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Such a wonderful track! Here, see what you make of Erasure - I Could Fall In Love With You. Damn, he's better than ever! (And for music to look forward to, make a note of Paul Hartnoll's forthcoming "The Ideal Condition" - there's some trace of Orbital in there, but it's quite a different animal, with all but one of the tracks prominently featuring traditional instruments, in addition to the welcome swathes of electronica)

Oh! New GPG key up. It's valid until (quite coincidentally) 7/7/7.

UK viewers of Doctor Who might want to bear in mind next weekend's - Gridlock - will be airing at 7.40pm, due to an FA Cup semi-final.

bob_basset does it again, with a pair of dragon paws, fashioned as usual of black leather.

I wonder what applications lasers might have in cooking.. a low power CO2 laser, say around 25W. There's the obvious - precise cutting, perhaps for complex pasta tiling patterns; but I'm thinking more in terms of actual cooking. It seems with that extreme degree of controllability, effects such as surface-layer cooking would be quite simple to accomplish, such as forming a solid layer of yolk on an egg, leaving the inside fluid. Or making a mesh of lines or dots on an oyster, for a simultaneously cooked and raw set of textures and flavors. Of course, if you want to get silly, how about pinging individual corn kernels upwards and have them popped in mid-air? Tracking wouldn't be that difficult, given there'd be no need to consider elapsed time between triggering the laser and the energy reaching the corn. Unless using a Star Wars laser, of course.

Via momentrabbit, word of an extremely rare sighting of a Sumatran striped rabbit.

I know there are one or two friends who might enjoy this round of foam encasement.. ^_^

Hint for building the PSP toolchain on OS X - tweak line 263 of toolchain.sh from:
$MAKE clean; $MAKE || { echo "ERROR BUILDING BINUTILS"; exit; }
$MAKE clean; $MAKE -r || { echo "ERROR BUILDING BINUTILS"; exit; }
ie, add "-r" to the second make command. Otherwise the build will burp out with a parse error. You may also want pspgl, a subset of OpenGL; and for tutorials, there's a port of the first ten from NeHe's collection.

Some folks might be interested in Beyond the Red Line, a (new version) Battlestar Galactica game, demo available for OS X, Linux, and Windows. It's a fan project of seemingly high quality, using the open source Freespace 2 engine from Volition Software. Being a work in progress, the demo's all that's available for now.

An Easter parade, of the NSFW variety. =:D

And there's even a little bit of an egg theme in this rather wonderful, creepy, surreal, and stylish CG animated short by Philippe Grammaticopoulos: La Régulateur. A couple want to have a child.. so, they visit a doctor. otter3 would like this, and it might appeal to the darker side of mythos_amante.

discopanda noticed a rather cool illuminated display matrix, of the kind you might use for light patterns, or large animated images.. but made of fire. =:D

So, there's apparently a sequel of sorts to "Turkish Star Wars".. maybe I'll watch it as a warm-up for last weekend's Doctor Who. =:D With an IMDb rating of 1.5, you know it's got to be good. ^_^

The Adventures of Ohmiomyo and Karma (caution: Flash intro with sound) doesn't always score a hit, but there's much to be said for the tales of a wandering Buddhist monk and bunny.

Generally, I only wear shirts with a furry theme, but I'd be quite tempted by one of these, starring Bruce Schneier.

Aardman, fresh from their split with Dreamworks, have apparently snuggled up with Sony instead, with a three-year deal.

Meet the Robinsons: not bad, not great. Decent enough animation, though the character designs were somewhat uninspired; some lovely scene designs, though, especially around the Robinsons' house. Its main flaw, I think, was a combination of two fundamental problems: poor pacing, and lacklustre writing. Even halfway through, I wasn't really sold on it - it does gain momentum later on, and redeems itself quite well, albeit with a somewhat hamfisted ending. The writing - was simply there, with little to lift it up, let alone any effort to establish a background for any but the main character. Still, not a terrible way to spend the time, but not something to go out of your way for - it's less a movie than a professional demo reel.

Hayate no Gotoku (Hayate the Combat Butler): I loved the sound of it, but it didn't really hit me. It had its moments, but seemed to be trying too hard to be wacky, in the same way Excel Saga failed, compared to Fairy Princess Ren. (But then, FPR only made it through its two pilot episodes, and ES ran for a full 26-ep season, so, it's just me =:) It stars Hayate as a hapless student with parents who outright refuse to work, leaving him to keep things afloat. After bringing in his first month's pay as a messenger, they run off with the money, leaving their creditors to him - and these are more the "sleeping with the fishes" sort of lenders. He happens across the rich heroine, and thinks of faking an abduction to gain enough of a ransom - but she's kidnapped for real first, leaving him to (quite ably, but very painfully) rescue her. And so the stage is set for her to give him a stable, well-paying job as her butler. I may try a few more episodes.

Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann: nicely weird. ^_^ Not nearly as odd as I'd thought it might be, though, with several of the key FLCL folks behind it. It's set in an underground village, where our hero grows weary of the routine of just drilling away to extend the reach of the village, burrowing all day long. A few others feel that way, too; so when he hits upon a mysterious metallic face, he's excited by the news, only to be interrupted by another weird (dinosaur-like) metallic head. (It has arms and legs, just about) Which sets about trying to destroy all of them. Yes, it's a parody of mecha, and quite a nicely deranged one. As with HnG, it's only seen the first episode fansubbed so far, but I'll probably be following this.

Highlight of the past few days, though, is unquestionably The Fountain, the most recent work by Darren Aronofsky, best known for Pi. I shan't dwell on the details, as it's as much an experience as a story - a fantastically layered tale of eternal life, and love transcending time - with some outstanding cinematography to lay forth the tale visually. (Due out on R1 DVD/HD DVD on May 15, and R2 DVD on May 28. This would be one for HD, if you have the means) Stunning.

Quite an excellent photo of gatcat in this Chicago story. Has he really lowered himself to the level of Quizno's, though?

Quote for the day, from the CEO of Seagate, hard drive manufacturers: "Let's face it, we're not changing the world. We're building a product that helps people buy more crap - and watch porn." (The rest of the interview's also good; just simple, frank answers on the tech industry and its players)
Heh! A bit different, true. ^_^ I should try Go sometime.. my usual casual game tends to be Backgammon, but I should change to a different app, as I feel I'm getting used to the style of the bkgm.com Motif applet.
Yes. You should play Go. Get an account on KGS and you'll find people who can teach you. Beware, you're likely to loose a lot if you start playing people right away.