Links-plosion!

The Giver was one the few (like 2) books I read on my Kindle before coming to the conclusion I cannot read books anymore... and I declare that to be a medical condition! Another reason why I switched over to audiobooks. I have been an avid audiobook listener for over 2 years now, and I absolutely love it - no better way to multi-task when doing menial tasks such as robotic acts like driving, moving stuff, etc.. And now back to the point, there is a movie in making for the book - as per The Mary Sue!!!

Lightning storm rains upon the Grand Canyon - zap!

Moore's Law still on track... Carbon Nanotube Computer is a go with 178 transistors - an important proof-of-concept.

Most unisex names in U.S. history - a visualization of the list.

Meanwhile iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S came out, Google turned 15, and I'm sleepy. Nightio!

Video-plosion!

Soo many interesting videos this week... and after parsing through them, I bring to you the best and interesting ones:

Few reasons why I'm posting this video:
 - Starts off with Tennant (10th Doctor in Doctor Who - honestly if you are following this blog watch Doctor Who!!!!) fixing the TARDIS
 - Has couple(lots) of Doctor Who scenes
 - And we all do this at some point in time and get things working

Percussive Maintenance from Duncan Robson on Vimeo.
Music by Joel Robson. http://joelrobson.bandcamp.com
Thanks to tvtropes and everyone else who helped me to collect these. If there's a good clip I missed, let me know in the comments.
http://dunk3d.tumblr.com
@dunkr
Courtesy : The Mary Sue


This video blew me away! Amazing performance!

Box from Bot & Dolly on Vimeo.
Box explores the synthesis of real and digital space through projection-mapping onto moving surfaces. The short film documents a live performance, captured entirely in camera. http://www.botndolly.com/box
CREDITS
Production Company: BOT & DOLLY
Executive Producers: Bill Galusha, Nick Read
Creative & Technical Director: Tarik Abdel-Gawad
Design Director: Bradley G Munkowitz
Lead Graphic Designers: Bradley G Munkowitz, Jason English Kerr
3D Artists: Scott Pagano, Bradley G Munkowitz, Jason English Kerr, Conor Grebel
2D Animators: Conor Grebel, Ben Hawkins, Pedro Figueira
Director of Photography: Joe Picard
Lighting Designers: Joe Picard, Phil Reyneri
Projection / TouchDesigner: Phil Reyneri
Robotics Animation: Tarik Abdel-Gawad, Brandon Kruysman, George Banks, Michael Beardsworth
Robotics Operator: Michael Beardsworth, Brandon Kruysman
Prop Fabrication: Matt Bitterman, Ethan Dale
Script Supervisor: Ian Colon
Sound Engineers: Joe Picard, Michael Beardsworth
PAs: Sean Servis, Dakota Smith, Nico Mizono, Eric Wendel, Patrick Walsh
Editors: Ashley Rodholm, Ian Colon
Music / Sound Design: Keith Ruggiero
Sound Mix: Joel Raabe
Performers: Tarik Abdel-Gawad, Iris, Scout
Courtesy: io9


What if all the people in Paris just disappeared...

hypocentre -short film- from Claire&Max on Vimeo.
Imagine an empty worrying Paris.
Imagine that human action is more harmful to our fragile planet.
First, "hypocentre" was a technical exercise for us. Then we decided to focus the film on the environmental side. It's new for us, more specialists in the travel video, to try to do a short film.
All the technical side of this film is explained on our website (with english translator) here: http://menilmonde.com/projet-hypocentre/
Feel free to join us on our dynamic facebook Fan Page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Menilmonde/143123885787492
and our twitter account : https://twitter.com/Menilmonde
Music: "Scathe" by Reid Willis, licensing through the Vimeo Music Store https://vimeo.com/musicstore/track/144244/scathe-by-reid-willis
And Reid Willis website : http://reidmwillis.wix.com/reid-willis-website#!home/mainPage
NASA last footage: Images courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center, http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/hd/
Old footage form http://archive.org/
Sounds from http://www.freesound.org/ ans specially Felix Blume http://www.freesound.org/people/felix.blume/
Stephen Hawking's quote from the voice of Google translator
Thanks to Vanguard (http://vanguardworld.fr/) for their support.
Courtesy: io9


So first we(not me) had Teddy Ruxpin, a delightful animatronic pal for little kids. Then we(I was there) had Ted, the CGI-based, foul-mouthed, binge-drinking pal once those kids grew up. And now there's apparently a gun-toting, Sock Monkey-slaying, cyborg-bear vigilante roaming the streets. Stephen Colbert was right, these things are terrifying....

The Mega Plush from Matt Burniston on Vimeo.
Set in the shadows of a gritty underworld, a war is brewing. The Mega Plush, a group of four plush toy vigilantes, are struggling against the uprising of the SOC (Society of Chimps) army. Good vs evil. Bear vs sock monkey. The question is "who has the stuffing to survive?" Watch the first episode of this epic showdown and meet the crew at www.themegaplush.com
Facebook - facebook.com/TheMegaPlush
Website - www.themegaplush.com
Twitter - twitter.com/TheMegaPlush
YouTube - http://youtu.be/j9o1Ey4ZNT4
Music & SFX by www.cassinisound.com
Get a t-shirt - http://shop.heshereallweek.com
Courtesy: Gizmodo

And I've decided to another fun video, a music video, Radioactive by Imagine Dragons, one of my favorite song:


And finally the best for the last - Doctor Who Series 7 DVD Box Set Minisode "Rain Gods":

Courtesy: io9

First Month of 2013 Fall Semester

My last and final semester at UNLV as an undergraduate started off with dealing with humid climate in a desert! I am not kidding, for claiming to be a dry desert, Las Vegas has been cloudy and humid for roughly 3 weeks with occasional rain here and there! FYI the following paragraphs are being written as I recollect what has occurred they may or may not be in chronological order.

First week was filled with the hassle of finding where the classes are located, getting to know new professors, calculating how much effort to put into each class and organizing my time for each.
The prof for compilers was in Scotland attending a conference so we had a sub for the first week. Analysis of algorithms is being taught by a prof I know and he is REALLY good! Tennis is located at the end of the campus so walking there and back is not an option.... Logic Design lab started with safety lab.... Biometrics is a small class of 7 people - 4 graduate students and 3 undergrads. And my final physics class - the dreaded Physics Senior Project. And top this off, working at Slickdeals!!! Oh... also deal with ACM club... since being a Treasurer aka an officer means I need to be present at meetings and do stuff! And my brother didn't get to drive because of the rain and cloudy weather >__> Also the week-long lent that is part of celebrating the birth of St. Mary started on Sunday.

Second week started off with Monday being a holiday and was more or less hunting for parking spot at various hours of the day.... It is literally Hunger Games at the parking lot!!! You fight with horns and lights to get a parking spot from others. Not to mention, Wednesday when my brother decided to finally drive to campus by himself, it started pouring like no end. Prof for the compilers showed up finally, and started assigning phases for building a Java 1.2? compiler in Java.... No, this is not like the - which came first, the chicken or the egg? - problem. And getting together to layout the club meetings and plans. Oh! Also the Friday, the research group along with the prof got together and had 4-5hr long meetings. Then again on Saturday afternoon, and then attending the wedding reception of the ex-PhD member of our group who moved to Arizona for his postdoc. That wedding reception was really fun - food, drinks (I did try Captain Coke... just because the groom insisted that it was his first drink and that how he got into drinking... And by the end of 3rd hour... I still had half the drink with me... and while rum has a unique taste, I didn't like the drink and decided to remain a non-alcoholic drinker), dance, and fireworks. Friday evening ended with a prayer meeting and Saturday morning started with a mass to celebrate the birth of St. Mary. Also I got the ball rolling for my graduation on Friday... papers were signed and the checkbox was clicked on Friday!

Third week was when things got really crazy! Latter half the week I had to deal with a family emergency on top of working and taking classes. I did get to spend time at a hospital in town... and let me say... the service provided wasn't all that great there. And thanks to my good teammate, I didn't have to worry about the phase 1 of the compilers. Oh Tuesday, my brother decided to drive again, but Mother Nature decided to throw another tantrum and flood the streets, so I had to drive him home after classes, leaving behind his car in the garage (and for the whole trip he was weeping about his precious (his car) being left behind). Wednesday was the start of the family emergency, and Mother Nature threw another fit, flooding the streets really bad this time. Saturday was spend on campus working on research and project. Aside from that, my schedule for the semester is now fixed.

Fourth week was more or less working at work, on class assignments, my project, club stuff, etc.... Far too occupied that I managed to watch all aired seasons of the Big Bang Theory. And Bones started airing their 9th season... which means the Fall seasons are coming!!! First exam of the semester - did bad... 75th percentile... yuck! Another 6 day week with Sunday spending on working on my research.... Officially I am totally occupied, no time for breaks or social events or to myself. Oh! I also started posting in the Lounge at SD (as the impossible moderator) :P and met CC... my target for next foreseeable future - hehehe.

World's 10 Biggest Cities

The World's 10 biggest cities based on population as per 2009 study by Richard Forstall, Richard Greene and James Pick.



Courtesy: Gizmodo

The Slothocalypse!!!

Albert Einstein sloth: 

Sloth of the 11th Doctor (Matt Smith) along with Amelia Williams and Rory Williams...

Good gracious.... the weeping angel sloth....

Oh great!... Even a minion sloth!!!!

Ahhh... here is the Harry Potter sloth collection:

For more sloth collection check out the artist's home page.

Courtesy: The Mary Sue

Heist!!

While I have watched some of THE best heists being performed in the TV show, Leverage (which I highly recommend for those hunting for a good TV show to watch), Rob 'n' Ron (two brothers) plans out and performs a western-y heist with hobby horses and piggy banks....


Rob 'n' Ron from Tumblehead on Vimeo.

Courtesy: io9

Proteigon

Remember the dance/battle with light video called Nuance? Here is a similar version that uses paper.


PROTEIGON from BURAYAN on Vimeo.
Directed by Steven Briand - briand.steven@gmail.com, at partizan during a two months intership.

Festival selections
South by Southwest (SXSW) 2012 / Austin, Texas, 2012
Moving Silence 2012 / Athens, Greece, 2012
Disposable Film Festival 2012 / San Francisco, USA, 2012
Very Short International Film Festival 2012 / Paris, France, 2012
Brasil Stop Motion Festival 2012 / Pernambuco, Brazil, 2012
Cortoons Festival 2012 / Rome, Italy
ANCA International Animation Festival 2013 / Zilina, Slovakia, 2013
Anima Mundi 2013 / Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 2nd, 2013 & Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2013

with Luca Fiore

music by Nodey & Omar
sound design by Moritz Reich

Produced by Partizan Films

with the help of Nathalie Lapicorey, Zeynep Gizem De Loecker, Benoit Masson, Vincent Nguyen, François Colou et Fabien Chambert

17/09/2013 Feed Compilation!

This thai commercial (with english subtitles of course) is better than a 2hr movie! Also it can get misty  - you have been warned!


So Vegas was not being Vegas at all for past 3-4 weeks... it was cloudy with drizzling and rain!!! Not to mention Vegas drivers go more crazy when it rains!

The Costa Concordia's 19-hour salvage:

For more pictures and video click here.

And for those looking for a work-out program to quickly lose fat and gain muscles, check out TurboKick and TurboFire! True story from a person I know - this is not a made up story, in fact I am looking into adding more exercise into my schedule!

Opposite time!

We (well some of us) feed pigeons, have pillow fights, blow dandelion, lick ice-cream, chop trees, roast marshmallows, and do other kinds of fun stuff.... Now what if we were the subjects on whom these actions were done... to get a visual representation go here.

Programmer vs Sales Person

So they teach us in software development class that most of the softwares that involves a business team is more or less a traveling salesman problem aka the requests for changes never stops coming in and the software/project is never truly done done. One/some of the factors that contributes to this is shown below:


Courtesy: My brother who found it and decided to make me watch the entire thing!

Nuance!

There you go my viewers! I battle exhaustion and drowsiness to bring to you this amazing dance/fight with/against light!

Here is a brief gif from the video below:

Nuance from Marc-Antoine Locatelli on Vimeo.
Nuance / 2013
Travail sur l’image vivante musicale.
Musique : “Ants” de EdIT / Planet Mu Records
http://www.planet.mu
Danse : Lucas B.

Courtesy: io9

Onam

Onam (ഓണം - written in Malayalam) is a 10-day harvest festival celebrated by the people of Kerala, India - aka my people. Wikipedia's article on Onam pretty much covers everything I wanted to iterate - the significance, the rituals, the legend, activities, etc!

One of the fun activity during this festival is to create flower circle - called Pooklam (ഓണപ്പൂക്കളം). 
From wiki:

And this flower circle was made at the Mumbai station (courtesy of my friend there):

One of my favorite part of Onam is the food which is rice + at least 5 - 7 dishes served on banana leaf on the last day of festivities:

And once again, wikipedia to the rescue - this link has some of the usual items served.

This is also a festival of music, dance and games. Tug-of-war is one of the most popular game played... which I got a chance to play this Saturday, and my team won!

Doctor Who 50th Anniversary - The Day of the Doctor

So for those waiting for one of the amazing thing to happen in 2013 - here is probably the best one - The Day of the Doctor - a Doctor Who movie (75 minutes in length) for its 50th Anniversary! Don't forget there is still the Christmas special which marks the 800th episode of Doctor Who as a whole! Say Who?!

BBC One's trailer for the 50th anniversary and for those with 3D glasses here is the 3D version!


Fan-made trailers follows:





Courtesy: The Mary Sue

New Harry Potter movie?!

Well it is a bit of stretch, this movie won't be part of the Harry Potter series, but rather is a "Harry Potter"-inspired movie from the "Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them" and set to kick off in New York, 70 years before Harry's story start.

Link to the book on Amazon for those interested!

Courtesy: The Mary Sue

Youtube video-plosion! Chipotle, Unicorn Doctor, Pole Dancing and Suit Song!

Chipotle's video to promote their organically-farmed meat and produce went viral in about 2 days.


It is Unicorn Doctor, enough said.


Pole Dancing done by a SD user who's name I shall not mention, but she will be reading this post :P


And finally the Suit Song!

Drumcat Street Performance

Amazing drumming!

A tragic twist to a damsel rescue mission

An animation about a damsel rescue going wrong, while in reality it is far worse. Beware, this video contains domestic violence and might make you sad for the rest of the day.


Un Conte from GOBELINS pro on Vimeo.
Durée : 2:24

Réalisé par :
Guillaume Arantes https://vimeo.com/guillaumearantes
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/unconte

Contact production :
GOBELINS, l'école de l'image, Moïra Marguin : mmarguin@gobelins.fr

Contact festival :
guillaume.arantes@hotmail.fr

Contact Distribution :
La distribution des films produits par GOBELINS, l'école de l'image est assurée par L'Agence du court métrage. Contact : f.keller@agencecm.com.

Sloths!

To my lazy friend out there, here is some sloth-y sloth stuff for you! :P

Meet the sloths from Lucy Cooke on Vimeo.
Courtesy: Lifehacker

Oh! You must check this shirt out!

Neutron Cream

For those who doesn't know about Star Trek, it is a sci-fi series involving space exploration that started back in 1966 and has over 6 series - the Original Series (1966-69), the Animated Series (1973-74), the Next Generation (1987-94), Deep Space Nine (1993-99), Voyager (1995-2001) and Enterprise (2001-05), and has 12 movies about it - last one being Star Trek Into Darkness (2013).

And now for those who know about Star Trek or don't, the recent movie - Star Trek Into Darkness, the crew that to work with lasers... and so they had to use special neutron cream to avoid any tissue damage... as per Scotty, and with him being the chief engineer of the Starship Enterprise, it is a safe bet to trust him on this... for more information watch the video!



Courtesy: The Mary Sue

Slickdeals.net!

Slickdeals! Oh, Slickdeals.net! Slickdeals.net is an awesome site filled with slick deals (duh!), coupon codes, and forums filled with threads by the users, moderated by super-duper awesome moderators, working around the clock making sure people who visit the site don't come across spam or fake deals.

On Slickdeals.net there is no actual buying or selling, just a collection of deals from various sites that'll save you (tons of) money, like for example let's say you want to buy a hard drive or clothes and not sure if there is any deals out there that'll help you save some extra bucks, or want to find and keep tracks of coupons for your favorite meal place!

I've gotten couple of good deals such as 50% off Papa John's pizza, Synology NAS, Seagate RED drives, free $5 and $10 on Audible.com, and oh! a free Doctor Who episode!!!

Also I came across this video today where the most awesome and daring Slickdealian, Finzz, goes on Mission Slick Possible on the night of Black Friday in 2010, enticing and dragging people into the world of Slickdeals.net by with awesome Slickdeals t-shirts!


And for more videos about Slickdeals.net from reviewers and people who use the site click here.

Oh! Did I mention you can lay traps for deals and coupons of your choosing and get email as soon as a deal arrives on the website? Well check out deal notification/alert page after signing up! And oh there are daily giveaway prizes!

And a shout out for all the amazing people behind Slickdeals.net! Special thanks to Finzz & widgit for the help :P

Netflix Original Series

So couple of my friends and a friend recommended the show House of Cards and Orange is the New Black to me respectively, both of which are Netflix Original Series.

So first things first. Orange is the New Black is about the life of Piper Chapman, a woman from Connecticut, living in New York City, who was convicted of transporting a suitcase full of drug money for Alex Vause (an international drug smuggler and Chapman's former lover) and was sentenced for 15 months to women's federal prison in Litchfield, NY. The series follows life of Chapman and that of those around her at the prison.



Next up House of Cards. There is two versions of House of Cards - UK version (3 series released in 1990, 1993 and 1995 - 4 episodes in each series) and US version (1 season - 13 episodes). I have watched both, and it is roughly the same plot style, and roughly the same name for the antihero!

The antihero of the BBC version is Francis Urquhart, a fictional Chief Whip of the Conservative Party. The plot follows his amoral and manipulative scheme to become leader of the governing party and, thus, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.


The antihero of the US version is Frank Underwood, a Democrat from South Carolina's 5th Congressional District and the House Majority Whip who, after getting passed over for appointment to Secretary of State, decides to exact his revenge on those who betrayed him.

Plex

So my last post was about setting up a NAS to store and access your files from the Internet, and in this post I shall bring to you Plex. Plex is multi-platform application that can arrange your (ahem! messy maybe?) media libraries and host them and so that you can watch them from anywhere and it also gives you the ability to share it with family and friends.

For every movie and TV show it gathers information from imdb and tvdb for every episode and also each TV show it also downloads the theme song and plays it on the background when one accesses the show.

Network Attached Storage (NAS)

In this digital media age, people have tons of photographs, videos - movies, TV shows (if you are anything like me), and music. But to store them we resort to space on the drives in our computers, some go for external hard drives (hopefully keep multiple copies of them across different drives to safe losing them if a drives fail - yes that happens!). Now accessing these files when touring or from outside home/work or on a trip can be a hassle with setting up dns, web-server, etc. for non-tech pros.

I found a simple and quick solution for this problem - a network-attached server. There is plenty of network-attached servers out there now for household use such as Synology (I just bought one!), ReadyNAS by Netgear, QNAP, Buffalo, etc.. Don't forget when purchasing drives make sure you get a NAS drive, and yes there is a difference - the typical drives are not meant for 24/7 usage whereas NAS drives are meant to be abused for 24/7.

Now if you have a Synology NAS with the drives, here is the setup instructions for creating a folder to store and share files and here is the setup instructions for making your server accessible from the Internet. Make sure you have your firewalls up!

Terminal Customization

If you work with terminals whether on linux or on mac, here are few tips & tricks to improve how it looks and feels!
Step 1: For those on linux has the package manager can proceed ahead! For those on mac, I highly recommend getting Homebrew and oh, check out iTerm2!
1) Fortune - A random fortune/saying spouting program.
2) Cowsay - A program that creates ASCII art of animals with some expressions.
3) Separator between commands - Helps to distinguish the starting and ending of command and it's output.
4) Colors and Prompt - While most terminals comes with properties and abilities to change color of text and background, this will help in customizing how you view files, folders, scripts, etc.

Few other examples of terminals and tweaks customized by others:
1) Battery capacity - for those working from laptop.
2) Background image - instead of monotone background color.

Original British Drama 2013

It is almost time for the fall seasons to begin! BBC has already released a compilation of their original drama series - Sherlock (starring Benedict Cumberbatch + Martin Freeman), The Musketeers (starring Peter Capaldi), The Escape Artist (starring David Tennant), The Great Train Robbery, Quirke, Ripper Street, What Remains and By Any Means.
Sherlock - Series 3 Trailer: