For Such A Small Guy He Sure Gets Everywhere!

Those of you who are readers of the great and wise Gnome will know that he occasionally rises from his lair - filled to the brim with retro goodness - to bring his enlightenment to the rest of the web (do you think I'm plugging him enough here?). While we all know him for the lair he also runs Gnomes Gaming on the Go, The SEGA Master System Junkyard and Retro Treasures along with the occasional guest post here and there. You'd have thought he'd have covered all bases there but, no, on he moves to conquer the Internet.

Along with Chris (The Artful Gamer) and Gary (From the Gutter) Gnome is now writing over at the recently launched Game Cabaret which, in Gnome's own words, explores the 'the sexy, dark, humorous and at times serious side of video gaming'. After breathing in that new blog smell check out wonderful posts on 'Repressed Homoeroticism in R-Type' and realism in games through the film Cabaret.

With the excellent posts over at all three of these bloggers blogs I'm sure it won't be long before Game Cabaret is pumping out constant quality. Your owe it to yourself to check it out.

Control Second Life With Your Brain.

There's a common misconception that everyone who plays video games are lazy because all they seem to do is sit on their ass all day. With the advent of the Wii this opinion has changed a little but there's still the idea that video gamers could be doing far more with their time. So, when some Japanese bioengineers come up with a way of playing games without even so much as moving a muscle you might concede that these 'haters' have a point.

Unfortunately the 'game' they decided to test this on was Second Life and one could argue whether or not the 'games' users actually have brains that think about anything other than sex (cheer up, I'm kidding!). The device works by monitoring electrical activity in the motoro cortex via eternal electrodes on the scalp. Hmm, I'll let the experts explain this one;

All a user has to do to control his/her avatar is imagine performing various movements. The activity monitored by the headpiece is read and plotted by an electroencephalogram, which relays it to a computer running a brain wave analysis algorithm that interprets the imagined movements. A keyboard emulator then translates the data into signals which can be used to control the movements of the user's on-screen avatar in real-time. - Neurophilosophy

Ok, so Second Life users may just want to use this technology to shift their position on the bed but this device is potentially revolutionary. The video demonstration doesn't show anything more than simply walking around the environment but, of course, this is still in it's early stages. It's a little creepy thinking about it but a future where we control computers and devices just by thinking is looking very likely now.

The Japanese always invent the cool stuff.

Brain-computer interface for controlling Second Life avatars - Neurophilosophy (Via BoingBoing).
Video Demonstration - YouTube.
Keio University press release - Keio University.

Real Lives.

It's not often a game makes me really think about how lucky I really am. In a world full of misery, poverty, and war to live in a warm house full of food, access to a TV and the Internet, and stacks of commercial products I have it good. When you're confronted with the plight of the majority of the rest of the world (remember if you're reading this you're most likely amongst the top 10% richest people in the world) you find it hard to complain when you can't find a McDonalds near you. Real Lives succeeds in showing you just how harsh life is for most of the worlds population and, in the end, it's all a tad bit depressing.

The basic premise of Real Lives sees you being born at a random location around the world into a completely randomised family. Since the game uses real-world statistics you'll most likely be born into a third-world country or a family that doesn't exactly have it great. This makes sense as the games aim is to educate you about the world's plight without just handing you a pamphlet filled with hundreds of statistics (the game provides a bit of information about each occurrence - which makes it all the more interesting.). However, you will sometimes be born into a fairly well-off country/family. In any case you can emigrate to any country you wish as long as you have the cash.

It may sound interesting at first - and it is - but it's so damn depressing. For example, on my first attempt I was born as Rafiki Mayat in Senegal. From the start I had my growth stunted from inadequate protein and then I had a whopping cough. A year later I'd caught measles and was suffering from malaria. At the same time I also had schistosomiasis and by the time I was nine I was a famine victim. Later on I found out I was gay, got chlamydia and died at the ripe old age of forty-two. You may think this is going a bit overboard but the sad fact is that people actually live lives like this somewhere in the world.

Even when you're born into a family doing well you can have major problems. Born as girl in South Africa I was incredibly gifted academic wise. After graduating college with a physics degree and attending graduate school to receive an advanced degree in physics I became a doctor and tried desperately to find some romance. Even though my appearance score was high I suffered rejection after rejection. Even when I started seeing someone we eventually broke up. There was even one guy who was such a bastard that he dumped me after I'd been raped.

After shunning men and becoming a lesbian I moved to London and found a nice woman to settle down with. Unfortunately I died at forty-five in a road traffic accident.

Damn, life is hard.

Download it here (the evaluation version is free forever. The only thing missing is the character creator where you can customise your own character. Everything else seems to be included in the free version so you really don't have to spend $25, but I'm sure it all goes to a good cause.).

(Found via TIGSource.)

EDIT: I've just noticed that in the evaluation copy the number of lives you've lived is the number of seconds the game will take to load up. I knew there had to be a catch somewhere.

Got a game you want me to take a look at? Email me or comment in the comments section!

Bear Robot To Rescue Wounded Troops

What's one thing missing from the battlefield? One thing that would really look out of place in all those explosions and that dying thing people tend to do? A teddy bear of course!

Introducing the latest weapon of mass destruction from your friends at the US military! Ok, it's not going to be taking out any terrorists anytime soon but it has it's very own purpose on the battlefield;

The Battlefield Extraction Assist Robot (BEAR) can scoop up even the heaviest of casualties and transport them over long distances over rough terrain. - BBC News

See what they did there, with the BEAR thing? New Scientist magazine says that the 'friendly appearance' of the robot is designed to put the wounded at ease. Right, so if I was lying in the middle of a battlefield in extreme pain and a teddy bear hopped along and said 'Come with me if you want to live!' I'd probably freak out and believe I was going crazy due to the pain.

There is one problem I have with it though. What's going to stop the enemy firing at this slow moving target and blowing it to fluffy little pieces? Common sense would dictate that they don't send it out under fire. Instead, the robot will be used to navigate difficult terrain and disaster areas, meaning other soldiers lives will not have to put their own lives in danger. The thing is, if I was lying injured somewhere I'd much rather have a fellow soldier helping me than some faceless robot - even if it does have the 'bear-like' face. Well, as long as it doesn't look like this anyway;


Bear robot rescues wounded troops - BBC

Vecna Robotics

Those Germans Do Some Crazy Things!

No LOLcats here! Instead we have a German guy who's attached a camera to his cat - whom is named Mr.Lee - to catch first-person perspectives of it's daily life.

I love cats, I'm not afraid to admit it, and there's an essence of voyeurism in wanting to see what cats get up to during their lazy days. If I attached a camera to my own cat it wouldn't be all that interesting as all she seems to do is sleep these days.

Check out the website, if you're really that interested, for the images.

Mr. Leee CatCam - (Via Boing Boing)

Did Pirates Really Say "Arrrr"?

Apparently not;

Both that phrase and the accent that goes with it are strictly Hollywood. They originated with Robert Newton, the actor who played Long John Silver in the movies and on TV through much of the 1950s. Newton was from Dorset, in the Cotswolds district of southwest England, and the regional accent he brought to the movies included a rolled "r." - Slate

Did Pirates Really Say "Arrrr"? - Slate

The True Historic Origins Of The Laugh-Out-Loud Cats?

We all love LOLcats (and if you don't know what the hell I'm talking about then where have you been?) but do any of us actually know the origin?

Not many people know this, but my great grandfather Aloysius "Gorilla" Koford, was also a cartoonist. From 1912-1913 he produced a comic strip which was featured in 17 newspapers, including the Philadephia Star-Democrat, the Tampa Telegraph, and the Santa Fe Good-Newser. The strip was entitled "the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats" and featured the exploits of one Meowlin Q. Kitteh (a sort of cat hobo-raconteur) and his young hapless kitten friend, Pip. The strip did not last long due to a run-in my great-grandfather had with none other than William Randolph Hearst.

See, the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats was run by a one of Heart's competitors, so “Big Willy” (as Hearst was known in his day) used the bully pulpit of his media empire to hound and mock the efforts of my great-grandfather. Hearst scribes insinuated Aloysius was an actual trained gorilla and purported to have evidence in the form of banana shipping statements. - Hobotopia

Of course, a Boing Boing reader points out that cheesburgers weren't invented until 1924 so the 1912-1913 timeline wouldn't work. The funny thing is - it's a pretty obvious hoax - that Boing Boing actually believed it in the first place!

It provided a good laugh though!

The real origin of Laugh-Out-Loud Cats - Hobotopia (Via Boing Boing)

Express Yourself Through Google Earth!

GeoGreeting allows you to create your own messages using aerial shots of buildings around the world. Using Google Earth and the hawk-like eyes of it's many users you can express the inner geek in you to anyone you wish!

The above message is made up of buildings from Tuscon, Shanghai, Minneapolis, Boise, Albuquerque, Bangkok, Hainburg, and Portland.

GeoGreeting.com (Via Miss Cellania)

I Love New Tokyo.

A simply amazing video of the sights and life in and around Tokyo.

I've promised myself that I will go here one day. Anyone want to tag along?

Hobbit Home.

'In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit...'

Ok, you know the story. If you don't then you've either been living in a hole for the last century (no pun intended) or you just don't care. How about seeing what it's like to bang your head on the ceiling every morning? Unless, of course, you happen to be terribly short and have hairy feet.

Thankfully the dimensions are vastly larger but the likeness still remains. Not only is something different for a change but it turns out to be pretty cheap too.

"You are looking at pictures of our family home in Wales. It was built by myself and my father in law with help from passers by and visiting friends. 4 months after starting we were moved in and cosy. I estimate 1000-1500 man hours and £3000 put in to this point. Not really so much in house buying terms (roughly £60/sq m excluding labour). - Makezine

It's also extremely environmentally friendly; using solar panels for electricity and water from a nearby spring. It even has a compost toilet (though I doubt the smell would be all too nice).

It makes you look around your shameful mass-produced home in disdain.

A low impact woodland home - Makezine (Via Wonderland)

History of the Home Video Game Console.

I'm too lazy to check if the Gnome has already posted this link but I expect (due to his amazing knowledge in all things retro) it's somewhere in there.

A Brief History of the Home Video Game Console points and laughs at how little I know about old consoles. Until I found this page I'm ashamed to admit that I'd never even heard of the Magnavox Odyssey (I've seen it around but the name escaped me), even though it's apparently the first home video game console in history!

Feel free to smirk at this lack of knowledge while I go and read up on the link. If you feel so inclined, you can also press that little left mouse button.

A Brief History of the Home Video Game Console - thegameconsole.com

The Sweet Tooth's Version Of Tolkien's Masterpiece.

The best thing about the Internet is that there's always something new and interesting for us to look at - more than you could ever need - something unique and mind-blowing that, without the Internet, we probably would have never found out about. They say that the Internet is unproductive; for the reader, maybe - but the immense amount of productivity showcased on the Internet makes it all the worthwhile.

So, here's a contender for today’s best use of productivity. Granted, it may serve no purpose in the long run but no one can deny the fact that it's freaking awesome.



Yes, ladies and gentlemen, what better way to celebrate the Internet's greatness than to present to you a complete recreation of the Battle of Helm's Deep (from the excellent The Lord of the Rings trilogy) made entirely out of sweets (or, if you prefer the word, candy).

This is the zoomed out view. The whole thing was constructed out of cardboard, glue, icing and… well, candy. It clocked in at about 7 feet long by 3 feet deep by 2 feet tall. We used over 500 Gummy Bears as orcs and Uruk-Hai. The Elves, Dwarves and Men were represented by sour patch kids. Most of these were of course corpses. - Miss(ed) Manners

Aragorn's valiant charge into the mele and Gandalf's attempt to rescue them - this thing has it all. Walls made out of Jolly Ranchers with Starburst for steps, Nerds for blood and Tootsie Pops for catapults. It may seem like one truly massive waste of time but it succeeds in providing a great deal of entertainment and wonderment on behalf of the Internet throngs. This, and porn, is what the Internet was made for.

Hit the link for more pictures and the creators description of the battle.

What I Did Over Christmas Vacation - Miss(ed) Manners.

New York, New York - It's A Hell Of A Tip!

Just how dirty is New York City?

Grab a power-washer and see for yourself.

(Via Boing Boing)

Game Boy Around The World.

This is just one of a series of images of this kid playing on his GBA at famous tourist attractions around the world. Locations include Stonehenge, the Cliffs of Dover and the Pool of Bethesda. Pity he's way too engrossed in whatever game he's playing to take in the full wonder of the sights. Someone should buy this kid a DS Lite!

Hit this link for the full Flickr set!

Game Boy around the world - Flickr.