Get a better look at the evil soul-sucking baddies Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and director Edgar Wright are teaming up to fight in their new apocalypse comedy The World's End. This will be the finale to the Blood and Ice Cream trilogy, and while we haven't even seen the movie yet, we already miss this trio. Hopefully the end of the Cornetto trilogy doesn't mean the end of these three fellas working together.
    
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JmicalHoly moses.
Two days ago, as the 2013 Moore tornado struck Oklahoma, Charles Gifford sought refuge in a storm shelter. After he was safe inside, and with the door securely shut, Gifford poked his camera through a small hole, allowing him to capture this insanely up-close video of the 1.3 mile wide tornado.
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This is Part 2 of a then-and-now look at the New York City filming locations of The Warriors. Click here for Part 1!
Resuming where we left off, the Warriors are on a train heading toward Union Square when a nearby fire forces them out into the the Tremont section of the Bronx on foot. This is definitely somewhere under the J train, most likely near Broadway Junction where the chase scene was filmed, but I wasn’t able to identify it. Any thoughts?
Meanwhile, we find Luther and the Rogues gang (responsible for murdering Cyrus, then pinning it on the Warriors) cruising around:
This was shot on First Avenue approaching 1st Street:
They stop at a soda fountain to make a phone call, located at 17 First Avenue…
…which is now a locksmith shop:
Meanwhile, the Warriors continue through Tremont to the next stop. Except, they’re not in the Bronx…
They’re on 45th Road (just off of 23rd Street) in Long Island City, Queens:
45th Road, along with the extraordinarily beautiful 45th Ave one block north, are routinely used in movies because they can be easily faked as Any Borough, NYC. Here they’re given a down-and-out look, but they’re typically used as upscale neighborhoods:
The Warriors run into the Orphans gang, who watch them from all sides:
Across the street, the stationary store is now a barber shop:
Just as it seems all will be OK, a woman named Mercy comes out to cause some mischief:
Mercy convinces the Orphans to deny them passage, but the Warriors continue through anyway. So sad to see that great porch building is gone:
The Warriors continue down the block and turn a corner…
…and are magically transported to way way way out in Brooklyn at 62nd Street and 15th Avenue, a block away from the New Utrecht Ave subway station:
The Orphans arrive, and it looks as though a fight will break out:
As tensions rise, Mercy heads toward the scene, though she’s technically going in the wrong direction. This shot was filmed on 15th Avenue right around the block, but to find the gangs, she should head in the opposite direction to the corner, then turn left.
But such is filmmaking, and she winds up at 62nd Street anyway:
The two gangs square off…
Then, one of the Warriors throws a Molotov cocktail, allowing them to escape:
They run just up the block to the New Utrecht Ave subway stop…
…head through the doors…
…and the camera rises to catch them as they come out on the platform upstairs:
This is one of my favorite shots in the film, as the layout of the subway perfectly facilitates this graceful, non-stop motion:
Meanwhile, Luther and the Rogues stop at a gas station to make another call about the status of the hunt for the Warriors. I did a lot of searching, but wasn’t able to locate this one…Anyone recognize it?
If it helps, there’s an insanely distinctive building right across the street:
Back en route to Union Square, The Warriors find the train lingering suspiciously long at 96th Street station and decide to make a run for it.
At first glance, you’d assume this was shot at the 96th Street and Broadway station, except…
…why do the walls say Hoyt on them?
That’s because this was actually filmed on the abandoned platform at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station in Brooklyn:
Dozens of movies have been shot here, including The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 (remake), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (the City Hall subway station), and Michael Jackson’s Bad music video.
Unfortunately, the police spring on the Warriors, and the gang splits up:
Four of the Warriors head up to street level…
…and suddenly, they’re at the 72nd Street 1-2-3 station in Manhattan:
They go outside…
…and run into the totally creepy Baseball Furies gang. This was shot on West 72nd Street looking north-east from the station:
The Warriors head south-west, with the Baseball Furies right on their tail…
…passing this restaurant on the corner.
From West 72nd, they then jump again to West 100th Street between Riverside and West End Avenue, heading toward the park:
A second shot – always great to see how those trees have grown up:
The Warriors rush into Riverside Park by way of the Firemen’s Memorial, another fantastic use of existing New York statuary:
Despite the grittiness of New York circa 1979, this graffiti is a little too photogenic to be completely authentic:
Stone benches have now replaced the old wooden ones:
The Baseball Furies continue their pursuit:
The action then moves a few blocks south, as the Warriors enter Riverside Park via the 97th Street ramp:
Now in the park, they run north along the dirt path that still exists today. Compare the tree on the left for accuracy!
A fight breaks out in the field just a few blocks north, and the Warriors are victorious:
But they still have a ways to go to Coney Island…Check back tomorrow for the final installment!
-SCOUT
View The Warriors Filming Locations Map in a larger map
JmicalMan, something was going down in Washington State!
1955 Cold War map of travel restricted zones for Soviet citizens in the US.
JmicalThe more I hear about this game, the more fun it sounds. The "unreliable" voice-over narration mechanic sounds GREAT.
Case in point: a four-minute (!) launch trailer, consisting of Mr. Greaves shooting people in the face with a wide variety of weapons. While Techland's latest entry into the Call of Juarez brand of shooters is looking better by the minute, I can't help but be wary after The Cartel. We'll see.
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Ugh.
I sort of already hate myself from weighing in on this but people keep asking me to tweet about it and forward their petitions, and I really thought it would quiet down by now but it hasn’t, so I’m going to give my big, fat, stupid, irrelevant and probably wrong opinion on the changes Disney made from the original I-might-trust-her-to-babysit-my-kid-when-she’s-a-little-older Merida to get-the-fuck-away-from-my-husband Merida.
There are all sorts of calls to action to get Disney to admit that the new Merida looks a bit skanky and they’ve met with some success and that’s awesome. Go team. I hope you succeed. But (in my opinion – stop yelling at me) the majority of people do not give a shit. Mostly because we’re busy personally teaching our kids what strong women look like instead of letting Disney do it for us. And in a way, Disney did us a favor here. Did you have a talk with your kid about the new Merida? Because if you didn’t you missed a good opportunity to see where your kid stands on this, and to talk to them about over-sexualization.
I showed the new Merida to my eight-year-old and she assumed that it was Merida’s evil twin. Which actually would make an awesome story, and personally I plan to tell stray children I see buying backpacks with the new Merida on them that the original Merida was eaten by the new Evil Merida because she was so hungry. And they will probably believe it because seriously, look at her waist…the girl needs a damn sandwich.
Anyway, my incredibly dumb and probably ill-informed point is that it’s really uncomfortable to see a strong, child-like character get tarted up and flash bedroom eyes at you, but it’s equally sucky to rely on a giant corporation to teach your kids what strong women look like. Strong women look like Amelia Earhart, Rosie the Riveter, Asmaa Mahfouz, or Elizabeth Smart. Or Wonder Woman, or Sally Ride or Sojourner Truth, or Amy Poehler, or Ada Lovelace, or Anne Frank. Or your grandmother.
Or you.
I support and admire the men and women who speak out in the cause of feminism, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that there are so many amazing women who may never end up on a lunch box (Wonder Woman and Word Girl excluded) but who can make a great difference in the life and perceptions of our sons and daughters.
Okay. Your turn. Who’s your favorite female hero?
PS. There aren’t any right or wrong answers here. It’s totally okay to like pretty dresses and sexy princesses. It’s totally okay not to. No judgment. Probably.
JmicalDavid Brin, I nub new.
"I am a member of a civilization that does stuff like that."
But let's turn back to the "middle horizon" of the moon -- not (I'll admit) may favorite destination, scientifically or economically. But still transfixing. Golden Spike is a moon-aimed venture that stands in that intermediate territory, between the hugely ambitious (and iffy) Mars One and Inspiration Mars missions and the far more near-term and already commercially viable SpaceX and Virgin Galactic concepts. (My favorite, Planetary Resources, also fits in the intermediate zone, aiming for a destination that might make us all rich.)
From my recent service as a member of the Advisory Board for NIAC (NASA Innovative and Advanced Concepts) group: A supersonic, bidirectional flying wing idea comes from a team headed by GeCheng Zha, an aerospace engineer at Florida State University. In this revolutionary (and kind of unnerving) concept, a midair transformation allows the aircraft to fly in its most fuel-efficient modes at both subsonic and supersonic speeds. Jet engines atop the aircraft would stay aimed in the travel direction. But after takeoff and subsonic cruise, the aircraft would then rotate under the engines to present its narrow cross section forward, allowing rapid and smooth acceleration to supersonic flight. A real brain twister, but intriguing!
Here's another. See this NASA Animation: Asteroid Retrieval & Utilization Mission aims to robotically capture a small near-Earth asteroid and direct it into a stable lunar orbit where astronauts can explore it. An excellent concept with just the right combination of plausibility and ambitious reach, that's also very compatible with the notions of Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries. An excellent mid-future goal, with some potential for unleashing a cornucopia.
Aw heck, you've already seen Space Oddity, but in case you've been hiding in a closet, here's the viral video from Commander Chris Hadfield recorded aboard the ISS -- this singing astronaut gives a terrific weightless version of David Bowie. Zowee!
Are we at a turning point in space exploration? See Neil deGrasse Tyson's latest book: Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier. No one can say it better than Tyson -- who argues that we must regain our curiosity and enthusiasm for what lies beyond.From a passage of Kurt Vonnegut's Bluebeard, the three types of specialists needed for the success of any revolution.
Slazinger claims to have learned from history that most people cannot open their minds to new ideas unless a mind-opening team with a peculiar membership goes to work on them. Otherwise, life will go on exactly as before, no matter how painful, unrealistic, unjust, ludicrous, or downright dumb that life may be.
The team must consist of three sorts of specialists, he says. Otherwise the revolution, whether in politics or the arts or the sciences or whatever, is sure to fail.
The rarest of these specialists, he says, is an authentic genius -- a person capable of having seemingly good ideas not in general circulation. "A genius working alone," he says, "is invariably ignored as a lunatic."
The second sort of specialist is a lot easier to find: a highly intelligent citizen in good standing in his or her community, who understands and admires the fresh ideas of the genius, and who testifies that the genius is far from mad. "A person like this working alone," says Slazinger, "can only yearn loud for changes, but fail to say what their shapes should be."
The third sort of specialist is a person who can explain everything, no matter how complicated, to the satisfaction of most people, no matter how stupid or pigheaded they may be. "He will say almost anything in order to be interesting and exciting," says Slazinger. "Working alone, depending solely on his own shallow ideas, he would be regarded as being as full of shit as a Christmas turkey."
Slazinger, high as a kite, says that every successful revolution, including Abstract Expressionism, the one I took part in, had that cast of characters at the top -- Pollock being the genius in our case, Lenin being the one in Russia's, Christ being the one in Christianity's.
He says that if you can't get a cast like that together, you can forget changing anything in a great big way.
(via @moleitau)
Tags: Bluebeard books Kurt Vonnegut
This is the culmination of Rick Aschmann's years-long "hobby" of collecting dialects. It's a comprehensive and detailed map of the dialects (and sub-dialects!) of English-speakers in Canada and the United States.
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An employee at Hawken developer Meteor Entertainment had only one real gripe about her job: Their office featured a poster of a scantily-clad lady mechanic, and it bugged her to death. She says her boss, Meteor CEO Mark Long, loved the poster. She did not.
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JmicalBasic, but a good article, since most of my ideas never get out of the "high concept" stage.
Every story begins with an idea. What's amazing about science fiction stories is, they often start with a cool idea. Like a spin on space travel or robots that nobody's ever thought of before. But how do you turn an idea into a story, with memorable characters and powerful moments? That's often the hard part.
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Europa Report is hands down the most painstakingly accurate space movie we've seen in ages. You want some semblance of realism in the story of a three-year journey to Jupiter's Moon Europa? AND a gripping narrative, you got it. Here's out first impressions, along with an exclusive look at the brand new poster.
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My brain just collapsed on itself. Legendary game designer Sid Meier is back at it, and his latest project, a WWI-era aerial combat strategy game called Ace Patrol, is coming to iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch this May 9.
According to publisher 2K Games, it'll be a free-to-play title that'll tasks users with piloting a selection of "30 vintage and historical WWI aircrafts" through 120 single-player missions, apparently split across four campaigns. It'll also pack in a two-player competitive mode via Game Center or hot-swapping on the same device.
Basically, anything Sid Meier or his studio Firaxis makes is awesome, thoughtful and deep, so I'm pretty stoked to give this a shot. May 9th is pretty soon, so the wait won't be too long.
So today I'm going to be a little different and talk about one technical aspect of my game TinyKeep, that is random procedural dungeon generation. It's pretty over-engineered, but hopefully will give anyone interested some ideas on generating dungeon layouts for their own games.
The interactive demo can be found here: Dungeon Generation Demo
Here's how I do it, step by step:
1 . First I set the number of cells I want to generate, say 150. This is an arbitrary amount really, but the higher the number the larger the dungeon and in general more complexity.
2 . For each "cell" I spawn a Rectangle of random width and length within some radius. Again the radius doesn't matter too much, but it should probably be proportionate to the number of cells.
Instead of using uniformly distributed random numbers (the default Math.random generator in most languages), I'm using Park-Miller Normal Distribution. This skews the size of the cells so that they are more likely to be of a small size (more smaller cells, less larger cells). The reason for this will be explained later!
In addition to this I ensure that the ratio between the width and length of each cell is not too large, we don't want perfectly square rooms but neither do we want really skinny ones, but somewhere in between.
3 . At this point we have 150 random cells in a small area, most are overlapping. Next we use simple separation steering behaviour to separate out all of the rectangles so that none are overlapping. This technique ensures that the cells are not overlapping, yet in general remain as tightly packed together as possible.
4 . We fill in any gaps with 1x1 sized cells. The result is that we end up with a square grid of differently sized cells, all perfectly packed together.
5 . Here is where the fun begins. We determine which of the cells in the grid are rooms - any cell with a width and height above a certain threshold is made into a room. Because of the Park-Miller Normal Distribution described earlier, there will only be a small amount of rooms in comparison to the number of cells, with lots of space between. The remaining cells are still useful however... read on.
6 . For the next stage we want to link each room together. To begin we construct a graph of all of the rooms' center points using Delaunay Triangulation. So now all rooms are connected to each other without intersecting lines.
7 . Because we don't want every single room to be linked to every other with a corridor (that would make for a very confusing layout), we then construct a Minimal Spanning Tree using the previous graph. This creates a graph that guarantees all rooms are connected (and therefore reachable in the game).
8 . The minimal spanning tree looks nice, but again is a boring dungeon layout because it contains no loops, it is the other extreme to the Delaunay Triangulation. So now we re-incorporate a small number of edges from the triangulated graph (say 15% of the remaining edges after the minimal spanning tree has been created). The final layout will therefore be a graph of all rooms, each guaranteed to be reachable and containing some loops for variety.
9 . To convert the graph to corridors, for each edge we construct a series of straight lines (or L shapes) going from each room of the graph to its neighbour. This is where the cells we have not yet used (those cells in the grid which are not rooms) become useful. Any cells which intersect with the L shapes become corridor tiles. Because of the variety in cell sizes, the walls of the corridors will be twisty and uneven, perfect for a dungeon.
And here's an example of the finished result!
Thanks, hope you guys enjoy :)
The algorithm is used for our upcoming 3D dungeon crawler TinyKeep, currently in development:
TinyKeep - A 3D Multiplayer Dungeon Crawler with Frighteningly Intelligent Monster AI
Editor’s note: this is the second in a series of letters excerpted from Shoebox Letters – Daughters to Dads, a collection of over 30 letters from daughters to their dads about the role that their dad has played in their life. Heartfelt storytelling told through the unique letter format, the book provides readers a rare, personal glimpse into the life between the writer and the father.
Hi Daddy,
I know I don’t always tell you how wonderful of a father you’ve been but hopefully you get that from the little things I try to do to make sure you know I love you. You have done an amazing job of not just being a father but fathering a daughter. You are more than merely the person who paid my tuition or reminded me that I “didn’t need that chump anyway” whenever one of my relationships ended. You are the man who set the standard for what I would accept from the men in my life and for that I am eternally grateful. I always knew our relationship was special but it wasn’t until I became a young woman, seriously dealing with men and establishing boundaries for how they would deal with me, that I really understood the magnitude of your importance in my life and in the development of my character.
I remember the point when I realized how important it was to have grown up with my father as the man in my life. It was around the time I was applying to business school and I had become really good friends with some really outstanding young women. From the looks of it, we were all cut from the same cloth‚ all bright, young, attractive (if I may say so myself 
and headed into graduate programs at some of the country’s most prestigious institutions…Harvard, Northwestern, Duke…you name it. As time went by and we became closer friends I learned more about them and saw how they interacted with men and more importantly, how their interactions were affected by men. We were all looking for the same thing: someone to love us, someone to settle down with, and someone to call our own. The variable that became strikingly evident was what I called the “father factor.”
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But Daddy, I have to tell you something. While you were an amazing father, you were a terrible husband and witnessing your disregard for my mother, your wife, has had an effect on me as well.
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I began to realize that while we all had our issues with the guys we dated, no one ever disrespected me or treated me as badly as they often treated my friends. This was because, as a result of my relationship with you, I knew the minimums a man needed to deliver and recognized when they weren’t being met. I always considered “if a man can’t do more for me than my daddy does then why put up with him.” So, when he wasn’t treating me like a lady I was okay saying “when.” This alone made my twenties much easier and less dramatic.
But Daddy, I have to tell you something. While you were an amazing father, you were a terrible husband and witnessing your disregard for my mother, your wife, has had an effect on me as well. As I have become older and am now considering marriage, I realize that I have subconsciously developed this overwhelming flight response when situations with the man I love are not ideal. It’s not because I don’t want to be his wife but because I don’t want to turn out like you‚ unfulfilled in my marriage but too afraid to be on my own to leave. People often say that women marry men like their fathers. I hope that’s true. What scares me to death is that the man I marry will be less like my father and more like my mothers’ husband. I know it seems contradictory to feel this way and I don’t know how to explain it much better than I have. On the one hand, because of you I have standards and boundaries. On the other hand, I lack patience and resolve. 
So what do you do with this? Honestly, I just wanted you to know how your influence and your role in my decision making processes has evolved in a way I had not imagined. I don’t love you any less or think any less of you. It’s just interesting to understand the many different ways you have impacted my life. You are one man with many roles and I truly have always felt how important your role as a father is to you. I guess the real shocker is that I now also feel how unimportant your role of a husband may have been as well. Just something to think about.
I love you.
♦◊♦
From more on the Shoebox Letters and series editor Clay Brizendine, check out the foreword excerpted from the book and a Q&A here.
Here is the first letter, Daughter Praises Dad for Unconditional Love
—photo by nasrulekram/Flickr
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JmicalHey, I did some writing work for these guys! Woohoo!
Last October peripheral maker Power A made a bid for the Android gamepad market with the MOGA, a pocket-sized controller with a flip-up clip for holding your smallish Android gaming device. The idea was that this odd little controller, paired with a smart phone, was effectively its own handheld gaming system, a Google-powered Game Boy.
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Dear Cutie-Pie,
Recently, your mother and I were searching for an answer on Google. Halfway through entering the question, Google returned a list of the most popular searches in the world. Perched at the top of the list was “How to keep him interested.”
It startled me. I scanned several of the countless articles about how to be sexy and sexual, when to bring him a beer versus a sandwich, and the ways to make him feel smart and superior.
And I got angry.
Little One, it is not, has never been, and never will be your job to “keep him interested.”
Little One, your only task is to know deeply in your soul—in that unshakeable place that isn’t rattled by rejection and loss and ego—that you are worthy of interest. (If you can remember that everyone else is worthy of interest also, the battle of your life will be mostly won. But that is a letter for another day.)
If you can trust your worth in this way, you will be attractive in the most important sense of the word: you will attract a boy who is both capable of interest and who wants to spend his one life investing all of his interest in you.
Little One, I want to tell you about the boy who doesn’t need to be kept interested, because he knows you are interesting:
I don’t care if he puts his elbows on the dinner table—as long as he puts his eyes on the way your nose scrunches when you smile. And then can’t stop looking.
I don’t care if he can’t play a bit of golf with me—as long as he can play with the children you give him and revel in all the glorious and frustrating ways they are just like you.
I don’t care if he doesn’t follow his wallet—as long as he follows his heart and it always leads him back to you.
I don’t care if he is strong—as long as he gives you the space to exercise the strength that is in your heart.
I couldn’t care less how he votes—as long as he wakes up every morning and daily elects you to a place of honor in your home and a place of reverence in his heart.
I don’t care about the color of his skin—as long as he paints the canvas of your lives with brushstrokes of patience, and sacrifice, and vulnerability, and tenderness.
I don’t care if he was raised in this religion or that religion or no religion—as long as he was raised to value the sacred and to know every moment of life, and every moment of life with you, is deeply sacred.
In the end, Little One, if you stumble across a man like that and he and I have nothing else in common, we will have the most important thing in common:
You.
Because in the end, Little One, the only thing you should have to do to “keep him interested” is to be you.
Your eternally interested guy,
Daddy
♦◊♦
This post is, of course, dedicated to my daughter, my Cutie-Pie. But I also want to dedicate it beyond her.
I wrote it for my wife, who has courageously held on to her sense of worth and has always held me accountable to being that kind of “boy.”
I wrote it for every grown woman I have met inside and outside of my therapy office—the women who have never known this voice of a Daddy.
And I wrote it for the generation of boys-becoming-men who need to be reminded of what is really important—my little girl finding a loving, lifelong companion is dependent upon at least one of you figuring this out. I’m praying for you.
This post was originally published here.
Image credit: patrick_bird via Compfight cc
Mounting lights in a small closet can be a hassle. Reddit user kavisiegel suggests adding rope lights inside the door frame with an automatic switch to make things easier.
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JmicalThere's a story here somewhere.
In 18th and 19th Century Scotland, families placed a piece of bread on the breasts of their dying loved ones. That’s not the strange part — the families then hired someone to eat the bread, believing that the practice would somehow absolve the sins of the deceased. Where did this strange ritual come from? And what sort of people worked as Sin Eaters?
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What percentage of philosophers are theists? How many of them believe in free will? More importantly: how many of them think zombies are actually possible? Finally, a study has provided an answer to all these questions, and more.
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You have a ton of different options for cloud backup services these days. Whether you're sick of Dropbox, or you happen to have a ton of space on Skydrive you're not using, Mover is a web app that makes transferring files to a new service simple.
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Over on Slate's Future Tense, the brilliant internet law professor Tim Wu has just launched a series of interviews with science fiction writers — and he starts with Neal Stephenson. They talk about everything from Stephenson's hope for the future to Plato's Republic. It's heady, awesome stuff.
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There's a recent tradition of developers screwing with pirates—from releasing enormous, immortal pink scorpions on them, to booby trapping their games with glitches when they get cracked. This weekend, Greenheart Games, creator of Game Dev Tycoon, just blew the curve for everyone. This is fantastic.
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JmicalThe answer is "yes." And also, rum is Bad.
When your friend gets tipsy and starts rambling about how tequila turns her into a savage party monster, and then your other friend vehemently calls bullshit, calmly put your hands up and say this: "Friends. Please. I got this." And then explain to them what I'm about to explain to you.
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JmicalIf you can't answer these, then you probably shouldn't be allowed to vote.
Feeling science-savvy? Take Pew Research Center’s 13 question Science and Technology Knowledge Quiz and see where you stand against a representative sampling of Americans.
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As you know I am a big fan of game audio (and audio in general) so I asked the fine folks at Irrational Games for some audio from Bioshock Infinite. They sent over a couple of files that fit the bill:
“New Objective” Ringtone (This is the tone heard in game whenever a new objective is given to the player)
“Step On Up” Ringtone (This is what one of the vending machines says when you walk near it)
You can preview them above and download a ZIP file containing both files in your preferred format:
Also, Irrational has posted 5 additional audio clips to download from their blog (“Salt Machine” is now my text tone)
Collect ‘em all!
Also: Here are some sound files from the original Bioshock I posted back in 2008 in case you missed ‘em the first time
Note: These audio clips are provided for personal, non-commercial use only
