It’s almost April Fool’s Day, and Google is starting a bit early. The company has just introduced PAC-Maps, which will turn any streetmap into a giant game of Pac-Man, considering there are enough streets in said area to support it.
This leads to super fun, often impossible Pac-Man stages through places like New York City and Barcelona. I haven’t tried PAC-Maps in Boston yet. I don’t know if I want to.
“With local place information and Street View, it’s easier than ever before to find where you’re going but there’s never been anything to let you know where *not* to go. With this update, we’ve added imagery of dangerous virtual beings, starting with Pinky, Blinky, Inky and Clyde. When navigating fruit-filled streets, determine at a glance which turns to pass to evade ghosts and get where you’re going safely. When you’re feeling a bit peckish, you can simply gobble up a few pac-dots or a cherry and keep on nommin’. PAC-Maps makes navigating around select locations as simple as left, right, up or down,” says a post on the Google Lat-Long blog.
You can play on desktop, iOS, and Android. There are going to be a lot of crappy April Fool’s jokes coming from tech companies this week. This is not one of them. This is awesome. Enjoy.
You know how there are some things that just make you happy? No, not the obvious things like beer, money, and grilled meat. I mean those times when you’re just delighted by something, inexplicably?
This is one of those times.
I guess it’s wrong to call my delight totally inexplicable. I think that it comes down to knowing that people took the time to do this. Of all the things in the world they could have done, they decided to remake, in Grand Theft Auto 5, one of the most classic chase scenes from one of the best flicks in history.
You know the semi chase in Terminator 2: Judgment Day? Well, here it is, painstakingly recreated nearly shot-for-shot in the GTA universe.
“It mostly took a lot of time because I wanted to try to make it exact. Yes I may have missed some small scenes but damn we worked hard on this from the actual setting up, to the directing, to the editing so please give it a look,” says creator John Chapman.
In books that I absolutely cannot wait to read news, Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston is going to write a memoir that focuses, in large part, on the six years he spent filming Breaking Bad.
“Walter White taught me a lot—some of it useful, some of it dangerous,” said Cranston. “With this book, I want to tell the stories of my life and reveal the secrets and lies that I lived with for six years shooting Breaking Bad.”
Secrets and lies? Do tell, Mr. White.
Publisher Scribner (a Simon & Schuster imprint), says that there will be other components to the memoir other than the making of Breaking Bad–but it’s clear that the groundbreaking AMC show will be a main focus.
“Cranston will trace the remarkable career of an actor who worked as a journeyman for many years and—through talent, tenacity, and luck—landed a role that transformed his life. A deeply candid work, Cranston’s memoir will offer fascinating insights into his early years, the craft of acting, and his experiences on the landmark series Breaking Bad,” they say.
Cranston hasn’t yet tweeted about the new book, but he has discussed his nervousness in regards to opening on Broadway. Cranston is currently playing President Lyndon B. Johnson in the play All the Way.
It's opening night for my Broadway debut. I'm finding fun, new places to throw up. Actually, I'm very excited! Come see me in "All The Way."
For everyone bitching about the recent co-opting of Kickstarter by the privileged elite, you know, well-established Hollywood players using the crowdfunding site for their new projects – take this as a counterpoint. This is the best use of Kickstarter in its purest form. This is beautiful.
“One of the themes I’ve returned to in my work every now and then is Sears…I guess I like the fact that Sears can be completely unique, while also being nearly indistinguishable from any other Sears in any other part of the country (the inherent contradiction of Sears),” says Bird.
If it’s possible for you to love this project any more, please watch his Kickstarter video, a wonderful parody of the trailer for Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life.
“The budget is to pay for gas (8,000 miles @ 30 mpg x $4/gallon), lodging (approx. 30 nights averaging $80/night), vehicle maintenance, food, art materials, and a traveling assistant (joining me will be the multi-talented Erin Pearce, sewer of things, maker of bugs), plus the cost of making & mailing prints and postcards. If the project goes over the minimum, that opens up the possibility of renting a gallery for a Sears show and public reception. If does really well, perhaps visiting Sears stores in far-off locations like Alaska or Hawaii, or expanding the trip into fall *and* spring legs,” says Bird.
For 8 lucky backers who pledge $1,000, Bird will give them original oil paintings of a Sears. Hurry up, as 7 of the 8 pledge spots have already been filled.
The Kickstarter project currently sits at $8,515 out of $8,000 pledged, with 22 days to go.
AMC has just put out a new trailer for the upcoming season 5B of Breaking Bad, and it’s likely to give you chills.
No new scenes, no hints at what’s to come – just Walter White calmly reciting Percy Bysshe Shelley’s 1818 sonnet “Ozymandias” over sprawling shots of the Albuquerque desert. Oh yeah, and the hat – Walter White’s “shattered visage.”
It doesn’t take a scholar to read the implications in this trailer. Shelley’s “Ozymandias” tells the story of a monument, built by a proud and boastful king, which stands withered away by time. It’s a powerful poem that holds a simple message: no matter how powerful the king, everything comes to an end. It’s a poem about inevitable decline.
“Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Chills.
Text for those interested in pulling out some kingly interpretations from the poem and how they relate to Walter White:
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away
If you thought the Sharknado craze was waning, think again. The SyFy network’s B-movie and award winner for most accurate title of all time (it features shark tornados, so, you know) is coming to the big screen.
According to THR, Sharknado is coming to a cinema near you. Regal Cinemas have announced that they will put on midnight shows around the country on August 2nd. Apparently, the film is coming to roughly 200 theaters around the U.S.
SyFy has been airing ridiculous (..ly awesome?) made-for-TV movies like this more years, but something about Sharknado struck a chord with the internet – especially on social media sites like Twitter. I guess it had something to do with the sharks and tornados. Go figure.
“You know how audiences have had fun with Rocky Horror Picture Show over the years. If the internet reactions to this film are any indication, then our moviegoers are primed and ready to enjoy Sharknado larger than life in cinemas,” says Chris Sylvia, Regal’s digital marketing head. “Regal is proud to be giving our guests this chance to fuel the social media whirlwind by inviting friends to come to the show and tweeting reactions.”
That won’t be the last sharknado you see either, as SyFy has confirmed that they will be making a sequel (working title: Sharknado 2). It’s set to hit the network some time in 2014. The sharks will invade New York City in that sure-to-be-hit.
And don’t forget Ghost Shark. For the love of all that’s good and holy, don’t you dare forget about Ghost Shark.
I love LEGO. You love LEGO. I think it’s safe to say that we all love LEGO. The little bricks that can do anything have entertained children for generations. Of course, entertainment is only one out of many roles that LEGO can play. People use them to build amazing contraptions. Today’s contraption may just be the most amazing.
YouTube user akiyuky has created what he calls the LEGO Great Ball Contraption. It’s a series of various contraptions that all serve to push small balls through a cacophony of moving parts until they reach their destination. I don’t want to spoil it so just watch the video. It’s absolutely mind blowing.
I don’t want to put in the 600 hours construction time it took him to build this. I do, however, want to play with it. This is the kind of automated LEGO machinery that delights me to my very core. Of course, now I want to see somebody top this. Don’t disappoint me, Internet. I know you can do it.
The big gaseous giant called Saturn, the sixth planet from the Sun in our Solar System, is typically remembered because of the multiple rings that encircle the planet. However, it’s also a e-freaking-normous planet. At 95 times more massive than Earth and with a radius 9 times the equatorial radius of Earth, Saturn easily claims the prize of the second-largest planet in the Solar System (behind Jupiter).
Being that large and in charge, Saturn also boasts a ton of moons. 62 moons, in fact (that we know of, at least). And these moons aren’t just slouchy moons, either. For example, Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, is bigger than Mercury, the smallest planet in the Solar System. Saturn has a moon that’s bigger than a recognized planet.
Captured by the Cassini spacecraft on December 7, 2011, “using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelenghts of near-infrared light centered at 752 nanometers,” the image shows just how colossal Saturn is when compared to two of its moons, Tethys (right) and Pandora (left). As if Saturn didn’t didn’t already look gargantuan enough, the Cassini spacecraft was approximately 1.3 million miles away from Saturn with the picture was taken. This is the second time in a month that Cassini has put Saturn in the news. Last month, the spacecraft helped scientists discover a “lake” on Saturn’s moon, Titan.
Seriously. Those two moons look like flecks of crumbs tumbling off the chin of a very corpulent Saturn. In other words, that is one monster planet.
…If you even have one, that is. As for Twitter? They’re doing just fine, what with the recent opening of their new headquarters in San Francisco. While the new base of operations has been in the pipe since December of 2011, Twitter officially opened their doors to the new facility on Monday, June 11. While the entire facility looks to be incredibly employee-friendly, there’s a specific place in Twitter’s new facility that’s getting the bulk of the attention:
Twitter’s rooftop deck, which, after you see it, will probably make you look at your backyard with disdain. The lead image is a snippet of the 360 degree panoramic view of the Twitter roof deck, taken and posted on Dru Miller’s Twitter account. Take a moment to play with Miller’s image because it gives a great idea just how accommodating Twitter has made their roof.
So, does seeing this give you any ideas of a new backyard project this weekend? Will it involve multiple trips to Home Depot or Lowe’s? Seeing this also brings me to another tangent: imagine if McDonald’s or Walmart did something like this for their hard worked/underpaid employees. I bet their incredible turnover rate would decrease ever so slightly.
The pool of entrants to Google’s 2012 Science Fair has been winnowed down to 90 insanely brilliant finalists from different regions around the world. Winners from each of the three age divisions will compete for the Grand Prize of a $50,000 scholarship, a personal LEGO mosaic, a trip to the Galapagos to visit Darwin’s Living Laboratory, and most likely enough worldwide notoriety that they’ll be fielding job offers from CERN, Fermilab, NASA, or just about any other high-profile science organization.
Among those 90 finalists, 13 of them have been nominated for a Scientific American Science in Action Award.
The projects that these youngsters are worthy of the most utopia-laden science fiction stories you’ve ever read. A pair of collaborating entrants, for example, Emily and Trevor Wang, are investigating whether a substance collected by bees may have anti-cancer properties.
Seriously, how does anybody even think of that?
Another fantastic idea comes from Mark Liang, who’s project centers on whether sunflowers can be used to absorb and neutralize a nasty chemical that’s currently been getting dumped into the soil across California.
Here, one more in case you weren’t feeling enough inferiority about your middling lifetime accomplishments. Ivan Ang Jie Xiong explored the possibility of using robots to help keep our environment clean.
Google posted an interactive map so you can browse through all of the finalists depending on the region they’re in. Go check it out so you can start getting acquainted with your future bosses.
With the unfortunate death of Maurice Sendak, the Internet has been busy coming up with different ways to pay their respects to the groundbreaking children’s author, whose most famous work, Where the Wild Things, lives on in the hearts and minds of the young and old alike. Whether it’s featuring the video of Christopher Walken reading Sendak’s unforgettable book or impressive drawings from Andy Marlette, Sendak’s passing was given the proper respect.
All that being said, perhaps the most impressive piece comes from Deviant Art member, AgarthanGuide, who, by combining The Avengers with Sendak’s Wild Things, you get this incredible homage to the great children’s author. I would recommend clicking the image for its full-size version, because some things are better appreciated in their original state:
The piece is loving called “Avengers on Parade,” and the artist who created it left something of a thank you note to Sendak:
Two things on my mind today-
RIP Maurice Sendak.
Yay Avengers.
Okay – I put together some wallpapers using the original – I tried to make them as big as possible and cover the major aspect ratios. You can download them here. Enjoy!
Also- I don’t have any plans to print it. The Avengers don’t belong to me, I feel like I got lucky, and I would rather share the nostalgia, you know? … Tom Hiddleston and Joe Hill both saw fit to tweet this. I just can’t…
In case you’re unaware, Tom Hiddleston is the actor who played Loki in the recently-released Avengers movie. Joe Hill is Stephen King’s son, and is an accomplished author in his own right. As for the awesome creation, like I said, if you don’t view “Avengers on Parade” in its full size, you’re only cheating yourself.
I should say AWESOME clone trooper mash ups, because thanks to the sterling work of two Deviant Art aces, we have even more Star Wars content for you to celebrate with, even if you don’t need anymore. Not only do these mash up works capture the feel of the Star Wars universe, because they are mashed up with Marvel superheroes, they fit with the theatrical arrival of The Avengers.
As pointed out by Geek Alerts, these mash ups were penciled by Jon Bolerjack and inked by JJ Kirby, and well, their work is something your inner Star Wars/Marvel geek will absolutely love. That being said, it wouldn’t be surprising if some of the more hardcore Star Wars fans took issue with the use of Clone Troopers as opposed to Stormtroopers, but hey, you can’t please everyone.
Furthermore, trying to do so will result in something much less awesome:
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Check out the respective Deviant Art pages for more of each artists work. It’s worth your time, especially when you come across Kirby’s awesome Zombie Colossus:
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With all of the above going on, how are you celebrating your Star Wars Day? As for me, I’ll probably fire this gem up on the PC:
Pi, or Π (and not pie) has a massive online following. Case in point, just take a look at how well Pi Day did in regards to Internet popularity. For those who don’t know, pi (Π) is an irrational number, representing the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, at least according to definitions. While the explanation may not clarify things for you, especially if you’re not a math geek, the attraction to the number is that it never ends.
Because math problems are difficult enough without the idea of infinite numbers, pi’s numeric value has been “shortened” to equal 3.14159, which is only five decimal places deep. However, when discussing their project, design firm TWO-N indicates pi has been verified up to 10 trillion decimals. To give people an idea of just how many numbers are represented with pi, TWO-N has created an SWF/image that visualizes 4 million of these decimals. According the page’s source code, the SWF is sized at 1170 x 600 pixels, giving them the necessary space to render each digit as a 1×1 pixel dot. As the file is moused over, corresponding numbers pop up, like so:
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Aside from the dimensions of the Flash file, TWO-N’s META description reveals an interesting tidbit concerning pi:
An average person can read out approximately 120 digits/min. Keeping this pace it would take more than 158,000 years to recite the 10 trillion digits of Π discovered this year and roughly 3 weeks to read out the 4 million digits visualized here.
If you want to test that idea for either the 4 million or 10 trillion, at least post a video of the numeric recital. As for the pi image, it is searchable, meaning if you want to see if a particular digit string appears in pi, you can find out. Consider the sheer amount of individual decimals featured in the irrational number, there’s a good chance the string will be found, as long as it’s not a repeating string of numbers (555555) for instance.
Lastly, the page’s HTML title will undoubtedly meet the approval of pi geeks everywhere. It is as follows:
In what may be one of the best art shows ever, the Light Grey Art Gallery in Minneapolis hosted the Pokemon Battle Royale. The show tasked 151 artists to bring their unique vision to one of the original 151 Pokemon. Here’s the official descriptor from the gallery:
151 artists have each selected and created original works of art inspired by each of the original 151 Pokémon. From Bulbasaur to Mew, each Pokémon is represented and injected with the artists’ own aesthetic, style, and creativity, exploring just what made those little Pokémon so interesting and fun to catch.
What follows is a visual trip that shows Pokemon as you’ve never seen them before. The original designs were so simplistic yet awe inspiring that seeing them in this light makes you want to play a game featuring these version. Here’s a few of our favorites starting with the absolute best: Charmillionaire Charmeleon.
Fearow
Pikachu
Golbat
Diglett
Alakazam
Farfetch’d
Haunter
Gengar
Mr. Mime
Mewtwo
There are just our favorites. There are plenty more to look through at the gallery. If you find yourself attracted to any particular piece, you can buy an 8″x8″ print for $40. I think that’s a fair price for some of the best Pokemon art to ever hit the circuit. Excuse me while I get myself a print of Charmillionaire.
Are you still in love with Angry Birds, but sick of that repetitive finger sliding motion necessary to launch the little guys? In what appears to be the most intriguing game-appropriate controller since the big orange gun in Duck Hunt, “rapid prototyping for microcontroller” company mbed has developed a big wooden slingshot with which to destroy those smug pigs.
Here’s what they had to consider when constructing the super-awesome slingshot:
With a real slingshot, you tilt the slingshot and stretch sling. The idea to measure these was using:
An accelerometer – this can measure the tilt by tracking the gravity vector (which way is down!)
A rubber stretch sensor – this can be used as the sling, and measure how much it is stretched
That is the input, but to play Angry Birds, you actually click on the bird, then drag to the launch angle and strength you want, then release. This means we have to translate the real slingshot movements in to a series of different mouse movements.
For example, this means translating starting to stretch the slingshot to a mouse to click and hold, whilst the vector of the stretch determined by the angle of sling and how far it is stretched translates to mouse movements relative to where we started.
The resulting controller acts like a USB mouse. Check it out below:
You can build one for yourself, if you are so inclined. They’ve posted detailed instructions to their blog.
All I know is that I’ve got to build have someone build me one fo these before Gene Simmons drops a KISS-themed Angry Birds game on us.
How many times have you been playing Skyrim and thought “the only thing that would make this better is food?” My personal answer is 100+ times. If you’ve ever thought this, it most likely follows that you’ve wound up making some food. And what’s a good gamer fuel? Hot Pockets, of course.
But once your molten hot factory-produced meat pastry is ready, another problem arises. In order to eat said device, you have to put down your controller and pause your game.
Well, not anymore. Thanks to Ben Heck of The Ben Heck Show, you’ll never have to stop playing to eat a Hot Pocket again.
That’s because he has engineered a Hot Pocket Dispenser that attaches to your Xbox 360 controller. The device allows you to mechanically feed yourself the Hot Pocket while you continue playing your game. It’s sort of like a meat and cheese push-pop.
Check out the entire invention/construction/demonstration below:
You’ll never have to grease up your controller with food fingers again.
With the ETA of the workday’s end inching closer, here’s your feel-good story to ferry you into the weekend:
Samantha Garvey, a 17-year-old high school senior in Long Island, New York, has been selected as a semifinalist in the eminent Intel Science Competition. That alone would be an accolade worth writing home about except this achievement is about to go from impressive to kicking you in the awesome button:
Garvey is homeless.
A New York CBS affiliate, WCBS 880, spoke to Garvey, who is 1 of 61 students in Long Island in the competition’s finals, ran the story yesterday:
Garvey said she was blown away and started crying when she learned about her place in the competition.
“I’ve gotten a lot of calls. People on Facebook, they’re posting things on my wall and it’s really exciting,” she said.
“I did a marsh study where I looked at mussels in a marsh and I saw that when they were exposed to crabs, they grew heavier shells,” she said.
After that, she introduced the situation to a lab setting.
Garvey’s other impressive stats: plays violin, speaks Italian, 3.9 GPA, all around ass-kicker of science. And if there’s any justice in the universe, you will one day call her Boss.
It’s my favorite time of day right now: that time when we learn about sock-knocking-off technology that sounds like it was born on the bright side of the future. To quote one of my favorite animators, “When the aliens come they will be so great in so many different ways that everything we ever thought was cool will make us ashamed.”
Ready to bring the shame? I hope not, because lucky for you (this time) the bringers of awesome future technology are from Team Earth (Sweden, in fact) and the awesome they’ve brought us is a slick piece of eco-friendly technology called PowerTrekk, tomorrow’s battery charger.
And here comes the best part: PowerTrekk is a darkness-defeating fuel cell charger that runs on – ready – WATER! It runs on approximately one tablespoon of WATER! You can charge your mobile electronics with the stuff that drips out of clouds and public fountains. This brilliant piece of future “cleanly and efficiently converts hydrogen into electricity” via PowerTrekk’s Proton Exchange Membrane. That sounds intense, but all you have to do is place one fuel pack, called PowerPukk, into the the PowerTrekk and “add water to provide instant and limitless power on the go.” Watch it in action:
UH-mazing.
myFC, the company that has created this device, promotes PowerTrekk as the ideal accessory for “business professionals in developing countries who seek freedom from wall charging either because they work in remote areas (where the grid is absent) or in cities where, from time to time, the electrical grid is unreliable.” Whether you’re charging your phone, camera, or even an iPod (because when you are completely removed from electricity the first thing to worry about is what jams you need to set the mood), simply plug the device into PowerTrekk’s USB port and – presto – you’re off like a battery-charging bandit. Take a look at all of it’s gadgety wonder:
So let’s recap: No power outlet? No problem. No car battery? No problem. No spare batteries? NO. PROBLEM.
The next time you’re venturing out into the wild, whether that’s an unfamiliar city or the actual wild that you see on Discovery Channel, take a look at your communication devices and ask yourself: Which one of these cute geometry-morphs do you hope to be:
Science fairs have come a long way from the days of those white cardboard tri-fold displays you had to decorate with construction paper letters and very messy Elmer’s glue. In my youth, we were tasked with menial experiments like investigating which object has the most buoyancy when placed in orange juice or how to make a baking soda volcano. We were hardly doing anything meaningful, like curing cancer.
Because they like to be involved in literally everything there is, Google has partnered with CERN, The LEGO Group, National Geographic and Scientific American to launch their second annual Google Science Fair. As Google says, it’s the “largest online science competition in the world, open globally to students ages 13-18.” Check out their accompanying video that introduces this year’s competition and, while you’re at it, note how much more compelling the competition’s mission is because of the British accented voiceover:
An update on Google’s official blog goes on to explain more about the competition:
This year’s fair will be even more global than the last: We’re now accepting submissions in 13 languages (Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Spanish and Russia). We will also be recognizing 90 regional finalists (30 from the Americas, 30 from the Asia Pacific and 30 from Europe/Middle East/Africa). From these 90, to be announced in May, our judges will select the top 15 finalists, who will be flown to Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. for our live Google Science Fair final event on July 23, 2012. At the finals, a panel of distinguished international judges (like Vint Cerf, Sylvia Earle and Nobel Laureates David Gross and Ada Yonath) will select top winners in each age category (13-14, 15-16, 17-18).
We’re also introducing a new category for this year’s competition—the Scientific American Science in Action award. We were so inspired by 2011 finalist Harine Ravichandran’s project, which attempted to solve energy surges in rural villages, that we decided to recognize an outstanding project that addresses a social, environmental or health need to make a difference in the lives of a group or community, as Harine’s project did for her grandparents’ village in India. The winner will also be flown to Mountain View for the finalist event in July.
Good lord. When I was a sixteen-year-old girl, I wasn’t doing anything nearly as meaningful as solving energy surges in rural village in India. It’s humbling what these kids are capable of these days. And here all anybody wants to worry about is the scourge of sexting among adolescent and how our culture is slowly eroding any sense of morality in today’s youth. Bullfeathers. These Google Science Fair kids are future human supreme.
Today is the ribbon-cutting moment of the 2012 edition of Google Science Fair and submissions will be accepted until Sunday, April 1 at 11:59 GMT (I’m presuming that’s the PM version of 11:59 but the Google post didn’t specify so maybe it’d be better for all involved parties to not wait till the last minute to get your submission in, eh kids?). To get your appetite for science growling, Google is offering prizes such as a $50,000 college scholarship and a 10-day trip to Galapagos (go get yer Darwin on, young brainiacs!).
Additional information was included in Google’s email announcement that highlight changes to this year’s competition in order to “make it even more global”:
Submissions will be accepted in 13 languages (compared to English-only last year)
There will be 90 regional finalists: 30 each from the Americas, Europe/Middle East/Africa, and Asia Pacific
A “Science in Action” award, sponsored by Scientific American — for a project that addresses a social, environmental or health issue to make a practical difference in the lives of a group or community
Do any of you readers know of any teenagers that participated in last year’s Google Science Fair? If so, tell us a bit more about them in the comments.
Seriously, I don’t want to put your entire week on a downhill trajectory, but in terms of the sheer scope of this video – it’s probably the best thing you’ll see on the internet all week.
Edited by Michael König, and compiled using images from NASA, this time lapse fly-over of the Earth provides five minutes of childlike amazement.
The lime lapse sequences are courtesy of astronauts aboard the International Space Station, more specifically the crew of expeditions 28 & 29 operating from August to October 2011. The photographs were apparently taken with a special “low-light 4K-camera,” providing us with the stunning images of Earth as they fly past Auroras and over cities filled with light.
There are quite a few awesome elements to this video, but in my opinion, it really doesn’t get much better than the incredible images of thunderstorms rippling throughout the clouds as the cameras pass. Truly amazing:
Like I mentioned before, the images are courtesy of NASA – more specifically the Gateway to Astronaut Photography. That’s a program that hosts the most complete internet collection of pictures of the Earth from space. New photos are added to the database daily, and according to the site, it contains over 1.1 million views of the Earth (675K from the ISS).
If you want to track the locations in the video, here’s a list provided by König of the various places, in order, from which he culled images:
1. Aurora Borealis Pass over the United States at Night
2. Aurora Borealis and eastern United States at Night
3. Aurora Australis from Madagascar to southwest of Australia
4. Aurora Australis south of Australia
5. Northwest coast of United States to Central South America at Night
6. Aurora Australis from the Southern to the Northern Pacific Ocean
7. Halfway around the World
8. Night Pass over Central Africa and the Middle East
9. Evening Pass over the Sahara Desert and the Middle East
10. Pass over Canada and Central United States at Night
11. Pass over Southern California to Hudson Bay
12. Islands in the Philippine Sea at Night
13. Pass over Eastern Asia to Philippine Sea and Guam
14. Views of the Mideast at Night
15. Night Pass over Mediterranean Sea
16. Aurora Borealis and the United States at Night
17. Aurora Australis over Indian Ocean
18. Eastern Europe to Southeastern Asia at Night
Can you spot any distinguishable features of Earth? What do you think of the time lapse images in general? Let us know in the comments.
All Hallow’s Eve is quickly upon us, and the denizens of the web are quickly gearing up for their annual dress-up games, evoking memories of video games, movies, memes, and, well, sluts. I’ll deal with the “slut” aspect later on in this post, but before that, there have been some awesome Halloween-related posts popping up all over the web, and thanks in large part to Reddit.com and Imgur.com, they’ve been assembled in a couple of places for you to enjoy.
First off, this post is going to address the some of the more unique costumes I’ve come across during this search. Sorry, but the scantily-clad costumes won’t be appearing in this section, but they are coming up, or, at least a comment or two about them. This first stop is simply called “Fantasy Football,” and it’s a creative way to get your Halloween on:
That’s just incredible. Ever wonder what a bottle of hot sauce might look like as a Halloween costume? Wonder no more:
It should be noted I’m working hard to limit the costumes I’m including because there are just so many of them out there. You could literally spend all day looking at them. With that in mind, here are a few more:
Courtesy. There’s this gem what was lovingly called “the worst zombie costume ever.” Come for the bad costume and stay for the incredible comment underneath it:
Next up is an exercise in incredible use of special effects makeup for Halloween purposes. It’s a tad disturbing, but it’s still awesome as hell:
It’s also important to remember your history, especially in regards to Halloween costumes. If you’re a child of the 70s, you’ll remember these gems quite well:
As for the slut aspect of Halloween dress-up, if you dress like this:
I’ll enjoy it, but these other two pieces of web content were made just for you:
And the incredible Jenna Marbles, who’s actually defending your choice to dress slutty. Keep in mind, the language is NSWF:
Now for some kick-ass pumpkins, all courtesy of Imgur:
Here’s the tutorial for those of you who are interested, but I doubt, however, the neighborhood parents would appreciate the creativity. Also, a word of warning to those of you who are thinking of making an awesome pumpkin:
Sounds about right.
In other news, if you’re interested in making a Google Places Jack-O’-Lantern, there’s a pattern for that. Oh, and for those of you who are thinking of scaring the crap out of your trick-or-treaters, keep this little public service announcement/rage comic in mind:
And with that, all of us at WebProNews wish you a safe and Happy Halloween.
