Cylon Jack-O-Lantern

For halloween this year, we made Cylon Jack-o-lanterns in both large and small versions. The design consists of two parts, a pumpkin-carving part and an electronics part. The big idea, of course, is to make the Cylon's red eye scan back and forth. "

-- HOW TO - Make A Cylon Jack-O-Lantern

Original photo and HOWTO via Windell H. Oskay and can be found at www.evilmadscientist.com.



tagged: battlestar galactica, halloween

Lost: Gaia Theory

Honestly, I'm waning on the whole "try and figure out Lost" thing. Part of me is now suspicious that the producers are doing their best to string viewers along. In short, the show is beginning to feel a bit like a tease and less like a puzzle.

For one thing, I'm not buying the "scientific principles" as a method of explaining much of anything on the island. They've tossed too much hocum pocum into the mix for me to try and look up how gravity or electromagnetism actually works and apply it to the show. Once you start putting "science" with "not necessarily proven or accepted as" in front of the concepts, the task starts to feel a little more realistic.

Which got me thinking - Locke keeps referring to the island as a living thing. Not just as a character in the show, like say New York in a Woody Allen film - but as a mover and player. In fact, the mover and player. The thing that brought them all there and gives him purpose and does everything. The Island is the Iago of Lost. It's virtually responsible for all the plot to be pushed along.

In the 1960's, Lovelock offered up his Gaia theory. This hypothesized that the Earth is like a living organism. The sum of its biomass is essentially an entity. How sentient and/or capable this being is depends on how radical one wants to apply the theory.

Let's apply it radically. The Earth is an intelligent and powerful entity on its own. You are a gnat on its backside. OK? Let's go.

The Island
The Island is the Earth's heart. It's a powerful nexus of biomass. The Earth protects this area when it sees fit through subtle changes of the weather. Boats in its path will narrowly miss it. Plane will narrowly fly past, or not see it due to cloud cover, etc. When it feels the need to - it drags people here. That's how a plane from Nigeria could drop here - freakish storm literally sucks it from one spot to another. This Oz without the ... well, Oz.

Think of The Island as Gaia's secret HQ. So from here on out, we'll just refer to The Island.

Four toed people, Black Rock, Magnus Hanso.
The Island has always had protectors. The original four-toed natives for one. When Magnus crashes his boat into the Island (or rather, the Island crashes his boat into itself) ... he becomes another. And by extension, so does Hanso and DHARMA.

Hanso and DHARMA
DHARMA's stated purpose is to extend the life of the planet - not surprising if we thing of Magnus as someone who has been employed by The Island. Along comes Valenzetti and his equation which predicts the (more or less) precise time for the end of the world ... and from that we get the numbers. So the numbers, the end of the world, DHARMA and the Island form more or less a straight line here.

The Numbers
From The Lost Experience - we know that the numbers are the output of the equation. They have to be adjusted to keep the planet moving. So let's think of the numbers as a cardiogram of the planet's health. This cardiogram is going to be present everywhere, because the planet's heartbeat is present everywhere. So these numbers crop up more than they randomly should because The Island is more present than it randomly would be? Why?

Coincidence and Fate
The Island works in mysterious ways. It doesn't always go tossing a tidal wave or knock a plane out of the sky to get things done. Sometimes it's subtle. Wings of the butterfly and all that. "Fate" and "coincidence" is really just The Island Getting Things Done. What caused the tear in Kelvin's suit that lead to Desmond refinding his boat and killing Kelvin and missing the countdown and crashing the plane? The Island.

Healing Powers
The Island is one big life force engine - but remember its also thinking. It can decide who to heal and who not to heal.

Telepathy, possession and precognition
Consider these all powers The Island possesses. It can get in your head, mess around, communicate thoughts. It can somewhat see the future (and tell people about it) because its always got the "big picture" of what's going on. Think of it like playing chess where you can only see one square, but The Island always gets the whole board.

The Current Conflict
Stuff ain't going right for planet Earth. So it's bringing the war to the home front. The Others and the Losties might be a grand recruitment drive to try and get the forces in line to keep the globe spinning. The Others feel justified in their actions because they're saving planet - but they're still the good guys. They can organize lists and information because they've got the best intel on the planet - The Planet.

Wacky? Oh hell yeah it's wacky. But it also feels to me to be in line with where the show's narrative is going. Rose's stories pretty much back up most of it and Locke handles a decent part of the rest ... so its not nearly as much conjecture as it might seem. It's also congruent with certain other theories, like Mu or Lemuria or whatnot.

I'm not a big fan of this notion, don't ge me wrong. But I'm thinking if we apply the basic principle of The Earth as a powerful, living being - it merges the hocum pocum and science at (overly) convenient crossroads.



tagged: lost, television

Threewave On Sponsored Content

Somehow, this is the Ouroboros of gaming. Threewave, makers of Threewave CTF, discussing in-game ads. It's an interesting read and discusses they whys (funding) and the do nots (spyware). Remember that Threewave predates Counter-Strike by like an Internet Age in terms of having an impact on gaming (one could argue that without TCTF, there might not be CS - which is probably overkill but at least debateable). Now Threewave is moving to the Source engine and increasing their development budget with ingame ads.

The head swims to take it all in...


tagged: game, gaming

Snow Cats

This is what the web is for, after all. X Snow Cats is that game, which was found on a random Japanese blog. It pits your 2D moggy against seven other felines, racing through a snowy course with the aim of finishing first, while pulling off as many somersaults as possible along the way.

It's not pure silliness though. There seem to be some pretty spot-on physics behind the deceptively simple graphics. Of course, I don't have an enormous grasp of what happens when a cat rides a tea-tray at speed in the real world, but the way they bounce around in this game certainly feels right - and presents quite a challenge to control.

-- Brandish (via Tech Digest)


tagged: game, gaming

Halo Movie On Hold

According to Jackson's agent at International Creative Management, Ken Kamins, "What happened was this: Universal, on behalf of both studios, asked for a meeting with the filmmakers just prior to the due date of a significant payment. Basically, they said that in order to move forward with the film, the filmmakers had to significantly reduce their deals. They waited until the last minute to have this conversation. Peter and Fran, after speaking with their producing partners and with Microsoft and Bungee [sic] (the studio that designed the original game), respectfully declined."

-- Game over for Halo movie (Joystiq)

A shame since many a gamer was hoping this would finally be the game movie that didn't suck. The factors don't look good here - a newb director and Microsoft apparently trying to pocket as much cash as possible. I kinda doubt Jackson himself would want to take the reins on this one unless someone at Bungie convinces him the story merits Lord of the Rings style attention (and as much of a fan of the Halo-Marathon backstory I am ... I'm not sure it is).

The formula here would seem to be to lower that $200 million dollar mark somewhat and find a director with less name power but some experience. It's early and I can't think of anyone right now, though.




tagged: game, gaming

Huffington Post On Bully

Author and mommy Liz Perle takes a crack at Rockstar's Bully:

As for the actual game, I've seen only what the rest of the world has- trailers. Here's a sampling of comments and responses to the trailer on YouTube where, as of this writing, it had been viewed 41,796 times (only about a hundred of those were from my 13 year old son, I promise). "Dude," says one commenter, "as long as I can get a girl pregnant in this game, I don't care how dated the engine is (presumably a reference to the fact the game is coming out on Playstation 2, not 3 to ensure the broadest possible holiday distribution). Or this contribution, "I wonder if there are unlockables where you can get guns, c4s, poison gas?" To be fair, there were also plenty of innocuous comments ("this game looks aaaaawwwsum, dude") which, while not particularly insightful or illuminating, are probably most representative of those who can't wait to fork over (or have their parents pony up) the $39.95 each game costs.

So what's my beef then? Simple: I think it's sad that I am looking at this game - both as a mother and a professional information purveyor -- with a modicum of relief because it appears not to be as ultra-violent (blood splattering and women being raped and beaten) as other games my kid and his friends want to play. What did Robin Williams say the other day? Something along the lines of 'you know you're bad when you start violating your standards more quickly than you can lower them.' I know my son wants this game for his birthday. Robbed of my usual excuses - no blood or guns allowed - I now have the more nuanced task of discussing role models and pointing out research that shows that the more time spent with aggressive video games, the more inured kids become to aggression. This makes me the boring mom, the killjoy mom. But so be it. Until my kids are old enough to vote me off the island, I still get to decide what's right for them. But like other parents, I must do my homework about video game content, I will read reviews, look at the game, decide with my husband what's right. Then, even though it's not popular, I happily reserve the right to say, "No."

-- Virtual Bully: A Finer Line for Videogames

For the record, Bully is rated T - which means Liz's little one has the clearance from the ESRB. She's acknowledging that she hasn't played it - and let's face it ... most parents don't exactly get the chance to play games before their kids take it home. Still, I don't think a random sampling of YouTube commenters is at all useful for gauging a game's content. In fact, I'd call it downright unfair.

But then again - where is she to go? It's not like Best Buy will offer her to boot up the game and give it a spin. 99% of gamer reviews are geared towards thirteen year olds (and a few may actually be written by them). If she brings up her concerns in most web forums, she's likely to get flamed for being "anti-video game" (as she risks on that post).

What's the solution here? I point her to Gamerdad.com - one of the few sites with a perspective fit for parents. Still, this seems to illustrate the gap of resources parents really have for making decisions like this one. The ESRB is helpful, sure, but when parents want to dig deeper - where else can they go?

That's the problem game publishers and the ESRB should be trying to solve. And perhaps it could be if lunatics like BatJack would stop throwing frivolous lawsuits and idiotic sound bites at them. Once again, BatJack is only hurting parents by distracting resources from what should be the real dialogue - parents and game publishers communicating so that parents know what they're getting from those boxes on the shelf.



tagged: game, gaming

LEGO Stargate

"This rotating Stargate is 19 inches tall with light-up chevrons. An RCX drives a treadmill, which spins the inner ring randomly for x seconds, then reverses direction, seven times. Won best medium space award and best brick mod at BrickFest 2005."

-- Stargate: LEGO(MAKE)


tagged: lego, stargate

Chris Crawford Is On Notice

All credit to Mile Zero since I didn't catch the show. Colbert is really stocking up the geek cred.

OK, so this is a generated image via that URL at the bottom from Mile Zero (I swear almost checked that out). Keeping it up though, because it's funny.



tagged: game, gaming

XNA Studio Express Info

Winkyboy sent along this page from Microsoft which outlines the latest beta of XNA Studio Express. Amongst the tidbits include the lack of "retail" game development as well as support for the content pipeline. Towards the bottom they point you to the "X" edition of the Torque game platform, which I can mostly recommend is worthy trying to giving a go.

Apparently Game Informer gave a full page spread on this and included the following links as resources:

www.thezbuffer.com
www.learnxna.com
www.xnaspot.com
www.xbox360homebrew.com
www.exdream.no-ip.info/blog
www.ziggyware.com
www.xnadevelopment.com
www.xnatutorial.com
www.thehazymind.com/XNAEngine.htm
http://pilot.vector4.com/xnainfo/

It really feels like XNA Studio Express is still finding its stride, but I still think its great that Microsoft is putting this out there. I'm pretty content with Mac development right now, but there's a decent chance it won't pan out as I like. Hopefully while I'm goofing around with iTunes more people can put this concept to the test.

Thanks again to Dan for sending this along.


tagged: game, gaming

Did You Say Zune To Me, Sir?

Microsoft’s forthcoming digital music player, dubbed Zune, may make some Hebrew speakers gasp. The name for the device — which will take on the Apple iPod when released later this year — sounds like a vulgarity, specifically the F word, in Hebrew.

-- Bill Gates tells Hebrew speakers to *#@! off and buy an iPod(Digital World Tokyo)

Nice. Still, don't companies rebrand products worldwide for just this kind of reason?



tagged: zune, ipod

Lost: Deja Vu Too

Why was last night's episode called "further instructions"? Because Locke can't do anything without the island telling him? Including apparently ... talk?

There seems a conflict with Locke's persona here. In one hand, he seems to be a leader constantly trying to struggle out of the herd. He's always under someone's shadow or thumb. Including on the pot farm, he seems to under the grip of the group more than he is able to charge on his own. This is how I was reading the "farmer" versus the "hunter" bit.

But he's still under the thumb of the island. Looks to stay that way. And speaking of the island having thumbs - what's up with Desmond? He survives an implosion with little more than a wardrobe malfunction. An implosion being that thing where everything collapses around you ... actually making it significantly more difficult to escape than say ... an explosion.

And not only is he OK ... he can tell the future? I hope the producers aren't going with some kind of "starchild" approach here where Desmond's actually dead and this is just some kind of Island Energy Being or some whatnot.

Overall, I'm with Hurley. I've got a bad sense of deja vu here. I keep getting more questions to toss onto the pile and slight little in the way of answers. This season we've learned the existence of Otherville (no big deal) and that they get baseball scores (also, no big deal). The Lost Experience has given us far more pertinent answers. By this time in Season Two, we knew more about DHARMA, the hatch and the experience than we would find out for the rest of season two.

Next week looks like more Other antics with Sawyer and I'm guessing Jack in the limelight. So I'm not expecting much new revelation there. Hopefully the mid-season cliffhanger will actually bother to explain something.

I'm starting to really feel for people I know who have stopped watching the show, however. A co-worker who has been on the edge of not watching commented this morning that, "last night was just a show ... take it or leave it."




tagged: lost, television

Do Counter-Strike: Source Hitboxes Suck This Bad?

Seriously? I knew they were always of suspect "back in the day" if you will. There were other well known bugs that have existed in the CS like phantom bullets (some players would fire off a few rounds when the game started because of bug where the first couple bullets would play effects but not actually register any hits) and bizarre hitbox/accuracy predictions. Distinctly this not the first such video I've seen about the game - but it does seem pretty severe.

Is this confirmed or bogus? Or do people just not care because they spray and pray so much these days?


tagged: counter-strike, gaming

Watching the Real World in the Virtual

From Kisa Naumova's photostream.



tagged: second life, gaming

Flickr Started As A Game?

How is it that I did not know this:

The Birth of Flickr

The original idea: a multiplayer game

Butterfield and Fake were originally trying to create a Web-based, massively multiplayer game. "It was different from most other Web games," says Butterfield. "It wasn't postapocalyptic sci-fi, and it wasn't men in tights fighting dragons."

The dream

While sweating out a nasty bout of food poisoning during a 2003 conference in New York (ah, the glamorous world of new media), Butterfield had an epiphany: "We had this game where people were sharing things. What if we added the ability to share photographs?"

Flickr's first version: game on

The original Flickr had many remnants of the game technology. You could share photos only with other people live on the site. And a ranking of your friends decided who got to see your pictures. "Your mom should be your best friend," says Fake, "but you don't necessarily want to share all your photos with her."

-- Point, Click, Design (fastcompany.com)



tagged: game, gaming

Lost: Polar Bears and Podcasts

Podcast Revelations
In the latest podcast (stop reading now if you avoid such things as spoilers), the producers confess that Ben is probably older than DHARMA itself and has been on the island all his life. They suggest that this throws the general thinking about the Others into a bit of a curve. Are they ex-Dharmites or possibly the remnants of the natives the Dharmites experimented on? If they're the latter - why would DI still be making supply drops (especially since funding is supposedly cut now) if the inmates are running the island?

Why would anyone be still on the island running experiments?

Also, I didn't even realize that I called the numbers being an output of Valenzetti's back in May. Go me. One prediction right out of like 100.

Telepathy, Empathy, Whateverthy
I think evidence is mounting that Others are capable of some kind of mental hocum pocum. Firstly, they can generate lists of names in record time. Secondly, they always seem to be able to ascertain precisely what is on someone's mind. Ben seemed to be constantly aware of what everyone was thinking when he was a hostage. And again with Kate during breakfast. And Juliet had an incredible amount of information on Jack when she was working him over.

The Scooby Doo alternative is that they are just highly trained interrogators ... with access to an amazing amount of intel.

But the added weight which leans me to the metaphysical is that the island seems to constantly throw this at the Losties. Their past and their little worried thoughts aren't just flashbacks - they're boars and horses and people oh my.

Polar Bears and other tidbits
Lost still has a remarkable number of loose threads. Not just big stuff like the Others and numbers. The cable Sayid found. The transmitter we never saw. The corpses in the caves and their odd black and white rocks. The song on the radio that shouldn't be. Polar bears running loose for some reason. The cigarrete in Pearl. Planes which shouldn't be able to make their way to the island crashing on the island. Even the voices and the sickness seem to be more background noise than a concern.

We're about half way through the "first half" of the season (remember this year they're splitting the show into two smaller seasons with a mid season replacement and avoiding reruns) ... and I think they need to start knocking some of this stuff down. Hopefully they're intertwined. Adam and Eve we're assuming will be explained with the "native" explanation. The cable, transmitter and cigarrete might be explained with a fuller view of how the island works (underground tunnels, etc.). The song on the radio and crashing of planes probably connected to whatever "veils" the island.

Old Smokey and the bears, I'm still guessing, are connected. I'm thinking tonight we might learn more.




tagged: lost, television