Pic of the day 8/24/08

Project complete!

Video Game Video-ganza!

I work on both of the games involved in this awesome video series. For video game fans I'm talking about Halo 3 and Viva Pinata. (Sis - you should share this with Jaywalka). But anyway, they are epic and hilarious. See the video below and then the making of below that (which is almost more impressive) and then the inspriation below that. Suffice it to say, I think video game developers have more fun.



The making of...


and the initial inspiration...

Chainsaw Maid

Claymation horror at its finest. It's gore and creepy sounds and blood and clay all wrapped up in a cute package. If you enjoy this, there is much more here.

Found this over at Boing Boing.

Springfield mapped

Simpsons fans rejoice! A man with much much more free time than me created an interactive and highly detailed map of Springfield for your amusement. Also pulled from the site:

SPRINGFIELD, USA:

City motto - "A Noble Spirit Embiggens the Smallest Man", "Corruptus in Extremis"

Founded - Unknown; before 1649

Incorporated - 1796

Founder - Jebediah Springfield

Mayor - Joe Quimby

Congressional Representatives - Bob Arnold (expelled), Horace Wilcox (deceased), Herschel Schmoikel Krustofski (more commonly known as Krusty the Klown)

Area - 2,088,723 km² (West Springfield is three times the size of Texas)

Population-City pop.-Density - 30,7201.50/km²

Elevation - 1582 feet above sea level

Area Codes - 636 & 939

Main Industries - Nuclear Power, heavy manufacturing, Duff Beer, Retail, boxes, fudge, fireworks, crackers, Animated Media

Official Bird - Potbellied Sparrow

New Music Wednesday

I haven't even listened to this all the way through, but when two of the most respected, creative and forward thinking artists in the world release an album (online as well, such trailblazers!), I'm going to pay attention and share it with who ever I can. Stream David Byrne and Brian Eno's new album "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today" below.


If for some reason the video won't play go here.

Lamar's Limp Wristed Throwing Style.. aka the Evolution of the Javelin

I have some serious, serious gripes about the Olympics coverage and what they put,and don't put in the primetime slot (ping pong, shooting events, all the amazing events you've never heard of), but that being said I love the Olympics.
This article in WSJ today gave a history of the Javelin, which is one of the more ancient and technically evolving sports.

Javelins, remember, started out as spears that were meant to kill people. Barely a year passes when one doesn't. A 1950s innovation shifted weight from the tip to the middle and enabled East German Uwe Hohn to throw 104.80 meters in 1984, the all-time record. However, those javelins landed flat and skipped, or overshot the field and skewered the crowd. They were banned in 1986, and a fresh record book opened from scratch.

Three years later, Mr. Nemeth roughened the tail's surface, adding lift even if the nose, as the rules required, had to hit the ground first.

The world record holder at the time was Jan Zelezny, a Czech who threw 87.66 meters in 1987. "I convinced him to take my javelin into his hand," Mr. Nemeth says now. "It made him famous and it made me famous." But in 1991, the rough surface was banned.

Quickly, Mr. Nemeth came up with another design: a javelin wrapped in carbon fiber to reduce vibration. Mr. Zelezny threw a new world record with it. Then the carbon wrap was banned. Carbon is legal again today, but Mr. Zelezny's record was wiped off the books.

Spearing the crowd. Sweet. However, the usually factually correct (though horribly Republican and slanted) paper missed the historically largest advance in the sport ofJavelin... by a little guy called Wormser.

The Thrill of the Chase!

I love my soccer team. Evidence that my appreciation doesn't stem from the thrill of victory shines through in this preview of tomorrow's game on the league website. There is only one direction to go boys!

Tune in for Tuesday Night's Toilet Bowl

Every team finds itself in the dumps at the bottom of the table every now and then, as the soccer gods smite them with injuries and bad luck. (And what is more noble than poking a little fun at those teams so afflicted when it isn't you?) Tuesday's game - dubbed the Toilet Bowl - will see a fight for the 12th and final Cup playoff seed between Cloverfield and Real Santa Monica. The winner will likely move on to the tourney, while the loser watches on the tele. So tune in for the match!

more about the league here.

Word of the day 8.15.09

Lithopanspermia - The theory that life can be carried between planets on rocks ejected by impacts
-courtesy of this post on i09.

Olympic High

Yikes. If you haven't seen this clip from the Olympics, you honestly might not want to. It's brutal, but, for me, like a trainwreck or 2 Girls 1 Cup, since I could not turn away despite my stomach turning. It harkened back to one of my favorite SNL skits of all time, which I remember from high school. Amazing that in those days you actually had to plan your night around watching SNL in the dark days before DVR, and just as amazing that Dennis Miller's hair seemed normal. 

Weightlifting Accident 2008 Beijing - Watch more funny videos here

The Inevitable Alliance

For all the comic book fans. Check this stop animation piece that has so many moments of brilliance, its unreal.

Hubble anniversary

ABOUT THIS IMAGE:

In commemoration of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope completing its 100,000th orbit in its 18th year of exploration and discovery, scientists at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., have aimed Hubble to take a snapshot of a dazzling region of celestial birth and renewal.
Hubble peered into a small portion of the nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074 (upper, left). The region is a firestorm of raw stellar creation, perhaps triggered by a nearby supernova explosion. It lies about 170,000 light-years away near the Tarantula nebula, one of the most active star-forming regions in our Local Group of galaxies.
The three-dimensional-looking image reveals dramatic ridges and valleys of dust, serpent-head "pillars of creation," and gaseous filaments glowing fiercely under torrential ultraviolet radiation. The region is on the edge of a dark molecular cloud that is an incubator for the birth of new stars.
The high-energy radiation blazing out from clusters of hot young stars already born in NGC 2074 is sculpting the wall of the nebula by slowly eroding it away. Another young cluster may be hidden beneath a circle of brilliant blue gas at center, bottom.
In this approximately 100-light-year-wide fantasy-like landscape, dark towers of dust rise above a glowing wall of gases on the surface of the molecular cloud. The seahorse-shaped pillar at lower, right is approximately 20 light-years long, roughly four times the distance between our Sun and the nearest star, Alpha Centauri.
The region is in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite of our Milky Way galaxy. It is a fascinating laboratory for observing star-formation regions and their evolution. Dwarf galaxies like the LMC are considered to be the primitive building blocks of larger galaxies.
This representative color image was taken on August 10, 2008, with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Red shows emission from sulfur atoms, green from glowing hydrogen, and blue from glowing oxygen.

Cheap Beer

Why is it that cheap beer holds such nostalgia for grown men? When involved in a discussion of the beers men grew up on, there is such fondness, nay, celebration of the poor quality beer we drank. Is it the pivitol role it played in so many coming of age experiences, its accessibility, its unmistakable smell from old dorm rooms and apartments? I think its definitely a combination of those with one other factor. Cheap beer is one of the last conglomerate owned consumable products that maintains a strong sense of place.

Slate lists America's greatest cheap beers by region, who owns them and how they got there. Find your favorites here.

Long live Grain Belt, Milwaukee's Best, Olympia, Old Milwaukee, Blatz and Hamm's.

Celebrity sighting of the day 8.11.08

Don't know Antonia? Click here.

Thanks pmo!

Physics fun

The Large Hardon Collider (or LHC as the scientists call it) began tests this weekend in prep for a Sept. 10th lift off. This may not mean much to many people, but the conspiracy theorists are all over it. According to the best ones, the first collision will produce a mini-black whole and suck most of Europe into it (oh heavens!). But on top of that, its a pretty interesting step forward for the science community and will be very exciting for scientists to be able to study things that they haven't been able to see before, ever! There are some great stories at i09 and Popular Mechanics.

But today, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has announced that the LHC will go online on September 10. On that day, researchers will activate particle beams within the 17-mile-long ring, and the world’s most powerful—and most talked about—particle accelerator will begin collecting experimental data. The LHC’s research potential is staggering, with physicists hoping to use the accelerator’s extremely high-energy proton collisions to generate a range of theoretical particles. Some of those particles could help us to understand the nature of mass, including the as-yet-undetectable dark matter that accounts for so much of the universe’s mass. Other particles might prove the existence of extra dimensions, or lead to entirely new theories or physical laws.

See?! Told you it was exciting!

Cars

I was not feeling the traffic this morning.

X-Files - The Reality Show

I Want One 8.07.08

Vinyl Rules

I hear about the comeback of Vinyl almost yearly it seems. But it is good to finally see a reputable paper, The Washington Post, write a well researched story (well researched by today's blogging culture standards) on a marked change in popularity. The reporter talked about kids who appreciate the sound quality that comes from analog records. I have had episodes where I painstakingly compared sound quality on my records vs. my Cd's on my better-than-average-but-nothing-special stereo and granted Vinyl a very slim victory. But I suddenly get it, because to kids today who grew up on iTunes songs and pirated mp3s, the uncompressed sound of vinyl should be amazing.

Though I have severely cut down my record shopping habit and increased my savings in the process, I found somethings pretty interesting in the story.

Turntable shipments topped 32,000 in April, one-third higher than the 19,000 record players sold the same month a year ago, according to the Consumer Electronics Association in Arlington. That's less than 1 percent of total music-player sales, but the increase has not escaped the notice of store managers. CD sales declined 15 percent in 2007, but sales of vinyl recordings are on the rise, according to Nielsen SoundScan, a research company that tracks music sales. Year-over-year sales of vinyl records increased 70 percent in March and could reach 1.6 million by year's end.

Long live vinyl, maybe I can count it as a long term investment.

The Hungriest of Cats

One of my favorite restaurants in LA happens to be within walking distance of my house, tucked away in the corner of a new but rather comely strip mall/condo development sharing a small patch of concrete with the most unoriginal of retail outlets, Borders.

Its a fantastic place focused on seafood (a great raw bar) and small portioned, incredibly tasty morsels. Running a close second to the tasty eats is the unique and brilliant bar. The spirits are all from lesser known (even to my Riley's Wines of the World honed knowledge) bottlers, many are organic and/or all natural, the mixers are as well and the juices are all fresh squeezed.

I was pleased to see that Angeleno Magazine just recently ranked it LA's restaurant of the year. What was a special treat (it's expensive), especially before its expansion, is now going to be booked solid!

Cheers to The Hungry Cat!

Jupiter

Ran across some stunning images of Jupiter and her moons on the Boston Globe web site today.

Ghetto Blasters

Kids these days...
In a trend coming out of Queens, a subculture of youth from Trinidad and Tobago have pimped out their BMX bikes with homemade stereo systems. Its a new embodiment of what brought hip hop and DJ culture onto the scene back in the 70's. At that time local DJs and gangs would roll up carts of stereo equiptment in NYC parks, plug into the lampposts and face off to see who had the loudest sound system (Kool Herc was the first).

I really want to hear what these things sound like and am not sure that I can wait until the short documentary on the kids and the culture, comes out.