Archive for April, 2008

Maharaja Imperial India Pale Ale From Avery Brewing Co…

April 30th, 2008 | Category: Drinks

avery_brewing_co-logoFirst reaction: This is some good I.P.A. After taking my second sip, I can say that my first reaction was on point. This has that great hoppy flavor that any good I.P.A. should have. Just as a note: I pour the beers I’m tasting into a glass to get the full effect, as far as flavor goes and in keeping with what any half-decent beer drinker would tell you. This oxygenates the brew and helps bring out the flavor. I’m a fan.
Anyway, this stuff is smooth as silk, and drinks quite nicely. This is definitely one brew that I’d like to have access to at any time…too bad it’s seasonal (available Mar. through Aug.) Coming in at 10.49% Alc. by Vol., this stuff packs a hellova lot of alcohol without giving much of a hint of it while being consumed. Like I said before, this stuff is smooth. This is beer I can recommend. Pick up one or two of these and you’ll be thankful you did.
Also, check out the cool label. It’s always nice to see that a brewery takes the time to get an artist to bust out something eye-catching and original to go along with their brews. Check it out–>
avery_brewing_co-maharaja-imperial_india_pale_ale-label
For more info: CLICK
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Dancehall Culture Takes Over Where Top40 Hip-Hop Left Off…

April 30th, 2008 | Category: Uncategorized

slackness-love_punany_badBob Marley’s One Love is heralded as the song of the 20th century. Jamaicans are jubilant about this. We boast of the impact of such songs as Redemption Song in encouraging the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. Millions across the world identify with the message in Bob Marley’s songs. We agree that music has tremendous power and effect. Isn’t this evident in how Jamaica has become known worldwide because of Bob Marley’s music?

How is it then that the same voices that acknowledge the powerful effect of Marley’s music now seek to deny the effect of dancehall artistes such as Vybz Kartel’s lyrics on the minds and subsequent behaviour of those who listen to them?

Dancehall is not just the music, but it is a culture which impacts dress, fashion and body language; it influences attitude. Dancehall dress leaves little of the women’s bodies to the imagination. It is this mindset that is now affecting so many of our young people in school. They are following the dancehall culture of ‘badmanism’, ‘hottie girls’, ’nuff girls’, ’nuff skin’ and body parts exposed, ’nuff slackness’, public wining and grinding, ‘bling and more bling’, and every thing else that the culture promotes.
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*Source: Jamaica Gleaner

My guess is that things have already gone too far. It all started in the 80’s with MTV and music videos. It’s sad (and pathetic) that kids feel they gotta emulate their favorite artists, tryin to act like a ‘video star’ in real life…and also that a lot of girls feel that they need to model themselves after the women in the videos…but what’s the answer? How do you snap people out of the funk? …seems impossible.

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Google Introduces Image Rank for Image Searches…

April 29th, 2008 | Category: News

google-pagerankGoogle engineers last week presented an interesting paper at the WWW2008 conference in Beijing which proposes to apply its PageRank system of finding relevant Web pages to radically improve the accuracy of image search results using Google. This new technology is being called VisualRank, according to an fascinating story on the subject in the New York Times.

The paper, titled “PageRank for Product Image Search,” (PDF) was published by Yushi Jing and Shumeet Baluja of Google. In it they talk about using PageRank to analyze the “visual link structure” that can be created among a group of similar images. This paper proposes to move away from the current model of many image search engine rankings, described as using “the text clues of the pages in which images are embedded to rank images.”

The new model would “identify ‘authority’ nodes on an inferred visual similarity graph and propose an algorithm to analyze the visual link structure that can be created among a group of images.” A numerical weight would be assigned to each image and, according to the paper, ranking would occur based upon “expected user behavior given the visual similarities of the images to be ranked.” The assumption, this blog points out, is that “people are more likely to go from an image to other similar images.”
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Source: PC World

Woohoo! Sounds like image searches are only gonna get better and better in the near future. Too bad Yahoo already jacked themselves on their image search by making all the Flikr results always rank highest. Just because they dropped Yahoo! Photos, they decided to sabotage their own image search? Weird, right? Get back on the ball Yahoo!.