Here’s a short animated film from Italy by Lorenzo Veracini, Nandini Nambiar and Marco Avoletta. Every trip on a bike should be such a good trip as this. I love the glass trees near the end.
There is also a web site for the film.
Marvel Makes a Create Your Own Comic Tool
Marvel Comics has a Create Your Own Comic tool that lets you put together either a simple 3-panel strip or an entire 22-page comic book. You don’t actually draw anything, but you choose layouts, backgrounds, characters and objects. You can re-size everything and layer objects on top of each other. It’s great for trying one’s hand at designing a layout that tells a story effectively. So write your comic book and start designing!
NASA Makes a Free iPhone App
NASA has released a free app for the iPhone that offers dynamically updated information, images, and video from many of its ongoing missions. NASA seems to be suffering through a confused decade in which it wonders what vehicle should replace its aging shuttle fleet, whether to dump the International Space Station into the ocean to save money, whether to go back to the moon, or whether Mars might be a suitable destination for a manned visit.
I think it’s probably safe to say that NASA is learning an enormous amount through its telescopes, satellites and rovers. I suspect that very little is really learned from sending three or four humans to the moon other than how to keep three or four humans alive on the moon for a few weeks. Perhaps NASA should just relax a little and stop worrying about making people interested in what it’s doing. Perhaps they should just worry about collecting information.
Barnes & Noble eReader Device Might Blow the Kindle Out
Amazon’s Kindle could be headed for the woodpile. The new Barnes & Nobel ereader device is coming at the end of November.
The new device is called the nook. Like book nook, I guess. But this thing has a color touch screen virtual keypad like an iPhone and it displays book pages on an eye-friendly E ink display. It appears to be sleek and well-designed. It will also allow ebook owners to lend their ebooks to other people who own Nook devices for up to 14 days. That’s a big deal.
Another thing it has going for it is support for formats like ePub, eReader, PDF, MP3, JPG, PNG and BMP files. One article compared this device to Amazon’s by saying it was like the internet compared to Amazon’s AOL. It has free 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity.
After the ongoing grotesque behavior by Amazon and its apparent lack of concern for owners’ rights it won’t take much for Barnes & Noble to turn Amazon’s ugly duckling of a closed-system ereader into a bad joke.
I never took the plunge to buy a Kindle from Amazon because I don’t trust their intentions. I have no hesitation to run out and buy the Barnes & Noble device as soon as it comes out in November.
National Film Board of Canada Releases Huge Film Library for iPhone App
The NFB (National Film Board of Canada) has just released a new free iPhone app that lets you watch hundreds of their films. You can use the app even while you’re away from hotspots by downloading films for viewing during a 24-hour period. The NFB is one of my favorite places on the web for film. They just do it the right way. They make it easy.
This is an excellent way to distribute their huge collection of ground-breaking films.
You can get the app at the iTunes store.
Book: The Vampire Archives
On Friday evening I went into Hollywood looking for monsters. I found some really bad ones. They’re inside The Vampire Archives, an enormous volume of vampire stories edited by Otto Penzler and published by Vintage Crime.
The book is organized into sections like Pre-Dracula, which holds gems like Good Lady Ducayne by English writer M.E. Braddon, Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu, and Ligeia, by Edgar Allen Poe.
Another section is That’s Poetic, with works by John Keats, Lord Byron and Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe.
The final section is Modern Masters, with stories by Ray Bradbury, Peter Tremayne and Brian Lumley.
The book finishes with what is advertised as the most comprehensive bibliography of vampire fiction ever assembled. And it certainly goes on for many pages.
The book is a big fat heavy pulpy treasure and I dug right into it as soon as I got home. This thing will put you in right good shape for the approaching Halloween day of terror and magic.
And let me stick my thumb into the eyes of literary bloggers everywhere who can’t write about a book and link to its purchase page without sadly trying to make 14 cents off the deal, I am going to pull an unexpected sleight of hand trick and link to this fantastic book without making a single pathetic penny.
Next time I see some jackass literary blogger link to a book as an ‘Amazon Associate’ I’m a gonna send that hungry fool 14 cents so they can go buy a Big Mac.
Machinarium Game Designer Sketchbooks and Trailer
Boing Boing has posted a set of fascinating sketches by Jakub Dvorský and Adolf Lachman, the designers of the upcoming point and click adventure game, Machinarium.
This game looks marvelous. It’s made by an independent game producer who also made a popular game called Samarost. Machinarium is about a little robot who’s been thrown out to the scrap yard behind the city must return and confront the Black Cap Brotherhood and save his robot-girl friend. I think I’ll give it a try. Although I usually find it much easier to build a puzzle game than to actually play one. They always leave me feeling stumped and dumb and I just end up quitting. But this one looks so beautiful that I’d try really hard just to see the next picture.
Puzzle Game: Tomb of the Mummy II
Want to ruin Halloween? Sure. Why not? Give it a try. This puzzle has driven many players totally insane. I’m actually not kidding. I’m dead serious. It’s really hard. It can warp your helpless mind and make you smash your computer. I have received more hate mail for this little puzzle than for any other reason.
Why don’t you try it? Go ahead… see if you can solve it.
You won’t regret it… for a while.
Halloween Desktop Wallpaper Images
Here’s a desktop wallpaper image of Dead Hill.
Download
small (800 x 600) | medium (1024 x 768)
Right-click the link you want and choose to save the image to your hard drive.
Dead Hill in old-time horror movie black & white!
Download
Animation: A Candy Affair
Here’s a little treat from OddBot, Inc. animation studio in Los Angeles. Directed by Crystal Stromer, this is the touching and tasty little story of a kernel of corn with a twinkle in his eye for a very lovely little piece of candy corn.
JibJab Does Halloween
Here’s a Halloween treat from JibJab based on one of their eCards.
Mystery Contest for Halloween 2009
If you want to enter the mystery contest, just finish the mystery we’ve started below by entering your part of the story into a comment. We do not need any personal information about you. You can just enter your name or your online nickname. We don’t need an email address or anything else. The contest is open to all writers of any age and skill level. Have fun and take the story in any direction you like. There’s no real prize other than getting some attention for your writing on this site.
We’ll post the winner in our blog sometime right near Halloween.
Good luck.
Horror Movie: The Road to Moloch
Here’s a horror movie about some U.S. soldiers in Iraq who face an ancient evil in a cave.
This is very mature subject matter with extreme violence and mature language. Not for young viewers.
This is not a very good film. That’s why I posted it. The filmmaking interests me because of its complete lack of vision. It tries to replicate to perfection other films that the director has seen. The director wants to be a professional and get hired somewhere. It shows in his work. Sorry, sir, but you put it out there and I’m calling it like I see it. The problem here is that the film is not frightening. It’s slick and well-shot, like television or feature films, but it spends all its energy that way. You don’t scare people by being professional. You don’t scare them by being violent. You scare them by showing them that you – director – are a little bit off.
That’s how you scare an audience. Not with professionalism. Try again and make it real this time.
International Space Station May Be Dumped Into the Ocean by U.S. Congress
The International Space Station which has taken 11 years and $44 billion to finally bring to a state of completion may be scuttled when its funding runs out in 2015. How about that? One of the greatest achievements in human history – greater than the building of the pyramids – may be dumped into the ocean before it can perform its intended mission which is scientific research and experimentation outside of the Earth’s gravity.
So we elect a man to the presidency twice over who is on the intellectual level of a monkey and give him $80 billion every few months so that he can arbitrarily slaughter the boys and girls of the people who elected him by sending them into a needless Iraqi hell on earth without adequate protection. But we can’t keep the greatest machine ever built by a human hand orbiting the planet? Someone simply must be kidding. I refuse to accept this as a possibility. There’s death money and there’s life money. Iraq war money is death money and sets human civilization back. The space station money is life money and it moves civilization forward. This is a simple equation that almost anyone can figure out. Except of course the drooling moron retired in Texas.
Horror Movie: The Brain That Wouldn’t Die
The Brain that Wouldn’t Die was directed by Joseph Green in 1959. It’s the creepy tale of a brilliant surgeon who perfects a method for keeping human body parts alive. When his girlfriend is decapitated in a car-wreck, he manages to keep her lovely head alive and talking in a tray. Unbelievable! She talks and everything! I love the tray! In fact, we used the tray idea in our Frankenstein – The Creature Must Die! game.