This is absolutely my favorite band out of Korea; they are subtle like a brick wall, and have attitude to spare. They have uploaded over 150 songs and are building still more. Park Bom is the lead singer, but do not get distracted into thinking everyone else is in backup band status; this is a true group effort. So how could I pick a few of my favorites out of this huge library? I couldn’t; these are a few random songs I love and you might like, but they have impressed me!
One of the best NASA Apps is simply called the NASA App, and besides the iPhone version they also made one for Android, and rolled out an HD version for the iPad. It is a monster with a ton of functions, including launch info with countdown clocks, current mission status, a huge library of images and videos, the latest news and feature stories, the Tweet feed from the various agency sources (in fact an entire Facebook and Twitter client interface to make it easy to interact with them), a live stream from NASA TV, and so much more. This was NASA’s very first official App, and while I hail its completeness, the kitchen sink approach has its drawbacks. They did end up breaking out most of the more popular functions into their own stand alone Apps, so you didn’t have to wait for everything to load or wade through a large menu when you just wanted to check the tweets or watch the live stream for example. More on those individual Apps in the next NASA Apps entry.
Rapparu is an 18 year old animator from Tokyo who appears to have more raw talent than most teens and some adults. The first piece is called Tenkou Kotofumi according to Crunchyroll (I can’t read the kanji and confirm that). The only part of the animation he didn’t build himself was the music, he got that as a free download song from Trial and Error. He has also created a ton of amazing black and white line art animated GIFs, and he compiled some of them into the second video on this page. I haven’t found anything of his that tells an entire story yet (or at least not one with dialog), but I am looking forward to seeing what else he comes up with.
This amazing video, called A Slice of Life, was put together by the folks at the GE Show. The premise of the program is to make the technology that is changing our day to day lives understandable in ways everyone can understand. The videos are short, punchy, and full of good information. The one presented here is the 7th in the series and demonstrates how an MRI works by giving you an analog equivalent; everyday objects (mostly food) are sliced up and photographed, the images then organized so you can view it in depth and over time. The soundtrack was nicely chosen to put a tempo to the process. Thanks to Laughing Squid for the heads up on this one.
Netflix has added a few tasty titles recently to their streaming service, of which the silliest has to be Mystery Science Theater 3000: Gamera, in which the team makes fun of all 5 of the original Gamera franchise movies (I think they missed the most recent one). The most interesting alternate history title is Night Raid 1931, which has a team of psychics in Japanese occupied Shanghai trying to keep control before the next major war breaks out. On the flip side, it looks like Netflix did lose its Starz deal, cutting off its best source of current movies.
The Lollipop Chainsaw game does for Zombies what the Buffy TV show did for Vampires. Rest assured, this is already on my Must Have list!