November 3, 2011
Battle of the cameras
With digital cinema on the rise, and DSLR video shooting becoming increasingly popular for low-budget and independent film making, expectations were high for Canon's big announcement at Paramount Studios today. And Canon delivered, the C300 is a DSLR-like camera that uses Canon or PL mount lenses (two different models), with no autofocus, S35mm sensor size, full HD to a 50Mbps 10-bit 4:2:2 stream, shipping in January 2012 for $20,000. They also announced a new range of high-resolution affordable zoom and prime lenses for cinema use, and, as an extra bonus, they announced they were developing a similar camera that could record 4k video for release at some time in the future. It all looked like a big win for Canon...
But, a few hours later, the always controversial and disruptive Red Digital Cinema, makers of the ubiquitous Red One and the relatively new 5K, 120fps EPIC, announced the EPIC's little sister, based on the same sensor, the Scarlet, a camera that also uses Canon or PL mount lenses, with an interchangeable lens mount, autofocus on Canon lenses, S35mm sensor size, 4k video (with HDR option) and 5k stills to a 400Mbps 16-bit compressed raw stream, shipping December 1st for $9,750 for the body (under $14,000 for a full, ready to shoot kit with media, card reader and 5" touchscreen, minus the lenses).
Occupy, eh?
While Occupy Wall Street has captured the attention of major American politicians, its counterpart in Canada has been mainly a municipal headache. Despite inequality north of the border rising at a comparable rate, and similar political sentiments, most Canadians also believe the movement is ineffective, though their hearts are in the right place. As the movement slows as winter weather sets in, cities are taking various measures to discourage the protests, hoping a combination of inconvenience and weather will disperse the encampments. [more inside]
Hu leads China's Fox News
Damn it, all over myself again!
Women Struggling to Drink Water is the new Women Laughing Alone With Salad. (Previously. Frequently updated salad tumblr.)
The Big Girl
3 part series (some subtitles): rad mashup between stop motion and drawn animation in an awesome wrap of cute fun. Ep 1, Ep 2, Ep 3 .
A.J. Liebling
[A.J.] Liebling didn’t invent The New Yorker’s fascination with work, with letting its interview subjects explain what they did for a living. But he did it very well, and his pudgy hand sits comfortably on the shoulders of the next generation, writers like Roger Angell or John McPhee. They are all of them purveyors of non-essential information, and the enormous pleasure we take in them is in inverse proportion to any actual need we have to know.
"When you think about the way he parked that boat, it was unbelievable, I mean, especially for somebody with no depth perception as we know it."
Tales of the Dark Knight
The Kitten Covers
Classic album covers, now with kittens!
Do+A+Barrel+Roll
Do you use Chrome*? Click the links to make Google Do a Barrel Roll, Tilt or change the logo to Ascii Art.
* May work in other browsers too, YMMV [more inside]
* May work in other browsers too, YMMV [more inside]
Televisual journalists report forthcoming same-sex nuptuals on Conan
How many words are 288,000 jelly beans worth?
SuperTwins - Super Charge!
SuperTwins, starring Natalie Kim and Trevor Zhou, is a new webseries about a couple ordinary, mid-level superhero fraternal twins, Karin and Kai, who are always at odds with each other. When we meet this brother/sister duo, it seems they've fallen on not-so-super times. Can they become awesome again? Here's episode 1, SuperTwins Super Losers?
Feel like a phony? Just fake it till you make it.
Rick. Rick. Rick.
Rick taught his cat, Lou, how to use instant messaging. Their chat logs can be read at Lou vs. Rick. (SLTP)
"the abyss where the eternally-formless state of the universe hides"
Losing track of words
Can vocabulary analysis detect the onset of Alzheimers Disease in writers? In 2004, a team at UCL demonstrated that Iris Murdoch's last novel had simpler sentence structure and a smaller vocabulary than her earlier books. Now a team at the University of Toronto has corroborated that research, and suggests that Agatha Christie too suffered from the disease at the end of her career.
Gimme the phone
Global British Columbia Sports Anchor Barry Deley wins lotto home draw, live on his own TV channel. But it turns out he's got an even more personal connection to the lottery.
Satisfyingly difficult versus satisfyingly long
In 1987 the first Castlevania was released. It was followed by Simon's Quest in 1988. The difference between the two games is stark. Although they both have the same basic plot lines (kill Dracula) and setting, Simon's Quest introduced an open world and RPG elements, giving eventual rise to the genre known as "Metroidvania". Sequelitis looks at the difference between these design decisions and shows that maybe Metroidvanias aren't quite as much fun as you might remember.
Of Course, of Course
Jasha Lottin says she can't understand why people are so interested in why she bought a horse, killed it, gutted it, then posed naked for photos inside the carcass and posted them on the Internet. (NSFW) [more inside]
Drop-matrix printing
Too Close for Comfort, Indeed
Previously, we discussed the strangely serious 1985 Too Close For Comfort episode titled: For Every Man, There's Two Women - a show of note in that one of its main characters, Monroe Ficus (Jm J. Bullock), is kidnapped and raped by two obese women with a jello fetish. At the time of the previous post, no footage of the episode could be found online. Recently, however, the entire episode [part 1] [part 2] was uploaded to YouTube. Trigger warning: the episode, though it deals with a serious subject, often plays the abduction/assault for laughs. [via]
Button mashing doesn't work with either title, nor does standing still and holding the block button down.
Starting the game at a higher than normal difficulty introduces the concept of "Darwinian Difficulty", which can be summarized by the motto "adapt or die."Exploring the lack of a difficulty curve via diamond-hard games Ninja Gaiden Black and Demon's Souls.
"The next time you hear a bird chirping outside your window, you might think twice about what’s going on inside his little birdbrain."
Are birds’ tweets grammatical? [Scientific American] But are the rules of grammar unique to human language? Perhaps not, according to a recent study, which showed that songbirds may also communicate using a sophisticated grammar—a feature absent in even our closest relatives, the nonhuman primates. Kentaro Abe and Dai Watanabe of Kyoto University performed a series of experiments to determine whether Bengalese finches expect the notes of their tunes to follow a certain order.
An unexpected murmuration.
The other two, sure. But Amir? As if
Unlike other forms of match fixing, spot fixing does not affect the final result, only specific events within a game. Last year, in a cricket match at Lord's between England and Pakistan, three Pakistani cricketers and one agent 'conspired to cheat'. Following the decision [PDF] at Southwark Crown Court today, all four men will face prison time ranging from six to 32 months. It is the first time this charge, brought in under the Gambling Act 2005, has led to a sportsperson's conviction. [more inside]
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