Comic book artist Tyler Kirkham spent $50,000 to convert his basement into the ultimate “Elder Scrolls” man cave. Check it out!
Despite wife Jill’s dreams of a swimming pool in the garden, Tyler Kirkham, 32, couldn’t be swayed from his vision based on The Elder Scrolls series of fantasy games, which features a $15,000 bathroom with its own waterfall and a secret door resembling a bookcase, activated by pulling one of the books. Alongside suits of armour, a crossbow and an alchemy lab full of medieval potions, the space features a $15,000 bathroom with its own waterfall and ivy-covered rock-face. He also fitted a $250 Italian crossbow, $8,000-worth of stone and masonry, stained flooring costing $3,000, suits of armour, an alchemy lab full of medieval potions, a medieval helmet worth $100 and a $20,000 home cinema for playing the games on a large screen.
By Chris (originally posted to Flickr as A400M) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
A highly automated military plane that crashed in Spain appears to have been hit by a software fault.
The Airbus A400M, which was being tested before going into active service, crashed shortly after take off last month killing four out of the six crew members. The crash happened when three of the four turboprop engines froze at the same time.
The automation feature in question is not so much about controlling the plane, but rather about taking the pilot’s controls and turning that into action in the most effective and accurate manner. Investigators believe the problem lay with the way the plane interprets the current engine torque levels to spin the propellers precisely in line with the pilot commands.
Reuters reports that investigators believe the relevant data files, wich detail the relationship between torque and propeller spin for the particular engines, were missing. They believe they may somehow have been deleted during software installation. Without the relevant data, the system simply stopped spinning the propellers.
It seems this in turn triggered two further weaknesses, which combined to cause the deadly results. The first was that although the plane system is designed to adjust if an engine fails, this safeguard wasn’t set up to deal with the possibility of three engines “failing” simultaneously for the same reason.
The second flaw was that an alert system designed to warn the pilot that the automated propeller control had failed was not set up to give the alert until the plane was at least 400 feet in the air. In this case it appears likely that the failure was already an issue at takeoff.
An Airbus spokesperson refused to address specific points raised by Reuters but instead said ” Safety is our first priority and we will do all that is necessary to get the full picture of what could have led to this tragic accident and take the necessary action.”
Everyone got really excited when they heard Batman animator legend Bruce Timm was going to be helping to create a new Justice League series, but seeing how golden age and ‘safe’ his run on Batman: The Animated Series was, no one expected something as dark as Justice League: Gods and Monsters. But darkness is just what we have gotten so far (not a complaint from this guy, I like my comic book heroes and stories twisted). Here’s the first episode:
I guess it’s right there in the title, “Twisted”, but this opening episode of Gods and Monsters Chronicles, Machinima and DC’s three-part prequel series to the Gods and Monsters animated movie, really does deliver a messed up alternate take on the DC universe. Focusing on the new (and vampiric) Batman, the short episode sees the Dark Knight investigate Harley Quinn’s hideout, complete with gruesome body bits and corpse displays. And yet, things evidently get worse!
I, for one, dig it. Marvel does the light stuff, DC does the gritty stuff. I am behind this 100%. Your thoughts on the matter?
Reddit appears to have answered the question of how long a meme will take to die out: two months and four days.
That’s how long what started as an April Fool’s Day post ran for and how long it took the online community to tire of pressing a virtual button.
Back in April a new subreddit appeared complete with a virtual button and a 60 second countdown. It was set up such that any user could press the button and reset the countdown to 60 seconds. However, you had to have a reddit account to press the button, each account holder could only press the button once, and it only worked for accounts registered before the experiment/prank started.
To make things more lively, users who pressed the button would then have a dot appear next to their user name, with the color depending on how close the countdown had come on the last press, with red showing the nearest of misses.
As usual with reddit, it prompted all sorts of online cooperation and competition, with some groups committed to keeping the button live, others working to try to ensure the time would run out and reveal what would then happen, and yet others playing daredevil and trying to work it so the button got pressed at the last possible moment. It appears the system was set up so that when “0” appeared on the countdown, there’d actually be one remaining second for somebody to press the button before whatever happened happened.
In the end just over a million accounts pressed the button. According to The Guardian, the end came amid a campaign that involved users ‘donating’ their account to automatically press the button at a scheduled interval, with 1,440 accounts needed every day to be certain of prolonging the “fun” and avoiding relying on spontaneous presses.
Unfortunately the people coordinating the donated accounts didn’t adequately vet their creation date and eventually one of them turned out to have been created after April 1st and the relevant button press was rejected. It’s possible that may have happened before, but on this occasion no other user was around to press the button manually.
Those expecting fireworks were out of luck. The completed countdown simply led to a message reading “The experiment is over.”
If you saw the wonderful, brilliant, hilarious movie we posted last week, Kung Fury, then you certainly remember the character of Hackerman. His computer skills were all but unrivaled, and without him on the team, they would not have been able to achieve the time traveling which was an essential element to their journey. But how did Hackerman do it?
Well, guess what? You are about to find out!
This tutorial video will give you further insight into the great man’s mind, as well as some more laughs at the sake of Kung Fury. You’re welcome, now go out there and change the world!
Okay, Dawn of Justice looks pretty badass, no denying. But many were wondering, why are two DC mega heroes fighting when the next movie clearly shows us they are on the same team (I.E. Birth of Justice = Justice League). Seems the official plot synopsis clears this issue up a bit for anyone wondering:
Fearing the actions of a god-like super hero left unchecked, Gotham City’s own formidable, forceful vigilante takes on Metropolis’s most revered, modern-day savior, while the world wrestles with what sort of hero it really needs. And with Batman and Superman at war with one another, a new threat quickly arises, putting mankind in greater danger than it’s ever known before.
Honestly, I don’t need any more reasons than “it is going to look awesome on film”, and I am pretty sure that is what all the execs behind-the-scenes were thinking.
![By Chris (originally posted to Flickr as A400M) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://i0.wp.com/www.geeksaresexy.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/a400m.jpg?resize=600%2C368)
