Year: 2009

Categories
Flash Games

Play This: Must Pop Words

Created by Bart Bonte, Must Pop Words is a word-themed game where you need to create words from the letter balls that constantly drop onto your playing surface. You get bonus points if you do what the blue penguin-type creature asks of you. If the screen fills up with 50 letters, your game is over.

It’s a simple premise but much harder than it sounds. I seem to lose it when there are too many balls in my face and scored a paltry 2510 points.

Play Must Pop Words at bartbonte. Let us know how much you scored.

[via Neatorama]

Categories
Awesomeness Movies

The Dude Abides: 8-Bit Lebowski Art

Jude Buffum is an illustrator and designer from Philadelphia and has a Flickr photostream full of 8-bit awesomeness, including art from one of the most entertaining stoner flicks ever, The Big Lebowski.

See more of Jude Buffum’s work on his Art/Design/Illustration Flickr set.

[via Blame It On The Voices]

Categories
Arty

Dear Diary 1.0: A Wooden Workstation by Marlies Romberg

Created by Marlies Romberg, a graduate of the Utrecht School of Arts, Dear Diary 1.0 is a fusion between the real world and the digital world, where one finds a computer embedded in a wooden desk.

It comes as a whole piece with a keyboard laser cut into the surface of the desk, a wooden screen, and wooden mouse to match. In the world of plastic and aluminium, Dear Diary is certainly a novel idea.

See more images after the jump.

Continue reading “Dear Diary 1.0: A Wooden Workstation by Marlies Romberg”
Categories
Awesomeness Gadgets Science & Technology Video Clips

Use An Entire Wall As a Trackpad

I love following new technologies. I’m especially excited about the future of our personal computers, and how we interact with them. Microsoft’s video about the future of personal computing was amazing, and Asus’ incarnation of that technology was a great attempt.

Scratch input is the ability to transform any surface that is remotely textured into a sort of trackpad. Your desk, a wall, your door, the shower, whatever. You can even use your clothes. Using this, you could scratch your finger in a clockwise circle to increase volume, for example, or double-tap to pause your music. You’d be able to apply the gestures to your browser if you wanted, and opening and closing tabs could be a matter or one or two taps. What’s even more fantastic is that since it works on vibration, you can scratch the wall far away from the sensor and it’ll still work perfectly.

I don’t want to spoil this for you, so just watch the video, and once you’ve picked your jaw up off the floor, post a comment and tell us what you think.

[via Gizmodo]

Categories
Arty Awesomeness Featured Movies Video Clips

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

From Terry Gilliam, the acclaimed director of the cult movies Brazil, 12 Monkeys, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, comes his latest film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.

Having made a deal with the devil, the 1,000-year-old Doctor Parnassus has gained the ability to take people beyond their imaginations. One day, the devil comes to collect on their arrangement, and the good doctor and his theatre troupe must travel through mystical parallel worlds to get back what is most dear to him.

This was final film role for the late Heath Ledger, who died a third of the way during filming. As a result his role was recast to use Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell to portray “physically transformed versions” of Ledger’s character. See the fantastical HD trailer below.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is set for a UK release on October 16th, 2009.

[via MTV Movies Blog]

Categories
Flash Games

Play This: Gravitee 2

Gravitee 2 is about golf. But wait, don’t turn away in digust – it’s in space! There are different challenges that require you to guide your ball through the cosmos collecting items and flying through hoops. The Newtonian physics used in the game means that the planets and stellar objects exert a gravitational pull on your ball – this could aid or hinder you depending on the situation you’re in.

There are 40 levels of interstellar golf with 90 achievements, 3 different medals to earn per level, and 4 different game play types. Play Gravitee 2 at Kongregate.

[via Jay Is Games]

Categories
Cautionary Tales

Nagasaki, 64 Years Ago

Last week we covered the horrific events of August 6th, 1945, where the nuclear weapon “Little Boy” was dropped on the city of Hiroshima in Japan. This was the first atomic bombing the world had seen.

Yesterday marked the 64th anniversary of the second atomic bombing, this time on the city of Nagasaki. On August 9, 1945, the 4,630 kg the plutonium bomb nicknamed Fat Man, was dropped from a B-29 bomber, Bockscar, and in similar fashion to Little Boy, it detonated at an altitude of about 550 m over the city. The explosion generated heat estimated at 3,900 degrees Celsius and winds estimated at 1005 km/h. The fireball created rose to a height of approximately 6 km (20 ooo feet), forming the ominous mushroom shape.

Nagasaki’s mountainous topography meant that the destructive effect of the bomb was not as great as Hiroshima but it resulted in 73,884 deaths, 74,909 injured, and another several hundred thousand diseased and dying due to fallout and other illness caused by radiation.

Japan surrendered to the Allied forces on August 15th 945, thus ending World War II.

Sources: 1 | 2 | 3.

BONUS: Did you know that 93-year old Tsutomu Yamaguchi happens to one of the few people who survived both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings?

Categories
Awesomeness

Super Mario Chess Set

The fact that my first two posts on this blog are related to Nintendo games is an absolute coincidence, I promise. It’s just that the content of these two posts was just so full of win, I had to post them.

Anyway, Super Mario Chess! This is just awesome. There are a couple of odd things you start noticing once you get over the feeling of nostalgia. Mario and Luigi as King and Queen? Mario as king I can totally understand, but Luigi as queen? And why on earth are the Goombas playing as towers?

Nevertheless, it’s still totally awesome.You can buy a set at EntertainmentEarth for $40.

[via Technabob]

Categories
Arty Awesomeness

Amazing Game Art

Deviantart user, Orioto, has put some absolutely incredible art up. Taking inspiration from most of the games we played as kids (and still dream about today, I’m sure), he’s created wallpapers of the likes of Mario, Sonic, and even Donkey Kong.

Man, I really hope some game designers are seeing this. Imagine playing games that look like this. I instantly think of Braid, and its wonderful visuals.

You can download the high resolution versions of these images, and many more, from Orioto’s Deviantart account. When I say “high resolution”, I’m not kidding; That Mario image is 5000px wide!

Thanks Orioto!

Categories
Site Announcements

A New Blogger Joins The Team!

It’s a really great feeling when you, our readers, comment on our posts and interact with us. Ettienne, a 20-something student from Pretoria, has been subscribing to Onelargeprawn for quite a while and has decided that he’d like to write for us. We’ve decided that this is an excellent idea and the rest, as they say, is history.

The man behind daejavoo.com, Ettienne is a bit of a geek and admits that his computer is more like an extension of his body than a device he uses, and binary code is closer to a language than simply a series of numbers. If Project: Epiphany is anything to go by, Ettienne’s blog entries will be a pleasure to read.

His favourite food is Sushi, he speedsolves Rubik’s cubes (serious), and his little toes don’t touch the ground. Hurrah! Welcome to the blog, Ettienne! :-D