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Vintage Byte
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Being Digital
List Price: $16.00
Sale Price: $3.40
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In lively, mordantly witty prose, Negroponte decodes the mysteries--and debunks the hype--surrounding bandwidth, multimedia, virtual reality, and the Internet, and explains why such touted innovations as the fax and the CD-ROM are likely to go the way of the BetaMax. "Succinct and readable. . . . If you suffer from digital anxiety . . . here is a book that lays it all out for you."--Newsday.
As the founder of MIT's Media Lab and a popular columnist for Wired, Nicholas Negroponte has amassed a following of dedicated readers. Negroponte's fans will want to get a copy of Being Digital, which is an edited version of the 18 articles he wrote for Wired about "being digital." Negroponte's text is mostly a history of media technology rather than a set of predictions for future technologies. In the beginning, he describes the evolution of CD-ROMs, multimedia, hypermedia, HDTV (high-definition television), and more. The section on interfaces is informative, offering an up-to-date history on visual interfaces, graphics, virtual reality (VR), holograms, teleconferencing hardware, the mouse and touch-sensitive interfaces, and speech recognition. In the last chapter and the epilogue, Negroponte offers visionary insight on what "being digital" means for our future. Negroponte praises computers for their educational value but recognizes certain dangers of technological advances, such as increased software and data piracy and huge shifts in our job market that will require workers to transfer their skills to the digital medium. Overall, Being Digital provides an informative history of the rise of technology and some interesting predictions for its future.
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1900 Gordon Hotels of Europe Hotel Metropole Hotel Victoria
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Vintage Magazine Article carefully extracted from a vintage American Magazine published in 1900. Article is in good condition. Approximate page size is: 6" x 9". Your satisfaction is 100 % GUARANTEED. If you are unhappy for any reason, we will offer a full refund - No questions asked. Note to buyers. You are purchasing a vintage magazine article, carefully extracted from a bound volume, not an entire magazine. Article contains 4 pages, 9 illustrations
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The Legend of Kyrandia, Book 2: Hand of Fate
Sale Price: $19.28
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From the back of the box: "Now you see it. Now you don't. The land of Kyrandia is disappearing piece by piece and you are the offbeat, young mystic who must voyage to the center of the world to break the curse and save it. Your surreal journey will twist even the sharpest of minds. Traveling through a vast, weirdly beautiful terrain, you must concoct potions, cast spells and lure the help of some very bizarre inhabitants to uncover the secrets that doom Kyrandia. With the new 'State of Mind' system you and over 50 other characters can change your mind and mayhem based on previous events. Breakthrough Trulight technology illuminates each scene more cinematically. Every chapter is packed with humor, puzzles and gameplay. Count only on the unexpected. Know nothing is what it seems. Grasp and kiss conventional logic goodbye."
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You too can be a wine connoiseur
A “connoisseur†– according to Oxford - is an “expert judge in matter of tasteâ€. For sure you know what you like and dislike, so already that makes you a judge. As for being an expert, you have “to have special knowledge of or skill in a subjectâ€. OK, this might require a bit of work but I can assure you it is much easier than most connoisseurs would have you believe.Â
Realize first that the key to being an expert in wine is to know precisely what aspects to look for in any bottle you uncork. The average novice has a vague idea at best. Consequently, despite the fact that both persons have the same discerning abilities, no matter how much wine the novice drinks, it won’t improve his ability to judge properly.
So what we will do here is to spell out in plain English the basic but quintessential virtues that make for a good bottle of wine. I think this will help you evaluate every glass of wine and form an expert opinion with ease. I am going to take you through just three fundamental areas of appreciation, namely Typicity, Quality and Age-worthiness. Mastering them is all that stands between you - a wine novice - and you - a wine connoisseur.
Style and Typicity
The style of wine from Bordeaux will and should be different from Napa Valley or Chile, otherwise wine would be a terribly boring hobby. No one style rules supreme in the wine domain. Typicity which describes how accurate the rendition of the style that the wine is supposed to manifest, is very important quality.Â
An average wine connoisseur is familiar with about 30 styles of wine. It doesn’t take long for a novice to achieve that. All you need to do is to taste a lot. Your palates have excellent memory even if your mind struggles to find more Giga bytes to store a lot of facts and figures. Very soon, when you open a bottle of Brunello di Montalcino, all your senses will automatically receive a download of tasting expectations. And even if the wine tastes very good it would be a disappointment if it doesn’t reflect the quality of its roots. So questions like “Are Australian wines better than French?†are really missing the point.
Quality
With the topic of style down pat, we can take a look at quality of taste. It is actually quite easy. I just need your mind to zoom in on five key areas. Your senses will then render an expert opinion on whether the stuff is good, bad or ugly. The five areas are:
Consistency
Intensity
Vigor
Balance
Finish
Consistency is about tactile qualities that leave a rewarding palate impression, not about flavors. Wine writers like to use the term Body to describe the weight of a wine. Full-, medium- and light-body describe how heavy and light a wine feels on the tongue. But size isn’t everything so in addition to body, we’re also looking for texture of smoothness and silkiness. The great Burgundy wine of Chambertin is well known for its remarkable combination of a full body and a velvety texture.
The flavors of a wine might come in low, medium or high intensity, much like the volume of music played on a stereo.  Great wine comes with an appropriate level of intensity just high enough to capture your undivided attention yet not excessively so as to drown out everything else. It is such deft touch that separates the great Australian wine - Grange (Hermitage) - from many expensive baubles out of the same region.
Vigor comes from acidity without which the wine would taste dull and flat if not downright boring. Great chefs often squeeze a splash of lemon juice to finish off a dish. The presence of the same kind of fresh acidity adds crispiness to a wine making it taste racy with a bit of welcomed levity. The great Italian Barolo from Piedmont are endowed with this quality and so are some of the lovely Sauvignon Blanc white wines from New Zealand.
Balance is the quintessential quality of a great wine. A wine is out of balance if one component sticks out like a sore thumb. Most frequently encountered flaws that throw a wine out of balance are excessively high alcohol which makes the wine taste overly dry and astringent (“hot†in wine jargon) and in white wines especially Chardonnays, excessively woody (“oaky†in wine jargon) and buttery which effaces the fruit flavors in the wine. The great Château Lafite-Rothschild is benchmark for balance par excellence.
The word “finish†refers to the length and quality of the aftertaste. In a long finish, flavors linger on for nearly a minute.  But length isn’t everything if the aftertaste fails to maintain its balance. Some long finishes fall apart giving way to a distinctly sour or bitter impression. Length doesn’t always bring satisfaction.
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Age-worthiness
To achieve greatness a wine must first undergo the arduous challenge of time. Most wines are not made with greatness in mind. For them, time is an insidious revelation of their mediocrity. For the best of breeds, age imbues in them depth and complexity of flavors. That distinguishes the wine from the merely good. Knowing this, fastidious connoisseurs relentlessly scour the town for old vintages pricey as some old bottles could (and should) be.  Novices on the other hand go for brand names and sometimes settle for wines that are far too young to drink, rarely getting their money’s worth. After all, it is the ability of wine to improve with age that positions it above all the other beverages.Â
By now, you have endued yourself with more than enough knowledge to be your own expert judge on every bottle you drink.  If you feel lacking a bit in exposure and experience, then just drink and drink and drink some more. But drinking the same stuff over and over again won’t help. Best advice is for you to refrain from ordering the same wine night in and night out.  Your time is best spent with a new fancy every evening. Promiscuity is inextricably married to connoisseurship. Even if you can’t divorce yourself from the “usual†at least be adventurous with different vintages of the same wine. Every year produces a different version of the same wine. This too is part of the myriad of fascinations that the world of wine has to offer.Â
Whether you are an assiduous restaurateur, a gregarious hobbyist or just a raver with a penchant for the finer things, wine is certainly an affair worth pursuing. This is one relationship which allows you to define all the rules. It can be a languid sidekick or you can take it seriously with a lot of respect and understanding. Ultimately it probably won’t love you back and it certainly won’t stop demanding more of your time, attention and alas, money. If this sounds like a raw deal, then perhaps this is one affair you should sidestep.Â
But imagine if that’s not a problem for you, what else in life can offer an reward so prodigious as something different and exciting to look forward to every single night?Â
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About the Author
Tim Drake is resident wine journalist in Asia, contributing to magazines and broadsheet in wine and the lifestyle that this beverage has created for the modern world.
Is this a good website name?
So, i want a website called Byte Me (bite is intentionally spelt Byte) it will have easy to follow electronics advice for people that have issues with computers. Also is there are a lot of people that use my site i will sell clothes with vintage game things on like space invader of pac man. What do you think 
Jinx
i like it
but let's hope no one already got that name let me see
nope not that i see
you would have to get the word out too
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