a Bolt and a Bullet

Those who were wondering just how fast Usain Bolt could run if he didn't start celebrating before the end of a race got their answer this week as Bolt broke his own world records in the 100M and the 200M by 0.11 seconds apiece.

Tyson Gay ran the non-tailwind-assisted 100M of his life with a time of 9.71 — the third fastest ratified time in history — and was still clearly in Bolt's wake at the finish line. (The 200M was no contest at all.) In fact, had Bolt run through the line without looking for Gay and easing up slightly, his time might have been even faster.

With a few years left before he hits his prime, how fast will Bolt eventually go?



When talking about Bolt's feat at lunch one day, and trying to put the 100M race into perspective, I noted that it's like running over the length of a football field (100M is about 109 yards) in under 10 seconds. Two questions then arose: First, how many of us could do it in under 20 seconds? (The jury's still out on that one.) Second, what would Bolt be like in the NFL? Would he just make a fool of everyone?

Not necessarily.

The NFL actually has a history of sprinters joining its ranks as running backs or wide receivers. Even those who never ran track in high school, college, or international competition have shown world-class speed, especially when considering that running in football rarely involves going in a straight line all the way.

Take, for example, one legendary figure, as described by TIME:

Among then was Bob (Bullet) Hayes, who won the gold medal in the 100-m sprint at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo and recorded what some observers consider the top time ever achieved by a human with an 8.6 split in the 4 x 100-m relay. (Relay marks are faster than regular sprints because runners receive the baton while in motion, enabling them to accelerate quicker.) Hayes later parlayed his speed into a career as a wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys; his passing in 2002 prompted one columnist to remark that Death must have tied his shoelaces together to catch him.

When looking for some videos of Hayes to link, I stumbled upon the YouTube holy grail — a video for which the comments are an actual intelligent conversation! (Compare that with the comments on the Bolt videos, which are a mind-numbing mix of inanity, sheer idiocy, and outright racism.) The debate that the commenters are having is whether or not Hayes could best Bolt's time on a modern surface, with today's equipment and advanced training techniques (and drug testing).

Whatever would happen on the track, from watching Hayes on the gridiron, it's clear that he had the ability to run routes, make the catch, shake a tackle, juke a defender, and get into the endzone — something one can't be certain that Bolt would have.

So, which would be more likely, Bolt breaking the 9.4 second barrier (I won't even pretend that 9.5 is out of his reach), or scoring an NFL touchdown?

Conan does anime voiceovers

Hilarious!


Via Japanator.

Conan's Backdrop

One fan's take on Conan's new backdrop on the new Tonight Show set. Update on what Nintendo thinks about the backdrop.

Gymkhana

Pretty awesome gymkhana video. Gymkhana is like a mix between rally and autocross and drift all rolled into one, which is pretty crazy.



From Autoblog.

The "original" video of awesomeness.

Transforminators

Pretty good mashup with Transformers and Terminator: Salvation.



From IGN via Gizmodo.

Creation of the original PlayStation

This article has a retrospective on how the original PlayStation was conceived. Pretty interesting stuff.

From Edge Online via Gizmodo.

Couple o' Trailers

First up, Duncan Jones' Moon — starring Sam Rockwell and the voice of Kevin Spacey — an indie sci-fi picture that has echoes of 2001, Silent Running, Alien, Solaris, and more:

The score is by Clint Mansell, and the poster is worth a look as well.

Secondly, Idiocracy's Mike Judge returns to the office space (har har) for his next film, Extract, starring Michael BluthJason Bateman, Ben Affleck, Mila Kunis, and J.K. Simmons:

"She's a tramp!?"

Rose Ball

Anybody here ever play it?

From what I've read:

this is Street Fighter IV, in practice mode. Both players are handicapped so they have a pixel of health, and both have selected Rose as their character. They are playing best of 9. At the beginning of each round, one of them “serves” by performing Rose’s “Soul Spark” move - a half-circle towards on the joystick, and a punch button. Then, they take it in turns to perform her “Soul Reflect”, which can reverse projectiles; this is a quarter-cirlce away on the stick, with a punch button. Whoever fails to time the parry correctly will get hit by the “ball”, and the other player will win the round.

So: they’re playing Pong, inside Street Fighter IV.

The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One

I didn't want to include links to things related to this kind of stuff, but I don't know that there is anything off limits here, and the interview itself moved me enough to put it up. I got the link from a fellow Hydran and felt it was worthy enough to get this out there into the netherverse. The link is an excellent interview with Bill Moyers about the economic mess and the aftermath. It gets more disgusting the more people expound on this. Hopefully people like William K. Black can get something going.

Gaming on the Cloud

Now this is an interesting idea, cloud computing for gaming. Whether or not it will work has yet to be seen.

[Part 1, Part 2 - via Joystiq]

Space Bat

A small, crippled bat clung to the space shuttle Discovery's external fuel tank as it launched into the heavens yesterday. Although NASA's report says that "the animal likely perished quickly during Discovery's climb into orbit", I'd like to imagine that, in its final moments, it saw something like this:


John Herrman of Gizmodo Australia would have preferred that NASA's release read more like his:

Bereft of his ability to fly and with nowhere to go, a courageous bat climbed aboard our Discovery with stars in his weak little eyes. The launch commenced, and Spacebat trembled as his frail mammalian body was gently pushed skyward. For the last time, he felt the primal joy of flight; for the first, the indescribable feeling of ascending toward his dream—a place far away from piercing screeches and crowded caves, stretching forever into fathomless blackness.

ioDrive Duo SSD

Words cannot describe how much I want this thing.

From HotHardware, via Engadget/Gizmodo.

Street Fighter 4 Rant

Where do I begin with this review. I can not promise much structure, but one of my fellow heads in the hydra said, “Just start writing to get the ideas out of your head.” Here comes the diarrhea of my thoughtcicles.

I'm a huge fighting game fan, and and even bigger Street Fighter fan. Playing fighting games consumed my adolescent years. Every Friday, a group of my friends and I would get dropped off (before any of us were 16) at the local Navy base, and we'd make the rounds in between a bowling alley arcade and a convenience store/pool hall/arcade. We affectionately were dubbed “the curfew kids” by the local military and especially military police, who would stop us from time to time, as we walked around the Navy base. I loved the evolution of Street Fighter. I was a fan of CE (Champion Edition), just for the playability of the bosses. I didn't play HF (Hyper Fighting) too much, but Super and Super Turbo were the huge leaps in how the game was played. The game was faster, a lot of characters were rethought, and most importantly, the game was looked at from a competition point of view. Years of feedback from gamers led to an attempt to balance a game. This showed the players that the game developers wanted this game to be their outlet for players to show that competition was possible at a high level.

This base in the fighting game industry has come back full circle for Street Fighter 4. Alpha's custom combos and SF3:Third Strike (SF3:TS) were games for the super-player. These types of games were my favorite when they came out, and if players are available, I still love to play these game. SF3:TS is still my favorite in the series. These types of games though were catered to an evolutionary fork to the SF series. They changed the fighting style of the game. SF3:TS alone showed that a fast paced game existed for SF with many levels of mind games with parrying. Without verbally describing the game, it made guessing games and mind games tools for reaction time. The average player could pick it up, but the true game and its purpose lay in the super-human calculations of strategy. Although the basics of hit confirming was the basis for SF3:TS, it was insanely difficult to land when most of the competitors you faced at high level arcades are gods at the basics, which forced the newcomers or average level competitors to elevate their game. This was an exciting goal for me, as I found an old favorite in SF3:TS, but it had such a new edge, that it was in itself a new game.

Street Fighter 4 is a throwback to the average player. You don't have to have reflexes of a god to play. Here in lies a different fork in the evolutionary tree that is Street Fighter. Gone are the air blocks from Alpha and the parrying from SF3. The game in its total is slower than even SF2: Turbo, but the game still seems faster than the original SF2. SF4 is definitely a layer of games, and the amount of thought they put in the game lets the player experience the layers only based on their will to learn the new mechanics or see the new mechanics from their opponent. The first few days playing the game, I'm introduced to many new characters and relearning the familiar faces. This coupled with not knowing the game, SF4 can play like old school SF2:ST. This is exactly how my friends and I played the game. Simple 2 to 4 hit combos, anti-air games, and lots of timing issues. We were searching through the tangled mess of new characters and moves to find priority of moves and timing. This is where the game gets deceptive. There are some new mechanics that truly change the game from old school ST into its own game. There is a new mechanics called “Focus Attacks” FA. This move lets the user absorb a move and apply damage. There are 3 levels to this move. The first level absorbs a hit, and when released, it gives a standard hit. If the hit in the previous scenario registers as a counter, then the opponent will “crumple”. A crumple is a state that is somewhat similar to a dizzy, but it's for a short amount of time, and if the character is not attacked, then he justs falls to the ground, but if attacked, they are in a sort of juggled state. A level two FA, is a guaranteed crumple, and a level three is a deeper crumple, where the character falls slower allowing for bigger combo setup. The more advanced version of this move, is a FADC (focus attack dash cancel) which lets the character break out of a move, to perform another move. This is mainly used to setup larger combos or setup for a super or ultra move at the expense of half of a character's super bar. The other new mechanics is the revenge meter. This meter gets built up the more damage you take. The ultra gets released, after the revenge meter flashes, and the bigger the revenge meter builds up, the more damage the ultra does.

OK, let's start with the likes. I love the graphics. The backgrounds are so full of life, especially the stage with a busy street. There are so many things going on in the background. The characters are also full of detail. The overall theme of the game is a sort of water paint base. So, a lot of moves and actions in the game take from the water paint theme. I also love the personal attention of winning quotes for one character vs another. The amount of different colors for each character is also a plus. This point in turn is also a bad one for the home system. To access more colors and taunts, you must play lots of single player challenges to unlock these items. Also, the game by default does not give you access to all of the playable characters. You must unlock characters by fulfilling certain scenarios. This is annoying as one of the base features of the fighting game, learning all of the characters, is limited by having to unlock them all. It's also not a one for one issue, certain characters will unlock new characters while others will just add titles, pictures, movies, etc.

With the advancement in home systems, the current gen systems heavily encourage online competition. This is one of pros as well as cons. I love online fighting games, which I've spent most of my time in between the week before Thanksgiving 2008 and now playing lots of HD Remix. In comparison to SF4, HD Remix is light years ahead of fight matching. The method of finding games is cumbersome. Most times I spend more time trying to find a game, than actually playing. There are two options of online games, player match and ranked match. First off, player match is just like a local arcade or an extended home gaming session. You can choose who you want to play with or host a game and let wanderers come and play. Ranked match is a game where you earn battle points by winning matches. The bigger the difference in battle points between the two players, the bigger the difference in points won or lost. For example if you beat someone with a big difference in battle points, you win a big percentage of their BP, and they lose that amount. If someone with a larger amount of BP beats a lower level BP player, they will only receive a small amount. Luckily you can filter your search by finding someone with a greater BP than yours to aid in gaining BP, match by similar levels of BP, or search by network stability. The problem with ranked match, is that you can choose who you fight for the ranked match. Because you can see the player, someone can avoid well known players. This should really be a blind random matching system, as it is in HD Remix. In addition, once a player is matched with someone else, both players' cursors are visible in the character selection screen. When you boil down a lot of fighting games, especially SF, it's really a different level of paper, rock, scissors. Some characters have advantages over others. The player who picks second always has an advantage. In tournaments, they use a double blind rule. One player tells an admin which character they will choose before the other player chooses. Then the second player chooses, and the first must use the player he mentioned secretly to the admin. This way the player selection is not based of off the other player's choice. This was handled in HD Remix, in both the friendly match system and the ladder match system. All games had double blind character selection, which should have at least been implemented in the ranked match system in SF4.

Also, to go back to the matching system for both ranked and player (friendly) matches, they have a quick match option. In HD Remix, quick match truly was a quick match. Upon selection, a random player was chosen and matched. In friendly matches the other user's name was shown prior to charcter selection. In ladder mode, the opponent name was not listed, so you had no way of even guessing a character based off of the user name. In SF4, quick match still lists random host listings, and you still have to choose! Not going into too much detail of how annoying this is, most times finding a game is more stressful than playing a really good opponent. I get frustrated just waiting to play! Aside from how poor this system is, there are also some really poor matching errors. There are two that make sense, host game full and no responding host games. The first error states that a host game listed “was” empty, but someone connected before you could. That error is straightforward. The second error states that the game finding system is so network laden, that not enough games replied to its query, so that's a limitation in the network or bandwidth. Te last error is the most annoying just for the fact that it doesn't even make an excuse. It just says, “Unable to play” or something like that. It's like some lame excuse that Capcom could have set an error to. Instead of trying to say, network port error, lag issue, other guy doesn't like your face, they just have a generic error. I can't state how annoying trying to find a ranked match game is, but on average I play about 20% of the time and the other 80% I'm looking for a game.

For now, this is going to end my first part of my rant. It's 3:30 AM, and the current episode of Star Trek: Voyager can't keep me awake, although Seven of Nine is involved. To be continued...

taste the rainbow

I've been working on making various infusions myself, but I ran into a neat tutorial on tasting the rainbow.

Personally, I'd go with Alameda's finest for the foundation.

The Inner Game of Tennis

Here's a video that I've been trying to track down for a while. I saw it once during a lecture in one of my college Computer Science classes, and it has stuck with me ever since. I was recently telling some friends about it, and decided to give it another Google.

It's a presentation by computer pioneer Alan Kay, in which he plays a clip of Tim Gallwey, author of The Inner Game of Tennis, from a 1975 segment on ABC's Evening News (with Harry Reasoner and Howard K. Smith). In the segment, Gallwey teaches a "55-year-old lady, 40 pounds overweight, 5'2" in a mumu", who had never tried the sport and had not exercised at all in years, to play tennis in under 30 minutes.

Is it possible to get someone to hit balls consistently — that too using a wooden racket with a 65 sq. in. head — just by having them watch another person and say "bounce, hit, bounce, hit" to the rhythm of their shots? See for yourself:



If you're interested in user interfaces or computer history in general, I'd recommend watching the entire video. It's quite fascinating.

Alternate Links:

• YouTube — Part 1, Part 2
• webcast.berkeley.edu — Real Player format [via]
• The Internet Archive — Higher Quality downloads

[Found via Talk Tennis at Tennis Warehouse, which saved me a lot of time clicking around at Berkeley's webcast site.]

Bob Barker says "FAIL!"

In the grand tradition of Sad Trombone and Instant Rimshot comes Bom Bom Bom Bom Wooooo.

I had this sound stuck in my head all last week, and even hummed it to myself a few times when things went wrong and others were out of earshot, so it's no wonder that the site found me as I surfed the web this weekend.

Everything is Amazing Right Now, and Nobody's Happy

The "funny because it's true" factor on this clip of Louis C.K. on Conan was so high for me that by the end of it, my eyes were red, my cheeks were stained with tears, and my jaw and neck were sore — and that's so true it's not even funny.

Update 2009/03/04: Replaced the original YouTube embed with a higher-quality (and more legal) Hulu embed.

Update 2009/03/18: Time interviews Louis about the clip.

Awesome Game Wallpapers

Here are some awesome looking game wallpapers from deviantArt.

Via Kotaku.

Super Bowl Commercials 2009

One week later, here's my take on 2009's notable Super Bowl commercials.

The Good

• Audi — The Chase: Jason Statham helps Audi take a stab at its competitors, saying that while previous decades might have been owned by Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Lexus, it's now time for the four rings to shine. It doesn't hurt that the car itself is one slick beast.
• CareerBuilder.com — Tips: I agree with everyone who says that this ad got tiring after the first 30-45 seconds, but in terms of getting people talking, it was second to none. Watch twitter explode when it airs, in The New York Times' interactive tracker (click "Talking about ads").
• Cars.com — David Abernathy: This type of ad has been a trend recently (e.g., Dos Equis' "Most Interesting Man in the World" ads), but I can't argue with the result here, even if it was a bit disappointing, for some reason, to find out that it was for cars.com.
• Hulu — Alec in Huluwood: I love 30 Rock and I love Hulu, and I love 30 Rock on Hulu, and I don't love this ad, but I like it a lot.
• Monster — Double Take: Simple, well-crafted, and clever. It easily got a laugh out of me.

Honorable Mention

• Bud Light — Sweden: Conan O'Brien + Japandering in Sweden (Swedepandering?) is a great starting point for comedy, but Bud Light's typical frenetic editing left the overall commercial a bit lacking.
• Coca Cola — Avatar: You can always count on Coke to bring the harmless but fun branding ads. "Avatar" is a take on our increasingly virtual connectedness, and the power of physical contact. Also, pretty girls are gamers too!
• H&R Block — Death & Taxes: Something about the tax services provider's ad stood out to me over many other equally eligible candidates. It must be the Abe Vigoda.
• Miller High Life — 1 Second Ad: If this really aired during the broadcast, then I missed it, but it's a concept that always gets a response when I mention it to people. As expected, it's just one small (but expensive) part of a bigger overall campaign.
• Pepsi — Refresh Everything and Pepsuber: The Pepsuber ad (with Richard Dean Anderson) probably wasn't very funny unless you've been following the recurring MacGruber sketches on SNL (and even then, maybe not, for many people). Combined with the aspiring-to-be-anthemic "Refresh Everything" ad, though, it was a decent one-two punch for Pepsi. Still doesn't make up for the logo downgrade ...

The Bad

• Cash 4 Gold — Ed McMahon & MC Hammer: Setting aside the fact that the shady company is basically a scam, it was pretty sad to see the hard-for-cash Ed McMahon (fresh off a stint rapping for FreeCreditReport.com) and MC Hammer trying to make the funny, though there are chuckles to be found.
• Castrol — Grease Monkeys: There are worse ads that I could have put on my list (I'm glancing at you, Doritos). Indeed, the production values here aren't even that bad. It just seems like they took the path of least resistance. I kept waiting for the punchline, and all I got was a man-on-chimp smooch. That's not going to cut it, Castrol.
• GoDaddy.com — [all of them]: Scraping the bottom of the barrel again. I wonder what Danica Patrick gets paid for these ads.
• Jack in the Box — Hang in there Jack: On the whole, I'm a big fan of the long-running campaign featuring Jack Box. This one had some nice touches — did you notice the angel on the store window in the final shot? — but it and the associated viral campaign seem wholly unnecessary to me. Or, maybe I just can't stand the thought of Jack not making it!
• Sobe — Lizard Lake: It's the second year in a row that SoBe has wasted its money on these pointless dancing lizard ads. Adding 3-D, football players, and ballet only made it worse. Whenever I see these ads, I can just picture the marketing meeting from which this mish-mash of bad ideas emerged. The focus groups must dig it or something. On the other hand, I credit them for being way above GoDaddy.com's level.

Now you've heard from me. What's on your list?

Sunday Night Videos

I would never, ever attempt to be like these guys ...



... for fear of ending up like this guy:



Steve Nash is more consistent at free throw shooting than I am at ... breathing ...



... though I am better than this girl at explaining the plot of Star Wars:

Windows 7 Beta: First Impressions

I'd have to say I'm pretty impressed with some of the changes from Windows Vista to Windows 7.

Some new things I noticed:

• The new dock taskbar actually works! There are still some minor bugs, but then, this is a beta. The dock taskbar functions somewhat similarly to the Mac OSX dock, except with way too much eyecandy. This can either be a good thing or a bad thing.


• UAC by default isn't as annoying as it was before. Its more inline with what Ubuntu does with the sudo dialog for administrative tasks, but the UAC popup frequency is a little too frequent for my tastes.


• Those taskbar status icons are consolidated to a small popup window. No more long list of status icons invading your dock any more.


• Sidebar dock from Vista is gone. You can now just add Gadgets directly to the desktop.

Application compatibility is currently an unknown, but I will be installing some games to see how performance is with the current beta. All things said, things appear to be more responsive and whatnot, so we'll see how it holds up in the next couple weeks.

Obviously, things might change when they release the final version of Windows 7, but these current changes from what I've seen are good.

No-keyboard Apple Notebook

I'd so buy one.

From the Onion via DF.

Great fantasy fantastical fight

Speedy Delivery

I'm pretty sure that some of the UPS drivers who've delivered packages to my house work something like this:



I once had an envelope with hundreds of dollars worth of software "delivered" into the Lilies of the Nile on the opposite side of my house from the door and mailbox. Didn't find it until a couple of weeks later, when the sprinklers were off due to a leak and we were watering the plants by hose.

(At least it was delivered to the right house that time, unlike some of the notebook computers I've ordered!)

My FedEx experiences are about on par with my UPS experiences. I sleep much better at night when packages are sent to my house via U.S. Postal Service. Thankfully, all the services deliver reliably to my work, where they are cool about us receiving personal packages.

Aronofsky and Boyle Interviews

Fox Searchlight, which has two films on all the shortlists this award season — Slumdog Millionaire, which I've seen twice now and highly recommend, and The Wrestler, which I'm looking forward to seeing after New Year's — had the brilliant idea to have the films' directors (Danny Boyle and Darren Aronofsky, respectively) interview each other in a series of web videos.

To save you all the trouble of searching around for the film blogs with "exclusive" embeds of each video, here are the links to all the available parts, which can be viewed directly on Fox Searchlight's site:

• Full Interview
• Part 1: Directing The Wrestler (topmost video)
• Part 2: TBA
• Part 3: Camera Technology
• Part 4: Directing Style
• Part 5: Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei
• Part 6: The "Millionaire" Game Show Rights
• Part 7: Film Development

Update 2009/01/11: Still waiting for Fox Searchlight to post the two remaining clips. In the meantime, here are some interesting videos on YouTube (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) taken by spectators at a CZW event in Philadelphia where the fight between "The Ram" and Necro Butcher was filmed. (The rematch with The Ayatollah was filmed across two Ring of Honor events.)

The clips really show why Aronofsky chose a cinematographer with a documentary background, as well as the pressures of shooting in such a chaotic environment, without having the safety net of doing many takes.

Update 2009/03/01: I can't find Part 2 on Fox Searchlight's website, but they now have a version where everything is in a single video, so I've added the link to that along with the link to Part 1.

VLC Easter Egg

The Santa hat that my VLC player has been sporting this holiday season was a fun surprise.



I know, I know; I should be using a skin, but VLC is good looking on the inside, and that's really what counts.

Put On Your Tinfoil Hats

Every time it seems like the fantastical visions of the future from Sci-Fi are slipping further away in real life, there's a new development that reels them back in.

As reported across the web, Japanese researchers used fMRI technology to study test subjects' cerebral blood flow while viewing 400 random 10x10-square black-and-white images, to the point where they could reconstruct and display a totally new set of viewed images — the letters of the word "neuron" — using only fMRI data. Scientists are saying that techniques like this may be the first step towards the ability to basically read minds.

So, readers, does news like this amaze you or terrify you?

DSL or Cable Modem Not Working?

If you're getting errors loading web pages, and have already tried restarting your computer, modem, and wireless router, it might be an issue with your internet provider's DNS servers.

For our less tech savvy readers, DNS servers basically translate a domain name like "example.com" to an IP address like "208.77.188.166", which your computer can then use to contact the example.com web server.

You can switch your PC or router to use OpenDNS, for example. (There are instructions on the site for configuring different operating systems or many types of routers.)

I've recently been experiencing what I thought were outages, but it turned out to be flaky DNS servers. I've seen people on Time Warner / Road Runner, Comcast, and Cox complaining about this issue, but had never experienced it personally until the past few weeks. OpenDNS solved the problem, and has been working flawlessly so far.

Another good resource to consult, if you have another means of getting on the web, is the Broadband Reports forums section. There are sections for individual providers and regions, which makes it easy to see if others in your area are having issues, and what, if anything, they did to solve them.

Although I Don't Believe In Coincidences...

A really good music theory explanation of the Joe Satriani v. Coldplay thing. Joe Satriani is and has always been the real deal.



He has a detailed blog post which is a really good read.

Inspirational Montage

(Credit: Matthew Belinkie; via Cinematical)

Jack's Bowl Cut

I saw a billboard for Jack in the Box's Teriyaki Bowls the other day and couldn't help but laugh at the photo and tag line. (The line "curds and whey" [and its delivery] in the commercial cracks me up, too.)

Lucky Penguin

I feel like the penguin in that video is smarter than the humans.

The killer whales may not be so merciful next time, my friends!


Aside: I have seen the future, and it is YouTube in 720p HD! (1, 2, 3).

(I have also seen the past and the present, a.k.a. Vimeo HD.)

Import a Library in iTunes 8

In iTunes 8, there's no longer a File > Import... item in the menu.

If you want to import a library XML file — after re-installing your system, or when moving the library from another computer, for example — you can use the File > Library > Import Playlist... menu item.

It's confusing, since there is a File > Library > Export Library... command, and it's not obvious that you export a "Library" but import it back as a "Playlist".

Billions Gone Wild!

Yes, just another link but wow! I knew about a couple of "big" buildings and a "big" amusement water park over there but never about all of this! Check out Dubai Building Projects

Eat the Head!

Have your birthdays been, well, a bit dull lately? Try being this guy.

Head tracking without a Wii.

Head tracking with a chicken. (+ superz-kyut follow up)

Yao's favorite food.

(first three videos via Waxy)

Midnight Movie News

That's "movie news at midnight", not "news about midnight movies"!

The Good: Jeffrey Tambor hints that the Arrested Development movie might finally be happening!

The Bad: Sir Ridley Scott — director of Alien, Blade Runner, and Gladiator — will indeed direct the feature-film adaptation of Monopoly. Yes, that Monopoly.

The Ugly: Much to alliesglove's chagrin, Jaden Smith (son of Will) is officially the new (wannabe) Ralph Macchio, in a remake of The Karate Kid ... set in China!?

Next time you have a 6,000 person layoff ...

... just say that you are "aligning your cost model with the global economic climate", like Sun Microsystems.

That will make it sound so much better!

Update: More euphemisms, via Fortune:

American Express — "re-engineering"

Fidelity Investments — "cost improvement"

eBay — "simplification"

Yahoo! — "become more fit"

Nearing the opposite side of the Uncanny Valley

We are getting closer to crossing the Uncanny Valley it seems. Check out this Emily video by Image Metrics. Quantic Dream, a French company, created the video game Indigo Prophecy (aka Fahrenheit) and is working on the game Heavy Rain using Image Metrics technology.

In this case curiosity kills the dog

... as well as a bunch of time from your life. Find the game here and the post on kotaku here.

Hunt for Broccoli Cheese October

Highlights from Souplantation's "guest favorites month" menu, from today's coupon circulars ...

October 1-11: Classic Greek Tossed Salad, French Onion Soup, Carrot Raisin Salad, Spicy Italian Sausage & Peppers Hot Pasta, Loaded Baked Potato Soup, Chocolate Chip Muffins, Chocolate Lava Cake (after 4 p.m.)

October 13-18: Strawberry Fields Tossed Salad, Broccoli Cheese Soup, BBQ Chicken Focaccia, Four Cheese Alfredo Hot Pasta, Wild Rice & Chicken Salad, Shrimp Bisque Soup, Pineapple Upside-down Cake (after 4 p.m.)

October 20-25: Mandarin Spinach Tossed Salad, Classic Creamy Tomato Soup, Grilled Cheese Focaccia, Shrimp & Seafood Shells Salad, Albondigas Locas Soup, Roasted Eggplant Marinara Hot Pasta, Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookie Cups (after 4 p.m.)

October 27-31: California Cobb Tossed Salad, Cream of Mushroom Soup, Banana Nut Muffins, Old Fashioned Macaroni Salad, Yankee Clipper Clam Chowder, Garden Vegetable with Meatballs Hot Pasta, Warm Apple Cobbler (after 4 p.m.)

I've emphasized a few items of interest. The Strawberry Fields Tossed Salad is one that I pile on to the point of overload. This time, however, it will compete for stomach space with Broccoli Cheese Soup.

The Souplantation to which us Hydrans go most often almost NEVER has this soup — even when the online menu says that it should be there. If they really do offer it this time, I might make a run at alliesglove's "Most Consecutive Days Going to Souplantation" record. If not, there will be some angry glares from me towards the soup that takes its place.

Why would a soup worry about that, you ask? If I'm mad enough, my laser vision might kick in and boil it all away. You think about that before you volunteer to sub in, soups!

Bonus reading: A while back, Monster Munching recommended the chocolate chip cookies.

Ask The Hydra: Mega Man 9

O, blessed heads of The Hydra, I ask thee: what are your thoughts on the newly-released Mega Man 9? (trailer)

Goon City

A simple web page "powered by Google" sort of like Google Maps but instead is a view of an always expanding "fake" city named Goon.

Tap'dNY

Some coworkers/fellow-Hydrans and I were joking one day at lunch about taking the pretentiousness out of bottled water and just marketing a product called "tap water". Then, along came a link to a product called Tap'dNY (blog). I'm not 100% sure that it's a real product, since the site is so thoroughly tongue-in-cheek, but it's close enough to our idea that I'll say they beat us to market. The "Refills Available at Any New York City Tap" line and the custom Sigg bottles are particularly clever.

LHC Live Webcams ;-)

Now that the Large Hadron Collider is finally up and running here are some live webcams running at the site. The USA contributed $500 million to the project.

Super Seth's Take on Mario

Mr. Show: The Audition

[via Cyn-C]

Raisin Brahms

Cuil

A new search engine named Cuil (pronounced "cool") debuted last week, to much fanfare, with articles heralding its launch from the AP, Reuters, Time, Newsweek, BBC News, The New York Times, and more. (Someone give that PR person a raise!)

Cuil claims the to have largest index and most relevant results, and boasts a team of search industry veterans with impressive resumes, including two former technical leads at Google, the founding CTO of AltaVista, and the original developer of IBM's WebFountain. Of note to privacy enthusiasts, it does not log any IP addresses or keep any users' search histories.

I decided to try it out on its launch day to see how it stacked up against my — and millions of others' — go-to search engine, Google.

I first "cuiled" (doesn't have quite the same ring to it as "Googled") my own name, being the self-centered egomaniac that I am. While Cuil did return one relevant result, the rest of the results had nothing to do with me. It did not find, for example, the site with my name in the domain name. Google, on the other hand, not only finds all of my personal websites, but finds a number of sites that mention me and my similarly-monikered brethren.

Maybe my first test was too difficult. I next decided to search for something much more popular. To my surprise, my query for "iPhone" turned up — wait for it — the Linksys iPhone!

Cuil was helpful enough to know that I might be looking for "Apple iPhone", but when I chose that tab, none of the results on the first page were from Apple's official site, and most were spammy links that weren't useful at all.

I then tried another popular search of the moment: "The Dark Knight". Finally, Cuil returned very relevant results on the first page, including links to the film's official sites (U.S. and Canadian), its Wikipedia entry, and some of its viral marketing sites (Why So Serious?). It also provided a good example of the "Explore by Category" box:

A few more searches of popular terms turned up similarly relevant results on the first page, though there were enough shady sites alongside them to make me suspicious.

Again, though, despite its claims about index size, I found Cuil's depth to be lacking. For example, my search for something at which I couldn't stop laughing that day, "horse backflip":

Google, for the same query, turns up over a million results, including direct links to corresponding online videos, and not just those from YouTube.

I can imagine that a decent percentage of web searches are for Warez and pr0n, and while I didn't really delve into this area, I've (ahem) heard that, there too, Cuil comes up short (har har).

Perhaps the most accurate result returned by Cuil during my testing (since fixed), is for the word "cuil" itself:

At least Cuil, the search engine, was honest enough to know that it isn't yet relevant.

R.I.P.

Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes.

Get Well Soon, Morgan Freeman. (Sorry about the marriage.)

Stay strong, Samuel L. Jackson.

From, Your Friends at The Hydra

Garfield Minus Garfield ... The Book!

A few months ago, I'd posted a link to Garfield Minus Garfield, and followed up with a comment pointing to a New York Times article in which Jim Davis called it "fascinating", "flattering", and funny.

While one might argue about how funny Mr. Davis himself has been over the past 30 years, he's nothing if not a shrewd businessman. He's taken his love for the strip one step further, and is helping turn it into a book:

Now, thanks to the awesome generosity and humor of Jim Davis, Garfield Minus Garfield is going to become a book and I’m absolutely honored to be part of it.

Theme Park Thoughts

Due to a steady stream of visiting relatives, I make an annual or biannual pilgrimage to various Southern California theme parks. Here are some of my thoughts from the latest round of trips:

Universal Studios Hollywood — The Simpsons Ride

The Simpsons Ride takes over the area previously occupied by Back to the Future: The Ride, and continues the earlier attraction's tradition of entertaining motion simulation.

The ride's concept is that the Simpsons (including Grandpa Abe!) are visiting Krustyland, a cross between Disneyland and the shadiest carnival you've ever been to. Their outing turns into an adventure after escaped convict Sideshow Bob takes over the park and attempts to kill Bart and his family — and you — for always foiling his plots to take revenge on his former employer, Krusty.

The best part of the ride is the line. Nothing makes an hour go by faster than watching the numerous flat-panel displays placed throughout the queueing area, which show a mix of The Simpsons' funniest moments (with a heavy dose of amusement park parodies) and clips created exclusively for the ride. As you get closer to the end, the fun continues, particularly in one room where it looks like Apu, Groundskeeper Willie, Patty & Selma, and Hans Moleman are life-size, within booths, talking to the guests. Also, don't miss the park map, and the circus-style posters for Krustyland's various amusements, including everyone's favorite, the Yard Work Simulator.

Homages to Back to the Future don't stop at the rib-tickling Doc Brown cameo in one of the clips shown in the line. The ride itself is essentially the same as its predecessor, down to the number of people in the vehicles and the domed IMAX screens. Of course, the technology has been updated and there's more spraying of water and baby powder aroma, but that goes with the times.

People who remember the old ride (which you can watch in its entirety over on "the You Tube"; intro clips: 1, 2) will note the many similarities, including parts where you're flying over a city, entering into a giant creature's mouth, and nearly falling into the burning lava pits of hell. Truthfully, the newer ride is a bit harder to follow, as it has much more dialogue and random scene changes, compared to the simpler chase structure of the old ride. That may just encourage repeat visits, though, as there are many in-jokes and visual puns to take in. I'm also not a fan of the third dimension that's added to the animation once you're actually on the ride — if it's going to end up being like watching a giant PlayStation 2 game anyway, why not pay Rough Draft Studios the extra bucks to get the clean-looking cel-shaded 2-D/3-D blend of The Simpsons Movie and Futurama?

Personal preferences aside, The Simpsons Ride is a worthy successor to Back to the Future: The Ride, and is probably more enjoyable for anyone who doesn't remember or isn't nostalgic for Marty McFly, Doc Brown, and the DeLorean. Even if motion simulation isn't your thing, you'll laugh all the way to the ride. If not, well, don't expect Krusty to give you your money back.

Disneyland — Innoventions

By far the coolest thing at Disneyland's Innoventions — the building in Tomorrowland that you've probably never been into unless desperate for A/C — is Honda's ASIMO robot. I'd watched many video clips and photos of ASIMO, but seeing it in person left me even more impressed, if not fearful (of the inevitable bot uprising).

After viewing a brief video about the history of automatons and robots, which includes humorous montages of lame 1950s B-movie monsters and early experiments in robot walking (picture a metallic ostrich, drunk), the curtains open to reveal the living room of a house. In walks a Kirsten Dunst stand-in, who explains that she just received her new ASIMO and wants to show us what it can do. After a few more moments of suspense, ASIMO enters and the auditorium's collective jaw drops.

What follows over the next 20 minutes is a demonstration of the mechanical man's various capabilities: walking forward, backwards, and sideways; kicking a soccer ball, stretching, and running; dancing; and the highlight of the show, ascending and descending stairs. The movements are deliberate, but smooth. I could do without the cheesy dialogue that connects each demo, but I suppose Disney is going for a 1950s World's Fair vibe.

While I'm sure ASIMO needed some custom programming for a show like this, many of the actions seemed to make use of its voice recognition, as the hostess would often make sure to look straight into its camera eyes and use specific phrases like, "ASIMO, why don't we show these people that you can also walk sideways?" Once in a while, the TV screens would show live footage from the cameras, superimposed with graphics that ostensibly show the object recognition at work. ASIMO also speaks, with the voice of a young boy. Fear not, though, child voice actors, it will be a while before you're out of a job.

As an engineer, it's hard not to be dazzled by ASIMO, knowing how difficult it must have been to create. Everyone else in the auditorium couldn't take their eyes (and cameras) off it either. It may ultimately just be an expensive toy, a fancy version of the Robosapien or Pleo that kids are playing with these days, but it's also an inspiring achievement of science and technology. We're not yet living in the future that was promised 50 years ago, but ASIMO is one step forward (pun intended) in that direction.

As for Innoventions in general, I would say that the only other thing worth checking out are the Segways, which you can learn to ride, for a minute or two. The "aging mirror" might be good for a few laughs as well. The rest of Innoventions is no more impressive than your local Best Buy, in my opinion. I'll grant Disney that visitors from some places might be impressed by the "house of tomorrow", with its HP Vista Media Center PCs (some stuck on the hourglass cursor), Xbox 360s, and Microsoft Zunes (yes, really). Most people, however, will find the conceit that they're being shown "not wild ideas that may fail, but futuristic technology that you can buy today" to be a thin veil over the truth that it's just a place to showcase sponsors' products, many of which aren't very futuristic at all. I can't tell you how many people I saw walking up to the touch screens attempting to pinch-and-zoom or multi-touch, leaving disappointed. Kids might like playing some of the games, but did you really spend hundreds of dollars on Disneyland admission so that they could play the same Guitar Hero they do at their friends' houses?

I won't go as far as saying that Tomorrowland has become Todayland. I will say, though, that Innoventions needs more things like ASIMO and Segway, or even the Siemens "Project Tomorrow" exhibit (scroll down), if it wants to be something more than a place to sit down for a while and escape from the heat.

Anything Can Be Funny

Roger Ebert, in his Step Brothers review:

Is this funny? Anything can be funny. Let me provide an example. I am thinking of a particular anatomical act. It is described in explicit detail in two 2008 movies, "Step Brothers" and the forthcoming "Tropic Thunder." In "Step Brothers," it sounds dirty and disgusting. In "Tropic Thunder," described by Jack Black while he is tied to a tree and undergoing heroin withdrawal, it's funny.

Same act, similar descriptions. What's the difference? It involves the mechanism of comedy, I think. The Jack Black character is desperately motivated. He will offer to do anything to be released. In "Step Brothers," the language is simply showing off by talking dirty. It serves no comic function, and just sort of sits there in the air, making me cringe.

[...]

I'm sure I've seen movies with more extreme language than "Step Brothers," but here it seems to serve no purpose other than simply to exist.

This is exactly the way I feel about a few of the Apatow productions I've seen. It's like when you go hang out with a group of people you don't know very well, and they're all joking around and laughing, but you can only manage a smile because you're just not one of them. Maybe the idea is to make so many movies with Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, and the rest of the gang, that they do start to feel like friends and you can start laughing at their everyday conversations.

(BTW, I need to lower my expectations for Tropic Thunder if I still want to enjoy it. Even Roger Ebert is getting me pumped up for that movie!)

YAGS - Yet Another Google Service

Along the lines of Second Life, Habbo Hotel and the to-date vaporware Sony Home, Google has launched a new service called Lively. It requires a small download and MSIE or Firefox browser. There's already a pile of fully 3D rooms. It has or will have hooks for facebook and myspace.

Where the Hell is Matt?

No way to set this up, but here is Wherethehellismatt.com. He eventually got sponsorship to do this, and here's the end result.


Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Face scanning technology flawed

Japan has face recognition software to "see" the amount of wrinkles on a face to judge the age of a customer at their cigarette vending machines. It looks like the camera can be fooled by a simple magazine cutout. More on how Bruce Willis wants young Japanese children to smoke here.

Update: Taspo is being used due to the face recognition issue. Sales of in store cigarettes have increased as consumers do not want to register to get a taspo card.

Utah just got more apealing

Utah gets a mandatory four day work week. They're experimenting if this will help reduce engergy use and pollution.

NYC waterfall by olafur eliasson

Pretty neat writeup about a waterfall that Olafur Eliasson created.

blindness

Been awhile since i posted. I was cruising the theatre recently and saw the poster for the movie adaptation of Blindness by Jose Saramago (see: one of the greatest writers of our time).

I've been a big fan of Saramago for a long time now. The movie has notable actors such as Gael Garcia Bernal, Mark Ruffalo, Julianne Moore, and Mark Ruffalo. The director is Fernando Meirelles whose body of work speaks for itself. Despite initial critical responses, I am eagerly waiting to see this movie.

Playing Hurt

(click to enlarge)

Despite my begrudged respect for the defensive prowess and overall championship-worthiness of this year's Boston Celtics, I've been reading about how torn up Tiger's knee was during the U.S. Open, and I had Photoshop running already, so I decided that the above photomontage was not going to make itself.

I do think Pierce deserved his Finals MVP, though; not only for the way he continually attacked the Lakers on defense and hit big momentum-shifting shots on offense, but for the way he carried his team through two crucial Game Sevens earlier in the playoffs. Plus, he's an L.A. guy at heart, even though he plays for the bad guys now.

Just, please — fewer theatrics next time.

Meet the Sniper

Big Ideas (Radiohead remix)

This is awesome!


Big Ideas (Don't get any) from 1030 on Vimeo.

Hack a DS to Make a Digital Sketchbook

A brief How To article can be found here to boot digital art pad software on your Nintendo DS.

This site displays many images created using the "Colors!" digital sketchpad software for the Nintendo DS.

Why I Don't Participate in Bike Races

USA Today: Car plows into bike race in Mexico, 1 dead

(Photo: AP)

The Hydra offers its condolences to the family of the man killed. Given the photo, it's a small miracle that he was the only one. As you might guess, the driver of the car was drunk.

Kobe is a Wild Boy

I don't know if these are real, but entertaining nonetheless.

This stunt caught their attention:



This one was with the "professionals":



Even pros need a reason to get on youtube. Looks like Kobe's got a backup career.

Where's all the Wii Fit?

I need to start attending talk shows, especially female hosted ones, they give out the best loot. Kotaku article on the show.

The Japanese Office

Ricky Gervais: "It's funny ... 'cause it's racist."

Ars Technica gets acquired

Talk about breaking news.

Dating Advice

McSweeney's lists good dating advice, taken from a GameFAQ for GTA: San Andreas. Some advice from the FAQ that's funny when taken out of context:

Just because she says she likes something doesn't mean that it's true. You are usually better off doing the opposite of what she says.

Perhaps if she's related to George Costanza ...

If you were going out with the girl and you killed her on a date, then you're in a situation similar to if you were dumped.

Um, "similar" is one word for it ...

It might be that some kind of event triggers phone calls, as you can often stand outside a girl's house for weeks without getting one.

The number she's calling at that point is probably only three digits long ...

The best haircuts for sex appeal are the cornrow, blonde cornrow, groove cut, and detail cut. Haircuts that give no boost to sex appeal include pretty much any that involve coloring (other than blonde) and the Elvis hair. Afros, mohawks, and goatees tend to give pretty low boosts as well.

Elvis hair, no sex appeal? You sure about that?

Gaining fat is easy. Just go to the fast food restaurant of your choice, and order up to 11 of the biggest meal they have. Don't have more than 11 meals in a 6-hour period though, or you'll vomit and gain nothing.

Profound.

The third basic type of date outcome is an abandon date. [...] The easiest way to do this is to get into a car, and then quickly drive away before your girlfriend can get in. [...] This is just like a failed date, but faster.

I can't tell you how much time I've saved over the years doing that ...

Yes, you can date all of the girls at the same time, and I recommend that you do.

Easy for you to say!

Clearly you both enjoy coffee a lot.

So Long, Sweet Mazdas

Mazda is destroying thousands of unused cars worth about $100 million:

It all started about two years ago, when a ship carrying 4,703 shiny new Mazdas nearly sank in the Pacific. The freighter, the Cougar Ace, spent weeks bobbing on the high seas, listing at a severe 60-degree angle, before finally being righted.

Nobody knows exactly what parts the salty ocean air corroded, or what other issues arose from having the vehicles tilted for so long. Despite having many willing takers for the cars anyway, the company is afraid of the implications of the cars getting into the hands of scammers and their unsuspecting victims.

Wrecking that many cars presents particular challenges. Hazardous fluids must be disposed of properly, potentially salvageable parts must be irreparably broken, and then there's the matter of the airbags:

For instance, most of the cars have six airbags, and discharging them individually (forcing them to inflate so they can't be resold) takes about five minutes apiece -- or a total of a half-hour per car. So engineers back at Mazda's headquarters, in Hiroshima, fashioned a device that can discharge all six at once. Multiplied by 4,703 cars, that trick alone saved months of work.

Don't worry, environmentalists, the scrap will be recycled.

The Journal article simply mentions that the Cougar Ace was "righted"; detail on that operation is in a dramatic Wired feature, which illuminates the lucrative, but high-stakes, profession of salvage work:

"Shut up!" Habib shouts. He explains that the Cougar Ace has become a labyrinth. Since it's heeled onto one side, they'll have to learn how to walk on walls and scale the sloping, perilous decks. Unfortunately, they'll have to learn to do it in the middle of the ocean. This will be their only chance to practice before they board the ship. Hopefully, no one else will die.

Don't worry, entertainmentalists, the story will be adapted into a movie.

Coffee table NES controller

Either it's a huge controller turned coffee table or a coffee table turned controller. More on this work of art here.

How to Prototype a Game in Under Seven Days

A brief article on a team of five prototyping 50 games in one semester here.

Colbert vs Rain

The feud escalated, and Colbert threw down a challenge to his nemesis, Rain:



It looked as though the challenge was unanswered, but in the wee hours of the night, the challenge was answered:

The real get realer

Force Dynamics is the company who made the racing simulator previously posted. The sim in the previous video was their 301 model. The current 401 model is featured below. The newer model adds rotation to the sim.