iband: playing music on portable devices
Here’s a trio of people playing music on an iphone, ipod, and nintendo ds.
mars surface shaped by rivers, streams, waterfalls
Astonishing new photos by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express Probe reveal a detailed and carven landscape, much like the canyons, valleys, and waterways of our own planet. It makes me wonder what those empty spaces were like when they were filled with water….
A view of Echus Chasma, one of the largest water source regions on Mars, showing a network of valleys
Over the last five years its stereo, high resolution camera has taken thousands of images of the surface, revealing the planet’s awe inspiring beauty in unprecedented detail.
The latest images show the Echus Chasma, a vast valley just north of Mars equator around 62 miles long and six miles wide. The feature is cut into a high plateau and its steep-sided cliffs - some 12,000 feet high - bear a striking resemblance to the canyons of North America.
Located on the eastern part of Echus Chasma is this cliff which is up to 4,000 metres high
i am 8 bit: chrono trigger + steamboat willie
In this picture here you can see the character Frog from the game Chrono Trigger on the left, and Steamboat Willie on the right. Why is there a plus sign between the two?
akira toriyama and disney
…because those are the two styles I am combining to re-create the characters for the painting I’m working on. I was looking for a new approach, and realized I never tried anything more vintage. You can see the rough sketches I did for the characters here. I’ll have a piece done very soon, by sometime next week. Painting these characters and researching the back story is reminding me why this game was so bad-ass.
spiderman calling batman
Hahahaha. I found this my friend Alex’s blog. This is so weird and quirky. I could imagine a whole series of animated shorts done in this style. I hope to see more of these in the future.
using toucan beaks to design cars and airplanes
It seems a wonder that toucans don’t fall on their faces, so enormous are the beaks of these South American birds. One large species, the toco toucan, has an orange-yellow bill six to nine inches long, about a third of the bird’s length. But the toucan’s beak is ingeniously designed to be both strong and light. Marc Andr`e Meyers, a materials scientist at the University of California, San Diego, thinks its two-part construction could be adapted for use in the automotive and aviation industries to offer protection from crashes.
Toucan beaks are beautiful structures,” he says. “The surface is made of keratin, the same material in fingernails and hair. But the outer layer isn’t a solid structure. It’s actually many layers of tiny hexagonal plates, overlapping like shingles on a roof. The interior is different from the shell, made of bone. It consists of a light yet rigid foam made of little beams and membranes. And some areas of the beak are hollow.” Born in Brazil, Meyers sometimes went hunting with his father and once found the skull of a toucan. “The beak was so strong and light; I stored the idea away for years,” he says.
spinning skyscraper planned in dubai
This type of design, if successful, will revolutionize the interplay between large-scale architecture and the environment. Not only will the skyscraper be capable of morphing into different shapes and patterns, but will also take advantage of the wind to help power itself as a self-sufficient system.
Leave it to Dubai, the United Arab Emirates state known for wild architectural endeavors, to be the planned home for such a tower. The $350 million Dynamic Architecture building, a project of an eponymous Florence, Italy-based firm led by architect David Fisher, will literally spin–with each individual floor self-propelled, voice-controlled and even capable of generating environmentally friendly power.
The floors’ motions, too, are individually controlled. Through voice activation, presumably through a central hub on each floor, the level can turn to position it according to where the daylight is, change the views, or even just rotate slowly for the effect.
According to Fisher, construction on the tower should begin by the end of 2007 and be complete within 18 months. Should its inaugural tower in Dubai prove successful, Dynamic Architecture has no plans to stop there. The firm hopes to continue production of building modules at its factory in Jebel Ali, with a goal of building similar towers in 11 other cities including Tokyo, New York, Moscow and Milan.
what is this bizarre primate? it’s the aye-aye
Aye-ayes can be found only on the island of Madagascar. These rare animals may not look like primates at first glance, but they are related to chimpanzees, apes, and humans.
Aye-ayes are dark brown or black and are distinguished by a bushy tail that is larger than their body. They also feature big eyes, slender fingers, and large, sensitive ears. Aye-ayes have pointed claws on all their fingers and toes except for their opposable big toes, which enable them to dangle from branches.
Aye-ayes spend their lives in rain forest trees and avoid coming down to earth. They are nocturnal, and spend the day curled up in a ball like nest of leaves and branches. The nests appear as closed spheres with single entry holes, situated in the forks of large trees.
While perched aloft, the aye-aye taps on trees with its long middle finger and listens for wood-boring insect larvae moving under the bark. It employs the same middle finger to fish them out. The digit is also useful for scooping the flesh out of coconuts and other fruits that supplement the animal’s insect diet.
Many people native to Madagascar consider the aye-aye an omen of ill luck. For this reason they often have been killed on sight. Such hunting, coupled with habitat destruction, have made the aye-aye critically endangered. Today they are protected by law.
i am 8 bit: chrono trigger character sketches
It was a difficult choice, trying to figure out what characters to paint for the I am 8 Bit show. Someone asked me, “Why don’t you paint the Chrono Trigger characters?” That was a great idea. With the upcoming release on the Nintendo DS, and the fact it is one of my favorite games of all time was enough for me to start sketching some rough character studies.
So here they are.
I’ve been working the past few days on the painting and am having alot of fun with it. I’ve been referencing the artwork of Akira Toriyama frequently, as his original character work has attention to all the small details and set the tone for the world.
They also did a re-release of the game on PSX in Japan with an animated intro a while back. It features the characters in their environments, as well as the combination attacks that make the gameplay a worthwhile experience. Very cool.
Click here to see the animated opening that showcases all the characters.
researcher plays the aztec whistles of death
Scientists were fascinated by the ghostly find: a human skeleton buried in an Aztec temple with a clay, skull-shaped whistle in each bony hand.
But no one blew into the noisemakers for nearly 15 years. When someone finally did, the shrill, windy screech made the spine tingle.
If death had a sound, this was it.
Roberto Velazquez believes the Aztecs played this mournful wail from the so-called Whistles of Death before they were sacrificed to the gods.
The 66-year-old mechanical engineer has devoted his career to recreating the sounds of his pre-Columbian ancestors, producing hundreds of replicas of whistles, flutes and wind instruments unearthed in Mexico’s ruins.
For years, many archaeologists who uncovered ancient noisemakers dismissed them as toys. Museums relegated them to warehouses. But while most studies and exhibits of ancient cultures focus on how they looked, Velazquez said the noisemakers provide a rare glimpse into how they sounded.
Click to hear some of the spine-tingling sounds of the ancient Aztecs
“We’ve been looking at our ancient culture as if they were deaf and mute,” he said. “But I think all of this is tied closely to what they did, how they thought.”
Velazquez is part of a growing field of study that includes archaeologists, musicians and historians. Medical doctors are interested too, believing the Aztecs may have used sound to treat illnesses.
tatsunoko vs. capcom
All the versus fighting series by Capcom are my favorites, and they’ve just released the first trailer for the new game, tatsunoko vs. capcom. It looks like the developers are taking advantage of the “2.5-D” platform being used in Street Fighter 4, with ridiculous and over-the-top super attacks that have made themselves a staple with the versus series. Make sure to watch through the entire trailer for a round of gameplay afterwards. Ryu vs. Gatchaman!
….the game will feature characters from the developer’s own fighting game franchises such as Street Fighter II’s Chun Li (Fumiko Orikasa) and Ryu (Hiroki Takahashi). However, it will also include characters from Tatsunoko’s in-house anime creations, such as Ken Katsuji Mori from Science Ninja Team Gatchaman (adapted in English as Battle of the Planets, G-Force, and Eagle Riders and the title character (played by Daisuke Ono) of the Shinzo Ningen Casshan anime.
Article source
Click here for hi-res images of gameplay from famitsu
the unexplained tunguska explosion 100 years ago
It produced a blast hundreds of times stronger than the atomic bomb, was seen hundreds of miles away and narrowly missed obliterating an entire city — but 100 years to the week after the mysterious explosion in Siberia, no one is any closer to understanding what caused it.
Despite countless investigations, the so-called Tunguska Event remains one of the 20th century’s greatest enigmas — seized upon by mystics, UFO enthusiasts and scientists as evidence of angry gods, extraterrestrial life or the impending threat of a cosmic collision.
But says Stanislav Krivyakov, who has spent the past 35 years investigating the Siberian blast, despite intense interest in the event — which has featured in several episodes of “The X-Files” — no conclusive evidence has been found to support any theory.
“There are many people who build their hypotheses based on scanty information,” he told CNN.
“But there are many aspects to the phenomenon that don’t fit any standards or analogies. In everything about it we find something complicated, problematic, vague. It’s truly out of the ordinary.”
i am 8 bit: sketching out ideas
Tonight I’m sketching out some ideas for the upcoming I am 8 Bit show in Los Angeles. If you haven’t heard of the show, you can check out last year’s event here on Kotaku. All the artwork is themed to video games, one thing I’ve fried more of my brain on than anything else in life. It’s a bit overwhelming because there are so many games I enjoy. Hmm….. I don’t want to be too obvious, but pick something people can still relate too. Back to work….
Click here to read Vinyl Pulse article and watch video
human: the science behind what makes us unique
I was listening to an interview with Michael Gazzaniga, the author of the book Human while drawing at work. The discussion first dealt with the uniqueness and similarities between other living creatures, then moved on to how that applies as a logical overlay in bioethics and observational similarities that seem hard-wired into our genome objective to culture or background. The most entertaining thing about the segment was how easily the author condensed complex ideas into simple and relevant terms. He likes to laugh alot too. Haha. Here’s a short description of the book from the publisher’s website:
One of the world’s leading neuroscientists explores how best to understand the human condition by examining the biological, psychological, and highly social nature of our species within the social context of our lives.
What happened along the evolutionary trail that made humans so unique? In his widely accessible style, Michael Gazzaniga looks to a broad range of studies to pinpoint the change that made us thinking, sentient humans, different from our predecessors.
Neuroscience has been fixated on the life of the psychological self for the past fifty years, focusing on the brain systems underlying language, memory, emotion, and perception. What it has not done is consider the stark reality that most of the time we humans are thinking about social processes, comparing ourselves to and estimating the intentions of others. In Human, Gazzaniga explores a number of related issues, including what makes human brains unique, the importance of language and art in defining the human condition, the nature of human consciousness, and even artificial intelligence.
hacking the wii remote into alternate technology
Building sophisticated educational tools out of cheap parts, Johnny Lee demos his cool Wii Remote hacks, which turn the $40 video game controller into a digital whiteboard, a touchscreen and a head-mounted 3-D viewer.
To understand Johnny Lee, just take a look at his personal projects page.
When he’s not hacking Wiimotes, Lee is a graduate student in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.
the kitten who thinks it’s a budgie bird
My mom sent these to me in an email. I wish I knew who took the pictures originally so I could give them credit. It is a kitten with a budgerigar parakeet, also known as a “Budgie”.
osaka popstar: keychain, record, garbage pail kids
A couple of days ago my friend John sent me a couple of things in the mail. One was this keychain they made of a design I did for the band. They did a pretty neat job on the details. You can get them at the Hard Rock Cafe in Tokyo here.
They just came out with a new live album recorded at one of the concerts. One of the other artists working with them, John Pound, did all the artwork for Garbage Pail Kids and has an insert with the new album. What a sweet painting! Look at the whole band rocking out in the background.
Hahaha. I can attribute Garbage Pail Kids to two of my most memorable childhood experiences of second grade. The good, no, great experience was collecting them! I had a bunch wrapped in rubber bands in my backpack whenever I went to school. The bad….well…I’ll never forget the day when the bell rang for the school bus and I left them on my desk. I frantically checked everywhere in the room the next morning. The Pail Kids had run away to another thief’s home. I think I know who it was too. I can’t prove it, but there was this other fool that used to bully me in first and second grade, and he also stole my paint markers on the bus. Maybe some day I’ll just pay a random visit to collect what is rightfully mine. You hear me punk? I’ll be back for my trading cards AND the paint marker set.
Oh yeah, lastly I just found out they are selling the records I designed for them a while back at Hot Topic now. You can buy them here. They are die cut into the shape of the character’s head.
weird sylvania lightbulb commercial from thailand
Jeh United Ltd in Bangkok promoted the Sylvania Light Bulb as the way to keep monsters at bay in this off beat TV ad from Thailand. A child at a picnic points out figures from South East Asian mythology. His father fearlessly names them as Kra Sue, the floating head of a female vampire ghost, Kra Hung, a flying ghost, the Banana ghost and others. All is safe in daylight. But when the light goes out…
human clinical trials using cancer ‘cure’ in mice
A clinical trial will examine whether a new cancer treatment is as effective in humans as it’s proven to be in mice, say researchers at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C.
The treatment involves transfusing white blood cells called granulocytes from healthy young donors - whose immune systems produce cells with high levels of cancer-fighting activity - into patients with advanced cancer. A similar treatment using white blood cells from cancer-resistant mice cured 100 percent of lab mice with advanced cancer.
“In mice, we’ve been able to eradicate even highly aggressive forms of malignancy with extremely large tumors. Hopefully, we will see the same results in humans. Our laboratory studies indicate that this cancer-fighting ability is even stronger in healthy humans,” lead researcher Zheng Cui, associate professor of pathology, said in a prepare statement.
the lost continent of lemuria
Though the living modern lemurs are only found in Madagascar and several surrounding islands, the biogeography of extinct lemurs extending from Pakistan to Malaysia inspired the name Lemuria, which was coined in 1864 by the geologist Philip Sclater in an article “The Mammals of Madagascar” in The Quarterly Journal of Science. Puzzled by the presence of fossil lemurs in both Madagascar and India, but not in Africa nor the Middle East, Sclater proposed that Madagascar and India had once been part of a larger continent, which he named “Lemuria” for its lemurs.
- Map 1: Lemuria at its greatest extent
Sclater’s theory was hardly unusual for his time. The acceptance of Darwinism led scientists to seek to trace the diffusion of species from their points of evolutionary origin; prior to the acceptance of continental drift, biologists frequently postulated submerged land masses in order to account for populations of land-based species now separated by barriers of water. Similarly, geologists tried to account for striking resemblances of rock formations on different continents. The first systematic attempt was made by Melchior Neumayr in his book Erdgeschichte in 1887. Many hypothetical submerged land bridges and continents were proposed during the 19th century, in order to account for the present distribution of species.
closeup images of mars soil in robotic arm scoop
This image shows a microscopic view of fine-grained material at the tip of the Robotic Arm scoop as seen by the Robotic Arm Camera (RAC) aboard NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander on June 20, 2008, the 26th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.
RAC scientists took this image at a resolution of 30 microns by rotating the scoop to within 11 millimeters of the camera’s front lens and refocusing the camera to macro focus. The image shows small clumps of fine, fluffy, red soil particles collected in a sample called ‘Rosy Red.’ The sample was dug from the trench named ‘Snow White’ in the area called ‘Wonderland.’ Some of the Rosy Red sample was delivered to Phoenix’s Optical Microscope and Wet Chemistry Laboratory for analysis.
The RAC provides its own illumination, so the color seen in RAC images is color as seen on Earth, not color as it would appear on Mars.