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We're actually Geeks, but the title is catchy, no?
Makey Makey
So there I was, thinking to myself how awesome it would be to play pacman with a notebook and pencil graphite, and then BAM! I saw this:
This is possibly one of the coolest gamer\fixer things ever invented. These fellahs have a kickstarter going for their company that wishes to sell these little buggers. Do you think they’ll make it? Well they were asking for $25,000 dollars, and currently, with 24 days left of fundraising, they ONLY have $134k pledged. I think we’ll be seeing these on shelves very soon
Here’s their kickstarter page: CLICK THAT!
Prometheus
When I was just a little Scott, I made the life altering mistake of watching “Aliens”, because my Uncle Bill was a complete fanatic. I’m not sure why I had to see it, but being 9 years old, and seeing one of the most horrifying movies (still to this day) simply seemed like an adventure I needed to take. So I did and since then have walked the path of the Sci-Fi Jedi. I saw “Alien” later, which I found out was actually far more disturbing, and was completely hooked.
Alien 3 was unforgivable, as was the corporate twisted barf on film known as “Alien Resurrection”.
Alien Vs. Predator came out, and it was ok, but was quickly and obviously nothing but gore-porn that made me want to hurl my junior mints. Yet another disappointing addition to the first 2 movies, that had been elevated to the highest levels of Science Fiction canon. We, the fans of these first 2 films have just simply disregarded the latter additions. Much like “The Highlander” sequels.
…until now…
Prometheus is Ridley Scott’s return to the medium that he himself can be credited as its creator. Nothing about any of the trailers for this film is pleasant, or not pee-your-pants inducing. Every time I watch something else released by these people, the immediate feeling of a corporate camera watching me sets in. At no point do you not get the feeling that some greater, colder, inhuman presence is at work. Something distant, dark and calculating. Something that is about to crawl inside your chest and break out of you from the inside… but not before eating all the popcorn you just paid $19 dollars for.
Check out this personnel file from the Weyland Corporation.
Tell me you don’t feel like you just read an H.P. Lovecraft story and I’ll eat a shoe…
…a chocolate one… cause eating a shoe would just be impossible… and ridiculousness… how dare you even ASK me to do such a thing! ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME?!
Geek Tats!
4 days
So I just keep seeing more and more of these amazing geek Tattoos, all unique and interesting. So I thought I would throw up a gallery of some of my favs.
You all have such geek cred! We approve!
Remember Angel?
4 days
The Vampire with a soul who got his own spin off from Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Some of you old school geeks will be with me on this one. Well there was something on that show that I would have always loved to have, and now apparently I can. When the gang needed info on a monster or demon they had to hunt down and decapitate, Cordelia (the amazingly beautiful and talented Charisma Carpenter) would just jump on the web and find the info they needed by referencing a few or one online resources.
Of course me being me, I immediately paused the DVD and jumped on the googles looking for such awesome and fantastical databases of monsters and such… and found zilch. Disappointed and deflated I returned my my normal internet activities of searching for por… litical… commentary…*ahem*…
Look what I just found! Finally there are people with even MORE time than I have to post awesome and completely useful databases of monsters and demons! CLICK THAT!
Commercial Space Race In Danger
Well It looks like the commercial space race might be over before it’s even really begun.
Last week, Congress approved a spending bill that demands NASA immediately choose one company for the commercial crew program, and this week they will be voting on it. Killing the private competition is meant to save money and speed up development, but more likely it will be devastating to NASA’s already stretched budget.
ANALYSIS: Money: The Next Human Spaceflight Incentive?
Currently, NASA is providing subsidies to companies vying to develop a viable manned launch system. There are a lot of interesting and promising commercial programs under development right now. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin project is working on a launch vehicle, Sierra Nevada is working on the Dream Chaser orbital vehicle, ATK just announced its intention to add a spacecraft to its Liberty rocket, SpaceX has its Falcon 9 and Dragon, and Orbital Sciences has its Antares rocket and Cygnus spacecraft.
SpaceX and Orbital Sciences are the front runners, both planning flights to the ISS this year to demonstrate their capabilities. SpaceX is scheduled to launch this coming Saturday. But these missions are unmanned cargo flights; manned mission aren’t expected until 2017. So why stop the competition before NASA has a viable commercial crew system?
The short answer is money.
Commercial crew projects fall under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program that was started in 2006 with the goal of easing the transition out of the shuttle era by having private companies take over the low Earth orbital launches allowing NASA to focus on its loftier goals of deep space manned missions on Saturn V-type powerful rockets. There’s no money for the COTS program in NASA’s 2013 budget. The bill will remove continued COTS costs and streamline the commercial launch effort by giving one company more money to develop its system faster.
ANALYSIS: NASA Deputy Administrator Faces the Tough Questions
The problem with the short answer is that it’s short sighted. The layered approach with multiple companies vying for the contract to build a new space transportation system is exactly what NASA needs right now. The competition has yielded creativity and innovation. The rockets and spacecraft these companies have come up with has cost NASA millions instead of billions since the agency isn’t alone in footing the bill, and there are clearly viable systems on the horizon.
If the competition goes away, the need to come up with the most reliable, cost-effective, and flexible system will go with it. “It is unfortunate that Congress would direct an agency to pick a company before the magic of the marketplace had a chance to work,” said Dale Ketcham, director of the Spaceport Research & Technology Institute at the University of Central Florida. Without the need to outdo a competitor the drive for innovation can disappear, leading to cost overruns and slipping schedules.
We’ve seen this before. In the early days of the shuttle program, NASA was directed to pick the contractor that promised the lowest overall cost without seeing a demonstration of abilities first.
During the Space Race NASA chose contractors based on designs and previous experience rather than demonstration. In both cases the program costs were huge and staying on schedule was an ongoing battle. The only difference with Apollo-era programs was that money was no object.
ANALYSIS: Neil DeGrasse Tyson Seeks New Inspiration for Space
“Ending competition by down-selecting to a sole commercial space company could double the cost of developing a privately built human spaceflight system and it will leave us in the same position we find ourselves today — having only one option for getting our astronauts to the space station,” NASA administrator Charles Bolden told an FAA commercial space advisory committee last week.
Picking one company now also means that the individuals aren’t carrying the risk in developing their systems. With full NASA funding, the taxpayers are the stakeholders, and its easier to spend money when it’s not yours. But it could turn out differently. It could be that the individuals behind these commercial ventures have the tenacity and moral fiber to stick with the goals of on schedule low cost launch systems that don’t compromise safety even when they aren’t financially responsible.
If the bill is passed, it’s likely SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Dragon spacecraft will be the commercial system of choice, selected before the demonstration flight this month. It’s really putting the cart before the horse. It’s possible that SpaceX’s founder Elon Musk’s enthusiasm and goals of contributing to humanity’s future in space — he’s tweeted that “Making large scale rocket propulsion landing work well is a critical step towards a fully reusable Mars transport system… which is the critical breakthrough needed for life to become multiplanetary” — will break the cycle of a single contractor leading budget overruns and slipping schedules.
We should know this week what changes we’ll see in the commercial space venture.
Image: The SpaceX Falcon 9 launches — a thing of the past? Credit: SpaceX
[via: Discovery]
Stumbldeeestumble…
So as I was feeding my savage addiction for Stumblupon, I came across something that very much reminded me of something I would see on Stargate SG-1. And here it is:
SOLAR SYSTEM VISUALIZER
This is a Solar Sys
tem visualizer. Basically it’s got most of the extra-solar planets we know about, charted and plotted in the star system they inhabit. I geeked out on this for about an hour before I realized my stomach was insisting I feed it more pizza rolls…
If your a Science Nerd like me, say goodbye to your… um… Skyrim…
…
Cause you’re gonna get lots of time to yourself…
Robot Skin Can Feel Touch, Sense Chemicals, and Soak Up Solar Power
When you meet your robot overlord, it may be wearing super-intelligent skin designed by a Stanford researcher–a solar-powered, super-sensitive, chemical-sampling covering that makes your meatbag covering look pathetic.
Zhenan Bao is behind the advances, and the r
ecent development centers on a stretchable solar cell system that can expand and shrink along two different axes, making it perfect for incorporation into artificial skin for robots, human prosthetic limbs, or even clothing.
Bao’s earlier successes with artificial skin have resulted in a highly flexible and durable material, which is part of a flexible organic-chemistry transistor, built on a thin polymer layer. When the skin is subjected to pressure, the current flowing through the transistors is modified as tiny pyramid shapes molded into the polymer layer compress, resulting in a super-sensitive transducer that can apparently detect the pressure from a house-fly’s feet. By modifying the transistor with a biological coating, it’s even been possible to make the “super skin,” as Bao calls it, detect the presence of particular chemicals or biological molecules.
The latest advance has seen Bao adding a corrugated microstructure organic solar cell layer into the skin. The clever folding in this layer allows it to be stretched along two axes…by up to 30% beyond its original length. This lets her coat pretty much any human-like joint with the skin and still have it collect enough solar power to run its sensor array, even when the skin is stretched and distorted over complex joints like elbows. Cleverly, the flexible solar array is connected into a circuit via a liquid metal electrode, which conforms to the particular shape of the solar cell at any particular moment.
The new super-skin will give future android robots–which are coming to our homes and workplaces sooner than you may think–the ability to gather power from the sun at all times, have human-like touch sensitivity (which is vital if they’re to be integrated into our lifestyles), and to have super-human chemical senses that make them very useful workplace assistants. If you’re not thinking of I-Robot now, then you should be… But it’s also possible that Bao’s super-skin could find uses in advanced robotic prosthetic limbs–adding back sensation (if there’s a way to wire the skin’s sense powers to nerves the way nerves are wired into controlling smart-limbs), and the solar-power skills reduce reliance on bulky battery technology. Variations on the skin could coat cars or military vehicles, and even soldier’s uniforms could act as both bio-sensors and solar power generators.
[via: Fast Company]
This no-budget science fiction short looks better than most movies
The Aaron Sims Company has designed such celluloid creatures as the aliens from Green Lantern, the simians from Rise of The Planet of The Apes, and the samurai with the chain gun from Sucker Punch. Now, as a labor of love with no funding, Sims has directed Archetype, a short film about a battlefield robot whose programming is on the fritz. It’s an absolutely stunning nugget of cinema.
We heard about this project, which stars Robert Joy (Land of the Dead, CSI:NY) and David Anders (Heroes, 24), several months back. What’s more, he’s planning a feature-length version. Here’s a plot synopsis:
RL7 is an eight-foot tall combat robot that goes on the run after malfunctioning with vivid memories of once being human. As its creators and the military close in, RL7 battles its way to uncovering the shocking truth behind its mysterious visions and past.
I seriously want to see the feature length film. Science Fiction seems to be the last bastion of originality in the Movie biz, and I for one am excited to see what comes next!
[via io9]
