Category: Featured

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Awesomeness Featured Science & Technology Useful/Useless Info

The Scale of the Universe

We’ve seen enough documentaries to know that the universe is rather large. These shows have compared the relative sizes of the planetary bodies in our solar system and taken us on trips to distant worlds in outer space. And projects like THINGS (The HI Nearby Galaxy Survey) have gone to great ends to catalogue the galaxies that have been observed thus far.

The Scale of the Universe is an informative Flash that shows the universe from the tiniest particles at fractions of a yoctometre (10-24 of a metre) to humans to giant nebulas that look like testicles to the very edge of what we can observe, many many gigaparsecs away.

Take that intergalactic trip in fullscreen here.

The animation was created by a 14-year-old Cary Huang, with help from his twin brother Michael.

[via PS3ZA]

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Featured Game Reviews

We Review: Skyrim

Skyrim

The battle between the sexes has never been more animated then when it comes to gaming. Well at least in my experience. I assume it’s mostly because when we’re playing games we’re not paying them enough attention (I’m going to pay for that). Fine, shoot the messenger, but if your friends are anything like mine, by now you’ll have heard droves of woman complaining about how their significant other is addicted to the game. I like to call it “being skyrimmed”. This in itself is an indication of how immersive Skyrim can be. At Onelargeprawn we like to do things differently, so I thought “why not turn the whole battle of the sexes on its head? Let’s get a girl to review the game!” And what a good idea that turned out to be. Find out what Ingrid, our guest gamer, thought of Skyrim, after the jump.

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Featured Game Reviews

We Review: Final Fantasy XIII-2

Final Fantasy XIII-2 is the latest game in the long-running RPG series, and the direct sequel to Final Fantasy XIII. Anyone who played the original FFXIII will know that it suffered its share of troubles due to horrendously linear gameplay, over-reliance on written codices to fuel understanding, and a distinct lack of just about everything that fans felt embodied what a Final Fantasy game was supposed to be. Square Enix, its developers, came up with Final Fantasy XIII-2 in part as a way of listening to its fan base and releasing the game the fans wanted. Did they do right this time? Let’s find out.

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Animal Kingdom Arty Featured Weirdness

Bizarre Animal Morphs

deviantART user HumanDescent from the U.K. has a vivid imagination. The digital artist thinks up what different species of animal would look like if they were interbred, and with the power of Photoshop, makes that union happen. Nosferatu is mashed up with a frog to create Nosferafrog. A Rabbick is a rabbit combined with a baby chicken, and one of his cutest creations is a Pog.

Have a look at some of his hilariously bizarre animal morphs after the jump.

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Arty Awesomeness Featured

Apocalypse Tomorrow: A Pin-up Calendar fit for a Cataclysm

Illustrator Andrew Tarusov imagines that our world that has undergone a cataclysmic event and has designed a sexy pin-up calendar as a pick-me-up for the hard times. Each month of the calendar features a different type of apocalypse and pretty lass suitably (un)dressed for the occasion.

Check out Apocalypse Tomorrow after the jump, be warned some months may be NSFW.

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Arty Awesomeness Featured Photoworthy Science & Technology

The Blue Marble Through the Years

On December 7th in 1972, far far above our heads, Apollo 17 blasted off from the Earth on its way to the Moon. About five hours into the journey, the spaceship was 45,000 kilometres away and at the point where it was facing the Earth, the astronauts onboard took photos of our planet. One of those photos (AS17-148-22727) which showed a fully-illuminated Earth looked like a glass marble to the astronauts, and is famously called The Blue Marble.

NASA has continued The Blue Marble series with similar photos in 2000, 2002, 2007, 2010, and the two most recent images date from just a few days ago. The initial image was captured by the Earth-observing satellite Suomi NPP and focussed on North and Central America. Due to popular demand NASA released a second image, this time displaying Africa, Saudi Arabia, and India to the east. Have a look at these two amazing images after the jump.

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Animal Kingdom Arty Awesomeness Featured Photoworthy

The Most Beautiful Sea Jellies

It’s not the first time that we’ve posted about the Alexander Semenov. The marine biologist works at the White Sea Biological Station (WSBS) in northwest Russia and photographs the most wonderful undersea animals as part of his job. After four years at WSBS, Semenov is now the chief dive master and a camera is always on hand when he journeys into the depths of the White Sea.

When I first began to experiment with sea life photography I tried shooting small invertebrates for fun with my own old camera and without any professional lights or lenses. I collected the invertebrates underwater and then I shot them in the lab. After two or three months of failure after failure, I ended up with a few good pictures, which inspired me to buy a semi-professional camera complete with underwater housing and strobes. I’ve spent the following field season trying to shoot the same creatures, but this time in their environment. It was much more difficult, and I spent another two months without any significant results. But when you’re working at something every day, you inevitably get a lot of experience. Now after four years of practice I get a few good shots almost every time I dive.

There are over 1500 known species of jellyfish in the world and Semenov has photographed quite a few, especially the Cyanea genus of stinging jellyfish. After the jump you will find some of the striking deep sea jellies that Semenov has encountered, more specifically photos of Cyanea capillata, the lion’s mane jellyfish.

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Featured Game Reviews

We Review: Lord of the Rings: War in the North

Lord of the Rings: War in the North is a co-op action RPG in that takes place in J.R.R. Tolkien’s famed fantasy universe, and details the events that occur around The Lord of the Rings, but which doesn’t actually include many of the actual written events from the story. The game follows the style of the films, but also includes many settings and characters from the book. Personally, I love The Lord of the Rings series. I make a point of reading the entire series through at least once every two years or so. But those are the books. The question is: does this game capture the essence of The Lord of the Rings? Or is it best consigned to the Cracks of Doom? Let’s find out.

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Featured Game Reviews

We Review: Lego Harry Potter Years 5-7

The Lego series of games have been coming at us at a fairly steady pace, and the latest one completes the latter half of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter story. The game follows the movies far more closely than it does the books, but does it do a decent job of it? The ultimate goal of any review is to answer the question “is it worth spending money on?” Let’s find out.

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Featured Game Reviews

We Review: Quarrel

Thanks to the ambiguous nature of the English language, a quarrel could be an angry dispute or a bolt fired out of a crossbow. It also happens to be the name of a rather interesting word-based strategy game that was initially released only for iOS devices in 2011. While there can be no Quarrel amongst Android and PlayStation 3 owners, (for they haven’t received the game on their platform) Scottish developers Denki sought fit to bring the fight to the Xbox Live Arcade.

Having played a variety of wordy games on Android—Wordsmith, Wordfeud, Word Search, Word2yourmother*—I eagerly jumped at the chance of playing Risk-meets-Scrabble in Quarrel. The war of words continues after the jump.

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