Friday, August 29, 2014



Superfriends commission by Dustin Harbin. (What, no horse?)

Thursday, August 28, 2014

Imagine if Gravity ended with Sandra Bullock having to fend off wolves for two days.
"Ants working in harmony create a daisy chain to pull dinner home."

A young man of average physical skills decides to commit himself to becoming a professional soccer player

Quora:
To get to a higher level you need connections. So I decided to email dozens of professional clubs in England. I got one reply from AFC Wimbledon based in London, which back then were in the 5th tier of English soccer. The coach said I could train with them, so I flew over to England. I trained with their U17's and I was told I wasn't good enough after two or three sessions.

I brushed that experience off my shoulders, went back home, kept training with the goal of improving.

...

By December of that year, I was invited to train with the U/17 Australian national team who were preparing for the World Cup. Might I add, I wasn't "invited" - I was just lucky that their training base was in my hometown, and my bullshit email to ask if I could "continue my professional training regime" was one of the few which were read and replied to.

That was an amazing opportunity for me. Training in an full-time environment where the pitch was perfect, kits were laid out nicely and the balls used were the best you could get. That was motivation, but sadly after two trainings, the coach thought I was nowhere near a standard to compete.

...

I always ask the coach what I could of done better and need to improve. Whether it's faster decision making, or strength, etc - after each trial I've always taken their "feedback" into consideration and acted upon it. This Kaizen method of constantly reviewing what I can improve each week, is what was/is slowly making me a very good player.

Monica Seles is a romance novelist now



You can buy The Academy: Game On at Amazon:
The Academy is an International Sports Mecca for teen athletes. There are only two ways in. Deep pockets or enough talent to score a scholarship.

Young tennis star Maya's dreams have finally come true when she earns a scholarship to The Academy. Plucked from her small town, Maya moves to the sports training facility/boarding school to (hopefully) start the beginning of her pro career. But Maya's fantasy of The Academy doesn't quite match the reality. Because where there are hot, talented teens, there's a lot of drama. Meet the players: 
Nicole: A tennis star who feels threatened by Maya (but she'd never admit it).
Cleo: Maya's rebel/punk roommate who is nearing the top of the golf world.
Renee: The gorgeous swimmer with enough money to buy her way into The Academy.
Travis: The son of The Academy owner--perfectly groomed to be the next NFL star.
Jake: Travis' younger brother--the bad boy to his brother's good.
(Bolding from the official description.)  Via.

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Social Justice Warrior logo



By Olly Moss.


3D-printed monkey selfie sculpture available at Shapeways.


The Monterey Bay Aquarium has posted some nice wallpapers (although few are of modern resolution). Via.
From an old article--when Avengers and Breaking Bad were filming next to each other, Sam Jackson wanted to do a brief cameo as Nick Fury by ordering chicken at Pollos Hermanos.
The president of NBC News is married to married to a former director of communications for Britain’s security and intelligence.

Tuesday, August 26, 2014



Kamala Khan and Carol Danvers custom action figures by raybot on sale at ebay.


Swell faux-lighting on these Warhammer 40k miniatures painted by Tim Davis as a commission.

*Buy painted miniatures at eBay.


Monster by Diana Esperanza for a game jam game called Onryo's Legend.

"Pain is only temporary. Film is forever."






Devin Graham's latest extreme stunts montage. And the blooper reel showing how much work goes into pulling off even the simplest stunt:

Shadow over Downtown Los Angeles.
"Malaysia Airlines Is Burning $2 Million Every Day as Flights Go Empty."

Monday, August 25, 2014



Blast from the past.

The closest Sony got to building a Walkman for vinyl



This is Sony's PS-F5 battery-powered portable record player with headphone jacks:



There was one at ebay when I checked.


The Seattle Reign.

Saturday, August 23, 2014

BART ebooks



Thursday, August 21, 2014

Redditor describes a truly bizarre one night stand, and another Redditor chimes in to say he had a similar experience.  (The best short stories you'll read today.)

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Ugly Shirt



The ugly shirt from William Gibson's outstanding Zero History is real:
In their malware demonstration, the researchers used a distinctive image to signal to their software that the scanner should replace a certain person’s image with an innocuous one.


Gozer by Tara McPherson for Gallery 1988.

Whoopi Goldberg's forgotten buddy cop/dinosaur movie Theodore Rex


Gabe Krahulik's account of trying to discover who was bombing his son's Minecraft creations

PA:
My son Gabe has a Minecraft Realm that he and his friends play on. It’s a service that Mojang offers allowing you to rent a private server. You need to specifically invite people to the server otherwise there is no way for them to join. As a Dad, I like this much better than having him out there playing on public servers. It’s not full weirdos who might be preying on kids, but it is full of 9 year olds and that presents its own problems.

These kids spend a lot of time on their Minecraft projects. I’ve been on there and seen massive statues, elaborate games and machines, sprawling castles and even a five-story hotel. On more than one occasion I have had my son come to me in tears because something on the realm was destroyed. In spite of the posted rules explaining that no dynamite is allowed it seems there was some mad bomber wreaking havoc. Unfortunately up until recently Minecraft Realms had no log of player activities. I had no way of determining who the vandal was beyond calling all the parents. Which is what we did.

My wife and I would reach out to all the various folks whose kids were on the Realm and ask if it was their special little angel who was blowing shit up. Now as the father of a 9 year old myself I can tell you that they are liars. So when you ask them if they did something they will just say “no” and in this case I really had no evidence so without someone taking responsibility I couldn’t do anything. That is until a recent update added a log that showed when players logged on and off. It wasn’t much but it was something.

The most recent attack took place a few weeks ago. This time a series of skyscraper sized statues was blown to pieces. The extent of the destruction lead my to believe dynamite was the culprit. The bomber had struck again. My son began restoring the Realm based on previous save files automatically created at regular intervals. We went back hours and then a full day before finally the statues appeared before us once again. Now we had a time frame for the crime but we still had no suspects.

My wife opened up the activity log and began cross-referencing the log in times of the various children with the what we believed was the time of the attack. A few names matched up as being online during that window but we still needed to narrow it down. I went back to the crime scene hoping it would give up a few more clues. These statues were actually massive recreations of specific player’s avatars. These kids all had custom skins and they had recreated them with blocks acting as pixels. There were three names on our list of possible suspects and I was looking at the ruined statues of two of them. Unless I was to believe that one of them was smart enough to destroy his own creation in order to throw me off the trail, I knew who my bomber was. Unfortunately it was the one kid I really didn’t want it to be.

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Thursday, August 14, 2014

The $2.5 billion Revel Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City will close two years after opening. Trump's casino is also closing.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014



Poster for Revenge of the Green Dragons. There was one at ebay when I checked.   Via.
Burger King is going to stop selling those "healthier" Satisfries at most stores.

Batman and Wonder Woman Uglydolls

Businessweek on cities running out of gravesites:
To tackle the shortage in burial grounds, London passed a 2007 law allowing authorities to dig up graves at least 75 years old to make way for new ones.

Gifs of the best fairy tale moments from the trailer for WiLD




Swimming by the sunken giant skeleton, and meeting the tree spirit.  Via.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Dungeons and Dragons-themed DEA Patches



Drug Enforcement Administration patches. A decent number of these are available at ebay.  Via.



The elephant and tiger from the end of the trailer for Far Cry 4:



The collector's edition with statue is 3 cents off at Amazon.

Zorb soccer



The song is Cali Get Down by Radical Something. (99 cents at Amazon and iTunes.)


Relatedly: Some adorable Groot concept art (spoiler).

Monday, August 11, 2014



Leia preparing for Jabba's Palace by Nate Baertsch.


Iridescent Nike Women's Blazer Mid available August 16.

Steampunk Miniatures Kickstarter



The Infamy Miniatures Kickstarter vastly exceeded its goal.

Sunday, August 10, 2014

Guardians of the Galaxy stunt doubles.


Microscale Lego moon exploration diorama by Eldeem.

Saturday, August 9, 2014

Dominique Ansel’s new creation is a stuffed pretzel that looks like a lobster tail



The pretzel lobster is a pretzel shaped like a lobster tail, stuffed with buttercrunch and peanut butter and served salted with whipped brown-butter-honey sauce. Via these sites.