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Williams' popularity, ratings could save his job USA TODAY Beyond being the most popular evening network news anchor, Brian Williams is a brand. The 55-year-old newsman routinely yucks it up with David Letterman and Jimmy Fallon on the talk show circuit. He's made self-deprecating appearances with Tina Fey ... Brian Williams gets support from ex-CBS anchor Dan RatherNew York Daily News all 1,298 news articles »

Apple on Monday posted a listing to its Jobs at Apple page describing an Engineering Project Manager position for "Apple Search," sparking speculation the company could be working on a full-fledged search engine for use on OS X and iOS platforms.

As first highlighted by Cult of Mac, the most recent position would be based in San Francisco and asks for applicants who are "technical, driven and creative," with the ability to "manage back end operations projects for a search platform supporting hundreds of millions of users." Though Apple's website lists the job as posted February 2, 2015, entries on other job sites indicate it was originally posted on November 19, 2014.


Though the wording appears to hint at a new service, in all likelihood the job's parameters are covering Apple's already-existing search platform, largely embodied in Spotlight. Another job, posted in mid-January, supports the Spotlight probability thanks to frequent mentions of the updated Spotlight Suggestions service.

While gaining attention thanks to the use of the term "Apple Search," the new listings are less likely to be aimed at an entirely new Apple-based search engine and more likely cover ongoing efforts to improve Spotlight. Job listings have in the past hinted at the company's work on upcoming projects, but most of the time - as with patents - they are more of an intriguing tease into what may or may not be going on behind the scenes.

Apple is facing some search engine decisions this year, however, with Google's search engine contract with Apple reportedly set to expire in 2015. That is most likely to be resolved, however, by an extension of the contract for an additional term or perhaps a shift to another provider such as Yahoo or Microsoft, both of which are reportedly lobbying for the lucrative deal.

For real?!?! WOW...... OK Blount I see u pic.twitter.com/kNXMyQynIy

— Sea"206"Hawks™ (@206fts) February 4, 2015

The Patriots are turning their Super Bowl parade in Boston into an all-out Seahawks trollfest. First there was Julian Edelman waving a Richard Sherman meme, now running back LeGarrette Blount has some pretty bold things to say about Marshawn Lynch.

It's a shame these teams don't play regularly, or this could be fun.

Blount responded to the picture later on Twitter:

About this shirt.. Just so ppl know, I have 100% respect for @MoneyLynch and how he plays the game. There's a reason he's called #BeastMode

— LeGarrette Blount (@LG_Blount) February 5, 2015

h/t @KevinShockey

SB Nation presents: Final thoughts on Marshawn Lynch, Rob Gronkowshi and Super Bowl XLIX

Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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This is part one of a new three-part series from Theodore Jefferson, whose new book, The Incredible Untold Story of Sailor Moon, is available now.

Marvel declared bankruptcy in 1996, and one of the key reasons was its inability to get into the film business. Despite record-setting comic book releases only a few years earlier, Marvel didn’t have access to the box office dollars (and the attendant publicity) an iconic character like Spider-Man could bring them.

As it turned out, it took a marathon bankruptcy war to shake the necessary rights loose so Marvel could make their movies.  Film fans and comic book fans alike have enjoyed the fruits of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe ever since, culminating in the billion-dollar Avengers film in 2012.

The reason Marvel had so much trouble in the 1990s is because up to ten companies owned a share of the rights to make a Spider-Man film.  It would have required a unanimous consensus to get anything into production, and anyone who works in this town will tell you a unanimous anything in Hollywood is virtually impossible.

One of the great strengths of the Sailor Moon license during the same period was that DIC CEO Andy Heyward made certain to acquire a full portfolio of rights to Sailor Moon in a large enough territory to make those rights worthwhile. As the English-language licensee, DIC had manufacturing, recording, syndication, adaptation, home video, interactive, apparel, and some limited publishing rights, along with a rumored inside track on some share of the film rights.

As a result, DIC was able to manufacture toys, games, apparel, some books, VHS home video, DVDs, audio CDs, and even a video game. Sailor Moon wasn’t near the financial success in the United States and other English-speaking territories that it was in Japan, but because of its ambitious licensed merchandising, it certainly wasn’t a disaster either.

Unfortunately, the Sailor Moon of 2015 is far different than the Sailor Moon of 1995.  The licensing situation for the character in English-speaking territories in 2015 is an unfathomable train wreck. One need only look for the dedicated Sailor Moon section that isn’t on Amazon or the “coming soon” pages on Viz Media’s official site for confirmation of this state of affairs. This is a property that is worth almost as much as the New England Patriots, and it has an “under construction” website almost eight months after its new episodes premiered!

Toei and Bandai have apparently never awarded any significant rights outside of Japan aside from home video and streaming. Viz Media claims to have interactive rights but appears to be unable to do anything with them, and to put a little frosting on this half-a-loaf approach, it appears Toei Animation might be competing with their own licensee by making side-deals for streaming Sailor Moon in English.

The similarities between the Spider-Man of the 1970s and 1980s and the Sailor Moon of 2015 are both remarkable and inexplicable.  Here is a property with ten-figure potential (Sailor Moon) that literally can’t get out of its own way.

One wonders why it was ever licensed in the first place. Aside from whatever is being purchased in and shipped from Japan, Sailor Moon has no apparent source of significant income! There’s no business case for this show outside of Japan.

This situation is devastating for the property itself and more importantly, highly discouraging for fans. The Marvel of the 1990s was personified by a distant, uninterested billionaire, and so is the “Sailor Moon Inc.” of 2015. English-language fans, particularly in Canada, feel left out and abandoned. The situation is tarnishing the property and the characters, and it is forcing numerous companies other than Toei and Bandai to leave money on the table.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

If asked, any animation executive will tell you a show by itself is worthless aside from its utility as a commercial for all the other stuff you want to sell. This has been true of both animated television and film dating back to the 1970s and 1950s respectively.  Disney built an empire on animated film rights starting with Winnie the Pooh, and companies like Hanna Barbera, Hasbro, and Mattel did the same with animated television during the breakfast cereal wars of Jimmy Carter’s presidential term.

On television, animation was cheap and plentiful. Fred Flintstone could run the 800m hurdles in his living room while passing the same chair sixteen times, the Transformers transformed at about four frames a second, and roughly half of Scooby Doo was the same run cycle for each character moving between opening and closing doors during groovy music montages.

The kids didn’t care. Mattel sold enough Hot Wheels track to circle the Earth, Barbie took over half of every toy store in America, and even the world’s least geeky kid owned at least one Transformer. That potential is why Andy Heyward pursued the Sailor Moon rights in 1994. That potential is why Ronald Perelman took 46% of the stock in Toy Biz and gave future billionaire Ike Perlmutter a perpetual royalty-free license to make Spider-Man action figures at about the same time.

But in 2015, there is no company in America capable of doing the same thing for Sailor Moon. According to my sources, Viz Media simply lacks the right to do anything except market the show itself. Without some kind of syndication deal that third parties can monetize, those rights have no value. They are particularly limited when the show’s licensor is also marketing the show.

Then there’s the issue of three versions of the same show: three companies with three different visions and three different directions. DIC marketed Sailor Moon to children. Viz is marketing Sailor Moon to nostalgic young adults. Toei is marketing Sailor Moon to manga readers.

Meanwhile, all of the merchandising is five thousand miles away. The licenses are five thousand miles away. There is nobody here in this market championing the property. There is no company with the right to do what is necessary to turn the good will Sailor Moon has accumulated over the years into a vision for her future.

And the fans are growing more and more unhappy about it.

The situation is almost exactly the same as the one facing Spider-Man during the Marvel bankruptcy. Fans were discouraged by talk of breaking up Marvel and selling the pieces off, and the reason a company with more than 3500 characters was completely unable to do anything worthwhile is because Spider-Man was quite literally tangled in his own web.

When I worked for DIC, my job was to help find ways to maximize the value of the English-language Sailor Moon character license.

In Part Two of this three-part series, I’ll show you what Bandai and Toei could have done differently three years ago, and twelve years ago, and how it would have delighted Sailor Moon fans around the world.

Theodore Jefferson is the author of The Incredible Untold Story of Sailor Moon, the definitive history of the world-famous animated television series in the United States and other English-speaking territories.  Mr. Jefferson is a founding member of the Lexicon Hollow Authors Guild and also writes for Moon Game.

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jones_supa writes: The importance of exercise has been arriving in spades for geek culture. However, when approaching extremes, a point is reached where vigorous jogging erodes some of the benefits light jogging has over a sedentary lifestyle. "Long-term excessive exercise may be associated with coronary artery calcification, diastolic dysfunction and large artery wall stiffening," wrote lead author Peter Schnohr of Copenhagen's Frederiksberg Hospital in a Danish study (abstract). Although previous research has found that physically active people have at least a 30% lower risk of death compared with inactive people, the ideal amount of exercise remains somewhat uncertain. In this study, strenuous joggers — people who ran faster than 11 km/h for more than 4 hours a week; or who ran faster than 11 km/h for more than 2.5 hours a week with a frequency of more than three times a week — had a mortality rate that is not statistically different from that of the sedentary group. Medical journalist Larry Husten notes that this study, while interesting, should not be taken as the final word on the subject.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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When is a stunt not a stunt? Perhaps when you set up a website, take thousands of orders, process the majority, and then sell the site for $85,000

Mat Carpenter fooled us all. The 22-year-old Australian SEO expert and online marketer managed to convince the world’s media that he had set up ShipYourEnemiesGlitter.com, a website which would package up glitter in an envelope and ship it to your enemies anywhere in the world for just AU$10.

In fact, the whole thing was a stunt, Carpenter says. The joke is on us: all he actually did was set up a website, take more than 2,000 orders, ship out the majority of the packages, and then sell the site for $85,000 to a buyer who promises to fulfil the rest of the orders, as well as continue the website as a going concern.

Continue reading...

In his column for WND, Teenage singing sensation Pat Boone revealed President Obama's diabolical plan to "release all murderers" from prison.

Read the rest

Indian comedians are angry. Really, really angry.

“People are waiting to get offended. They open their computers in the morning, and they think ‘how can I be offended today,'” said stand-up comedian Atul Khatri. “It’s becoming a national pastime.”

“Comedians speak the truth—and get paid for that. We’re saying it like it is,” said Sumukhi Suresh of “Anu Aunty” fame. “It’s sad if you pull the plug.”

There is reason for such derision. A week after All India Bakchod (AIB) released videos of a live performance on YouTube, the comedy collective has taken down the content in the face of outrage from right-wing Hindu groups, threats of action by politicians and a police investigation.

And thus, the already difficult business of stand-up comedy in India has suddenly become even more challenging as comedians find their freedom of expression questioned and their preferred medium of distribution under scrutiny.

But there’s a strange irony in this entire situation: Stand-up comedy in India has rarely got such mainstream publicity—and that definitely won’t hurt an industry where eyeballs matter.

Appropriate warnings

“AIB took every possible precaution to make sure that if someone doesn’t want to see the video, they shouldn’t see it,” stand-up comedian Kenneth Sebastian told Quartz. “Seriously, don’t watch it if you can’t handle it.”

The three YouTube videos came with appropriate warnings for adult content. Even before the live performance took place, the comedy collective suggested watching roasts of Charlie Sheen and Pamela Anderson to prepare attendees to what to expect. Not only this, there were boards at the venue to warn about the content.

“If you don’t like it, watch MSG (The Messenger of God) or an episode of Ramayana. Don’t waste your time,” Khatri suggested.

The show—christened “AIB Knockout”—was neither aired on television nor on radio, where people could have stumbled on it by chance. To be offended, one had to go on YouTube and search the video. “It’s like breaking into someone’s house, going into the bathroom, using it, and then putting a notice that ‘your bathroom is not clean,’” Sebastian said.

Karan Johar, who was the roastmaster and a butt of some seriously insulting jokes himself, felt similarly:

The internet

The internet—and YouTube, to be precise—has always been the medium of choice for India’s fledgling comedy community.

“They won’t let us be on TV or radio, so let us be on the internet. There is no other medium like YouTube that let’s you have freedom of speech,” said Sebastian. “If you are going to moral police the internet, that’s insane, because then we might move to the Middle East or North Korea.”

Though pressure was evidently piling on, it was unclear as to why exactly AIB chose to restrict access to the videos on YouTube. The comedy collection has been reluctant to talk to the press and declined comment when Quartz reached out on Feb. 03.

It has now given this lengthy explanation.

“The internet is what unites us 1% who think like that,” added Sebastian. “We will find a way through Twitter or Facebook, and ironically, we will make sure that they don’t do more moral policing. We know our rights.”

“Forget India. YouTube is the last bastion of free speech for every country in the planet,” said stand-up comedian Sorabh Pant.

Thin-skinned

Being the path-breakers they are, AIB isn’t new to authorities clamping down, said Sebastian. “But they didn’t realise the magnitude.”

“India would have had to wait at least 10 years to watch gay jokes openly—that too by celebrities—in a country where being gay is illegal,” he added. “Basically, you’re so open and accepting about each other that you make jokes about it.”

The same was true for a woman comedian, Aditi Mittal, being roasted—with the same level of audacity as for a man—and she was fine with it.

“You make a joke as an equal—that’s what women want in India. She is above these jokes. That’s maturity,” Sebastian said.

For women stand-up artists like Suresh,  what’s even more grating is that groups and politicians vociferously oppose AIB’s humor, while comedians like Kapil Sharma can go about night-after-night making blatantly insulting jokes about wives and women. “It’s a little irritating.”

The double standards are difficult to miss.

“If any politician says…shit like ‘women should stay at home,’ that’s fine. But they’d have a problem with celebrities making fun of each other—with complete consent,” said Sebastian. “All this is not about AIB. It’s just a sense of control they want to have.”

“There were people who got offended over PK without even having seen the movie. So these are unemployed people who would go out of their way to get offended,” added Pant.

Comeback

But India’s stand-up comedy community isn’t planning to back down.

“It won’t stop AIB or anyone else from coming up with live shows,” said Suresh. Instead, all the mainstream publicity that AIB and their ilk has managed in the last few days will only help broaden the audience. “Comedians aren’t going to listen to people saying, ‘Don’t do it.'”

“We thrive on this,” said Sebastian. “Such things are just gonna push us more to talk about things like this.”

“This whole thing makes us aware of what you can do and cannot do. It was waiting to happen. The only thing will happen is that language might be diluted,” added Pant, “But we will still be working hard to create comedy.”

So, who will have the last laugh?

This article is a part of Quartz India. For more, follow this link.

The American talk show host Jimmy Fallon finally played yesterday alongside one of his heroes and favorite targets for impersonation (video), Neil Young. It was an indisputably tender moment on The Tonight Show, and one that demonstrated what many of his fans have known for a long time—Jimmy Fallon is not just a gifted mimic, but also an excellent musician.

Fallon is probably not the best comedian on late night (that distinction goes to Conan O’Brien), nor the best interviewer (Craig Ferguson, though his show ended in December), but he offers something that no one else currently on television does. His versatility elevates the iconic show to heights not seen on American variety TV since Carol Burnett and Dean Martin.

After years of stale Jay Leno one-liners and bits, it’s refreshing to see NBC and The Tonight Show allow Jimmy to be Jimmy. Here are a few of Fallon’s best musical performances:

Playing harmonica on Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” with actor Russell Crowe (solo at 1:42):

Doing an absolutely uncanny impersonation of The Doors’ frontman Jim Morrison on a bluesy rendition of, yes, the Reading Rainbow theme song (video):

Filling in admirably for Bono on “Desire” after the musical act U2 had to cancel:

Singing R. Kelly’s “Ignition (Remix)” with his barbershop quartet, The Ragtime Gals:

His virtuoso “History of Rap” series with Justin Timberlake:

Finally, harmonizing—on the spot—with Billy Joel to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”:

Fallon is not the only late night talk show host with musical talent, though. Conan O’Brien is also a solid guitar player (video).

Judge asked to order measles shots for four Highland Township children The Macomb Daily A single-dose vial of the measles-mumps-rubella virus vaccine live, or MMR vaccine is shown at the practice of Dr. Charles Goodman in Northridge, Calif., Thursday, Jan. 29, 2015. Some doctors are adamant about not accepting patients who don't believe in ... and more »

Meanwhile, the Colts keep digging through Canada for football talent.

The Atlanta Falcons are currently embroiled in a crowd noise controversy. The NFL is investigating the use of artificial crowd noise being pumped into the Georgia Dome, which is prohibited by NFL rules. Owner Arthur Blank has even admitted the "embarrassing" tactic. Given the situation, one would expect the team to avoid further negative attention.

However, according to Fox Sports, new head coach Dan Quinn has hired Steve Scarnecchia, a member of the New England Patriots' video department during the "Spygate" scandal.

Spygate isn't the only controversy that surrounds Scarnecchia. In 2010 as an assistant with the Denver Broncos, he was caught taping an opponent's walkthrough before a game. The league fined the Broncos $50,000 for the infraction. Scarnecchia might offer plenty as a coach, but it's questionable whether a team like the Falcons should hire him when they're trying to move past their own issues with the NFL.

Green Bay expected to promote Ron Zook to special teams coordinator

No team had more blocked kicks than the Green Bay Packers in 2014, which also saw their season end in part due to a special teams gaff in the NFC Championship Game. Accordingly, head coach Mike McCarthy made the decision to part with special teams coordinator Shawn Slocum after six years. Now the Packers need to locate a replacement, and it appears they're zeroing in on their guy. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the frontrunner for the position is current assistant Ron Zook.

Usually special teams assistants are anonymous individuals in the eyes of the public, but Zook's previous stints as the head coach of the University of Illinois and the University of Florida have given him notoriety. He has actually worked as a special teams coordinator before, serving in that capacity with the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Florida Gators. Whether he can improve one of the league's worst units won't be known for at least another season.

Carolina reassigns Richard Rodgers

The Packers aren't the only team making changes on special teams. The Carolina Panthers finished near the bottom of every significant special teams category in 2014. While they won a playoff berth, they see this is an area they need to improve in order to compete for a championship. As such, coordinator Richard Rodgers has been reassigned by head coach Ron Rivera, per a report by the Charlotte Observer.

The report goes on to say that Rodgers' assistant, Bruce DeHaven, is expected to replace him as the team's special teams coordinator. Rodgers has served in that capacity for the past three seasons after a lengthy career in the college ranks. His son, Richard Rodgers II, plays tight end for the Packers. However, it does not appear at this time that the elder Rodgers would be considered for the vacancy in Green Bay.

Indy sign Duron Carter, Ben Heenan out of CFL

The Indianapolis Colts need playmakers and protectors for superstar quarterback Andrew Luck. With free agency still a month away and the draft even further, the team has looked north to find answers. According to ESPN's NFL Nation, the Colts have signed CFL wide receiver Duron Carter and guard Ben Heenan.

Carter is the son of Pro Football Hall of Famer Cris Carter. He played most of his college career at Ohio State, but off-the-field issues turned away NFL teams. After a successful stint in Canada where he caught 124 passes for 1,939 yards and 12 touchdowns in two seasons, the Colts were enticed to bring him. As for Heenan, he is a former CFL No. 1 overall pick who has experience at both right guard and right tackle. Both of Indianapolis' starters on the right side of the line ended the season on injured reserve. If Heenan's performance transfers to the NFL, he could provide valuable insurance in case those injuries don't heal in time for training camp.

Stratasys Tanking More Than 30% On Slashed Guidance – Forbes.

3D printing bulls like to say the industry is the future of manufacturing, aerospace and even orthodontics, but for one three-dimensional printing company, the immediate future looks a little grim: the Minnesota-based Stratasys released preliminary fiscal 2014 earnings results and 2015 guidance after Monday’s closing bell that were significantly below the Wall Street consensus, and the numbers shook investors so much that Stratasys stock opened for Tuesday trading down 29% — and the free-fall only continued from there.

…This is a significantly wider loss than the $31.6-to-$24.4 million loss (that’s a per-share loss between 63 cents and 49 cents) that the company projected in November, and is largely driven by a $100- to $110 million fourth quarter impairment charge related to the company’s MakerBot unit. (Stratasys acquired MakerBot for $400 million in June of 2013; at the time, David Reis, Stratasys’ CEO, praised MakerBot’s “rapid adoption” by designers and engineers and called it the “strongest brand in the desktop 3D printer category.”)

Though Stratasys said that it does not expect the $100 million charge to affect ongoing business, it did acknowledge that MakerBot’s expansion into new markets — through partnerships with the likes of Staples, Home Depot and Sam’s Club — has introduced less predictable sales patterns and reorder rates into the business model.

Ok, maybe that means Staples, Home Depot and Sam’s Club are not where people are going to buy 3D printers? One thing in that statement, we did not know what this term impairment charge meant – “a $100- to $110 million fourth quarter impairment charge related to the company’s MakerBot unit” – so we looked it up.

“Impairment charge” is the new term for writing off worthless goodwill. These charges started making headlines in 2002 as companies adopted new accounting rules and disclosed huge goodwill write-offs (for example, AOL – $54 billion, SBC – $1.8 billion, and McDonald’s – $99 million). While impairment charges have since then gone relatively unnoticed, they will get more attention as the weak economy and faltering stock market force more goodwill charge-offs and increase concerns about corporate balance sheets – Investopedia.

An Impairment Charge is incurred when the fair value of a company’s goodwill is less than the recorded value. If the fair value of goodwill is less than the recorded value, a company’s goodwill is said to be “impaired” and the difference (between the fair value and recorded value) must be charged off as an expense – wikinvest.

So if we understand this correctly, Stratasys is saying they paid more for the MakerBot “brand” than the actual sales value turned out to be?

Here’s some more-

At around 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Stratasys shares were down some 30 percent, at $56.36. In an emailed statement to Xconomy, MakerBot said “It’s important to note that the 3D printing industry is a dynamic and growing market. MakerBot’s sales have had explosive growth and have expanded by more than 600 percent from 2012 to 2014.”  The company said it has sold more than 80,000 of its desktop 3D printers – Xconomy.

Digging through the numbers, MakerBot revenue… is estimated to represent approximately 12% of preliminary total Stratasys revenue for the fourth quarter. The Q4 revenue for Stratasys is estimated to be $214 million, this means MakerBot is about $25m per quarter for revenue, or maybe about $100m for the year (2014). We’re guessing that MakerBot sold 40,000+ MakerBots, or about 3,000 per month. These are all guesses and estimates, we’re trying to get a sense of the market size for MakerBot and what it would look like if it were still a stand-alone company. What’s puzzling is if our guesses are correct the Stratasys one-time non-cash $100m impairment charge to the goodwill value of MakerBot is the same as the revenue from MakerBot for the year, it sounds like calling a “do-over” – erasing 2014, and then going forward 2015 gets a clean slate. How does one even “determine the fair value of goodwill”?

What does this all mean for 3D printer market? We don’t know, but here’s what we do know – there are more pro-Maker/pro-Hobbyist 3D printers than ever. At Adafruit the top sellers are the open-source Lulzbots, Printrbots, ORION deltas and all the unique and high quality filaments we stock, picked by our experts Noe & Pedro and Ladyada. From our point of view the demand for 3D printers is higher than ever and people looking to spend $399 to $2,200 and more choices than ever – including 100% open-source hardware 3D printers such as the LulzBot TAZ 4. The demand from our customers is only increasing and more companies are entering the market. We’ll continue to post about this and discuss on our shows.

Related chatter:

• Stratasys Cuts 2014 Outlook, Gives Weak View for 2015.
• Stratasys Plunges 27%: Q4, ’15 View Miss on MakerBot; Steps Up Spending.
• Stratasys Takes Write-Down on MakerBot; Is 3D Printing Due a Reckoning.

It's so bad it's impressive.

There have been a lot of bad shots in the history of football. Kicking a round object at a target often a couple dozen yards away and all while tired, running and dealing with defenders trying to destroy you is not easy. But players usually get the ball going in the right general direction.

Dorian Dervite is not one of those players.

Dervite got the ball, saw the goal in front of him, had some space ... and then he kicked it directly sideways. Maybe he slipped. Maybe he took his eye off the ball. Maybe he panicked.

Most likely, he wanted to enter the Horrible Shot Hall of Fame. Mission accomplished.

It was pigstys then, it’s Bed-Stuy now.

Original Source

BOSTON—Having watched the Patriots win their fourth Super Bowl title in 14 years, sports fans across New England issued a thoughtful and introspective joint statement Wednesday announcing that they in no way deserve any of the success their teams ha...

With nine Academy Award nominations and countless other wins, The Grand Budapest Hotel is director Wes Anderson's most critically fêted film to date. Among those nominated for an Oscar is the film's editor, Barney Pilling, known for An Education, Never Let Me Go and … more »

The post Oscar-Nominated Editor Barney Pilling on The Grand Budapest Hotel appeared first on Studio Daily.

Original Source

NEW PRODUCT – PiGRRL Pack build your own Pi Game Emulator! (CASE NOT INCLUDED)

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For all those who feared their Game Boy days would be but a memory, worry no more! The Game Boy may be dead, but with this pack you’ll have a chance to revive it. We’ve collected all the right parts so you can assemble the guts of your very own DIY GameGRRL – a portable Raspberry Pi running MAME and NES emulators.

It’s called the PiGRRL and it’s powered by a Raspberry Pi Model B and a PiTFT display.  You’ll have to do all the assembly and installation yourself to get gaming, but our learn guide will help you get through the process.

The PiGRRL has just about everything you need to make this project EXCEPT the case. You will need to 3D print your own case – but check out our 3D printing guide for the pack so you or your friend can 3D print an enclosure. You will also need to solder together the parts so many hand tools and other small parts such as screws or blue tack are required. Please read through the tutorial so you can see what else is needed to complete this project

Please note this is a medium-difficulty project that uses many Maker skills such as soldering, 3D printing and installing Linux!

In stock and shipping now!

I remember one time in design school when a guest critic called out my classmate's project, a website to facilitate bartering. The critic balked at the idea of imposing specific procedures on how people should conduct a trade, and he talked about how the parents of Park Slope, Brooklyn shift several million tons of used toys using a very active Yahoo Groups (the class gasped in horror)... sometimes all a user wants is a message board.

So I'm one of those \Blackboard / "enterprise-class courseware learning platform" skeptics. If you've had the good fortune of never having to use one, they look like the image above, usually some really bloated outdated web portal thing with 50 different "learning modules" that 90% of university classes never use unless they're forced by the department.

As an instructor, I don't want to "setup an assignment" by digging through three different layers of menu screens! Sometimes all a user wants is a message board.

This semester, I'm running my game development courses on GitHub, Steam Community, and Tumblr. All three provide some semblance of message board functionality, so they're all suitable for teaching. Here's how I'm doing it:


For code-oriented classes, I usually teach with GitHub, though I imagine any Git service would have a similar feature-set. Here, the repository wiki feature is really great. I have my students submit work on the main wiki page, so students share a living document and hopefully feel a greater stake in classroom management. It's basically a message board with one shared post that we all keep editing.

This semester, I'm experimenting with having students create their own personal wiki pages (automatically linked from the wiki sidebar in GitHub) to keep their reading journals and project documentation. Plus, making them visit the course repository website repeatedly is also useful for getting them to "stop being scared of GitHub" and normalizes the process of looking at code from past lectures and creating their own repositories to collaborate. (To enforce this further: if students want digital copies of the syllabus, I tell them download it from the Git repository. I'm told this is a computer science professor-y thing to do. Sorry.) I know some code teachers even correct students' homework using pull requests, to help try to normalize that functionality, but personally I stop short of that.


I'm also teaching a modding classes that use Source Engine, so I've been using Steam Community as a sort of educational hub. The first time I ran the class, we used Portal 2 which had decent integration with Steam Workshop, and some students even built-up fan followings, which was amazing and very rewarding for them...

Unfortunately, the Portal 2 fork of the Source Engine has like a million problems, so this semester I'm switching to Source SDK Base 2013 instead, and coordinating them using a Steam group. Here, my intent is kind of the opposite of my intent with GitHub -- I want to normalize game design and learning as something that takes place everywhere, rather than normalizing the software... and the Steam Community is basically a giant message board. Then when it comes time to grading, I edit their post and add my feedback / comments at the bottom.


For my virtual reality course, I'm been using Tumblr since that's what we did last year. It was a great way to consolidate our progress in the course and document our work -- and imagine more than one student will be re-visiting the Tumblr to grab photos or videos of their past projects, so this public record serves as a kind of backup.

I also discovered that Tumblr has a "submit" feature, which lets me turn Tumblr into a sort of curated wiki thing / track students assignments. Some of their project documentation will involve making Vines and GIFs, and maybe their work will go viral on Tumblr. Like having fans on Steam, it would help reinforce that their education is not happening in a vacuum and their work is having an actual impact outside of the classroom.


My deeper philosophical objection to school-mandated learning software is the fact that it reinforces some problematic politics about higher education, namely the idea that learning is something that happens in this hermetically-sealed academic subdomain of a subdomain. There, the data stays locked away on the school's servers.

Like okay, maybe society DOES appreciate that you are protecting us from your English 101 paper about the symbolism of the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet -- but art and design fields require interaction with the public and development communities, for real living people to actually understand what you are trying to do. I also want to emphasize to students that their classwork is a real-game that a real-person might real-enjoy real-playing, and it isn't an isolated academic exercise.

Some more notes about "teaching in public":

• Whatever modern web service you use today usually works better than whatever bloated ASP / PHP / Java "enterprise-class" thing that the school IT administrator bought a 25 year vendor contract for, even if Steam Community was designed more for sharing screenshots than responding to academic readings. All I need is a big textbox that works.
• Ironically, when outside of the protected academic intranet, students have greater access to their own data! They can always grab old project documentation or files, vs. their university disconnecting their e-mail and revoking login privileges when students leave.
• Data privacy is, of course, a totally valid concern. I let students use pseudonyms, nicknames, or temporary "burner" accounts to guard their privacy if that worries them. They're also free to hide or delete all their data once I'm finished grading them for the semester. But they have a strong incentive not to...
• ... because many tech employers (or any speaking opportunities, etc.) often put a lot of importance on someone's online presence. If someone has a lot of social network followers, or a very active GitHub profile page, then that reassures them that you are what you say you are. Sadly, your online presence is now part of your application / portfolio. (And if you don't have an online presence at all, unfortunately that's even more incriminating than having a drunk selfie or two.) Welcome to Web 2.0, kids.

You did it, you crazy-looking building, you! Dubai's 55-story, aptly-named "Maze Tower" just got the nod from the Guinness folks that it's officially the largest vertical maze in the world.

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