There really is a competition focusing on America’s Greatest Otaku, and it could be you that brings home the prizes this time. The contest is being held by TokyoPOP, and it runs from Monday, February 7th (yes, that is tomorrow) until Friday, February 11th. Each day of that five day period will see a different contest being presented, each a day long and each giving you a shot at some great prizes. You can get the official rules here, and then log into the America’s Greatest Otaku site each day this week to enter each new contest as it comes up. The documentary series that all of this is in support of launches on Hulu on February 24th.
The folks over at Robot Japan just held the 1st Robot Japan Dance Competition on Sunday, January 9, 2011 in Tokyo. This video has some clips from that contest, with several different entrants, and it is worth watching just for the silliness factor. There are a few worth noting for the skill and ingenuity that went into their construction and programing, mostly towards the end of the video.
And one of them, the Kabuki bot, is very reminiscent of the wonderful days when Steampunk Japan was created. From 1600 to 1900, from the Edo to the Meiji periods, Karakuri or Clockwork Dolls were designed and built, mechanical robots who’s movement and logic tree choices were based on mechanical programming rather than electronic. At the beginning it was imported technology, based on Swiss gearboxes (mostly watches and clocks with the occasional Mecha built into a cuckoo clock) brought over by Portuguese sailors. It didn’t take long for some truly smart artisans to grasp the basic principles and start designing their own, starting with a tea serving robot who would bring you your cup, wait while you drank, and take the empty back. To the best of my knowledge this was the very first practical implementation of household robotics in any form, and at the core of Japan’s current supremacy in the field; they have now been building them for 400 years, after all.
Thanks to Singularity Hub for the heads up on this one.
This weekend hasn’t been in doubt since half way through 2009; TRON: The Legacy is the hands-down winner. Many of us have been waiting decades for the continuation of this story, an archetype tale of the computer age that changed movies forever. It wasn’t just the use of computer graphics (real and simulated), although that was a precursor of movie production processes to come. It was also the first time computer processes were personified, with each subprogram taking on the personalty its function set would require; the first time the kind of Artificial Intelligence we had known for years from books was portrayed on any screen.
There had been previous attempts to personify AIs on screen, such as 1967’s Colossus: The Forbin Project, which in my mind was the inspiration for the original Skynet from 1984’s Terminator movie, much as the original 1982 TRON was the inspiration for the animated masterpiece ReBoot in 2001. The most notable AI film after them was 1999’s The Matrix, which again completely changed the rules.
None of them led to War Games in 1983, because that box was a real computer and the logic of the plot line adhered to actual parsing rules any programmer of today understands. There was no touch of AI in that story, just the massive paranoia of the time combined with a lack of understanding on the majority of the audiences part of how computers worked. Just saying…
Interestingly enough, the other movie coming out this weekend is a spiritual descendant of TRON by way of William Gibson’s Neuromancer on several levels; the protagonist in Spark Riders invents a way for people to place their soul on the internet. When her idea is stolen by a power hungry psycho and a greedy spy, people begin to become trapped online. With a total budget much less than TRON spent on catering the location shoots, this film could still potentially be worth checking out; after all, they made Dark Star on 10% of Spark Riders budget, and Hollywood promptly threw a ton of money at Dan Obannon and John Carpenter (who then created the Alien and Halloween franchises respectively) because of it.
And one final note; for all of those who, like me, have been frustrated in their efforts to acquire ReBoot for their personal collections, an agreement was reached a few months age between Rainmaker Entertainment, Inc. (the direct descendant of Mainframe Entertainment) and Shout! Factory to release ReBoot in the US in some format or another, most probably a DVD Box Set version. ReBoot really is a direct descendant of Tron; what a treat if we could finally access the original of the former with the the next volume of the later within a year or less of each other! Here is the latest peek at the cover art for the complete series DVD.
Just about to be released on DVD in the US , Eden of the East sucked me in with the initial scene: the protagonist naked with only a gun and a cell phone in front of the White House saves a tourist girl from arrest, then starts running. In eleven episodes, they cover one of the most interesting conspiracy plot lines I have seen, easily on a par with Welcome to the NHK or Speed Grapher, and every bit as riveting. It carved hours out of my precious sleep schedule, because every episode demanded that I watch the next, to find out what happened. Yes, I watched the entire thing in one sitting; I could not help myself. The link to watch the program online still exists at HULU, but the site link for Funimation Video is already past that, moving onto the new seasons programing, Like Birdy the Mighty: Decode. The best news is that it isn’t over; we get to go back to that world in Eden of The East the Movie I and II and see what happens next!
This one is wonderful, and I had to post it here. I figure almost everyone else in the world saw it last week, but then this web site has always been about getting there in the end…
Geek and Gamer Girls Song – Watch more Funny Videos
PAX, the Penny Arcade Expo, happens this weekend in Seattle to counterbalance DragonCon on the East Coast. PAX is a major Gamer Con and festival put together by Penny Arcade (the WebComic), but more than that it is the premiere Nerdcore event each year. Nerdcore artists from all over North America converge on this event, and put on a show that has to be seen to be believed. I need to be there next year.
What is Nerdcore? Just like Steampunk is what happens when Goths discover Brown and the technology to develop it, Nerdcore is what happens when Computer Programmers discover Rap and record a video. These are a few good Nerdcore examples. But first, the explanation; which of Us are Nerds?
Pac-Man Paranoia is the name of the first song, by the Swedish band Bondage Fairies. This Giant Robot Kills follows it, the new MC Lars tune, from a Tweet by MC Frontalot. The next song is Galvanize the Empire; I got the link for that one in a tweet from @_mcchris. And then comes the theme song: Penny Arcade itself, where the lyrics give you the password. If you are a true classic gamer, you will have no problems recognizing the original MMO game, Zork, in the following song (You Might Get Eaten By A Gru).