LEGO has been on top of licensing its brand into videogames, something that could have ended in disastrous shovelware but instead has led to some pretty great titles. (And fingers remain crossed for LEGO Universe, the upcoming MMO.) More »
What better way to show your contempt for the mail-order set of “classics” on your bookshelf than burning through their hearts with a Lightsaber? After all, if you’re never going to read Moby Dick or Ulysses, you might at least make them useful.
Now you can, with the glowing Lightsaber book-ends from the Star Wars shop. The Lightsaber doesn’t really spear through the books, although judging from the photos it does turn at least part of them into a clammy mess of scrambled egg. That’s not quite fair: the photos show a prototype, so the final shipping version should look (hopefully) a little more like molten metal, and the light part will glow via battery-powered lamps.
No amount of the Force will help you keep track of your place in the books however. Now, at least, you can say “This is not the page I’m looking for.” $50, ships March 31st. Move along.
Exclusive Illuminated Lightsaber Bookends [Star Wars Shop. Thanks, Jon!]
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Back up your files on this thumb-drive and you’ll keep your data from crossing to the Dark Side. The lightsaber drives hook up using a USB plug hidden inside the handle and can store just 1GB each, which is hardly enough to justify their $20 price-tag.
The lightsabers do at least make good use of the normally annoying flashing lights found on almost all pen-drives: When you plug them in they will glow, either with the malevolent red of Darth Vader or the moronic, headstrong and self-centered green of Luke Skywalker.
Available now, as officially endorsed Lucasfilm collectables.
Japanese Lightsaber USB Thumbdrive [Think Geek]
We’ve got the first exclusive clip from Seth MacFarlane‘s second Family Guy Star Wars spoof. Since Empire Strikes Back is the best of the bunch, MacFarlane is really going to have to bring it… and so far, so good.
The official name for the Empire Strikes back spoof is Something Something Something Dark Side, and it’ll be on DVD & Blu-ray 12/22.
While we’re still busy thinking up legitimate uses for a humanoid robot, Aldebaran Robotics keeps finding newer and zanier ways to play with its Nao. The latest is a pre-programmed Star Wars routine that should have all you aging loyalists positively moist with glee, and even includes a terrific R2D2 impersonation that is not to be missed. Past the break, you shall find it. Oh, and as to real world uses, there are further videos of Nao reading out your emails and doing balancing acts, which may be found at the source link.
Continue reading Nao performs Star Wars homage, scores mad geek cred
Nao performs Star Wars homage, scores mad geek cred originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 08:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Today’s big budget movies have the technology to create worlds and characters unlike anything we’ve ever seen before… but is that really a good thing? What if CGI just distracts from all the important things about moviemaking?
Wired magazine’s recent story about the making of Avatar contained the following passage:
Cameron is trying to show me something with a laser pointer. He queues up a scene towards the end of Avatar and freezes the frame on an image of a large crowd of Na’vi. He uses the pointer to draw attention to an ornate headdress composed of hundreds of tiny beads. The onscreen image is amazingly crisp, and the headdress appears utterly real. Each bead was designed by a digital artist, Cameron says, so it would look handmade. “Every leaf, every blade of grass in this world was created,” he says, and his laser pointer streaks across the screen, alighting on so many things I can’t follow its path.
When I read that, I thought to myself, that’s everything that’s wrong with CGI movies. I’m always torn when it comes to live action movies that rely so heavily on CGI’d surroundings and special effects: On the one hand, it’s amazing what can be done with the technology, but on the other, it’s depressing seeing what has been done with it, as well. CGI has become the atom bomb of movie special effects: Yes, we have the technology to “fix” everything, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we should use it.
In many ways, the argument against the overuse of CGI is like critic Douglas Wolk’s complaint against autotune in modern pop music:
And now, the smallest errors are vanishing, too. The gift that modern digital technology has given pop music is the ability to fix every nagging inconsistency in a recording, note by note and beat by beat. If you hear a contemporary mainstream rock record, you’re almost certainly hearing something that has been digitally nipped and tucked and buffed until it shines.
The little inconsistencies in musicians’ performances aren’t just glitches, though: They’re exactly what we respond to as listeners — the part that feels like “style,” or even like “rock.” The exciting part of guitar-bass-drum-voice music is the alchemy of specific musicians playing with each other, and the way those musicians’ idiosyncratic senses of timing and articulation and emphasis relate to each other. That’s where the rhythmic force of rock ‘n’ roll comes from; that’s also why a great band can replace one of its members with someone who’s technically a more skillful musician, only to discover that their instrumental chemistry isn’t there anymore.
Watching movies where CGI has created entire worlds like Pandora – or The Lord of The Rings‘ Middle Earth or anywhere in the three Star Wars prequels, for that matter – and what you’re seeing may be technically impressive and the work of hundreds of artists up and down the moviemaking food chain, but none of it entirely convinces; there’s a distance that we, as viewers, instinctively pick up on because what we’re watching is so fake that it can’t even convincingly fake verisimilitude. It doesn’t matter how many how many hours or computer modeling programs have been spent to create “lifelike” scenery or surroundings, it will always lack the element of chaos, the potential for mistakes, that makes it something we can believe (and lose ourselves) in. Moviemakers today can try and distract us from that missing piece – with occasionally unintentional results; how many times do we watch something and think that it’s impressive or “must have taken a lot of work,” and not notice that we’re being taken even further out of the story in order to do so – but there hasn’t been any CGI-centric creation that has managed to replace it, yet.
More worryingly, CGI has given free rein to the worst, most-OCD elements of moviemakers’ imaginations. Whereas, before, worldbuilding would have meant coming up with the strongest stories and performances in order to pull audiences in, now both of those seem to often take backseats to the spectacle of the spectacle itself (Think of this summer’s Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, which didn’t appear to make sense, or again, the Star Wars prequels, where Lucas as a director was clearly more in love with the technology responsible for the worlds he was building than the actors and dialogue he was populating them with). That James Cameron has created languages, flora and fauna and hundreds of elements for Avatar‘s Pandora that we may not even really see in the finished product is, at once, both an impressive and incredibly frustrating feat: Good for him for being so dedicated, but without a good story, it’ll be the most expensive window dressing for a store that no-one wants to shop at.
As technology has become more and more adept at literally translating someone’s imagination into a finished product, so, it seems, has the focus of filmmaking become using that technology: Pushing it to create new things, replace reality as closely as possible and take out all of the confusion, disarray and accidents of the real world. But in doing so, actually imagining things seems to have become diminished, both in terms of the creators – because flights of fancy soon become weighed down by translating them into something that computers can understand and model in visually “believable” terms – and in terms of the audience, who now get imaginary worlds presented to them in as close to photo-realistic terms as possible, but missing any genuine life. What we’re left with, then, are movies overpowered by themselves, making everything more “perfect,” more sterile and more lifeless than what we’ve seen before, no matter what our eyes may tell us.
Of course, I’m writing this before seeing Avatar, so maybe I’m wrong; maybe Cameron has spent enough time on the story, perhaps all the actors involved do wonderful work, and all of the work that’s gone into the CGI has created everything we’ve been promised: an immersive, believable new world unlike everything we’ve ever seen before. But everytime I think of Cameron boasting to the Wired journalist about the CGI-creation of blades of grass – because, obviously, real grass isn’t good enough sometimes – I worry that it’ll just be more of the same old empty razzle-dazzle.
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Is your little one a video-game couch potato? JAKKS Pacific may have what you need with the Star Wars Republic Squadron Motion Flight Game ($29.99 list, for ages 5 and up). Your child’s moves control the game, so kids will stay on their feet.
The Star Wars Republic Squadron Motion Flight Game is basically a game controller that you plug into your TV; the game is built in. It has AV cables attached, and on the controller are a menu button, an on/off switch, and dual trigger buttons on both ends and underneath the controller.
Setup was super easy: Since it’s a plug-and-play toy, there’s nothing to build or put together. (And the packaging was easy to get into, unlike with so many toys; you just untie a few strings, and it’s out of the box.) The controller requires four double-A batteries. To insert them, you turn the controller over and unscrew the compartment. Then just plug the AV cord into the proper TV input, hit the on switch, and you’re good to go.
The mission in this entertaining game is to help Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker fight General Grievous and his separatist forces. Your child flies a number of ships in a series of campaigns to help them win (there are over 20 missions included).
Jedi trainees can stop wandering the neighborhood looking for a kindly old man or frog-like hermit to train them in the ways of the force. Uncle Milton’s new Star Wars The Force Trainer can help them hone their mind-object control skills. I’m no longer a kid, but I grew up with Star Wars and still secretly (well not so secretly now) wish I had Jedi mind skills.
The $99 product arrived in our offices last week, and I took it for a test drive earlier today. It takes AA batteries and three AAAs, but otherwise set-up is a no-brainer (get it?). The double AAs go in the base, which uses a fan to push a decorated ping-pong ball up a transparent tube. It communicates wirelessly with the adjustable headset, which features three sensors that ostensibly read your brainwaves and transmit the information back to the base. With the right kind of concentration (sit still, don’t hold your breath, and think about making the ball rise), you can make the fan blow harder (or softer) and send the ball up and down the tube. Training takes you from Padawan level to Jedi Master–Yoda is your audio coach throughout.
Virtually all promotion pictures and video show a boy with his hand stretched toward the device. This isn’t necessary, but a fair amount of concentration is. I didn’t break a sweat during the test drive, but I believe I may have, with Yoda’s help (he coaches you throughout), finally become a Jedi. The proof is in the video.
Check it out, after the jump.
Thanks to Lucasfilm’s nod of approval, ThinkGeek’s got a treat for every Jedi’s snuggly-wuggly-cuddly-just-ten-more-minutes-please-mom side. I wanna throw a sleepover to have an excuse to roll out lotsa these Tauntaun sleeping bags which “simulate the warmth of a Tauntaun carcass.”
It started out as an April Fools joke, but as it happens with most of ThinkGeek’s pranks: People wanted the real thing. So after some pleading with Lucasfilm, ThinkGeek got the blessings needed to bring us this Tauntaun sleeping bag complete with a lightsaber zipper pull. And whether it mimics that Tauntaun smell or not, I’d definitely rather spend $100 on this sleeping bag than try to make my own. [ThinkGeek —Thanks, Nat!]
We don’t know exactly how to say this without overloading your nerd subsystem, but this R2D2 unit packs eight consoles, an integrated sound system and a projector for throwing your Jet Grind Radio sessions onto a wall. The only extras you’ll need are the masses of controllers you see above and the steady constitution to not erupt into geek euphoria. Popular Science reader Brian De Vitis is the man you have to thank for this splicing of console goodness, and he’s been kind enough to also provide a picture of the R2’s mobo-laden innards. It awaits just past the break.
[Via Hack N Mod]
Continue reading R2D2 turned into retro gaming shrine, includes head-mounted projector
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
R2D2 turned into retro gaming shrine, includes head-mounted projector originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Sep 2009 05:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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