Geek Stuff – Page 9

Geek Year in Review: Year One

August 4, 2011 by Administrator, posted in Geek Stuff, Guest Authors, Movies, Science, Television

Guess what folks? It has been one year of the “Geek Month in Review”! I’m so pleased that at least once a month there is a place for comics, science, games, technology, and other geeky things to live here on The Magical Buffet. And if the comments and website views are to be believed, many of you have been amused by this now one year old tradition here on the site too. Sure, I poke fun at the volume of 3D printer or Doctor Who stories John opts to include most months, but at the end of the day….I knew a whole heck of a lot about 3D printers before they showed up on The Colbert Report…..and doesn’t everyone love Doctor Who?

So happy birthday to the “Geek Month in Review”!

By JB Sanders

Writing the Geek Review article has been a lot like sharing links with my friends — with less “seen it” than real life. I read a lot, and frequently come across the oddest little news items. Putting them together into one article has been really a lot of fun — it’s much different than blasting one link across FaceBook. When you see them all pushed up into one place like that, grouped together, it’s a far more surreal and yet somehow pleasant experience.

I think I’m going to call it my Museum of the Geeky Weird. I’ve found some really interesting Curiosities (to me, anyway) and glommed them together into my own Cabinet*. So, please, wander the exhibits, press your nose against the glass, and whatever you do, don’t feed the monkeys.
Below are the best of the best, or what I thought were the most endurably interesting of this past year.

* If you want to know what I mean, a link.

Behind the Scenes Photos
From little movies like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Other shots:
• How they did the Empire Strikes Back text crawl (you’ll be surprised).
• A shot of Alfred Hitchcock, Tippi Hedren and some birds.
• A shot inside the giant alien spacecraft in Alien.
• A picture of Max Schreck lounging creepily. (Bonus geek points if you know the Other Movie this ties into, all too eerily.)
• Really, why are you still reading this blurb? Click on the link already!

This is How Science-Fiction Becomes Reality
Austrian scientists have developed a new way to do what rotors on helicopters and airplanes have done before now. Heck, their flying machines don’t even need wings. They produce thrust by using rotating turbine-like blades, and because those blades can be adjusted, the D-Dalus can produce thrust in any direction, 360 degrees. It’s also fine with rough weather and nearly silent.

The Amazing Transforming Apartment
Anyone else reminded of Bruce Willis’ guy from Fifth Element? Watch what this guy packs into 24 square meters:

Concrete Tent
Brilliant, simple idea. Ship a canvas tent that’s been impregnated with concrete, put it up with an air blower, dose it with water and in 24 hours, you have a permanent concrete structure. Awesome!

Lost Pyramids Found
It’s not really news that infrared satellite imaging will reveal hidden structures. It’s certainly not news that Egypt has pyramids. What is news is that these researchers found 17 pyramids, over 1,000 tombs and over 3,000 ancient settlements, all previously unknown. Oh, and the city of Tanis. You remember that one, right? From the first Indiana Jones movie? Buried in the sands thousands of years ago, Ark of the Covenant? Yeah, that Tanis.

Squishy Circuits
Ever wanted to teach your 4-year-old about electrical engineering and circuitry? No? Why not!? How about you show them about battery packs, LED lights and play-dough. Yeah, did you know that regular commercial play-dough can conduct electricity? Or that with a little work, you can make your own play-dough? With a slight variation of the recipe, you can even make a resistive play-dough to help create play-dough circuits. Very cool stuff.

How Much is Smaug Worth, Anyway?
And of course, look no further than Forbes magazine for that answer. The article is a behind-the-scenes (“showing a little ankle” as the author amusingly puts it) look at how Forbes goes about evaluating the “Fictional 15”, or the 15 richest fictional characters. It’s humorous and a little surreal seeing a mainstream discussion of what I would have thought was just a fan-boy discussion of relative fictional fortunes. Possibly the geekiest article I’ve ever linked to.

Who Stole My Volcano?
A blog article about an interview with the man who was the production designer for such movies as “Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang”, “Dr Strangelove” and numerous Bond movies. The subtitle of the blog post is “Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dematerialisation of Supervillain Architecture.” Totally worth a read.

All of Doctor Who in 6 Minutes
A light, and lightning-fast, overview of all of Doctor Who’s 47 years on television in 6 minutes. Fun!

Spacewar, 50 Years On
The venerable first video game, originally coded on a PDP-1, has been ported up to the web. It’s using the original Spacewar code, running on a PDP-1 emulator. Originally the emulator was running in Java; in the latest version it’s been ported to HTML5 tools. Enjoy!

In case you’re not sure what a PDP-1 is: Link

You’re Playing With Them Wrong
Because nothing you did as a kid was as awesome as these Star Wars Lego(tm) action shots. Seriously.

How Much Radiation?
Ever wonder how much radiation you can suck up and not have a problem? Want to see that comparison visually, with solid science behind it? Well, look no further than xkcd, not only a great comic, but purveyors of fine graphs and maps.

Analogies Can Be Graphs
Or is it metaphors. Anyway, great take on the graph.

Teenager Builds Solar Death Ray
And oddly, doesn’t burn down school. See the sun’s concentrated rays burn through concrete! Steel! Other stuff!

It’s Old, But Still Indecipherable
Remember the Voynich manuscript? That seemingly-old document written in a language no one can understand, and filled with unintelligble diagrams? Yeah, well, they know how old it is now, anyway: about the 15th century. Or 100 years older than everyone thought it was.

Underground Master Plan
And no, I don’t mean mole people invaders. The folks of Helsinki Finland are planning on expanding their city below-ground, forming a master plan that encompasses subterranean sea-water-cooled data centers, municipal swimming pools, coal storage, 60km of tunnels, the city-wide heating system, factories and whatever else “doesn’t need to be seen”.

Once Forgotten Caves Laser-mapped
A series of caves, now thought to be a sand-mine, were recently laser-mapped, providing smoke-like maps of their winding, twisty corridors. It’s thought the “caves” were a working sand mind in the 1700’s and were re-discovered in 1892. Some basements in Nottingham actually open onto the caves. Be sure to watch the movies — there’s a virtual fly-through.

Make It Better
Fun little typographic animation perfectly showcasing the geek’s need to fidget with things until they’re “perfect”. Plus it’s cool.

Voxels Make It More Fun
THere’s a new shoot-em-up video game coming to the Mac/PC world, and it looks like a game that escaped from 1984 and then was hit with the 3D wand. But cooler than I just made that sound.

Watch the demo video:

And read more details about it here.

Avoiding data charges in 1906
Text messages are hardly new to communications — just ask anyone who remembers 1906. Back then, it was called the telegram, and this farming equipment company came up with a great way for their customers to avoid additional charges for ordering: codes.

Fly-over of New York City
You’re expecting this to be some footage from 1982 or something, right? I mean, come on! Who can do a fly-over of NYC in this day and age? These guys, that’s who. In an RC airplane at 7am in the morning (when regular air traffic is light). And sure, the TSA and NYC police talked to them — but no arrests or nasty exchanges. Amazing!

Oh, and for the RC enthusiasts out there, a link to the setup they used:

Burning Liquid Sulfur: Blue Flames!
Ever wonder what a sulphur mine inside a volcano might look like? Wonder no more — awesome photos ahead!

Lego Antikythera Mechanism*
That’s right, you read that correctly. Combine the worlds best make-it-yourself toy (Legos!) with an ancient device discovered in clay jars in a shipwreck. What’s the result? Pure concentrated awesome! (thanks to Alex for the heads-up)

Twenty Thousand Terabytes Under the Mountain
Want the ultimate in data security? How about a Swiss nuclear-proof bunker in the Alps? Take a tour of the facility with Wired:

Here There Be RPG’ers
I just love me some maps. This is a beauty sent in by a faithful reader (Hi, Matt!). It shows all the RPG-related forums online, in good-old-fashioned hex-map format, where 1 hex equals 1000 members, and then organized into vaguely related islands. My favorite RPG country? The Sunken Ruins of Usenet (an ancient empire).

Read by the Light of the … Trees?
Scientists have found a way to use gold nano-particles to make tree leaves bioluminescent. Interesting, but what if you turned that into a large-scale civic project to replace street lights with trees that GLOW?

The science.

The mind-bending thought experiment.

Fishing in a Manhattan Basement
It’s a surrealist picture of an actual life event: in a stream bubbling through the basement of a building in Manhattan, this guy caught a fish. It’s a bit like a scene from an unlikely urban fantasy novel.

Map of Online Communities
What if there was a map, like you get at the front of your better fantasy books, that showed the online communities sized to their relative daily bandwidth? That would be one of xkcd’s wonderful virtual maps. I should have one of these things in every monthly article.

It’s All Tommy Westphall’s Fault
This isn’t new, and it isn’t terribly October-y, but BOY is it geeky. If you’re just about to watch St Elsewhere on DVD for the first time or something, look away now, because I’m going to ruin it all for you. Follow along with the crazy, will you? At the end of the TV series St Elsewhere, the last scene has an autistic boy (Tommy Westphall) shaking a snow globe with a miniature version of the hospital in it. The scene right before that had snow falling on the hospital. And the two other characters in the room with Tommy idly wonder what the boy sees in that snow globe. So the obvious interpretation from this is that the WHOLE series has just been inside Tommy’s head, kind of like a giant “and then she woke up” moment.
Weird, but that’s not the Crazy part. See, several characters from St Elsewhere made cross-over and/or cameo appearances on other TV shows (e.g. Homicide). So that means, by some Law of Contagion, that those series are ALSO all in Tommy’s head, or meta-fictional (fiction within fiction). Cross-eyed yet? Wait, there’s more. If you assume that:

A) St Elsewhere was all in Tommy’s head, and
B) any TV series where a St Elsewhere character also appeared is ALSO in Tommy’s head

Then it logically follows that

C) any characters on a B tv show who themselves appear on another tv show is … yes, you guessed it, in Tommy Westphall’s head.

Which makes like 90% of TV shows in the same damned virtual imagined autistic universe.

Don’t believe me? Take a look here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Westphall
or
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~kwgow/crossovers.html

The big picture, for those who need the visual
And download the PDF for the full explanation of all the crazy connections.

It’s like a Unified Conspiracy Theory for TV.

Evolution of the Geek
How could I pass this up? It’s a biological evolution flowchart showing how the “geek” has evolved over time, from head-biting to Elite Geekdom.
(For those of you opposed to evolution, just assume that the first geek sprang forth from the forehead of the chicken-biting guy and leave it at that.)

How Good is Your Geek Movie-Fu?
No, not another mindless multiple choice quiz-of-the-week. Not a quiz at all. Just a seriously great bunch of t-shirts with extraordinarily obscure references to some great movies. Man, wish I was getting a cut from these guys. Note: mouse-over the t-shirt to see where the reference comes from, then smack yourself in the head for not remembering it.

Making Stop Motion Animation With Light
Take an iPad, add some custom software to generate animation frames for you, and then a custom app on the iPad to show the frames as you move around. Result? This:

When Computer Keyboards Were Made Like 1950’s Cars
You know, with steel. There are people who swear by their ancient, clunky keyboards and will get violent if someone tries to take them away. And when your keyboard is, in fact, made of steel (NOT plastic), that’s a problem.
But there are different brands of “my favorite keyboard”.

There’s Ancient Apple

The Intentionally Retro

And the King of Keyboards, the IBM Model M Thunkmaster. So you KNOW when you’re typing:

The SciFi Airshow
So, it’s like an air show, only all the “planes” are scifi space vehicles. (It’s not real, though.)

Gore Factor Five!
I know, Dragon Age: Origins has been out, like, forever. The review I’m linking to is even months old. But it’s so damn funny, who cares?!

Best. Map. Ever.
Or even, all maps ever made of the earth, the stars and the universe in general, smushed together. Found out about this amazing map by seeing it on TED, and if you don’t know about the TED talks, I’m sorry. You’re about to have a lot of your free time sucked away by amazing speakers and mind-blowing technology.

See the talk about it at TEDTalks:

And then see the software that makes up the map:

About John:
John’s a geek from way back. He’s been floating between various computer-related jobs for years, until he settled into doing tech support in higher ed. Now he rules the Macs on campus with an iron hand (really, it’s on his desk).

Geek Credentials:
RPG: Blue box D&D, lead minis, been to GenCon in Milwaukee.
Computer: TRS-80 Color Computer, Amiga 1000, UNIX system w/reel-to-reel backup tape
Card games: bought Magic cards at GenCon in 1993
Science: Met Phil Plait, got time on a mainframe for astronomy project in 1983
His Blog: http://glenandtyler.blogspot.com

Geek Month in Review: July 2011

August 2, 2011 by Administrator, posted in Art, Geek Stuff, Guest Authors, Movies, Science

By JB Sanders

Fireworks Time!

Need a Post-Apocolypse Movie Location?
Then just fly on down to the Big Easy and check out the former Six Flags New Orleans. All this destruction was a result of 1 month of brackish water (averaging 7 feet deep) and then leaving the front gate of the park open for a few years. Seriously, it’s only been six years, not 100 like these pictures make it seem. Yikes.

Bionic Glasses
For real, people. These glasses sample what the person is seeing (or should be able to see) and figures out what’s there by interfacing with a computer in their pocket. Not an “in 5 years” product, a real thing right now.

Print Your Own 3D Chocolate Creations
CAD it, then have it made of chocolate. Mmmmmmmm, chocolate.

The Cartilage Car Fuels Itself
It’s 3D-printing and weirdo concept cars of the future all in one. The car was created using the 3D-printing technique, and the composite artificial material most closely resembles cartilage, which makes the car nearly impervious to impacts. It also creates it’s own biofuel. How? Algae reservoirs (with LED’s for night-time production) in the places in the artificial cartilage body that would otherwise be bone marrow in a creature. Freaked out with the scifi yet?

Psychedelic Light Paintings Using Your Robotic Vacuum Cleaner
How often are we going to be able to use a headline like that? See these long-exposure photos of Roomba-mounted LED lights. It’s MUCH cooler than that sounds.

Star Trek Geeky
I would like to posit that this app is one of the most geeky things in all Geekdom. We’re talking an iPad app that not only looks and acts like it’s out of Star Trek (NG, but still), it also is an an interactive encyclopedia of Star Trek lore.

Food Photos by a Science Geek
See cake sprinkles, chocolate cake, sugar, pineapple, and blueberries (among many other things) through the lens of an electron microscope. Yes, that means everything is very small.

New Evil Dead Movie!
Bruce Campbell has confirmed that there is a new movie in the works.

A Ship So Big…
It needs it’s own zip code? This beast will be 6 times larger than the largest US aircraft carrier. Let that sink in a moment. Six times bigger than those nuclear-powered floating islands. Check out the illustration showing one of those liquid natural gas carriers (with five giant domes on deck) docked next to it.

Looking for that Ideal Island HQ?
For a mere $750,000, this island fortress (circa 1850) could be yours. Comes complete with island. May require some upgrades. Cable-car permit included.

Super Yacht
When super villains build their super-yachts, this is what they wish they looked like. It’s got it’s own escape sub, a missile defense system, an anti-papparrazi laser and a pool that turns into a disco.

Spatially Impossible Hotel, Cheap
So someone was building a level for Duke Nuke’em based on the Overlook Hotel from the movie the Shining. Cool, right? Well, they noticed that there were parts of the hotel, as portrayed in the movie, that were just impossible. They mentioned this to a film professor, and the result is a walk-through of the unworkable.

Wait, Monopoly Can Be Fun?
Ever wonder why a game invented in 1930 is still around, even though everyone agrees it’s boring and takes too long? Here’s why: the house rule in practically everyone’s house has been to ignore one of the fundamental rules of the game, making it … you guessed it, slow and boring. Seriously.

It’s Weather — No, It’s Music — No, It’s Sculpture!
Artist takes weather data, translates it to a musical score and then into sculpture. See it to believe it:

Prime Numbers are Everywhere
Not just a weird movie concept. See why a 13-year life-cycle is a useful tool.

10 Questions with Clinton Boomer

July 17, 2011 by Administrator, posted in Books, Geek Stuff, Interviews

1. Let’s start with, can you tell my readers a little bit about your novel “The Hole Behind Midnight?”

Absolutely, and it would be a pleasure! I often describe the book to friends and/or prospective readers as a darkly-comic, postmodern urban-fantasy crime/mystery noir/pulp tale-of-suspense-and-magic-and-cursing, a rollicking thrill-ride full of nudity, violence, foul language, forgotten gods, a world-ending conspiracy, dick jokes, gunfights, cigarette smoking and one-liners, torture scenes and haunted car chases, an ex-girlfriend and on more than one occasion, a demon clown from Dimension Q with a thing for stabbing people in the throat.

This is my first novel, and I’m more proud of it than anything else I’ve ever worked on. It’s got everything I could ever want in a novel – little shards of 1940s gumshoe detective fiction mixed up with weird, sick magic and wild, strange comedy – and the review I’ve got on the cover says it all:

“Raymond Chandler meets Douglas Adams by way of a fantasy nerd’s fever dream. And it’s AWESOME.” – Daniel O’Brien, Senior Writer for Cracked.com; contributor to the New York Times bestseller You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News

Now, it’s also a weighty 550-page tome, so any summary I could come up with will probably fail to do the bugger justice. But, yeah, in general … that’s a little bit about it.

2. “The Hole Behind Midnight” is a setting where knowledge really does equal power. By being a geek about comic books, mythology, music, religion, politics, etc. your intimate knowledge of all of these things and more manifests itself as real, tangible power. Was this by design as a chance for you to indulge in some of your favorite interests?

Oh, yeah, 111%, that was my goal. I’ve got a thing for etymology and sub-pop-sub-culture, as well as everything else you listed, especially esoteric-religion & conspiracy-history, and there was certainly a part of me that wanted to make that obsession a legitimate source of super-human ability in an urban-fantasy setting; I’ve gotten so burned out by vampires and werewolves and boring old tropes about uninteresting things going dull-bump in the night that I wanted to play with how magic worked, and I think I stumbled ass-backwards into something that people really respond to.

Of course, I can’t forget to mention the huge chunks inspiration I took from Israeli fantasy-author Uri Kurlianchik, or the deep debts of genius I owe to Massachset-based novelist Ashavan Doyon and to New York game-writer Lou Agresta; each of them, and many other members of the WereCabbages Creative Guild, were instrumental to me as friends, collaborators, editors and sounding boards during the creation of this book and the shared universe it inhabits, existing as a first peek into that world. Their interests and weirdnesses influenced the novel a TON.

3. I found the way magic worked in “The Hole Behind Midnight” to be a wonderful blend of sympathetic magic and Chaos magic; a modern interpretation of folk magic. How did you decide on the magic used in your novel? And if you don’t mind, could you share a little bit with my readers about how it works in “The Hole Behind Midnight” universe?

Since I come, first and foremost, from a roleplaying-game background, one of the early things I did was write up a design-document for magic, which ended up in the final version of the novel, slightly truncated, as a series of notes from the protagonist’s mentor in Chapter 14 and later, as an interlude between chapters 19 and 20, with frequent musings on the topic by the main character throughout the rest of the book. All of it is based on conversations between various members of the WereCabbages, and it’s tied to the idea of magicians “claiming territory” of Emptied Empires, and becoming Secret Royalty to lost or fictitious lands.

One of the big elements I wanted to include is that magic, like Photoshop, can do just about anything … but that there’s no guidebook or user’s manual. The main character is sometimes in the dark about how some trick of enchantment actually works, and he’s not much of a magician, himself, which gave me some wiggle-room to play with weird questions and freaky answers.

In short, the rules of the setting are that you gain power by calling yourself nobility of a place that doesn’t exist, and that you can use the power so generated – the Dust of the Empire – to do interesting things, like break various physical laws. Most magicians can use this power all-but-instinctively to enhance their own physical strength or speed, to command the weak-willed, or to perform minor divinations, because rulership so often means having might of arms, domination over the masses, and foresight … but older Kings and Queens have figured out tricks and rituals to teleport, bind monsters, alter memories, create magical items, hide themselves in plain sight, and other, stranger stuff. And, of course, this is all against a backdrop of a secret universe which lurks behind the one we know, and the various players who move back and forth from the Waking World to the Nethertime.

And it’s more complicated than that, obviously, because Secret Royalty also have to deal with the potency of their ancient or fictional empire in mass culture, other claimants to their throne, courtly intrigue from their own friends, and rules about identifying themselves as Kings if anyone asks them. That’s on top, of course, of the Totems of each Empire and creatures from the Deep Sideways and basic stuff like having a job & paying your gas bill.

It’s a joy to play around in, honestly.

4. The protagonist in the book, Royden, is a real asshole. And yet as the book goes on you end up rooting for him. Where did the idea of a gruff, anti-authoritarian, Indian, little person come from?

Royden is the consummate outsider. That much, I knew from before the first word was written. I wanted him to be physically and emotionally remarkable – the diametric opposite of a noir/pulp antihero who can slip unobtrusively from place to place, blending into crowds, keeping his cool … and with a big-ass chip on his shoulder about that. It was a discussion with Lou Agresta, about two days into the initial free-writing, that led to Royden being a little person, and a discussion at about the same time with Uri Kulianchik which led to him very specifically being dark-skinned and ‘ethnic’-looking.

And it works. Which is really awesome.

But all of the profanity-spitting, heavy-smoking, semi-recovering-alcoholic, kleptomaniacal, poor-impulse-control, oppositional-defiant, anti-social-behavior stuff comes out of a very dark spot in the back of my brain which I usually keep tightly locked up … because if I acted like Royden, I wouldn’t have any friends. And, of course, Royden doesn’t. Still, I’m always pleased to hear that people can root for the son-of-a-bitch, because I have a soft spot in my heart for him.

5. Currently “The Hole Behind Midnight” is available as a self published title. How has the experience of publishing your own book been?

It could have been a real and terrible nightmare, honestly … but I’ve been very lucky to have incredibly supportive friends, family and collaborators, plus the amazing people at Lulu.com watching out for me and cheering me on, and that’s made a world of difference. I wouldn’t wish the anxiety and confusion and self-examination of the publishing process on my worst enemy’s dog, but it’s been worth it, 111%, every time I meet someone who liked the book and shared it with a friend.

6. Many of our readers (especially our Geek Month in Review readers) may recognize you from the work you’ve done on some role-playing games such as Pathfinder. How did you end up writing for the RPG industry?

I’ve been a gamer since 1993, with the release of Planescape, and a lot of my favorite moments and memories with the closest of my friends involve RPGs – talking about them, playing in them, or involved in events closely related to them, like the traditional post-LARP dinner or the Mountain Dew-fueled roadtrip to a convention. I’m probably best known online as the co-creator, writer and producer of the D&D PHB PSAs on YouTube, through the auspices of my channel CreativeJuices7, and that represents the first of my “game writing” in a lot of ways.

But the leap to professional writing occurred with the inaugural RPG Superstar! competition from Paizo Publishing in 2008, in which I placed in the Final Four worldwide; after that, I got the opportunity to lend my pen and my gonzo to the Ennie Award-winning Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting … and the rest has mostly been history. I’m incredibly proud of all of my projects, especially my work for 3rd-party publishers like Rite Publishing and Sean K. Reynolds Games and Open Design and Zombie Sky Press and so many others, and I hope that I get to keep doing this for the rest of my career.

7. What are some of your favorite RPGs and how do they influence your writing?

I’m all-but-obsessed with Planescape, as the Lady of Pain tattoo on my back might give away, and I have an eternal and perhaps unhealthy level of love for the Spelljammer: Shadow of the Spider Moon mini-setting created by Andy Collins and published in 2002 by Paizo in Polyhedron, which I’ve used for a number of campaigns. I still dick around with ideas for that universe in the back of my head almost a decade later – to my mind, that’s the mark of great, inventive writing.

Besides high-fantasy, high-octane, slightly-gonzo d20-based sword-&-sorcery, I also have a lot of love for modern or semi-modern settings: Call of Cthulhu, Unknown Armies, Shadowrun and various White Wolf stuff across the board – my favorites were always the Corax, the Technocracy, the Kuei-Jin and Fomori, for whatever reason. Maybe because they’re more alien, or have a bit more to unpack behind the stories.

All of this bleeds into the rest of my writing, of course – I love dialogue interplay, and trying to ground the really and absurdly fantastic into actual emotion. The real trick is to take an absurd concept like immortal, steam-powered Aztec warriors aboard a rune-scribed ice-ship heading for battle against space demons and give the characters something interesting to say.

8. You’re also a bartender, so I’m obligated to ask, what is your favorite rum drink?

Oh, rum is a beautiful liquor! I pride myself on a lot of my concoctions, from picture-perfect Long Islands to a Bloody Mary that will bring a tear to your eye, and especially on a small arsenal of clever, candy-sweet shots that will leave you wondering if there was any hooch in there at all right up until the moment your ass hits the floor … but rum is one of those alcohols that barely needs encouragement or a massage from the likes of me. Once you’ve learned how to mix a sharp Captain & Coke, your training in the arts of rum is about half over.

Of course, there’s one drink I can make with Malibu, crème de cacao, Bailey’s Irish Crème and two secret ingredients that will knock your socks off, but it’s something of a trade secret.

9. What’s next? Are you working on anything my readers should be on the lookout for?

I’ve got a whole bunch of stuff I’m working on right now, plus the ongoing book-tour, and I’m super-excited to be submitting more work to everyone I’ve worked ever worked with in addition to my just-announced gig with Clark Peterson’s all-new Legendary Games.

Right now I’m working on several novels, novellas or book-ideas, including the direct sequel to the book – ‘The Thirteenth Impossibility’ – and a project called ‘Big American Hell’ for the Hellcrashers setting. There’s also an apocalypse/cyberpunk book called ‘Flickering Degenerate Fluorescent Dystopia’ that’s struggling to get out of my head and on to paper, a very odd piece called ‘Cityskin Pariah’ that’s rattling around back there as well, and of course I can’t forget my old loves: ‘Soapscum Unlimited’ and ‘Brand-New Knockdown’ and ‘Road to Varno’.

If I live to be a million, I’ll never get half of my ideas on paper.

10. Parting shot! Ask us here at The Buffet any one question.

Ooooh! Fun! Alright, but this isn’t a poll-question or a right-or-wrong thing. I’m just generally curious, and I find that I spend a lot of time thinking about it, myself:

Which would you prefer as an afterlife: to discover that your own existence was like a super-packed DVD, or that existence itself is like a video game?

Both of them have their upsides, in my opinion.

In the DVD version, you would get to sit down at the end and talk to the cast and crew – or, at the very least, listen to the commentaries and skip around chapter by chapter and check out what you missed on the first viewing. You could pause and rewind, afterward, and clip through to the featurettes and check out behind-the-scenes footage and audition-pieces and a music-video, and maybe see deleted scenes and alternate takes and endings. That would be really cool … and then, maybe, you could browse through all of the other lives that have ever been, watching sequels and remakes and original, experimental projects and watching stuff you’ve heard of but have never seen, before finally choosing to take on another role.

In the video game version, there’s less finality – you could go back to any save point and pick it up again, or restart as a different character on a harder setting, or try to unlock extra levels and achievements on various modes. It’s never, ever really complete because you can always make new challenges for yourself or go back and try it a different way this time.

I think about this sort of thing a lot, I guess.

I just wonder which one would be more satisfying.

Honestly, I’d go with none of the above. When this is over, I want it to be over. No reflections, no time to ponder “what might have beens”, no do overs. I’m quite looking forward to nonexistence.

About Clinton Boomer:
Clinton J. Boomer, known to his friends as ‘Booms,’ resides in the quaint, leafy, idyllic paradise of Macomb, Illinois, where he attended 4th grade through college. He began writing before the time of his own recollection, predominantly dictating stories to his ever-patient mother about fire-monsters and ice-monsters throwing children into garbage cans. He began gaming with the 1993 release of Planescape, which shaped his Jr. High years, and he was first published professionally in the Ennie Award-winning “Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting” from Paizo Publishing after placing in the Final Four of Paizo’s inaugural RPG Superstar! Competition. He currently devotes a full 99.9% of his waking hours to thinking about fantasy-adventure in general or ninjas, more specifically. Boomer is a writer, filmmaker, gamer and bartender; his short comedic films, the “D&D PHB PSAs,” have over 3900 subscribers on YouTube and and have been viewed more than a million times. A member of the WereCabbages creative guild, a frequent freelance contributor to Rite Publishing, Sean K. Reynolds Games, Paizo Publishing, Reality Deviants Press, Zombie Sky Press, Legendary Games and the Hellcrashers setting, his debut novel “The Hole Behind Midnight” was released in 2011; Daniel O’Brien, columnist for Cracked.com and contributor to the New York Times bestseller You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News called it “ … Raymond Chandler meets Douglas Adams by way of a fantasy nerd’s fever dream. And it’s AWESOME.” Boomer is currently the happiest he has ever been in his whole life. He can be found online at www.clintonjboomer.com

Geek Month in Review: June 2011

July 7, 2011 by Administrator, posted in Geek Stuff, Guest Authors, Science

By JB Sanders

The hot has begun…

Because This Will End Well
Archaeologists in Mexico have found a previously unknown tunnel under the Temple of the Snake in Teotihuacan. They estimate that it’s been sealed for over 1,800 years and there are chambers at the end of the passage. Those SciFi movie plots don’t just write themselves…

Muppets, Fraggle Rock and Serenity
Nerd and geek combined into one: cross-overs that never existed.

Behind the Scenes Photos
From little movies like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Other shots:
How they did the Empire Strikes Back text crawl (you’ll be surprised).
A shot of Alfred Hitchcock, Tippi Hedren and some birds.
A shot inside the giant alien spacecraft in Alien.
A picture of Max Schreck lounging creepily. (Bonus geek points if you know the Other Movie this ties into, all too eerily.)
Really, why are you still reading this blurb? Click on the link already!

Scary Great Toy Mashup or Sign of the Toy Apocalypse?
So, combine collectible action figures, with collectible card games, Pokeman, Gauntlet (yes, the venerable arcade game) and console-based video games. Oh, and throw in some old-fashioned leveling-up madness. What do you have? Skylanders. It’s a video game for consoles (all of them, I guess). It’s fairly standard Gauntlet-like collect things and smash monsters. However, the character you play is based on what actual toy action figure you plug into their USB-connected platform. Before your head explodes, you have to use one of the action figures (32 at release) they’re producing for the game. The plus side is that any items you collect or leveling-up you do with that specific action figure are stored — inside the action figure. You can take the guy with you to a friends house and have all those abilities and loot you got before. The game comes with 3 figures, and they’re going to be releasing “booster packs” with random figures inside.

Awesome People Hanging Out Together
It’s the name of the link and the subject matter all in one. Photos of unusual pairings, all looking like they’re candid shots. Lots of pop culture icons in there, plus some geek favorites: Niels Bohr & Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates (many, many years ago, looking all hippy and geeky), Neil Patrick Harris & Stephen Colbert, Chuck Norris & Bruce Lee (that’s a money shot). And something just for a conspiracy-theorist’s dream: Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Warren G. Harding, and Harvey Firestone (I mean, seriously); or Salvador Dali & Walt Disney.

Laser from a Living Cell
Are atomic mutants not far behind?

Well, The Assyrian Dictionary is Done
And it only took 90 years!

Now, This is Graffiti I Can Get Behind
Just an inspired piece of art. Imagine drawing a mustache on a famous portrait, and then take it up about ten notches.

From the ‘Dogs Can Smell Better Than You’ Files
Scientists have discovered that dogs are better at telling twins apart than, wait for it, DNA tests. Turns out there IS a genetic difference between twins, but it’s so small that modern DNA tests have trouble distinguishing between identical twins. Not so with dogs.

How to Build an Awesome Enclosure for Your Telescope
How? You make it into a TARDIS replica. Seriously.

Mars in a Bottle
Scientists create an artificial Mars-like environment and then toss in some Earth microbes to see how they fare. It does sound a little like a SciFi Channel Saturday movie, why do you ask?

Why Are Homo Sapiens the Only Hominids Still Hanging Around?
Maybe because homo erectus used the same axe design for a million years. Yeah, seriously.

The Lego(tm) Barad-dùr
It’s the heart of Mordor in Lego(tm) form. Evil Eye included. Check out the link at the bottom of the article to the Flickr pictures.

Print Anything: Input Just Sand and Sun
Ok, not anything, but lots of things. It’s a 3D printer powered by the sun that just uses sand as a material input.

Slow is Creepy, and Trippy
Ever wondered what that sound a modem makes when it does the initial hand-shaking connection-making with the host computer would sound like if you slowed it down 700%? Well, wonder no more!

Note: if you’re not old enough to know what a dial-up modem is, sounded like or was for, look it up on wikipedia already.

The Pop Up Post

July 1, 2011 by Administrator, posted in Geek Stuff, Music, Television

Rejoice pop culture junkies! At the end of May VH1 announced the return of “Pop Up Video”!

“Pop Up Video” would generously sprinkle music videos with facts and trivia about the artist and video heavily laced with sarcasm. For those of you unfamiliar with the awesomeness that is “Pop Up Video”, let me demonstrate the fun with this true classic of the original “Pop Up Video” series, Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna’ Give You Up”.

(It’s well documented that Magical Buffet founder Rebecca Elson is a big fan of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna’ Give You Up”.)

ET.com’s PopWatch writer Jeff Labrecque reports, “After a 10-year hiatus, ‘Pop Up Video’ is coming back to VH1, with 60 new episodes ordered for this fall. This time, not only will the show tackle classic hip-hop and rap music videos for the first time, but the ‘Pop Up’ treatment will feature user-generated pop up content and updated polls in its bubbles.”

(Rebecca copied and pasted this quote while listening to the “Family Guy” television show. She often works this way.)

With 10 years of catching up to do, I can’t wait to see where they start! I mean, one can only assume there will be an all Lady Gaga show, right? One day soon we may get to see “Poker Face” get the kind of treatment that REM’s “Losing My Religion” received.

(Rebecca originally planned on using the “Pop Up Video” version of No Doubt’s “Ex-Girlfriend” but in the end opted for the more iconic “Losing my Religion” video.)

Do you remember “Pop Up Video” too? What videos do you hope to see them tackle?

(Most bloggers end posts with questions like these as a blatant attempt to get readers to leave comments on their website.)

(It rarely works.)

Geek Month in Review: May 2011

June 9, 2011 by Administrator, posted in Geek Stuff, Guest Authors, Science

By JB Sanders

And the weather is warming!

Fantastic Time-Lapse Movie
If you’ve never seen a cloud layer boiling and roiling like the ocean against a beach, you haven’t seen a real time-lapse movie. Must watch this in HD (full-screen).

The Amazing Transforming Apartment
Anyone else reminded of Bruce Willis’ guy from “Fifth Element”? Watch what this guy packs into 24 square meters:

It’s a Plane! No, it’s a Train! Actually, It’s Both.
A Japanese research group is working on a type of “train” that floats above the ground on a cushion of air. No, not a maglev train; apparently those are old hat. They’re working on a train that acts like a plane cruising right above the ground.

National Jukebox
The US Library of Congress (working with Sony) has put together a database of sound recordings from the early part of the 20th Century. It’s streaming-only, but has a wealth of stuff, all searchable. It’s not just music, but speeches, too.

Let Quantum Physics Officiate Your Wedding
No, really, that’s what the title of the article is. Apparently a scientist is using some machine to quantum entangle photons as they pass over the happy couple. Or something.

The New Domesday Book
In the 80’s the BBC and some historians cooked up a national effort to create something like the original Domesday Book, on it’s 900 anniversary. The original was a census of England at the time. The new thing was created with a population survey, tons of photos, virtual walk-throughs of historical buildings, etc. And then pressed onto special laser discs. That’s right, laser disks. Which required a special reader to read and a specific computer to display. Fast forward 30 years or so, and todays historians are worried the disks won’t be able to be read anymore (can’t think why).

The Project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Domesday_Project

Here’s what they did to solve it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/domesday

CDC Tells How to Prepare for Zombie Apocalypse
Do they know something we don’t? You ever read that story about a conspiracy that uses movies and tv shows (“fictional” ones) to prepare the wider population to accept and deal with an upcoming Big Problem? No? Oh, never mind then.

Surreal Monuments from the Future
So I totally stole this from the Illuminated Site of the Week, but here’s 25 monuments in the former Yugoslavia that look like they’re from the future.

Orchidarium Professor Ruth Cardoso
It’s a nifty looking building, but the name itself is just so much fun to say. It’s a memorial to Professor Ruth Cardoso (which is why her name is tacked in there), but the purpose of the building itself is to grow Orchids. Thus the “Orchidarium” part.

What If We’re the Forerunners?
An amusing little blog entry that posits, ok, there something like 500 million Earth-like planets out there, just in our galaxy. So why isn’t there a spaceship in orbit right now, offering to sell us cheap hyperdrives? Well, what if we’re the first sentient race? And then he has a very funny idea….

Real, Functional Bionic Hand
Welcome to the 21st Century, where we have real bionic limb replacements. No, I’m not kidding. Yes, it is real.

When Your Museum Gets Raided by the CDC in Biohazard Gear…
…You know you’re doing something interesting. So this historical society in Virginia put on an “oddities” exhibit from their collection, including a letter from a smallpox sufferer who included one of their smallpox scabs. Call me crazy, but I think there are some things you don’t need to collect for posterity, and potentially viable smallpox is definitely high on the list.

Weather in Mordor Today: Overcast, 100% chance of Eye*
Official in Hungary are using locations from the “Lord of the Rings” instead of real places to test broadcast their automated radio alerts.

* Headline courtesy of Fark.com

Need a Drone?
Need an unmanned aerial drone cheap? Need to make 3D maps of the photos your drone takes? Look no further than Pix4D, a cloud-based company that helps stitch together your aerial’s photos and create nice 3D maps out of them. They also created a spin-off company that can sell you the drones.

Graphene: the New Plastic
The latest miracle material — wait, don’t stop reading. It really is. The discoverers/inventors have a Nobel prize to back up their assertions. Not to mention the over 200 scientists doing active research into it.

Icelandic Volcano Eruption, in HD
Because there’s nothing those Icelandic folks like better than a good volcanic plume. Video in wonderful HD.

Pigs Flying
Duke Nukem has gone gold. I know, hell has frozen over. (See the illustration in the linked article, it’s funny.)

Robots Developing Their Own Language
No, not a headline from 2044. It’s a lab in Queensland (Australia) where the researchers are setting up their robots to develop their own communications system.

Ring Around the Moon
Japanese research firm is proposing building a ring of solar cells around the Moon’s equator, and then beaming the 13,000 terawatts of energy back to Earth. Yeah, seriously.

Angel Ambush

May 26, 2011 by Administrator, posted in Geek Stuff, Science, Television

At London’s Victoria Station a voluptuous angel fell from the sky and interacted with unsuspecting humans. Needless to say, it created quite a reaction. However, the angel in question didn’t actually fall from the sky; she leapt out of someone’s laptop.

In Europe they’re known as Lynx, but to us Americans the brand name of Axe might be more familiar. It wasn’t too long ago that they launched a new television ad that was, in fact, really quite clever. Some average Joe sprays some Axe body spray and the next thing you know smokin’ hot angels are falling from the sky and smashing their halos for a chance to be with him. Like I said, it’s pretty amusing. Take a look for yourself.

This is where a thing called “augmented reality” comes in. According to the anonymous folks at Wikipedia, “augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or an indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input, such as sound or graphics. It is related to a more general concept called mediated reality, in which a view of reality is modified (possibly even diminished rather than augmented) by a computer. As a result, the technology functions by enhancing one’s current perception of reality. By contrast, virtual reality replaces the real world with a simulated one.

The television series ‘Firefly’ depicts numerous AR applications, including a real-time medical scanner which allows a doctor to use his hands to manipulate a detailed and labeled projection of a patient’s brain. In ‘Minority Report’, Tom Cruise stands in front of a supercomputer using AR technology, and in the movie ‘Mission Impossible 2’, Tom Cruise uses Augmented Reality technology via a set of sunglasses he wears to debrief himself of his forthcoming mission, Chimera, after he completes climbing a mountain at the very outset of the movie.”

More than ever companies are exploring augmented reality for, you guessed it, marketing. And that is what led to “Angel Ambush”, which featured an angel falling from the sky to interact with people at Victoria Station.

According to an article by Sharif Sakr on the BBC News website “some experts have commented that ‘Angel Ambush’ was not ‘real’ augmented reality at all because the virtual angel was just a layer of video manipulated by a human operator, rather than an independent 3D object.” The article goes on to state that Myles Peyton, UK Sales Director of Total Immersion, says “The true commercial power of augmented reality lies in its ability to let consumers virtually hold and interact with products that are fully and accurately modeled in the virtual world.”

So perhaps “Angel Ambush” wasn’t “true” augmented reality, but it sure looks like a lot of fun. I do find myself wondering if it will be so fun once it’s everywhere jumping out at me; trying to get me to buy all kinds of crap I don’t need. Until then, bring on the angels!

Interested in learning more about augmented reality? The website How Stuff Works has got everything you’d want to know!

Geek Month in Review: April 2011

May 19, 2011 by Administrator, posted in Geek Stuff, Guest Authors, Science

By JB Sanders

Early start for a warm month (well, it’s warm NOW).

Robo-fun
RoboGames 2011, the worlds largest robot competition. Do I need to say more?

First Legal Challenge to 3D Printing Repository
How long did you think we could go without a 3D link? The folks at Thingiverse, an open-source repository of 3D models and content, got a DMCA take-down notice because someone posted the CAD files for printing a Penrose Triangle. Read the details. (Tons of cool links embedded in the article on the subject of 3D printing)

And while I’m on the subject, some really amazing objects printed by a 3D printer.

Visualizing Fusion Propulsion
Using the designs from the Project Deadalus space propulsion project of the 1970’s, these folks put together an animation of how the system would and could work.

Commodore 64 Coming Out
Seriously. Again. Only this time, the guts are a LITTLE more powerful. Debuting 30 years after it first hit the market, this system (with the SAME exterior) includes a 1.8 Ghz dual-core processor, optional Blu-ray player and HDMI ports (for between $250-900). Crazy times, huh?

100 Classic Atari Games
It’s nostalgia month! Atari is releasing 18 titles from the arcade, and 82 from the 2600 on the iOS (iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch) platform, including the free Pong. They’re also releasing something called the iCade, which is a fancy case for the iPad that turns it into an arcade-like device with a real analog (but now Bluetooth) joystick and giant mashable buttons. Yes, exactly like the ThinkGeek April Fool’s Day of 2010 — apparently Atari liked the idea so much, they’re having someone make it for them. $100.

Tallest LEGO Tower
Bigger than any LEGO tower you built.

UFOs, For Real
Where’s Mulder when stuff like this comes out? The FBI has released a document under the Freedom of Information Act that describes an interview with an Air Force investigator in Roswell New Mexico, where he talks about captured flying saucers and aliens in shiny metallic suits. Yes, really. Go read it for yourself. While you’re there, take a look at the FBI’s FOIA archives.

Garden of the Future!
There should be an echo on that title. It’s called Aquaponics, and it’s a hybrid of various “green” technologies to make food on 1/10th of an acre (2600lbs worth). It’s like the utopian convergence of every hippy technology into one location: wind power, passive solar heating, grey water systems, hydroponics and fish. Lots of fish.

A direct link to the project.

Origins of Language
Interesting application of biological methods (like DNA tracking) to linguistics.

Robots for “Sale”
Ok, so it’s an ad for a video game, but it’s got robots and a sarcastic ad-like voice-over. You be the judge.

Sarah Jane Has Died
First Alfred last month, now Elisabeth Sladen, the actress who portrayed the character Sarah Jane Smith on Dr Who for over 40 years has passed away. There aren’t many actors who get to portray a character over that length of time, nor with such iconic strength that they stand the test of time so well. The BBC blog entry below quotes Steve Moffat (current Lead Writer and Executive Producer of current Dr Who) as saying that his son, when shown the old Doctor Who, immediately recognized the character of Sarah Jane and was surprised she hadn’t changed at all.

3D Scanner — Using Just Your iPhone
Some crazy guys at Georgia Tech have created an app for the iPhone that lets you make low-end 3D scans of objects (or your face!) just using the phone’s built-in front-facing camera. Also works on iPad 2 and iPod touch.

The First Theme Park
You know, it’s either this, or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and there’s some dispute as to whether those Hanging Gardens even existed. Anyway, this is History Geeky. Vauxhall Gardens were outdoor public gardens, which charged an entrance fee, and were described thusly:

“The main walks were lit at night by hundreds of lamps. Over time more features and eyecatchers were added: additional supper boxes, a music room, a Chinese pavilion, a gothic orchestra that accommodated fifty musicians, and ruins, arches, statues and a cascade.”

If that’s not a theme park, I don’t know what is.

Brooklyn in LEGOs
So this NYC guy builds a replica of Brooklyn, entirely made out of LEGOs. And there are pictures. Do you really need more than that?

Also, British warship made out of LEGO.

24th Annual Rube Goldberg Contest
First off, how did I not know about this? I feel cheated! Second, check out the video of the winning machine. Wow.

3D Photos of Earth, Moon and Mars
Plus some other random things. Requires those red/blue glasses.

All of Doctor Who in 6 Minutes
A light, and lightning-fast, overview of all of Doctor Who’s 47 years on television in 6 minutes. Fun!

What is IQ?
What does an IQ test really measure? Intelligence, or intelligence plus motivation. Spoiler: the study found that the more money offered to the test takers, the higher their resultant IQ score.

The Last Typewriter Factory Closes
To which pretty much everyone I know would respond: they still make those things?

Roads of Light
Solar-cells as paving stones, that is.

Zombie-proof House
At least, in theory. Testing still to be done. A little bit bunker-like from the road (as you’d expect) but pretty open-air from the other side. It folds up to be pretty much completely sealed, including the drawbridge to the second-floor entrance to the house.

Pictures.

More, with floor plans.

Pan-and-Scan Views of the Sky: 360
Full views of the night sky you can pan around to get a better look at. Feel free to ZOOM way the heck in, too.

Awesome Moon Video
And speaking of cool astronomy pictures, try this video of the moon, shot from Fenway park, with a fun guest interposed between the moon and the videographer.

Geek Month in Review: March 2011

April 6, 2011 by Administrator, posted in Books, Geek Stuff, Guest Authors, Movies, Science

By JB Sanders

Geek Month in Review: February 2011

March 8, 2011March 8, 2011 by Administrator, posted in Art, Geek Stuff, Science, Television

By JB Sanders

In between the snow, some links.

Mars500 Crew Reaches Mars
Ok, yeah, simulated Mars, but still.

Into Eternity
Review of a documentary film about Finland’s building of a nuclear waste repository — one designed to contain the waste and prevent entry for 100,000 years. Which is about how long that nuclear waste crap needs before it’s safe. Building a house that’ll last 300 years seems pretty tame by comparison, doesn’t it?

Snowpocalypse From Space!
Specifically the January 31st to February 2nd (2011) snow storm. Video of what the weather looked like from orbit, which is about the only place in North America you didn’t have to shovel snow.

Teenager Builds Solar Death Ray
And oddly, doesn’t burn down school. See the sun’s concentrated rays burn through concrete! Steel! Other stuff!

Play That City!*
What would happen if you crossed SimCity and a sound synthesizer? This Flash game.

Foxy Graveyard
No, this isn’t some weird erotic thing. It’s about the oldest known graveyard (16,500 years old) which shows evidence that before dogs became domesticated, foxes were all the rage.

Behold the Power of Steam!
Look, it’s a steam-powered vehicle! Now I know you’re expecting a link with pretty Victorian illustrations and gentlemen in top-hats, but you’re wrong. This is New Steam. These guys are trying to break the steam-driven land speed record (currently 148MPH!), and the getup they’ve developed may also be something you see in a production car sometime in the future. No, really!

Older Than Stonehenge and Still Accurate
It’s called Wurdi Youang, and it’s possibly the oldest human-made astronomical structure (known). The aboriginal-built stone “circle” (it’s sort of ovoid) hasn’t been fully officially dated yet, but it looks to be around 10,000 years old.

Zoetrope!
Because it’s fun to say. Also, Pixar has built a real life zoetrope to show how animation works. It’s … wild. You’ll think it’s stop-motion animation, but nope, just a clever use of a strobe light and some awesome sculptures.

Get Your Decoder Ring
Now without waiting, box tops, the post office, or cheesy TV shows from the 60’s. It’s a website. You pick a Master Key (numbered 1 thru 10) and give them your message (up to 133 characters) and it gives you the coded output. It’s a decoder ring on the web.

Link to a Specific Part of a YouTube Video
So, you just want to show someone that scene in that movie with that guy when he does that thing? Only it’s like 18 minutes into the video? Well, worry no more! For now we have a way to add some text on the end of the URL and it goes right to that bit.

My Trilogy Kicks Your Trilogy’s Ass
And if you can’t tell what trilogy by looking at the URL, don’t bother clicking on it: http://1.21jiggawatts.com/

I, For One, Welcome Our New Robotic Overlords
Scientists in Britain are developing a system to allow robots to share learned information with all other robots. Let the robot apocalypse begin! (You know, as soon as they actually have robots that can use the system they haven’t finished developing yet.)

WWII’s Top Secret Rosies
The War Department employed women to calculate ballistic trajectories, both by hand and as the first programmers of the ENIAC. Instead of Rosie the Riveter, it was Rosie the Programmer. Not sure what the poster would look like.

Pothole Detector
You’re picturing some kind of specialty camera mounted under a special city vehicle, right? No. When they say “there’s an app for that”, they just aren’t whistling dixie anymore. The city of Boston has developed an app (iPhone, Android) that uses the accelerometer in your smartphone to detect when you go over a pothole. Pretty nifty.

Blood Wars!
And already, you’re thinking the wrong thing. In this case, Blood Wars refers to an art piece that takes “audience participation” to a whole new level. Kathy High (the artist) has the white blood cells from two people put into a petri dish, dyed for better visibility and then filmed in time-lapse. She then plays the video as an art piece. Who’s blood is tougher?

It’s Old, But Still Indecipherable
Remember the Voynich manuscript? That seemingly-old document written in a language no one can understand, and filled with unintelligable diagrams? Yeah, well, they know how old it is now, anyway: about the 15th century. Or 100 years older than everyone thought it was.

When Britain Became an Island
Thought it always was? Nope. And it wasn’t some tectonic event millions of years ago, either. The current theory is that a massive Norwegian landslide caused a tsunami that broke the land-bridge from Europe to Britain, drowning vast plains in what is now the North Sea. Kind of makes you wonder what lost cities lie beneath the waves, huh?

Buy a Tube Station!
There’s an abandoned tube station for sale in London. How awesome would that be? “Why yes, we do have our own tube stop.”

Interview with Mike Mignola
Yes, you know who that is. He created a few little comics, you know, like Hellboy (I hear it was also turned into a movie). The interview is particularly odd/interesting because it’s conducted by an architecture geek.

Immortal Hobbits!
Ok, first, that’s a horrible title. And second, they’re not immortal, just “completely free of normal age-related diseases”. But they are short. Plenty of technical bio-medical stuff in the article, too, just for you biology geeks.

Anti-Laser
Physicists have built a light-absorbing laser. Make your brain hurt? Try reading the article.

Lost Stories of the Odyssey
Premise of this book is tales that got left out of Odyssey when Homer wrote it down. It’s widely believed to be the case that Homer didn’t create the stories he wrote out of whole cloth — they had been circulating in some form or another orally in the Ancient World for centuries before his time. In this case, he’s more like the Brothers Grimm than an originator, although much like the Grimms, he’s taken his place among the pantheon of literary foundation works of Western Civilization. Anyway, here’s an interview with the book author. As with all BLDBLOG articles, there is a heavy focus on architecture, but plenty of other weirdness to delight the mind.

Flight of the Bumblebees on Bottles
Because if you have enough time and a talent for music, this is what results.

Time-lapsed Starry Skies Rule
Tip of the hat to the Bad Astronomer for this exceptional time-lapse movie of the starry Chilean sky. Be sure to set the resolution to 720p, put it full screen and have some appropriately chill-inducing music on (no sound for the movie clip).

Underground Master Plan
And no, I don’t mean mole people invaders. The folks of Helsinki, Finland are planning on expanding their city below-ground, forming a master plan that encompasses subterranean sea-water-cooled data centers, municipal swimming pools, coal storage, 60km of tunnels, the city-wide heating system, factories and whatever else “doesn’t need to be seen”. All that stuff I just mentioned? That’s the stuff that’s already there right now. With a video tour.

Cubelets!
Not another quantum computing post. Really! It’s about snap-together robotics, where each cube imparts a certain behavior or ability. Link them together to form auto-driving robots, or ones that sense distance and graph it for you. Very cool. Be sure to watch the video.

The Brigadier Has Passed Away**
The actor who played Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (in Dr Who) passed away in February. He was 81. The man played his iconic character in 107 episodes of the series. 107!

How Far Away is the Moon?
Ever wonder how far away the moon is from the Earth? No? I see you astronomers in the audience going “250,000 miles or so, on average”. Yeah, whatever. Here’s a great YouTube video showing in relative scale the distances involved. It’s good.

* I steal a lot of links from Alex, and this is the credit he gets.
** I got this from Rebecca.

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Category: Geek Stuff

Geek Year in Review: Year One

Geek Month in Review: July 2011

10 Questions with Clinton Boomer

Geek Month in Review: June 2011

The Pop Up Post

Geek Month in Review: May 2011

Angel Ambush

Geek Month in Review: April 2011

Geek Month in Review: March 2011

Geek Month in Review: February 2011