Watching this neat show tonight on Discovery, called Alien Planet
I want Ripley to see this, as it’s not only interesting and informative speculative documentary, but some of the best eye-candy I’ve seen in a LONG time.
Via Slashdot, the tech sector’s CNN, (or at least National Enquirer)
An anonymouse reader writes “Tom’s Hardware has a feature up on the makings of Tron which may interest latent fans. Through interviews with the creators they explore the makings of Tron, from how it came to be picked up by Disney to how the effects were put together (‘While the majority of the film takes place in the computer world, only 15 minutes worth of footage actually used CGI’, because it would have taken years to make the film otherwise). They then explore why the film flopped at the box office. ‘It was like we put LSD in the punch at the school prom and it was just way more than they can handle,’ said Steven Lisberger.”
If you thought the conversations about Star Trek, Star Wars, and The Matrix got heated (when comparing special effects to plot), check out the commenting threads going on for this story.
One comment [edited here] struck home for me, especially, from tinkertim
I saw Tron, opening night, and its one of the things that made me really, really want to figure out how those nifty looking typewriters with screens could do so much. I didn’t know what memory was, I didn’t know what a processor did, I barely understood how a calculator worked and if you said Binary I’d say “Sure, I have a Huffy!”.
We’re always looking at value as something monetary. Tron made me go get my first trash-80 (Err Tandy TRS-80 heheh) and later my first Commie. I wanted to know how those things worked.
The value of the film wasn’t how much it grossed , if you want to calculate that, then calculate the life time earnings of those who got into computers partly because of seeing it and you may be surprised :)
However only 15 minutes of CGI? I somehow (not sure why, because I know what was available then) thought most of it was CGI.. but yes, that would have been very very difficult at the time. My bubble sort of broke reading that article, never really thought about the making other than being fascinated as a child with the results.
Entertainment isn’t entertainment to most if it requires too much thought.
Tron got to be the pavement others were able to ride in on. So wallet aside, I don’t think the film was a flop. I was too young to remember any hoop-la coming from Disney about the film.. I wonder how it would have done if it had been underplayed before release.
Cool article, if you can wade through the advertisements :)
I remember getting sucked into this movie almost as badly as Star Wars: The Master Control Program made me tremble with fear, and when the old guy died, I’m pretty sure I teared up.
I’m *such* a geek.
{to the tune of “If I had a million dollars”}
If I had $200, I wouldn’t have to reach for the cord…
If I had $200, I’d poke myself in the ear ’cause it cosssssts more…
Logitech Wireless Headphones for iPod
Heaphones that are that latest “sport” style.
But cordless.
With remote ON THE FREAKIN’ EAR.
Via We-Make-Money-Not-Art (which, if it weren’t for Slashdot and my own site, would probably be my homepage).
ScrambledHackz (Click here to see what it’s about)
sCrAmBlEd?HaCkZ! is a Realtime-Mind-Music-Video-Re-De-Construction-Machine.
(click the picture to see a snapshot of some of what’s going on)
Via We-Make-Money-Not-Art
Data Transcriptions
Looks very cool.
An amalgamation of image and text parsed from the BBC’s live internet news service is algorithmically recombined into a semi-abstract visual array, which is then back-projected onto a suspended screen situated in the lowest well of the staircase. Beneath the screen, a surround sound system emanates a seemingly garbled newscast. On the ceilings, geometric abstract patterns are painted directly onto the surfaces. These images are visual translations of the equations responsible for creating the real-time audio/visual elements of the installation – scribed in a data-language that, like the fundamental components of the media itself, is opaque to human perception.
None of which I understand, of course, but this is neat.
Go see my buddy Moxie’s blog…
http://mblog.lib.umich.edu/~rdivecha/archives/2006/02/the_world_of_sm.html
Funky multiple-point touch screen goodness.
(don’t try the video unless you’ve got high speed, I’m guessing)
There’s needs to be a long way to write “dope” so it sounds like “duuuuuude.”
Looks like they’re finally putting sticky toes to good use in CPU architecture…
Although they don’t occur naturally, they have similar properties to setae, which are those tiny hairs on the feet of gecko lizards. Actually, the ends of setae split into many nanoscale fibres called spatulas, and these spatulas are so fine that they form molecular bonds with almost anything they touch. Those bonds allow geckos to climb walls and hang from a pane of glass.
…and that would be “gecko lizards,” as opposed to “gecko mammals?”
Maybe next time I’m about to throw away some little piece of broken hardware, I’ll start sticking it to other broken bits, and make some of these little robot doohickey things.
Dylan Tinlun Chan is a genius, of sorts (and bit and pieces).
Very very cool, and unlike so many of the other do it yourself sites (like Hack-A-Day), this stuff looks like it could be made by non garage-full-of-ex-military-hardware types.
Like me.
Was bumbering around tonight looking for “Thunder Snow” because The Colbert Report opened with a great little joke about it (and looking forward to Flood-Nado, Sleetsami, too), and stumbled across some links on there that pointed to this great 14 ways to turn your organization into a mess
Click here to read more.. »
