Time Off For Christmas

HAPPY HOLIDAYS
MERRY CHRISTMAS
HAPPY HANUKKAH
HAPPY KWANZAA
SEASONS GREETINGS
HAPPY NEW YEAR
etc...

See you next year!

Your Watch Roids Pong

You know those times when you're sitting at the train platform or in the movies just wishing you had an old 1970s video game to play? Yeah, neither do I but apparently these guys misinterpreted Nintendo's old "Game & Watch" systems and thought it'd be a great idea to whack Asteroids (or 'roids to the cool kids) into a watch.

Now, that's no ordinary watch there as it doesn't actually display the time but it does have a tilt sensor so the little triangular spaceship points downwards to aid in targeting. There's also a Pong version in case blowing up polygonal asteroids isn't "your bag, baby". Check the video out below and thanks to Engadget for the tip.

Top Gear Does Tesla

Time for my weekly Tesla Roadster post (not quite). This time it's about a story run by the whacky guys on the original (and best) Top Gear. The shows wordsmith Jeremy Clarkson got his hands on not one, but two of these zippy zappers from the valley of silicon and thrashed the crap out of them (as he does).

I don't want to ruin the surprise ending for you but let's just say that he's finally found a car that runs on electrons he'd consider buying thus making him a "volt head" instead of a "petrol head". The Tesla manages to do quite an impressive run around the test track with The Stig at the wheel but the driving range of the car was markedly different to the official Tesla figures.

Click onwards for the video and thanks to AutoBlogGreen for the tip.

eSATA Flash Drives Go Fast

I'm sure everyone has at least one USB key/flash drive sitting around or at least knows someone with a USB key well throw them all out, now. Actually you might want to wait a little while until these new fancy eSATA flash drives actually hit the streets.

While not as cheap as their USB grandparents these guys will kick it up a notch in the transfer speed stakes with eSATA almost doubling the speed of USB 2.0.

Engadget says there was no price announcement but Register Hardware estimates it'll be $32 for the 8GB model, $56 for 16GB and $160 for 32GB. That's USD.

It's Friday, I'm In Love With My New T-Shirt

After months of salivating over all the wikkid t-shirts over at Threadless Tees I finally bit the bullet today and bought myself this beauty printed on a black tee.

It may seem a little cryptic to those of you unfamiliar with the works of The Cure so maybe this might help. Clever and cryptic, just how I like 'em.

Designed by Loy Valera and printed by the folks at Threadless I hope this to be the first of many cool shirts from their store. If you want one too you'd better be quick as Threadless tees seem to sell out really fast.

For those of you who are more into Michael Jackson there is a cool dancing zombie shirt titled "Eating Brains, Throwing Shapes" by Aled Lewis.

Hopefully when the shirt arrives (in 1-3 weeks :( ) I'll get an action shot of me wearing it and post it up here. JOY!

Recycled car and bike bits = scary fire breathing robot dog

Take 1-part crazy guy with welding equipment and 2-parts totally recycled Citroen cars and other bits and you get this amazing (and quite scary) machine. Like a bit player from Wall-E this character which has galloping horse-like legs at the front and a couple of wheels at the back is named LRRY-1, that's pronounced "Larry" with a 1 on the end (I assume that means there will be more).

Not only does it gallop androll it also breathes fire out of its freaky head which officially makes it scarier that the lame motorbike terminators in the upcoming film. Make sure you check out the video below to really get an idea of what this thing is capable of. Oh, did I mention it's made from no new materials at all, i.e. all recycled bits and pieces.

Reminds me a bit of "Dog" from the Half-Life series... oh, and thanks for the heads up Engadget!

Angsty Teen To Play Teen Aang

If you watched Nickelodeon's faux-Japanese anime "Avatar: The Last Airbender" like I did then you're probably already aware that M. Night "Sixth Sense" Shyamalan is writing and directing the feature film live action adaptation.

What you may not be aware of is that the three lead protagonists have just been cast. An unknown karate kid from Texas who goes by the name of Noah Ringer will be playing the bald, arrow-tattooed Aang (center in the image) who is the Avatar and the last airbender in the series. Jackson Rathbone from the recent teen vampire flick Twilight will be playing the clumsy (and often hilarious) Sokka while Nicole Peltz will take the role of Katara, Sokka's moody sister and bossy waterbender.

It was also announced that Jesse McCartney is in negotiations for the role of Prince Zuko, Aang's chief antagonist who was banished from the Fire Kindom by his father until he regains his honor. No mention of who will be playing Toph the earthbender, or if she will even be in the film. Same goes for Zuko's wise tea-loving uncle Iroh and his super evil sister Azula.

Also unannounced is who will play the roles of Aang's Sky Bison, Appa and his little flying monkey thing Momo. Knowing Hollywood's casting directors they'll probably go with the obvious choices, Michael Clark Duncan as Appa and Brad Pitt as Momo.

I have no idea what the Texan karate kid looks like but I guess if he's skinny, bald, has blue arrows painted all over his body and can fly around on a kite then he'll suit the role to a tee. Jackson Rathbone looks like he could fit into Sokka's blue robes after a quick shave but going by Nicole's IMDb profile shot she looks a little too young for Katara. Maybe when she gets the loopy things in her hair she'll look the part.

Regardless of what happens I'll be keeping a close eye on this one. The series was great fun and was something I could watch with the kids yet still get something out of it for myself. Let's hope M. Night pulls out his Stuart Little hat and not his The Happening hat when writing the script.

Zero Punctuation Does Left 4 Dead

It seems when Yahtzee doesn't have anything negative or cutting to say about a game his reviews can be a little dry. This one seems to go for ages but I think that just shows how good a game Left 4 Dead is. What do you reckon?

I do agree though that it'd be nice to do SOMETHING while waiting to respawn as an Infected.

100th Telsa Roadster Being Delivered Today

The Tesla Roadster, the poster child of clean and fun driving, has reached another milestone in its young life as today the 100th model is being delivered to a "special customer".

The fully electric sports car made by US-based Telsa Motors from a Lotus-built body continues to be the number one reason to get away from burning old dinosaurs for propulsion, if you have the cash, but it has some hot competition biting at its heels.

No idea who is getting the 100th Roadster but Autoblog Green has a few ideas.

Satriani Says Coldplay Copied Him

Word on the street today is that multiple Grammy nominee guitarist Joe Satriani has filed a copyright infringement suit against pommy Enviro-Pop Rock band Coldplay.

The man famous for teaching some of music's most influential guitarists such as Steve Vai and Kirk Hammett says the British downer's hit single Viva La Vida incorporates "substantial original portions" of his 2004 tune If I Could Fly.

I had a listen to both tracks repeatedly and I can see where he's coming from as the basic chord structure of both tracks is very similar. Unfortunately I don't think he's going to get far as it's not uncommon for popular music these days to use the same structures. Also, if he succeeds it'll open the doors for hundreds of other artists to take up similar suits.

You may know "Electric Joe Satriani" from his huge hit single Always With Me, Always With You but see if you can hear the similarities between his 2004 track and Coldplay's 2007 track:

Viva La Vida by Coldplay:


If I Could Fly by Joe Satriani:


A mashup of the two tracks:

I'm Calling The World Tour Off

To celebrate my recent birthday and the upcoming birthday of some religious guy born a few thousand years ago I did the right thing in this world of consumerism and bought myself Guitar Hero: World Tour for the Xbox 360.

To help the transition to the new Guitar Hero I sold our Wii copy of Guitar Hero III with its two guitars. Why not just upgrade? Well, mainly because the Wii's audio output is utter crap, not to mention the lack of downloadable content for Guitar Hero on Wii and the laughable video capabilities of the rebadged GameCube.

So with fresh eBay cash in hand I spent most of my Sunday (Nov 30) searching for an Xbox 360 version of the game. I eventually found one at JB Hi Fi in Preston and proceded to grab the complete band super duper box set of World Tour which includes the new guitar, microphone and the ground-breaking fake drumkit (see above/left).

After rocking out to a few tracks, starting a band with my wife and daughter and making it out of rehab I found that the red pad on the drumkit (that would be the "snare") had started ignoring my hits. I tried to go through the drum training initially but couldn't complete the velocity sensing bit where you can hit the drums harder to get louder notes, it just wasn't working. Then, around Wednesday the snare packed it in altogether and nothing could be done.

So being the good user I am I read the manual and found I was to contact Activision directly for any support issues with the hardware. I perused their online support and discovered I had to order their free USB-to-MIDI cable to adjust the sensitivity of the drumkit.

Said cable arrived yesterday (8th of Dec.) and after miraculously getting the drumkit, which was attached to my PC, to talk to my Xbox 360 down the other end of the house I found that even after setting the snare's sensitivity to 20 (the highest value) I still did not respond. The other drum pads when set to this level would trigger if a sparrow farted in the next room.

So it was back to the Activision website for more help. They said that if the issue wasn't with the sensitivity of the pad then I needed to send the offending part back to Activision in Sydney. Of course the problem I have is with the snare on the largest part of the kit so it got bundled back into the enormous box it came in and came to the Post Office with me this morning.

Activision, while offering a Reply Paid address for sending warranty requests back, were sneaky enough in that to use Registered Mail the sender (that's me!) is required to pay the full amount upfront. I refused Registered Mail initially until the post office clerk said I should probably wrap the box differently incase it went walkabout. I ended up paying $16 to ship the drumkit back to Activision via Registered Mail.

So now I have to wait "up to 2 weeks" for the kit to be looked at and assessed by the techs at the other end. *fingers crossed* I get the drumkit back in working order in time for my Christmas break but until then I'll have to be happy with the guitar and microphone.

Tekken 6 Trailer Is Awesome

I know the word "awesome" is thrown around a lot these days, especially in the same sentence as my name (usually with a negator in between) and remember, that without me it's just "aweso".

Regardless of this drivel, the following Tekken 6 trailer is, well, awesome. Plenty of OTT explosions and action that would make Michael Bay blush. Of course it's all pre-rendered goodness, as with most Tekken cutscenes/trailers etc. but there are a few in-game shots thrown in, especially near the end. Make sure you watch out for the portly pork farmer "Bob" bringing the smackdown as Japan's stereotype of US citizens (about time!).

The new trailer is to celebrate the arcade favourite making its way on to the PS3 and Xbox 360 consoles. I just hope there's a demo coming out, that's about all I can manage with my l33t button mashing skillz.

Thanks for the heads up Kotaku.

I'm Lost For Words

Japanese TV ad for Saints Row 2... ahhhh... ummmm... errrr...

There's another one over at Kotaku and for comparison here's a US TV ad for the same game.

Zero Punctuation Double Dose

Seems none of my news feeds tell me about Zero Punctuation reviews so when I finally remember to go and check them out I'm a few weeks behind. Anyway, following are "Yahtzee's" reviews of Guitar Hero: World Tour and Mirror's Edge.

I have the full blown edition of World Tour (and am loving it) but I've just replayed the Mirror's Edge demo a few times seeing as that's about all I wanted out of it.

Mirror's Edge:




Guitar Hero: World Tour:

View Code Without Right Clicking

Here's a little Visual Studio 2008 tip for you. I find myself right-clicking ASCX/ASPX files and selecting "View Code" frequently during the day and today I just had enough of it. So I went a hunting on the Googley internet and didn't find much of anything useful (mostly just hints on using F7 and Shift-F7 to switch between Code View and Design View, i.e. not what I was after).

Using the search box in the Visual Studio Keyboard options to narrow down the list I found this little gem (click the image to see the full size version). Just select "OtherContextMenus.SchemaExplorer.ViewCode" and assigned it to your hotkey of choice. I used F12 F1 but I may change this later on if I find it too cumbersome. Don't forget to hit the "Assign" button or nothing will happen.

So now when I'm editing the front-end code and want to get to the back end code I just whack the old F12 F1 key and voila!

EDIT: Dammit, I just realised that F12 is the hot key to go to a method's definition so I'm now giving F1 a go seeing as I never use the inbuilt help. You can get your answer via a Google search before the inbuilt MSDN help has even loaded.

EDIT: If you accidentally assigned F12 to View Code you can set it back to its original setting by assigning it back to Edit.GoToDefinition in the Keyboard settings.

Mike Patton Scores

Mike Patton, the man, the voice, the legend behind bands such as Mr Bungle, Faith No More, Fantomas, Tomahawk, Peeping Tom etc. will be writing his first feature film score for the upcoming sequel to the mindless Jason Statham action film Crank.

Movieweb says Mike Patton's pal Danny DeVito "didn't quite know how to describe the score, but did hint that there may be a song track that contains actual lyrics and singing by Patton."

Mike Patton's music spans multiple genres from good ol' rock to hip hop to almost-too-painful-to-listen-to experimental works (have a listen to Adult Themes For Voice if you're game). Such a range means it'll be interesting to see what he comes up with for the score to a popcorn flick like Crank 2: High Voltage.

Michelin Man Goes Green

Michelin, the French company famous for its rubber donuts and an over inflated mummy, has teamed up with a Chinese tech company to produce this amazing bit of gadgety gizmo that you could very well be riding on in a year or two.

Dubbed "Active Wheel" this seemingly unassuming piece of tech-in-a-wheel actually contains motors for propulsion and suspension which means you can whack a few of these babies onto almost any vehicle frame and you've got yourself an EV.

According to AutoblogGreen, Michelin and CITIC Guoan Mengguli Corp. in China have a working prototype built atop a Lifan 520 sedan that can reach 87 mph (140 kph) and go for up to 81 miles (130 km) before needing a recharge of its lithium ion batteries.

The partners have announced that the wheels will be available to OEMs by the end of the year but didn't say which year.

Black Mesa: So Close I Can Smell It

Black Mesa, the total remake and modernization of the original Half-Life game seems to be getting closer and closer to completion but if previous fan remakes are anything to go by we'll never see it.

Well, OK, maybe we'll never *play* it as you can actually see it right here in glorious internet widescreen! I was mildly interested after seeing screenshots from previous iterations but this trailer really gets my blood running hot... oooh baby.

*fingers crossed* they make their 2009 projected release date (if you can call an entire year a release date).

Consoles Put Differences Aside To Mourn Lost Comrade

It's always a sad day when someone we've spent a lot of time with, whether we like them or not, passes away and according to tiggerboy's blog, consoles are no different.

His fourth Xbox 360 RROD'd recently so some of it's fellow consoles and gaming peripherals attended a farewell where Master Chief read a moving eulogy to a sombre but respectful crowd.

Check out the photographic story on tiggerboy's blog which, in true soapy fashion, has a shock ending as an unexpected guest arrives as everyone else is leaving.

You might have to be a bit of a console gaming geek to understand half the references in the post.

Cool Terminator Salvation Poster

Good to see some people using technology to improve things. While this isn't curing cancer it does show a new take on the old movie poster.

Original is here.

Stig Drives Veyron, World Doesn't End

If you've ever watched an episode of Top Gear you'll know about The Stig, his strange habits and amazing driving skills. Well recently The Stig mounted one of the world's most powerful road cars, the 16 cylinder, 64 valve, quad turbo, 736-kilowatt (1,001 PS/987 hp) Bugatti Veyron to see how it performed on the show's test track.

You'd think a car like this could out perform the current ranked car on Top Gear's test track, the Gumpert Apollo which posted a time of 1:17. Check the video below to see what happens when The Stig meets The Veyron, luckily the universe didn't collapse in on itself.

Watch out for the Veyron's rear foil as it changes angle depending on the required downforce, kind of like a plane's flaps.

Popcorn Hour A-110 Does Your Evil Bidding

About 6 months ago I upgraded (read: replaced) my home theatre PC (HTPC) with a brand spanking fancy pants machine which, basically, kicks ass. My criteria second time round was for it be to quiet and be able to play 1080p MKVs with no problems. I settled on an ATI-based system using the funky new motherboards that do the decoding onboard in a sub-$100 Antec HTPC case which is so quiet my projector sounds noisy in comparison.

Fast forward to today and look what I'm sent, an item which fills all my criteria and then some, the Popcorn Hour A-110 "Networked Media Tank". Ignore the stupid name for the moment and take a look at the stats on this $215 USD RRP ($344 AUD, the cheapest price we found) baby. It decodes/plays pretty much everything including video and audio streams in MKVs containers and outputs via HDMI 1.3a, optical SPDIF audio and others. Has USB inputs and a single USB output so you can even use it as an external hard drive (i.e. copy files directly to it from your computer).

What's more is you can whack a hard drive in it and use the inbuilt BitTorrent web client to do your totally legal downloading for you. It has networking protocols up the whazoo and is tiny enough to put up on a shelf somewhere out of the way.

There's a handy video review below for those of you who don't like reading words or there's this Engadget UK review for those of you who do. I have to say I disagree with the reviewer's comment on optical audio. I've used optical SPDIF since my first MiniDisc player back in 1994 and not once have I had a problem.

Thanks for the tip Ottey!

Man Shot, Needs New Phone

Like something out of a B-Grade action movie a New Orleans man has been shot in the chest only to be saved by the extremely lucky placement of his mobile phone.

Ronald Richard was mowing his lawn when he felt a hard object hit him in the chest. He took off his sweater to discovered that he'd been hit by a .45-caliber slug and that his Motorola RAZR had literally taken a bullet for him.

Engadget says, "The angle of the bullet and the modest stopping power of the cellphone were all that stood between the man and serious injury or even death. Instead, this lucky gent got away with little more than a fairly significant bruise..."

No mention of where the stray bullet came from or why someone was shooting randomly in their neighbourhood but then again, it was in the US, do they need a reason?

Talk about lucky, and now he's got a great excuse to buy a new phone for himself and I have discovered a use for Motorola phones.

I Shall Call Him... Mini Me

After all the hype and excitement building up to the release of the new Xbox 360 dash (the total opposite to the lack of communication for the Facebook redesign) we have this little guy. Say hello to my new Xbox 360 Avatar.

While the new dash is fun to play with it's these Avatars which were always going to be the big thing. We all know Microsoft took the success of Nintendo's Miis and ran with it. Miis are basic. How basic? Miis are so basic they'd make a Lego man blush.

The Wii offers more options for rearranging facial features on your Mii than the 360's Avatars but the rest of your Mii is basically choosing a colour for your top (including you ball hands). The Avatars feel more like Sims and look a lot better with their detailed cloth textures and far surperior lighting. Another benefit is it's all hooked into your online presence via Xbox Live/Windows Live (take a look at my gamer tag over to the right there) so your little console guy is available in the "real" world.

Of course Microsoft plan to take this funky little idea and make money out of it with a limited selection of tops, pants, shoes and accessories available for dressing your little You up. How will they make money? By offering extra items like themed shirts/outfits for a small payment, e.g. a Guitar Hero t-shirt for 100 points. The most obvious instance of forcing this is in the ladies shoe department where a total of 8 shoes are offered. Ladies don't like shoes do they? I'm hanging out for the Prada shoe pack! I'm sure it'll only be 15,000 points... bargain!

Anyway, it's all good fun and the new themes are pretty funky too... oh, and if you're lucky to live in certain countries you get the Netflix integration where you can watch HD movies directly through your 360.

Amazing what you can get for free these days (not the movies).

Big Week In Gaming

If the excitement of the New Xbox Experience wasn't enough for you then wait until the awesomeness of Left 4 Dead hits your screen. Out on PC and Xbox 360 L4D is Valve's latest twist on the first person shooter game genre, this time with way more zombies, 4-player co-op play and a server-side AI "director" which determines what will happen to you in the game ensuring you get a unique experience each time through.

I played the demo last week with a mate and two AI characters as we cut a path through hordes of festering zombies. The majority of the them go down with a couple of shots from your shotgun, assault rifle or pistols but there are a few "hero" zombies which take more damage to defeat.

Today the full version of the game was released both in old style retail outlets and via Steam, Valve's digital distribution network/tool. I had a quick bash of the game this morning and even managed to luck my way into an achievement.

There are 4 of us lined up (in the real world) to play through the game in its entirety via the internet as the "survivors" and I can't wait. Friday night we hit the streets of Dodgeville to try to battle our way out of the city and hopefully safety.

Chrysler With Tesla-Like EV

A few months ago Chrysler were behind their competition in the EV stakes then they introduced us to the Dodge EV prototype which is now a reality and doing the show circuit.

Chrysler kind of cheated in the Tesla way by basically taking a Lotus Europa and replacing the engine with an electric powerplant. That said this little beasty with its 268 hp electric motor has a 0-100 time under 5 seconds and it will run for up to 200 miles (320 km) on a single charge.

Not quite the rocket that Tesla have but I reckon this thing will be half the price of the Tesla Roadster and being badged as a Doge will probably be within reach (geographically speaking) of many more people. To give the Chevy Volt a run for its money the word on the street says is it could be available as early as 2010. Of course it's still only a 2-seater so won't be in direct competition with the Volt. Looks like fun though!

Air Traffic Worldwide

I love examining data through charts and whatnot so when something like this comes along I need to reach for a box of tissues.

The video (below) shows a single 24 hour cycle of the air traffic around the globe with yellow dots depicting each flight. You can see the daylight and night shadow run over the Earth's surface and how the various flights in each country (check out the flights from America to Europe) fluctuate during the cycle.

North America and Europe both become a mass of yellow during the daylight.

Thanks Jussy!

</nerd>

Video Playback, Windows 7 FTW

If you've ever tried to set up a computer to play the varying forms of videos you can get on the internet these days then you probably know how much of a headache it can be. Codec packs have been the answer for a few years now (I'm currently using K-Lite for my home theatre PC) but news today may make them a thing of the past.

On Long Zheng's blog, I Started Something, he has posted an item detailing the Codec support found in Windows 7 and how Microsoft's "Vista 2.0" will play almost everything out of the box. Great news for those of you who "acquire" TV episodes or "backup" your own DVDs as most MPEG4 formats are supported (XVID/DIVX/MP4 et al) plus those whacky 3GP Codecs your mobile phone is so fond of.

What interests me the most is the support of the H264 (MPEG-4 AVC) Codec, which is the current standard for high definition video encoding, and the total lack of support for the Matroska (MKV) container format (just like the Xbox 360/PS3) which appears to be totally intentional on Microsoft's part.

I'll keep my eye on this one and props to Microsoft for at least making our Codec Pack horrors slightly less painful.

You WILL Bow Down Before Me

RED, the company behind affordable yet crazy high definition video cameras has released their latest product(s) which will amaze and bedazzle you. Just today their "Digital Still and Motion Cameras", AKA Scarlet and EPIC, were unleashed on the public and as expected they do crazy high res video and stills for 1/10 the price of other cameras.

Engadget says, "Scarlet will launch in 4 choices ranging from $2,500 (and possibly less) to $12,000 with a variety of lens mounts (yes, Canon and Nikon) capable of shooting 3K @120fps on up to 6K @30fps."

"Epic will offer similar mounts with capabilities spanning 5K @100fps ($28k) to 9K @50fps ($45k) -- a 28K system hitting 25fps is expected in 2010 for $55k. Still image resolutions will range from 4.9 megapixels to a freakish 261 megapixels. The first Scarlet systems could come as early as Spring of 2009 while EPIC should arrive by summer."

As you can see from the image it is highly modular so when RED release a new bit (including the main processing part) you can just replace that one piece. RED also introduced a 3D camera configuration today seemingly as an afterthought (see poster below).

If you don't know what those numbers above mean, the ones ending in a K without dollar signs are the resolution. e.g. "5K" is a resolution of approximately 5,000 pixels wide (1080p is 1920 pixels wide). The "fps" figures are the Frames Per Second with regular TV being between 25 and 30 frames per second (depending on your country of origin). Thus, 5K @ 100fps means the video camera is recording a 5,000 pixel wide image 100 times a second.

RED also claim to have eliminated the wobbly "jelly" look that current video recording DSLRs have a problem with which is an odd effect you get on the video when panning horizontally.

Toshiba Uses Bullet Time v2.0 To Sell TVs

In this world of viral marketing it's good to see a viral-type advertisement that looks like a lot of time and effort went into it. The video below is a Toshiba ad which builds on the techniques of bullet time, so well documented on The Matrix DVD, by introducing HD video cameras to replace the still cameras.

Engadget says "a circular rig with 200 Gigashot HD camcorders and 20,000 gigabytes of data later, they created this little number, which mixes full motion video, Matrix camera moves and a healthy dash of hipsterism." Hipsterism dammit, HIPSTERISM!

Enjoy!

IIS7 URL Rewrite Module Goes Live!

Just a quick note to say that the RTW version of IIS7's Rewrite Module has gone live! Go grab it from iis.net! If you aren't running IIS7 just ignore this message. If you'd like to read up on URL Rewriting you could always check it out on Wikipedia.

New Terminator Salvation Pics

A whole stack of very cool concept art from the upcoming Terminator Salvation film fell onto the internet today. This is the film starring Christian Bale as John Connor with proper Terminators that are mean and don't have nervous breakdowns like certain Terminators on a certain TV show do.

The designs stick pretty close to James Cameron's original designs with the "old model" T600 terminator looking very cool indeed. The motorbike design concept is just too stupid for me to even start thinking about commenting on while the giant robot is cool but ultimately silly.

Still looking forward to the film though which is due for release mid 2009.

While we're talking concept art and movies there are a few new Watchmen posters out today showing some of the characters in their outfits.

Fuel Prices Have Dropped. Yay, Let's Buy SUVs!

Here we go again, the price of petrol ("gas" if you don't know the difference between liquids and solids) has dropped back to the price it was a few years ago and people have already forgotten how much money they were forking out only a few short weeks ago to fill their tanks.

Autoblog Green tells us the sad tale of a manufacturer kicking their SUV/Truck manufacturing plants back up a notch in anticipation of increased demand after almost shutting them down over the past year and people who went through a car downsizing are now feeling buyer's remorse.

All price and environmental issues aside, oil is a fossil fuel and therefore a finite resource. Why go burning through something we'll still need in the foreseeable future for the production of plastics and the like when there are alternatives already available. All the people who were bitching and moaning about the price of petrol, imagine if you drove up to the bowser and there was no petrol at all.

Now I'm not a big fan of hybrids as they don't really solve the problem, they just make people who would have driven a medium sized car use the fuel of a small car or a more efficient car. Ultimately you'll still need to stop and fill up with fuel which is a chore and plug in electric cars are still a few years away from being in my garage.

So while I wait for my Holden Volt or Mitsubishi iMiEV I've been trying to drive more efficiently using some basic hypermiling techniques (apparently it's the word of the year for 2008) and tracking my success with Fuel Frog. My last fill up shows I averaged 7.7 litres per 100km, not too shabby, and that's basically from accelerating and braking slowly and coasting when possible.

While I was stoked to pay only $1.19 AUD per litre for my tank of dead dinosaurs I still hate having to stop for petrol. At the weekend we drove to Marysville which has a lot of trees and not much else for half the trip and I was thinking how screwed we'd be if we ran out of fuel out there.

And if that's not enough, now we have ninja kittens driving around on our roads!

While I'm on the topic, take a look at these car ads from the 1970s during the "energy crisis", look familiar?

99 Bricks Teaches Abject Lesson In Physics

Just when you thought you'd seen every possible iteration of Tetris comes this funky bouncy Flash-based online game. This one (of course) has a little twist, instead of trying to make lines of tetriminos you've got to make the tallest tower possible out of 99 bricks (hence the title).

Sounds easy? Fat chance! These things are squishy cushion-like bricks that obey the laws of physics like gravity. Just when you think you've lined up the perfect drop with an L-shaped tetrimino it'll tumble off the edge taking a whole bunch of bricks with it.

Loads of fun and a nice clean interace to boot!

Check it out here.

Steamy News For Gamers

Back in March Valve Corp. announced the upcoming release of Steam Cloud, a series of services that allows gamers using the Steam platform to store game configuration settings in "the cloud". Well it's coming out just in time for the release of Left 4 Dead, Valve's new multiplayer zombie shooter.

This means that if you're like me and rarely use the default keyboard configuration you can upload your settings to the Steam Cloud and grab them any time you like. So if you buy a new PC or your game is really buggy and resets the config each time it crashes (I'm looking DIRECTLY at you Bioshock) or you're on your mate's PC or whatever, you can set everything to what you're comfortable with.

"For some time now, Steam has allowed gamers to log on from any computer in the world and access their applications. This also makes it easy to upgrade a PC without worrying about losing your games," said Gabe Newell, president and co-founder of Valve. "Steam Cloud is a natural extension of the portability Steam affords gamers and developers, and we intend to expand its feature set as it is used in Left 4 Dead and other games coming to Steam."

What would be really great is if games that share a common engine or common settings could import from another game. For example, imagine loading up Left 4 Dead for the first time and a prompt appears asking if you'd like to import your Half-Life 2 control settings.

Enough Already, Stop Using IE6

As most of you know I run a little Facebook application called Mood Stones which attracts a wide variety of users. I rely heavily on alpha transparency in the PNGs I use and Internet Explorer 6, which doesn't do alpha transparency in PNGs, has been a thorn in my side for ages.

Earlier this year I added in a little bit of JavaScript which displays a small message telling IE6 users that they should upgrade and, while the percentage of IE6 users has dropped since then, there are still a lot of them.

In the first 3 months of 2008, 75.4% of Mood Stones users were running various flavours of IE with 28.4% of those running IE6 (21.4% of the total). Flash forward to the past 3 months (ending October) IE's overall usage has dropped to 67.4% of the total with 22.9% of those running IE6 (15.4% of the total). The usage stats on this blog are slightly different (more Firefox oriented) but still there are enough IE6 users to worry about.

I've wondered why those people running IE6 aren't up in arms because so many things on the internet would error or just plain not work with their browser of "choice". But then I had a support request at the weekend which shone a light on the situation.

One Mood Stones user said her stone image was over the top of the text on her Facebook profile. I immediately thought of IE6 and its total lack of CSS standards support and asked her which browser she was running. She said it was IE6 so I suggested she upgrade to IE7, Firefox or even Safari. I then got the following response:

"Hi Michael THANKS SO MUCH!! I upgraded to IE7 and it's working great now...so is everything else...lol...never realized how good some things on the internet were supposed to work!! thanks again!!"

At this point I had a moment of clarity and thought that perhaps most IE6 users don't realise there's something wrong with their browser and their the assumption is that the internet is inherently broken and most stuff just doesn't work. Well, if you're using IE6, the internet isn't broken, your browser is. It was released 7 years ago and you should get IE7 or Firefox or Safari or even Chrome... just get rid of IE6.

Lazy Friday Mega Post

Too many good things to post about today so I'm just going to list a few.

• Hungarian School Teacher Strips For Students (video, semi-NSFW)
• David Tennant Leaving Doctor Who 2010
• Samsung FTW With 40" 1080p OLED Prototype Screen
• Microsoft Makes Uber Cool "Surface v2.0" With More Surface (video)

*phew*

Blue Is The New Red

Kent Displays (I've never heard of them either) have apparently been making cool and funky displays for a few years now and selling them to manufacturers but today it was announced that they've got two hot new technologies ready to rock your gadget world.

The first one is "a simple monochrome electronic writing tablet that consists of a pressure sensitive display (think next-generation Post-it note)". I can't quite picture how this works and the photo just looks like a bent LCD screen...

BUT!

The cool one is the funky colour changing electronic "skin". Named eGo it requires no power at all to maintain any colour already rendered on the surface. This means you can "display" whatever colour you'd like and it stays that way without using any more power until you switch it again. It would be handy for things like watches and phones (like in the photo) if you're a little fashion conscious. Or maybe it can be applied to your fingernails so you can be just like the secretary from The Fifth Element. Can you think of any other uses for it.

Windows 7 Will Do Stuff

Sorry for the day-late post but here's where you can get all you need to know about the new version of Windows, Windows 7. To me it looks like a point release for Vista but then again, it's not out for another year so who knows what'll happen between now and then.

Some highlights:

The icon-only items in the taskbar, which is now very square looking, are highlighted with a dynamic colour based on the main colour in the icon.

The Sidebar is gone and gadgets are now dumped on the desktop.

Hovering over an item in the taskbar brings that application into focus by making the other windows transparent (kind of like switching to it without switching to it). You can also do this with the Desktop so you can see your gadgets without having to minimize everything.

Supports up to 256 CPUs but can run on a pissy little eePC's CPU plus new DirectX enhancements means 50% less memory usage for the UX.

Lots more Windows 7 info can be found over on Long Zheng's blog.

The Real Return of 50s Communist Paranoia Sci Fi

The new trailer for The Day The Earth Stood Still (DTESS) was released onto the tubes today (see below) and I must say, I'm more than a little excited about it. Keanu Reeves is back in his Neo-like broody mood getting his freaky alien shiz on as Klaatu, the freaky alien shiz guy in a human suit.

DTESS is a modern retelling of the classic 50s sci fi film with the same name about an alien visitor (that'd be Klaatu) and his giant chrome robot (no, not Bender). Judging by the new (lengthy) trailer the design of the robot is remarkably similar to the original and it has LASERS!

The remake is directed by Scott Derrickson, the man behind The Exorcism of Emily Rose, so expect some scary moments. It stars Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Kathy Bates and John Cleese. Plus, for the sci fi nerds out there, Battlestar Galactica's Aaron "Chief" Douglas makes an appearance as Sgt Winter, not to be confused with Captain/Major Winters.

DTESS is due for release this December (12th in the US, 26th in Australia).

Live ID, Now With More Open-ness

Great news today from the Windows Live Dev site where they announced that pretty soon you'll be able to use your Windows Live ID (MSN Messenger, Hotmail, Xbox Live etc.) to authenticate with Open ID 2.0 sites.

"The Windows Live ID OpenID Provider (OP) enables anyone with a Windows Live ID account to set up an OpenID alias and to use that alias for identification at an increasing number of OpenID 2.0 relying party sites". JOY!

For those unsure of what Open ID is Wikipedia says, "OpenID is a shared identity service, which allows Internet users to log on to many different web sites using a single digital identity, single sign-on, eliminating the need for a different user name and password for each site."

I already have an Open ID set up with another provider but if the Windows Live community of users has easy access to such a wonderful technology things might start heating up. Aren't you sick of trying to remember usernames and passwords for heaps of sites?

Ninja Scroll Gets Real

I appears that Hollywood is getting tired of remaking Japanese horror movies and Spanish thrillers and has moved on to elsewhere for their source of "new" ideas. Coming to a theatre near you in the next few years are remakes of Anime classics Battle Angel Alita, Akira and Astro Boy and you can now add one more to the list.

Today Warner Brothers announced that they have acquired the rights to, and will be making a live action remake of, Ninja Scroll. IMDb's plot outline for the original reads, "A ninja-for-hire is forced into fighting an old nemesis who is bent on overthrowing the Japanese government. His nemesis is also the leader of a group of demons each with superhuman powers."

I'm not sure how Warner Bros. will tackle some of the scenes from the anime like the giant rock-man raping the poisoned ninja girl or the naked woman whose snake tattoos spring to life and writhe around her body or the endless limb slicing and body hacking. Either they make an R Rated film which the fanboys will poo poo and won't make much money or they make a PG film which the fanboys will poo poo but will make a lot of money... hmmm.

I'll keep my eyes on this one.

Australia to Become A Better Place

Great news everyone! Australia usually gets shafted when it comes to big new technologies that require brand new infrastructure due to the amount of whitespace between cities but today we got some great news.

Better Place, "a California-based, venture-backed company that aims to reduce global dependency on petroleum" has just announced that their next target for building a nation-wide electric car charging network is the good old Land Down Under. They say, "[w]e will build an electric vehicle network capable of supporting the switch of Australia’s 15 million gas cars to zero emission vehicles.", just in time for me with my Holden Volt!

I like Better Place's stance on why they chose Australia as their next area, "If Australia can do it, so can others.". I assume they're talking about the previously mentioned wide expanses rather than us being so stupid that anything we can do, others can do (better).

About Better Place, Wikipedia has this to say, "In January 2008, Better Place announced a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Renault-Nissan to build the world's first Electric Recharge Grid Operator (ERGO) model for clean transportation in Israel. Under the agreement, Better Place will build the electric recharge grid, and Renault-Nissan will provide the electric vehicles. In 2009, Better Place expects to deploy hundreds of charging stations as the company moves toward wide-scale deployment in 2011.". I guess they'll be doing something similar here.

Yay Australia!

Quake In Your Browser Not Your Boots

It looks like some whacky folks have gone and ported ye olde Quake over to Microsoft's Silverlight. You can sit and watch the demo run but as soon as you try to load up a new game it just hangs. No audio yet either. Still, pretty cool.

Check it out on the Innoveware website: http://www.innoveware.com/ql/640/QuakeLight.html, or watch the video below.

Note, this isn't video playback it's the actual game engine running in Silverlight. You can read more about it here.

I Just Need A Litte Space

Once again, Scott Hanselman delivers the goods, this time in the form of an easy to read guide on how to free up potentially heaps of hard drive space under Windows Vista.

Some of the tips are obvious, like running Disk Cleanup regularly, but tips on clearing away Vista Service Pack 1 setup files and good ol' NTFS Compression are something that most people might not think of (or even know about).

I did a few of these things last night and recovered around 4GB of space on my Vista 64 machine at home (now with an all new R4850 video card!).

Check out the guide with handy images over at Scott's blog... be warned though, his final tip has the "Works on my machine" certification which means it might not on yours.

Watch Out, 'Cause We're the Spaceballs

Late one night in 1957 RAF controllers told US pilot Milton Torres to scramble his F-86D Sabre fighter to "lock on" and attack a "bogey" hovering above Norfolk, England. Seconds before the 26-year-old US Air Force lieutenant fired at the unknown flying object the size of an aircraft carrier, it vanished at an estimated 16,000km/h.

Sounds like a Hollywood remake of a 50s sci fi movie but it is actually from one of 19 files declassified by Britain's Ministry of Defence and released by the National Archives this week.

According to The Sun newspaper Torres said, "I was told I would be firing a complete salvo, all 24 rockets. I was pumped up - this was the sort of thing that happened before a war.".

He was approaching the UFO at almost 1125km/h and could see it on his radar before it suddenly disappeared from view. Torres, now 77, said: "I was smoking, as fast as I could go. This thing had a different propulsion system. It was not an airplane."

He said he was visited afterwards by a sinister security official and warned not to tell anyone. I wonder if they were wearing blue rubber gloves.