December 16, 2010

Beyond the Real Life

Beyond the Real Life is a World of Warcraft fan movie, blending live action and special effects with in-game footage. The follow-up to a 2006 short called The Edge of Real Life, Beyond the Real Life tells the story of Tank the warrior and Bubbleballs the paladin on a quest to save Tank's love interest after she is kidnapped by a Horde mage. The acting and writing aren't in danger of winning any awards, but the mix of machinima and live action is very well done, and there are some pretty good gags in there, both WoW-related and otherwise. (via RPS)
posted by The Pusher Robot at 11:45 PM PST - 5 comments

How Long is Babby Formed?

"Normal" human pregnancies last 40 weeks, right? Well, no; they can vary quite a bit by the mother's race, age, number of previous children, family history of delivering early or late, home state, work habits, and even the fetus' HLA type. So where does that "40 week" thing come from? Oh, dear. So check out this super-nerdy pregnancy statistics website, from an engineer mom who is collecting data from the public (see the raw data and auto-generated graphs, and read the FAQ about the survey, with more cool graphs). Looking for day-by-day probabilities on when that baby's due? This would be your stats table with daily prediction (adjust dates at top of page as needed). Of course, you could always shut up your constantly inquiring relatives and friends another way.
posted by Asparagirl at 9:49 PM PST - 45 comments

Boss battles are more intimidating in real life...

Rooster Teeth's Immersion is like Mythbusters for video games, and isn't afraid to ask the hard questions: What is it like to drive a real world car from a game's 3rd person perspective? Do the clothes worn by women in Japanese fighting games offer any protection whatsoever? What is it like to be Mario in a outside version of a side-scrolling platform game?. Finally, would Xbox Live-style trash talk would distract a real Special Operations soldier?. [˙ǝdou˙pɹɐɥ oslɐ ˙uoıʇɔǝʇoɹd ou ˙pɹɐɥ sʇı :sɹǝʍsuɐ]
posted by blahblahblah at 9:26 PM PST - 23 comments

Word Lens

Word Lens REPLACES text viewable in your iPhone camera with its translation, in real time, with formatting intact. Be sure to watch the demo video. Pretty much straight up magic. The app itself is free, but Spanish->English or English->Spanish dictionaries are $5 each, via in-app purchase. It's been a while since my jaw has dropped like this from any piece of software.
posted by 3rdparty at 7:37 PM PST - 95 comments

Land Girls and Lumber Jills

Land Girls and Lumber Jills is an exhibit at Scotland's National War Museum. It explores the history of the Women's Land Army and the Women's Timber Corps. These two organizations were formed during the First World War to compensate for shortages in male laborers in agriculture and forestry, respectively. The museum's exhibition ties in a collection on flickr, interviews and a book available for order online. Other sources online will allow one to hear audio samples of the Land Girls' stories, read Land Girls' and Lumber Jills' memoirs and watch old propaganda clips about them or more recent documentary videos (more on YT). Officially commemorated in 2008, these civilian service organizations have also been the subject of a film, "The Land Girls" (trailer), an ITV sitcom, and a BBC series (Episode 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

The British Women's Land Army model was successfully replicated in the U.S. with the Woman's Land Army of America (whose members were known as "farmerettes") and in Australia with the Australian Women's Land Army.
posted by HE Amb. T. S. L. DuVal at 6:06 PM PST - 8 comments

Alligator bites electric eel

What happens when an alligator bites an electric eel? (SLYT) hattip: Boing Boing [more inside]
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:09 PM PST - 144 comments

I can't imagine any job where these are work safe...

Douglas Burgdorff is a director who makes disturbing short films (all links not safe for work) about: the color red, partying, drugs, drugs and skateboarding, friendship, lollipops, and... um... Taylor Swift? Not for the faint of heart, nor the easily disgusted. [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 4:57 PM PST - 13 comments

The Digital Version Of The Nativity Story

The Digital Version Of The Nativity Story, told through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google, Wikipedia, Google Maps, GMail, Foursquare, Amazon and more. [more inside]
posted by ericb at 3:51 PM PST - 18 comments

"Hockey is murder on ice." ~Jim Murray

Mass Brawl on Ice! [SLYT] KHL teams fight 6 seconds into game.
posted by Fizz at 2:23 PM PST - 83 comments

Best Music Writing 2010

Best Music Writing 2010 - Links inside! [more inside]
posted by chaff at 2:22 PM PST - 15 comments

All these worlds are yours...

An open letter to all fans of Science Fiction from Tom Hunter, Director of the Arthur C. Clarke Award - The Arthur C. Clarke Award, the yearly award for best Science Fiction novel published in the UK, could be in trouble.
posted by Artw at 2:15 PM PST - 26 comments

"In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they’re not."

“There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.” - C.A.R. Hoare, from the Top 50 Programming Quotes of All Time.
posted by Slap*Happy at 2:09 PM PST - 39 comments

"We are each other's best friend."

In December 1966, ABC 's Stage 67 broadcast a teleplay of Truman Capote's beloved short story, "A Christmas Memory." It won both an Emmy, and Peabody, and was narrated by the author himself. Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
posted by timsteil at 1:47 PM PST - 6 comments

What can a poor boy do?

More, perhaps, than any other rock star of his generation, Jagger has made it his business to understand and control the mechanics of his own stardom.
posted by Joe Beese at 1:46 PM PST - 24 comments

Chinese ghost cities

Chinese ghost cities. Big bubble.
posted by Meatbomb at 1:13 PM PST - 46 comments

Death of a hero

If you've ever watched the movie "The Battle of Britain", you surely must remember Squadron Leader Evans, a man with a horribly burned face. That role was played by William Foxley, his only appearance in film, and that was really what he looked like. In 1944,. Bill Foxley was navigator in a Wellington bomber which crashed shortly after takeoff. He got out of the wreck safely, but he heard a crewmate screaming inside and went back in and dragged the poor fellow out. In doing so he was horrifically burned, destroying his face and badly ruining both his hands. He lost one eye and the cornea of the other was badly scarred, leaving him nearly blind. As a member of the "Guinea Pig Club" he underwent almost 30 surgeries over three years to fix his hands and rebuild something like a face, which is what you saw in the movie. Bill Foxley got on with his life, and this week he died at age 87.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 1:11 PM PST - 21 comments

Dostoyevsky's "Der Idiot" copied by hand

Dostoyevsky's "Der Idiot" copied by hand Martin copied the entire book "Der Idiot" of Dostojewski by hand. He exchanged the main figure Myskin with his own name: Martin.
posted by riley370 at 1:04 PM PST - 32 comments

404 Bookmark not found

Yahoo to shut down Del.icio.us, other sites. After a series of layoffs, Yahoo announced internally that a number of Yahoo products would be shut down, and others merged into existing features of the Yahoo main site.
posted by zabuni at 12:52 PM PST - 262 comments

Faces from the Past: People Are Interesting

Faces from the Past is a blog of beautiful images of fascinating people, including Djuna Barnes, Audrey Hepburn, Louise Brooks, Sappho and Eve. [more inside]
posted by Morrigan at 12:41 PM PST - 7 comments

"It's so useful!"

'Phone-Wielding Shoppers Strike Fear Into Retailers.' 'A revolution in retailing—what Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Chief Executive Mike Duke has dubbed a "new era of price transparency"—and its arrival is threatening to upend the business models of the biggest store chains in America. Until recently, retailers could reasonably assume that if they just lured shoppers to stores with enticing specials, the customers could be coaxed into buying more profitable stuff, too. Now, marketers must contend with shoppers who can use their smartphones inside stores to check whether the specials are really so special, and if the rest of the merchandise is reasonably priced."The retailer's advantage has been eroded," says Greg Girard of consultancy IDC Retail Insights, which recently found that roughly 45% of customers with smartphones had used them to perform due diligence on a store's prices. "The four walls of the store have become porous."' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 12:37 PM PST - 108 comments

CreatureCast

CreatureCast is a collaborative blog and podcast from evolutionary biologist Casey Dunn, who uses it as a teaching tool at the Dunn Lab at Brown University. The Lab investigates ways in which evolution has produced a diversity of life, and the blog includes neat, invertebrate zoology-related videos that may cover anything from "mating when you're stuck to a rock" to Flying with Squid to Multicellularity to Diving for Jellies. (Via) [more inside]
posted by zarq at 12:24 PM PST - 2 comments

Being thrown out of this place is significantly better than being thrown out of a leper colony.

Director Blake Edwards, Dies at 88. A prolific writer and director, honorary Oscar recipient, and husband to Julie Andrews, Edwards died of complications from Pnuemonia. He was the director of such classics as Days of Wine and Roses, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Victor/Victoria and, of course, the Pink Panther film series. Does your dog bite?
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:17 PM PST - 57 comments

BodyWorks In Your Browser

A busy day for Google, as it soft-launches BodyBrowser (latest betas of Safari, Firefox and Chrome required.). Using a combination of HTML5 with the <canvas> tag with WebGL (essentially plugin-free OpenGL for 3D on the web), BodyBrowser makes the human body as accessible as a mapping application.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 12:09 PM PST - 12 comments

Word search

Google's new Ngram Viewer lets you track the history of words in six languages, including several flavo(u)rs of English. Whether it's the rise and fall of a single word, the evolution of technology, or the mysterious seventeenth-century proliferation of fart jokes, there's a lot to play with. More at the Official Google Blog.
posted by theodolite at 11:34 AM PST - 74 comments

Gotta Catch Em All!

Favimon: Like Pokemon with favicons. [via mefi projects]
posted by sveskemus at 10:58 AM PST - 43 comments

Are you a dynamic, results orientated team player that excels at fast paced problem solving?

LinkedIn has analyzed the millions of resumes stored on the site and revealed the top 10 most overused, cliched, buzzwords used on resumes this year. Number 1 is "Extensive Experience."
posted by COD at 10:42 AM PST - 87 comments

“Who knows what the truth is? We broadcast facts. That’s enough.”

"Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty broadcasts information to Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East in twenty-eight languages. Much of the information comes from the places where those twenty-eight languages are spoken.... Reporters are also working, sometimes clandestinely, in countries where RFE/RL bureaus aren’t allowed. The mission is to tell people living in those countries what is happening to them." -- Facts Meet Freedom: On the Air in Afghanistan, by P. J. O'Rourke
posted by valkane at 10:28 AM PST - 12 comments

Beginning of the end of the Stored Communications Act?

A shady "male enhancement" peddler is the unlikely subject of a landmark case holding that e-mails are not subject to warrantless searches. [more inside]
posted by *s at 10:25 AM PST - 15 comments

Beats and Pieces, Collected in Loving Memory of 900 Bats

Back on August 15, 2010, Aesop Rock kicked off a sprawling collaboration effort, with input by 28 artists, with an eclectic collection of videos spanning from music videos to odd clips and a Kimya Dawson recording studio dance party, works by photographer Chrissy Piper, and lots of music, from unreleased tracks, remixes, and mixtapes. There's even a post about being manhandled by a nude model, written by the Dwarvs front-man Blag Dahlia. Going back to the beginning of the site, the second post was a collection of facts about bats, and the only obvious connection back to the tragic impetus for the title of this ongoing collaboration (900 bats) -- over 900 bats were torched to prevent disruption of work on the ongoing renovations of the historic Bala Quila (also spelled Bala Qila) fort in Alwar, Rajasthan, in north-eastern India. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:13 AM PST - 4 comments

Bully For Them

Ken Rex McElroy for years had terrorized the small town of Skidmore Missouri, and was considered the town bully. He had been charged with more than 20 felonies, robbing, raping, burning, shootings. He intimidated people by driving by at night and firing a shotgun blast, putting a rattlesnake in their mailbox, etc. He was murdered on July 10, 1981. No one in town would identify Ken Rex's killer and no one has ever been charged with his killing, though there has been intense speculation about who did it. There have been various dramatic depictions of the crime. Is vigilante justice ever justified?
posted by Xurando at 9:53 AM PST - 148 comments

Girls Gone WWII

Photos of female aircraft workers, 1942-1943.
posted by hermitosis at 9:44 AM PST - 31 comments

I Smoke Crack Rocks

PhDChallenge.org proposed a challenge: To have the phrase "I smoke crack rocks" included in a peer reviewed academic paper. The winner is Gabriel Parent from Carnegie Mellon, who included it in his paper [PDF].
posted by reenum at 9:08 AM PST - 54 comments

Niagara Falls, dry

The Day Niagara Falls Ran Dry
posted by morganannie at 8:05 AM PST - 45 comments

So, Mithras and Gaia had some children

Forming (NSFW - cartoon nudity) is a webcomic by Jesse Moynihan (NSFW) that tells the history of the evolution of man via the machinations of various alien entities whose familiar names (and unfamiliar stories) have been recorded in various religions throughout time. [more inside]
posted by lyam at 7:49 AM PST - 24 comments

I mean, c'mon, Armageddon? Who would believe that?

Do you enjoy The Criterion Collection's packaging design? Do you like Eric Skillman's design blog, where you've seen the process for such design as Night of the Hunter, Stagecoach, and Che? Have you already fallen in love with Sam Smith's design blog, where you've seen him work through things like Modern Times, House, and Everlasting Moments?

Then you will probably hate Fake Criterions, a Tumblr blog showcasing Criterion designs for such notable films as The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Ernest Goes to Jail, and Three Ninjas.
posted by shakespeherian at 7:27 AM PST - 51 comments

Defenestration Defined

Defenestration: we've seen posts mentioning it in the Blue, but not one dedicated to the idea in full. Even Mefi's own defenestration hasn't done a proper post on it (but please, Sir, no need to throw yourself out the window over it). The first thing to note is just how awesome the word defenestrate is, from the Latin de- (out of) + fenestra (window), which came to fame via Prague (live reenactment in July 2009; plus a nifty Lego version) and in this movie clip (actual defenestrations begin at 6.39), but history is filled with notable defenestrations (Wiki), such as the one in 1993 where "Toronto lawyer Garry Hoy fell to his death after attempting to demonstrate the strength of his office tower's windows", and of course someone has cobbled together a Top 10 List (and let's not forget the opening credits of SCTV or the fate of one John Locke). We don't hear much of it these days (although in October 2010 the news reported a story of mass self-defenestration owing to Satanism, a tale that that later was, er… thrown out the window), but defenestration has become an art landmark in San Francisco, and naturally it is classic Hollywood staple (Ten Memorable Movie Defenestrations). It has even been used at xkcd. While I have at times defenestrated objects, I am pleased to say I have never been defenestrated myself. And lastly, you have to appreciate the clever geek pun of defenestrating your computer, which doesn't mean tossing it out the window, but instead replacing Windows with an alternative OS such as Linux.
posted by bwg at 7:03 AM PST - 52 comments

Let's pasture the goats on the State House lawn!

His radio station was shut down. His medical license was revoked. So he ran for Governor. (Time, 1932), and almost won. Twice. "Dr". John R. Brinkley, the goat gland doctor, (previously on Metafilter) had six weeks. He also had a plane, a huckster's skills, a staff skilled in promotion, and lots of chutzpah. [more inside]
posted by julen at 6:43 AM PST - 10 comments

It's-a me...

Two brothers pull off the heist of the century when they steal money from a criminal kingpin. The kingpin retaliates by abducting one brother's girlfriend. Now the brothers and their two close allies must team up and rescue her, deal out some pain, and get away with their lives. You may think this sounds vaguely familiar, but you've never seen Nintendo's classic Super Mario Bros. depicted like this. Presenting The Brothers Mario [SLYT; contains strong language and scenes of violence; rated M-for-Mature].
posted by Servo5678 at 6:33 AM PST - 35 comments

surfing for charity

Chrome for a Cause. From now until December 19th, every tab you open on Chrome with this extension installed will help raise funds for five different charities (The Nature Conservancy, Charity: Water, Doctors Without Borders, Un Techo para mi Pais and Room To Read).
posted by fight or flight at 4:50 AM PST - 36 comments

Santastic V

Santastic V Yet more holiday mash-ups, alternate treatments and bootleg remixes. [more inside]
posted by Mwongozi at 2:54 AM PST - 12 comments

Football Mascots, English Democrats And Shadow Mayors

The Local Government Act 2000 brought directly elected mayors to the UK. Take up was limited and success was mixed. If you were lucky you got Stuart Drummond. If you were unlucky you got Peter Davies. Davies, the mayor of Doncaster, is widely seen to have exacerbated existing problems in the town.

This week, the Localism Bill was introduced to Parliament promising referenda on directly elected mayors in the twelve largest cities in England. In advance of this, council leaders are being turned into 'shadow mayors'. The problem? The leaders don't actually want these new powers.
posted by ninebelow at 2:27 AM PST - 9 comments

"The key learning from this was that *Santa* IS brand. PARTLY literally and TOTALLY metaphorically."

*Santa* is a Concept, not an idea. It's an Emotion, not a feeling. It's both Yesterday and Today. And it's Tomorrow as well. Santa winds infinite Possibilities around finite Limitations to evoke the essence of invention and the Odour of Nostalgia. It has the complexity of Simpleness and the Simplicity of complexitiveness. It begins with the Hiss of Power and ends with the Ah of Surprise. *Santa* is.
posted by creeky at 1:51 AM PST - 18 comments

Who knew Mike D knew so many dance moves.

Beastie Boys Annotated [more inside]
posted by cthuljew at 1:26 AM PST - 44 comments

« Previous day | Next day »