8-Bit Inspiration

The last decade has seen something of a renaissance of craft; a grassroots resurgence of folk arts and archaic methodologies. One of the more fun branches of this movement is geek craft; works celebrating the artist's love of video and computer games, classic sci fi, role playing games, etc. My favorites are those based on classic NES games, like the above Punch-out! scarf by Beatboxtaun. 8-bit graphics are the perfect jumping off point for a ton of craft mediums. Remember those perler beads you played with as a child? Sooo right for 8-bit re-creation, like these coasters by lost mitten.

Cross stitch and plastic canvas too, like these cross stitch pinback buttons by pOOm plastic:

How about mosaic? Yeah, we got that. By popmaw
The coolest thing about these is that they are all super easy to make. That's right, you can do it! I especially recommend trying out perler beads and plastic canvas, they are very handy for making all kinds of cases, i.e. for your DS or your ipod. And remember, what I've shown here is just the tippity tip top of the iceberg.

mel

Germany Hearts Polar Bears

Germans (and pretty much the rest of the world) lost their shit last year over Knut and Flocke, but those cuties are growing up quickly, as polar bears are apt to do. Have no fear, there is a new polar bear in Germany...Wilbaer! Officials at the Stuttgart zoo say that "Wilbaer will not be a commercial success" but the cuteness of polar bear cubs is force to powerful for mere mortals to reckon with. I think Knut, the original world famous adorable polar, is still my favorite, but it's hard to resist any baby animal in a basket.

mel

Lost Review 2/28/08

As I've stated in a earlier post I don't like new characters, or at least if they aren't well known actors and low and behold that this one is a B!tch she is just annoying at the start of this episode, but in all honesty the only "good guys" of this new batch characters would be Jeremy Davies and the helicopter pilot.

Last night's episode was a heavy Desmond episode and it seems like the show has gone in that direction since his reappearance in season 2 going further in season 3. I like that he's a great character and his romantic situation with Penny is sweet. Much like the Jin and Sun situation.

Desmond Flashes back instead of forward like he did in season 3 we aren't unaware of his "abilities" but they are finally explained in this episode.

The year is 1996 and Desmond is once again in the army, he is training but also has lost all memory of his time on the island, Desmond accompanied by Sayid go on to the freighter ship to meet some new characters. Now it was great to see a familiar face, some of you may remember this face from 3:10 to Yuma so I was happy to see it again on this show. The new characters seem hostile right off the back, because of Desmond's condition.

We are introduced to someone in the sick bay who has been in a lot of movies from the 80's buy you may remember him much like me from this movie:

He also has Desmond's condition due to being to close to the island.

Desmond is told by Daniel that he must meet him in the past to help him with his condition in the future. Its quite cool to see that time travel is in this show it was shown a little in season 3 but it felt much like Daniel explains, a concious time travel in the mind. He is also told to survive he needs to find a anchor to keep his barring Desmond can think of only one person for that.

In a promise made 8 years in the past, Desmond calls Penny and tells her that he loves her and always will. It is one of the most dramatic and heart felt moments in the series it almost had me in tears, these characters have gone through so much in their lives so to finally see them say what they have tried to for years is just great.

This moment is only 1 up'ed by the end of Season 1 when Jin and Sun say good bye to each other.

The episode ends with what may be a hint to Daniel's condition as well and that he may be time traveling as well, over all a fantastic episode better than last weeks I hope the show just gets better from here!

Lost Review 2/21/08

Ok so as I said before I missed last weeks episode so I'll be playing catch up today and doing to reviews, the first will be last weeks episode.

I got to admit that I really like the pop up Lost episodes they are good and help you catch things you may have missed.

Alright so its no mystery that this is a heavy Kate episode, we start the episode with a flash forward to Kate's trial where she will be held accountable for all her crimes.

When we get back to the island there is short little conversation between Jin and Sun, which might be hinting at some friction once again between the 2 love birds but I hope its just a mistake on Sun's part. 

But the show does love to play mind games with us doesn't it?

Kate is back in court and from the sounds of it is going to be found guilty due to the defense's star witness which is her mom,(who btw is from Sabrina the teenage witch ;) she tries to bargin with her daughter but Kate wont have anything to do with her. Would you blame her? She saves her dumb mom's life from a crappy situation and she just tries to get Kate arrested. Anyways it doesn't work and she gets cold feet and can't testify, good for Kate I guess. She is set free with 10 years probation.

Before the episode comes to a end we see Locke at his true potential, he is ruthless and badass! Kate told him the truth about Miles but I guess Locke just didn't believe her.

We end the episode with a big WTF!? And thats in part because we don't know for sure if that really is Kate's son, his name is Aron which is the same name of Claire's child but is it the same one? Kate told Sawyer that she wasn't pregnant so WTF!? I'm sure we'll find out soon enough.

Lego MP3 player!

Via technabob:

"While I don’t think these are officially sanctioned by LEGO, these whimsical MP3 players bear a striking resemblance to the colorful interlocking plastic blocks."

"Each one comes with a built-in rechargeable Li-ion battery that should give you about 6 hours of play time, and from what I can tell, you’ll have to provide your own microSD card for storage (2GB max). At $46 a pop, they are a bit expensive for players with no included memory."

Check out more HERE.

Adobe's futuristic photo lens!

Via Geekologie

A lot of tech blogs might be posting this and you might be thinking to yourself what's the big deal? Well let me put this in simpler terms, what if you could take a picture and be able to adjust what the focus is? You take a picture of someone, but you want to see who's in the background thats blurred out. Well with this new lens from Adobe you'll be able to adjust all that!

Playing Catch Up

So I was gone for a while, and I was gone for a reason, one of them being that I was at Wonder Con over the weekend. I have a very busy week ahead on me so lets get this ball rolling before I fall more behind shall we?

For those of you curious yes I am aware that I miss a Lost review, the reason behind it is that I missed last weeks episode :( but I'll just have to post up 2 reviews this week instead of one.

Definitely the highlight of the day I was there (Saturday) was the world premiere of JLA the new Frontier, it was based on the comic by the same title that came out 4 years ago. I was really skeptical of it, because in all honesty I'm not a fan of Tim Bruce, who works on all the JLA and JLA unlimited animated series. I was afraid that he wouldn't be accurate to the writing of the book as well as the historical timeline of when this book takes place in ( the 50's).

And my reasoning behind that would be that when he took over Batman the animated series after Paul Dini I felt that the series went to crap along with the animation that is now a well known flat style. With the first season of Batman they were inventing a new art style not seen since the days of Fantasia with paintings drawn over black paper etc. And a style that many copied including the anime Big O. It became a flat style and all the characters looked the same especially the females. But I was wrong and he did a great job with the New Frontier, one of the things that made it stand alone from all the animated releases to date would have to be the voice acting, my man Kyle (pictured above) did the voice of Superman, Xena the warrior princess herself did the voice of Wonderwoman. Even Neil Patrick Harris did a voice!

The movie was really epic, in a excalibur kinda way. You know these hereos you know how they got their powers its not rocket science. But seeing them grow to what we know them as is something thats just a fanboys dream, its what we like and a nudge to us. I like stuff like that its a shout out to us who grew up and took the time to read these books growing up. Now since they had to cram the whole book into a hour or so, it wasn't completely accurate but still really good for what they had to cram in that time space.

I can't say anything bad about it cause I liked it so much and urge you guys to buy it when it comes out on DVD you wont be disappointed!

As for the rest of WonderCon it was ok but my thing was that I didn't have money to spend so uh yeah.

Pink DS Bento Box

This is making me so hungry as I enter the homestretch at the end of my workday...and it's pink! So cute! Someone make me one of these, please!
mel

Mario Kart first Impressions

Via Gonintendo

1-up has its first impressions up for Mario Kart which can be checked out HERE. The main thing which I was concerned about were the controls, which I am proud to announce that you can use the game cube controller or the classic controller.

Kids say the Darndest things!

A great article is up about what 6yr olds in Japan think about Mario and his brother, you'd be surprised at what they think the family structure is, here's what they though it was.

(note Koopa is Bowser in Japan)

1. Mini Koopa is Mario’s brother, stepbrother or cousin.
2. How height of someone is directly proportional to how old they are.
3. Mario’s father (or uncle) often kidnaps his own daughter (or niece).
4. It is up to Mario to constantly defeat his father (or uncle) to win the love of his sister.
5. Mario is possibly romantically involved with his sister.
6. Mario has an evil brother.
7. No one knows who Waluigi is, but he hangs out with the family at most parties.

CLICH HERE TO READ ARTICLE.

New toys from Toy Fair

Can't wait for these suckers later this year!

To check out more stuff and what looks like more through the week click this link for up to the min. updates.

CLICK HERE.

Hentai Song

Via Kotaku-

The jist of the lyrics are something like:
"Stupid, stupid pervert! Stupid, stupid pervert! Pervert, pervert, pervert! Creepy, creepy, that's enough! Creepy, I'm pissed! Creepy, creepy, unbelievable! Dorky! Demon! Demon! Liar!" Blah, blah, blah. Funnier in Japanese, but still still amusing.

(for those inpatient one hit up the 3: 1/2 mark to check out the song)

Girl playing Video game tunes

News going around today is about a Japanese girl who plays video game tunes on a flute. Just hit the video and click on her profile to see the other 27 videos she's posted.

You might want to turn the volume down cause its 

pretty loud!

Sea Shell house

This seashell inspired abode was built by designed by Senosiain Arquitectos for a couple in Mexico City. It's amazing.

Via Geekologie.

House of the Future returns!

Associated Press-

Disneyland's original "House of the Future," a pod-shaped, all-plastic dwelling, quickly seemed quaint and closed its doors after a decade, in 1967. Its oddities included handsfree phones, wall-sized televisions and electric razors.

But Disney announced Wednesday that it will soon open a new dwelling in Tomorrowland - this time in partnership with 21st century technology giants.

The 5,000-square-foot home, scheduled to open in May, will look like a suburban tract home outside. But inside it will feature hardware, software and touch-screen systems that could simplify everyday living.

Disneyland

Heading out to Disneyland once again, well actually not till March. But felt like posting up some Disney news. There is this really long read but worth it to get a insiders look at what might effect your trips to Disneyland.

Lost Review 2/15/08

Assassin!

First we start the episode with Sayid and a flash forward, which sets us up to believe that he's one of the Oceanic 6. On top of that he's up to his assassin tricks and looking bad ass as ever!

Can I point out something without going to much side tracked? Has anyone ever noticed that everyone on the island is really good at whatever their profession is, for expample. Sayid is the most smartest guy on the island and can fix just about anything including helicopters, on top of that he can tell when someone is lying. Jack is a doctor but does it help that he's the best doctor in the world!? And last but not least Locke is the best and hunting, its pretty crazy how it works but it does make for good t.v. 

Back on track again sorry for that, anyways I love this running theme of trying to find answers just like we try to watching the show, Desmond asks then why did she have a picture of me!? And of coarse they don't have a answer for it! But at least they are asking the questions which I like.

In the next Flash Forward we get a glimpse at Sayid again, and no lie I was thinking to myself that damn Sayid is like a secret agent, I mean look at him in that suit!

What time travel? possible I mean this really reminds me of something hmmm........

There is this scene in the first Back to the Future where doc brown, holds up a stop watch and one from his dog! Could Lost be in some Time displacement?

Hurley really showed his colors, and can play a good bad guy, we know he got off the island soooo, does he join Jack eventually?

And finally the end was the best what does it all me is it a flash forward?

here's my theory  of the oceanic 6 Its Jack, Kate, Hurley, Desmond, Sayid and Ben. or Sayid and Ben aren't off the island which means that 2 others got off. But I'm sure its the way I got it set up.

Now one last rant to rap this up I want to point out how great that every season is so different from each other:

1st season is like this

People crash on island and there is lots of action and suspense and oh yes mystery.

2nd season

more at a look at faith and maybe religion? A little more answers but not quite there.

3rd season

A bad look at the others and then writers change and we are given what we like Kate, and Jack and our favs.

4th season is up in the air but looks like action and mystery, thats it folks hope you enjoyed this and I'll see ya all soon. :)