It is Worldwide Dungeons and Dragons Gameday today, and lots of people are playing. But here is a prototype of a toy I would like to start playing with. It is built with off-the-shelf parts totaling about $350; a camera, a small projector, a cell phone, and some colored plastic or tape for your fingers. But it combines them for functionality we have never had before, and in production it would cost around $100. They are calling it the Sixth Sense, and it is the first wearable computer I have seen that turns your environment and the things in it interactive. This project is from the MIT Media Lab, one of many they are developing to invent a better future. Thanks to Technology Story for the heads-up on that one.
I hit two movies yesterday, and I have to say I was most impressed with Push, which delivered much more than it’s trailer promised. If you haven’t seen it yet, do so today; but don’t bother to bring along friends who are slow on the uptake (like 55% of the reviewers at places like Rotten Tomatoes), because the plot twists and story pace are way too dense and swift for them to keep up. As for the other movie, all I can say is I have been struck by lightning one time… seven seems a bit much to me, but the film itself deserves whatever awards it might gather. For online fun, I recommend you check out the Anime Network Online Player, which is currently running Angelic Layer, Divergence Eve, and Mezzo, amongst others. Or you can hit Crunchy Roll to watch Steel Angel Kurumi and a whole bunch of other popular animes. ADV also has an online Anime viewing site you should enjoy. For gaming fun, the BBC has released a few of its Doctor Who Online Games for play outside of the UK, including the linked K9 game.
Future music from past equipment; Akihabara, the bleeding edge center of all thing Otaku, recently held an event called Silent Live. 8 bit chipsets from decades old game systems were the musical instruments, and if you wanted to join the party you had to bring your own pair of headphones to jack in to the audio. Some things you just have to do for the fun factor.
Doug Adams may be gone from our lives, but his legacy lives on, in many places online and off. One of the best is at HitchHikers, the new community repository. Then there are links like HitchHikers Guide, to let you play games and do a lot more. My favorite new BBC site is BBC 7, which includes the BBC’s SciFi Showcase, brand new and worth your attention! The Doctor Who entry alone is worth the price of admission… which is free, BTW. Ignore the fact that at the time of this page’s posting, the new Who series had not yet been signed off on! It is an old post, after all…LOL…
I have wanted to do an entry on scifi cross-universe pages for a while, but the phrase means two different things to me, and I couldn’t decide which to do first. So the heck with it, here are examples of the first, the next entry will start on the other!
In Fan circles, a cross-universe story is one where characters from 2 different fictional universes get together (also called Shared Universe stories) and interact. Some of them can be quite outrageous, like the classic “You Can’t Do That On Trek” site, where fans contributed some of the funniest Photoshopped images you ever saw (I’ll post the link if I can ever find a live version of it; the Paramount legal dept. blue meanies went after it pretty hard, my last good link to it died in 2001). Another great one, still online, is Stone Trek ; Star Trek meets the Flintstones! What makes this one special is the Flash Webisodes, nine at last count and still growing. And the list goes on, with FanFic , Logical Comparisons , RPG’s , Board/Model Games , and more. Each of these categories deserves it’s own entry here, with lot’s of details and info.
It isn’t just the Fan’s who have fun with this. The difference is, the Pro’s actually make money with it. Authors sometimes open up their worlds for others to play in; like Keith Laumer’s BOLO, Fred Saberhagen’s Berserker, and David Weber’s Honorverse, to name a few. (BTW, seen the ads for Sky Captain? Wouldn’t Angelina Jolie make the perfect Honor Harrington, when it’s time to make the movies?). Sometimes a group of authors rally around a concept and build the universe in parallel, like Wild Cards, The Fleet, and Chicks In Chainmail. And if you don’t know what any of those are, run, don’t walk, to your nearest library or bookstore; You are missing something wonderful!
Books aren’t the only media; comics have a long history of this kind of thing, starting with single meetings within the same House (Batman showing up in a Superman issue kind of thing). Then they took it between Houses, although mostly the independents. Then a few brave souls took it between media types, with things like The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen. And let’s not forget the movies, with offerings like the film version of Extraordinary Gentlemen, or Alien Vs. Predator. But then, movies were doing it back in the Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman days.
OK, see why I didn’t want to get started? This is just the tip of the iceberg on this topic, almost no intro at all compared to what lives in this realm. If you haven’t been there before, I hope at least one link here fires your imagination. I will be returning to this topic a lot in future entries’, count on it!