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News: Solar Flare Gives Earth Biggest Radiation Storm in 7 Years; Auroras Likely

NASA reports that the sun erupted late last night with a large solar flare—an M8.7 class flare. The classification is calculated according to the peak flux of 100 to 800 picometer x-rays near Earth measured from the GEOS weather satellite. There are 5 letter classifications for solar flares, each with a linear 1-9 number scale of severity. M is the fourth most powerful class, with X leading the way. But last night's earth-directed coronal mass ejection (CME), captured by the Solar Dynamics Ob...

Shot on the 5D Mark II: The Last 3 Minutes (+ Behind the Scenes Footage)

This short film was shot entirely on the Canon EOS 5D Mark II DSLR. It's called The Last 3 Minutes and was directed by Po Chan, and shot by cinematographer Shane Hurlbut, ASC. The main character is a janitor, whose life is kind of mundane. At least, that's what it seems like, but as the story develops, many layers of interesting happenings are revealed. Scenes were shot in both 24 and 30fps, and they used Canon L Series prime lenses, using great depth of field. Lenses used in the making were:

News: The Epic Danny MacAskill's Greatest Hits

Danny MacAskill has been a cycling and internet god since the day he surfaced on YouTube back in April of 2009. A Scottish street trials pro rider for Inspired Bicycles Ltd., MacAskill has been practicing his stunt riding for over 12 years. He gave up his job as a mechanic to ride full time, and now appears in music videos and commercials.

News: 1.3 Million Dollar Surgical Robot Folds Paper Airplanes, Gives Manicures

Here's a two-in-one "tutorial" for you today; how to fold a paper airplane, and how to execute a belated St. Patrick's Day manicure. Just follow along and do as the da Vinci does—our adroit instructor is a surgical robot, with a hefty price tag of approximately 1.3 million dollars, plus several hundred thousand dollars in annual maintenance fees. In truth, the da Vinci doesn't have the brain power to dictate the folding of a simple origami plane, nor does it know how to paint orange and green...

How To: Play Music With Your Mind

Tired of getting calluses from incessantly strumming along to 'No Woman No Cry'? Just hook up to the brain-music system and use your brain power to play a tune instead. I'm not talking—humming along in your head. The machine, created by composer and computer-music specialist Eduardo Miranda of the University of Plymouth, UK, is composed of electrodes taped directly onto your skull that pick up tiny electrical impulses from neurons in your brain and translates them into musical rhythms on a co...

How To: Ikea Makes Beautiful (Not Quite HowTo) Cooking Videos

When images of a rumored Ikea cookbook surfaced through the blogger grapevine, foodie and graphic design fetishists alike grew ecstatic. The leaked images from the 140 page coffee-table baking book presented pristinely assembled, OCD patterns of ingredients and the resulting desserts for 30 classic Swedish baking recipes. Forsman & Bodenfors, the Swedish agency behind the project took a different approach to the typical organization of the standard baking cookbook.

Start Your Day Off Right: Beautiful Oscar Nominated Short "The Lost Thing"

The Lost Thing is a lovely short written by Shaun Tan and co-directed by Tan and Andrew Ruhemann (executive producer of the fantastic doc My Kid Could Paint That). Based on the award-winning children’s book of the same title (also by Tan), the piece was created over a span of eight years(!) using a mix of CGI and 2D handpainted elements. Tan, whose background is in painting, spent much of the duration "carefully building, texturing and lighting of digitial elements to create a unique aestheti...

News: Trade in Your Grill for Japanese LED Teeth

In the far away land of Japan, gold is out, glow-in-the-dark is in. LED "grills" were recently conceived of by two Japanese designers/hackers for a winter advertising event at clothing store Laforet Harajuku. The LED teeth attachments quickly became a hot item. Foreseeably, one of the two designers demonstrating the teeth in the video above is the familiar Daito Manabe (our favorite "self-electrocuting" mad hacker). Manabe's partner, Motoi Ishibashi, came up with the idea when "he saw a video...

News: Are North Korean World Cup Fans Really Chinese Actors?

World Cup World asks: "How'd North Korean fans get to the game?" Fair and valid question. It's seeming IMPOSSIBLE for any North Korean citizen to get a visa to leave the communist regime (not that they could afford it, anyway) to attend this past week's game. After much initial speculation on whether these fans were the real deal, the mystery has been resolved by multiple news sources.

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.

Oscar Nom Review: EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP

FEATURED DOCUMENTARY: Exit Through the Gift Shop, the first film directed by reclusive street-art legend Banksy, is a little puzzle-box of a documentary. It's perfectly designed and pitched to be enjoyable on multiple levels: on one as an entertaining, illuminating mini-history of "street art" and on another - one entirely more convoluted and entertaining - as a light-hearted "up yours" to both street artists and their patrons.

UDP Flooding: How to Kick a Local User Off the Network

Only so much data can be passed through the network and to your computer's networking interfaces. This is limited by the amount of bandwidth you have. The more bandwidth you have, the faster your network connections will be. Not only this, but your transfers will be more parallel and distributed so that all of your speed isn't taken up by one transfer. When all of your bandwidth is sapped and unable to be used, this is called a denial of service, or a DOS.

How To: How Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) Attacks Sneak into Unprotected Websites (Plus: How to Block Them)

XSS stands for cross-site scripting, which is a form of web-based exploitation that uses client-side vulnerabilities in a web page to execute malicious JavaScript codes. JavaScript is referred to as "cross-site" because it usually involves an external website containing the malicious code. That code is most commonly used to steal cookies with a website that the attacker created and hosted on another server. The cookies can then be used to escalate privileges and gain root access to someone's ...

How To: Restore Netflix's Former "Watch Instantly" Web Layout

Netflix may be killing its competitors, but they're losing fans thanks to their reputation for rolling out interface updates without user knowledge or consent. PlayStation 3 owners were upset at the Netflix interface change earlier this year, and now nearly 5,000 diehard Netflixers are irate at the website's new look for its Watch Instantly section.

Abstinence: The Video Game

There is an abstinence game being created by the University of Central Florida with $400k+ of taxpayer money. The game is directed at middle school girls to help them handle and cope with sexual advances.

News: Why is ACL Injury More Common in Female Athletes?

The sudden deceleration, shifting in the knee, popping sound and screaming from the intense pain that immediately follows is becoming increasingly common among our young athletes. Those who have witnessed or suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) are familiar with the pain, surgery and intense 6 to 8 month rehabilitation that accompanies the injury, not to mention the disappointment of ending a season. Nationwide, this will occur more than 500,000 times this year, and female athlete...

Making Electromagnetic Weapons: The Theory Behind EMP Generators

This is the third part of my electromagnetic pulse series (see Part One and Part Two). By now, I've covered the hardware and general concept of electromagnetic pulse generators, but how exactly do they disable electronics? How can an invisible field of energy have such a catastrophic effect on computers, cell phones, and most any other electronics? I'll be answering all these questions in part three of Making Electromagnetic Weapons.

News: Canon's 5D Mark II Invades Hollywood

Since its release three years ago, Canon's EOS 5D Mark II has been the most sought out digital SLR for photographers everywhere. But it's also becoming a favorite amongst cinematographers, thanks to its compact size and high-def video recording mode, seeing action in everything from independent features to Hollywood blockbusters and even big network TV shows.

GENRE JAM: West Side Story (1961)

There's gonna be a rumble.... For this week's GJ article, I thought I would jump right into talking about a mortal-lock favourite of mine: West Side Story. If you haven't seen it (and a lot of folks havent - dudes especially) and you want a lesson in filmmaking craft from a bonafide master then you kind of owe it to yourself to rent this undisputed gem.

News: Seido and The Shadow

Not long ago in Rome during a Master’s Tennis Tournament something remarkable happened. In a tightly contested game, American Andy Roddick challenged a linesman’s call on a ball hit by his opponent. The remarkable thing about this incident was that Roddick argued against his own interest. He insisted that the opponent’s ball had landed inside the line and that he, Roddick, should NOT be awarded the point. Spectators applauded as if they’d witnessed a miracle. Imagine! Sportsmanship in a profe...