news breaker for sure and that too the fastest, how did it do that? It was the first

PayPal an online payment company that has grown upon the success of eBay has finally decided to walk a different path as reported by Cnet. The company has

Hipteacher tagged me for this Teaching Meme. I am a good teacher because… I am reflective … have a lot of paid free time — entire summers with nothing to do, holidays, long breaks.

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You know what I love more than a meme? A writing meme! Stolen from jen_in_japan and arch … auto insert line breaks use log.code use smilies

Obama is now playing defense. Instead of blessing the great unwashed with his pearls of wisdom, he finds himself reacting instead of acting. He has turned from the agent of change to the agent of the perpetual whine.

John McCain has stolen his slogan. Everyone knows Obama owns the ‘change’ mantra and its just not fair for McCain to co-opt it. And besides, Sarah Palin is lying and McCain is so stupid he can’t use the Internet.

The attacks from Obama are not playing well in Peoria. In fact, the backlash is hurting Obama and throwing Democrats into a frenzy as more women, independents and Democrats switch their allegiance to McCain. Oh, the fickleness of it all.

What has become increasingly clear is that Obama seems incapable of embracing change. His political playbook was written 20 years ago and Obama is sticking to it. He doesn’t realize that the game has changed. The media is, gasp, under fire for being so blatantly in Obama’s corner. The polls in battleground states are starting to lean towards McCain and the presidential tracking polls have McCain ahead by 3. Palinmania has replaced Obamamania. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

In politics, perception is reality and Obama’s reality is changing.

The first major decision presidential nominee Barack Obama made was to pick Joe Biden as

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Weekend SkyWatcher’s Forecast - September 12 -14, 2008

greetings, fellow skywatchers! it's big… it's bright. it's undeniably the moon. so what are we going to do this weekend? why, inquiry of practice! we'll take a look at some history, some mystery and even some cool variability that can be studied without any special equipment. are you ready …

“The Express” roars into Syracuse with premiere

There’s been a lot of buzz about the movie, “The Express,” which tells the story of SU star and Elmira native Ernie Davis. It’s based Robert Gallagher’s book about Davis’ life called “The Elmira Express.” We caught up with Gallagher and our Iris St. Meran has more on his take on the success of the movie.

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The Best Reason To Root for Chad Johnson

We all deserve a hug from time to time.It’s easy to lampoon Chad Johnson. The dancing, the mohawk, the name-chage—it’s a circus act, the sort of shtick that induces catcalls from the cheap seats and ulcers in the coaches’ booth. Still, Smokey Robinson wasn’t kidding about the tears of a clown, and far be it from me to deny any man in such dire want of affirmation.It’s one thing to call attention to that which makes you great.It’s quite another to shine a light on that which leaves you incomplete.I don’t mean to condone Johnson’s antics here. He’s immature and unreliable, and his choreography has been stale since at least 2006. But life is too short for potshots. When the choice is between piling on and peeling off, the truth is there’s really just no choice at all.Everyone hates a prima donna. Everyone hates a prima donna.One may be the loneliest number, but Ocho Cinco isn’t far behind.If there’s a moral to this story, it’s that desperation wears many masks. Sometimes it’s the haughtiness of the hero. Sometimes it’s the folly of the fool. And sometimes—just sometimes—it’s the mindless mirth of the glaze-eyed geek smirking smugly in the front row.Nietzsche said wit was the epitaph of an emotion. Nitschke knew levity was the mark of a loser.By any man’s wisdom, he who laughs too long at the world is liable to learn the joke’s on him. Sports fans are good at scorn. Empathy, alas, doesn’t come quite so naturally—which is our loss more than anyone else’s. The best reason to root for Chad Johnson is that he needs it, and so do we. And while we’re in a giving spirit, let’s please get some Maalox for poor Marvin Lewis, who looks to be in for an awfully long autumn. I don’t imagine Chad is too into Abbey Road, but the rest of us could stand to take a hint from McCartney:In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make. Even when your first instinct is to sneer. And especially when all the punch lines in the world could only ever add up to so much just saying, is all…

77059

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