Online Poker. Have you heard about it? Have you tried it?

Late last night, after a second glass of martini, I have found myself staring at my computer screen with nothing to do. I was bored, and so, I clicked on an online poker banner.

I always thought that online poker is a good way to lose money. It turns out that it's a great way to lose money!

I opened a free account at pokerstars.com. Had a few runs of play money (as opposed to real money) poker. Went good! Man, was I hot. I tripled my chips, and it only took me about half an hour.

So I was thinking, 200% profits in half an hour. That's a good investment, ain't it? That's when I drew my credit card, clicked on "cashier" and bought a hundred bucks, that's 100$ (I wish I could lose a "0", but I don't want to lie to my faithful readers) of real money chips.

At first I got lucky, I'll give you that. I had a full-house, I went heavily in and took back some nice profits.

Tragically, what seemed at first as beginner's luck quickly became beginner's disaster. Encouraged by my intial success, I went all in in my next hand. I was missing a card to complete a flush, and I thought, what the heck – the odds are not that bad. Well, bad or not, that card didn't came. Congratulations, whomever took my dough from me.

I figured that my losses are simply the result of my reckless game, going all in like that. Again, I wish it weren't so but I bought 100$ more, this time promising myself that I will go easy on it.

And that is just what happened: This time, it took me four hours, not two minutes, to lose the 100$.

So, final check: 200$ lost in four hours and two minutes.

Cheers!

Thoughts about MMORPG addiction

The internet allows gaming possibilities that couldn't otherwise exist. I'm talking about MMORPGs - Massive Multiplayer Online RolePlaying Games. These are roleplaying games much like D&D, only that they are played over the internet, along with people from all around the world. The two most prominent examples are Everquest (nowadays less popular) and WoW - World of Warcraft.

I had my own personal experiences with these kind of games, back in the days when they were still only text-based (MUDs). I remember these games very fondly.

Nowadays, though, you often hear about how dangerously addictive they are. Many fine young lads have lost their lives due to overgaming, apparently. This is just one out of many examples.

One might add that these losses occurred mainly in Southeast Asia. Makes you wonder.

Anyway, with all the reports about casualties, socially malfunctioning teenage addicts, etc, I really wonder: Is it the MMORPGs? Are they really this incredible threat to society? National security? Humanity?

Personally, I don't think so. The truth is that people die all the time because they develop obsessions for habits that are otherwise just plainly fun, or even healthy and beneficial. According to wikipedia, it appears that hundreds die every year due to overworking. Many more all over the world die due to over-eating. Should we regard food and work as dangerous and unhealthy activities?

I argue that it's the very same case with MMORPGs. Many people play them without developing any addiction whatsoever. On the other hand, it allows the gamer to communicate, sometimes meaningfully, with people from different cultures and backgrounds. And it can also be just great fun!
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Top Movie Reviews sites

Without saying a word about illegally downloading movies from the internet, many of us like to enjoy a good movie every now and then.

Myself, I tend to get quite busy. That's why if I make the time to watch a movie, I want to be sure that my time is spent wisely. Strange as it may seem, when I watch a movie, i'd like it to be a good movie.

So, I surf to one of the many movie reviews sites and check it out. Reviews are very likely to be found even for the newest of movies.

Here are my favourite sites:
1. RottenTomatoes.com
Rotten Tomatoes is extremely comprehensive and very easy to navigate, and it includes online reviews from authors that are certified members of various writing guilds or film critic associations. You can search for a movie by title, by actor, director, etc.
Notice the different parameters for each movie: There is the tomatometer, the certified fresh tag, the audience's opinion and the "top critics" tomatometer.
Also, I like it's design. Fun to surf in that.
2. RogerEbert.com
Roger Ebert is perhaps the most well known film critic in the world. Regardless of that, I usually find his reviews very accurate and very in tune with my own likings and opinions. I dig his taste, if you may.
Notice his site has the ordinary reviews and the "great movies" section.
3. Metacritic.com
Metacritic is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. In that sense, it is more generally "useful" than the above sites. It is somewhat similar to rotten tomatoes, but with less cool design and a different scoring method. Safest would be to check the movie both at rotten tomatoes AND here.

So, choose wisely and have fun!

Mathematics portal: http://wims.unice.fr/wims/

Usually, the first step to take when looking for information or online
tools on the internet is to head off to google.

Well, I was looking for a matrix (which is a mathematical object)
calculator the other day, and have stumbled upon this very useful
mathematics portal: http://wims.unice.fr/wims/.

I must admit that I have not yet visited all the portions of this website.
However, I can strongly recommend their different calculators.

Finding a good, free online calculator gets quite tricky once dealing
with tasks more complicated than adding or multiplying.

Their matrix calculator and matrix multiplier, for instance, are easy
to handle, nearly bug-free, and quite comprehensive.

In the site, you will find:

• Lessons and references on various topics.
• Online calculators and plotters : numbers, functions, matrices, curves, surfaces, etc.
• Interactive exercises of various styles and levels.
• Mathematical recreations : puzzles and games.
• Virtual classes and portals to manage scored student works.
• Misc. interactive documents. 

and you can also browse the site.

Cheers!

Israel, Judaism, Middle East Conflict and more: Haaretz.com

One of the topics I find both extremely important and interesting is the
ongoing conflict in the middle east.

We're witnessing the renewal of the peace talks between Israelis and
Palestinians these days, and I guess we can only hope for the best as we
wait and see how things turn out.

Haaretz.com is the English version of the website of one of Israel's
leading newspapers.

It's a site quite rich with content, most of which is closely related, one
way or another, to either Israel, Palestine, Judaism and so on. It's
written (mainly) by some of Israel's leading journalists.

This is stuff about Israel written by Israelis, for good and for bad.
These guys are both journalists and people who live this reality
for years and years.

Anyway, in the site you'll find the daily news, as well as various
opinion columns, and everything else you'd expect to find in a
respectable newspaper's website.

If you're interested in these issues or you wish to get familiar with
them, I daresay Haaretz.com is a must.

The site reflects, in a way, the hot topics for the Israeli public.
Still, don't forget it's a site targeted at non-hebrew speakers.
In that sense, it's also, in a way, the face Israel would want
you to get a view of.

Hope you find it worth your time.

Cheers!

Online Dictionary: Wordreference.com

A while ago me and my friend were wondering what is the word
for "donkey" in French. Well, he casually mentioned that we can
check it out on wordreference.com.

Now this multi-language dictionary seems like that site that everybody
is supposed to already know about and use quite frequently. Well, I
didn't and I kept wondering how come I've never heard of it before.

Either way, wordreference.com offers an easy-to-use interface and
includes 15 different languages.

Naturally, the most popular dictionaries in the site are the Spanish,
French and Italian. Also, the more popular dictionaries often offer
an audio recording of the requested word, so you can get the
pronunciation correct.

So, that's my two cents for the day. If any of you know of a different
useful dictionary, perhaps with some ultra-exotic languages (anybody
knows how to say mayonnaise in New-Guinea tribal language?), I'd
sure like it if you post a link in a comment.

Cheers

Hello and Welcome!

I've been an internet addict for many years now. Every once in a while
I stumble on a site I like. Every once in a while I encounter a problem,
either in my computer or in real life, and very often I find a cool site
which helps me solving it.

This blog is about my internet life, my internet routine, the interesting,
noteworthy virtual locations I run into. I can only hope that some
of you out there will find my posts worth your five minutes now and
then.

Yet another purpose of this blog is to keep on learning new things
about the internet, with your help. If you have an interesting idea,
site or anything else about the internet which you would like to
share, you've just found someone who's eager to listen. Just
comment away.