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Death of Rats Airship

I enjoy the heck out of online Virtual Reality environments, and this is a perfect example of why; I get to be the Death of Rats (one of my favorite Terry Pratchett characters from his Discworld series), flying one of the Airships featured in the recent Steampunk movie version of the Three Musketeers. The universe these pictures were taken in is Second Life, which has been around for a while but is still an awful lot of fun. I had found that ship an hour or two after the Role Playing class I attended (last picture; it is difficult to see me hidden by the wings of the fairy sitting behind me), where the instructor was a red demoness on a bar stool, with her assistant teacher being a 10 meter long yellow dragon. Some of the smaller non-humans brought their own seating arrangements, like the cushion the mouse lady in the lower right corner of the picture is using.

Steampunk Death of Rats
Steampunk Death of Rats
Flying up to the Airship
Flying up to the Airship
Role Playing class
Role Playing class

EepyBird Soda Powered Rocket Car

The folks over at Eepy Bird have a mission: to take everyday objects and turn them into something extraordinary. This time around the ordinary was Coke Zero and Mentos, and the extraordinary was the rocket car they built using them. This is actually the Model 2 version, which gives them greater speed and range than their original soda powered rocket car. This is the kind of scientific research that gives me hope that the world might be a more fun place in the future.

Stuxnet Explanation

This video is a very good explanation of the most dangerous virus released so far. The sad part is, your tax dollars may have paid for it, depending on where you live. And if you do live there, don’t be surprised when it comes home to roost, as all such things do. Having a good way to leave the planet might be useful when that happens, so hopefully any government that would build and unleash such a thing would be funding its space program well into the future, to protect its citizens.

Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Computer Virus from Patrick Clair on Vimeo.

Gundam Augmented Reality App

This should be fun; the folks at Bandai Namco Games have released a Gundam augmented reality game for the iPhone/iPad called Gundam Area Wars. As in most games, the goal is to take over the enemy bases by defeating them, thus growing your own forces for the next battle. The fun part is it uses the camera and GPS functions of the iDevices to show that enemy on your screen against your real world background. A word of caution; while the game itself is free, some mission orders and add-ons are purchased from inside the game. Depending on how that is set up, it could get pricey pretty fast. Thanks to Anime News Network for the heads up on this one.