Rexfeng

Designed by Duncan Frazier and Steve McGuigan of Brookyln-based BitBanger Labs, the Pixelstick is a fancy new gadget for creating long-exposure light paintings. The device reads digital images created in Photoshop (or any other editor) and displays them one line at a time through an array of 198 full-color RGB LEDs. The images can be any height up to 198 pixels tall and many thousands of pixels wide creating huge possibilities for visual effects. You can see more example images created with the device here and learn more about it on Kickstarter.

Street Fighter II was an important video game. It was one of the very first video games I ever fell in love with, and I know I’m not alone. So many of us just have the tiniest details of Street Fighter II embedded in our consciousness. That’s what makes the Twitter feed of Akira Nishitani so fascinating…

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In the city of Qingdao, a new apartment complex is raising eyebrows. Some of the windows, it seems, aren't windows. They're paint.

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A surprising twist… or twenty. Screw it, this Freddie Wong sketch with Key & Peele has ALL of the surprising twists. It's a few days old but we just spotted it and couldn't stop laughing.

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This short clip of the iconic Calvin and Hobbes' dance in the woods by Canadian animator and compositor Adam Brown makes me want an animated cartoon so badly. One that is silent because, really, no actor would be able to get their voices right.

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From Serious Eats: New York

[Photographs: Paul Yee]

The woman behind the counter at the recently opened Nugget Spot is well rehearsed in explaining the ordering process to first time customers, "Choose between chicken and pork, then pick one of the four coatings. Each order ($7, eight nuggets )comes with your choice of sauce."

In short, the Nugget Spot fits the mold of a single item restaurant that offers creative variations of an iconic dish. The playful theme of the menu at the Nugget Spot is reinforced by incorporating ingredients like Cheez-Its, Ritz crackers, pretzels, and rice crispies.

Nuggets!

The nuggets differ from a fast food product though in that they are not molds of forcemeat, stamped and fried in uniform oblique shapes; the use of my chunks of breast meat may cause the chicken nugget enthusiasts to proclaim they are actually mini tenders. Nevertheless, they are crisp, fatty, and salty with a juicy bite—exactly what you would look for in a nugget. The pork nuggets are also whole chunks, but are just slightly tougher than their chicken counterparts, and don't have a noticeably strong pork flavor.

Nugget dipped in blue cheese dressing.

Of the four options for coatings, the Southern Fried style closely recalls the craggly batter of a McNugget, though much more peppery; an order of the Southern Fried nuggets with their honey dijon or barbecue sauce is a safe bet for those who prefer not to tinker with a classic combination. But the boldest flavor comes from the Ritzy Ranch coating which is dusted with a powdered ranch dressing, rich in tangy buttermilk. The Cheez-it and Pretzel coating both fail to deliver any strong cheddar or pretzel flavor.

Ritzy ranch nuggets.

Many would consider the nugget merely a vehicle to deliver dipping sauce, so it's no surprise that the Nugget Spot offers eight varieties. If you're looking to stray from the aforementioned classic honey mustard or barbecue sauce, the wasabi mayonnaise offers a pleasant latent heat that's not at all aggressive to your sinuses. Their blue cheese dressing is also surprisingly funky, removing any doubts that it may be from a bottle. And if you're a fan of McDonalds green packets of sweet and sour sauce, the Mumbo sauce comes closest, only bringing much more sour to the party.

Mozzarella nugget.

As is the case with most fried foods, your nuggets are at their best when eaten immediately, which makes me wish that their space was more inviting to dine in. The narrow store that the Nugget Spot occupies is brightly lit, economically packed with seats, and generally feels like a fast food joint—not exactly the kind of place you want to linger around, even if they do offer affordable beer and a big screen TV.

Ultimately, that seems to be a common thread amongst the one item restaurants in New York City, they offer no more than what their name promises, not on the menu nor in their atmosphere, supposing that it's enough to be the definitive destination for one particular dish. For the Nugget Spot it just might work; if a friend of mine ever has a hard craving chicken nuggets, I know where to take them.

About the Author: Paul Yee is a brooklyn based filmmaker who loves cooking and eating. He also runs the Brooklyn Table supper club..

For the past decade, the best way to learn typing has unquestionably been killing zombies. The Typing of the Dead swapped your gun in rail-shooter House of the Dead 2 for a keyboard and a Dreamcast backpack, gave the zombies ping-pong paddles and huge rubber mallets, and made you type ever-longer randomized phrases to escape maniacs with chainsaws and other tarot-themed enemies. But the game was first released in 1999, and it's showing its age, even with a 2012 iOS adaptation. Fortunately for all of us, there's now a sequel. Yesterday, Sega released The Typing of the Dead: Overkill (based on 2009 game House of the Dead: Overkill) on Steam, complete with nine levels, a "full and faithful port" of the non-typing PS3 House of the Dead,...

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For some time Facebook has studied your Likes, comments, and clicks to help create better ads and new products, but soon, the company might also track the location of your cursor on screen. Facebook analytics chief Ken Rudin told The Wall Street Journal about several new measures the company is testing meant to help improve its user-tracking, like seeing how long you hover your cursor over an ad (and if you click it), and evaluating if certain elements on screen are within view or are off the page. New data gathered using these methods could help Facebook create more engaging News Feed layouts and ads.

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One of the most anticipated new games coming to the Xbox One is Titanfall, but those eyeing the PlayStation 4 assuming the game will eventually come to Sony's next-gen console as well are in for a surprise. VentureBeat reports that Blake Jorgensen, chief financial officer of Electronic Arts, said today that the game is an Xbox console exclusive in perpetuity. "In the case of Titanfall, it's a brand new [intellectual property], and it's exclusive only — through the life of the title — for Xbox One, Xbox 360, and PC," he said.

While it had been known that the game was an Xbox exclusive, games are often given timed exclusives — locked to a given platform for a window before being released on different platforms — and it appears...

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And another Command & Conquer game bites the dust: EA has just axed the latest in the longrunning strategy series, the company announced today.

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Endangered.

Stock is dropping within the world's largest cod fishery, and out of precaution, the total allowable catch for next year has just "been cut slightly from 1 million tonnes to 993,000 tonnes," a move that signifies the price of fish in restaurants is about to increase, Fish2Fork reports. Breeding levels have decreased, leading to a smaller supply of fish in Russian and Norwegian waters, and a scientist tells the site that numbers could drop "as much as 25 per cent over the next two or three years." The price of haddock, which is also used in fish-and-chip shops, has already increased, causing some proprietors to cut the menu item. Some argue that such changes are the result of natural fluctuations rather than overfishing, but in any event, it's probably best to hit the local chippy while it's still dealing in fillets. [Fish2Fork]

Read more posts by Hugh Merwin

Filed Under: fried fish, cod, endangered specifies, fish and chips, haddock, overfishing

Snap to it.

All in honor of selling its millionth fusion sausage, apparently. The tiny St. Marks Place restaurant has been doing this since Friday, DNAInfo notes, and the Berkshire-pork-based festivities end at 5 p.m. tonight. [DNAInfo]

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Filed Under: free, freebies, japadog

Snipping some garnish for the evening's specials.

"Hide your dock, hide your mallow. No herb is safe." Or so says Martin Connolly, the manager of a Portland, Oregon, apartment complex, who claims local chefs are regularly sneaking into his fenced-in yard and stealing weeds, no doubt destined for the carefully tweezed plates of neighboring restaurants. "If you live in Portland," Connolly says, "you have to know what comes with the neighborhood, and in this case, it's bands of sous-chefs."

This is apparently not a joke: Foraging thieves have left evidence in the form of beard nets and recipe notes, and one hapless chef even got stuck on the fence while trying to make off with a bag of chicory. Connelly notes that the presence of interlopers "sometimes smells like brisket," and at this point, he can probably catch a whiff of stained apron before the offending sous-chef even nears his block. He won't call the police, but vows to hunt down pesky cooks as if they were any other kind of pest: "In some neighborhoods there's coyotes, some have skunks," he says. "Here, it's just sous-chefs and all the things that come with that."

'No herb is safe' from weed-stealing sous-chefs, says apt. manager [KATU]

Read more posts by Belle Cushing

Filed Under: foragers, portland, weed whackers

For eight seasons the HBO series Entourage told the story of a fictional Hollywood A-lister and his band of friends — and now a movie is on the way. Deadline reports that a deal has been closed for a big-screen continuation of the series, that will see all of the original cast returning, including Adrian Grenier as star Vincent Chase and Jeremy Piven as the irascible Ari Gold. The Warner Bros. movie is budgeted at a relatively modest $30 million.

Talk of an Entourage movie has been circling since even before the series ended two years ago, and last year Deadline reported that series creator Doug Ellin had finished a script for a feature that would pick up six months after the show's conclusion. Negotiations reportedly stalled out...

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From Serious Eats: New York

[Photographs: Max Falkowitz]

A good chaat house can be hard to find. A great one—that gets you excited about every saucy, fried carb-y bite—is worth the drive out to the edge of Queens.

Chaat is one of India's many takes on snack food: a variety of dishes centered around carbs like samosas, fried crackers, or puffed rice sauced with everything from yogurt to tamarind to mint chutney. At its best it's a mix of hot, freshly fried crunchy bites with cool, crunchy vegetables and tangy, spicy, and refreshing sauces for something approaching the perfect bar snack. Many chaat houses take shortcuts, using stale ingredients or chutneys straight from the jar. Which is why you should take a trip out to Mumbai Xpress in Glen Oaks, Queens, home to the freshest, most delicious chaat I've tasted in New York.

Mumbai grilled cheese.

We've written about Mumbai Xpress before for their take on a grilled cheese ($5.99), a triple decker white bread stack of potatoes, raw onions, green peppers, bright-green cilantro chutney, and yes, some melty cheese, all working together in bizarrely fresh-tasting harmony. The sandwich maintains its addictive appeal, but the real treasures on Mumbai Xpress's menu are the dozens of chaats.

Tokri chaat.

Take the Tokri Chaat ($7.99), rarely seen in other restaurants. Its defining feature is an edible bowl made of grated and fried potatoes, something like a taco salad shell but crispier, sweeter, and more intensely browned. It's filled with creamy chickpeas, fried chickpea crackers, and onion, topped with cool yogurt, deeply tangy tamarind chutney, and tiny fried chickpea flour noodles called sev. Pick at it with a fork, then start breaking off chunks the potato bowl as you dig in for more.

Pani puri.

There's also standout Pani Puri ($4.99), small crepes that are fried until they puff up, crisp and hollow. They're filled with chickpeas, onions, and a variety of sauces; here they're taken to great heights by a powerful tamarind chutney balanced well with cooling yogurt, and the puri remain crisp under their saucy payload. Take note: eat these in one bite, with a slight slurp as you might an oyster—otherwise they'll fall apart on you.

Misal pav.

On the weekends Mumbai Xpress offers Misal Pav ($7.99), popular with some of the Indian families at neighboring tables. The dish comes in two parts: toasted pav, which look and function much like hamburger buns, and the thin curry full of nutty, crunchy matki (moth beans) softened in a warming, coriander- and asafoetida-tinged sauce. Chickpeas and more sev soak up much of the broth for a hearty soup which can be spooned on to the pav and eaten like a sandwich. Chaat is nothing if not exciting to eat, and this dish captures that spirit well.

Masala dosa.

The kitchen also prepares Dosas ($3.49 to $8.99), but as is the case with many chaat houses, they don't deliver. Here the crepes are thick and spongy, the potato fillings wan. Skip them and stick to the chaat. That also goes for the Frankies ($5.99), Mumbai-style burritos with flaky wraps and spicy potato fillings. The versions at Mumbai Xpress are uninspired and bland.

Mumbai frankie.

These are acceptable misses when the chaat is so good—when everything fried is crisp, fresh, and greaseless, and the sauces are clean and abundantly flavorful, not just dumped out from a jar. You can find some very good chaat in Jackson Heights and some great Mumbai-style snacks in the West Village, but for some truly exceptional chaat, this is the place to visit.

About the author: Max Falkowitz is the New York editor at Serious Eats. You can follow him on Twitter at @maxfalkowitz.

Still hungry? Follow SE:NY on Twitter and Facebook.

Cheers!

The Times gets confirmation from the illustrious Mission Chinese Food chef that his next project will indeed be a Mexican restaurant called Mission Cantina at 172 Orchard Street. We've suspected as much since July, and have been generally excited. The first few details do not disappoint: Apparently, Bowien and his chefs will channel their inner abuelas and will make their own Oaxacan cheese on-premise and nixtamalize Anson Mills corn for the house tortillas. Florence Fabricant also notes that a large, front-facing rotisserie will configure in the design, which will supply slow-roasted chicken and pork for tacos throughout the day. Just don't call the place a taqueria.

Bowien says that despite the appearance of tacos, the menu structure at Mission Cantina will be less rigid. “It will be our take on Mexican food. It’s not going to be a taqueria, even though there will be tacos on the menu because we love tacos," he says, mentioning lamb ribs served over masa with pecan-coffee mole as an example of dish that will be served.

The restaurant will take reservations when it opens on November 20, which also happens to be Día de la Revolución in Mexico.

Danny Bowien’s Mission Cantina Opens Soon [NYT]
Earlier: Mission Chinese Food Spinoff Reportedly Called Mission Cantina [Updated]
Related: Orchard Street Gets Even More Appetizing With These 18 New Restaurants

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Filed Under: coming soon, danny bowien, empire building, mission cantina, mission chinese, new york, new york restaurants, noodle bar, orchard street

This video dicusses three simple ways to travel through time (all of which you can do right now at home) and three not-so-simple time travel methods.

For more on time-travel, here are some works by physicist and time-lord Sean Carroll:

Rules for time-travellers - http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cos...

Learn more about time and time-machines in his book From Eternity to Here - http://preposterousuniverse.com/etern...

Visualizations of the spinning universe - http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/1...

An engaging talk on the Paradoxes of Time Travel - https://vimeo.com/11917849

(via digg)

Tags: how to   physics   science   time   time travel   video

About five years ago, I decided to check out the cult-hit web comic Achewood because my brother bought a weird sweatshirt. It had a picture of an animal that looked like a penis wearing pants, and it said "HERE COMES A SPECIAL BOY." My brother doesn’t usually go for lowbrow humor, so I started reading the strip — and learned that the thing is a five-year-old otter named Phillipe, not a penis, and the quote was from a pair of talking shoes his mother gave him.

Welcome to the world of Achewood Court, populated by characters based on author Chris Onstad’s ex-wife’s stuffed animals. Achewood debuted in 2001 and soon caught fire, accrued a loving fan base, and was named Best Graphic Novel by Time in 2007.

But by late 2010, Onstad...

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Our favorite Cambodian sandwich place (Num Pang, thanks for asking) is opening their newest location in Times Square on Wednesday and to celebrate they’ll be open tomorrow (Tuesday) from 11am to 1pm selling 3 different sandwiches for $3.  It’s on 48th btw. 6+7th and for the $3 you’ll have your choice of peppercorn catfish, pulled [...]

Oh, wow.

Danny Bowien has made good on his promise: The delivery zone for Mission Chinese Food has now grown substantially from the small swath of the Lower East Side initially covered just two weeks ago, when it was first announced. "Mission Chinese Food NY now delivers anywhere in Manhattan below 59th street," tweeted MCF general manager Allen Yuen. The menu is here, in case you want to take a look. [Yuen/Twitter, Earlier]

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Filed Under: planned service changes, danny bowien, delivery, mission chinese food

Apple's trouble with daylight saving time appears to be popping up again. According to AppleInsider, a number of iOS 7 users whose clocks turned back an hour overnight are seeing the time displayed incorrectly inside of the iPhone's built-in calendar app. While looking at the calendar's day view, the bar representing what time it is will appear in the appropriate position, but it'll reportedly display a time that's one hour behind. The issue apparently hasn't come up elsewhere in the system, and it isn't stopping alarms or calendar events from sounding at their scheduled times.

Though this bug isn't the most consequential issue that Apple has had with clock changes, Apple has had a bad history with them. In 2010, an iOS 4 bug caused...

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Continue reading Space Engineers touches down on Steam Early Access

Space Engineers touches down on Steam Early Access originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 27 Oct 2013 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Showing all the polish of an Apple television spot, the company played a new video detailing its so-called Campus 2 — better known as "the spaceship" thanks to its enormous circular footprint — for members of Cupertino's city council last week. The presentation comes ahead of a planned November 15th vote, which would be a final approval before groundbreaking can begin. Architect Norman Foster makes an appearance in the clip, who notes that Steve Jobs told him "don't think of me as your client, think of me as one of your team" when the two first started working on Campus 2's design in 2009 (Jobs famously made an appearance before the council in 2011 to lobby for the facility's approval shortly before his death).

The video is clearly...

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One hundred percent all-American is the theme of this new bi-level barbecue joint named after the great Mother Road and opening this week in the financial district. The walls are bedecked with Hopper-esque murals (Edward, not Dennis), the ceilings outfitted with reclaimed Wisconsin-wood beams, and the bar well stocked with American whiskeys, craft brews, and the kinds of seldom-seen regional sodas like Cheerwine and Dad’s root beer that attract cult followings. On executive chef and Blue Smoke alum Billy Kooper’s menu: pimento cheese, Alaskan salmon, deviled eggs, oyster po’boys, fried quail and waffles, pit-smoked pulled pork, and shrimp and Anson Mills grits (pictured). And, damn straight, there’s a kale salad. It’s enough to make you want to stand up and recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

Route 66 Smokehouse, 79 Pearl St., nr. Coenties Alley; 212-943-1602

*This article originally appeared in the November 4, 2013 issue of New York Magazine.

Read more posts by Robin Raisfeld and Rob Patronite

Filed Under: openings, barbecue, billy kooper, route 66 smokehouse, slideshow

Researchers have developed software that could let you measure your pulse using nothing more than your earphones and a smartphone. The tech measures the air pressure in your ear canal, taking advantage of the seal made by earphones. As your arteries pump blood, it causes tiny movements in your eardrum at a frequency of about 1Hz. Using the earphones' speaker as a microphone, the software can detect and interpret this movement to determine your pulse rate.

There were quite a few issues to overcome to achieve this feat. Even the most expensive earphones don't make for a completely-enclosed space, and ambient noise can obviously interfere with measurements. The research team says that its software is now able to isolate the pulse even...

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Blizzard has detailed Myriam Jahzia, a new Artisan that will help demon slayers rough up their prey in the upcoming Diablo 3 expansion, Reaper of Souls. Myriam is a Mystic, and shortly after players save her in Westmarch, she'll offer two services - the property-altering Enchanting and the appearance-oriented Transmogrification.

Enchanting will allow a player to pick an unfavorable property on a Rare or Legendary item and then re-roll to potentially improve it. The post notes that "not all properties can be re-rolled," but most can, and players will be able to re-roll those as many times as they like after paying a material cost.

Transmogrification will leave properties as they are and instead serve as a way to change just the appearance of armor and weapons. The Battle.net post states that "all items with a visual appearance" are planned for compatibility with the Transmogrification service, so long as the desired appearance has been unlocked. Keep in mind that item appearances unlocked in Normal mode will be separate from what you gather in Hardcore mode.

Step-by-step procedures for using either option are written in full in the Battle.net post detailing the character, but the gist of it is that you'll need to visit her cart to have either service performed. You can also check out concept art of how her cart will visually progress as she levels up.

Blizzard details Myriam's Artisan abilities in Reaper of Souls originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 27 Oct 2013 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Move over, William Tell and Robin Hood, there's a new legendary archer in town. Or there will be, when you master the QWOP-like controls of Probably Archery, which require you to independently manipulate your avatar's wrists, elbows, shoulders, and of course, their bow and arrows.

Originally an entry for the 7 Day FPS Game Jam, Probably Archery is aiming for a Steam release, and is up for voting on Greenlight. A free demo available for PC, Mac and Linux features eight scenarios to experience, including shooting an arrow to cut a hangman's rope, shooting arrows in zero gravity, and shooting arrows at apple-headed berserkers. Because archery. The game features native support for the Oculus Rift and multiplayer modes as well.

If you pre-order Probably Archery through the game's official site, you'll get instant access to new demo versions as they become available, and will receive a Steam key should the Greenlight campaign be successful.

Probably Archery mixes QWOP-style controls with a deadly weapon originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 26 Oct 2013 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ms. Wallace was the voice of Edna Krabappel on the “The Simpsons” and earlier Carol Kester, the receptionist on the 1970s sitcom “The Bob Newhart Show.”

In grade school we were all taught to get as low to the ground as possible during a fire, to avoid excessive smoke inhalation. But a fire can also quickly create a dangerous mix of toxic gases hindering a safe escape. A fire fighter's mask and oxygen tank provides a constant supply of fresh air, and that's what the 5aver promises on a smaller scale giving someone five minutes to escape a burning building.

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