Journal
This news is actually a little old but since we’ve just had the Christmas holiday I figure I can give myself a bit of slack. That and it’s my blog so I’ll post whatever I like whenever I like 
The tales of Beedle the Bard is a book given to Hermione in the 7th and final Harry Potter book. They are a group of short stories, including the one that explains the Deathly Hallows. In the wizarding world they are very well known, generally passed off as childrens stories - however they hold an element of truth, having messages and meanings that can be used to improve yourself and possibly even defeat evil (indirectly).
In the real world… The Tales of Beedle the Bard is a series of 7 books, hand written and illustrated by JK Rowling. Each book is leather bound and embellished with different precious stones. 6 of the …
December 20, 2007 | Links
Fellow 9ruller - Justin Ruckman - has mentioned a very funky Adobe Flash based artist on his blog, Centripetal Notion.
Erik Natzke’s generative paintings are made using Flash, sometimes from sampled photos and video and other times from scratch. He controls very specifically the environment in which his creations thrive, leaving the artwork’s specificities to the whim of the code
The pictures his software creates go far beyond the normal Flash random image generators, creating the sort of thing I would actually like to hang on my wall. Some of them, despite being machine created, actually look, at least partially, like they’ve been painted with some sort of natural media (oil/ acrylic paint).
Below are a few of my faves - you can check out the original post on Centripetal Notion and Erik Natzkes blog and flickr account for more art than any normal person can handle.
Recently a UK politician claimed teens playing games is making them less intelligent, in fact the following quote comes from a very popular tabloid - the Sun.
KIDS hooked on computer games have sent England plummeting down world league tables for reading, it was claimed yesterday.
A study of literacy at primary schools in 41 countries saw our youngsters slip from third to 15th in just five years.
Ministers claimed pupils spend so much time on consoles that they are not burying their noses in books.
I’m not going to say that games are not to blame, they work very nicely as a distraction from school work (and reading), but before games we had television and movies - they worked just as well.
In recent years the brain training genre, popularised by Nintendo (with games like More Brain Training) and continued by a number of other companies (Ubisoft, and Sega) are recent examples …
Speed Racer is a cartoon from my childhood that I have distant memories of. My memories of the show are that it was one of the best toons ever.
It’s now been turned into a feature film by the Wachowskis. I love the Matrix, V for Vendetta, and Bound and based solely upon this trailer, I think I’ll love Speed Racer too. The trailer captures the super frenetic pace of the cartoon perfectly - it really is a cartoon brought to life.
I seem to remember the Wachowskis saying something like “we want to do with films things you can’t do in real life” - and they’ve certainly managed that with this.
A bit of something different for the weekend - robots beating each other up. The future is now!
Spoilers…
I love that the tiny robot beats the big one - bigger isn’t always better The moves they pull off are pretty cool too. I just hope they don’t start giving these things pointy weapons and artificial intelligence, else it’ll be the start of the Terminator movies.
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December 3, 2007 | Links
Wired have an recently held a competition to see if they can find who has the saddest work cubicle. I’m pleased to say mine isn’t too bad (technically I don’t have a cubicle, but my workspace is enough for me) and is certainly nothing like the ones shown here.
Binary Moon
Gun Wing
Rocket Boards
Bubble Blitz
Bubble Bomb