Shien’s Revenge (Almanic - SNES - 1994)
according to Wikipedia, this is the first video game designed by Go Nagai
At the big VGJunk site today: shuriken-slinging, Nazi-slashing, time-travelling action in Almanic’s SNES title Shien’s Revenge! He’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but his actual knife is pretty sharp so he makes out okay. Read all about it here!
    
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The finalists have been chosen for the 14th annual Game Developers Choice Awards. This year's group runs the gamut from unassuming indies to AAA blockbusters, and encompasses all the best wonderful and weird experiences of the past year.
The Last of ...
Much as all good things—like rampant bootlegging, gangster-run businesses, and men wearing snappy hats—must inevitably come to an end, so shall the fifth season of Boardwalk Empire be its last. HBO made the announcement today at its TCA presentation, where our own Todd VanDerWerff carved his way out of a crowded conference room with a lead pipe concealed in a rolled-up newspaper to relay us the news.
The series will return in the fall, as per usual, wrapping up the saga of Nucky Thompson, Atlantic City, and the assorted criminals and con men who populate it, as showrunner Terence Winter moves on to his Mick Jagger-produced rock ‘n’ roll drama with Bobby Cannavale. Winter speculated that the end was nigh when we spoke to him in November, and there have even been some rumors that the fifth season could see a reduced episode order—though ...
At this point in the year, we've usually got a bit more info about the Portland International Film Festival—which, this year, runs from Thurs Feb 6-Sat Feb 22. But this news from Marc Mohan at the Oregonian is promising, at least: The Wind Rises, the latest (and final) film from Hayao Miyazaki, will be playing at the fest, along with new films from Ti West (House of the Devil, The Innkeepers) and Ari Folman (Waltz with Bashir).
Not much else has been announced about this year's PIFF, other than it will screen some films at OMSI's Empirical Theater. But stay tuned to the Mercury for more PIFF coverage as the fest gets closer and we find out more.
(Sadly, there is no word yet if The Monkey King will be playing. Fingers crossed, people.)
The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit which owns Wikipedia, has apparently terminated an employee who was engaged in editing for pay. The issue of editing for pay has been a hot topic among Wikipedia editors, and it resulted in hundreds of account terminations a few months ago.
The employee, Sarah Stierch, was a "program evaluation coordinator" who was often quoted by journalists writing about Wikipedia, especially on the topic of how to get more women participating as editors. She was hired by the foundation in April 2013, where she was one of about 180 employees. Before that she had a paid fellowship at the foundation, where she did things like oversee an "edit-a-thon" in which editors worked to create new articles on under-recognized female historical figures.
Wikimedia's Senior Director of Programs, Frank Schulenberg, wrote a message on a public Wikipedia mailing list last night explaining why Stierch and the foundation had parted ways. It read:
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It seems like only a few hours ago that the glory of Armor Cat was bestowed upon us, but now there is a new challenger to the throne of January 9th, 2014's greatest cat cosplay! Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... Mewbacca.
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Tim Bray, Software in 2014:
And I totally fucking hate having four independently-scrollable areas on the screen controlled by weird-looking JavaScript-genius-handcrafted scrollbars. And then I’ll be working with some fancy single-page app, accidentally hit the tab key and everything goes a little sideways.
The Hover Chair is a ubiquitous, utilitarian, all-purpose assisting device. Each passenger aboard the Axiom has one. It is a mix of a beach-side deck chair, fashion accessory, and central connective device for the passenger’s social life. It hovers about knee height above the deck, providing a low surface to climb into, and a stable platform for travel, which the chair does a lot of.
We see that these chairs are used by everyone by the time that Wall-E arrives on the Axiom. From BNL’s advertising though, this does not appear to be the original. One of the billboards on Earth advertising the Axiom-class ships shows an elderly family member using the chair, allowing them to interact with the rest of the family on the ship without issue. In other scenes, the chairs are used by a small number of people relaxing around other more active passengers.
At some point between the initial advertising campaign and the current day, use went from the elderly and physically challenged, to a device used 24/7 by all humans on-board the Axiom. This extends all the way down to the youngest children seen in the nursery, though they are given modified versions to more suited to their age and disposition. BNL shows here that their technology is excellent at providing comfort as an easy choice, but that it is extremely difficult to undo that choice and regain personal control.
We see failure from the passengers’ total reliance on the chairs when one of them (John) falls out of his chair trying to hand an empty drink cup to Wall-E. The chair shuts down, and John loses his entire connection to the ship. Because of his reliance on the chair, he’s not even able to pull himself back up and desperately reaches for the kiosk-bots for assistance.
This reveals the main flaw of the chair: Buy-N-Large’s model of distinct and complete specialization in robot roles has left the chair unable to help its passenger after the passenger leaves the chair’s seat. The first responders—the kiosk bots—can’t assist either (though this is due to programming, not capability…we see them use stasis/tractor beams in another part of the ship). Who or what robot the kiosk-bots are waiting for is never revealed, but we assume that there is some kind of specialized medical assistance robot specifically designed to help passengers who have fallen out of their chairs.
If these chairs were initially designed for infirm passengers, this would make sense; but the unintended conscription of the chair technology by the rest of the passengers was unforeseen by its original designers. Since BNL focused on specialization and fixed purpose, the ship was unable to change its programming to assist the less disabled members of the population without invoking the rest of the chair’s emergency workflow.
John reaching for help from the Kiosk-bots makes it appear that he either has seen the kiosk-bot use its beams before (so he knows it has the capability to help, if not the desire), or he pays so little attention to the technology that he assumes that any piece of the ship should be able to assist with anything he needs.
Whether he’s tech literate or tech insensitive and just wants things to work like magic as they do on the rest of the ship. The system is failing him and his mental model of the Axiom.
Considering that the chairs already hover, and we know Buy-N-Large can integrate active tractor beams in robot design, it would have been better to have a chair variant that allowed the passenger to be in a standing position inside the chair while it moved throughout the ship. It would then look like a chariot or a full-body exo-skeleton.
This would allow people who may not be able to stand (either due to disability or medical condition) to still participate in active sports like tennis or holo-golf. It would also allow more maneuverability in the chair, allowing it to easily rotate to pick up a fallen passenger and reposition them in a more comfortable spot, even if they needed medical attention.
This would allow immobilization in the case of a serious accident, giving the medical-bot more time to arrive and preventing the passenger from injuring themselves attempting to rescue themselves.
The chair has been designed to be as appealing to a low-activity user as possible. But when technology exists, and is shown to be relatively ubiquitous across different robot types, it should be integrated at the front line where people will need it. Waiting for a medical bot when the situation doesn’t demand a medical response is overly tedious and painful for the user. By using technology already seen in wide use, the chair could be improved to assist people in living an active lifestyle even in the face of physical disabilities.
My birthday is next month. Just saying.
In episode 3 of series 2 of Airwolf computer expert Dr. Karen Hanson has to deal with a “Logic Bomb” in Airwolf. This is first depicted by a screen full of hexadecimal numbers.
Subsequently she is seen listing with the LIST command an Apple BASIC program that produces a screen full of… random hexadecimal numbers.
Debugging note: notice that the screen of hexadecimal does not contain the digit F at any point. This is because the code used to generate the random hexadecimal contains a bug. The INT(RND(1) * 15) + 1 will produce an integer from 1 to 15 and can never output 16 and hence the F from the string A$ is never chosen. This was pointed out by Mr Phlip.
Hard working cats. Life is tough for everyone these days.
Photos via Pinterest
If putting the concepts “work” and “cats” in the same sentence makes any sense at all… :)
Former Halo writer and creative director Joe Staten has joined Microsoft Game Studios.
Staten had been working on Destiny for one-time Microsoft subsidiary Bungie, until September last year. His appointment was announced today by Microsoft studio manager Mike Ybarra. "Thrilled to welcome back Joe Staten to the Microsoft Studios family," he wrote on Twitter.
In September, Staten announced his plans to leave Bungie "to tackle new creative challenges." During his tenure at Bungie, he served as the voice of the Halo series' grunts and the author of the Halo: Contact Harvest novel. Most recently, he served as design director for Destiny, the developer's upcoming open-world shooter. Last year, Staten appeared in a video for Destiny, in which he discussed the shooter's social experience.
Polygon has contacted Microsoft for more information on Staten's new role at the company and his potential involvement in 343 Studios' new Halo game.
Following the tide of formerly niche cable networks that have abandoned their once-noble missions in favor of new ones involving Bigfoots and ghosts, IFC has officially renounced its origins as the “Independent Film Channel,” it was confirmed today. That’s likely not a surprise to anyone who’s seen IFC increasingly concentrate on original comedy shows like Portlandia and Arrested Development reruns, but IFC’s break with its past was made formal at this week’s Television Critics Association panel for The Spoils Of Babylon—a miniseries that is neither independent nor a film. Discuss.
“The name ‘Independent Film Channel’ has been legally retired and IFC as an acronym now stands for nothing,” said network president Jennifer Caserta, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “Well, it actually stands for a growing number of smart, funny and original alternative comedies, but our viewers already know that. So, starting today, IFC is legally IFC.”
...3D printers are becoming more and more accessible, but there's still one big hurdle to using them: unless you know how to create digital objects, there's not much to print. But Matterform is aiming to change that with its stylish, simple, and fairly inexpensive 3D scanner. After a successful Indiegogo campaign last spring, Matterform is finally preparing to launch the device next month, and it's unveiling the final model at CES this week.
You can watch the scan materialize on your computer
The scanner is surprisingly small: when closed, it's a bit larger than a shoebox, but it opens up as though it were putting an object on display, with a spinning platter on the bottom and its scanning mechanism — a camera and two lasers — mounted inside the lid.
Matterform's goal is to get your object from that platter to a 3D printer as easily as possible. Whether you've sculpted an object out of clay or just want to duplicate a small household object, it'll scan it in, clean it up in an app on your computer, and then output a file that you can send over to any 3D printer. You can edit the model too if you want, but the goal is to make the whole process simple enough that many of Matterform's users won't need or want to.
Even on the CES show floor with visitors jiggling the machine throughout its scan, Matterform's scanner was able to create a good looking replica of a cute model monster that it was given to it. Scans take anywhere from about 5 to 45 minutes, depending on how detailed you want the model to turn out, though Matterform says its medium-resolution scan tends to take just 15 minutes. While you wait, you can watch your digital creation slowly rise into existence on your computer, as the scanner sends it over piece by piece.
The scans certainly aren't perfect — and they definitely won't work for anyone who's worried about tolerances — but they should serve just fine for hobbyists. That's an impressive point to reach for the scanner's price, $579, but Matterform says making it so inexpensive was simply a matter of having its small team create the device on its own. Other companies have started putting together comparably priced scanners recently, finally taking them down from upward of several thousand dollars, but few are quite so inexpensive or simple. Even MakerBot's Digitizer regularly sells for $1,400.
Once the scanner is shipping, Matterform plans to make a website for users to share their scans, and then start development on a larger version of the device that could potentially allow it to create higher-resolution models. Such a scanner might appeal to a more professional crowd, but for now, Matterform is aiming straight at consumers interested in design — not the people who already know their way a CAD program.
firehosevia willowbl00
Cat vs. The Paper Army
More cat gifs were requested. This is the last for a little while as to not spam. :)
Back in August 2013, Barnes & Noble declared that it wasn’t giving up on its Nook e-reader just yet. Despite its struggles, the longstanding American book retailer blamed previous management for poor sales. It turns out, though, that even with a new president and CEO, few people want to buy the things.
On Thursday, Barnes & Noble announced that “device and accessories sales” plummeted to $88.7 million during the October through December 2013 holiday period, a drop of 66.7 percent. The company attributed the drop to “lower unit selling volume and lower average selling prices.” Of course, that’s prime shopping season, when most retailers see a spike in sales. The company added that “digital content sales” were $36.5 million during the same time frame, a drop of 27.3 percent.
Somehow, CEO Michael Huseby thought that these depressed sales figures are a good thing.
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Whipped this up on my lunch break to let everybody know I’m not dead.
firehosevia Snorkmaiden
Danny Boy the Super Mario pony is the pride and joy of Lindsay from Knit Fast, Die Warm.
(via So Geek Chic)
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firehosevia Snorkmaiden
fyb-ish, but satan
Having just moved into a new home, all I’ve been doing is searching for new bookcases for the mountains of books my husband and I own. How absolutely perfect is this Pentacle Bookcase from Etsy seller MotherOracle?
