If you haven't noticed yet, I've started dishing out some "Scrabble Bingo of the Day" articles that showcase interesting and somewhat unusual seven-letter words (or longer) that could give you an extra 50-point bonus on the board, as long as you empty your rack. So, for this week's Scrabble Challenge you'll have to get your brain in gear, because it's a tough one based of high-scoring bingo plays.
House Café offers traditional American food with a heavy Mexican influence. The restaurant is located near Crescent Heights and Beverly Blvd, sandwiched between The Grove and The Beverly Hills Mall. We’ve (wife and I) visited this restaurant several times, here are our impressions of our most recent visit.
There's nothing better than playing a game of Scrabble, feeling the smooth wooden tiles in your hand and savoring the heavy fumes of cardboard, cheap wood and plastic as you rearrange the letters on your rack into the perfect word. You try to keep a straight face while you watch your opponent sweat, but you can't help but release that diabolical grin of self-admiration as you play the elusive triple-triple. The score's recorded and you feel sorry for your bitter rival, but then you remember y...
If you're between the ages of 20 and 40, then video arcades probably hold a special place in your heart. Whether you all but lived in one (me), wished you could, or detested those with a liking for them, there's no denying that arcades were a ubiquitous part of American culture. They were everywhere, from big chains to little mom-and-pops, housing better systems than gamers had at home and with all the best games and newest titles.
There are two types of Scrabble players in the world—those who enjoy it and those who love it. I definitely fall into the latter category. Unfortunately, most of my friends don't. I'm lucky to have a few who simply enjoy it from time to time—some are even standing on the edge of Scrabble geekdom, afraid to take that last step. Maybe someday.
Shadows of the Dammed (360/PS3) is a polarizing game. It's not shy of being crass and crude. Go ahead and judge the game by the following examples (click to enlarge):
Last week's round up was all about third party services that sprang up to fill any Google+ voids. This week, I'll let you know how to keep up with the latest Google+ updates, and give you some great tips for interacting with your followers.
What's more fun? Winning against your friends or winning against others with them? It's an age old question, and in video games, the former one-on-one multiplayer has been the norm. But cooperative multiplayer has made a comeback, with Halo and Diablo II starting the trend, the first mainstream shooters and RPGs with great co-op modes. And now good local and multilplayer co-op games are available in almost every genre.
Difficulty Level: If you have eyes, you can do this.
There's no doubt about it—the most elite military force in the United States is hands down, the Navy SEALs. They can operate at sea, in the air and on land, and their ability to conduct missions underwater separates them from most other military units in the world. They've fought in World War II, Vietnam, Granada, Afghanistan and Iraq, but have gained some serious hype in recent years thanks to SEAL Team Six, aka DEVGRU, aka NSWDG, who saved Captain Richard Phillips from Somali Pirates in 200...
+Randall Munroe, the man behind the web's most popular web comic, XKCD, has always had a knack for getting to the heart of the larger social issues on the web. During the 1st 48 hours after Google+ started letting non-Googlers in, one of the most shared posts within its private walls was his latest comic about Google+:
This is a continuation of a previous post about getting "unfocused" with your DSLR. We all work hard to get pictures that are sharp and have perfect focus. Maybe we’re missing the forest for the trees. Think about mood, color, ideas—in other words, not your gear.
A woman from space that who has been dead hundreds of years has been resurrected on the internet and you're the IT assigned to fight the viruses attacking her. Child of Eden is a mesmerizing musical game, with fluid animations, great game play, and lots of replay ability.
Most of the indie and vintage games discussed in Indie Games Ichiban are pretty cheap to purchase. They rarely top twenty bucks, which is one of the major advantages independent games have against their sixty-buck, major league counterparts. But if you think $60 for a game and $300 for a PS3 or Xbox 360 seems like a lot, then you haven't played Steel Battalion or seen the TurboExpress. They go above and beyond what normal gamers are willing to spend for questionably entertaining products. Her...
In many of my articles, I will refer to applications designed to empower Mac users to automate various tasks on their computer. One such application is called Hazel. Like smart folders, smart playlists, and smart albums found in Mac OS X and iPhoto, Hazel can automate the task of moving, copying, or deleting files in folders on your Mac. I recommend Hazel as one of the most essential applications for any Mac user. Let's explore how it works.
No game is perfect. Well maybe except for Super Mario Brothers 3. In the last two posts I've been praising Tera but it's not without its shortcomings.
The days of having to pay for video games are over. Generally, retail games are better because they're made with more effort and care than their free counterparts. But free browser-based game sites are insanely popular, specifically Kongregate, Armor Games, and the grandaddy of them all—NewGrounds. Despite not receiving funds directly from the players, they’ve become a profitable niche in the games industry. And that popularity has attracted more talent and money to the production of web game...
Movies like to show hackers breaking passwords with fancy software and ludicrous gadgets. The reality of busting passwords open is much more mundane. Simple as it may sound, most passwords are broken purely by guesswork. Check out this infographic from ZoneAlarm, as well as this list from the Wall Street Journal of the fifty most common passwords gleaned from the 2010 Gawker hack. If your password is on one of those lists, you need to change it. Right now.
A common problem for many guitarists is what I call the intermediate plateau. As a beginner, you improved rapidly. You got faster and more fluid almost on a daily basis. Then it stopped. However hard you practice, you don’t seem to get any better.
Scott Pilgrim vs The World: The Video Game was released on Tuesday August 10th for the PS3 (Download only, $9.99). It will be released for the Xbox 360 on August 25th for 800 imaginary points. We spent a few hours yesterday on co-op and single player and here are our initial impressions.
The SCRABBLE Brand trademark has been around since 1948, but video advertisements for the popular board game didn't appear until the start of this millennium. Although there may be a few SCRABBLE video spots out there that predate 2000, I haven't come across them.
Kurt Harris, MD, writes about paleolithic nutrition at his highly recommended blog, www.paleonu.com.
Take It On
Aside from the popular television commercials Ogilvy & Mather did for Mattel's Scrabble back in 2000 and 2001, they also have a large history in print with Mattel. From 1998 until the present, they've been designing graceful, risible and salacious Scrabble and Junior Scrabble adverts, winning prizes for advertising prints at the Cristal Awards, Golden Hammer, Loerie Awards, Cannes Lions, Epica Awards and FIAP. Without further ado…
Spent the weekend with Sprint's new phone, the HTC Evo G4. Specification wise, it's better than Verizon's Incredible and T-Mobile's HD2. Apple will be announcing the new version of their phone this week. If it's comparable to leaked phone shown over at Gizmodo, then to say which phone is better is debatable. The iphone might have a better battery life but the Evo has an unlimited data plan, unlike AT&T's new tier pricing structure.
Kick Ass Review Part 3: Conclusions [Spoiler Alert! Plot points are discussed from the movie and comic in this section!]
So the fiance and I cannot imagine spending upwards of $500 on a DJ for our wedding when we have tons of perfectly good music on our computers. And the cross-fade feature... Genius!
Ever since high school, I've been preparing my own taxes. Each year it gets more and more complicated, which results in me filing later and later, avoiding it until I have the time or just can't wait any longer. I even resorted to using TurboTax online to help do some of the grunt work for me these past couple years, but that hasn't stopped me from being lazy about it. I have yet to file my 2010 taxes, but I will very soon. Tomorrow, in fact—before TurboTax raises their prices.
It's somewhat funny that the HTC ThunderBolt smartphone would be released around the same time as Apple's new Thunderbolt technology. Mainly because HTC's smartphone isn't exactly something I would compare to a flash of lightning, which averages around 60,000 miles per second. But Apple's new interconnect surely deserves the Thunderbolt designation.
Back in the eighties, I used to hate television commercials, but I eventually got used to them. Had to, in order to enjoy my favorite shows. Then, the increasing number of billboard ads annoyed me in the nineties. They followed me everywhere I went—no escape—persuading me to buy the newest whatever. It seemed like Big Brotherism—like They Live. But, I got used to it. When I finally entered the digital age and became a web addict, I was peeved at the constant sight of online ads everywhere I v...
After years of false rumors and abandoned hopes, the day has finally come. Verizon Wireless is finally getting the Apple iPhone!
There's a whole lot of brouhaha going on right now about the hidden plug-ins being installed unknowingly in the Mozilla Firefox web browser, with companies like Apple, Microsoft and even Google being named top offenders.
The Motorola XOOM was just released last week to Android-hungry fans waiting the next best thing to Apple's iPad. But should it have been released, considering Verizon's switching to the 4G LTE network soon?
Recently, buyout talks between Google and Groupon ended with Groupon turning down Google's $6 million offer. But with Amazon backing LivingSocial, should they have? Your guess is as good as mine, but one thing's for sure— Groupon has a great voice, and they're sharing it with the world via their Public Groupon Editorial Manual.
How To Start To start developing website is a hard way to tell people depending on what they are best at. I'd like to describe a few of 'em. I will call them a few names depending on what effect comes out of 'em. And I will describe what developing languages there are out there and are most widely used. Let's start with that for now.
WonderHowTo is a how-to website made up of niche communities called Worlds, with topics ranging from Minecraft to science experiments to Scrabble and everything in-between. Check in every Wednesday evening for a roundup of user-run activities and how-to projects from the most popular communities. Users can join and participate in any World they're interested in, as well as start their own community.
You're sitting in front of your grandmother's Windows XP machine that has the worst infection you've ever seen. Safe mode? No dice. Restore points? They're compromised. Even worse, all of the files are hidden and none of the executables will run! This leaves her computer in a bricked state. Without some serious CPR, it will be lost to you. Sure, you could just reinstall the system, but then you might lose all of that valuable data.
People sometimes ask me about the IT industry here in the states. These folks are usually either trying to get into a certain field, or looking to switch or move into another one. Right now, you may currently be a Computer Science major that will be graduating shortly and are interested in the current state of IT security.
Remember that scene in The Matrix when Trinity uses a realistic Nmap port scan, followed by an actual SSH exploit (long since patched) to break into a power company? Well, believe it or not, but that scene is not far fetched at all. If you want to exploit vulnerabilities and root boxes, you'll need to learn how to perform the necessary reconnaissance first. In fact, you will spend far more time researching your target then you will exploiting it. In this article, I am going to show you the fi...
In this article, I'll show you how to build a simplistic circuit to generate negative ions. Negative ions have been known to contribute to fresher air, happier mood, and general health benefits. However, they also look amazing in the dark (check out the photos below, purple plasma is amazing!). And if all else fails, they make a cool nightlight. If you've ever been around a Tesla coil, cathode ray tube TV or sometimes even on a trampoline, you've probably noticed that smell; the smell of "sta...
