You can ride a dinosaur! via photoshop.

Because there are obviously a lot of people out there who can't use photoshop and are too lazy to try, there's now a website that offers what you can learn to do in less than an hour - photoshopping you riding a dinosaur.

There is seriously a website that, for $49.95, will photoshop you onto the dinosaur (or woolly mammoth) of your choice, and send you a poster size print of it.

That's it really. I Just found it hilarious that people would pay nearly 50 bucks for this.

via Dinoprints

The secret weapon of the US Army? Cyborg bugs.

This is both pretty creepy but also pretty incredible technology-wise. Basically, DARPA is creating cyborg beetles.

The official name of the project is the “Hybrid Insect Micro Electromechanical Systems”, or HI-MEMS, and its purpose is to locate dangerous obstacles, such as mines, or locate hidden nuclear weapon caches. Basically a recon bug.

The project is currently still at an experimental phase, but the plan is to harness all the senses the insect has at its disposal — so instead of attaching tiny cameras to its back, its sensory organs and optics will be used. The interface will allow the insect’s movement to be controlled remotely, allowing the controller to direct the bug wherever to do whatever they want.

In terms of power, the system is powered by fat, instead of chemical batteries, and, failing that, thermo-electric converters, piezoelectric generators and even “broadband energy scavengers” could be used. The technology itself is “tightly coupled” to the insect as it grows, with the idea being that as the little guy develops, it will create, and strengthen, the bonds between the electronics and organic tissue.

If this works, it will be a pretty incredible leap forward in terms of technology. Harnessing a living (and growing) creatures sensory inputs and converting it to a form that can be seen on a screen or readout, not to mention being able to control the creatures movements - it's just another step to the possibilities of human augmentation, and the ethical and moral minefield that awaits.

I can't help but wonder at their choice of animal though. Should they be spending so much money on augmenting a creature that can be taken out by a $5 can of bug spray?

via News.com

Chance that there's alien life out there just got bigger.

We knew our galaxy was big, but it just got a whole lot bigger - an international team of researchers have discovered that our galaxy contains a minimum of 100 billion planets. And a number of these are apparently smaller planets like Earth, rather than larger gas giants.

According to Stephen Kane, one of the authors of the study at NASA’s Exoplanet Science Institute in Pasadena, “not only are planets common in the galaxy, but there are more small planets than large ones. This is encouraging news for investigations into habitable planets.”

Basically, the estimate for the number of terrestrial planets has risen to about 10 billion.

This, in addition to the increasing number of planets in the 'Goldilocks Zone' - the area in the solar system where the planet is close enough and far away enough from the sun for life to occur - dramatically raises the chances that there is life out there somewhere, or if we eventually manage to get that far out into space, that there are habitable planets.

Of course, as to whether said alien life has progressed to our level, or are instead huge blue cats with funky hair remains to be seen.

via Hubble

Behold! The Shopping Trolley of the Future!

Although we still don't have hoverboards or flying cars, something else is about to get a futuristic upgrade - the humble shopping trolley.

Carindale IGA in Brisbane is about to get the new-and-improved shopping trolley, following in the steps of IGAs in NSW and Victoria. It will feature an LCD screen and control panel, and the trolleys can be used to locate items in the store, scan products as they are purchased for a running tally, or use a list pre-loaded on a website. It can also inform you of any specials, as well has track which aisle you're in instore and make appropriate reccomendations.

I just hope they've fixed the steering and handling. Trying to maneuver the standard trolley around a packed supermarket is akin to trying to do a precision driving course with a bus with flat tyres. On ice.

via Gizmodo

A Dedicated Gaming Tablet? Meet 'Project Fiona'

So the CES (Consumer Electronic Show) is happening at the moment in Las Vegas, which means there's no shortage of interesting, expensive, and sometimes pretty damn weird gizmos and gadgets flooding tech news sites at the moment. Here's one of them.

It's called 'Project Fiona,' and it's a tablet made solely for gaming, with two analogue joysticks built into the design, and specs to rival an (admittedly cheap) desktop pc. Built by Razer (a company that until recently, made only peripherals), it's a proof-of-concept prototype; however Razer is taking it seriously - what we see here is version 0.2, but Razer have already finished a version 0.8 at their labs, and expect to have a 1.0 by the end of the year.

As a result, what we see here isn't what the final product will look like, says Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan. "It will be thinner (it currently has the thickness of 3 iPads), lighter, and cheaper than $1000."

While made for gaming, it'll run on Windows 8, giving it full PC powers, with internet browsing and the like, with Razers specialised gaming software added in.

It's also pretty specced out, considering it's a tablet. It ran Warhammer 40k: Space Marine with ease, which has the minimum requirements of a 2GHz dual-core CPU, 2GB RAM, and 256MB video card. Not bad.

No word on other details, like battery life and release date, but I think it's fair to expect it in the first quarter of next year. Could be worth watching!

via Gizmodo

Star Wars Live-Action TV Series?

While rumours of a new Star Wars project have been hanging around for a while now, we now have new details - to start with, it has a working title of Star Wars: Underworld.

According to producer Rick McCallum, it's set between Revenge of the Sith, and A New Hope, and focuses on the 'seamy underbelly of crime on Coruscant during the rise of the Galactic Empire.'

LucasFilm's budget is $5 million - for each episode. But apparently it's not enough, says McCallum.
"The show incorporates several digitally animated characters, and so the plan is to wait a couple of years and watch the changes in animation technology and delivery methods — Lucas hasn’t decided on a cable network or digital distribution — and then make the show 'if we’re still alive.'"

While that may not inspire much confidence, it could be worth the wait - the series is to be 'bigger than any of the prequels were,' and 'complex,' 'dark,' and 'adult.'

Now we just need that live-action Harry Potter inspired TV show The Aurors to be made, and we'll be set.

via TDW Geeks

Come join the dark side... we have burgers!

This is kind of awesome, but kind of disgusting too. Like a lot of French cuisine actually. But anyway, in order to mark the release of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace in 3D, French fast-food chain Quick is releasing for a limited time only, a 'Dark Vador' burger, and a Jedi Burger. The kicker is that the Dark Vador burger (as seen above) is actually black.

Obviously it's just food dye, or squid ink, but it still looks...  kind of nasty. Like the time my sister left her snadwich in her school bag for a couple of months. But then Jedi burger is just a regular burger, so I guess I'd go the dark side.

The burgers are available from March 1 (only in France though) and the movie is set to be released February 10 (if you want to sit through over an hour of Jar Jar Binks in 3D. Oh the horror).

via Gizmodo via Lexpress

Mountain Dew can dissolve a mouse!?

(WARNING: The following story will absolutely destroy any desire you had, have, or will have, to drink Mountain Dew. Just sayin.)

A man in Illinois is suing the Pepsi Company, claiming he found a dead mouse in one of his cans of Mountain Dew, and sending the 'remains' as evidence to the company.

However, Pepsi have denied that this could be true, because the 'remains were too intact.'

"...Pepsi's lawyers also found experts to testify, based on the state of the remains sent to them that, "the mouse would have dissolved in the soda had it been in the can from the time of its bottling until the day the plaintiff drank it," according to the Record...It would have become a "jelly-like substance," according to Pepsi..."

Mountain Dew is acidic enough to dissolve a body. In other news, serial killers and mobsters now have a new interest in the factories of Mountain Dew...

via Yahoo News

New trailer for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey!

Well it's been a while since I last posted. But coincidentally, it's also been a while since Peter Jackson re-introduced us to Middle Earth in cinemas! But fear no longer, my hairy-footed friends. The first trailer for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has just been released!

Featuring stunning scenery, concerned looking wizards and a riddling bi-polar schizophrenic, you can check it out just below.

The film will be out in just under a year, on the 14th of December. Much too far away, precious....

Two times Tokyo?

Because Japanese legislators have been watching waaaay to much Evangelion, they're considering building a second Tokyo, in case the first one is destroyed. By Angels.

It's not that crazy an idea to be honest, during WW1 France built a second Paris to confuse German bombers, and China is building a number of towns reminiscent of traditional Germany and Austria.

According to World Architecture News, "the new city, code named IRTBBC, or Integrated Resort, Tourism, Business and Backup City, will stand in for the capital in the event of it being hit by a disabling earthquake. A possible location has already been earmarked 300 miles to the west of Tokyo on the 1236 acre site of the largely superseded Itami Airport."

The legislative backers of the proposal want 14 million Yen (approximately AU$175,087) to research as to whether this 'emergency city' will actually work. The city is proposed to house 50,000 residents, 200,000 daytime workers, an emergency seat of government, casinos, and the tallest tower in the world (at approximately 2,139 feet).

Although considering practically every disaster movie is set in either New York or Tokyo, this may be a good investment.

via inhabitat

The secret to Viking Navigation is a crystal!

Ancient Vikings were very good mariners. They crossed wide seas with none of the navigational equipment we have today, instead relying on their knowledge of the sun and the stars. But a question that has always plagued archaeologists, is how did they accomplish this on the Atlantic, which can often be a pretty soggy, foggy, and altogether nasty place?

According to Viking legend, they used a 'sunstone,' a magical device that allowed their navigators to read the celestial positions even in deep fog. And now, archaeologists think they've found what it was.

Researchers at the University of Rennes in France have put together all the evidence they've found, and have wound up with something quite plausible. While not magical, the device was a transparent calcite crystal, known as an 'Iceland Spar,' that ancient navigators would've used to depolarise light - meaning that the crystal was able to split light along two different axes.

In practice, that means that a sailor simply had to put a dot on top of the crystal, and then look at it from below. The incoming light would hit the dot, and create the illusion that it was duplicated. This optical effect was apparently all ye olde sailors needed to be able to locate the sun, even when it wasn't even visible. 

In case you didn't get that, (I sure didn't), lead researcher Guy Ropars has a less technical version:

"Then you rotate the crystal until the two points have exactly the same intensity or darkness. At that angle, the upward-facing surface indicates the direction of the Sun. A precision of a few degrees can be reached even under dark twilight conditions...Vikings would have been able to determine with precision the direction of the hidden Sun." 

These precursors to the compass were also used later on, being considered more reliable than the newer compass due to the fact that the presence of metal didn't affect it.

I'm still saying it's magic.

via i09, with the original report here.

Strawberries now cure alcohol poisoning?

Strawberries are delicious. In fact, they're second only to the great mango in terms of tastiness. But now they're not just delicious - they can cure the effects of alcohol poisoning!

Heavy drinking can bring serious problems. And not the 'I-got-drunk-last-night' kind of drinking, but the 'I-got-drunk-every-week-this-month' kind of drinking. It can cause long-term damage to the mucous membrane of your stomach that can give rise to all manner of gastrointestinal disorders, including ulcers, colorectal cancer, and inflammatory bowel disease. Not cool.

Now a European team has found that strawberries, or more accurately the anthocyanins and antioxidants found in strawberries, can help mitigate these effects and even improve treatment of stomach ulcers.

Sara Tulipani, University of Barcelona researcher and co-author of the study, explains that "the positive effects of strawberries are not only linked to their antioxidant capacity and high content of phenolic compounds, but also to the fact that they activate the antioxidant defenses and enzymes of the body."

TC;DR: Gastrointestinal diseases like stomach ulcers caused by heavy drinking are caused by 'free radical' atoms and molecules that are highly unstable and cause chain reactions in trying to gain stability. That's why the damage accumulates over time. Antioxidants in strawberries activate the 'defense systems' of the body, and reduce the production of these free radicals in the first place.

Life lesson here: If you plan on doing some heavy drinking during the holidays, minimise damage by loading up with strawberries in the days beforehand. It won't stop the damage, but it'll help reduce it.

via i09, while the original research paper can be found here.

Shoot first, re-focus later - New Lytro Camera!

Now this is actually pretty cool. Lytro have unveiled a new camera that's completely different to anything else out there on the market at the moment. The key? You can focus and re-focus your images after you've taken the shot.

The Lytro camera, named after the company, is about 11cm long, and 4cm square, and has a lens on one end, and an LCD touch screen display at the other. Along the sides are the shutter button, USB port, and a strip that controls the zoom function - 8x. It's a pretty different design to your standard camera, which is generally loaded with more buttons than you actually know how to use. (true story).

On the inside, is where it's really different. Conventional digital cameras use lenses to focus a subject so it's sharp on the image sensor, then it takes the picture. That means that for an in-focus part of the image, light from only one direction reaches the sensor. In the Lytro though, light from multiple directions hits each patch of the sensor; the camera records this directional information, and after-the-shot computing converts it into something a human eye can understand. This means that the focal point of the image can be re-adjusted multiple times on the computer, even after the image has been taken.

This means that you can whip it out, take a photo of a scene before it changes (a bird flying away, someone's smile, a fast-paced scene) and then fix it up later. In addition, this kind of photographic technology (known as light-field photography) allows the images taken to be shown in 3D - because you have an image with potential multiple depths-of-field.

There are three models - the $399 cameras with 'electric blue' and 'graphite' exteriors whose 8GB of built-in memory is enough for about 350 shots and the 'red hot,' 16GB camera that can record 750 shots. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like you can expand the storage space once it's purchased.
US residents can apparently order one online now, according to Chief Executive Ren Ng, and they'll be shipped in the first quarter of 2012. No word yet on a international release, but you could probably just import one if you wanted to.

via Cnet

Want to float in the clouds? "Niiiiimbus!"

I've always liked clouds. They look like a great big jumping castle in the sky. Seriously, imagine if they were bouncy? That's be awesome. Tiago Barros also likes clouds, but in a more sedate, float-amongst-them kind of way.

His 'Passing Cloud' concept allows people to float in the sky amongst the clouds, wherever the wind takes them, sitting on top of the zeppelin-like, nylon-covered and steel-skeletoned structure. It's environmentally friendly, and is completely reliant on wind-power.  

According to Barros, "nowadays, traveling is achieved with this idea of having a fixed destination and an estimated time of arrival. Passing Cloud completely inverts this system. A floating device is introduced that travels around the entire USA territory according to current predominant winds. It has no fixed time of arrival or place for arrival. The journey becomes the essence. Imagine traveling at wind speeds in a totally sustainable object that leaves no Human trace behind."

This actually looks pretty awesome. The idea of just travelling wherever, without any fixed plan or destination sounds pretty relaxing... and it reminds me of Flying Nimbus from Dragonball. Which is awesome. Although personally, I'd like to see some simple shelters on the structure, basic cabins or even tents, so that you weren't always exposed to the open air and weather.

via Dezeen

Create your own Portal 2 Level!?

Because the people over at Valve were concerned that we all weren't already in love with Portal 2, they are now working on an “a Photoshop for test chambers,”an easy way for amateurs to design their own Portal levels, and allow other users to download these created levels.

According to a report by Geoff Keighley, GTTV host, Valve are also developing a system that would allow Portal 2 players to access the new levels from within the game, without having to go outside the game to access them. “Now maps will appear on an easy to use menu, dramatically expanding the potential audience for fan-created content–and hopefully making it available on the consoles as well.”

If that doesn't seem exciting enough, Valve are also considering adding a personality to the level creator - a GLaDOS that would be watching how you did things, interjecting snide comments every now and again, and berating you if you spelt a word wrong.

Valve haven't confirmed all of this of course - they're definately working on it, but they haven't said as to whether it will actually be released, or if it's just an experiment.

For now, have a fun Cave Johnson quote. "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take back the lemons back! Get mad! I don't want your damn lemons! What the hell are these?! Demand to see life's manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I'm the man who's gonna burn your house down! WITH THE LEMONS! I'm gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that BURNS YOUR HOUSE DOWN!"

PS Vita Australian launch dated and priced

Sony's new handheld gaming device, the PlayStation Vita, will hit Australian shores on the 22nd of February next year, according to Michael Ephraim, the Managing Director of Sony Computer Entertainment Australia and New Zealand.

It will cost $349.95 for the wifi version, and $449.95 for the 3G version.

“PlayStation Vita is a revolutionary device, which will offer the best possible portable gaming experiences available on the market," said Ephraim. “Its impressive feature set is designed to provide the ultimate gaming experiences on the go. This, combined with social connectivity means there will be not only innovative new ways to play, but also new ways to connect with others. We are incredibly excited about the upcoming launch of PlayStation Vita.”

I've got to admit, that's actually pretty tempting. The graphics far outstrip Nintendo's 3DS, but it'll come down to the games available, specifically the launch titles. It'll be interesting to see how it goes.

via Kotaku

Halo concept art is awesome.

Halo is awesome. Everyone loves Halo, right? Know what's almost as awesome? This apparently brand-new, never-seen-before concept art by Alex Chu, Ashley Wood, and Frank Capezzuto. These works, among others, are being packaged in a new book, Halo: The Art of Building Worlds, which will be chock full of pretty concept art for the entire Halo trilogy. If you're interested in the book, which is a decent $18 from Amazon, check it out here.

Otherwise, sit back and enjoy the (free) pictures here.

Happy Birthday!

So this isn't general news as such, and it's been awhile since I posted (dammit uni), but it's a friend of mine's birthday today. So I figured I'd upload this for him:

And don't worry, regular posts are coming back soon!

Laws of Physics being overturned!? "She'll make point five past lightspeed."

In news that should excite sci-fi fans all over the world, scientists at CERN have announced that they have recorded sub-atomic particles travelling faster than the speed of light.

Spokesman for the researchers, Antonio Ereditato, said that measurements taken over the course of three years showed neutrinos pumped from CERN near Geneva to Gran Sasso in Italy had arrived 60 nanoseconds quicker than light would have done.

 

"We have high confidence in our results. We have checked and rechecked for anything that could have distorted our measurements but we found nothing," he said. "We now want colleagues to check them independently."

If their work is confirmed, it could shake the foundations of physics as we know it, overturning Einsteins 1905 theory of special relativity, which states that the speed of light is a 'constant,' and that nothing can travel faster.

"I just don't want to think of the implications," said Ereditato. "We are scientists and work with what we know."

60 nanoseconds may not sound like much (and it isn't) but it's the fact that it's possible that is so astonishing.
Many different works of science fiction are based on the possibility of exceeding the speed of light, and acheiving either time-travel or faster-than-light (FTL) travel.
Lets just hope if we do get there, we don't encounter Goa'uld, or Reapers. 

via SMH.com.au

 

IRL: Running from zombies!

Gotta admit, this is one of the most original, and awesome iPhone games in development at the moment. ZOMBIES, RUN! is an indie developed game that is still a WIP over at kickstarter, and merges reality and video games.

The core premise is that you are Runner 5, a survivor of the zombie apocalypse and a scout of sorts, looking for weapons, ammo, med kits and critical supplies to keep your base of hundreds alive.

As it says on the website: "Zombies, Run! is an ultra-immersive game for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and Android where you help rebuild civilisation after a zombie apocalypse. By going out and running in the real world, you can collect medicine, ammo, batteries, and spare parts that you can use to build up and expand your base - all while getting orders, clues, and story through your headphones."

Essentially, by running in real life, you run in the game, picking up the afore mentioned critical supplies. You don't need to watch the screen while you're running either, the story and instructions are delivered through the headphones; you simply press a button to start and to stop.

"Zombies, Run! is about making the thrill of running even better with a game and a story delivered through your headphones. We’re making running more fun, more exciting, and more addictive for everyone from couch-to-5k newbies to weekend joggers and marathon runners. And Zombies, Run! works anywhere - in a park, along a beach, in the city, even on treadmills!"

The game is still in development, and is expected to be released around February 2012. For those wishing to donate and contribute to the games development, head over here and you can get some sweet goodies for doing so.

via Kickstarter