Paste Magazine has a very insightful article about the four movies that saved SciFi this summer; District 9, Moon, Cold Souls, and , of course, Star Trek. In the real world (a place I sometimes visit), a few new twists in the development of the Web are mentioned by MIT’s Technology Review. First, using White Space for Wi-Fi was proposed this week at SIGCOMM 2009. In the old analog TV days, the White Space was the empty spaces in the video datastream where things like closed captioning could be inserted. These days it means the gaps between existing digital Radio and TV transmission spectrum allocations. While this process has been going on for a while, with Google, the FCC, and many others fighting over the bandwidth, the SIGCOMM presentation makes it a global push. Even more interesting, it looks like we are several steps closer to building a quantum internet, and the quantum computers to run on it.
I spent a little time watching the Perseids Meteorite Shower this morning, or as much as I could see through the overcast and light pollution. I am obviously not the only one, as my tweet box is full of such links to pictures. SteamCon is coming in October, and it looks like a lot of fun. Author GoH is Tim Powers, Music GoH Abney Park is my favorite Steampunk band, and Artist GoH Paul Guinan is well known for his Victorian Robots web site, although his Heartbreakers Graphics Novel series (created in conjunction with his wife, who does the plot/dialog/story segment of the process) are Steampunk Webcomics that have been nominated for the Eisner Award. Finally, I was not impressed by much in the G.I. Joe movie beyond the special effects, which even I had to admit were at least somewhat competent (sad when somewhat competent impresses you compared to the other aspects of the presentation). But I did enjoy this little twist, which reminded me of Firefly’s The Hero of Canton to the point I had to include it for comparison… and then a counter-argument.
Graphing real-world data in real time in a 3D virtual world… that is what Glasshouse is all about, and it is pretty amazing. It works in environments like Second Life, or as a stand-alone using the Sun Java JRE6 or JDK6. You can read a good interview and watch some video demo’s over at Maxping, and if you have Java installed try out the Applet environment. This is an excellent tool for making complex arrays of data visually comprehensible, such as genomic progressions, biochemical reactions, or N-body gravity interactions.
Otakon kicked off today, and included the east coast premiere of EVANGELION 1.0: YOU ARE (NOT) ALONE, and a fun little project called Pirates vs. Ninjas. Musical guests include VAMPS for those wondering what Hyde has been up to since he left L’Arc-en-Ciel, and MELL. It is being covered by all the usual suspects, including Anime News Network, Ani Gamers, Funimation, and more. The con has an official Twitter link and a dealers room webcam, but that’s not as much fun as being there yourself. It runs through Sunday if you still want to grab a daypass.
Test your Star Wars movie knowledge at the Star Wars movie quiz at SciFi Scanner (thanks on the heads-up on that one to SF Signal).
IO9 scores again, with two excellent articles today. The first talks about the new shows on SyFy, and how they are for the most part recycled old shows. They are right on the money about Warehouse 13, and the combination of two old favorites is quite entertaining (the web page is nicely done as well). They also touch on Eureka (I disagree with their conclusions on that one), and the forthcoming Alien Nation and (possibly?) Quantum Leap. The other article I enjoyed today was on science fiction lawyers, which is a larger list than I would have expected. And that’s surprising, because I knew everyone mentioned; but they forgot Eli Stone and a few others. The first teaser trailer is out for Burden, a movie that has already been nominated for multiple awards before being released. Independent films often make the festival circuits pre-release, and this one is no exception; you can see it at the DragonCon Film Festival in September, Action On Film IFF on the 25th, and the International Film Festival Ireland at the beginning of September.