About three months ago I finished reading Steve Jobs' biography which was written by Walter Isaacson, the same man who wrote Benjamin Franklin's and Albert Einstein's biographies. The title of the authorized biography is simply Steve Jobs. i loved the book but was extensively saddened by it as Steve Jobs is probably the person I most idolize. I simply could not understand how he could simply die at such a young age, it was all very sudden. The biography was first scheduled for release on March 6, 2012 but because of his deteriorating health it was moved forward to November 21, 2011 and finally following his passing on October 5, 2011 it was moved forward again to October 24, 2011. All the information in the book was compiled by Isaacson both by interviewing Jobs, his family and friends and other people and through intensive research carried through by other means.
The book went all the way from his parents conceiving of his, to his adoption, through his all life, and finally up to his death in just over 650 pages. All his accomplishments both in his professional life and in his personal life are profoundly described by the author. I believe the best part of the book was Isaacson's reflection about Jobs' whole life at the end of the book, it was very emotional and it made me and probably any other reader reflect on his life too. I think Steve Jobs chose just the right person to write a biography about him.
Touch is a TV show written and created by Tim Kring which debuted on Fox on January 25, 2012 however it did not start to air regularly until March 22, 2012. The series stars Kiefer Sutherland - yes, the same actor who played Jack Bauer in the TV series 24.
Touch tells the story about how Martin Bohm (Kiefer Sutherland) tries to communicate with his autistic child, Jake (David Mazouz), who seems to only know how to through numbers. Jake's mother and Martin's wife died in the World Trade Center during the September 11 attacks. Since then, Martin has struggled to raise his 11 year old child who has never said a word in his life, only attempting to communicate through the numbers he viciously writes down over and over again in a notebook of his. In the series debuting episode, Jake's repeated escapes from his special school leads social worker, Clea Hopkins (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) to question Martin's ability to raise Jake. Meanwhile Jake repeatedly writes down the same pattern of numbers in his notebook. Finally when Martin manages to interpret the numbers he finds out that it is possible for him to "touch" with his son, because of this he manages to save a man from dying. I will not give away any more of the series' plot as that is for you to find out by watching the episodes.
The show has received a generally positive review and, as you can see by the screen shot above, currently holds a Metacritic score of 63 out of 100. Verne Gay of Newsday wrote "A bit melodramatic, a bit manipulative, Touch is still one of the best pilots of the 2011-12 season to date." The debut was received by a whopping total of 12.01 million US viewers, however the number has diminished with every episode after that, the last episode that has aired, which is the 10th episode of the series received merely 6.02 million US viewers, almost half of the debuting episode. The last two episodes of the first season will both air the 31th of May in the US, the show already renewed for a second season on May 9th, 2012.
If you have for any reason recently searched "do a barrel roll" on Google you would have noticed that a weird, overwhelming and spontaneous trick occurs - go ahead, try it. If you did you would have noticed that the webpage rotates 360 degrees, that is, unless you try it on Internet Explorer where it doesn't work, such a surprise for Microsoft; lets not blame them too much.
The trick was developed by a programmer at Google to pay tribute to the Nintendo 64 video game Star Fox 64 as the character in the game would do a barrel roll when you pressed the R button two times or the Z buttons two times, this is the reason why you can also search "z or r twice" on Google and it does the same trick. The programmer at Google also made this to demonstrate the power of CSS3, the new version of CSS, a method of coding used to create and manipulate graphics in web development.
I think the new trick is very innovative and it shows that Google is constantly trying to create new things, it doesn't matter how important or necessary. I also like that they constantly pay tribute to innovations and people of the past, like for example the interactive doodle they made on Google's homepage of a Moog synthesizer, one of the first synthesizers to be used by musicians, to commemorate the 78th birthday of its inventor Robert Moog.
Cuevana.tvwas launched on October 1st, 2009 by an Argentinian college student called Tomas Escobar while at his small college dorm. Cuevana.tv allows people to watch movies and TV shows online without paying a single dime. Cuevana.tv doesn't store its content on its servers, instead it embeds content stored in file hosting websites like Wupload.com on their website - this permits them to lower significantly server costs. Cuevana.tv got a mayor blow this month when Megaupload was closed by the US government as many of the content they used on their website was stored in Megaupload.
Cuevana currently serves an average of 2 million users daily and shares 3,000 films and 250,000 TV show episodes on their website.
Cuevana's future is uncertain as it is being demanded by La Academia Nacional de Cine Argentino and HBO for copyright infringement. The probability of Cuevana being closed is rising constantly especially as they gain viewership and because of the sentence which was made by the FBI against Megaupload. The sentence made against Megaupload also most probably scared off content hosting websites and content uploaders. This is probably the reason why when I tried to watch the 11th episode of Modern Family yesterday on Cuevana it told me that they had no sources to serve that specific content.
Modern Warfare 3 has completely changed the expectations bar for the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series for the better. It has most improved in the Special Ops game mode, in which there is now Survivor Mode, in which the player has to fight off an unlimited number of enemy waves. Special Ops also now has the option to play online with friends and other people in either the Xbox Network or the PlayStation Network depending on the game console the player owns, or also over a regular internet network if the game is played on a computer. The multiplayer section has a few new "perks" for the player, but the main improvement is the new "killstreak" rewards and the ability to play split-screen while playing online multiplayer.
The game has managed to make more money in the first five days after its release than any other piece of entertainment in the history of the world, grossing $775 million, nearly four times the gross of the topfive-day earner in the film industry, The Dark Knight, which managed a gross of $204 Million in its opening five days.
I own the three Modern Warfare Games and I definitely feel that this one has exceeded the standard of the two other games in all the ways, apart from the campaign mode in the first Modern Warfare which is the best of all three.
The 8th season of House, M.D. premiered October 3rd on Fox. Up tonow it has released eight excellent episodes of which I have watched all. The TV show is about Gregory House's medical feats at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. House is the boss of a team of diagnosticians, which by episode eight are; Dr. Chris Taub (Peter Jacobson), Dr. Jessica Adams (Odette Annable), Dr. Robert Chase (Jesse Spencer) and Dr. Chi Park (Charlyne Yi). The season starts with Dr. House in prison after he was jailed for having crashed a car into a house. The next episode House is released after Eric Foreman, the dean of medicine at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, demands for House to be released as he is needed for a medical case. At first, when House relocates back to his hospital he finds that his office has been taken and that he now only has one doctor working for him, Dr. Park. After a few episodes House manages to fund his workplace and he recruits the other doctors. The TV show is considered a Medical drama as it also has a interlined story of the relationships between the main characters of the show. House's best friend is called Dr. James Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) which is an oncologist at the hospital. I think the new season has accomplished the expectations I have on how House M.D. should be.
Yesterday night I finished reading a book called The Street Lawyer by the acclaimed author, John Grisham. I liked the book substantially, even though I didn't like the ending, as it was not concrete - very open. Judging by the name, the book is obviously about a street lawyer, which doesn't surprise me, as John Grisham is a lawyer and most of his books are legal thrillers. John Grisham's most famous titles include; The Firm, The Chamber, The Client, A Painted House, The Pelican Brief, The Rainmaker, The Runway Jury and A Time to Kill.
The book tells the story of an antitrust lawyer named Michael Brock, who works at a big firm in Washington D.C. called Drake and Sweeney. The plot begins when a homeless man that calls himself "Mister" enters the offices of Drake and Sweeney and takes as hostages about a dozen of the lawyers at the firm. As he is at the office he gives the hostages a lecture about homelessness and about the general greed of the American higher class asking them as proof how much they earn per year in comparison to what they give to charity or other non-profit organizations. Finally at the end of that day "Mister" is shot by a police sniper and the hostages are rescued. Consummated by the need to understand what he learned from this incident, Michael reaches to a man called Mordecai Green, an advocate for the homeless who asks him to help him one night at a homeless shelter. Here Michael becomes more sympathetic for the homeless. A few days later Mordecai asks him to join him at the 14th Street Legal Clinic, the legal clinic which is owned by Mordecai. Michael finally quits his job at Drake and Sweeney to enter his new job at the 14th Street Legal Clinic meaning he has to abandon a 400 thousand dollar annual salary for a 15 thousand dollar annual salary. Simultaneously, Michael takes a file illegally from Drake and Sweeney regarding an illegal eviction done by a lawyer at the firm in which Mister was involved. He tries to copy the file and then take it back to the firm, but while heading to an office to make the copy he is embraced in a car accident which delays his fleet and causes the lawyer involved with the case to realize the file was stolen. At his new firm Michael manages to attend many clients in need, much who just needed someone to talk with. At the end of the book Michael produces a legal case against the illegal eviction in which he succeeds a a major settlement with Drake and Sweeney for all the damages caused by the eviction, then Drake and Sweeney demand him for the robbery of the file in which he accepts his license to practice law to be suspended for six months and to return the file.
