Flyfire, a project initiated by the SENSEable City Laboratory in collaboration with ARES Lab (Aerospace Robotics and Embedded Systems Laboratory) aims to transform any ordinary space into a highly immersive and interactive display environment. To do so, they put a few hundred LED-equiped toy-like helicopters in the air, and use them to create some fantastic visual effects. Check it out:
The
Life After Lost (and 24): Day 5
So here we are on the fifth and final day of our group rehab. If you still haven’t found something to ease the pain of the post-Lost/24 world, it’s time to take a completely different approach. Instead of looking for more examples of compelling action, crisp writing, finely-honed characters, and great special effects, let’s try something completely different: the worst movie ever.
(For the sake of argument, I’m sticking to movies with a vaguely geek-related theme. If I didn’t, I might have to finally get round to watching the DVD of the Ultimate Weapon in which a toupee-clad Hulk Hogan plays a mercenary who discovers the Special Forces unit which hired him are actually IRA terrorists and he must now destroy them in the jungle to rescue his daughter…)
Before I get to the worst geek movie ever, there must be a dishonorable mention for Countdown to Chaos, also known as Y2K the movie. The plot is simple: fears of the Millennium Bug prove not only accurate, but understated, and the hero is a computer whizz who needs to stop a nuclear station melting down.
Now, I’m one of the people who doesn’t believe Y2K was completely overhyped: the reason nothing happened is because we actually did something about it. But this is wonderfully entertaining dross, in which everything that can go wrong with the change over to midnight does go wrong. And of course, there’s the important lesson that the 17 time zones which get to midnight before the US can go screw themselves because it’s only American peril which counts.
But the worst geek movie ever is Terminal Error. Wikipedia’s attempt to summarize the plot is as follows: ” An ex-employee of a computer firm wants revenge and befriends the boss’s son giving him a MP3 file containing a computer virus. This virus creates havoc all across the city by poisoning the water with chlorine, making planes crash and ultimately developing an intelligence of its own.”
So what makes the movie so joyously bad? Yes, partly it’s the awful acting, terrible dialog (“I helped create you… and now I’m going to help you die.) and clichéd characters, notably the disgruntled hacker with Hawaiian shirt and disheveled ginger hair. But really the movie is made by the portrayal of technology. Imagine every questionable line about firewall parameter mainframes from 24 and take it to the max. Without wanting to give too much away, the virus literally speaks to people, makes a an ASCIII face from green-screen text, and turns out to be vulnerable only to a Nintendo Gameboy.
Buy, beg, borrow or steal.
Heartless: The Story of the Tin Man
Whitestone Motion Pictures presents Heartless: The Story of the Tin Man, a short movie based on the backstory of The Wizard of Oz. Featuring magnificent visuals and outstanding storytelling, Heartless is truly one the best short films I’ve ever seen online. If you’ve got a bit of free time today, make sure you watch every minute of it, you’ll be glad you did.
[Full Heartless soundtrack available for download here]
[Via Neatorama]
All your tech support are belong to us [Graph]
[Via]
The Future of User Interfaces [Video]
In the following video, Minority Report science adviser and inventor John Underkoffler demos g-speak — the real-life version of the film’s eye-popping, tai chi-meets-cyberspace computer interface. Is this how tomorrow’s computers will be controlled?
Life After Lost (and 24): Day 4
Whatever your response to the ending of Lost, it probably centered on your approach to the flash-sideways sequences of season 6, both in the way everyone turned out to be connected in some manner, and the fact that it all took place in some form of subconsciousness and imagination.
Those themes show up again in what is also perhaps the pinnacle of TV fan geekery: the Tommy Westphall Universe. This is the theory that because the series St. Elsewhere wound up appearing to be the dream of child character Tommy Westphall, then his imagination must also be responsible for any shows which have storyline links.
The most common starting point of the links is that two St Elsewhere characters, Roxanne Turner and Victor Erlich also appear, as the same characters, in Homicide: Life On The Streets. That makes things interesting straight away as Homicide character John Munch has appeared in no fewer than eight different shows, including The X-Files and The Wire.
At last count, 282 shows can be said to be the work of Tommy Westphall’s mind, running from Degrassi Junior High to Doctor Who.
And to give one example of the connections:
- Characters in St Elsewhere once visited the bar from Cheers.
- Frasier from Frasier got his own show. In it, Niles and Daphne read the cartoon which is produced in Caroline and the City
- Cartoonist Caroline appeared in an episode of Friends
- Phoebe from Friends has a twin sister named Ursula (also played by Lisa Kudrow) who first appeared in Mad About You
- In one episode of Mad About You, Paul produces a documentary narrated by Dick Van Dyke Show character Alan Brady
- Dick Van Dyke Show character Buddy appeared in the Danny Thomas Show
- The Danny Thomas Show came back as Make Room for Daddy and one episode featured the lead character from Here’s Lucy.
- An episode of Here’s Lucy featured the lead character from detective show Mannix being held hostage.
- Mannix featured in an episode of Diagnosis Murder
- The Diagnosis Murder episode Murder In The Air featured Oceanic Airline Flight 456 (the footage being reused from the movie Executive Decision)
- Oceanic Airlines flight 815 crashed at the start of Lost.
As for 24, forget it. Jack Bauer doesn’t play nice with others.
For more details on crossover episodes, check out poobala.com.
The Coke & Mentos Rocket Car [Video]
The awesome guys from EepyBird.com, whom we interviewed both in 2007 and 2008 (videos), have just released a brand new video showing their new creation at work: a Mentos and Diet Coke powered car. Check it out!
The Coke Zero & Mentos Rocket Car uses a piston mechanism: a six-foot long rod sits inside a six-foot long tube attached to each bottle of Coke Zero. When the Mentos drop into the soda, the pressure tries to push the rod out of the tube. With 108 rods all pushing at once, that gives us a lot of power.
SoCal Geeks Con Coming Up In June
If you’re a southern California Geek, and are looking for a convention to tide you over until Comic con, then you can hit-up Geeks Con, scheduled for June 19. The good news is that it’s free admission, so you can keep saving your shekels for that 3 day Comic Con pass!
Tags: conventions, geeks con