Compiled By Sujash Islam
A beautiful combination between indie rock and acoustic guitar led KT Tunstall to become one of the successful indie artists that paid much contribution to Brit-pop. Katie Victoria KT Tunstall is a Scottish singer and songwriter. She has enjoyed commercial and critical success since picking up three BRIT Awards and one Grammy nomination. She has also earned much accolade for her solo album “Drastic Fantastic”.Tunstall was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. She grew up in St Andrews, a town in Fife. Tunstall's first appearance of note was a solo performance of her famed blues song “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree” on Later with Jools Holland. The performance was notable as she had only 24 hours to prepare after scheduled performer Nas cancelled. Her performance caught the eye of many viewers, although she had previously performed it on French television only some weeks before, upstaging more established acts such as The Cure, Embrace, and The Futureheads; she then went on to top the post-show poll on the website for that episode.
Tunstall is known for her live performances, in which she combines use of an AKAI E2 Headrush loop pedal, which she affectionately calls “Wee Bastard”, with a full four-piece backing band. Tunstall appears on the Sophie Solomon song “Lazarus”, on the album Poison Sweet Madeira, and provided guest vocals for three tracks, “Ladino Song,” “Refugee” and “Yesterday's Mistake,” on the Oi Va Voi album Laughter Through Tears. She has also performed “Get Ur Freak On” by Missy Elliott, “My Doorbell” by the White Stripes at a school performance in Scotland and “The Prayer” by Bloc Party at Live Lounge. Tunstall's seventh single, “Another Place to Fall” featured a cover of Radiohead's “Fake Plastic Trees”. She also provided backing vocals for the Travis song 'Under The Moonlight' and recorded lead vocals for the Leo Abrahams song 'City Machine'.
Tunstall received three BRIT award nominations when they were announced on 11 January 2006. Nominations included Best British Live Act, British Breakthrough Act, and British Female Solo Artist. At the ceremony on 15 February 2006, Tunstall performed “Suddenly I See” which is included in Drastic Fantastic and won the award for Best British Female Solo Artist, remarking that she wished to share it with fellow nominee Kate Bush.
She received a 2007 Grammy Award nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree”, but the award went to Christina Aguilera's “Ain't No Other Man”
Source: Wikipedia
Reviewed by Emil
And out comes Crysis: Warhead. A standalone game that parallels the first one. It's 'story'? Involves the somewhat brutish British SAS Sergeant “Psycho” Sykes. While Nomad's (from original Crysis) battling through one army on one side, this dude has to fight through another on the other end. Let us ask the question: What's the point?
Think what you will, but I've never found myself to be drooling over a game like Crysis… Sure, it's got pretty good graphics, quite realistic, revolutionary in the gaming and graphics industry, and all that rot. But, it just didn't rock my boat. Doesn't. Something as hyped up and big mouthed about as Crysis should pack that certain punch, have that certain allure to it, which even some mediocre and less popular titles have.
What's more, this franchise feels almost like something very exclusive and posh, not meant for the 'unworthy', as it were. You have to have a powerhouse of a computer to play this game the least bit comfortably. And you need some SERIOUS specifications if you wanna boast high settings. Which is kinda pointless, in my books- but hey, everybody likes to do that.
Call of Duty 4, which runs on most Pentium 4s easily, with decent enough video cards possess graphics good enough to mesmerize. Or used to possess graphics good enough to mesmerize. Until the advent of Crysis. They took it the next level, lo and behold, brought forth a new level of eye-candy never seen before, and all that rot, generally. I've yet to play a game in my life time that swayed me with its amazing omigodthisisoreal graphics. I could name a few games where the graphics and art played a major role in winning favors, but primarily because it suited and fitted in with the rest of the game. What good is an apple tree to you if it yields only ONE GOOD apple per season?
Crysis: Warhead, like its predecessor (the original Crysis), is SO devoid of evoking a sense of purpose in you, that the whole story, or what there is of it, becomes just a faint backdrop, and all you really do for the duration of the play is shoot at people while wearing a super-suit that provides armor, heals your body from extremely fatal injuries that should usually mean certain death, let's you be super fast for a few seconds, and jump high. Ooh, that is so original- look at me, I'm giddy with excitement, biting my nails off and feeding them to my cat. Lame. Hey, maybe it's just me, but I kinda miss the days when you had to use some sort of medical equipment to get better.
Anyone who has played Crysis and NOT Bioshock (they both came out in the same year) should be living under a thousand ton jagged rock in the Antarctic, suffering from chronic diarrhea. Websites and magazines that gave Crysis awards like “Best game”, “Best shooter”, and “Game of the year” should drink LSD and liquid morphine till they can't feel their bodies freezing up as bungee jump off a cliff at the north pole, with their intestines. That would be mercy.
When I play a game, I want to be able to feel that I'm actually doing something, even if it's while killing and maiming with super weapons and super-suits. Warhead offers absolutely nothing new from Crysis, apart from a different storyline, which is difficult to follow what with all the explosions and the utter lack of any immersion value, and then there's the insanely good graphics, which coupled with a complete lack of other interesting things is just a major turn off.
What else is there to a game? Music and voice-cast? Meh. They're okay- almost a good movie-like, but they can't be the redeeming factor of a game. I'm sure that this game holds something of value to some gamers, but I kinda have a difficult time seeing that. The only thing Warhead can be good for is benchmarking purposes, and even there, it'd be discouragement to everyone to see their uber-expensive computers brought down to its knees and made to groan in agony.
I'm sure many people out there can afford to dish out a thousand dollars every few months to get that oh-so-awesome PC, which quite honestly wears out just the same just as quickly as a mainstream PC, if only to try out games like Crysis: Warhead. Even entirely pointless games like Zuma and Peggle hold better gameplay values.
Unless, you really have nothing else to play whatsoever, and really want an FPS just for the heck of it, then and ONLY then could Warhead be recommended. Albeit, extremely reluctantly…
You could try a Second Variety.
By Mood Dude
James Bond always wowed the world with his 'wowness'. It included his swagger, his amazing attraction to the ladies and his cool gadgets. And nothing was ever more 'gadgety' than his car. It was always fitted with the most amazing tricks that were absurd at first but very appropriate in a following chase sequence. Guns and rockets were common fare. Any Tom, Dick and Harry could hook it up on their jalopy. But Bond went as far as to have a car that could become a submarine. With torpedoes.
In the 1977 movie 'The Spy Who Loved Me', Bond takes a Lotus Esprit and takes to the water to avoid a nasty machinegun toting helicopter. Generally considered a car that could suffer from a lot of problem following a rain shower, this Lotus managed to dive under water and come out unscathed.
Well, a Swiss car specialist has taken this iconic scene to the next level. Rinspeed, famed tuner of many already fast cars, on Feb, 14, 2008 introduced the sQuba. They claimed that it is the world's first real submersible car. Later at the Geneva Motor Show in March, they unveiled the real thing. Rinspeed boss Frank M. Rinderknecht, is known for his extraordinary automotive creations and is a huge James Bond fan.
'For three decades I have tried to imagine how it might be possible to build a car that can fly under water. Now we have made this dream come true.' Rinderknecht said. Rinspeed has also built one of the fastest amphibious cars. If you are wondering, it's a car that runs on land s well as water.
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Honey, get back in the car |
In the end scene of the movie, Bond drove up a beach, paused in front of a gawking sunbather, lowered the window and oddly dropped a fish out the window. Makes you wonder that maybe the car wasn't all that watertight after all. The Rinspeed , based on another Lotus, does away with all your doubts of water leaks. It has no roof so that when you dive you also take a bath. Of course, we are not quite sure how the CD player will work. But you can be sure of one thing. Men having midlife crises will now be able to buy a sports car that takes them fishing right down to the fishes level.
The car is stable at a depth of 10 meters, has zero emissions, is driven by three electric motors, and powered by rechargeable Lithium-Ion batteries. The high-tech VDO instrument cluster and controls create a futuristic ambiance and allow controlling all vehicle functions even while submerged. When underwater, it "flies" like a submarine as it is not designed to drive along the surface at the bottom of the water. On the surface, it can zoom about like a slow speedboat at about 6 km/h. The car's top land speed is 120 km/h (75 mph). Slow when compared to other sports cars but unique it definitely is. Being electric, acceleration though should be fast enough to reassemble your guts. Pricing is still to be announced so don't expect to see it popping out of the Buriganga any time soon.
Now everyone could become Bond. Although getting the ladies would still be difficult.
You can watch the demonstration video on www.youtube.com
