Coop Double Hitter - gaming goodness on mass

This little monkey has been a little slow with the posts the past couple of weeks, but it's good news for you my friends. 2 x Coop Eps back to back.

LittleBigPlanet (PSP), Mass Effect 2, Avatar (The Game)



Modern Warfare 2, Team Fortress 2, HALO & Many More…

2010 Movies - HOT TUB TIME MACHINE

At Work Over XMAS? ANNOY PEOPLE

DO THE DAFT!

Video Game Minimalism

There are more to see at My Modern Met, and yes, you can get them on a t-shirt.

I kind of like this one of Kratos from Gods of War

Zero Punctuation: Demon's Souls

Digg Dialogg - Peter Jackson Interview

Peter Jackson, the Academy Award winning director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the upcoming film, The Lovely Bones, talks to James Rocchi and answers a few Digg questions. District 9, Lord of the Rings and more....

Monkey's Christmas Wishlist

This silly season I find that I'm looking for the online bargains, trolling around the internets looking for some of the coolest things that I'd never buy myself. You know, some of that useless stuff that's great on Christmas Day then finds it way to the back of your wardrobe and some of the must haves for the debt inclined. So here we go...


USB Desktop Tanning Center

Ever been laughed at by your friends for looking nerdy? Ever thought that it could be due to you monitor-tan? Well this nifty little device plugs into your USB and pumps your face with luscious UV rays helping you to look active on the outside.



Livescribe -Pulse Smartpen


Ever wanted to get a soft copy of your minutes for work? Can be buggered re-typing it all over again? Well fret no longer... as well as having a little inferred camera in the nub to record your pen strokes there's a microphone so you can add notations which can also be converted into a txt document! Nice..





The New Tivo

With the new CASPA VOD service and unmetered downloads from a growing list of ISP's the new Tivo Dual HD Tuner PVR could be on top of any one's list. Currently it's around $2 - $4AU dollars to watch your favourite TV show using the service but coming April next year you'll have to option of watching the show with commercials for free. And it's not that bad as commercial content goes with 30 second breaks at the start, middle and end of your shows (more for movies) is a breeze compared to current scheduling practices. It's got one of the easiest user experiences of all other locally available PVR's and you can stream you're archived video's to the unit (Divx, Quicktime, MP4/H.264...) We'll see how the streaming goes, but for all the other features this is a total goer.

Darth Vader Unmasked - USB Stick

It's just cool.... in 2,4,8 and 16gb.

 

Tauntaun Sleeping Bag

There's something pretty sweet about waking up in the guts of one of your favourite fantastical creatures. I mean you even get a mini Light Saber on the zip as you slice her open and the head becomes a little pillow! For any Star Wars fan or any nerd at all... this will be hard to beat.

Kindle Wireless Reading Device

A virtual book. The digital ink simulates the look and feel of reading with no glare or refresh rate to strain your eyes. It looks real paper, and makes accessing the mass of features a cool and fairly painless experience.And there's no need for a PC as the build in Wi-fi and 3G lets you surf the net as well as access Amazons library of 360,000 books and 50,000 audio books. Other features like Read-to-Me Voice to text and wikipedia are cool too but need some work. For us Ozzies it gets a bit more difficult as only a fraction of the noted titles are available in Australia and but it can be made up for by the access to free out of copyright content from websites such as Gutenberg.org and the new ability to read PDF's. The high price tag is a total downer but this is a wish list I suppose....

Tarantino Mixtape

A nice like mixup of Quentin Tarantino's work....

See more funny videos and TBT Videos at Today's Big Thing.

sepukoo.com - the latest thing in social networking?

sepukoo - Social networking suicide. The virtual life gets yet another simulated kink, but what happens when somone 'seppukoos' online and tops themselves in real life? It also occurs to us that it's just a matter of time before some online feud leads to a murder/suicide sitation where accounts get hacked, or information 'borrowed' and rather than an indidual voluntarily opting out of their online presence (which is what the site seems to exist for), they will get 'offed' by their adversary or some jealous and resentful 'friend'.

I guess it's one way to scare the crap out of your Mum (If she's the type to check your account several times daily, just to keep tabs), and you can always just reactivate your facbook account if you change your mind later (in fact, entirely getting rid of a facebook profile you have created is next to impossible), but what about all those cool buddies of yours who you only know through online chatting? that you have never actually met in person? Virtual grief is not something we've been planning on.

It's a viral newsbyte waiting to happen... and it could happen to you.

Supervillains in Love: The Monarchs

For fans of The Venture Brothers...

Zero Punctuation: Left 4 Dead 2 & New Super Mario Bros Wii

WTF!? with Quentin Taratino...

The world's first commercial spacecraft

Pictures released Monday which we saw on Boing Boing of 'Spaceship 2' from The Mojave desert, California, home to Virgin Galactic's research and development base (it's actually the craft in the middle, between the dual carriages of the catamarine-like aircraft that lauches it). $200,000 US will get you a ticket (assuming you pass the physical) on a flight to the upper limits of Earth's atmosphere to the edge of space, and approximately 5 or 6 minutes of true 'zero-g' wieghtlessness... not to metion the huge carbon footprint you will earn yourself at the same time.

Between Two Ferns - Strange Tonight Show

Zach Galifianakis from "Hangover" fame hosts this bizarre talk show "Between Two Ferns"... I think that it's funny, but then again it may just be odd.

Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis from Between Two Ferns

Between Two Ferns With Zach Galifianakis from Between Two Ferns

Movie News - New Avatar Featurette

A nice new twist on the current load of trailers that are floating around for James Cameron's Avatar. Sigourney Weaver voices a kind of Welcoming Guide to Pandora. Location, Inhabbitants, geographical makeup... it's all hear in a really slick and drool worthy piece of video. How long till it comes out? The 17th??? Ohhh... man :(


You have to click off site as there's no youtube copy of this treat...

Tech News - Turning your PS3 into a Personal Video Record

PlayTV AU Impressions

Annoyed that you missed Iron Chef last night? Disgruntled because you had to duck out to the bathroom during the *insert sporting code here* grand finals and you missed the most memorable moment of the game? Getting crabby because you're about to go on holidays for a week and you'll be out of touch with your friends in Summer Bay the entire time?

Well, turn that frown upside down. PlayTV is here to ensure you don't miss a second of oh-so-important television time. It comes along on the heels of set top boxes like Tivo, services like Foxtel iQ and hardware like PC TV tuner cards. It's not in any way new, in other words, but in this case it's affordable, convenient and – for the most part – pretty user friendly.

We've been testing PlayTV for a few days now, and it works very much as advertised. Plug the little black box containing the twin TV tuners into your PS3, plug an aerial into the black box, install the software to your PS3 and you're good to go. The tuners had no problems finding all the Australian free to air channels – including the weird community/parliament/teaching aides ones. Oh, and the one that seems to do nothing but play re-runs of The Jetsons, The Flintstones and Bewitched. Wow, it's like having cable. For free! 

We didn't really have any issues with reception either, which was gratifying given how awful the analogue reception is at our test location. One of the advantages of a digital signal is that you basically either get it, or you don't. I.e. you'll either see a clean, crisp, smooth signal, or it'll be frozen and only occasionally spit out another frame. So no fuzzy reception, no ghosting – it's either on or off.

Choose the Live TV option and you're watching tele as per normal. Only, because of the ability to buffer to the PS3's hard drive and the twin tuners, you have a number of cool features, such as pausing and rewinding live TV, and recording one channel while watching another. The Electronic Program Guide (EPG) integration also means it's a simple matter to browse through the TV guide and select a number of programs you want to record. Once you've set your schedule, the system gets pulled out of sleep mode to record each program, or can do it in the background while you're playing a game or watching a Blu-ray. We've tested recording a film while playing a game (Brutal Legend, if you must know), and experienced no issues whatsoever. full article here...

Tech News - Net piracy: The people vs the entertainment industry

"THIS is the kind of snooping you'd expect in China, not a modern western democracy. It raises huge questions over privacy invasion and freedom of expression." So says Andrew Heaney - who is not, as you might imagine, a civil liberties campaigner, but a senior executive at TalkTalk, one of the UK's largest internet service providers. Along with other ISPs, his company faces the prospect of being forced to spy on its customers' downloads for signs of potential copyright infringement.

Heaney's disquiet is shared by web campaigners worldwide, as the measures contained in a controversial international copyright treaty (New Scientist, 5 July 2008, p 24) are slowly being translated into national laws variously tipped to bridge, distract from or widen the gulf between the entertainment industry's desires and those of the millions who share copyrighted material over the internet.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), suggested by the US administration in 2007, aims to redefine global trade rules. The intention is to stem losses from counterfeiting and internet-mediated piracy of content like music and movies.

It will do that by penalising internet service providers and websites that carry, or help people to find, pirated content. ACTA has quickly proved a hit with G8 nations, the European Union, South Korea and Australia, who are all using it as a basis for future national laws.........

........ACTA is still being worked up in secret by trade delegations from the many nations involved. But a series of leaks to the Wikileaks website reveal that it will require ISPs to become technological sleuths who monitor their customers' internet use to "deter unauthorised storage and transmission of infringing content". Infringers will face a "graduated response", with disconnection as the ultimate sanction. "Monitoring every single packet going across our network for the fingerprints of hundreds of copyrighted files will require tens of millions of pounds' worth of computer systems," Heaney warns. Without that extra computing power, internet access will slow to a crawl.

ISPs would have to scan the contents of every chunk of data, using what is known as "deep packet inspection" technology, which is used by China and Iran to monitor and censor internet communications. But even if ISPs install such technology, identifying infringers will be far from straightforward. The EU has ruled that before anyone can be sent a warning letter, rights holders must take an ISP to court to get the name and address of an alleged culprit.more...

More info about the ACTA

Tech News - Solar Power from Space

A new develpoment from the worlds largest economy, California has just approved a new kind of energy system, and it's based in space!

Energy beamed down from space is one step closer to reality, now that California has given the green light to a deal involving its sale. But some major challenges will have to be overcome if the technology is to be used widely.

On Thursday, the California Public Utilities Commission gave its blessing to an agreement that would see the Pacific Gas and Electric Company buy 200 megawatts of power beamed down from solar-power satellites beginning in 2016.

A start-up company called Solaren is designing the satellites, which it says will use radio waves to beam energy down to a receiving station on Earth.

The attraction of collecting solar power in space is the virtually uninterrupted sunshine available in geosynchronous orbit. Earth-based solar cells, by contrast, can only collect sunlight during daytime and when skies are clear. more...

Zero Punctuation: Assassin's Creed 2

Panic Attack!

So here's the scenario - guy makes short film, does a few screenings and posts it on the internet. Film gets seen by Legendary genre director who finds guy and helps him get a major deal with a Hollywood cinema. Guy gets associated with a coupleof geektastic projects which don't come to fruition, then makes something wonderful.
Sound Familiar? it's approximately what has happened with Neill Blomkamp being 'discovered' by Peter Jackson a few years back and ending producing 'District 9' this year, on of the most innovative, engaging and exciting works in Science Fiction for a long time.
Now it might be happening again, if we're lucky. THose of us who saw Blomkamp's Halo 3 shorts or the short that District 9 is based upon, Alive in Joburg



might have had a similar feeling watching the film at the top of this post; Panic Attack by Fede Alvarez. Sam Raimi sure did, and has signed the Uruguayan film maker to 'develop and direct an original genre project'.

This MTV Movie Blogs points out that this is happening the same year that Oren Peli has had 'unparalleled success' with his ultra low budget suspense flick "Paranormal Activity" - produced for a variously reported 10-15 thousand dollars in 2007, Peli's film came to the attention of Steven Spielberg after some festival Screenings and has bee a sleeper hit that led to a dealwith Peli at Dreamworks. Peli's story might remind some of the way that 'The Blair Witch Project'exploited the internet to market itself in a way that hadn't been tried before.
This trend must be inspiring to any would-be film makers, and it sure is exciting for Science Fiction and Horror fans. I think the kind of patronage that Spielberg, Jackson and now Raimi has shown is laudable, and I hope it keeps happening for more low-budget projects.

Fede Alvarez made 'Panic Attack' for a reported 'few hundred dollars' - it sure doesn't look like it!

There's a change in the virtual winds...Mininova limits service

Looking around the internets earlier today I stumbled on some massive news. Mininova has been forced to restrict access to illegal torrents by a Dutch Court. There's a big shift online at the moment and it's hard to tell who's winning.

Mininova Blog Post
November 26, 2009

Today is an important day in the history of Mininova. From now on, we are limiting Mininova.org to our Content Distribution service. By doing so, we comply with the ruling of the Court of Utrecht of last August.

Unfortunately the court ruling leaves us no other option than to take our platform offline, except for the Content Distribution service. According to the verdict (Dutch link) we have to prevent uploads of torrents to Mininova that refer to certain titles or to similar-looking titles. We’ve been testing some filtering systems the last couple of months, but we found that it’s neither technically nor operationally possible to implement a 100% working filter system. Therefore, we decided that the only option is to limit Mininova to Content Distribution torrents from now on. We are still considering an appeal at this moment.


We launched our Content Distribution service in 2007. This service allows producers and artists to easily publish and distribute their content for free through Mininova. The launch of Content Distribution has proven to be a success. Countless content owners have used Content Distribution to distribute their content (e.g. albums and documentaries) for free to millions of users. For example, the Dutch band Silence is Sexy released their complete album on Mininova and received the Interactive Award 2009 for doing so. The Dutch television broadcaster VPRO decided to start using Content Distribution in 2009 in order to distribute documentaries.

Full posting from Mininovas blog

Zero Punctuation: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

We live in a universe that is optimised for building starships!

Here's a cool article from New Scientist about future prospects for interstellar spaceflight, ....  ooohh...

SPACE is big," wrote Douglas Adams in his book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. "You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is."

He wasn't exaggerating. Even our nearest star Proxima Centauri is a staggering 4.2 light years away - more than 200,000 times the distance from the Earth to the sun. Or, if you like, the equivalent of 50 million trips to the moon and back.

Such vast distances would seem to put the stars far beyond the reach of human explorers. Suppose we had been able to hitch a ride on NASA's Voyager 1 the fastest interstellar space probe built to date. Voyager 1 is now heading out of the solar system at about 17 kilometres per second. At this rate it would take 74,000 years to reach Proxima Centauri - safe to say we wouldn't be around to enjoy the view.

So what would it take for humans to reach the stars within a lifetime? For a start, we would need a spacecraft that can rush through the cosmos at close to the speed of light. There has been no shortage of proposals: vehicles propelled by repeated blasts from hydrogen bombs, or from the annihilation of matter and antimatter. Others resemble vast sailing ships with giant reflective sails, pushed along by laser beams.

All these ambitious schemes have their shortcomings and it is doubtful they could really go the distance. Now there are two radical new possibilities on the table that might just enable us - or rather our distant descendants - to reach the stars. read the rest of the article...

Co-op - Assassin's Creed 2 Review Special

Could they gush any more about this new title?? hummm, maybe I'll have to go and have a look.

Tech News - Computational cameras perfect your photos for you

17 November 2009 by Jim Giles

The signs of the digital photography revolution are hard to miss, from cameras embedded in our cellphones to gigabytes of images stored on hard drives. But if you thought the revolution finished with the death of chemical film, think again. Computational photography promises equally dramatic changes, turning even the most ham-fisted of snappers into veritable Cartier-Bressons.

We are on the cusp of a new era in which every camera comes with a sophisticated built-in computer, says Ramesh Raskar of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who delivered a presentation on advances in computational photography at an imaging technology conference in Monterey, California, this week. Low-cost processing and memory combined with new digital sensors will deliver richer images created by fusing elements from multiple shots and even video.

Hints of the changes to come can be found in cameras such as Casio's EX-F1, which launched last year and has been dubbed the first computational camera. In poor light, photographers face a difficult choice: use a flash, which can produce a harsh illumination, or go for a long exposure, where the risk of image blur increases. The EX-F1 offers a third option. It shoots a burst of images at long exposures and its computer merges the shots into a single image, reducing the blur as it does so. The process may not yet outperform established anti-blur techniques, such as using a tripod, but its existence is a significant advance in itself.

In labs around the world, researchers are developing a slew of other computational tricks for cameras. "We're creating images that people have never been able to produce," says Marc Levoy at Stanford University in California. more...

Tech News - LHC smashes protons together for first time

More news from the LHC.... - Monkey

22:39 23 November 2009 by David Shiga

The Large Hadron Collider bashed protons together for the first time on Monday, inaugurating a new era in the quest to uncover nature's deepest secrets.

Housed in a 27-kilometre circular tunnel beneath Geneva, Switzerland, the LHC is the world's most powerful particle accelerator, designed to collide protons together at unprecedented energies.

It was on the verge of its first proton collisions in September 2008 when a faulty electrical connection triggered an explosion of helium used to cool the machine. This caused a 14-month delay while CERN repaired the damage and installed safety features to prevent a repeat of the accident.

But physicists started whipping protons around the machine again on Friday.

Now, at long last, CERN is heralding the first collisions inside the machine. Two beams of protons travelling at nearly the speed of light crashed together on Monday at 1322 GMT inside the ATLAS detector, one of the giant measuring devices the LHC will use to probe shrapnel from the collisions, according to CERN's announcement. Further collisions occurred inside the LHC's CMS and LHCb detectors.

"This is great news, the start of a fantastic era of physics – and hopefully discoveries – after 20 years' work by the international community to build a machine and detectors of unprecedented complexity and performance," said Fabiola Gianotti, a spokesperson for the ATLAS detector project. more...

Tech News - Britain's new Internet law -- as bad as everyone's been saying

Yikes! Now here's some scary shit....damn you QUEEN!    -  monkey

Cory Doctorow

POSTED AT 4:28 AM November 20, 2009

The British government has brought down its long-awaited Digital Economy Bill, and it's perfectly useless and terrible. It consists almost entirely of penalties for people who do things that upset the entertainment industry (including the "three-strikes" rule that allows your entire family to be cut off from the net if anyone who lives in your house is accused of copyright infringement, without proof or evidence or trial), as well as a plan to beat the hell out of the video-game industry with a new, even dumber rating system (why is it acceptable for the government to declare that some forms of artwork have to be mandatorily labelled as to their suitability for kids? And why is it only some media? Why not paintings? Why not novels? Why not modern dance or ballet or opera?).

So it's bad. £50,000 fines if someone in your house is accused of filesharing. A duty on ISPs to spy on all their customers in case they find something that would help the record or film industry sue them (ISPs who refuse to cooperate can be fined £250,000).

But that's just for starters. The real meat is in the story we broke yesterday: Peter Mandelson, the unelected Business Secretary, would have to power to make up as many new penalties and enforcement systems as he likes. And he says he's planning to appoint private militias financed by rightsholder groups who will have the power to kick you off the internet, spy on your use of the network, demand the removal of files or the blocking of websites, and Mandelson will have the power to invent any penalty, including jail time, for any transgression he deems you are guilty of. And of course, Mandelson's successor in the next government would also have this power.

more from the article...

BBC News story.

Main points from the bill thanks to politics.co.uk

Tech News - Lady Gaga Earns Slightly More From Spotify Than Piracy

Written by enigmax on November 21, 2009

Piracy is without a doubt, truly evil. It doesn’t help the artists, it robs them of their rightful revenue and is such a poor basis for a business model, it’s unworthy of consideration. Of course, new streaming sites are miles better, offering a legal way to listen to free music. Hmm – Lady Gaga got a million plays on Spotify and earned $167.

gagaIn August, Swedish artist and composer Magnus Uggla launched a scathing attack on the owners of Spotify. After discovering that Sony BMG is a shareholder and receiving virtually no cash from his music being played there, he withdrew his tracks from the service and stormed away, declaring controversially: “I’d rather be raped by The Pirate Bay.”

Nevertheless, Uggla insisted that Spotify is a fantastic service with a great range of music to sample. However, he felt that the fact he wasn’t getting paid was the fault of the major labels involved in the project (Sony BMG bought 5.8% of Spotify for 2,935 Euros, Universal Music got 4.8% for 2,446 euros, Warner Music paid 1,957 Euros for 3.8% and EMI pocketed 1.9% for an investment of 980 Euros), claiming that he “earned as much in six months as a BUSKER could earn in a day.”

More...

Hadron Collider is back online!

Alright! Finally! Now got ready for the moment that we all pass out and see six months into the future! or just cease to exist, one of the two...










From Pop Sci Fi

Frickin Laser Beams!

Boeing's Matrix Laser destroying an unmaned drone aircraft

from Gizmodo;

Boeing has successfully tested their new Matrix laser over airborne targets, which is a world's first. In total, they shot down five drones at various ranges. That's a lot of pew pew in a day.

The Air Force and Boeing achieved a directed-energy breakthrough with these tests. MATRIX—Mobile Active Targeting Resource for Integrated eXperiments—performance is especially noteworthy because it demonstrated unprecedented, ultra-precise and lethal acquisition, pointing and tracking at long ranges using relatively low laser power.

I'm sure that description would get Governor Tarkin wet, but if that weren't enough, Boeing—along with the Air Force and the Army—also tested the Laser Avenger, a kinetic-laser hybrid weapon that fires a high power ray coupled with a 25mm machine gun.

Obviously, the kids in the funny uniforms are happy with their new toys, but I would like to see if they can do the same with a small thermal exhaust port only two meters wide.

More from Pop Sci Fi

Zero Punctuation: Dragon Age: Origins

Co-op (Show) - Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Single Player, Dragon Age, DJ Hero

OMG The Coolest Cake EVER?!?!?!?!

Goodness me... below are some pics of the coolest cake I've ever seen. I mean what right minded net loving nerd doesn't digg the Tauntaun from Hoth but to have it made up into buttery, surgery deliciousness is stroke of genius. Even better, the guy who commissioned this beauty, Chris Trevas, is an fully fledged Star Wars artist doing illustrations for various roleplaying games, card games, collector cards, book covers and numerous magazines in the Lucas universe! Very nice...Linky...

.

Tech News - 1TB of data on fingernail-sized chip ?!?!?!

Engineers have created a material that could hold a trillion bytes (a terabyte) of data in a chip the size of a fingernail -- 50 times the capacity of today's best silicon-based chip technologies.

The engineers, from North Carolina State University, said their nanostructured Ni-MgO system can store up to 20 high-definition DVDs or 250 million pages of text, "far exceeding the storage capacities of today's computer memory systems."

The team of engineers was led by Jagdish "Jay" Narayan, director of the National Science Foundation Center for Advanced Materials and Smart Structures at the university.

The engineers made their breakthrough using the process of selective doping, in which an impurity is added to a material whose properties consequently change. more...

Games - Modern Warfare 2 Crazy cool knife throwing action

MonkeyM666 has a new favourite game and it's called Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Here's a little clip with a random moment in a multiplayer game. Stay tuned as I'll be writing up a review and posting more about this truly impressive game. 

LEGO POP-UP BOOK

No reason, just thought it was cool. The things some people do for fun...

ZERO PUNCTUATION: UNCHARTED 2: AMONG THIEVES

JOHNNY LEE WINS THE INTERNETS!!

Apparently this u toob video (and the others linked to it) has been around for a while now - but it is new to us. We've heard that Microsoft has taken Johnny Lee in and put him to work in research and design... and it's no wonder. This is the coolest Console Hack ever... and the possibilities it presents for interactive gaming and stereoscopic viewing are pretty mind-boggling. This will give even the most occasional gamer a reason to stay interested, maybe even drop some cash on a Wii.

More of Johnny being brilliant here;

FLAMING LIPS FLAMING NUDE VIDEO - NSFW

Those guys should really wear some kind of pants while bike riding... I can only imagine the kind of post-shoot chafing rubdowns they all had to go through. Actually, that's quite a nice thing to imagine... I may have to take a nude ride through my neighbourhood sometime soon.

link to NME if the video doesn't play for you

Embryonic is a great album, and if this doesn't get people's attention, I'm not sure what will...

JAPANESE AVATAR TRAILER - with new stuff in it!

Video:The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon

Hehehe... what a great little short film. Fear the spoon!!!!

Game News: Battlefield: Bad Company 2

Promo= cool.



Campaign promo = cooler



Multiplayer demo = superfly

Game News: Serious Sam HD Supermercial

Sifting through Xbox Live video I found this funny ol' clip for the upcoming XBLA release...

Red Book, Carl Jung's Final book released

Just before the first world war, the 38-year-old Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung was troubled by awful dreams and visions. Analytical to the core, he embarked on what he later described as his "confrontation with the unconscious", and documented the lot.

The material went through various drafts before Jung recopied it all, using an ornate gothic script, into the single big, red, leather journal which gives the previously "lost" Red Book its popular name. Jung went on to add historiated (enlarged) initials, ornamental borders and a substantial number of paintings (see Soul pictures).

Though it was written for public consumption, Jung eventually decided not to publish it and put it to one side. After his death in 1961, the Jung family declined access to all comers. But nearly 50 years later, after years of dialogue with the Jungs, translation and editing, it is now published. And for such an arcane work, it is generating quite a buzz. Its true importance, however, will be to the western intellectual tradition as a whole. More...

Local News: Building Collapse on Sydney Road

I was wandering down to the local shops to get my self some chicken wings and beer when I found that my way was blocked by emergency services. Sydney Rd in Brunswick, Melbourne Australia, was completely closed off due to a medical centre toppling over. Cool video, shame the beers got warm....


View Building Collapse in a larger map

ABC News Link

3AW Radio Photo Link

Nine News Video

I love the Internet

I Love xkcd from NoamR on Vimeo.

NEW THEATRICAL TRAILER FOR AVATAR

Go to the link and you can Quicktime the HD version - yeah, we're not Americans...

My eyes... they're not bleeding. Parts of it t DO look like a game FMV cut scene. That's ok though, I love 3D cartoons.

Zero Punctuation: Brutal Legend

Tech News: Ultimate jukebox is next step in net music

11:23 29 October 2009 by Jim Giles

Something exciting has just happened to online music, and it has nothing to do with Google's new music service garnering all the headlines.

If you Google search for music related terms, like an artist's name, some results now come with links to audio previews for relevant tracks. It is easy to use, but the service taps into just a few of the online music streaming sites. Lala and iLike are included but others with large libraries like Spotify and Last.fm are ignored. It also only works in the US. But more importantly, Google's service only helps people find music, and what they really want is to listen to it.

If a friend tweets about a song, for example, I don't want to have to search for it: I want a play button to appear in the tweet. I don't care which server the song is stored on, I just want to click it and hear the music. The same goes for tracks mentioned in emails, blogs or anywhere online.

A new service called Playdar tries to do just that. Its creator is Richard Jones, a programmer who developed some of the technology behind Last.fm. Playdar's stated goal is to do one thing: "Given the name of a track, find me a way to listen to it right now." more...

Modest Mouse: "The Whale Song" Video

Cool Animation... take a peek.

Tech News: The US lets go of the internet – will anyone notice?

A sour note for the future of the internets...

13 October 2009 by Gareth Morgan

POLITICAL power is rarely ceded without good reason. So eyebrows were raised last week when the US Department of Commerce decided to relax its grip on the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the body responsible for the naming system that ensures that when you type a web address, your browser knows where to go.

In future, governments and other international organisations will be able to nominate staff to sit on one of ICANN's three newly created steering committees, something the DoC had resisted for years. "What it really means," says ICANN's chief executive Rod Beckstrom, "is that we're going global."

Countries that don't use Latin characters, which ICANN says web addresses must be written in, will welcome the changes. Millions of web users are currently blocked from using domain names in their own language. Beckstrom says the changes to ICANN could soon fix that and predicts that addresses in Chinese and Arabic alphabets may emerge in little more than a year. read more...

Further links.

John McCain’s Internet Freedom Act Seeks To Block Net Neutrality

 ICANN Site 

Google's Public Policy Blog 

www.openinternet.gov

Tech News: Super slow-motion camera can follow firing neurons

09:00 28 October 2009 by Colin Barras

Slow motion just got a whole lot slower, with a camera sensor able to film action at 1 million frames per second.

The black and white device is quick enough to capture impulses hurtling through firing nerve cells, and its resolution is good enough to film the microsecond-long pulse-like nerve signals that speed through networks of neurons at up to 180 kilometres per hour.

Capturing frames that last one-millionth of a second requires great sensitivity to light, as well as precise timing. The device uses an array of single-photon detectors, or SPADs, each hooked up to a tiny stopwatch. The stopwatch records when the SPAD is hit by an incoming photon, with an accuracy of around 100 picoseconds. more...

Zero Punctuation: Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story

Tech News: lifelogging, Truman show begins around your neck

11:59 20 October 2009 by Colin Barras

Innovation is our regular column that highlights emerging technological ideas and where they may lead

Last week news broke that a commercial version of a camera worn around the neck to capture photos of your every moment is to be launched. It was originally invented to help people with memory problems.

It has been said before that an era of lifelogging, in which people will record and broadcast their daily lives, is on the way. But this time it might happen – people are already capturing many things about their lives and sharing them via social networking sites. The launch of the new camera and new research from Microsoft suggest people are ready to take the final steps. more...?

Film Review - UP

Pixar/Disneys latest eye fiesta "Up" has been out in cinemas for a while but this Monkey finally felt that it was time to spend the big bucks and enjoy a 3D/Real D ride again. The big spenders in Hollywood have put a lot of cash into all things 3D, trying to ward off the pirates and UP is no exception. One of the prettiest of Pixar's films UP is a story of love, loss and friendship. Carl Fredricksen, the old man from all the promotional material, lives alone in a nameless big city. His wife, and love of his life Ellie recently passed away leaving Carl alone to reminisce about the how everyday life got in the way of their dreams of adventure they shared as children. Alone, Carl is about to be thrown out of his house when he grasps at his last chance for adventure and floats his home out of the city and into the depths of South America. Tagging along is young Wilderness Explorer Russel who gets caught up in Carl's escape and helps him along the way.

As with most Disney films, the side kicks are the most entertaining and "Up" follows the same line. Keven, a giant gay pride coloured bird and Dug, a rehashed mold for a talking dog, are by far the most entertaining part of the film. Kevin's hyperactivity and erratic ADD movements along with Dug's innocence and stupidity are highlights in this kid's movie. Carl's childhood hero and inspiration for the entire balloon jaunt, Charles F. Muntz, is sadly a 2 dimensional villain in this 3D feature. For a man who has lived in the jungle for years with talking dogs, a great scientific mind and a big mother of an air balloon, he hasn't really done much more then a Papier-mâché wall; maybe Mr Muntz found some special toads in the jungle and only got chasing after Kevin when it was the dry season. With a mixture of confusing ages (how old is this guy? 200?), flat voice acting and uninspired dialogue it's a shame Adventurer Muntz wasn't more of a character. It really makes him the film's weakest link but there are other reasons that this movie doesn't hit the mark.

Even though I enjoyed the lighter side of this sad story, walking out of the cinema I didn't feel fulfilled. My thoughts were that the ending was apt considering the set-up in the film, but the overall moral of "life is what you make it" felt flat and a little old hat. I'm used to more complex story arcs that really make me think about how I relate a character such as this and how his story in the film changes him for the better. I always knew that Carl would find happiness again. From the moment we were shown the "dream" of Ellie and Carl living atop a mountain I thought to myself "there's the final shot of the film" and I was right. The whole thing felt uninspired, much like most of Disney's animated films these days. Nothing really surprised me, and nothing really touched me other then the sadness of Carl's loss. Even though the visuals are some of the best in any Pixar film the envelope was never pushed. The 3D was cool but again there was nothing that really took advantage of the format like a so-so film like" Monsters V Aliens" did. Maybe this is what the Studios want with 3D but I was expecting some of the best 3D I've ever seen considering who made it. Sure, production of this beast is impressive and the characters are quite lovable but there seemed to be a spark missing overall from the picture.

On reflection, reading the film another way leaves thoughts of Pixar's own change under Disney, the promise of excitement may appear to be gone but even after death they will be back. I don't know; it sounds like a grand life after Disney's re-accusation for the famed animation house with the likes of 'the princesses and the frog' and that dammed Tinkerbell movie, but they show that they're premium animators even with the spark missing.

7/10

We Were Once A Fairytale

A short film starring Kanye West, directed by Spike Jonze

Zero Punctuation: Wet

For District 9 fans

click here

Yep, it's some odd, disconcerting stuff right there - there is to be a 'pictorial' of Marge Simpson in the upcoming November issue of U.S. Playboy.

You could, if you were barking mad insane, go to the Google box right now and type 'Simpsons' and 'Nude', or 'Marge+Simspon' and 'Porn', or , you know 'cartoons fucking', something like that. But you shouldn't. You must not. You will think for a moment 'this might be a good laugh', but it isn't; it's just really, really depressing.

Don't get me wrong, dear reader, I find no fault in fleeting fantasies regards cartoon characters. Cute hand-drawn and lovingly rendered creations can indeed spark all manner of imaginative thought, and there's a whole subculture of Hentai anime that, while having only meagre interest in, I don't object to, that seems to be something different to what's going on here. Those characters are created to play a role in a sexual fantasy, titillation and hand-drawn porn, whereas I can't help but feel that the creators of the Simpsons are whoring Marge's ass out.



For me, I've once or twice lingered upon the shapely drawings and attractive personalities of Turanga Leela and Amy Wong from Futurama during a very lonely period in my life, but it's a passing fancy that one has for finely wrought character, a piece of fiction that entertains the libido for just a few seconds. It's much different when you take a picture of Bender and add a robotic extendo-cock that's penetrating Dr. Zoidberg while he uses his claws to clamp Amy's nipples and Professor Farnsworth beats off into a dixie cup... or you know, whatever these sickos draw.

It's only been funny once or twice, this pic -



is darkly satirical, clever and subversive, but there's a whole story behind it about the artist responsible, a former Disney illustrator who was done wrong by Uncle Walt,and took his revenge upon the canvas.

It goes awry for me when a character has made it's place in pop-culture as a 'Mum with moxie', a strong female character who is funny on her own terms, can go toe to toe with an oaf like Homer (and even occasionally 'out-crazy' him), who has the respect and love of a brat like Bart while serving as a role model for proto nerd-feminist drip Lisa, gets relegated to Hefner's stable of Bimbos. It was tricky enough for me to handle when they gave her big fake boobs for an ep a few seasons back, but now this?

In the Fifties it would have been amusing and novel, now it just seems a little regressive. But maybe I'm being to precious? She's just a bunch of lines, after all, and I guess, as sex symbols go, you could do a lot worse. Most of the articles I've read are quick to point out that she doesn't go full frontal anyway (the phrase 'implied nudity' has been used), but most seem to be implying that we are going to see her boobies. I'm just not sure I need to.

Plus, let's face it, we all shrieked like 8-year old girls when we saw Bart's weiner for about half a second in the movie. I suppose if it's tastefully done I might be ok with it.



More here
and here

Funny Pic - Time Travel

While looking for an image for the below LHC article I came accross this pic and just couldn't help myself posting it. hehehe... 

Science News - The LHC, the Higgs Boson, and Fate

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday October 13, @02:52PM

Reader Maximum Prophet sends a piece from the NY Times by the usually reliable Dennis Overbye reporting on a "crazy" theory being worked up by a pair of "otherwise distinguished physicists": that the Large Hadron Collider's difficulties may be due to the universe's reluctance to produce a Higgs boson. Maximum Prophet adds, "This happened to the Superconducting Super Collider in the science fiction story Einstein's Bridge. Now Holger Bech Nielsen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan, are theorizing that it's happening in real life."

 

"I'm talking about the notion that the troubled collider is being sabotaged by its own future. A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather."

more info here, CERN's Press releases here and the origional NY Times artice here