Anime North 2011 could have been just a regular con experience, but this guy decided to take it all the way into Epicville. Rather than take a bunch of pictures with hot anime cosplayers (not that there’s anything wrong with that), he talked a bunch of people into acting out fight scenes with him.
The video is awesome enough to warrant a “step it up” to Hollywood from Rob Bricken from Topless Robot, who said:
If one guy can make these kind of action scenes with random, obviously non-professional martial artists, on? his computer, I kind of think there’s no excuse for any movie or TV show to have a shitty action scene ever. Ever. Entertainment industry, shape the fuck up.
Word. Check out more from GakAttack (including a blooper reel) on YouTube.
If you’re not familiar with piezoelectrics, it’s a good time to get current. (Here all week, folks.) Researchers at RMIT University and Australian National University have finally quantified the voltage output of piezoelectric nanofilms — thin film materials capable of converting pressure into electrical energy.
The voltage output of up to 40 mV and current transients up to 200 pA, compare very well to published results for nanowire generators of 30 mV and 100 pA which were shown to be suitable for powering nanosensors. [ 24 ] The effective power generated is 250 W mm^- 2 at 5.0 mN force.
Applications for this kind of pressure-turned-power are limited only by the scale-up logistics of mass producing the films. Imagine a laptop powered by typing or clicks. Or shoes that charge your iPod while you work out. As long as a force is acting upon the film, energy is being produced–so, theoretically, until the film is damaged in a way that renders it incapable of transferring energy, the output is potentially unlimited.
There are no hard and fast projections for when (or if) the new batteries will reach market, but when they do, it’s safe to say they’ll be around for a while.
Entertainment Weekly has the first look at Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins in the upcoming The Hobbit.
How does Jackson feel about the casting?
”He fits the ears, and he’s got some very nice feet,” Jackson says of his Bilbo. ”I think he’s got the biggest hobbit feet we’ve had so far. They’re a little bit hard to walk in, but he’s managed to figure out the perfect hobbit gait.”
And because I’m a fan of Sir Ian McKellan, here’s a shot of him reprising his role as Gandalf.
What say you, Geeks? Does Martin Freeman look like he’s a pretty good Bilbo?
Money might not buy you happiness or love, but it does mean you can put money into outlandish projects that won’t turn a profit. That may be why Amazon founder Jeff Bozos is helping finance a clock that’s designed to work for 10,000 years. Oh, and it’s in a cave.
The clock was first conceived by parallel computing inventor Danny Hillis in 1995 and is designed to both find a creative use for technology and make humans think about the big picture of time.
The concept of the clock is on a massive scale in four-dimensions. It has a 10,000 pound pendulum at the end of a 200 foot pivot, and will be housed in a 500 foot shaft in a remote Texan mountain owned by Bezos. Rather than ticking every second, it ticks once a year. The only hand advances once a century. And there’s a cuckoo that appears once every millennium.
The theory is that sunlight power will be enough to make sure the clock continues to keep time. There is also a display of the precise time and a daily chime, but these only operate if and when somebody winds a mechanism. Whenever this happens, the daily chime will play a different melody every day for each of the thousand years.
The winding isn’t likely to be a daily occurrence though: visitors will need to get to the town of Van Horn (population 2,435) and then hike for around a day before making their way through tunnels and chambers.
As well as the clock, they’ll see five underground rooms. The first will, one year after the clock goes into motion, house an animation of the solar system and all the interplanetary craft mankind launched during the 20th century. The second is scheduled to have an animation to mark the 10th anniversary of the clock, though the content is yet undecided. Both animations will play once a year, with the clock providing the power.
The remaining chambers are designed to commemorate the 100th, 1,000th and 10,000th anniversaries: the project creators will leave mechanics in place for future generations to create clock-powered animations.
Though a small-scale prototype was first produced in 1999, the project has now reached the stage where the design is complete and construction is underway: completion is scheduled simply for “many years into the future.”
Filmmaker Joe Nicolosi’s friend Amanda Boone has not seen the Star Wars trilogy in its entirety, but offers this breakdown of the plot from the bits and pieces she knows. Listen at 2:48 for the disbelief in his voice as he asks her what Han’s name is. This film won the ‘George Lucas Selects’ award in the 2009 Star Wars Fan Movie contest.
Shanghai-based artist Jian Guo made these absolutely amazing World of Warcraft-themed stained glass-style illustrations featuring various scenarios from the game, and I have to say, if the guy would sell prints of these somewhere, I’d be definitely interested in buying a few.
