Morning Runner

Oscar Wilde opposed mimesis, the concept that art imitates life, and favoured antimimesis, the concept that life imitates art. Wilde believed that the ways in which people perceive life and nature is conditioned by what artists have taught people to see, and people have been taught this through art. Wilde asserts that the loveliness people find around them, the beautiful effects, “they did not exist till Art had invented them”. Halliwell asserts that the notion that life imitates art was not new in Wilde but was actually derived from classical notions which can be traced to the writings of Aristophanes of Byzantium. Aristophanes does not go quite so far as Wilde however, to totally negate mimesis, but rather “displaces its purpose onto the art-like fashioning of life itself”. A famous question posed by Aristophanes about the comedies by Menander was: “O Menander and Life! Which of you tookk the other as your model?”

According to Wilde, how we perceive life has been conditioned by art, even down to observing camera cases. The way in which we perceive camera cases is completely conditioned by what art has taught us to look for.

There was a really interesting documentary on the other night on channel four about lottery winners. It gave an insight into people who had won the jackpots and how their life had been since.

Some of the winners had, had a great time and had really enjoyed the money. Some of the winners meet up with other winners who can relate to what they have gone through and they can all share their experiences.

Others say the lottery has ruined their lives. One guy in Wales recently bought a winning lottery ticketsand ever since then had been plagued by bad luck. He said how people had tried to attack him, they were nasty and he had his car stolen.

It doesn’t always sound like fun winning a lot of money! Most of the winners said they learnt who their true friends were. Some friends would go out with them and expect them to pay or just say thank you and they just didn’t. That must be heartbreaking.

Picture: news.sky.com

I saw Thor this weekend, and while I thought it'd be a bit of a geeky boy action movie, it was actually really impressive. And a bonus - there's plenty of eye candy for guys and girls, with Chris Hemsworth playing Thor, alongside the always stunning Natalie Portman.

As for the film, it had the right amount of action, the right about of human interest and best of all, amazing graphics. Absolutely stunning. The whole realm Thor descends from - Asgard - is stunningly created with CGI, and would've probably been even more spectacular had I watched it in 3D - the animators have clearly taken a CGI maya tutorial or two!

The movie has been doing well at the box office, and if this movie’s success is any indication of how people feel about this kind of movie, Thor 2 will be on it's way down the pipeline pretty soon - the film was left fairly open-ended!

Photo: light_arted (Flickr)

This is a warning letter everybody. A friend of mine recently set up his own online venture and enlisted the help or a Cloud Hosting company to help him out. He paid them a lot of money to provide him with a server of sorts and then went ahead and sent them all of his content. What he didn’t do though was read the small print of his contract with the company and they then, effectively held his business to ransom. Extorting an extortionate amount of money from him at a truly ridiculous price.
He now has to pay a higher than usual bill every month for their services otherwise they will just shut him down completely. Due to the contract that he signed with them, he also can’t get out of it for 18 months which is horrific. It’s an absolute mess and a half. Do your homework on these companies before you use them and read all of the small print.

When playing fruit machines, it is not all about luck. You need to be savy and look out for tell-tail signs that will help you pick a winning machine.

Here is a list of my top tips to help you make some big bucks!

1. Pick the fruit machine with the biggest payout percentage. (normally 80%)
2. Timing a location is key – pubs and nightclubs are the best as normally people there don’t care how much money they are spending when having drinks and then obviously the best time would be a Saturday or Sunday morning after the night before!
3. Give yourself a limit when playing.
4. Pick a game with lots of gaming features.
5. Never play with more than you can afford to lose.
6. Avoid machines that are heavily lit up and flashing as these are more often ones that have just been won on and trying to build their money up again.

They are just a few tips, there are loads of cheats and reel functions that you need to consider as well and obviously not all of these tips would apply to online fruit machines, but I hope it helps!

Happy Gaming!

Picture: incentivedirect.com