firehose

"Milwaukee Brewers closer John Axford has a sweet mustache. The commentary team in Major League Baseball 2K12, Steve Phillips, Gary Thorne, and John Kruk even spend time talking about it when he's on the mound, throwing strikes. Yes, dialogue was recorded specifically to discuss the pitcher's facial hair - and yet Axford's player model is clean-shaven with some average-joe sideburns."

So began my review of MLB 2K12 a year ago, though it could just as easily serve as a fitting introduction for a review of MLB 2K13. Axford's facial hair hasn't changed in MLB 2K13 - and neither has the game. I take that back: The Online Leagues feature has been removed, the Houston Astros are now in the AL and Tampa Bay Rays pitcher David Price is on the cover. There, I think we're pretty much all caught up.

Continue reading MLB 2K13 review: Shameless

MLB 2K13 review: Shameless originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LoL by: Unknown (via Reddit)

Tagged: dogs , interspecies , paw , friends Share on Facebook

shattersthemoon:

archival footage of GUNS FOR HIRE [x]

holy mother of god i need to see this

babyanimal-gifs:

tawny frogmouth chick
x

trekgate:

“Don’t say it’s fascinating”

And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen and others: the 23rd Century’s Eye-roll Champion in best form…

lordlamebrain:

bakerstreetbabes:

boyinthemachine:

Okay, by just looking at the artwork I deduce that all Holmes and Watson are doing 24/7 is basically sitting around in chairs while judging everything (unless they get up to judge more ppl).

I mean, seriously:

even each other

DYING.

Oh my gawd XD HAH!

Chuckling hard.

Both Holmes and I had a weakness for the
Turkish bath. It was over a smoke in the pleasant
lassitude of the drying-room that I have found
him less reticent and more human than anywhere
else. (The Illustrious Client, A. C. Doyle)

…Uh huh.  :)

(Here’s a double cubicle in one of the drying / cooling areas. This could have been where they were relaxing. Click through for more info.)

…Joking aside, though, this can’t be viewed through our own cultural/period goggles: this was a thing that both men and women did, and tremendously popular. You want to look at the images of the interiors of some of these places. And the ads.

(more under the cut)

(Here’s one from a big London bath that due to popular demand had opened up a separate women’s bath facility so it wouldn’t have to do staggered hours at the main one.)

(For those interested in background:)

• Victorian Turkish Baths (the Places index: check the rest of the site, there’s fabulous stuff there)
• (UK) Baths and Washhouses (Historical Archive)
• What a Turkish bath is like
• Where to go for the best (contemporary) Turkish bath in London

…This is just a hint of the resources out there. A fascinating subject…

YouTube Bonus: Michael Palin has a Turkish Bath.

Link here (Twitter): https://mobile.twitter.com/The_Whip_Hand/status/311510132565622785 Radio Times link: http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2013-03-12/benedict-cumberbatch-confirms-sherlock-series-4

“We’ve agreed to two more series but I could get into trouble for saying that,” said Cumberbatch at the South Bank Show Awards this afternoon. “All I know at the moment is I’m doing these three and another three.”

(A clarification: the two leads have signed for a fourth season, but this does not necessarily confirm that a fourth season has been picked up by the BBC. Though that could have happened but not been publicized as yet.)

The original question from depechemoses:

How fleshed out is the Romulan language? You always hear about people knowing Klingon and that’s fine and dandy, but Romulan seems like it’d be a way more interesting thing to know.

Strangely, that’s how the Rihannsu books started in the first place. I asked my editor at Trek about the possibility of doing a Romulan dictionary, but was told that the Klingon one wasn’t doing so well (this was a long time ago) and there was no demand. “But you should feel free to do something else,” I was told. 

I did something else. :) It’s never a long step from linguistics to history. And then to culture, and cultural differences. And then to plot. And a woman saying, “I was planning to capture your starship. Do you mind?”  )

(One note here. There will always be people hung up on the Mary Sue concept who are sure that female authors are busy self-inserting into any fictional milieu, especially Trek. Such people don’t get that good writers self-insert into all their characters: they must do so to make them engage correctly with the reader. And to do so in just one gender, role or aspect is unfair to all the others, who expect from you the creator’s common courtesy in bringing everyone equably to life. Those who’re looking for me will find me readily enough, in sickbay usually, snarking gently at one of my favorite Doctors. …But Ael is based physically on my then-Trek editor, Mimi Panitch, a slight dark-haired woman who no one would have been wise to tangle with, and mentally on other friends much smarter and fiercer than I. I much prefer to put my friends in my books. People I don’t like are annoying enough in what passes for real life; I don’t allow them into my creative work.)

…Once I had my plot in place, I started coining words. I used a simple MBASIC program that I wrote to do this. I wanted something that (in sound) was halfway between Latin and Welsh. I gave the program a long series of phonemes and instructed it to start stringing them together. In every long page of printout I would find five or six words that sounded nice. 

Then I started messing with grammar. And then I realized I had little time for that, so I filched some Dracon-language grammar endings from the Middle Kingdoms books, subverted then a bit, and plugged them in where necessary. (All the time, C. J. Cherryh’s work in HUNTER OF WORLDS was on my mind. Carolyn does not stop to discuss grammar with you, but by the time you finish the book, you understand a fair amount of the iduve language, enough to get along with them and keep one of them from killing you, which is the whole point. CJ is a genius with languages.)

And that’s all the work I did.

…The Rihannsu-language generator has been ported into other languages by sweet and dedicated geeks to whom I am indebted. I’ll find links and add them here later. 

ETA: here’s a link to a Python version at GitHub. Someone apparently also did a Ruby version a couple of years back.

Humble Android Bundle 5 has reason to brag with the addition of three new games to its lineup of unlockables: Superbrothers Sword & Sworcery EP, Splice and Crayon Physics Deluxe. This trio joins Super Hexagon and Dungeon Defenders as games available by paying more than the average, which generally stays below $7. All unlocked games come with their original soundtracks.

Games available for any price at all are Beat Hazard Ultra, Dynamite Jack, Solar 2 and NightSky HD, along with all of their soundtracks (excluding Dynamite Jack). All games come for PC, Mac, Linux and Android devices, with system requirements here. There are six days left to get some games on the cheap and donate to charity at the same time, right at Humble Bundle.

Humble Android Bundle 5 adds Sword and Sworcery, Splice, Crayon Physics Deluxe originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 12 Mar 2013 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NPR

Google fined, will beef up privacy training in Street View settlement Washington Post Google will institute enhanced employee privacy training and create a public campaign about the importance of securing wireless networks as part of a $7 million settlement with state officials who were investigating the company's controversial Street View ... Google To Pay $7 Million Fine Over Street View SnafuHuffington Post Google pays $7 million to settle 'Wi-Spy' case filed by statesNBCNews.com (blog) Google Fined $7MFox Business News-Herald.com -ValueWalk -OzarksFirst.com all 191 news articles »

The quote in the title is from www.muckrock.com/about/. And that is exactly what MuckRock is all about: Making FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests for you (and investigative reporters) so you don't have to deal with the often-daunting paperwork and runarounds you may run into when you try to pry information out of a recalcitrant government agency. In theory, most government information is public. In practice, many local, state and federal government bodies would just as soon never tell you anything. This is why Tim Lord talked with MuckRock co-founder Michael Morisy, and why we're running this interview in the middle of Sunshine Week, which exists "...to educate the public about the importance of open government and the dangers of excessive and unnecessary secrecy."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sagmeister

Let’s dance

Earth girls are easy, Library Edition

Vonnegut,  Kurt Snarfield - Class of 1940

photo via AP/Kyodo News

When the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami struck Japan on March 11, 2011, an entire forest in the Iwate Prefecture was obliterated by the tsunami. Of the 70,000 trees, just one remained: the so-called “Miracle Pine.” The lone pine tree lived for 18 months after the disaster before it died due to saline soil conditions caused by the tsunami. Over the course of its 173 year life span it had survived three major tsunamis (1896, 1933, 2011). When the tree died it was cut down and sectioned for preservation. It has since been rebuilt as a monument. The trunk was hollowed out and reinforced with a carbon spine. The branches and leaves at the top of the tree were replicated in plastic. Two years after the disaster, the Miracle Pine now stands as a lasting monument.

photo by Per-Anders Pettersson/Corbis

via The Asahi Shimbun, Colossal, designboom

New neighbors, Adrian Tomine

Here’s the breakdown of how I draw lineart for swamps.

1. Rivers

Swamps are often around a river – if this is the case, then begin with the river at the heart of the swamp. Unlike most rivers which usually run for miles without branches, in a swamp I add lots and lots of tributaries feeding into the main river. This indicates the water draining in from the wider swamp and helps to define the borders of the swamp. Because I’m drawing a 3/4 style map here, I emphasise the horizontal spread of the rivers over the vertical spreads.

If your swamp isn’t connected to a river, then ignore this step.

2. Tufts of swamp grass

Add in tufts of grass throughout the swamp. 2-3 lines spiking up from the ground should do the trick.

3. Water Ripples

Here we really specify the area of the swamps. I add horizontal lines and ripples to imply the surface water in the bog. The lines don’t meet up with the tufted grass – that separation helps keep the texture clean rather than messy. Finally I add a rippled line around the edge to define the limits of the swamp.

For more tutorials check out the tutorial archive.

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small pieces 1/3 cup honey 4 large egg yolks 2 large eggs 2/3 cup fresh blood orange or lemon juice (about 4-6 blood oranges or 6-8 lemons). Be sure to zest the citrus before juicing it! 1 tablespoon finely grated blood orange or lemon zest

If Lucian Rudaux was the Grandfather of space art, Chesley Bonestell was the father. He was born on January 1, 1888, 15 years before the Wright brothers first flew and 38 years before the launch of the first liquid-fuel rocket. When he died 98 years later, men had walked on the moon and spacecraft had visited most of the planets and many of the moons of the solar system.

Bonestell's paintings not only anticipated 20th century space exploration, they helped to bring it about. So realistic were his depictions of other worlds that visiting them no longer seemed fantasy. His artwork looked like picture postcards taken by some future astronaut.

Bonestell started drawing at age five and be­gan formal art instruction by the time he was 12. When he was 17, he visited Lick Observatory where he was in­spired by seeing Saturn through the observatory's giant refractors. As soon as he returned home, Bonestell sketched a picture of the planet as he had observed it—probably his first attempt at space art.

Bonestell eventually became an architectural designer and renderer. One of his first professional jobs was working with the legendary Willis Polk on the reconstruction of San Francisco after the great earthquake and fire. Polk quickly made Bonestell his chief designer. In New York, Bonestell assisted Wil­liam van Alen in the design of the Chrysler Building (its famous gargoyles are Bonestell's work). Later, Bonestell worked on the Golden Gate Bridge.

During this time, he kept up his interest in astronomy, filling sketchbooks with extraterrestrial scenes, like this one:

In 1938, Bonestell began a new career in Hollywood as a spe­cial effects matte painter. The first film he worked on was Orson Welles's Citizen Kane. All the views of turn-of-the-century New York and of Charles Foster Kane's mansion, Xan­adu, are Bonestell's artwork. In The Fountainhead, Bonestell in a sense was Howard Roark: all of the buildings created by Ayn Rand's superheroic architect are by Bonestell. He eventually became Hollywood's highest-paid matte artist.

After his success as an astronomical artist, Bonestell returned to Hollywood to provide spe­cial effects art for George Pal’s Destination Moon, War of the Worlds and When Worlds Collide. The complete panoramic matte painting for the latter is here, and an unused alternate version below:

And Bonestell's 14-foot-wide lunar landscape created for Destination Moon:

It occurred to him that he could employ what he’d learned as a special effects artist to create astronomical art with a level of realism never seen before. "As my knowledge of the technical side of the motion picture industry broadened,” he wrote, “I realized I could ap­ply camera angles as used in the motion picture studio to il­lustrate 'travel' from satellite to satellite, showing Saturn ex­actly as it would look, and at the same time I could add inter­est by showing the inner satellites or outer ones on the far side of Saturn, as well as the planet itself in different phas­es."

For instance, he often employed a laborious technique of constructing detailed model landscapes, which he then photographed, painting over the final print. This resulted in a level of realism that was utterly convincing. It was a laborious technique, however, that he seldom used after the 1950s. Here is a detail from one these models:

e

This project resulted in his first published space art, a series of paintings depicting scenes on Saturn’s moons, that appeared in the May 29,1944, issue of Life. The public—to say nothing of science fiction fans—were astonished and delighted. Among the paintings was a ethereally beautiful view of Saturn seen from Titan. Inspiring an entire generation of scientists and space enthusiasts—countless scientists, engineers and astronauts have been inspired in their choice of careers by Bonestell's images, including a young Carl Sagan—it has been called “the painting that launched a thousand careers.”

Around this time, Bonestell began a long-term collabora­tion with Willy Ley, an expatriate German historian and sci­ence popularizer who had been a member of the German Spaceflight Society (Verein fur Raumschiffahrt). Taking advantage of Ley's advice, Bonestell began adding spacecraft to his paintings. In 1946 Life published another set of his il­lustrations, this time depicting a manned flight to the moon.

Bonestell's art began appearing regularly in magazines, from Look, Coronet, Pic and Mechanix Illustrated to Air Trails, Scientific American and Astounding Science Fiction. So popular had his art become that Bonestell once mistakenly sent the cover painting for a science-fiction magazine to the wrong publication. The editor of that magazine promptly ran it! Bonestell's first book, The Conquest of Space, created in collaboration with Ley, featured 48 of his paintings. It became an immediate best-seller. The cover painting has become one of the iconic images of the 1950s:

In addition to the artwork he was creating for books, magazines and movies, Bonestell created a magnificent mural for the Boston Museum of Science. Forty feet wide, it depicted a lunar landscape with breathtaking realism. The mural was removed after the Apollo 11 landing in 1969 because “it was no longer accurate.” The mural is now in the collection of the National Air & Space Museum, where plans are being made to restore and display it.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke tried to explain Bonestell’s popularity at this time by saying that his “...remarkable technique produces an effect of realism so strik­ing that his paintings have sometimes been mistaken for ac­tual colour photographs by those slightly unacquainted with the present status of interplanetary flight.... In the years to come it is probably destined to fire many imaginations, and thereby to change many lives."

Clarke was only too right. In 1951 Cornelius Ryan, the asso­ciate editor of Collier's magazine, invited Bonestell to illus­trate a series of five articles on the future of spaceflight. The prime author was Wernher von Braun.

Just as Clarke had been, von Braun found himself awed by Bonestell's sharp eye for scientific and engineering accuracy. He once wrote that "Chesley Bonestell's pictures... are far more than reproductions of beautiful ethereal paintings of Worlds Beyond. They present the most accurate portrayal of those faraway heavenly bodies that modern science can offer. I do not say this lightly. In my many years of association with Chesley I have learned to respect, nay fear, this wonderful artist's obsession with perfection. My file cabinet is filled with sketches of rocket ships I had prepared to help him in his art work—only to have them returned to me with pene­trating detailed questions or blistering criticism of some in­consistency or oversight."

The Collier's series—published between 1952 and 1954—took America by storm. The country turned space-happy; reproductions and knockoffs of Bonestell's paintings appeared in settings ranging from commercial advertise­ments to television programs to school lunch boxes. The series was eventually collected in three books: Across the Space Frontier, Conquest of the Moon and Exploration of Mars, now all collector’s items. Bonestell's artwork strongly influenced the American pub­lic and, in turn, the government to support an investment in space exploration. An influence that has been repeatedly acknowledged.

Over the following decade Bonestell watched manned space explo­ration become a reality. He grumpily noticed that the softly rolling lu­nar hills seen by the Apollo astronauts bore little resemblance to the craggy, romanticized, Doresque landscapes he had painted. But such inaccuracies do little to diminish the primary importance of Bonestell's work. His illustrations gave immediacy and veri­similitude to dry astronomical data. What had once been columns of numbers and blurry telescopic images took on a new, compelling reality.

Bonestell continued to work until he died in 1986, an un­finished painting still on his easel. Asteroid number 3129 and a crater on Mars have been given the name "Bonestell"—a fitting honor for the man whose art contributed to the birth of the space age.

All art copyright by and reproduced courtesy of Bonestell LLC

Mar 11th 2013 By: Ziah Grace

Cartoon Network's action and anime-focused Toonami programming block returned to Sunday nights last May following a four-year hiatus, with plans to re-air much of its classic content while developing original programming and continuing to acquire freshly-localized anime. This past weekend at the MomoCon anime convention in Atlanta, Toonami staff announced its plans for the block's second year back, including launching a new logo, hosting the American TV debut of the 2010 Evangelion 1.11 You Are (Not) Alone animated feature as part of its 16th(ish) birthday on March 16, unveiling a redesigned TOM and his Absolution ship for hosting duties in April (alongside webcomics fleshing out his own original storyline around the same timeframe), plus plans to air Funimation's uncut version of One Piece beginning later this year.

From the Toonami Tumblr:

We're showing "Evangelion 1.11 You Are (Not) Alone". Full schedule below.

12:00 – Bleach
12:30 – Naruto
01:00 – Evangelion 1.11
03:30 – FMA Brotherhood
04:00 – Cowboy Bebop
04:30 – Cowboy Bebop
05:00 – Inuyasha
05:30 – Inuyasha

Toonami also clarified on its Tumblr that the March 16 block will include, "a few other goodies airing on our birthday, so don't miss it! And no... NO HINTS. You gotta watch! :)" The Toonami staff also teased that "We are still exploring short series to air, short series fans, so we'll let you know if and when we have announcements in that area!"

The new TOM 5 and Absolution ship will not only serve as TV hosts, they'll also appear in "an online comic that will tell the story of How TOM 3 became TOM 4, how TOM 4 became TOM 3.5, where Sara and the Clydes are, and how we got TOM 5 and the new Absolution."

Many of the specifics behind Toonami's One Piece's broadcast plans are still up in the air, with Toonami writing that, "We're not sure yet it if will replace Tenchi GXP or come in later, and we're not sure where we will start in the episode order. We'll let you know more in the coming months."

Debuting as an action cartoon block hosted by Space Ghost villain Moltar on March 17, 1997, Toonami was rebooted in 1999 with an original spaceman host known as TOM, along with a new Japanese anime focus. Hosting shows like Neon Genesis Evangelion, Trigun, Dragon Ball Z, Cowboy Bebob, numerous Gundam series, and many others, Toonami served as a gateway to anime (and by extension, much of its manga source material) for a generation of viewers.

[Via ANN/Crunchyroll/ToonamiNews]

When Batman and Robin #18 arrives in stores Wednesday, you’ll notice the cover by Patrick Gleason and Mick Gray is decidedly different from the one solicited by DC Comics in December. Gone are the hopeful red hues of a Gotham City at sunset, replaced by the somber blue-gray tones of night.Gone, too, is what might be mistaken for a grin on Bruce Wayne’s face, now eclipsed by shadow.

And oh, yeah, it’s also missing a grinning Damian Wayne, soaring through the air at his father’s side, replaced by the darkness within the folds of Batman’s cape. Never has Gleason’s skull-shaped signature seemed more appropriate.

While the other Bat-Family titles receive completely new covers for the “Requieum” storyline, which deals with the aftermath of Damian’s death in Batman Incorporated #8, Batman and Robin #18 is the only one to boast a modified image — one made more eerie by the absence of Robin.

It’s an entirely silent issue,” writer Peter J. Tomasi told Comic Book Resources. “No text, no sound effects, storytelling at its purest form — show don’t tell — and, holy crap, does Patrick Gleason show why, in my humble opinion, he might be one of the best Batman artists ever. He knocks it out of the park.”

What we’re reading

[Bunnie], the hardware hacker who first hacked into the original Xbox while at MIT, is releasing his book on the subject for free. The book was originally released in 2003, and delves into both the technical and legal aspects of hacking into the console.

The book is being released along with an open letter from [Bunnie]. He discusses the issues he faced with MIT legal and copyright law when working on the project, and explains that the book is being released to honor [Aaron Swartz]. [Swartz] committed suicide in January following aggressive prosecution by the US government.

The book is a great read on practical applications of hardware hacking. It starts off with simple hacks: installing a blue LED, building a USB adapter for the device’s controller ports, and replacing the power supply. The rest of the book goes over how the security on the device was compromised, and the legal implications of pulling off the hack.

[Bunnie]‘s open letter is worth a read, it explains the legal bullying that hackers deal with from a first hand prospective. The book itself is a fantastic primer on hardware hacking, and with this release anyone who hasn’t read it should grab the free PDF.

Filed under: news, xbox hacks

So, Surgeon Simulator 2013 came out of nowhere (well, this year's Global Game Jam) to be one of the most hilarious, disturbing games that some folks have played this year. And that was before the folks at Bossa Studios added brain surgery to their in-progress game.

A new video gives a glimpse of just what it'll be like to be a maladroit neurosurgeon in the game. Let's just say that no patient is making a full recovery after SurgSim2013 players are doing hammering at that cranium. Surgeon Simulator 2013 is currently up on Steam Greenlight so there's a good chance you'll be whacking at some poor schmoe's head in this exact way very soon.

New submitter jader3rd writes "Intrade, a popular Irish website that lets people bet on anything, has shut down. In addition to being used by gamblers, Intrade has been used by academics and pundits to track public sentiment. '"... broad crowds have a lot of information and that markets are an effective way of aggregating that information," says Justin Wolfers, "and they often turn out to be much better than experts."' Being forced to lose their U.S. customers couldn't have helped.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a recent study, astrobiologists claim to have found fossilized algae-like structures in a Sri Lankan meteorite that landed on December 29th 2012, MIT Technology Review reports. If the research is accurate, the findings would provide support for the theory of panspermia, the idea that life exists elsewhere in the universe and is spread through comets and asteroids. The research, led by Jamie Wallis at Cardiff University, claims to have “clear and convincing evidence that these obviously ancient remains of extinct marine algae found embedded in the Polonnaruwa meteorite are indigenous to the stones and not the result of post-arrival microbial contaminants.” However, critics remain skeptical that the findings aren’t the result of contamination or that the rocks even came from outer space. One possibility is that the rocks in question were formed on Earth by lightning strikes, the other is that they started on Earth, were ejected from the planet by an earlier asteroid impact, and re-entered the atmosphere.

via MIT Technology Review