Sunday, June 27, 2010

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Geek-a-Week trading cards (and Cory in Baltimore today and DC tomorrow!)

Posted: 27 Jun 2010 04:38 AM PDT

Len Peralta was kind enough to feature me in his Geek-a-Week trading card series (collect the whole set -- including Morgan Webb, John Hodgman, Jonathan Coulton, Jasmine Kobayashi and many, many more!). There's also an accompanying podcast.

On the subject of matters personal: if you're in the DC area, I hope to see you -- I'm at Red Emma's bookstore in Baltimore today, at 3PM (event co-sponsored by Baltimore Node). Tomorrow night, I'm at Copynight at New America Foundation, at 630, event co-sponsored by Public Knowledge.

And if you're at the American Library Association conference in DC, I hope to catch you Monday morning at 1030AM at the Science Fiction Past Present and Future Program, Convention Center 209A.B.

Remembering the dearly departed Bug-Eyed Monster

Posted: 27 Jun 2010 03:55 AM PDT


Golden Age Comic Book Stories has a small gallery of scans from science fiction illustrator Edd Cartier's 1951 "Travelers of Space."

Cartier's bug-eyed monsters are second to none. As Bruce Sterling notes, "with vampires, werewolves and zombies absolutely littering the pop-culture landscape, you have to wonder why these sweet little guys haven't made a major comeback." Travelers of Space, Published by Gnome Press ~ 1951 (via Beyond the Beyond)



Handmade jointed glass robotling

Posted: 27 Jun 2010 03:45 AM PDT


Etsy seller Jenine sez, "I flameworked a tiny jointed glass robot in Pyrex glass. Every component of its body is sculpted by hand, with a torch. The robot is fully jointed, made only of glass, and it stands about 3 inches tall."

He's adorable!

Handmade Jointed Glass Robot (Thanks, Jenine!)



Help underwrite Kal Spelletich's robot art show

Posted: 26 Jun 2010 09:36 PM PDT

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We've posted on BB before about San Francisco machine artist Kal Spelletich, who has made dozens of elegant, menacing, and incredible robots and kinetic sculptures over several decades. Kal is a veteran of Survival Research Laboratories, Seemen, and a former artist-in-residence at the Exploratorium. He's managed to secure a gallery show in New York City on August 6, 2010. The rub is that he can't afford to finish the new pieces and, even more challenging and expensive, ship all this heavy metal and sensitive electronics, and himself, across the country. And back. So he's hoping to raise $3,000 via Kickstarter. If you donate $1,000, you even get a tabletop kinetic version of the giant tree robot (robot tree?) that will be the centerpiece of the show. Kal Spelletich: Cosmicism & Contemporary Forestry



Star Wars meets high fashion

Posted: 26 Jun 2010 09:41 PM PDT

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Fashion illustrator John Woo created this "He Wears It" series of drawings depicting Star Wars characters wearing the styles of famous designers. Jango Fett rocks Comme des Garcons, a Stormtrooper wears Thom Browne, New York, etc. Above, Vader wears Band of Outsiders and a Scout Trooper models Victor & Rolf. You can see them at Woo's heavy Flash site Wooszoo.com or a selection at Colt-Rane.com. (Thanks, Mathias Crawford!)

Adventurer's Club from Walt Disney World recreated in painstaking detail with Half-Life engine

Posted: 26 Jun 2010 07:41 PM PDT

Walt Disney World's Adventurer's Club was a nightclub in the now-shuttered Pleasure Island area, where live players and animatronic trophies voiced by actors behind the scenes (who monitored the action with hidden cameras). It was one of my absolute favorite places at the park, and it shut along with the otherwise lacklustre Pleasure Island in 2008.

Many Club fans have mourned its passing, but Brerben, didn't just mourn, he re-created the Club in astonishing detail using the Half-Life engine and the Garry's Mod tool. From the Inside the Magic blog:

Throughout the time spent working on it, Brerben kept his focus on including as much detail as possible while encountering a few technical hurdles. He told me, "The interactive parts of the map were the most difficult to do, because, for example, I would search YouTube for segments where Babylonia would say something, and try to record the audio to put in my map, but I really couldn't do it correctly because there was always some guest in the video laughing hysterically which made it difficult to separate Babylonia's voice from the guest's laughter."

But while you can't sit through any complete Adventurers Club shows in the virtual world, there is still plenty of entertainment to be found. Brerben explained there are audio clips of "small sentences that the characters would say sometimes, such as Arnie and Claude in the Mask Room, the Colonel, and Babylonia." In addition, certain props and elements are interactive. "Some things, like the piano in the Library, will start playing if you walk up to it and activate it. Also in the Library are secret books scattered throughout the shelves, which do different things to the Library when you activate them."

..."I really have to give thanks to a YouTube user named Yodatc who sent me 3 gigabytes worth of photos and audio recordings that he took at the Club before it closed. Every single artifact, every single picture on the wall at the Club was accounted for in his high resolution photos."

Walt Disney World's Adventurers Club virtually recreated for fans to once again explore

Download the map

(Thanks, Ricky!)



Texas GOP comes out against oral sex, the UN, and the Supreme Court

Posted: 26 Jun 2010 08:29 PM PDT

The Texas Republican Party has passed its new election platform, including a ban on pornography, oral sex, gay marriage, sodomy, strip clubs -- they also want to ditch the Federal Reserve, "withhold Supreme Court jurisdiction in cases involving abortion, religious freedom, and the Bill of Rights," "oppose the implementation of one world currency" (why was I not informed of this One World Currency? It would sure make travel simpler!), and get the US out of the UN. The platform itself seems to be down (if you've got a working link, post it to comments -- here's one), but here's some verbatim highlights.
The GOP there has voted on a platform that would ban oral and anal sex. It also would give jail sentences to anyone who issues a marriage license to a same-sex couple (even though such licenses are already invalid in the state).

"We oppose the legalization of sodomy," the platform says. "We demand that Congress exercise its authority granted by the U.S. Constitution to withhold jurisdiction from the federal courts from cases involving sodomy."

Ah yes, the "no blowjobs party" -- that'll bring out the vote!

Texas GOP platform: criminalize gay marriage and ban sodomy, outlaw strip clubs and pornography (Thanks, @greatdismal!)

(Image: wingnut, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from genista's photostream)



2010 Locus Award winners!

Posted: 26 Jun 2010 07:14 PM PDT

The 2010 Locus Magazine Awards for science fiction were handed out today -- many of the winners were reviewed here as well (links below). You'd be hard pressed to find a better reading list of great contemporary SF:
Best SF Novel: Boneshaker, Cherie Priest (Tor)

Best Fantasy Novel: The City & The City, China MiƩville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK)

Best First Novel: The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade)

Best Young Adult Book: Leviathan, Scott Westerfeld (Simon Pulse; Simon & Schuster UK)

Best Novella: The Women of Nell Gwynne's, Kage Baker (Subterranean)

Best Novelette: ''By Moonlight'', Peter S. Beagle (We Never Talk About My Brother)

Best Short Story: ''An Invocation of Incuriosity'', Neil Gaiman (Songs of the Dying Earth)

Best Anthology: The New Space Opera 2, Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan, eds. (Eos; HarperCollins Australia)

Best Collection: The Best of Gene Wolfe, Gene Wolfe (Tor); as The Very Best of Gene Wolfe (PS)

2010 Locus Awards Winners

Gadget Gauntlet (BBG revisit!)

Posted: 26 Jun 2010 07:14 PM PDT

gadgetgauntlet.png Before Boing Boing Gadgets and Offworld were reabsorbed by the mother entity, we used to put up pointless, bizarre flash game parodies now and again. I just chanced across the preliminary work for Gadget Gauntlet, one such project that we never completed. The idea would have been the classic game Gauntlet II, but instead of being a Wizard, Warrior, Valkyrie or Elf mindlessly emptying a dungeon of treasure, you would have been one of four types of shopper wandering a zombie-infested mall to loot consumer durables. I thought you may enjoy the concept art and theme tune.

Listen: Gadget Gauntlet


Monkey-Pirate-Robot-Ninja-Zombie: Rock Paper Scissors 9.0

Posted: 26 Jun 2010 08:11 AM PDT


Bored of the same tired old rock-paper-scissors (lizard-Spock)? Try Mark Rayner's variant: "Monkey-Pirate-Robot-Ninja-Zombie!"
Monkey
* Monkey fools Ninja
* Monkey unplugs Robot
Suggested noise: ee-ee-eek!

Robot
* Robot chokes Ninja
* Robot crushes Zombie
Suggested noise: ex-ter-min-ate!

Pirate
* Pirate drowns Robot
* Pirate skewers Monkey
Suggested noise: arrrrr!

Ninja
* Ninja karate chops Pirate
* Ninja decapitates Zombie
Suggested noise: keeee-ah!

Zombie
* Zombie eats Pirate
* Zombie savages Monkey
Suggested noise: braaaaaaaaaainsss!

How to Play Monkey-Pirate-Robot-Ninja-Zombie (Thanks, Mark!)

Quotable quotes from Government 1.0 -- in binary

Posted: 26 Jun 2010 08:06 AM PDT


The Code for America project is celebrating July 4 in style, with a set of posters quoting the founders of the USA Government 1.0 in handy binary form. Print and display with pride!

Some Fourth of July Decorations (Thanks, Tim!)



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