Near... Far...

Address Is Approximate from The Theory on Vimeo.

Where everybody knows your name...

The Hunger Games Official Trailer!

Hell Yeah!!

Happy Friday!

PencilHead from qwaqa on Vimeo.

At first glance...

Photo:

T’Met Monastery

T’Met Monastery:

Oftentimes we see applications of a new building technique on a small experimental model, but rarely do we see them applied to a large creation. I am delighted to see tiberium_blue‘s T’Met Monastery, which not only uses Technic liftarms for its massive stone walls but also depicts a refreshing subject of a fictional sanctuary inspired by a Star Trek Vulcan monastery.

Hi.

When the music is gone...

Public Resonance from sam weller on Vimeo.

We are living in the futur.. oh wait..

Uh... Wow

Happy Sighday

http://www.wdyl.com/#

Why I mostly agree with "The Top 10 Geek Axioms" by Matt Blum of Geek Dad

Geek heresy!

I came across an article this morning, and its pretty spot on. 
In true geek fashion, and according to his description of how our sub-species reacts to such stimuli I either wanted to defend or counter any of his points, so here it goes:

10. Being a Harry Potter fan is neither necessary nor sufficient to make you a geek, any more than seeing the movie Gettysburg is necessary or sufficient to make you a historian.

True; While Harry Potter is a fun series, it's ability to cut across many demographics, and the success of the movies, makes it more of a marketing juggernaut, and successful marketing experement. Not to mention that Rowling's actual lack of character development past Prisoner of Azkaban to create a follow through punch kills the true geekdom from the beginning. (Lucas understudy?) 

9. Batman is much cooler than Superman.

True?.. Maybe, I just read the 1st Justice League from the new DC reboot, and gleaning from that and interweb scuttle-butt it is possible that The Man of Steel may actually be ditching some of his Boy Scout-ish persona. That is refreshing really, I mean Batman is the ultimate Bad-ass, (parents dying in front of you and all) but maybe this new take on Superman will deal with the fact that actually being the most powerful being on earth could make you a little cocky..

8. Caffeine and bacon make everything better (provided you’re not among those who don’t consume one or both for religious or medical reasons).

True, I mean I've never been the guy with a perpetual Due attached to my hand, but........mmm bacon....

7. Lego makes the best toys in the world.
Right. Duh. But also.. man toys today SUCK! I bought my son a Transformer for his birthday, he wanted one, they look cool, and I was down, its not like we were fans of the movies any way. IT FELL APART IN OUR HANDS! In the very act of transforming, like the arm popped off the ball socket, and I should not have been surprised to find exactly 0 die cast parts in the whole mess. Sad.. oh well, where is that Lego bucket...

6. The MythBusters have the best jobs in the world, even if they do have to occasionally make things like the earwax candle, which was frankly one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen on TV.

There has to be a way to make it mandatory viewing in grade school, because really, Astronauts have the coolest job in the world, and these guys could so be the new inspiration needed to charge our imaginations, and get our "Science is Awesome! juices flowing. It is needed.

5. ThinkGeek is the most dangerous website on the internet — to your wallet, that is. (Disclaimer: GeekDad and ThinkGeek collaborate on a lot of things. But I’d have included this even if we didn’t.)

Yeah.. I mean, I'm not a clever t-shirt wearer, where I'm sure most of their revenue comes from, but most of that stuff ends up being some really great gifts, and inteweb-window-shopping/dreaming.

4. Video games are art. The fact that some of them are the rough equivalent of “Dogs Playing Poker” or a velvet painting of Elvis does not change that.

Myst, Portal/2, Final Fantasy, Homeworld, Minecraft, Bastion, Little Big Town, Warcraft, (not World of..) all masterpieces.  

3. Vampires do not sparkle.

Who cares? I have never been interested/cared/worried about anything to do with vampires, they aren't interesting or cool, unless they are Simon Belmont's antagonist or making a rouge-gallery cameo in a Batman story. They are kinda like zombies/ninja/pirates, in that they are as good at the person writing them, and even then.. Meh. "I love you, and I hate the moon." 

2. Growing old is mandatory; growing up is not.
<3*8

1. Han shot first. (This one was a no-brainer.)

So... have you been been catching up on ST:TNG since it became available to stream on Netflix..

So, what’d I miss?
GI-JOE was the best cartoon ever
Must have taken apart at least 3 VCR's as a kid, even if you didn't get them back together.
Hackers and Real Genius are required viewing.

Image copyright Lucasfilm Ltd. Used under Fair Use.

Phoenix is a giant strip mall, with nothing to see between destinations. Oh yeah, did I mention, it's kinda hot too.

Double Whammy Monday Bonus Post!

Compressed 02 from Kim Pimmel on Vimeo.

"Did we miss anybody?"

If only...

Ever feel like you just can't get away...

Amazing indeed..

so rad, see more here

I cannot even imagine..

Now you see it..

Do you remember me...

The PC turned 30 today, 

Love the first ad on that link, also props to my Dad for having one of these in our house for as long as I can remember. I know it was on an Apple IIe in school, but I remember being pretty fascinated by Oregon Trail and Number Chrunchers.

Maybe a little more perspective for those whose tech experience has been tied to mobile devices. Really at some point the two worlds merged..

If you don't know who Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson is, you need to know him . In this compilation video he lays out why NASA is important, why it inspires and how little it actually costs. I grew up(lol that's relative) dreaming of space travel and astronauts, I remember crying when the Challenger blew up, I remember talking about astronauts in school, and I remember designing moon bases. What happened to all that? Have we really allowed Sci-Fi movies/books/comics/mini-series to take over our yearnings for exploration? Let them satiate our need for discovery? Are we telling our kids that the next frontier is planetary travel? That they could actually be the ones to go to Mars? A like Dr Tyson points out, many may ask why is that important? How is it significant? What purpose does it serve? Well he lays out some great points, educational and otherwise. And frankly after seeing stuff like this, and this, and this, I worry about what our focus is on as a nation. I realize this is a 1st world problem, but in light of the "budget crisis" and our massive decline in educational standings around the world, it seems we ought to "reboot"

 

Happy Friday

Sesame Street breaks it down from Wonderful Creative on Vimeo.

Fascinating...

Chin up, America. China ain't so great. That 10% GDP growth they've been having? A lot of it is fake. Take this investigate report that looks at the big trend over there of Chinese ghost cities and ghost malls. China is building ten of these cities a year, cities that can serve millions, with rows of apartment complexes, shopping malls, and universities. But almost no one lives in them. By pouring materials and resources and labor in, the government can keep national GDP at its state-mandated levels, even if its not meeting any real demand. It's like someone is playing SimCity with all cheat codes, but this is a game China is going to lose.

With 64 million of these apartments sitting empty, too expensive for most Chinese to rent - artificially inflated prices keep "value" up high, which is also helpful on the spreadsheets - they've created the largest property bubble in history. The tiger's paper is wearing thin.

via the consumerist http://goo.gl/OYIBw

Happy Friday!

I swear a review of Google+ and some thoughts on why someone needs o explain why Superman can fly...

Monday makes me want to join...

Eclectic Method - The Dark Side from Eclectic Method on Vimeo.

Happy Friday!

This is not really a post about cats! Seriously get through to the end...

Seriously, get that app! 

cause..

and cause...

Aaaand, Action!

Plot Device from Red Giant on Vimeo.

Happy Friday

Yeahbeenplayingwith Google+alldayheresapicOKbye..

Special Report Thursday

Ok, that does it, it is time to break down and buy me some Mindstorms!

Fake it till you make it..

Play with your food...

Not a Nick Cage movie..

Woah...

Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Computer Virus from Patrick Clair on Vimeo.

Special Report Thursday: Happy 100th IBM!

The 100-year-old company is celebrating the milestone in style, with a resource-laden website and a new book highlighting the century of innovation. The company released a 13-minute film recapping that storied history year-by-year. The short movie features one hundred people, each presenting a different IBM achievement from the year they were born, from oldest to youngest.

President Thomas Watson got that long list going early on by instilling the slogan “THINK” and signaturestrong customer service into corporate culture. Over the decades, IBM equipment has powered Social Security, learned to play checkers, facilitated plane reservations, helped land men on the moon, and beat humans at Jeopardy! Watson, the natural-language analytical computer who did the winning, earned a Webby Award for “Person of the Year” on Monday. IBM scientists also invented FORTRAN and put barcodes on inventory.

One of the things IBM did not give the world, however, is the inspiration for the malfunctioning computer in2001: A Space Odyssey. HAL is short for “Heuristic Algorithmic,” and the one-letter offset with IBM is purely coincidental.

In addition to the celebratory reflection on where they’ve been, IBM is also giving back. Since the start of the year, IBMers have donated over 2.5 million hours to 5,000 service projects in 120 countries.

Congratulations, IBM, on a century of advancing technology.

via. GeekDad

Yeah, like that

Where Is Your Head from Nenko Genov on Vimeo.

Monday..

Happy Friday!

YES! We can finally stop saying "Where is my flying car!"

Check it out @ http://www.terrafugia.com/

Sometimes...

CASSINI MISSION from Chris Abbas on Vimeo.

Happy Friday!

Just watch...

Flottille (detail) from Etienne Cliquet on Vimeo.



Flotilla is a series of videos of micro-origamis (2 ou 3 centimeters long) which are opening slowly onto the surface of the water by capillarity (more infos on my website : ordigami.net/​flottilla)

I'm going to invent a cell phone that runs on the same signal as that classical radio station that I seem to get No. Matter. Where. I. Am!!

Happy Friday! Fly me away

But his "spirit" lives on

NASA Concludes Attempts to Contact Mars Rover Spirit

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA is ending attempts to regain contact with the long-lived Mars Exploration Rover Spirit, which last communicated on March 22, 2010.

A transmission that will end on Wednesday, May 25, will be the last in a series of attempts. Extensive communications activities during the past 10 months also have explored the possibility that Spirit might reawaken as the solar energy available to it increased after a stressful Martian winter without much sunlight. With inadequate energy to run its survival heaters, the rover likely experienced colder internal temperatures last year than in any of its prior six years on Mars. Many critical components and connections would have been susceptible to damage from the cold.   read more @ NASA

Picture explains why Rapture didn't happen.

via sommee

Happy Friday!

I am so fanboy stoked for this movie! I may have even put my geekiness on display for the sake of making it onto the official website...

Also that pic came from a cool collection of LEGO inspired Movie Posters.

Best use of Ball Pit Balls, EVER!

F5 2011 RE:PLAY Film Festival. Inductance from Physalia Studio on Vimeo.

Even Superman has a Monday...

Happy? Friday!

HAL's annoying, less well adjusted, little brother?

Um.. please yes!

The cost of the hardware to run your computing electronics has always been pretty cheap, you mostly are paying for the software. The bummer is, as software advances, your hard ware, 'cept for the occasional GPU upgrade, is what it is. Enter Google Chrombooks.. yeah baby! This is pretty significant for schools btw. Check it out..

Monday... nah, lemme just remember..

Had a blast last week backpacking around Navajo Mountain, and got to break in this cool app, Trip Journal doing it. Just click on the map below to zoom in and out then see some pics and vids that I took along the way. Oh, and set the map to Terrain to get some prespective...

h

Hi, Mom

I come from good people, both my parents are hard working, dedicated, and loving people. As long as i can remember they have been involved in the community, active and vibrant. Obviously this is all mom's fault, and pretty sure dad wouldn't argue that.She is such a peacemaker, a lover of family and gatherings, and music, always music. And I have never meet a harder worker, always striving to make things better for those around her. One of my fondest memories is of her bulletin board calenders, changing like clock work every month, the days shaped like the corresponding months holiday/theme shape. My favorite were the October pumpkins. She raised five boys, each of them unique, each of them requiring something different, each of them getting that. Most say to me, "oh, your poor mother, having five boys!" I just smile and say, "Nah, five helpers around the house." Man she put us to work, never letting there be much idle time, unless it was together time. She cannot swear. I'ts hilarious actually, when she says "poop" its like the filthiest word she has ever uttered, and pains her to say. She is a caregiver, I watched her bathe her grandmother, haul us to the care center to visit her grandfather and always, always remember people on their birthdays. She taught us the gospel, and not the "preach it from the corner" gospel. The, quiet acts of service, the time spent making a lesson better with a homemade visual aid, and her unwavering testimony that she knows God lives and that we all are wort it. I love you Mom. Maybe we could record some stuff, like these guys did.

No More Questions! from StoryCorps on Vimeo.

So many Lego's so little time...

What did you do today?

Mon-frikkin-day

Orange and Blue

How else do you think that works?

Happy Friday!

What part of you could you lose...

And what lengths would you go to to get it back? Roger Ebert, who one could say used his voice to make a career, takes us on his fascinating journey through losing it to throat cancer and his subsequent attempts to get it back, literally! Through text-to-speech, emotional readings from his wife and friends, and even a synthesized version of his own speech, he describes what it has been like to create a new "voice," both auditory and in print.  It is also fun to hear about Mr. Ebert's love and early adoption of technology, see his optimism despite his "disability," and hear his take on the new "voice" media and the internet can give people. Two thumbs up, Mr. Ebert.

For those who remember Space Camp, and those who keep dreaming of the stars

Google and Qwiki celebrate the First Man in space, Yuri Gagarin 50 years ago today,

View Yuri Gagarin and over 3,000,000 other topics on Qwiki.

NASA honors the men and women who have given their minds, hearts and lives to the 30 year Shuttle Program, with a refreshingly metered William Shatner. I cannot get over what they were able to accomplish, with less than a quarter of the "technology" we have today. It was like Odyssey of the Mind on steroids...

Speaking of amazing feats in engineering and innovation, when the Opportunity and Spirit rovers landed on Mars 6 years ago, the "giant-space-air-bag/bounce-to-a-stop" method of landing seemed, well, crazy, but of course it totally worked. So when the Curiosity Rover launches later this year seems logical to use that proven system right, wait, no? Oh yeah.. thats's how I would have done it..

Here's to Boldly Going...

Mond...woah!

Happy Friday!

Its spring time.. maybe go out, do some campin'...

So Smart..

Monday..........

Happy Friday! Finally, not all movies HAVE to be 3D!

Genius! Why does every movie have to be 3D!? Now they don't! Check out these little babies. Perfect, now we can enjoy movies again.

I had so many choices...

But I went with this, too weird/cool not to:

Make Monday Awesome

via GeekDad: This is great for a lot of reasons, Mario, Audio mixing, and a nice message at the end reminding us that we can still help out.

Happy Friday

The Aurora from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.

Wednesday is for Science!

I loved my science classes, I wasn't very good, getting a C in chemistry and struggling with the math in physics, but it was always fascinating, always inspiring and always fun when I figured something out. These kinda of simple demonstrations, where the concept is learned because of some work put into demonstrate it; my kind of science.

Special Report Tuesday: Happy Birthday Captain Kirk, uh..er, William Shatner

William Shatner is 80, and whether you love him or hate him, he did help create one of the most iconic sci-fi characters of all time, who may be actually be the focus of my lauding. Firefox (remember Firefox?) released a new version(thoughts later) and I want to go to here:

Monday: Breakfast for your brain

Happy Friday!

So, how many streets in the world do you think bear your name? Well now you can find out! Or any other name for that matter. Stephen Von Worley on his blog Data Pointed wrote a slick little program that displays all the streets in the world that share your namesake. It can also export a .klm file for Google Earth. I also wonder how accurate it is for popularity of a name, John St. vs. Bartholomew Blvd. for example. Pretty cool.

Please watch full screen...

Sometimes the Stars from The Audreys on Vimeo.

Special report Tuesday! Happy Birthday Dot Com!

Yep, 26 years ago today the first .com was registered. So here's to you symbolics.com, whatever the heck you are! If it weren't for you BBN.com(again??) could have been first in a line of many. And the rest as they say...

Monday is for...Pi!

This doesn't talk about Pi directly, but... 

Happy Friday!

There is a lot going on in the world today, so let me help add to/cut the tension with the following. The agony of an ink jet printer has never been so well captured, ever.

Special Report Thursday: The End and Beginning of "Boldly Going"

"Space shuttle Discovery made its final landing today at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Completing its 39th and final flight, the Discovery now retires as Nasa’s oldest and most flown space shuttle. It was a bittersweet touchdown as everyone witnessed this history in the making. Discovery still holds the record(among all operating shuttels) with 39 missions, 148 million miles, 5,830 orbits of Earth and 365 days spent in space. It will take several months of work to dismantle engine parts and drain fuel before the Discovery will be ready for its final resting place at the Smithsonian Institution.

The Discovery is still in top shape and its retirement is due to the closing down of NASA’s shuttle program in order to financially support new programs to send astronauts beyond Earth’s orbit. NASA is under presidential direction to make this decision and to shut down the shuttle program by this summer."

[via USA Today] (I added the Bold text)

I was ranting the other day about how I'm kinda sad that we may not see inter-stellar travel in my life time. But this.. makes me kinda tear up a little, to think that we are retiring an era in the hopes of a new one. It is thought provoking and fascinating. I followed the Mars Rover mission from day one, and was riveted by every facet of the mission conception to execution. Still, I want to go into space.. really. I, I just cannot imagine a more humbling, awe inspiring, self-evaluation provoking adventure than to see Earth from the heavens, with the stars as an infinite landscape, and the Sun burning ever bright in the background. There is so much out there we do not understand, so much we can observe and expand our knowledge of how our own world works. I'm aware that this may sound somewhat escapist, ignoring all the challenges we face in the hear and now; I say, don't stop innovating or pushing this important work. It is because of the space program that we have so many of technologies that we do, the medical advances and the sparks of imagination that our kids and youth need to overcome and surpass their current situations. So, I'm excited, thrilled and enthralled at what may be next, what is around the proverbial planetary bend. 

It keeps you running..

So.. I never posted this to anywhere although most of the tools I was using would let me share my progress to FaceBook or Twitter. I guess I didn't want to jinx it, but I just completed the 9th week of the Couch-2-5K running program(this is the 10th week, and have kept on schedule so far). Yeah, I know! It has been pretty awesome. And I have to admit I needed some conditioning and reward systems.  There are various apps out there for the iPhone, but  have stuck with two: micoach.com from Adidas, and a timer app from FeltTip. The first is GPS enabled, marking tracks and gauging pace and calories burned. The mapping feature played into my geekiness and getting stats and data helped motivate me. There were times the GPS lost signal, but I think that was more the iPhone 3G's fault. I did have to hit the treadmill a couple of times due to weather and stuff, so it kinda killed the accumulated miles, but getting an "achievement" like this:

Yeah, pretty motivating. So the next step, keep up the schedule, and look for a "local" 5k to actually run in. Know any?

Couple of routes I ran:

 

this will get you Up! on a Monday ; )

Happy Friday!

From Latitude 47: A killer rabbit, the Holy Grenade of Antioch and Monty Python’s search for the Holy Grail all intersected at one precise location in 1975. This Scotland location is  Tomnadashan Mine, but for fans of the British comedy troop Monty Python, and the movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” the location is best known as the lair of the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog.

The geocache “Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Scene 21″ (GCP439) has brought more than 100 adventurers to the location since it was hidden in 2005.  Some geocachers even add their own makeshift props adapted from the movie, including their own “killer rabbit.”

The killer rabbit about to attack

The logs thank Snaik and a Deceased Parrot for placing the cache and keeping a small part of movie history from vanishing into the Scottish countryside. One entry reads, “I would never have known this were here if it weren’t for geocaching! I packed a holy hand grenade just in case, but the rabbit must be hibernating early. Thanks for bringing me here!”

The cache page for the difficulty 1.5, terrain 4 cache also details the non-cinematic history of the site as an abandoned mining operation. But it’s the reference to the Monty Python movie that has geocachers traveling deep into rural Scotland with their GPS device, a pen to the sign the log and a “killer” stuffed rabbit to pose in pictures.

Continue your exploration of some of the most engaging geocaches from around the world. Explore all the Geocaches of the Week on our blog or view the Bookmark List on Geocaching.com.

How many do you know?

I got about half. And I miss Night Court. Click here for the answers.