The UFC Is Not The Only MMA Spot In Town

Posted on March 13, 2008 by admin.
Categories: UFC.

061231ufc66.jpgIt has been easy to forget that the UFC is not the only MMA show in town, but that will soon change. There are several other groups vying for dominance, and with many of the UFC fighters contracts coming due and better offers for some from other places, we may see a more diversified MMA front in the near future. CBS has picked up EliteXC.

Dave Meltzer At Y! Sports (Full Article)

The May 24 match between Tito Ortiz and Lyoto Machida at UFC 84 from Las Vegas is among the most important matches of 2008.

Ortiz is a key component of a battle that ends with the last man left standing.

That battle isn’t in a ring or a cage, but a business war for supremacy of the mixed martial arts industry.

Ortiz is the biggest of a host of name fighters whose UFC contracts will be expiring at a time in which a slew of new rival promotions are in desperate need of big-name fighters.

For groups such as Elite XC, which debuts soon on CBS, and Mark Cuban’s HDNet Fights, the key to challenging the UFC’s supremacy in the marketplace is having the right television exposure, the right stars, the right business sense and a degree of long-term planning and patience.

Only time can tell how big of an impact this will have. I do find myself coming to terms with the fact that the UFC is not the only MMA spot. There was definitely a time not too long ago when I would directly connect the two, MMA and the UFC. With the success of the show, ppv, and the impact Dana White has had on the industry, it is to be expected that other people would want to jump on the bandwagon and try to generate the kind of earnings that the UFC has been able to achieve.

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Bad Credit Can Be Fixed

Posted on March 11, 2008 by admin.
Categories: Internet - General.


I have bad credit, mostly due to playing so much World Of Warcraft that I kinda forgot to go to work for a while. I wondered what to do for a while, but then I found that there are bad credit credit cards that are designed to help people like me who have bad credit to get back on their feet. (As for not playing world of warcraft…well I have yet to find the proper help group for that, but I can assure you that there will be one available soon, because its about as addicting as cocane).

BadCreditOffers.com gives you a good overview of some popular cards, and what options they have. It also tells you if they are secure or unsecure (meaning you have to put money down to back the line of credit or not), and they offer a ranking system to tell you which cards are the most popular.  This is a great way for many of us who have bad credit to find a starting place to help rebuild.

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American Idol Top Twelve Performances

Posted on by admin.
Categories: TV.

What was up with the performances tonight?

Kristy Lee Cook raped a good song.

Carly screamed (like she always does).

Brooke was good.

David Cook was good.

Chikizie was good in a weird way.

Everyone else not so much..Yes you David Archuleta.  David was a disappointment tonight as well as several others.  The worst of the whole entire night was Kristy Lee Cook.. if  you watch her sing this song, it will make you hurt inside.  I personally think that David Cook was the best.

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Gulf Oysters Are Yummo!

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Categories: Science.


2199.jpgWho does not love to grill seafood with friends and family around, the bbq grill fired up, playing football down by the beach…ahhh those are the days. Some nice Gulf oysters with a little garlic and bacon…maybe a little bit of lemon.

You should be aware of Vibro Vulnificus though, and how oysters can be treated to reduce the risk of this bacteria.

Vibrio vulnificus is a gram-negative bacterium that occurs naturally in warm, unpolluted seawater.

Most normal people would not be affected by vibro vulnificus, but if you have liver disease or cancer or a few other types of diseases you could be at risk. There are 3 different post harvest methods to reduce these risks, which are: IQF (fresh-frozen technology), heat cooled pasteurization, and high pressurization processing. To learn more check out www.beoysteraware.com .

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Why Are Gas Prices So High? Is It Greedy Oil Companies?

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Categories: World.

856563572_0cfc5dbb13.jpgFact: Gasoline Prices Are At An All Time High

They are going to get higher.  But why?  Many factors affect the price of crude oil, and ultimately gasoline.  One major influence is the economy.  The US economy is weak (understatement of the year right?) and because of this weakness, and the dollar losing ground, people invest in crude oil as a “hedge”.  When the dollar falls, things like crude oil, gold, silver, etc.  become much more valuable.  Oil prices make up about 80% of the price of a gallon of gasoline, and those prices have increased about 20% because investors  are funneling money into commodities.

Believe it or not, the refineries are struggling to make any money at all.  They get blamed sometimes for the prices, but as I have stated above, the prices are influenced by investors, and the companies that own the actual oil.  The refiners are making about 6 dollars from every barrel of oil they process, when about a year ago they were making 35+ dollars per barrel.  They currently are only operating at about 85%, but I ask you where is their incentive to increase throughput when they can’t turn a profit.  So who is making money? BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron, etc.  Thats where most of the profits go, and that is who is stuffing their proverbial pockets full of our hard earned money.

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Shopping Cart Software Anyone Can Use

Posted on March 10, 2008 by admin.
Categories: Internet - General.

For those of you out there who are novices to the web design world, you may want to have your own ecommerce website, and wonder how in the world you can tackle the problem of having quality shopping cart software. I can tell you from experience that while solutions like OsCommerce look good, they can be a huge hassle if you ever have to dig down into the code to do anything unique to it.

One great thing that I have noticed about AShopCommerce is that they will design your custom e-commerce storefront for free! They also offer the ability to get some custom work done on bits and pieces on an as needed basis, and they host the whole thing for you on lightning fast servers, and guarantee the up time of your site.

They also make the ecommerce shopping cart SEO friendly. This is a tough thing to do after the fact, so starting with the correct shopping cart up front can save you time and money in the end. I have had clients in the past who tried to modify their own shopping carts and failed causing huge problems for themselves down the road. You can save your self the trouble, and start with something that you know will work correctly.

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Camcorder Reviews By Regular People, For Regular People

Posted on by admin.
Categories: Technology - General.

This is the future of reviews! User submitted video reviews, all I have to say is that this is a great idea. Camcorder reviews are not always easy to find, and this is a site that has true user submitted reviews. the large number of features and price ranges can be overwhelming to the average consumer, and deciphering all that technical jargon can often be maddening.

One of the highest reviewed camcorders on the site is the Sony DCR-TRV280 Digital8 Handycam Camcorder w/20x Optical Zoom. Now, I did not know much about this or any of the other camcorders, as I have been out of the loop on these for a few years now. I find the user submitted reviews to be very beneficial, especially in the fact that they cut out most of the jargon and if there are flaws in the design or function, I feel like a consumer will point that out to me, instead of trying to tap dance around it like the company would do. Allowing the reviews to be rated by the site viewers makes the reviews that are the most helpful the most visible, which is exactly what you want to happen.

There are many other reviews like the Panasonic PV-GS120 3CCD MiniDV Camcorder w/10x Optical Zoom Review.  The site also features reviews of many other electronic devices, and again I can not say enough about how great of an idea user submitted reviews are.  This is definitely a good way to find out what people really think about many different types of camcorders.

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Too Many People In The World

Posted on March 9, 2008 by admin.
Categories: World.

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I am sick and tired of not being able to go anywhere or do anything without being surrounded by a cloud of morons. Every time I go to buy groceries, I have to fight my way through crowds of sheep who can’t think for themselves. I can’t drive across town without getting cut off in traffic or almost run over like we are in a Nascar race. There are just too many people in the world. I am sick of the crowds, and standing in lines for every single thing. I think we would all be sick out of our minds if we knew exactly how much of our lives we spent standing in lines and waiting for one thing or another.

I would love nothing more than to completely drop off of the grid, live on my own like survivor man out in some remote wilderness. I am not a violent person, but I have had the impulse to get a tank and run every car in front of me over in traffic, or to break the arms and legs of the next person who cuts me off in traffic. I blame these feelings on the fact that the US is just too crowded. All these damn immigrants, who think they can just come here and live off the blood and sweat of my hard working, tax paying ass, while we support their 35 kids on welfare and food stamps. Why I pay a huge premium for health care because they are getting their health care for free. We have to do something.

Stop the immigration, do it under penalty of death if that’s what it takes. Make it a capital offense, make it a form of treason, but do something about it. And then limit the number of children people can have. I know that sounds harsh, but I think it is needed. We absolutely have to do something, before it is too late.

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A Planet Similar To Earth, I’ll Pack My Bags And Meet You There….

Posted on March 7, 2008 by admin.
Categories: Science.

There was a recent article which I will show a brief snippet from:

Earth may have a twin orbiting one of our nearest stellar neighbors, a new study suggests.

University of California, Santa Cruz graduate student Javiera Guedes used computer simulations of planet formation to show that terrestrial planets are likely to have formed around one of the stars in the Alpha Centauri star system, our closest stellar neighbors.

Now.. that information is interesting, and as I finished reading the article, I see the first comment:

Wow. Not only should we be able to observe such planets (earth-like or otherwise), but if we detected any we could realistically send a probe or two to study them. If it pans out it might be the most exciting extra-solar planet discovery in history.

There are several other comments along these same lines.. now what i want to know is.. do people not realize how far away this is? Alpha Centauri A & B are roughly 4.35 light years away from us. Proxima Centauri is slightly closer at 4.22 light years.

The Voyager spacecraft is on an interstellar mission. It is traveling away from the Sun at a rate of 17.3 km/s. If Voyager were to travel to Proxima Centauri, at this rate, it would take over 73,000 years to arrive. If we could travel at the speed of light, an impossibility due to Special Relativity, it would still take 4.22 years to arrive!

So yeah.. lets send some probes there… come on people.. get real.  We could send new probes there every 50 years, and in 1,000 years we could try to send another probe, and we could probably beat all the other probes there.  (If humans still exist on Earth by then).

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How To Get The Last MySQL Auto-ID in PHP

Posted on March 6, 2008 by admin.
Categories: PHP Programming.

There will be times when you will need to retrieve the last auto id on a table where you just did an insert. They way to do this is as follows:

<?php

$link = mysql_connect(’host’, ‘user’, ‘pass’);

if(!$link)
{
die(’could not connect: ‘. mysql_error() ) ;
}

mysql_query(”INSERT INTO table (field) values (’val1′)” );

echo “Last ID is “.mysql_insert_id());

Be sure you do this directly after the insert, if you need to use it for something, because it changes anytime another insert is done on a table with an auto id.

I have also noticed weird results on the first entry of a blank table, so watch out for that.

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Review of The Innocent Mage by Karen Miller

Posted on March 4, 2008 by admin.
Categories: Books - Fiction.

Innocent MageThe Innocent Mage (Kingmaker Kingbreaker book 1)

I give this first book in the series 4/5 Stars ****

I try to pick up a new author every now and again, just to get a little something different. I picked the Innocent Mage by Karen Miller up on a whim because amazon told me I wanted it. (You know how amazon watches every thing you buy/look at / think, and then tells you what you want even if you don’t want it). Well…amazon was right. I wanted it.

This book turned out to be fantastic. The only gripe I have at all is that the ending leaves you hanging (or maybe falling is a better word). The protagonist is refreshing. The speech takes a little to get accustomed to, but I found myself rather enjoying Asher after 100 pages or so. I don’t want to spoil the book for anyone, but I really enjoyed the magic system in this book, and I think that Karen does a good job of character development. Asher changes through the course of the book, and thats all I can tell you. There is enough intrigue and open plot to make you come back for more, as I’m sure I will have to read the next book.

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December 21, 2012 7 Prophecies Of Doom

Posted on by admin.
Categories: World.

Mayan Calendar

1. Ancient Mayans

The Ancient Mayans were obsessed with time, and their calendar was in some ways more accurate than our current calendar. The Mayan calendar is able to predict eclipses thousands of years in advance. It also turned out to be prophetic, as it predicted in the 8th century BC that “white skinned bearded gods would arrive from across the sea on March 5, 1519″, the exact day that Cortez and his Conquistadors arrive in the new world. The Earth and the Sun come into exact allignment with the center of the milky way galaxy on December 21, 2012. The Mayans reference a “Dark Mother” / Black Hole, at the center of the galaxy. (Which science has recently shown to have credence). This alignment only occurs 1 time every 25,800 years.

2. Cumaean Sibyl lived in ancient Rome around the 6th century BC. She was highly regarded by Roman authorities. Her scrolls were housed in the temple of Jupiter and were some of the most important religious documents of their time. She predicts the world will last for 9 periods of 800 years, and that the 10th generation will begin around 2000 AD, and that it will be the last generation. She accurately predicted the invasion of Hannibal 700 years before his arrival, and his defeat. She also predicted Emperor Constantine by name 800 years before his birth. It is also believed that she may have predicted Christ 20 years prior to his birth.

i-ching.jpg

3. I CHING

The I CHING The I Ching (Wade-Giles), or “Yì Jīng” (Pinyin); also called “Book of Changes” or “Classic of Changes” is one of the oldest of the Chinese classic texts. The book is a symbol system used to identify order in chance events. The text describes an ancient system of cosmology and philosophy that is intrinsic to ancient Chinese cultural beliefs. Wiki says..

One of McKenna’s ideas is known as Novelty theory. It predicts the ebb and flow of novelty in the universe as an inherent quality of time. McKenna developed the theory in the mid-1970s after his experiences in the Amazon at La Chorrera led him to closely study the King Wen sequence of the I-Ching. Novelty theory involves ontology, extropy, and eschatology.

The theory proposes that the universe is an engine designed for the production and conservation of novelty. Novelty, in this context, can be thought of as newness, or extropy (a term coined by Max More meaning the opposite of entropy). According to McKenna, when novelty is graphed over time, a fractal waveform known as “timewave zero” or simply the “timewave” results. The graph shows at what time periods, but never at what locations, novelty increases or decreases.

Considered by some to represent a model of history’s most important events, the universal algorithm has also been extrapolated to be a model for future events. McKenna admitted to the expectation of a “singularity of novelty”, and that he and his colleagues projected many hundreds of years into the future to find when this singularity (runaway “newness” or extropy) could occur. Millenarians give more credence to Novelty theory as a way to predict the future (especially regarding 2012) than McKenna himself. The graph of extropy had many enormous fluctuations over the last 25,000 years, but amazingly, it hit an asymptote at exactly December 21, 2012.[18] In other words, entropy (or habituation) no longer exists after that date.

So, the King Wen sequence shows that the time line ends on exactly December 21, 2012. The same day the Mayan Calendar ends.

4. Merlin (Merlin The Wild) Myrddin Wyllt

Merlin, a 6th century British prophet, also foretells the end of the world. He predicted the first American colony by name. He predicted the British victory at Waterloo, the Nazi holocaust, and some of his farther reaching predictions may strike true in your thoughts, like this one “At that time shall a man, standing on the shore of England, speak instantly to a man in France through a speaking stone.” He also predicts that the sea will discharge into the river (i don’t know the spelling of that river) and that fish will grow multiple tales because of this. There happens to be a modern day nuclear reactor right next to that river.

5. Mother Shipton

Though her prophecies may have been fabricated in the 1800’s, I find it interesting that one of them reads something like “When pictures look alive, and ships swim like fish.. and men soar in the sky like birds, then half the world deep drenched in blood shall die”.

6. John Of Patmos

The book of Revelation has some chilling words of prophecy that most are familiar with. Including flood, famine, earthquakes, etc. Which also coincide with many of the other prophecies we have discussed.

7. The Web Bot Project

This was referenced on the History Channel, and I can not seem to find any solid information about it via the internet. It was said on the H channel that the web bot technology was created as a predictive model for the stock market, and at some point it began to predict future world events as well. The web bot is said to predict limited nuclear war and world disasters around 2008-2009 leading up to devastating world events in 2012.

What could happen?

hapgood.jpg

It is now believed that a polar shift has happened in the past, and could happen again in the future. This shift would cause all of the same types of disasters that I have discussed in these prophecies. This would involved the magnetic poles of the Earth..well..shifting, and if this happened quickly (over days or hours) it could be devastating.

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Dungeons & Dragons Co-Creator Gary Gygax Dies…

Posted on by admin.
Categories: World.

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It is a sad, sad day for RPG fans everywhere. Dungeons & Dragons means a lot to most of us. Many a code monkey has fond memories of playing D&D with their friends, some Mt. Dew, staying up all night to kill the red dragon. D&D was not only a board game, but it influenced the entire game development community. Its dice techniques are still used even today. Even games like World Of Warcraft use a sophisticated system of simulated dice. This game in my opinion would only be second in influence to LOTR. Why when I was a boy scout myself (no jokes please) I can remember everyone gathering together after meetings to play D&D. I do not understand why it got such a bad stigma, as in my opinion it was completely benign. No computer game in my opinion can come close to the immersing experience of a really good game of D&D. So I salute you Mr. Gygax, and thank you for the legacy you leave behind.

MILWAUKEE - Gary Gygax, who co-created the fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons and helped start the role-playing phenomenon, died Tuesday morning at his home in Lake Geneva. He was 69.

He had been suffering from health problems for several years, including an abdominal aneurysm, said his wife, Gail Gygax.

Gygax and Dave Arneson developed Dungeons & Dragons in 1974 using medieval characters and mythical creatures. The game known for its oddly shaped dice became a hit, particularly among teenage boys, and eventually was turned into video games, books and movies.

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PHP Permanently Move A Page

Posted on March 1, 2008 by admin.
Categories: SEO.

The proper way to move a page and have search engines properly find it is to use a 301 redirect. The 301 redirect tells the search engines that “this page has permanently moved”. I am in the process of redirecting an entire website using 301 redirects, and I will post updates on the impact this has on the SEO and search engine placement on the site. The code to do a 301 redirect in php is as follows:

<?php

// Permanent redirection

header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");

header("Location: http://www.somacon.com/");

exit();
?>

Be sure you put the line : header(”HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently”); Because as I have recently discovered, just using the header location line does a 302 redirect instead of a 301.  A 302 redirect tells the search engines that “this page has temporarily moved”.  So be sure you do this correctly if the page is permanently moving.

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