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A trailer for the upcoming Special Extended Edition of the final installment of The Lord of the Rings has been released. The trailer is 6 minutes long and details some of the new added scences which total a stunning 50 minutes! I can't wait to get this one on the 14th of December! Now I just have to find time to watch it...but that is what Christmas Vacation is for right!
IGN has posted a new trailer of Final Fantasy XII and it is amazing. I can't believe how realistic the CG from Square Enix looks. I can't wait till this game comes out! Enjoy!
Looks like there are some intresting articles floating around about using your Mac as a HDTV DVR! Check this atricle out from MacOSXHints for some great references to tools you can use to record HiDef shows straight over your firewire interface. Hmmm...may be time to get rid of my dish afterall...
The final flight of the X-43A Scramjet was a success! The jet flew at 110,000 feet at a speed of Mach 10 (which is about 7000 MPH!) breaking the speed record. Man that is fast! NASA spokes person Sean O'Keefe was quoted saying "These developments will also help us advance the Vision for Space Exploration, while helping to advance commercial aviation technology..." So my next flight to England will take only 30 minutes. Sounds good to me!
Digital pictures are a huge part of everyones life now-a-days. With all the little kids bragging about how many megapixles their camera has, I think these guys win. Their 2.5 GigaPixle photo contains over 7.5 gigabytes of data. This is one huge image! Playing around with the zooming image is quite impressive. You can even tell the time on the big clock in the background, or even read the license plates on the cars! I just wish he would have taken a picture of something more interesting...
There are others touting their horn with huge images like this as well. See an impressive picture of Bryce Canyon here, or some other cool pictures of more tropical and intresting settings here. Hmm...what should I make a huge picture of??
Here are some links to sites that can help you make your own panoramic and large pictures:
http://panotools.sourceforge.net/
http://www.ptgui.com/
http://www.kekus.com/ptmac/
http://hugin.sourceforge.net/
http://www.epaperpress.com/ptlens/ - fixes the pin cushion effect
http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/index.html
http://www.tawbaware.com/ptasmblr.htm
http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/pano12ml.htm
In an email sent to supporters and purchasers of Audion, Panic Inc. has announced it is retiring is MP3 player for the Mac. For more than 5 years, Audion has been brining Mac users a wonderful MP3 player that is one of the best examples of what a real Macintosh application should be. Audion has been my MP3 player of choice on any platform for it's beautiful skinable GUIs, awesome playlist, and support for many different encoders. I will be very sad to see the development of this great application stop, but I understand the reasons behind the decision.
Audion has had quite the story through out it's life. To quote a summary from the email, "...the full story contains all sorts of interesting things, such as how Audion almost became iTunes (!), how we almost became an AOL / Time Warner company, and our how Apple boardroom meeting with Steve Jobs went." If you would like to read the full story of Audion, check it out here.
In a related news story, Nullsoft, makers of Winamp, has also closed it doors. Is this the end of the MP3 player innovation? Are there any more real features that can be added to MP3 players? What kinds of things are MP3 players missing? It seems that the new features have basically stopped in the last year. What will be next is the question I would like to ask.
In an email sent to supporters and purchasers of Audion, Panic Inc. has announced it is retiring is MP3 player for the Mac. For more than 5 years, Audion has been brining Mac users a wonderful MP3 player that is one of the best examples of what a real Macintosh application should be. I will be very sad to see the development of this great application stop, but I understand the reasons behind the decision. On a good note, Audion is now available for download in it's full version for free here!
This very special Mi-24 helicopter is presently flying in Afghanistan, where it is no doubt causing quite a stir. It is quite the paint job and I sure would run if I saw that thing a comin'!! It is pretty cool that the troops are over there, yet they still got to do something as cool as that while they are there. I gotta hand it to the artist, cause that is just awesome! Click on Read More to see more pictures!
Is it always hard to shop for the holidays, especially for the geek who has everything. Well here is a guide from New Scientist that promises "No More Socks" for us in geekdom. The Editors Choice is definitely a cool one for any Kid At Heart. So to all the Wife's, Girlfriends, siblings, and parents of a geek, go here and take a look at what we really want for Christmas!
Another funny flash base cartoon was brought to my attention and I couldn't stop laughing with this one. So everyone should go check out http://homestarrunner.com/
Watch the character bits as they are pretty funny, but I couldn't stop laughing when I watched the Toon "Strong Bad in Jail". The emails are quite funny as well. Enjoy!
As many people have come to realize, George Lucas couldn't leave well enough alone (again) and there were more changes to the Starwars Trilogy that was recently released on DVD. Over at DVDAnswers, they have posted a great walk through of the changes that were made between the original and the Special Edition and again in the DVD versions. They have an article for A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. Each film has very interesting changes and additions. I find the color correction they did absolutely amazing, so I have to hand it to Lucas for that. However, the Lightsaber consistency issues we see in the DVD are downright horrible. So while the DVDs look amazing, there are still parts that should have just been left alone...
NOTE: It seems the DVDAnswers is getting a bit Slashdotted right now, so check back later if you can't get to them now.
I have changed the comment restriction so that any one can leave comments (not just TypeKey memebers). So please feel free to leave me some comments on the posts (and let me know someone is reading!!). Thanks!
AnandTech has put up a round up of 16x DVD burners that support dual layered media. They test their speed, reliability, compatibility and feature sets. There were 3 main contendors here: Pioneer DVR-108D, NEC ND-3500A, and the LG GSA-4160B.
The winner overall was the NEC's ND-3500A for it's speed, reliability, and bitsetting feature (which increases compatibilty with set-top DVD players).
