Sorry that is has been such a slow month but I finally have a new article to post. It’s about a great website that I have learned about called Freerice.com. This website was first created by a man in Indiana who wanted to help his son study for his SAT. So he created a website to help him study his vocab. But now millions of people are visiting the site everyday to study their vocab, or just for fun. But the best part about the website is that when you get a word correct, the website donates 20 grains of rice to a country that is in need of food. And with millions going to the website each day, there is tons of rice being donated to needy countries. So if you’re one of those people who like to help the needy, or you just need to study for a test, go to www.Freerice.com

Hello there! Fragger Jackson, here! For those of you who don’t know me, I’m the news correspondent for the Cipher. For today’s post, I managed to secure an interview with a campfire. You may be thinking, “Who the hell is Fragger Jackson?” Well, my answer to that involves a long list of legal clauses, but we can skip that part. Anyways, let me recap what happened:

     “I arrived shortly after dusk, floating gently to the Earth from under my parachute. I was armed with my trusty MP5 and bottle of whiskey, neither of which I hoped to use. Well, I hoped to use my whiskey, but my doctor said no alcohol after noon. I countered his proposal the next day by downing five bottles of tequila and shooting my way through a research facility.  Anyways, I landed in the forest, and immediately proceeded forward. After scaring a family of campers and kidnapping their 8 year old son, I found myself in a clearing. There, in front of me, was a campfire. I approached it cautiously. It invited me to take a seat, and presented a comfortable armchair. I sat down, and began to ask it some questions, which you can find here. I thanked the campfire graciously for its time, and left the area. I proceeded back to the landing zone, where my helicopter was waiting. We lifted off, as the campfire sputtered and died.”

That’s all of part 1. Part 2 will be posted soon. Take care.

-NOTE: Fragger Jackson and this post are not real. This is written entirely by Nick.

*Dead on Arrival

Gamers, rejoice! If you enjoy games that are challenging, adventurous, progressive, and exciting, Next Life is not for you!

The game begins with an awesome storyline about Adam Raichl, who was killed in a car accident. When he is “resurrected”, he finds himself on a small island with other lost souls. These souls seemed to come from every place and time. Who were these people? Why were their? Is Adam dead? Is this a lost episode of Lost?

By the end of the first chapter, I didn’t really care about the answers. The makers of the game seemed to base it on a very cool game, No Exit, but didn’t know that games were supposed to be fun, exciting, or at least engaging. The main character sadly just runs all over the place to complete different quests. The only thing that prevented me from quiting the game was the fantasy-based warfare that was going on between the ghosts. However, there wasn’t any kind of warfar. Thus, I quit the game and threw it away. It wasn’t even good enough to be sold on Ebay.

HP has edged out Dell in this quarter, selling the most computers in this quarter. HP has an 18.2% market share, Dell , which is in second, has a 14.3% market share, and Acer, the third place finisher, has a 8.9% market share. Lenovo is in fourth with a 7.4% market share, and Toshiba is in fifth with a 4% market share.

HP sales increased by 30% from last quater. Dell increased by 17%. Read the rest of this entry »

Professor Yi Cui and associates at Stanford’s Department of materials Science and Engineering are currently working on increasing the life of chargeable lithium batteries. They hope that by using silicon nano wires as the anode instead of Graphite the battery life will be extended. They are saying that Two day batteries could be on the market in a matter of years. They have known about Nano wires for 30 years but before now they were impractical to use. Apparently the can change volume by 400 percent when inserted and extracted with lithium. Not only do they handle extreme volume changes, they also provide good electronic contact and conduction.

This is elaborate!

Antimatter, a substance which annihilates matter on contact, has had it’s source discovered. Scientists have discovered that antimatter is created by stars being ripped apart by neutron stars and black holes. Apparently the center of the milky way galaxy has a cloud of antimatter about 10,000 light years wide. They don’t know whether it was exploding stars or dark matter that created the cloud.

The researchers calculate that a relatively ordinary star getting torn apart by a black hole or neutron star orbiting around it — a so-called “low mass X-ray binary” — could spew on the order of one hundred thousand billion billion billion billion positrons (a 1 followed by 41 zeroes) per second. These could account for a great deal of the antimatter that scientists have inferred, reducing or potentially eliminating the need for exotic explanations such as ones involving dark matter.

for full story go to——–http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080111/sc_space/sourceofmysteriousantimatterfound

I hate to draw peeps away from this site but my site www.gorgefamily.com/alec is pretty awesome. Check it out!

I didn’t know this was possible!

Bilbo lives!

After publicly feuding for more than a year, “Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema have reached agreement to make J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” a planned two-film prequel to the blockbuster trilogy.

Jackson, who directed “Rings,” will serve as executive producer for two “Hobbit” pictures. They will tell the story of how the young hobbit Bilbo Baggins originally came to possess the nefarious One Ring that Frodo, his adopted heir, needed three films to dispose of.

A director for the films has yet to be named. Production is tentatively set to begin in 2009 with a release planned for 2010, and the sequel following in 2011.

Relations between Jackson and New Line soured after “Rings” despite a collective worldwide box office gross of nearly $3 billion. Jackson shepherded Tolkien’s Middle-Earth saga to a combined 17 Academy Awards including best picture for 2003’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” The trilogy also includes 2002’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” and 2001’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.”

“I’m very pleased that we’ve been able to put our differences behind us, so that we may begin a new chapter with our old friends at New Line,” Jackson said in a statement. “We are delighted to continue our journey through Middle Earth.”

Late last year, acrimony between the 46-year-old Jackson and New Line became very public, with the studio announcing they would move forward with “The Hobbit” without him. Jackson sued New Line over the amount he was paid including DVD payments for “The Fellowship of the Ring,” the first installment of the trilogy.

“The low point was when we both started getting a little too personal about this whole thing,” said New Line co-chairman and co-CEO Bob Shaye on Tuesday. “From my own perspective, I realized that I shouldn’t be so thin-skinned about everything that goes on in my professional life.”

Jackson’s suit, the two sides announced Tuesday, has been settled. The terms of the settlement weren’t announced, though Shaye cheerfully said: “One of the key terms was we all shake hands with each other.”

In his statement, Jackson thanked Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios (MGM) Chairman and CEO Harry Sloan for helping him and New Line “find the common ground necessary to continue that journey.”

New Line, which is owned by Time Warner Inc., holds the rights to produce “The Hobbit,” while MGM, which is owned by a consortium including Sony Corp. and Comcast Corp., has the right to distribute it. The two studios will split financing and distribution costs, with New Line handling distribution in North America and MGM distributing internationally.

Two “Hobbit” films are scheduled to be shot simultaneously, similar to how the three “Lord of the Rings” films were made all at once. Shaye and Sloan both said it was Jackson’s idea to divide the story, adapted from Tolkien’s first book about Middle Earth (which was about half the length of any from the trilogy that followed).

The film’s production schedule is subject to how long the writers strike lasts, which some forecast could continue for many months. There isn’t currently a script for either “Hobbit” film, and producers will be unable to even approach writers until the strike is over.

“If the writers strike drags on, then everything can change in terms of the time table,” Sloan said Tuesday.

Sloan added that some patience has been necessary for making “The Hobbit” happen: “We’ve always taken the position that we wanted Peter to be involved in this project, but it’s taken some time to work out the differences.”

Jackson, who directed “King Kong” after finishing the trilogy, is currently finishing shooting for “The Lovely Bones,” based on Alice Sebold’s novel.

The three “Lord of the Rings” films rank among the 25 most lucrative films of all time, made more financially successful by the risky strategy of shooting all three together. The production budget for the trilogy has been estimated at around $300 million.

Tolkien’s fantasy epic has been a cultural juggernaut since its publication in the 1950s, inspiring everything from the ubiquitous “Frodo Lives!” graffiti in the ’60s and ’70s to the Dungeons and Dragons phenomenon of the ’80s. With the franchise now considered one of the most bankable projects in Hollywood, the “Hobbit” films will be expected to match the blockbuster success of “Rings.”