It Has Begun: Bananapocalypse is one of the funniest YouTube videos I have seen in quite a while. After I got my breath back and was able to get up off the floor, I just had to post it here. And it is not alone; the new YOMYOMF Channel is already cranking out some excellent entertainment. If you keep a sharp eye out you will notice a lot of faces you already recognize populating the footage, and the folks putting these together are no strangers to quality video production. I suspect we will be seeing a lot of excellent productions from this team as time goes on.
The Mars Descent Imager camera, MARDI for short, took a bunch of 1600X1200 pixel resolution pictures during the decent and landing. As usual with things that happen so far away, the bandwidth of the uplink back to Earth was the choke point on our retrieving the sequence, but now we have it. The original capture rate was 5 images per second, but this playback is at 15 frames/second, so it takes noticeably less than the original 7 minutes of terror (watch second video for that one) to play the video back. Use the link to watch the video on YouTube if you want to see it in full 1080P resolution. Thanks to Peta Pixel for the heads up on this one.
2NE1 is my current favorite South Korean band, and even though they keep hitting the top of the charts there is nothing even a little Top40 about them. Their latest song, I Love You, is a lot mellower than their earlier work, so I hope you can appreciate this total change of pace, and their song Lonely is also quite laid back. Just to give you a feel for their range, a few of those tunes; enjoy!
H+ The Digital Series launched this week online, and it looks like a very interesting project. The stage is globe-spanning, the cast includes a few old favorites, and the plot is intriguing. You can upgrade yourself by getting a chip implant called HPlus, which gives you internet access just by thinking about it. But then a virus is released and one third of the H+ users (which is most of humanity by that point) die overnight. Some of the survivors go offline, some stay online, and some were never part of the network, but they all try to put their world back together. Besides the web site they are also running a You Tube Channel, and you can watch the first six episodes now by subscribing to it. There is a good interview over at Tor you might like to read as well.
More music from Kyary Pamyu Pamyu. I saw this terminally kawaii artist for the first time on J-Melo on the NHK World channel last year, and every song she does is just addictive. I have noticed two basic reactions to her music; you can’t stop playing the same song over and over, or you run from the room screaming half way through the first repetition. I seem to fall in the former category. I am also sure it will be no surprise to anyone that she is neck deep in the Tokyo Kawaii Fashion Scene.
Written and sung by The Phenomenauts, this is a near-punk anthem to a world class astrophysicist, Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson. Someone had to inherit the mantle from Carl Sagan, and it turned out to be Neil. Thanks to Laughing Squid for the heads up on this one.