my.bicycle

JWZ asked on his livejournal how to get media from DirecTivo -> Mac -> DVD, and I know at least one person this may interest.

Remind me to complain about abysmal PVR implementation in my Sony PSX in a future post.

Star Wars Animation Begins. The theme for this year’s Comic-Con was Star Wars is Forever. Lucasfilm’s Head of Fan Relations, Steve Sansweet, revealed that Lucas Animation will be carrying on the spirit of adventure and excitement through a new animated Star Wars series set to debut in the Fall of 2007. Production has begun, and Sansweet announced several of the talented people behind the new endeavor, including Catherine Winder, Dave Filoni, Chris Kubsch, and Henry Gilroy.
(through the Homing Signal LucasFilm newsletter)

Anyone know if this is different than the other TV series that is planned? I recall that one is live action.

Labels: comic

Dad 'n Me, the new brawler from the makers of Alien Hominid, is playable as on online Flash game.

Labels: games

I’m reading this. It’s really good. Check it out for yourself! Or buy it if you don’t like reading on screens.

"I think your translator's broken." He holds the phone to his ear carefully, as if it's made of smoke-thin aerogel, tenuous as the sanity of the being on the other end of the line.

"Nyet – no, sorry. Am apologize for we not use commercial translation software. Interpreters are ideologically suspect, mostly have capitalist semiotics and pay-per-use APIs. Must implement English more better, yes?"

Manfred drains his beer glass, sets it down, stands up, and begins to walk along the main road, phone glued to the side of his head. He wraps his throat mike around the cheap black plastic casing, pipes the input to a simple listener process. "Are you saying you taught yourself the language just so you could talk to me?"

"Da, was easy: Spawn billion-node neural network, and download Teletubbies and Sesame Street at maximum speed. Pardon excuse entropy overlay of bad grammar: Am afraid of digital fingerprints steganographically masked into my-our tutorials."

Manfred pauses in mid stride, narrowly avoids being mown down by a GPS-guided roller blader. This is getting weird enough to trip his weird-out meter, and that takes some doing. Manfred's whole life is lived on the bleeding edge of strangeness, fifteen minutes into everyone else's future, and he's normally in complete control – but at times like this he gets a frisson of fear, a sense that he might just have missed the correct turn on reality's approach road. "Uh, I'm not sure I got that. Let me get this straight, you claim to be some kind of AI, working for KGB dot RU, and you're afraid of a copyright infringement lawsuit over your translator semiotics?"

There has been a spate of controversy surrounding House of Cosbys. But it’s back on now, and funny as heck. (originally via waxy, despite the preponderance of boingboing links)

Jon Jones enjoys a Power Pack of Mountain Dew X Variant No. 516. He will soon discover that it is Re-Agent, and will return a-head of the times as a cunning linguist for captive audiences..

Sony PSP: marketing ideal vs. tragic reality.jpg (intelligent artifice)

The Microsoft Xbox 360 Summit at the renowned Akasaka Prince Hotel in Tokyo was a lot more interesting and inspirational and believable than the E3 Kickoff. No talk of “one billion users!” this time around, for one, and more importantly MS announced that they are benefiting from the support of every major Japanese developer, including major publishers and the upstart... er, startup studios of famous name, independent developers. I briefly met Tetsuya Mizuguchi (Rez, Lumines, Ninety Nine Nights), Yannis Mallat, XP of the Prince of Persia series, and Andrew Vestal late of TheGIA.com and more recently of Official Playstation Magazine correspondent business.

What is more stunning than gaining the support of every major developer is that many of them are developing 360 exclusives. Many of the publishers remained coy on upcoming titles; I think they’re trying to keep a bit back for announcements at Tokyo Game Show in September. Yuke’s games were shown there as well: Rumble Roses XX (“double X”) and Wrestle Kingdom.

Labels: games

White PSP. Now I want one.

There's Sex In My Violence! / What's this lame soft-core porn doing in my ultraviolent Grand Theft Auto? I am outraged!
Suddenly that downloadable patch you installed last night kicks in and there’s, like, a lame and badly animated sex scene, right there, right between the graphic bloody part where you bazooka’d the police helicopter and the part where the gang-banger gets his lame ass beaten with a large handgun, and suddenly you’re like, what the hell? Who stuck this lame badly animated sex in here? Where’d my soul-numbing ultraviolent racism go? I am outraged.
[...]
Shouldn’t someone be outraged over the fact that 17-year-old virgin geeks who play endless hours of ultraviolent video games might somehow be tainted to their very cores by two minutes of badly animated sex, despite how you are, as a typical American teen, so regularly co-opted, so viciously pummeled by crass product placement and violence on the news and wicked misinformation about everything from marijuana to abstinence to cafeteria food, well, it pretty much makes the tepid and completely unarousing sex on GTASA look like outtakes from Shrek III: Now We’re Just Whoring It? You’re darned right there should!

Labels: nsfw

MeFi got links to 99X FM’s Mandatory Mashup page with excellent cutups (at least check out Benny Hill vs. Fifty Cent), and other MeFi-ers posted some of their favorites in response, including the news that Dsico That No-Talent Hack is producing again! Also, if you like Philip Glass’ music but always felt it could use some contemporary lyrical assistance, there is Glassbreaks. (thanks, El Otro Miguel)

Labels: music

Not as representational as the Citroen car/mecha advertisement, but significantly more laff-tastic: Voltron gets served. (waxy)

7 Words You Can’t Say in Kindergarten (waxy)

“People should not be afraid of their government. A government should be afraid of their people.”

The trailer for V for Vendetta is up, and filled with everything Americans should be remembering right now. (thanks, weezie)

Don Ho covers Peter Gabriel's Shock the Monkey (MP3), and a few other atrocities of LOVE by other artists. Get it fast; it will go away. Or you can buy the CD like me! (chad underkoffler)

Update: Copy, Right is the blog-of-the-week here at my.bicycle. Yes, this is the first time I have declared a blog-of-the-week. So?

Labels: music

Following up on a post I wrote for futurismic, there is a review of Japanese adult video on UMD format is up at Tokyopia: PSP Porn:

Today we grabbed one of these fine UMD's: h.m.p.’s “The Palace of a Virgin,” performed by the lovely Hikaru Koto. This was 1,995 yen, making it THE cheapest movie/music UMD available in Japan (there’s another h.m.p. release, but the girl had really snaggly teeth, so we didn’t bother). Note that the GLAYZ discs were 3,800 yen and had Japan-only region coding, as opposed to the all-region h.m.p. ones. Importers take note.
[...]
On the other hand, the quality of the video itself is stunning; it’s obviously a transfer from a tack-sharp HDTV master, and runs in progressive scan at 60fps — the resulting smoothness is akin to playing Ridge Racers, but with added fellatio.

Note that the screengrabs, despite censoring above-and-beyond the usual Japanese mosaic overlay, are decidedly not worksafe. I am wondering if I am ever going to see a middle-aged guy watching this stuff on a crowded train, the same way they read “sports” newspapers with 1/4 page pictures of topless women in thongs.

Labels: nsfw

As the mother of a gay son, I’ve seen firsthand how cruel and misguided people can be.

Many letters have been sent to the Valley News concerning the homosexual menace in Vermont. I am the mother of a gay son and I’ve taken enough from you good people.

I’m tired of your foolish rhetoric about the “homosexual agenda” and your allegations that accepting homosexuality is the same thing as advocating sex with children. You are cruel and ignorant. You have been robbing me of the joys of motherhood ever since my children were tiny.
— Sharon Underwood, mother of a gay son
(via chad underkoffler)

I have been given the illustration duties for Futurismic’s Fiction section; the most recent three stories are all collage illo’s that I have whipped out pretty quickly. Though it is a challenge to come up with two-composition illustrations, they are a lot of fun to do. While I have enjoyed the FF that has been offered, The Rivers of Eden is particularly insightful and chilling.

How things work: fantasy online games 101 at Something Awful

Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope — How It Should Have Ended (direct link to .WMV). (chad underkoffler)

You know, I used to apologize for making B-movies because inexperienced people worked on it, the writing is not so good, the acting is cheesy, the director is not as accomplished. But A-movies are now B-movies.
— Kotaku’s Q&A with Bruce Campbell

Gloomy-chan, the beclawed and bloodied cute bear by Osaka artist “Mori Chack” keeps cropping up in my licensing research, yet NEVER stays in my damned head to be trotted out as an example at the right time. So now he’s stuck HERE. On my blog. For EVER. By the way, Happy Tree Friends has its own videogame now.

Weird. Oddly enough the character appeared at the San Diego Comic Con.

Labels: comic

This article shows gorgeous, high resolution scans from the upcoming Unreal Engine 3 powered game, Gears of War. Does anyone know what book the article is referring to? Some kind of E3 giveaway?

Labels: games

A beautiful new trailer for Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride. Between the pooch shown here, Nightmare Before Christmas’ Zero, and Frankenweenie, I am beginning to worry that Burton is overly fascinated by dead dogs. (thanks, monty!)

I’m looking forward to this movie as a potentially exceptional sequel to what Van Helsing should have been: Terry Gilliam’s The Brothers Grimm.

Mashup Town has a live365 streaming radio, as well as current individual entries via podcast (XML) and some very cool tracks in a number of genre by various cutup mixheads. (thanks, steven kaye)

Labels: music

Inspiring, panty-themed, get-down goodness advertisement for MTV Asia. (tokyopia forum)

This screenshots gallery for the upcoming Burnout Revenge shows some gorgeous shots that include the upcoming tracks in Japan! (joystiq)

Knowing Weezie’s penchant for eBay and some of the odd dreams he posts, it wouldn’t surprise me if some of the items from Disturbing Auctions showed up in his dreams.

With all the controversy surrounding a sex game in GTA: San Andreas, how can no-one be paying attention to the highly questionable, fetish-oriented Very Strange Sims?

Labels: games, nsfw

Hey, the hit TV series Lost will be released on UMD, so you can watch it on your PSP during a long flight. On second thought...

...or Jeeps and HMMVs at least. (lego livejournal)

Knowing my weakness for having my attention held hostage by screensavers, Groovetube, a device that turns any TV into a light sculpture, probably would make me spend more time staring at a TV, not less. (f blog)

Smuggler has a great reel of work to show, but remember before you click: lots of short videos can still take up a lot of time to watch. I remember back when MTV actually showed nothing but music videos; some days I could sit down early in the afternoon, watch what felt like a couple videos, then suddenly realize it was dark outside. And Smuggler’s videos are cooler than what I watched then. You have been warned.

(...) But I have also now started stealing your music. I haven’t stolen much, but I’m sure you will agree that the moral issue is not merely one of quantity. I have been one of the last independent apologists for a moral kernel, elusive now to perhaps the point of imagination, in your corrupt and desperate retreat, but now even I have given up. I still buy, but now I also steal. You have forfeited your right to my loyalty. And maybe you’re too lost and beaten to care, and even more likely it's too late to matter, but for a few minutes I'm going to pretend that neither of those things are so. I’m going to pretend that you’re still capable of awareness and reason, and in a spirit of truth that you long ago stopped deserving, while I’ve still taken little enough to list, I’m going to tell you exactly what I have stolen from you, and why.
— TWAS 503: (Warnings and Promises)

I’m new to podcasting, so forgive my spurting enthusiasm. DailySonic (iTMS) — it’s like radio you can pause. And not hear the same thing repeatedly. And rewind the DJ when he announces the song title and band, but you didn’t quite hear it the first time. Now if I can figure out how to get iTunes to play nicely with podcasts that haven’t necessarily benefited from Apple’s seal of approval, such as Warren Ellis’s SuperBurst mixtapes (RSS) life will be grand.

Daily Show’s Rob Cordry explains Tourists Hate America. The Japanese guy is not saying what the subtitles claim, by the way.

After missing it in the Japanese theaters and on airplanes in-flight service and in hotel rooms’ pay-per-view, I finally saw Collateral last night via rental DVD. Due to a sense of high school nostalgia caused by Manhunter and Miami Vice (forgiving a misstep with The Keep), I am willing to watch just about anything Michael Mann makes. Moreso that Heat, Collateral felt like a return to the stylings of Miami Vice’s action and drama, with natural, well-paced comedy to even out the emotional pacing. In a word, Collateral was good.

With all the freak-out based press Tom Cruise has been given, and hearing what appears to be zealotry in his responses to a German interviewer who questioned the data as Cruise presented it, it is even easier to watch him in the role of a villain. It is probably preferable; he did a good job with the arrogant, untouchable Lestat in Interview with the Vampire, though that character was a bit more ham-fisted than the role of assassin, Vincent, played in Collateral. A featurette on the movie that I saw promoting its theatrical release focused on the amount of physical training Cruise went through to make his actions seem flowing and deadly: a natural killer. Unlike many directors in recent movies, Mann doesn’t resort to quick cuts and tight shots to “immerse” the viewer in the action (and instead simply causing confusion), however the result is that some of the choreography seems a little over-rehearsed. Still, his speed is impressive, and generally believable. Perhaps more believable is the quasi-philosophical ease with which Vincent excuses his lethal-to-everyone-around-him job, and is psychopathically willing to kill time conversationally with his victims before literally killing them, as he professes utter conviction that nothing matters in the larger picture.

Jamie Foxx was very good; more easily and readily believable than Cruise, though that may have more to do with the level of celebrity than any objective criteria. He definitely is on par with Cruise’s performance, turning out one of the most nuanced portrayals of a normal guy caught in an abnormal situation that I’ve ever seen. Jamie is a couple years younger than I am, but appears aged a decade or so, either from a life of stressful perfectionism trapped in medicrity, or it could just be 12 years of driving for a living in Los Angeles (shudder). I suspect Foxx is destined for big things; it turns out that he will be opposite Colin Farrell in the movie remake of Miami Vice, so Mann apparently liked what he saw working with him here.

Biggest Tease award goes to a brief cameo by Jason Statham in the opening scene. Actually, I probably would have liked the whole movie better if Statham has played Cruise’s role (Check out this trailer for The Transporter 2).

More than any of these people though, much like Miami Vice’s focus on the city as a presence, the real star of Collateral is Los Angeles. Color use in the movie tends toward dingy greens and baleful yellows and oranges, lending a tone of failed sterility, a denial of the natural palette. As in real life, there is almost no presence of plantlife on view, only man-made structures, with the exception being a momentary, middle of the night sighting of a coyote against the backdrop of the carefully regimented rows of palm trees that are cinematic shorthand for southern California. There is something truly ethereal and elusive about Los Angeles at night; through sweeping, rolling shots of cars on freeways, chainlink fence, and lights reflecting, refracting on steel and glass, then scattering dully across expanses of concrete, Mann has captured that essence with frightening success.

Check this flickr slideshow of an improvised battle between nerds and zombies. (boingboing)

In trying to find out who did the song for the car chase video (Northern Lite: Treat Me Better (iTMS)), I stumbled across another goodie. It turns out that directors Simon and Jon also are responsible for the ultra-killer video for Boogie Pimps’ cover of Somebody to Love (.mov) that Ben introduced to me on my birthday last year.

Labels: video

Russian Shockwave "game" that sends a bikini-clad contortionist careening through a bunch of bouncy spheres. At turns painful, tasteless, and hypnotic. (imomus)

Labels: games

High production value car chase (.mov)! It's so low-key and dorky, it's cool. (4thur)

Joey Comeau of A Softer World webcomic fame has a science fiction story up at Strange Horizons.

(tim x)

Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s Mirrormask now has a gorgeous, creepy clip online (.mov). (thanks, monty!)

This gallery of embalming fluid bottles captures the design, type, and social niceties of a bygone era. SCP tribe)

All the characters in Cowboy Bebop were endearing; they had interesting personalities and motivations. Despite much effort in the series applied toward a mysterious background, Faye Valentine was probably the most transparent, which she makes up for by being incredibly sexy. If you, like me, harbored an impossible, unrealizable crush, and wish to maintain it do not follow this link.

Wish you could hear a bit of bastard pop that hasn’t yet been done? You could always learn how to make your own.

Labels: music

Imagine you’ve just gotten out of prison for assault with a deadly weapon. Then someone gives you a shiny new baseball bat — a pretty nice one, titanium, and technologically advanced. The latest thing in bats is something called P2P. Even though you’re a convict, with a past history of violence, what you’ll actually do with this bat is still a matter of some debate. Who knows? You could have an innocent get-together at a local batting cage and have a home-run-hitting contest with friends. You know, test the limits of your new tool. Or you might, well, cause some trouble.
— LA Weekly: Grokster v. a Baseball Bat

Check out the whole thing at Bizarre Creations. Are they really going to get that many hi-resolution textures in the game? Holy moly. (kotaku)

Labels: games

Reality TV brings us the adventures of a malcontent, crotch-fixated, aggressive dog who is owned by an irresponsible woman whose vagina he attacks. He also appears to be unkind to another dogs’ penis, if the woman is to be believed. (.wmv) Entirely worksafe (it is an excerpt of the broadcast TV show Showdog Moms and Dads) but of questionable propriety. (memepool)