Wednesday, February 8, 2017

Link Round-Up: February 8, 2017


The Force Awakens Posters by Aix-en-Provence, France-based Ladislas Chachignot


15+ of the Coolest Bookstores to Visit Around the World

As stated in the most recent Full Frontal Nerdity strip, the trench on the Death Star may not be where you think it is, and you can be excused for having been misled.

Have you been reading our new Heirloom Tech series? Well you should. This week’s article is on the interesting acoustics of the Music Hall of the Ali Qapu, a famous palace of the Persian Empire’s Safavid Era. Besides being stunning, the cut outs in the decorative muqarnas (read this Heirloom Tech article to get more info on muqarnas) diffuse sound in the room while preventing echos.

Turn an IKEA Lamp into an Exploding Death Star from an IKEA pendant lamp with this Instructables tutorials from MariaK64.

We have a list of the greatest Spirographs in the world, which is a handy primer for Inspirograph, an online Spirograph toy! I may have to stick a few images from that on a virtual refrigerator somewhere.


Monday, February 6, 2017

Video: Adam Savage's NERF Rifle



In another installment of One Day Builds, host Adam Savage made a custom paint job and modification of a Nerf Longstrike CS-6 rifle for his Imgur Secret Santa. Savage gave the rifle a more realistic and weathered look, replaced its internal mechanism with a more powerful spring, and added a working scope and bipod.
"This past holiday, Adam took part in Imgur's secret santa gift exchange, surprising a fan with a custom modded and painted Nerf rifle! For today's One Day Build, Adam shows how he took the Nerf toy apart and put it back together with his functional and aesthetic improvements."

Video: Miniglobelet



Crystals form, colors swirl, and liquids combine in the beautiful microscopic film series “Miniglobelet” by Beauty of Science. The four-part series covers the crystallization of alunite and ammonium chloride, pigments flowing in alcohol, and various liquids reacting to being combined with each other.


Sculpture: Darth Vader


Available for purchase from Etsy. US$12,000

Do you want to scare the crap out of visitors to your house? Well, this massive Darth Vader statue should do the trick just fine. It measures in at a whopping 7’2″ tall, which is about how tall the real Vader is, and it tips the scales at nearly 850 pounds, which is what Jabba the Hutt probably weighs.

The sculpture was made by Kreatworks, using a variety of old car parts, and other found junk. If Darth Vader were really made of this much metal, he probably would have survived Return of the Jedi.


Gaming Round-Up: February 6, 2017




A Burnt Torch: Darkest Dungeon, Mental Health and Lovecraftian Horror [Paste Magazine] “Darkest Dungeon [wiki] is a tactical, party-based roguelike with a Lovecraftian flair. You play as the last heir of a fallen noble house. It’s your job to recruit and command a set of heroes, sending them into the decrepit bowels of a ruined estate—and the corrupt environs surrounding it. 

"Eventually Atari came to us and said, 'What do you guys really want out of this?'" On the thirty-fifth anniversary of the popular arcade game, Benj Edwards chronicles the rise of Ms. Pac-Man and how a few MIT students created the next big thing off the back of the previous big thing in 1980s arcade history.

A History of Deus Ex's Racism Controversies “With futuristic, sci-fi sequel Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [YouTube], developer Eidos Montreal has once again found itself walking atop the fiery coals of controversy.

How Designers Engineer Luck Into Video Games

Martian Immigration Nightmare [via mefi projects] An online game specifically made to call out Elon Musk on his collaborationism with the Trump regime. Will you manage to board the Mars rocket, or will you be crushed by an unsympathetic bureaucracy?

At The New Yorker, Raffi Khatchadourian writes about the future of interactive films, with a focus on the company joined by Her Story developer Sam Barlow. 

Original design documents and sketches for the first Legend of Zelda game

Richard Stanton has started a new column at Kotaku which looks at British game developers big and small. The first entry focuses upon shmup designer Jeff Minter.


Sci-Fi Round-Up: February 6, 2017



Interviews

Billy Dee Williams opens up about "Very Nice Lunch" with Donald Glover
Life On Mars: An Interview With Neal Holman of Redline

News

Rocket Raccoon's New Comic Series Is A Scifi heist Caper
Romanian Government Backs Off But Demonstrators Remain
Seniors Welcome New Robot Friends
Star Wars: New Movie About Hardcore Fans Coming

Link Round-Up: February 6, 2017




Adobe Unveils Its 10 Design Predictions For 2017

This Fan has Reimagined the Original 151 Pokémon as Hearthstone Cards “Thanks to a Redditor named Corpit, the original 151 Pokémon have been reimagined as Hearthstone cards. [Full Imgur Album]"I tried to capture the character of each species while trying to make them unique as cards too," Corpit said.”

A Guide to Buying Your First Laser Cutter

This Legion Art Installation Will Blow Your Damned Mind

When Galina Balashova designed her first space habitation module for Soviet cosmonauts, she drew a landscape on its interior wall, something that could remind them of home. In a 2015 interview, she said, "When I popped by to commission the final product they asked me where to procure the painting for the wall. When I replied that it was not needed I was reproached: 'No, it’s been signed off and so we will build it exactly that way.' So I sat down one night and painted pictures for the space capsules. Usually watercolors depicting Russian countryside. They all burned to nothing on re-entry."

Women Who Draw is an open directory of female professional illustrators, artists and cartoonists who take freelance work.


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