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The Power Geeks #96

by DarthMolen on Apr.13, 2011, under The Latest Shows

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We are LIVE on Ustream . This week we talk robotics, Wonder Woman Faux Paux’s, Real live LAZERS, and your weekly dose of Chinese conspiracy theories

Intro Natali
Intro Ben

Items of Interest

  • Zombies are People too! (SM)
    • Page up in arms about the inhumane treatment of Zombies
    • They only keep their zombies in the safest of cages
    • Fed only a daily brain substitute made from textured soy protein and placed in a mannequin
    • They don’t beat their zombies
    • And they extract the zombie blood with as little mangling as possible for you to drink
    • Due to several incidents, tours are no longer given of their zombie lab or related research facilities. On a related note, we recently acquired more zombies to bleed.
    • Their motto? if a zombie bites you, its bad, if you bite a zombie, its delicious
  • Kill Shakespeare #10 out.. and I dig this series
    • Graphic Novels from IDW
    • Take all Shakespeare’s constructs and put them in a world
    • Reswizzle, add some snazzy illustrations, and a great storyline
    • You get Kill Shakespeare…
    • I LOVE this series!

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Deals of the Week / New Release

  • Can’t afford Photoshop? Adobe has released an upgrade for Creative Suite, ver. 5.5 that supposedly works better with touch-based tablets and smart phones, butnow you can rent individual programs for a monthly or yearly fee. Photoshop starts at $35/month, the entire Master Collection will be $129/month.  You can still buy Photoshop for $699 or Creative Suite Master Collection for $2599 up front. (btm I wonder if other software companies will join in on the “rental software” idea?)

Movie Minute (new feature)

  • KNEEL BEFORE ZOD Michael Shannon cast as General Zod in Zach Snyder’s Superman franchise reboot which has now been officially titled “Man of Steel”. Shannon will be joining the already cast Henry Cavill (Superman/Kent), Kevin Costner (Pa Kent) and Diane Lane (Ma Kent). Shannon known for his Academy Award® nominated role in “Revolutionary Road”. (btm)
    • Also gets official name “Man of Steel” (udg)
      • Like I said ;)  (btm)
      • I’m tarded and didn’t see that  :)
  • Dear WW Fans, Ne We Didn’t REALLY Listen to You(udg)
    • 3 costumes that will all be used. First trainwreck, second car accident and finally “shorty shorts” which they claim are like the ones in the original WW. Really? Shorty shorts????
    • (SM) Wow, just wow… how wrong can you go with a production that could have garnered some real attention and love from fans??
    • (btm) To be fair, what Lynda Carter wore in the original was short shorts over flesh-toned satin tights (just like it says in the song). 1970’s TV Censors wouldn’t let them by with less.
  • Producer of “I, Robot” and “Predator” taking on “Martian Chronicles” (udg)
    • All the 50s Sci-Fi fans, THROW YA HANDS UP!
    • It might be time for Sci-Fi legend Ray Bradbury to get the big budget cinema treatment he deserves.
    • The Hollywood Reporter said Tuesday that Paramount Pictures has picked up the rights to Bradbury’s 1950s collection of loosely-linked short stories, The Martian Chronicles,  and they want John Davis to produce the adaptation.
    • Davis has a lot of Sci-Fi street cred, to be sure. Despite a few missteps in his filmography (like Paycheck…ouch), Davis’ credits also include every film in the Predator franchise (including the AVP flicks), I, Robot and Waterworld, which by now we all have to admit is so bad that it’s good (Come on…Costner drinks his own pee in that movie! His own pee!).
    • The book is a collection of stories written by Bradbury in the 1940s, all focusing on the colonization of Mars by a group of humans fleeing a deteriorating Earth, only to find that the native Martians aren’t too happy to have them there. The story has already produced a TV miniseries released on NBC in 1980, but despite the presence of the late, great Rock Hudson, Bradbury himself dismissed the final product as boring. Mr. Blockbuster himself, Steven Spielberg, optioned the book in the late 90s and hired several writers to work on it, but nothing ever got off the ground, and now it’s in Paramount’s hands.
    • Ray Bradbury is 90 now. Maybe we can get a good movie out of this before he dies. Get your asses in gear, Paramount.
  • Rise of the Planet of the Apes is opening August 5th this year but during a LiveStream event on Facebook with WETA Digital, the people who did the SFX for Avatar and LOTR, it was announced that the first official trailer would be exclusively released on iTunes Movie Trailers starting Thursday April 14th. Currently there’s a 5 second clip on the Rise of the Planet of the Apes Facebook page. Andy Serkis, who provided the motion capture for Gollum and King Kong will be featured as the lead chimp, Caesar. (btm…segue to Hobbit? )
  • Hobbit Update (be sure to visit peter jackson’s fan page and like it)
    • They’re shooting at double the frame rate (48 frames per second) – allows smoothness, less jitters, and helps in the 3-D department
    • Did you know that they’ve been shooting films at 24 fps for 9 decades now?
    • Star Tours used 60 fps process
    • (SM) Very much akin to when Star Wars Ep. 1 came out. Sure ppl can argue the plot sucks but nobody argues how it looked (shot in full digital)

Craig Charles, who played Dave Lister, has announced on the official Red Dwarf blog that the British sci-fi cult classic has been picked up for 10th series (season). The show will begin shooting this year for a yet to be announced 2012 air date. (btm)

Geek Speak

Tech, Gaming, and Geek News

  • 2011 Eisner Award Nominations for Best in Comics & Graphic Novels Announced (udg)
    • The Eisner Awards celebrate the best in Comic Books & Graphic Novels and the 2011 Nominations have been announced. We will find out the award winners at this years SDCC on July 22nd and this year’s really represents a wide range of from heartfelt autobiographical works to books aimed at kids and teens to deluxe hardcover archival editions. In fact, unlike in past years, superheroes are very much in the minority in this year’s selections.
    • This is the 23rd year for the Eisners, which is pretty much described as the Oscar’s of the comic industry.  So here are the biggies for this year.
    • Nabbing 5 nominations, including Best Publication for Teens, Best Graphic Novel-New, Best Writer, Best Artist and Best Publication Design- Jim McCann & Janet Lee’s Return of the Dapper Men is definitely leading all the nominees.
    • Just behind Dapper men,  four nominations were Two Comic of Doom Favorites- Morning Glories (Nick Spencer & Joe Eisma) and Locke & Key (Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodriguez).
    • Also receiving multiple nominations was Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys,Chew from Image Comics, Mike Mignola’s Hellboy, and Daniel Clowes‘ Wilson.
    • Among this year’s nontraditional “discoveries” by the judges are Seymour Chwast’s adaptation of Dante’s Divine Comedy (Bloomsbury), the “mocumentary” Finding Frank and His Friends by “Clarence ‘Otis’ Dooley” (Curio & Co.), the Native American anthology Trickster (Fulcrum), Lucidity Press’s The Anthology Project, and cartoonist Dave Kellett’s Literature: Unsuccessfully Competing Against TV Since 1953.  (btm.. the link I sent you guys for the review copy has now been posted on his public blog)
    • To check out the full list of nominees, check out Comic-Con’s official webpage here. The Eisner nomination list is always a good way to be exposed to great comics that you may not have heard of before. Tie it in with the “Expand your Comic Mind” contests that the awesome peeps over at Geek Girls Network, Guerrilla Geek and Nerds in Babeland are having to encourage everyone to expand your Comic Minds!
    • (Dapper Men Intro has me sold- “To anyone who ever fell down a rabbit hole, walked to the sidewalk’s end, danced a wild rumpus or followed the second star to the right, may you find adventure, wonder and a little something from which dreams are made in these pages.”-udg)
  • Boy Scouts get a “Robotics” Merit Badge (SM)
    • Finally, after everyone has been asking for years, the BSA is updating their curriculum
    • Robotics is a new merit badge, 1 of 31 STEM (science, tech, engineering, math) badges
    • Badge will teach how to handle actuators, sensors, programming, and a myriad of other requirements
    • more requirements: design, build, program, and test a robot; demonstrate the bot and share their engineering notes; attend a robotics competition or do research on robotics contests; and explain how robots are used today.
    • (SM) This is HUGE! the BSA curriculum has needed and update in FOREVER!
  • Warner Bros Denied Access to Superman Estates’ Documents (udg)
    • The clock is ticking for Warner Bros. and the rights to Superman. In 2013, if things go as planned, they will lose certain rights to the character to the estates of both Siegel and Shuster (the co-creators of Superman).
    • And it’s not looking so good for WB. Recently they were denied access to  a secret document. One that breaks down how the  estates of Joel Shuster and Jerry Siegel will handle the rights to Superman, including not doing deals with Warner Bros. studio. In fact, it also covers how they will split the proceeds on Superman once WB loses the rights.
    • So, on one side  you have DC and Warner Bros. creating new Superman stories for everyone to enjoy and reaping the benefits. On the other, the creators, Joel Shuster and Jerry Siegel, have been trying to sue DC for Superman for their fair share and have been living a poverty-stricken life. Joanne Siegel, wife of Jerry Siegel who inspired the character Lois Lane, died in her deathbed during a time when Warner Bros. execs continued to harass her. “We were just stubborn. It was a dream of Jerry’s, and we just took up the task.”
    • Superman fans will have to continue to watch as the fate of Superman’s future truly is yet to be determined.
  • Navy successfully tests LASER from ship (SM)
    • no this wasn’t one of those non-lethal weapons this was an actual destructive laser
    • Solid State High-energy Laser (HEL) was fired from  ship and disabled a small target vessel.
    • It was on the USS Paul Foster, powered from the ship, guided by radar, and defeated a target at range  (btm… target was a mile away in rough seas)
    • Still a long ways from completion and will never replace kinetic weapons in near future (btm… I had to call a few people to confirm, but I have to tread lightly on this subject as I am still under an NDA from when I did R&D work in Dahlgren with some of their weapon systems)
  • Free Software Makes Using a Mouse Easier for Those W Disabilities (udg)
    • Our entire world revolves around computers. When you have a motor disability, using a mouse can be incredibly frustrating. Well a University of Washington team has invented two mouse cursors that make clicking targets a whole lot easier. And neither requires additional computer hardware – just some free, downloadable software. The researchers hope that in exchange for the software, users offer feedback.
    • The Pointing Magnifier combines an area cursor with visual and motor magnification, reducing need for fine, precise pointing. The UW’s AIM Research Group, which invented the Pointing Magnifier, learned that users can much more easily acquire targets, even small ones, 23 percent faster with the Pointing Magnifier.
    • The magnifier runs on Windows-based computer systems. Software for the Pointing Magnifier includes a control panel that allows the user to adjust color, transparency level, magnification factor, and area cursor size. User preferences are saved when the application is closed. Keyboard shortcuts quickly enable or disable the Pointing Magnifier. The UW team is also making shortcuts customizable.
    • Another AIM technology, the Angle Mouse, similarly helps people with disabilities. Like the Pointing Magnifier, it may be downloaded, and two videos, one for general audiences and another for academic ones, are available as well.
    • When the Angle Mouse cursor initially blasts towards a target, the spread of movement angles, even for people with motor impairments, tends to be narrow, so the Angle Mouse keeps the cursor moving fast. However, when the cursor nears its target and the user tries to land, the angles formed by movements diverge sharply, so the Angle Mouse slows the cursor, enlarges motor space and makes the target easier to get into. The more trouble a user has, the larger the target will be made in motor space. (The target’s visual appearance will not change.)
    • Wobbrock compares the Angle Mouse to a race car. “On a straightaway, when the path is open, the car whips along, but in a tight corner, the car slows and makes a series of precise corrections, ensuring its accuracy.”
    • “Pointing is an essential part of using a computer, but it can be quite difficult and time consuming if dexterity is a problem,” Wobbrock said. “Even shaving one second off each time a person points may save hours over the course of a year.”
    • Wobbrock suggests that users try both the Pointing Magnifier and the Angle Mouse before deciding which they prefer.
    • “Our cursors make ubiquitous mice, touchpads, and trackballs more effective for people with motor impairments without requiring new, custom hardware,” Wobbrock said. “We’re achieving accessibility by improving devices that computer users already have. Making computers friendlier for everyone is the whole point of our work.”
  • Robotics Deployed in Japan Nuclear Disaster, Ranked with Chernobyl (SM)
    • A piece of sad news: The Fukishima disaster has been upgraded to Chernobyl status.
    • So while the country is expanding the evacuation zone to 12 miles
    • still trying to contain the disaster.
    • 900 workers are currently deployed to work the site
    • remote operated loaders and excavators are helping do the work around reactor 3
    • ROBOTS IN UNTENABLE GLOW IN THE DARK SITUATIONS! GENIUS!
    • More of these units are being evaluated that were shipped from US
    • Also using unmanned aerial units to provide monitoring and inspection
  • Apple Patents Hybrid E-Paper Displays for Phones & Tablets (udg)
    • One of the biggest iPad complaints by people who are loyal to their Kindles (or other e-readers) is that high contrast e-paper displays can be read in any light, even outdoors, without the glare and eyestrain of an LCD. They also brag about their battery life being longer than that of the LCD-based tablets.
    • Well, Apple has heard your complaints and a recently uncovered patent filing looks like a way to build a hybrid e-paper/LCD combo display. This could revolutionize mobile devices and tablets as we know it if it works well. The patent is named “Systems and Methods for Switching Between an Electronic Paper Display and a Video Display,” and behind the lingo is technology that could one day allow segments of, or an entire device’s screen to toggle between e-paper mode and LCD mode.
    • The system would work by putting a thin, nearly see-through electronic paper screen on top of the LCD display, but underneath the capacitive touch-sensitive panel. When the user wants to toggle the e-paper mode, the backlighting for the LCD, which is on the bottom, simply turns down or off, and the only thing on-screen that the users sees is the e-paper display. When the user wants to play a video or bring the screen back to color, toggling the LCD mode will stop current to the e-paper layer and bring up the LCD backlighting.
    • Putting the two displays into layers like this would likely mean slightly thicker devices, but not by much –compared to the battery, the displays themselves make up little of the depth of most mobile devices. What may be an issue however is battery life: even though e-paper displays use less power than traditional LCDs, the act of powering up and dimming the backlight for the LCD may impact the battery life of such devices.
    • Apple reportedly filed for the patent way back in 2009 and is just now making the filing public. That doesn’t mean there’s a new product ready to roll out. It just means Apple is letting us and its competitors know it’s working on the possibility. If this does become real, the iPad will definitely be harder to compete with.
  • Facebook Says Screw You China, We’re Coming Anyway, Or Are We? (udg)
    • So, earlier this week Chinese press reported that FB had reached a deal with Chinese search engine Baidy to build a joint social network in China. Yet FB is indirectly denying it to US press.
    • Yeah, which one is it folks?
    • Here’s what we know:
      • Three different sources say it’s a go. Two at  Chinese regulators that say they are reviewing the necessary joint venture application and one at Baidu.
      • FB isn’t exactly denying it on record. Their only comment is “Facebook is currently studying and learning about China, as part of evaluating any possible approaches that could benefit our users, developers and advertisers.”
      • Baidu isn’t commenting at all
    • So what the heck is going on? Well it’s possible that FB hasn’t signed off on all the legals yet, so it’s not set in stone. Chinese regulators would still be aware of the deal even if it was not completely signed yet. The two parties may be keeping it hush in the event the regulators decide to veto the whole thing to avoid either party being embarrassed.
    • On the other hand, we’re talking China here. As soon as the report made it to the US, Baidu’s stock jumped. This could have been planted to the Chinese press by traders to move the stock. Don’t look at me like that. Stuff like that happens in China all the time.
    • It’ll be interesting to see what the true story is. All I know is if anyone’s getting a social network into China, my money is on Zuckerberg. And Zynga.

No more Google Street View in Germany. Google has halted Street View photography in Germany for no apparent reason. Google received a court order that declared street photography to be legal in Germany so this decision has left many baffled. They will continue to use the Google Cars to collect data like street names and road signs to maintain their maps but no new photographs will be taken. (btm)

  • Kiip- Rewarding You for Your Angry Birds Addiction (udg)
    • I love the moments when I see something new and think “jinkies, that’s actually awesome.” Rarely does it happen when advertising or marketing are involved. And then I met Kiip.
    • Kiip, a mobile ads startup, has been around for 7 months but they finally came out of stealth mode to unveil an entirely new entirely new model for in-game advertising. You’ve all seen the “free” versions of apps that force you to tolerate lame ads. Now, you are about to experience one that actually offers you value.
    • The folks at Kiip know their gamers. They know when people reach an in-game achievement (you know upping a level, etc) we get happy. We pay attention to the app. They call that “the most user engagement”
    • Does Kiip go “Sweet! Good job! Here’s an ad?” Nope. They go “Sweet! Good Job! Here’s free stuffs!” Kiip has partnered up with big brands like Sephora, popchips, Homerun.com, Sony Dash, Vitamin Water, 1-800-Flowers, Dr Pepper, GNC, Carl’s Jr and Hardee’s to offer players actual in-game rewards like a voucher for six bags of popchips, a lipstick sample or a complimentary smoothie when they complete gaming milestones. Kiips is my kind of peeps.
    • “Achievements are the universal currency for accomplishment and every game in the world has achievements,”  says 19-year-old Kiip co-founder Brian Wong explaining what he calls the “Achievement Moment.” “The achievement itself isn’t the cool thing, it’s the moment. We realized that the moment was worth something. The natural evolution is to put something there that actually matches the achievement.”
    • Kiip Rewards Network will be rolling out rewards in over 15 games, reaching 12 million monthly active users. I was not able to find a specific list, but their intro video shows Angry Birds. Brands will pay up when a user signs up for a reward, from 25 cents to $3 per cost per engagement.
    • Wong says the team has got a lot more up its sleeve. I’m looking forward to see what that is.
  • Jerry Lawsen, inventor of the video game cartridge, passed away Saturday of unknown causes. He was among the earliest video game engineers. Developed the first video game cartridge (for the Fairchild Channel F system). Prior to this home game systems only played games that were built into the system. (btm… if you’ve every blown on a video game this man is why)

Intarweb Goldmine

  • What happens if you get sucked out of a plane
    • Brought to mind by the hole that was ripped in the ceiling of the SW airline
    • Everybody was fine on that flight but what happens at 30,000 feet?
    • Many Factors: Cut in half by hole, lack of oxygen, cold (-70 F), 500 mile winds
    • You’re dead way before you hit the ground
    • This has been your friendly neighborhood PSA announcement :)
  • Nude web coders wanted!
    • “Sex does not play a part in naturism – yes one is aware of differences in sex and size and shape and age of everyone, but the concern is on sales and technical ability, not availability”
  • 7 Year Old Missing? He may just be a hardcore gamer. (udg)
    • A mom in Rochester called police after her 7 year old son said he was going outside to ride bike around 2pm and was nowhere to be found an hour later.
    • Where was he? Well he was found around in the video game area at Walmart around 6pm. He told police he was there earlier in the day and wanted a video game.
  • Disco is Officially Dead. Meet the Man That Killed It. (udg)
    • California man who used a shotgun to blast the speaker on his son’s stereo will not be facing criminal charges, according to prosecutors. The man told cops that he destroyed the speaker because his 24-year-old son–an aspiring DJ–“was playing his ‘disco’ too loud.”
    • Stanislaw Jarmolowicz, 53, was arrested last week on suspicion of shooting at or into a building. Jarmolowicz spent about two days in the Yuba County jail before posting bail Wednesday.
    • After a review of the case, prosecutors opted not to prosecute Jarmolowicz, chiefly because criminal negligence could not be established since he did not intend to injure his son Anthony. The younger Jarmolowicz uses the handle “Baas” in connection with his DJ pursuits.

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