I think this is a stunt, but considering it’s Scarlett Johannsen, maybe it isn’t. Regardless, I don’t think I’m gonna get permission to enter the contest.
Of course, the disclaimer at the bottom could be interpreted several ways…
via Ubu, a new Ranma short is in the making:
The “It’s a Rumic World” exhibition of manga creator Rumiko Takahashi’s original artwork opened in Tokyo’s upper-class Ginza shopping district on Wednesday with both the previously announced special 30-minute Inuyasha anime short and a new Ranma ½ anime short. The Ranma ½ short adapts the Akumu! Shunminkō (Nightmare! The Incense of Spring Sleep) story from the manga. This is the first Ranma ½ animation produced in 12 years.
I have a feeling that it’s going to be a “period” piece, occuring during the mainstream chronology rather than show us any evolution in Ranma and Akane’s relationship. kawaii-kune, indeed.
Hobbes has been replaced by Steve Jobs:
Brilliant. I especially love how Jobbes turns into a stuffed toy when the parents or others are around. The artwork is perfect, but the comic has a sharp edge, too:
Calvin: Jeez! How come all your stuff so expensive, Jobs?
Jobs: Well, Calvin, it’s carefully put together by some of the world’s most ingenious craftsmen!
Calvin: Really? But isn’t it slapped together in China like just about everything else?
Jobs: I was talking about our ads.
Somehow I don’t think Bill Watterson is going to be as tolerant of this as Jim Davis was with Garfield Minus Garfield… speaking of the latter, travors just signed a book deal with Davis’ blessing.
These pictures of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN are awe-inspiring, but also make me a bit sad. It’s depressing to think that Big Science like this can’t be done in the US anymore. Or rather, won’t be done.
these are just a few of the amazing photos available. For captions, and many more, check out the original link.
I visited Fermilab as a kid and then actually worked on some hardware for an experiment there as a summer student in college at UW. I don’t know much about particle physics but I do know that every square foot of those massive, intricate assemblies is the product of some grad student’s or researcher’s life work. It’s humbling to think of the intellectual capital invested in this machine, built to answer what amount to such fundamental, even basic questions.
I had a similar reaction when I visited the Saturn V on the grounds of the Johnson Space Center in Clear Lake, TX. That was once functioning hardware; had there been the money, it could have flown to the moon. Instead it rusts in a placid Texas field.
It occurs to me that I’ve never seen the equal of these pictures of the LHC in any science fiction, on TV or film. Nothing in the imagination of our storytellers has equaled the sheer complexity and power of the simple photos here.
OK, forget what I just said. Scrabulous is back! Well sort of - Scrabulous v2.0 is rechristened Wordscraper, and boasts just enough design changes to throw a wrench in Hasbro’s case for infringement. Behold:
Scrabulous 2.0: Wordscraper. Looks familiar... but not too familiar.
The differentiation has both superficial (circular tiles, random/userdefined placement of the bonus squares) and game mechanical (tile point values, tile letter distribution) elements. Whether that’s enough to keep it alive from Hasbro’s lawyers is an open question. I love the fact that you can define your own board, however. My only gripe is that they didn’t save any games from Scrabulous, but I suppose that was necessary since doing so would require the “Scrabble classic” board, whose layout is probably part of Hasbro’s copyright. I’d like to have at least had the chance to restart games in progress, though.
I guess the appeal of Scrabulous was indeed the wordplay and not any actual loyalty to Scrabble per se. It’s like you’ve driven a Ford Mustang all your life and then one day you try a Corvette - if you like Mustangs, then you won’t like the Corvette. If you like driving sports cars, though, then it doesn’t matter how you get your fix1.
So, lets scrape!
It was inevitable that Scrabulous would get yanked off of Facebook eventually, so I didn’t even rouse myself to note the fact of it when it happened a couple of days ago. I admit that I was rather peeved at Hasbro, mainly because I was doing rather well on the games I had in progress - including a bingo I had spent over a month nurturing towards revelation. Still, I don’t exactly have any loyalty to the brother Ajarwal, who were making a comfortable $25k a month for their (obvious) copyright violation (moral soapbox: when I violate copyright, I don’t profit off it!). So, I figured I’d give the Official Scrabble App a try. Here’s a screenshot of my game in progress:
the official app
Overall, it’s a slick application, with everything that Scrabulous had except for support of the alternate dictionaries and Challenge mode. I did prefer Scarb’s less-flair aesthetic, it was a cleaner looking app, this one goes for a lot of the 3D tile effect which makes the screen look too busy. The focus should be on the grid, not the tiles or the players etc.
Also somewhat irritating is the fact that the game is segmented so that only US/Canada players can play each other, and international players can only play themselves, with no crossover. This may be due to some licensing thing but it really is a drag. I don’t know if its a limitation most people will chafe under, but it’s something that does affect me, and feels really arbitrary. This sort of limitation is why sometimes it’s better to go the unofficial route.
Anyway, if you need a fix of Scrabble, you can still get one, and that’s what matters. I do wish they’d tone down the interface a bit though. They should hire these two brothers in India I know about who have some experience in that regard…
Is anyone watching this show? From this interview at ComicCon it looks like it might be as interesting as Smallville. I’ve no idea whether its the same continuity as the movies or the new movie coming out or not. Still, Summer Glau kicking butt is pretty appealing. And the evolution of John Connor also will be something to see - I am reminded of Smallville.
One of my favorite movies from childhood was Return to Witch Mountain, about two orphans (brother and sister) who seek to discover the source of their magical powers. Hmm. Guess I was into mahou shoujo early on, it seems. At any rate, Disney is doing a remake, which usually elicits a yawn (if not horror). What caught my attention though was that the girl is being played by AnnaSophia Robb, and the Bad Guy by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. I was utterly enchanted with Robb’s performance in Terabithia and Johnson is just a genius of screen presence. Even if they butcher the basic plot, it’s still going to be worth watching.
Just saw this at AICN:
IF Magazine has learned that producer Erwin Stoff is developing an adaptation of one of America’s favorite anime series…. Cowboy Bebop.
“I’m developing COWBOY BEBOP for Fox, but doing it as a live-action film, so I’m working on that at the moment,” Stoff tells iF. “I’m really excited to be working on it, and it’s in the really early stages. We just signed it the other day.”
“I have such an enormous admiration for its creators, that our first and foremost concern is going to be a real degree of faithfulness to the tone of the movie, to the mix of genres, and so on and so forth,” he says. “When I met with them in Japan, one of the first things that I brought up was the experience that we had on A SCANNER DARKLY, and how hard we worked to remain faithful to Philip K. Dick, and that was our big concern here.”
America’s favorite anime series? I thought that was DragonBall Z… which also is getting the live action treatment, as I noted before. Of course there’s also that live-action Robotech coming up, too.
I’ll get really excited when they start casting for live-action Haibane Renmei. Others may be waiting for live-action Najica Blitz Tactics. To each his own…
Just curious, though. Suppose they were to do a live-action Haibane. Who’d you want to see playing Reki and Rakka?
Given that otaku tend to be an obsessive bunch by definition, I find this rather convenient: an actual white whale.
A new white humpback has been sighted off Byron Bay on the east coast of Australia.
The newcomer, which was filmed by a television news helicopter, has excited marine scientists who think it may be related to Migaloo - to date, the only known all-white humpback whale.
Melville is surely grinning in his grave.
