HotForWords? Yes, it’s very educational!
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Posted by on May 10th, 2008Marina is a Russian who moved to the USA in pursuit of furthering her education in the English language and to improve on it. She wanted to earn a Ph.D. in Philology. Back in Russia she was a high-school teacher who taught English and World History. Her story of rising to the superstardom on the Web is amazing. Watch this video to learn more about how this 27 yo managed to make learning so cool yet not-boring. Marina has been voted a Wired.com’s Sexiest Geeks!
Two things everyone understand!
Posted by on May 9th, 2008
And I bet you and your browser’s parser do too 
A lovely concept to a Birthday Cake this one…
[Via Flickr]
Sky carries the Olympic Torch
Posted by on May 6th, 2008
XiaoFeng “Sky” Li had carried the Olympic Torch and has become one of the ten gamers that have announced they will carry the torch for this momentous event. Other gamers that will join Sky are WarCraft 3 player JaeHo “Moon” Jang, and StarCraft player Junchun “Pj” Sha.
SK Gaming has more on this and a few pictures too.
It’s a great thing that the gamers are getting in on the act and the organizers are supporting them too. This is a great publicity opportunity for gamers and the gaming community.
A List of WarCraft 3 Leagues
Posted by on May 2nd, 2008
A major portion of the replays that are uploaded on well known warcraft sites (WCReplays, Replays.net etc) are produced by top level league games such as the WC3L or NGL. There is no doubt that these two leagues are the top most in every aspect… be it prize money, skill level, organisation or the fact that both have offline finals every season. However, there is a lot more activity in the warcraft scene and many of us are not aware of it.
Here is a list along with a small description of other not so well known European and American leagues. I’ll try my best to order them in decreasing skill order as accurately as possible.
1. WPL - ‘Warcraft Premier League’
WPL is a branch of ‘The Gaming League’ (TGL) with well known teams such as PGS, wicked, srs and fnatic that take part in it. I would rate it above NGL-two even.
2. WCIP - ‘Wc3 International Premiership’
The WCIP is organised by ‘Electronic Sports League’ (which also organises WC3L) and is highly rated among all the semi-pro leagues.
3. WGS - ‘World Gaming Series’
The WGS is responsible for organising two warcraft leagues, namely ‘The Frozen League’ (TFL) and ‘World Gaming League’ (WGL). TFL works on the WC3L format (five independent games) whereas the WGL is NGL format (winner to stay). These two leagues are almost as good as WCIP, if not better.
4. WHL - ‘Warcraft Heroes League’
WHL is only into its third season and has improved massively since when it started. Many top american teams and some decent european teams participate in this league.
WCL has been around for a while now. The organisers faced some problems recently and there were some chances of it being closed down, but thankfully it’s still running, currently having qualifiers for their next season.
Other respectable leagues that fall at the bottom of this list include:
7. W3AL - ‘Warcraft III Americas League’
8. ICL/ICE - ‘Infernal Cry League’
I’ve been following these leagues a lot more than i used to. While the skill level is definitely not what one might be used to seeing in golden crowned replays from replays.net, this level of gaming also helps us improve. The reason being that these players make mistakes that pros only rarely would, from which we could learn.
Replays from these leagues can be found on their websites.
Take your internet back!
Posted by on May 2nd, 2008
The penetration of the internet as a fast medium of information for the developing world of which Pakistan is a part of. And some people do not want you to know the truth. Well, the truth is out there and you need to take the internet back from them.
Of the late, YouTube has been a regular target of internet censorship in Pakistan, and since some ISPs have started unlimited-usage services on their high speed connections, they are fond of regularly blocking YouTube to avoid traffic clogging. Not only that, but due to a lot of objectionable material surfacing on online social websites, governments around the world are rethinking their decisions to let the information pipes run free. Which is absurd. But anyways. Help is on the way.
Kortaz has listed an awesome amount of web proxies that enable you to skip firewalls and visit website like Facebook and MySpace without much hindrance. Kortaz also lists user submitted proxies, and with all of them they have added a small description to let you know if the proxy would work on your destination website. The entry submission date is also given so you know which proxy is old and might be malfunctioning, etc. Proxy.org, is another website that has listed proxy websites according to various orders; country, popularity, usage, ISP, software, etc.
Check out our earlier posts on Web proxies to find out the ones we have already discussed and a few that have been suggested by our users.
IGN Watermark on Strat-Guide [Boo-Boo]
Posted by on April 28th, 2008
This just cracked me up. BradyGames made a massive boo-boo.
[Via Joystiq]
11 Signs you are not the Hard-core Gamer you used to be!
Posted by on April 28th, 2008
Yes, when the truth sets in, these are the 11 pinching symptoms of an aging veteran. I found these funny, and none of these have set on me… yet 
[Via Kotaku]
Gamerpk now running Wordpress 2.5.1 under the hood
Posted by on April 26th, 2008
After a failed attempt, thanks to some buggy plugins, I have finally managed to upgrade the CMS that is running this blog of ours. From Wordpress 2.3.3 we are now running Wordpress 2.5.1. The process is fairly simple but needs some (in fact a lot of) improvisation. The upgrade guide on Wordpress Codex is well detailed.
I needed to backup a few tables and databases, disable plugins, delete a few folders because I could as I had root access 
and then just upgrade the older version. I had to save my configurations too, and if you have some experience with Wordpress, you know what I am talking about.
Anyhoo, so thats that, upgrading plugins and maintaining other stuff much much easier. Hope I can further improve the layout. Adios for now.
Halo 3: Bungie Helps Restore Some Emotion for a Gamer
Posted by on March 9th, 2008
A very interesting story posted by bs angle on Hawty McBloggy Invites You Play about how a gamer sent in his XBox for repair and when it came back it had all emotions of his wiped off.
It so happened that a Halo 3 gamer Nathenial had collected a lot of artwork and signature from around the gaming community on his XBox but on sad day it broke. Now he had to send it in for repairs and asked the support on the phone not to wipe off the various signatures and autographs that he had collected.
Unfortunately this thing was not communicated back to the repair department who in the end completely serviced the XBox and it was returned clean as a whistle. This story got posted the same day this happened and in return Bungie decided to send him some Halo 3 stuff that Microsoft apparently owes the kid.
Head on to the blog post to look at some of the really cool stuff that he got! Cool people at Bungie…
A Reason for High Crime Rates: Personal Gadgets, Not Video Games!
Posted by on March 6th, 2008
Every now and then there comes an article from a pro-censorship politician or an activist against computer games proclaiming how XYZ game causes people to lose their mental balance and commit crimes as horrendous as killing multiple persons.
GamePolitics.com is one such blog that tackles lame and half-baked arguments like those and delivers a heavy counter punch to such people. They are also doing watch-dog work a part of the ‘Electronic Consumers Association.’
In their recent article, they have combined studies from various Academic institutes and news journals to state that as a matter of fact it is the new gleam-y, gaudy gadgets that are causing a rise in urban crime rates, and not these video games.
And this is honestly true, we hear more about mobile phone robberies than people playing CounterStrike, going out on killing sprees and trying to nail streaks of head shots. Mobile phone and cell phone theft is probably the most annoying and irritating yet the easiest of robberies that can be done on a street or in a crowded gathering.
I agree that there are a few cases of dementia that would happen anywhere in the depressed corners of the modern day society, but bundling computer games to violent crimes is just an escapist route at finding a scapegoat.
That’s my take on it, read the original article here.
