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News: Making Ordinary Objects Extraordinary

Kevin Van Aelst creates witty visual "one-liners" by recontextualizing everyday, ordinary objects. With a few simple tweaks, the viewer recognizes a roll of tape as the ocean or reads gummi worms as chromosomes or understands mitosis through the use of sweet, sugary donuts.

News: Unconventional Edit in Mann's "Public Enemies" (DP: Dante Spinotti)

I watched Michael Mann's "Public Enemies" (DP: Dante Spinotti) last night for the first time and was struck by a very unconventional, yet effective (I think), cut. In the opening sequence (video below), Dillinger is driven up to the entrance of a prison and escorted out of the car. The scene is established in a long lens medium wide shot (probably 200mm from 150' away...Note: standard 35mm dimensions, not 2/3"). After a few steps/seconds, it cuts to a wide angle lens closeup (24-2mm from with...

How To: Cut your own bangs the right way

Have you ever wanted to save yourself some money and trim your own bangs? The results, if not done properly, can be a disaster of monstrous proportions. Then you'll actually need the trip to the hair salon. DailyCandy can help you with this video from their Easy Does It series on how to cut your own bangs, the right way.

News: Top 25 Firefox Tweaks

How is it that we use Firefox tremendously and yet not care for its needs? You might have noticed Firefox sometimes tends to slow and not respond often. You might have installed countless add-on in Firefox to enhance your using experience, to get the most out of your Firefox use these Hacks. The about:config page contains all most all of the tweaks and enhancements available for Firefox to day.

News: Piratebay - To be blocked in the UK

To those who may not know about this, the UK high court has ruled that all UK based ISP's are to begin blocking Piratebay. This comes in retaliation to Piratebay's action to take down all torrents and provide only magnet links to the pirated content - a move which releases TPB from liability should they be once more accused of hosting the actual content.

Master the Power: How to Make Fluorescent Tubes Glow with Your Bare Hands

I'm sure most everyone has some kind of fluorescent light source in their home; those long white tubes that emit a bright white light when turned on, or maybe a few of the CFL power-saver bulbs. These bulbs actually require very little "power" (i.e. a high voltage:almost no current ratio) to emit light. In fact, static electricity is enough to make them flicker. Inside these tubes is a gas, and when electricity flows through that gas, it gets "excited" and produces light.

How to Make a Jacob's Ladder: Chained Lightning

In this article, I'll show you how to create a simple yet accurate demonstration of the "rising ionized gas" principle. In other words, a transformer, two metal prongs and lots of evil laughter. Remember those large "towers" in the background of Frankenstein movies with a "lightning bolt" rising upwards every few seconds? That's called a Jacob's Ladder; one of the coolest awe-inspiring demonstrations of high voltage. Here's a video of the final product: Materials and Tools

News: The Discovery of Dolphin Language

In my early life I was deeply impacted by the work of physician and psychoanalyst John C. Lilly. I still have my dog-eared copies of The Mind of the Dolphin (1967) and Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer (1968). Lilly's work, with dolphins and the development of the sensory deprivation tank, has formed the basis of movies, music and television productions.

News: Resurrecting the Video Game Magazine: PC Gamer Digital

PC Gamer represents all that was awesome about games journalism in the '90s, now sadly diminished. Brilliant, funny, full of integrity, and solid print sales were always present, and with the tragic exception of the latter, still are. Video game magazines were hit harder than nearly any other magazine vertical when the internet began its uncoordinated, but inevitable assault on print media. Magazines are now struggling to find their place in a world filled with more competitors than paying cu...

Little Indie: A New Distribution Service and Support Firm for Indie Games Goes Live

Indie developers and their games have enjoyed massive success distributing through Steam, notably Zeboyd Games and Carpe Fulgar. While that bodes well for the future of indies on the platform, Steam has to devote a lot of front-page real estate to AAA games and thus can't promote small indies as well as a dedicated indie game distribution service could. IndieCity out of the UK seems like it could be that, but today a consortium of three German game companies launched their attempt at beating ...

Games That Act Like Films: Are They Really 'Bastard Half-Children'?

Many gamers see the film industry as the premier model that video games should follow, and it's no surprise. Movies are seen as the most legitimate and profitable of all artistic visual mediums, which is certainly qualities practitioners of any new medium would desire. Big budget games like Heavy Rain and L.A. Noire strive for the same level as film by aping its techniques, focusing on storytelling in a cinematic fashion, rather than creating compelling gameplay experiences.

UPDATE: Wafaa Bilal’s Head Rejects Camera Implant

If you missed our previous posts on Iraqi artist Wafaa Bilal's attempt to go cyborg, here's the short and skinny: First, Bilal announced a plan to implant a camera in his head, a project entitled 3rdi, which would record his daily life while simultaneously feeding the images to monitors at the Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar. Then, he actually did it (and, yes, it was gnarly).

How To: Seek Comfort In A New Country

Feeling comfortable or at home means living in an atmosphere where you are accepted. Some people moving abroad worry about getting adjusted to the new social environment or the western culture. You may have left your home to make big business, excel in your career, get married, meet a relative/friend, discover new places, or for any good reason.

News: Book Review - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

I loved The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay for so many reasons. For its fantastical sense of adventure, set against the real world action and tragedy of the Jews in Europe during World War Two. I loved the opening chapters of Josef in Prague – a city I spent several months in a few years ago and one of the most beautiful places I’ve been. Reading scenes set in Prague and descriptions of places I’ve seen made the story that much more personal for me.

News: The Avengers (2012) Poster and Fan Art

After his fall from Asgard into space, the Asgardian Loki meets the Other, the leader of a warmongering alien race known as the Chitauri. In exchange for retrieving the Tesseract,2 a powerful energy source of unknown potential, the Other promises Loki a Chitauri army with which he can subjugate the Earth. Nick Fury, director of the espionage agency S.H.I.E.L.D., arrives at a remote research facility during an evacuation. Physicist Dr. Erik Selvig is leading a research team experimenting on th...

DIY Scientists Beware: When NOT to Use Household Chemicals for Your Projects

The only thing better than successfully pulling off a new experiment is doing it with household materials. You get to laugh in conceit as professional scientists everywhere spend all their grant money on the same project you just accomplished with some under-the-sink chemicals! However, there are times when DIY gets dangerous. Some household chemicals are not pure enough to use and some are just pure dangerous. Let's take a look at two problems I have encountered in the course of mad sciencing.

Glass Cutters Are for Tools: How to Dissolve Glass Using Sodium Hydroxide

Glass is one of the least reactive substances known to chemistry. It is the standard container material for almost all lab chemicals because it's so inert. But there are a couple of substances that have strong reactions with glass. Sodium hydroxide, aka solid drain cleaner or lye, can easily be stored in glass as a solid, but when molten, it reacts violently with glass and can actually dissolve it away! So, the next time you clog up your drains with broken glass beakers and flasks, rest assur...

Hide Your Secrets: How to Password-Lock a Folder in Windows 7 with No Additional Software

Today's guide is on creating a password protected folder on Windows 7 without any additional software. Yes, you heard that right. No extra software at all! This guide is intended for beginners. But please note, this method should not be used to store financial or otherwise highly confidential material. It might be a good place to hide a planning document for a family member's birthday party or similar occasion where you need to keep something secret temporarily.

How To: Hide the Facebook News Ticker in Firefox and Google Chrome

Facebook has been "improving" their interface in several different ways in attempt to combat the threat of Google+. One big change is the introduction of a news ticker in the top right corner that constantly feeds updates from friends and organizations you are connected with on Facebook. Not only do some people find the ticker annoying due to the constant stream of text flowing across it, but many felt unnerved by the fact that every “Like” or comment on a profile could instantly be seen acro...

News: Hate Final Cut Pro X? Try Adobe Premiere Pro or Avid Media Composer

It's no secret. Professional video editors everywhere are irate at the newest edition to Apple's popular non-linear video editing software, Final Cut Pro X. As of right now, Final Cut Pro X has 503 five-star ratings in the Mac App Store. Not bad. But it also has 671 one-star ratings and 414 users who aren't sure what they think. It's such a bad update that it even earned itself a skit on Conan.

News: Indie and Mainstream Online Games Shut Down by LulzSec

Anybody who spends most of their day on the internet should know all about lulz. Lulz are most often jokes made at the expense of web users, as popularized on 4Chan. Today, a consortium of hackers called LulzSec is attempting (and in some cases succeeding) in efforts to shut down some of the games that offer web users a giant share of their online fun. World of Warcraft, League of Legends, EVE Online, and Bethesda Softworks have all been targeted by LulzSec's hacking efforts in the last week,...

Privacy Is So 2001: An Anime Video Game Novel About Social Media

Japanese people are into many things Americans find weird—like YouTube's beloved canine-hosted cooking show or Daito Manabe's light up LED grills or even more insane, a vending machine that distributes live crabs. In light of these cultural oddities, the Japanese phenomenon of visual novels (NVL, or bijuaru noberu), seems relatively normal. A meeting place of books and video games, visual novels are a sort of "Choose-Your-Own-Adventure" for the new generation.