Ebola Cola

It’s not often a games company releases a box of perfectly polished games for the price of one. Valve released “The Orange Box” in late 2007, containing five games. Among this treasure trove was a game known as Team Fortress 2, Team Fortress 2 was released in April of this year for PC gamers and to my amazement, is one of the best games I’ve played.

I began playing Team Fortress 2 on the Xbox 360 console, needless to say, many problems existed. The game relied on players to actually “create” a server which would just piggyback on the player’s connection. No “ranked” matches actually exist on the console’s version as most of the players seem to enjoy the quick unranked matches and the unranked matches that exist are unbearably filled with lag and connection problems. This ultimately left the servers lonely and vacant. It was a shame because the game was packed with so much fun.

After selling my Xbox 360 version of The Orange Box, I was able to buy Team Fortress 2 for Windows and after a month or two of playing; I’ve finally reached a rather superior conclusion.

Read the rest of this entry »

The spotlight first turned to ex-SAS soldier, Ben Griffin in 2006 when he refused to return to combat in Iraq, claiming that the war was illegal. Griffin also claimed that he had witnessed illegal acts conducted by US troops, who also looked upon the Iraqi people as being sub-human.

Personally, I have nothing but respect for Ben Griffin, as the first SAS soldier to stand up for what he thought was right and not return to combat in what is quite obviously an illegal war.

Ben Griffin served with the parachute regiment for eight years and was a member of the SAS for two years; he has taken part in operations in Macedonia, Afghanistan and Northern Ireland. Judging by his gleaming career, he has witnessed some ugly, dangerous and nightmarish situations. So what made him back out of Iraq?

Read the rest of this entry »

Now, EbolaCola doesn’t normally do obituaries, but we feel that one is significant in this case. In today’s society more news coverage goes over the death of a TV personality, or an actor. These people may have touched the lives of millions; However, we tend to forget the brilliant minds that help to shape our society, further our knowledge of the world and save lives.

Dr. Michael DeBakey was a world-renowned American heart surgeon, innovator, medical educator, and international medical statesman. What many consider to be the world’s greatest-ever surgeon pioneered medical procedures such as bypass surgery that are now common-place in today’s world. He also was a pioneer in the effort to develop artificial hearts and heart pumps to assist patients waiting for transplants, helped create more than 70 surgical instruments, and performed surgery on countless patients.

His longtime work mate, Cardiovascular surgeon Dr. George Noon praised DeBakey as ”the greatest surgeon of the 20th century” who “single-handedly raised the standard of medical care, teaching and research around the world.”

“Dr. DeBakey’s reputation brought many people into this institution, and he treated them all: heads of state, entertainers, businessmen and presidents, as well as people with no titles and no means,” said Ron Girotto, president of The Methodist Hospital System. He also said the surgeon “has improved the human condition and touched the lives of generations to come.”

People tend to take a lot of things in life for granted, and never fully see the hard work and brilliance of the people behind them.

Dr. Michael DeBakey died on the 11th of July, 2008. He was 99.

Ask anyone if they have watched ‘the trilogy’, they will think you’re referring to Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. Although Star Wars grew from being a trilogy alone, it was always regarded as one and although there are many trilogies that may meet the quality of Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, such as Back to the Future and The Matrix, these examples have never been branded as being the trilogy.

On the subject of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings however, although you may not know it, the two are rather similar. Both have also had a very large cultural impact. So, which has made the largest impact and which is the best, if there can be a best of the two? In this article, Light Sabres will clash with, well, wands and medieval weaponry I assume.

Read the rest of this entry »

Brain boxes at Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School (Where else?) have recently developed a nifty little web tool called HealthMap. HealthMap gathers and utilises information from the world wide web to accumulate information on outbreaks of diseases, and pinpoints their exact location on a big worldwide map.

Or as they say over at Harvard, it is a ”multi-stream real-time surveillance platform that continually aggregates reports on new and ongoing infectious disease outbreaks”.

The developers hope that the use of HealthMap will help  ”facilitate early outbreak detection, increase public awareness of outbreaks prior to formal recognition, and provide an integrated and contextualised view of global health information”.

In the example to the right, I searched for recent cases of the disease that shares the first half of this sites name; Ebola. Through search criteria, HealthMap was able to tell me that one unlucky guy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, slap bang in the middle of Africa - was displaying suspected symptoms of Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever. Very cool stuff but way cooler if you’re a researcher. Not so great if you’re the poor guy with ebola.

HealthMap.org. Another great example of science utilising the web for what it was meant for.

“Bitchin”, as House would say.

If there is anything with this article that is wrong, I will be happy to hear from you.

I have been experimenting with software known as ‘Shimmie’. For those not in the know, Shimmie is based on the Danbooru concept. Although Danbooru focuses on primarily anime and manga uploads, Ebola Cola’s very own ‘Colaboru’ (maybe we need to fiddle with the name) will allow the uploading of anything.

You can upload images, leave comments and register. To participate, hit this link.

Colaboru also supports anonymous posts and uploads, however I will not hesitate to wield the Banhammer at anyone uploading inappropriate material. To understand what is appropriate and what is not, don’t upload anything you wouldn’t be happy to show your grandmother.

So, feel free to contribute with anything our users might enjoy.

Hearing the news that Bill Gates had finally left Microsoft, I quickly turned to alcohol. On the brightside, I invented a summery drink which you can make yourself at home. It only takes two minutes and tastes of summer meadows.

First of all, choose yourself an appropriate beer. I chose Finkbräu, which is very cheap and has a rather strong taste. Perfect for our drink.

Read the rest of this entry »

Good evening readers, even if there are only a small handful of you out there. I keep putting off this post, but it was unavoidable and had to be done at some point. In this post, I’m going to discuss things concerning the website, take suggestions and hopefully steer us onto the correct track should we be going wrong anywhere.

First of all, Ebola Cola was a personal blog but in just one night we seemed to have expanded and now have several editors and a larger fanbase number of readers. Which is excellent news, it means we’ve had a good start. Considering our first post began on May 27th and it is now 28th June, having almost thirty posts means that we have published a lot of content when you take into account the size of the website.

Read the rest of this entry »

Well, indirectly maybe.

Scientists have recently discovered that lack of vitamin D can significantly increase your chances of an early grave.  Here are a couple of Vitamin D facts for those who don’t know:

• Vitamin D is formed in the skin when it is exposed to ultraviolet rays present in Sunshine.
• Vitamin D is essential in Humans to promote the absorption of calcium and phosphate from the intestine and their uptake by bone. This makes Vitamin D a human body must-have accessory.

Unfortunately though, it was believed until a few weeks ago that vitamin D deficiency only played a part in diseases that screwed up bone structure, such as rickets and Osteoporosis. 

Now, it seems, lack of vitamin D can also contribute to cancer, strokes, sudden cardiac death and death of heart failure. Pretty much everything that involves pain and death.

Being the “Sunshine” vitamin, your unnatural existence of sitting in your dark room all day in front of the computer is not exactly beneficial to your health.

Best way to fix that though, is to simply walk in the sun for a while, eat fish and other such foods rich in vitamin D and pills. Lots and lots of pills.

There is a catch though. The real annoying thing is that spending too much time in the sun can develop skin cancer. On the other hand, spending too much time out of the sun can cause cancer anyway. Even having excess vitamin D in your diet can screw you up, causing silly little things like nausea (Yuk!), and more serious things like heart rhythm abnormalities (Boo!). Therefore it’s important, like many other things in life, to stick to a healthy medium.

So if you really are that obsessed with RPG’s, second life ,or you are just Japanese, get out more, or at least on a sunny day, take your laptop outside.

• Information on the new Vitamin D health implications (PDF)

If there is anything with this article that is wrong, I will be happy to hear from you.

After 33 years of intense activity, today’s the day William Henry “Bill” Gates III leaves his full-time job at Microsoft to dedicate himself to the charity foundation named after him and his wife, Melinda.

Whether you like him or not, nobody in the IT field could say that this is not a moment to be remembered. While little will change in the immediate future (Gates’s leaving was announced more than a year ago and had surely been carefully planned in advance), the software industry will probably be different without a man like him.

Read the rest of this entry »