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Terrestrial Human

Something to Watch: DVDs, 12Mar13

The most interesting movie this week is about a man who made interesting movies; Hitchcock. Anthony Hopkins does an amazing job in the role title role. Someone is releasing the 1962 movie Jack The Giant Killer, probably in the hopes you will confuse it with Jack The Giant Slayer which hit theaters last week and buy it by mistake. Rise of the Guardians is a fun little animated film from Dreamworks you might enjoy, with various mythical characters teaming up together to fight evil.

In TV Ripper Street is a crime drama in Victorian London with a Steampunk edge, as the law enforcement team struggles to keep control of the streets of the city. And always, they keep an eye out for the one that got away… Jack the Ripper.

Anime brings us Bleach: Season 16, with episodes 230 through 242. Of course, we still have a ways to go there; Japan just watched episode 366 last week. Penguindrum: Collection 2 brings us closer to Himari’s appointment with Death by supernatural forces.

There are also a few re-releases worth noting; Shingu: Secret of the Stellar Wars and Trigun: Complete Series each bring their entire stories out in box sets. If you have missed them so far, now is your chance to pick them up.

Ravi, Robot, Rubik

Ravi Fernando is a Stanford undergrad who can actually solve a Rubik’s Cube while juggling it. When he doesn’t juggle it, he can solve it in as quick as 10.49 seconds. Pretty amazing to watch, isn’t it? Back in 2011, Mike Dobson and David Gilday built CubeStormer II from a Lego Mindstorm set, a smart phone, and a custom written android app that solved it in 5.32 seconds. I used to be so proud of being able to solve it in 10 to 15 minutes… ah, well. Thanks to Open Culture for the heads up on this one.

Animation Approaches

How an animator approaches the creation of and object/effect relationship can be really interesting. The examples I am including here are from recent postings by SIGGRAPH, an organization that has been at the heart of computer graphics since long before most people knew there was such a thing. And yes, many of them are professionals, including all three of the artists in this group.

Another Amazing Image

The folks at APOD have done it again, with yet another amazing picture. This time Göran Strand did a mosaic image of the full moon over a snowfield, with the lights of Östersund, Sweden peeking over the horizon in all directions. Check out his other images at his site, he creates some truly astounding graphics.

Small Snowy World

New Terry Pratchett Radio Play (and App)!

BBC Radio 4 starts a new radio play with Terry Pratchett’s Eric tomorrow. They have broken the story into four parts, with part one airing at 2300 GMT on Wednesday, March 6th. If you want to get an idea of what you can expect, listen to the clip and try not to hurt yourself laughing. Terry Pratchett’s stories are always funny as hell, and BBC Radio does a first class job of rendering them in Radio Play format. And if you haven’t grabbed the Discworld App for the iPad yet, here is a little teaser for you…