Homeland review
I’m pretty sure mostly everyone knows Homeland. Or the adventures of Sergeant Brody through wonderland as I call it.
Now I have
to admit I’m not that much in to spy drama stuff so I could potentially be a
cruel judge. Anyway let’s begin with a disclaimer. This review is spoiler free
in general so you may just go ahead and read.
What I am
going to do is review the series in general and then review 3 characters in
specific. Nicholas Brody, Carrie Mathison and Saul Berenson.
That being said you may now proceed to the review.
A friend of
mine studying abroad in England first told me about Homeland. He specifically said
that Homeland is the best series ever. Now I don’t take any pride in this but I’ve
seen so much TV shows and movies that I can hardly be surprised nowadays. So I
went on ahead and saw the first episode. Now the basic storyline goes like
this.
A sergeant
in Afghanistan (Nicholas Brody) is found in captivity after seven years that
was considered dead. The CIA has reason to believe that Brody has turned in to
a terrorist by an Osama Bin Laden kind of guy called Abu Nazir. Brody returns
to the United States, where all of us try to figure out if he really is a
traitor or not.
That is
pretty much the general story behind the series. Two things kept me to see the
whole first episode. First one is a ridiculously beautiful woman called Morena
Baccarin, playing Brody’s wife, Jessica Brody.
But let us
be serious. There was also another reason. Nicholas Brody himself. Or actually the
actor. Damian Lewis. I’ve known him since Band of Brothers and he truly is
amazing.
So what do
I like about this series? It’s all a big scheme and an overture to espionage as
we hoped it could or would be. You see the brain being the most effective
weapon to protect your country. Now let’s be honest.
The show is very American
oriented in terms of what is a terrorist. There is some critique of course
about watching the other side of the coin and the fact that the Americans are
also the invaders and stuff but it’s mostly a villain’s talk. Which can be
disturbing from times to times but other than that the series manages to keep
suspense in to high levels without mechanized crafted cliffhangers. They are
pretty honest with that. They build a story and keep you with the story.
Now there
are many plot twists that make the show great and virtually none of them seems
bullshit. That’s pretty honest if you ask me.
Now let us have a little look in the characters.
Nicholas Brody/Damian Lewis
What can I say about Nicholas Brody technically the whole show revolves around him. An amazing grey character. You never know if he is the asshole or not. He plays his part keeping you wondering what’s wrong. A marine trained to kill, with a heart full of shit after seven years of captivity. The choices he makes can be evaluated in so many levels giving him many chances to get away. One moment he is a coward and an asshole and then he turns out to be the best guy in the world.
Carrie Mathison/Claire Danes
I am really
tempted in to describing her as the bitch. But I won’t. The mastermind of
intelligence in CIA is Carrie. She’s also young and very hard to find allies in
believing her conspiracy theories. She is the one believing that Brody is a
terrorist.
Using
unorthodox methods but also having a brilliant mind gives her the advantage to
prove here points and trying to make the change in protecting her country and
the CIA.
Saul Berenson/Mandy Patinkin
What can one say about Mandy Patinkin? Let us not forget he is Inigo Montoya. From princess bride. Yep that’s right.
The most exquisite poker face you can ever imagine. I Homeland he is very high in the CIA hierarchy and his “child” is Carrie Mathison. He is the one getting her out of trouble and finding solutions for her. Saul is the only skeptic in the show about the “techniques” used by the CIA while on the other hand can be more invasive than any.
So Homeland fans, put on your seat belts and get ready for 4 seasons of great story and suspense (Homeland season 5 release date is around September 2015) that will rock your mind. Espionage at it’s best.
How to increase your Facebook page reach performance
We see lately that Facebook organic reach is plummeting.
Now why is this happening? Well for me there are two reasons.
Engagement is the key.
What you need is balls.
The Facebook video.
Best SEO tips for blogger (and it's free)
Every ambitious blogger desires one thing. For people to see his articles and perhaps gain some revenue out of it.
So many people around the world go out and try to find ways to increase their SEO (search engine optimization). So what is SEO to begin with? Basically is how often you will appear on search results on Google and other search engines.
Unfortunately lots of people get scummed and get to pay massive amounts of money to "increase" their search engine visibility. So this article is something I created on my own. It's not something you will find all over the web.
It's the do's and dont's in SEO for blogger.
Have in mind you can use all of these tips in anything you want to do online. So should we begin with with the dont's?
1. Metatags and specific keywords in the code do nothing.
You might have heard of the power of metatags. You put some specific words on the backend of your blogger blog and magically you get more pageviews. This is not true. Metatags are more like a "guide" of what the blog might contain, but it will never bring the desired traffic on your blogger blog.
2. SEO Companies.
There are still SEO companies around the world selling you SEO optimized blogs etc. Do not spend a penny on this. It's nothing you cannot personally do, and nothing that will give you any traffic of importance. Google has stopped promoting words for SEO. Google promotes content in the proper context with words as a guide.
3. Backlinks.
Supposedly backlinks is an effective way to build traffic on your blog. There are two kinds of backlinks. Those you find free and those you have to pay for in order to gain access to them. Do NOT ever use any kind of backlinks for your blog. It will most likely reduce your traffic, than get you any traffic at all. Google as I said before wants traffic to be fair. Google wants it's users to find what they actually are looking for and not some crap websites. For that reason backlinks will never help you.
Now let's see what you can do to give an increased SEO value on your blog.
First of all. Remember to be patient. Rome was not built in a day. Content/Context SEO takes time to build (mostly because it takes time to index), but after it is built, it's precious and it will not be gone.
1. Words.
When we are talking about a blog, it's mostly articles right? How will you get Google to show your article on Google? You will need to show you actually try. You don't just blog to make money. You need to show that your content has value. One way to prove that is how many words is an article. Based on my experience, do not go below 500 words. Go for at least 500 to 1000. That will show Google that you mean business. Plus you will get space to increase your density.
2. Words density.
Now that is important. Google recognizes keywords inside your content. Based ALWAYS on your context, it scans your words density. Meaning how many times a relevant word appears. But be careful. Don't just go around spam one word. This will not help. As I said, context is crucial when it comes to this.
3. Images.
Images nowadays have an important SEO value. But be careful. As I said before. Do not use random pictures in hope that you will get more traffic. You won't. Do not forget. When you are using an image, Google doesn't know what the image contains. You will have to name it. In blogger you can do it like this.
Just go on your image while editing and click on properties.
4. Helpful websites where you can spread your content.
Personally I do not use many. I mainly use websites that can give added value to whichever content I am using. For that reason I use Pinterest for the images. You cannot possibly imagine how much traffic my blog gets from Pinterest. Other websites can be Stumbleupon (works amazingly with a bit of luck and GOOD content), Digg, Scoop.it, Tumblr and Delicious. Just by having your articles there can be helpful.
5. Webmaster tools.
There are so many bloggers that do not use the webmaster tools and it's such a shame. It's a free tool provided by Google that actually lets you index your articles much faster and give them value.
Remember folks, I am here to give you a personal evaluation and help for your blog, if you need any.
Leave a comment or just use the contact form and I well get to you.
I hope this article helped. I sure hope I could have read something like that when I began blogging.
A cheat guide to mount and blade warband (cheats and more)
I know people who play many different "not so mainstream" video games around.
Games such as Minecraft, the 2 billion dollars game that looks like it came out from the 90s.
Well I kinda have a guilty pleasure like that myself. I love playing Mount and Blade Warband.
A game that really isn't as cool and awesome as others. Basically it's such a sandbox game that I love it. I also heard that recently it's a trend on steam too.
What I love is that you get to create a character, gather an army and just march around the world killing. That's all. there are some useless quests too, but I never bothered doing them.
What's amazing about it is that you can literally use any cheat you like (cause if you don't it's hard as shit) to gain whatever it is you like. Oh yes. Mount & blade Warband is truly a paradise for my Sundays. I just go outside with my huge army and kill. Or even with my elite team!
Which brings me to the cheats issue. You can use cheats pretty easily and there are 2 ways. It's what I call "soft" cheat and "hard" cheat. "Soft" cheat is when you only push buttons inside the game and "hard" cheat is when you play with the settings. So Anyway. Here are all the cheats. Let's begin with the soft skills first.
Cheat List for Mount and blade Warband:
Use the following cheat codes
First you will have to enable cheats in the Config menu like this.
In the inventory it gives you 1,000 Gold - CTRL + X
Ctrl+Alt+F4 - Knock out enemy troops (it's awesome when it comes to huge battles)
Full Health - CTRL + H
Knock out all of your troops - CTRL + SHIFT + F6
Knock out one of your troops - CTRL + F6
1,000 Experience Point Bonus - CTRL + X
Add 10 points to weapon proficiency - CTRL + W
AI Fights For You - CTRL + F5
Kill Enemy Automatically - CTRL + F4
See All Parties - CTRL + T
Slow Motion - CTRL + F9
Teleport Party to Cursor - CTRL + Left Click
Hurt Yourself - CTRL + F3
Hurt Allies - CTRL + F3
CTRL+H - Full Health
CTRL+Shift+H - Full Horse Health
CTRL+F11 - Stop time
CTRL+Space - Fast Forward
Now for the "hard" cheats.
Inside the game press C and go to your character menu.
Click on the "statistics". From there you click on "export character". That will export your character in a notepad. Just remember. In order for this to work, when you are done tweaking the stats you will have to re-import your character back to the game. (kinda like the Matrix!)
Having that in mind go to:
There you will find your character sheet. You might as well back it up before you start.
Then you can change anything you like and as you like in there. I usually go for 10 with the skills (it's the max) and leave the rest, to make it more challenging but you can do whatever you like.
Hope I helped and that you love Mount and blade Warband as much as I do!
Of course if there is anything I can do to help, just leave a comment and I'll answer!
The hedge knight, A Game of Thrones Prequel
Have you heard about the Hedge Knight? Probably if you are only watching Game of Thrones on TV you haven't.
It's a great opportunity to learn about it though! Plus I will be giving you two alternatives to check it out! A book and a comic!
It's all set up in Westeros and is actually a Game of Thrones prequel.
My suggestion though is going to be about the comic book. Let's face it. If you haven't read the Game of Thrones books it's pretty hard to actually read the Hedge Knight books either.
But what the comic book will offer you is a world class, amazing illustration of the Game of Thrones universe.
You are going to see the armors as they are actually depicted on George R. R. Martin's mind. Truth is that when it comes to a TV production you can't really show exactly what is being described on the book.
Yep, that's the Kingsguard |
On a comic book though, it's the opposite. You get to see it all. The illustration is done by Mike S. Miller. I love his work. It's truly magnificent. You will love it.
That is his work too by the way! |