Tuesday, January 29, 2013

The golden spacesuits from Sunshine




Wikipedia says of the design:
Boyle designed the gold-coloured space suits along these lines despite persistent encouragement to model them after the NASA template. The helmets were designed to have cameras mounted in them. This further enhanced a sense of claustrophobia useful to the actors in delivering more heartfelt performances. The helmets were also limited to a horizontal slit for visibility instead of a full-face visor as further consideration toward protecting the characters from the ambient radiation of outer space. According to Boyle, the funnel shape of the helmet was influenced by the character Kenny from South Park.

Link roundup

1.  Deeply disturbing allegation.

2. "A parasitic louse that crawls into your mouth, vampirizes your tongue, then clamps itself onto the withered stub so it can ride around inside you and drink your mucus for the rest of your mutual lives"

3. The Obi-Wan Kenobi of Episodes 4-6 is a clone:
When Luke meets him, he says “The droid says he belongs to an Obi-Wan Kenobi, do you know him?” and Ben gets a little lost in thought. Imagine the process tumbling through his mind.

No one alive knows I am a clone
I may or may not have these implanted memories from the original Obi-Wan and I dont recall owning a droid.
I know the whole story of what happened with Vader and the truth about Luke’s lineage.

“Obi-Wan Kenobi. That’s a name I have not heard in a long time”

And the deciding moment.

“He’s Me!”

And the rest is history. It fits, and I think it would have been an awesome twist

Nike Purple


Sanfrecce Hiroshima



Boca Juniors



Mercurial Vapor IX




Nike's The Chance



Serena Williams at the Australian Open

Monday, January 28, 2013

Dredd movie prop auction



Dredd movie props are being auctioned off at ebay.  Via.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

A former Raider might be a serial killer



The start of an article at GQ:
Some of his friends and teammates remember Anthony Wayne Smith as a strange and volatile guy, prone to paranoia and outrageous lies. Others recall a gentle giant who gave to charity and mentored kids. None would have predicted that he'd retire from football to a life of arson, torture, and murder—but that's exactly what prosecutors allege. As the former defensive end (57 1/2 career sacks) waits trial for four killings over a nine-year span, Kathy Dobie unravels a life that made his violence on the field seem like child's play

Reddit's collection of riddles

Top result:
What's black when you get it, red when you use it, and white when you're all through with it? (charcoal)

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Primer




You can rent it for $3 at Amazon.  Or you could buy the DRM free version with limited edition poster at Shane Carruth's site.

"Male echidnas have a four-headed penis"

"Each time it copulates, it alternates heads in sets of two"

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Safety Not Guaranteed



I was just going back through my first year posting and found this from May 2007.  Inspiration for the movie?

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

RIP THQ



Link roundup

1.  "Most of the existing armor worn by the Vatican's Swiss Guard dates back at least 100 years when people were generally smaller than they are today, so the existing armor does not always fit today's bulkier guards."

2.  "Women look their oldest at 3.30pm every Wednesday, a study has found."

3.  How to pass a kidney stone.

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Photo documentary about a trip to North Korea

Eric Schmidt's daughter accompanied him on a recent trip to North Korea.  She posted a long photo documentary here.  Sample:

Looks great, right? All this activity, all those monitors. Probably 90 desks in the room, all manned, with an identical scene one floor up. 
One problem: No one was actually doing anything. A few scrolled or clicked, but the rest just stared. More disturbing: when our group walked in--a noisy bunch, with media in tow--not one of them looked up from their desks. Not a head turn, no eye contact, no reaction to stimuli. They might as well have been figurines.

Of all the stops we made, the e-Potemkin Village was among the more unsettling. We knew nothing about what we were seeing, even as it was in front of us. Were they really students? Did our handlers honestly think we bought it? Did they even care? Photo op and tour completed, maybe they dismantled the whole set and went home.

Amethyst Princess of Gemworld: Level 3: Random Encounter



Amethyst Princess of Gemworld: Level 3: Random Encounter.

Jerry Seinfeld credits some of his success to Scientology

I believe this article was published in 2007:
“I last really studied, oh, it’s almost 30 years ago. But what I did do, I really liked, in terms of it’s very...it was interesting. Believe it or not...it’s extremely intellectual and clinical in its approach to problem-solving, which really appealed to me. I actually got to it from my auto mechanics teacher in high school, who was into it, and he was telling me about it. In my early years of stand-up, it was very helpful. I took a couple of courses. One of them was in communication, and I learned some things about communication that really got my act going.” 
[p] 
"They have a lot of very good technology. That’s what really appealed to me about it. It’s not faith-based. It’s all technology. And I’m obsessed with technology."

Link roundup

1.  The thrilling conclusion to an Illusionist in Skyrim:
When I wake up, everything's normal for about a second - just long enough for me to read that "As a fully developed vampire, you are hated and feared." Then the entire Imperial Legion turns on me. Ah. This is going to be a problem.
2. Also very entertaining, how "Colts Punter Pat McAfee Nearly Got Catfished, Too, But Realized He Wasn't Famous Enough For Groupies."

3.  "There Are Whales Alive Today Who Were Born Before Moby Dick Was Written."  (Bowhead whales can live longer than 200 years.)

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Link roundup

1.  Fast Company looks at the effort to make Nascar race cars look more like the models people can actually buy.  Toyota's  will have "headlights":
True headlights and fog lights would be crushed by all of Nascar's bumping and grinding, so these are all decals. The strips are applied to stamped cutouts where the lights would be on a production car, to make them as realistic as possible.
2.  "No backboned animal has been found that can harness the sun – until now. It has long been suspected, and now there is hard evidence: the spotted salamander is solar-powered."

3.  An article from 2011: "Charlie Sheen tells Sports Illustrated in its latest issue that he took steroids 'for like six or eight weeks' while filming the 1989 movie 'Major League.'" 

4.  "On Friday, former [New Orleans] mayor Ray Nagin, who ran the city during the Katrina disaster, was indicted on 21 charges of bribery, money laundering, and other corruption offenses."

Friday, January 18, 2013

Watch the Metal Gear Rising Revengeance bosses in action



Almost five minutes of boss battles from Metal Gear Rising.  And here's another 25 minutes of gameplay:



You can preorder the regular or limited editions at Amazon. Via.

Moon Knight and Echo



By Alex Maleev.

Reebok ATV 19+

Movie posers for Alice in Wonderland, Inglorious Basterds and more



Movie posters by Jeferson Barbosa.

New from Garth Marenghi



Matthew (Garth Marenghi) Holness has a new short film called A Gun for George:
Terry Finch - a man alone. Forgotten author of The Reprisalizer, Britain's toughest pulp paperback vigilante, Finch pens tall tales of brute force and rough justice from his isolated caravan, treading a thin line between reality and fantasy in an attempt to exorcise painful memories of his brother's death. When his ailing writing career grinds to a final halt, Terry’s compulsive and cathartic visions of violent retribution refuse to die with it, and a dark new chapter in the story of The Reprisalizer unfolds - where actions speak louder than words... 
There's also a related site.

*Buy Darkplace at Amazon.

Magik and Valeria





Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Cyberqueen: A visceral choose your own adventure



Cyberqueen is an intense, disturbing interactive work of science fiction.  A playthrough takes only about ten minutes.

Assassin



By Richard Sala.

The Atlantic looks at the Cuban Missile Crisis

Camelot:
On the first day of the crisis, October 16, when pondering Khrushchev’s motives for sending the missiles to Cuba, Kennedy made what must be one of the most staggeringly absentminded (or sarcastic) observations in the annals of American national-security policy: “Why does he put these in there, though? … It’s just as if we suddenly began to put a major number of MRBMs [medium-range ballistic missiles] in Turkey. Now that’d be goddamned dangerous, I would think.” McGeorge Bundy, the national security adviser, immediately pointed out: “Well we did it, Mr. President.”

"A third-place finish at a tournament last month by a formerly obscure player was so startling that organizers searched his clothing and took apart his pen looking for evidence that he had outside help"

NYT:
They found nothing.

But the episode has again raised the question of how officials can monitor games in an era when technology is so advanced, and it set off concerns about how such suspicions will affect the game.

Not tonight



From Daredevil #121.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Monday, January 14, 2013