It’s incredible whenever new advancements are made in science.  The little kid in me who grew up thinking we would be going to Mars and beyond, or have flying cars, or have perfected artificial intelligence always gets a little excited whenever I actually see something that was previously science fiction become science fact.

But at the same time, that little kid’s heart always dies a little inside when those same discoveries are made.  Maybe it’s because in the grand scheme of things even our biggest advancements still fall under the shadow of the reality that we still have a long way to go to achieve the things the child in me thought he would get to see in his lifetime.  For every successfully cloned sheep, dark matter discovery, or sub-atomic particle that travels backward in time, there’s still the realization that we have yet to travel outside our own solar system, effectively slow the aging process, or even cure the common cold.

But this week?  This week the Saturday morning cartoon-watching, cereal-eating, pajama-wearing me from yesteryear is looking on wide-eyed and in wonder – a Japanese/US research team has created a molecular computer that can handle complex computations like a computer, yet functions more like a real brain. It can even heal and repair itself when it has a problem.

Even more astounding is that the computer is only two molecules thick.

This is pretty mind-blowing stuff.  I mean, just around thirty years ago we were still in our computer infancy.  Atari was the big console of the time.  Arcades still existed to give gamers young and old a chance to play the latest creations (with ash trays!).  William Shatner was shilling for the Commodore Vic-20, the “wonder computer of the 1980s” while any system that was designed for heavy computations still took up quite a bit of room space and most likely involved reel-to-reel tape for data recording.

Yet, only thirty years later we’ve achieved something that by 1980s standards would still be a dream in the distance.  Only it’s not quite that distant.  It’s here.  Now.

Immediate images of Skynet rising to smite us all aside, this is one of those major steps forward in science that has me hopeful and excited for what’s to come in our immediate future, despite the fact that it sometimes seems like our society’s progress seems a little uneven at times.  Achievements like this help to remind me that though it sometimes seems like the fantastical science we see in our favorite fiction may not become a reality within our lifetimes, occasionally we get to see the extraordinary the very next day.  We may not have a colony on the moon yet or mastered teleportation, but right now we are one step closer to creating Data.

Let’s hope it isn’t Lore.

The Don blinded himself with science, then got the hiccups.

As I mentioned to you all last week, I have turned another year older.  Though my physical age may continue to run ahead of me, my essence remains ensconced within a youthful visage, and my interests continue to dwell within a timeless epoch.

Simply put – I’m getting older, but I still love things from my youth.

Case in point, as much as I love modern day video gaming (and I do love me some modern day video gaming), I’m still very much a fan of the old school – Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Mr. Do…  Those are games that, no matter what the new hotness is that I am currently playing on my PS3, I can go back to and play anytime and still get just as much enjoyment out of them now as I did when I first put a quarter in the coin slot back when arcades were still all the rage (I miss arcades).  The classics never get old to me.  And when emulators first became available many moons ago, I went giddy with glee at the thought of being able to play my favorite arcade classics on my PC at home.

Now, here we are in the Year of Our Monolith, and one of the things that has always been a minor obstacle in my enjoyment of classic arcadia has been the inability to play them wherever I go.  Arcades have all but dried up, and the ones that still exist only fill a certain quota – some fighting games, some shooter games, some racing games, a DDR game or two, and some silly, little ticket-spewers.  I have a laptop, and that’s portable… but only to an extent.  Sure, I can play them in my hotel room or at a friend’s house if I bring lappy with me, but I couldn’t just fire up the ol’ MAME while waiting to be seated at an Olive Garden.

Until now.

One of the coolest gifts I got for my birthday was a handy-dandy little portable device called the GP2X WIZ.  This sucker is like a portable slice of love, as it can play any emulator from Atari to Commodore 64 all the way up to PS1.  In short – this thing rocks!

And that isn’t even half of it.  It does tons more!  Not only can it play all those different emulators, but it can also function as an e-book reader, a music player, a picture viewer, a movie viewer, a planner, and a digital recording device.  With all that I’m rather surpised that it doesn’t also grant wishes.  Trust me, it doesn’t.  I tried rubbing it, but to no avail.

Now, it’s a wee bit pricey, but it’s really worth it if you want to save up for it.  It includes a gig of drive space, but you can also throw games and emulators on any size SD card and toss that in there as well.  This thing is truly a remarkable device.  I’ve already slapped three different emulators on a two gig card and have been spending a lot of time playing all my favorite classics writing articles for you fine folk.

That said, I should probably get back to playing Pac-Man writing more writings for the readers of said writings.  In the meantime, I leave you with the other, cool, geeky item I got for my latest trip around Sol:

I certainly won’t freeze before I reach the first marker.

The Don thought they smelled bad on every side.

I’m kind of taking the week off (but not really) since my birthday is this weekend.  That’s right, everyone – The Don wasn’t actually created in a test tube or grown in the forest of Pernalia.

Nope, I am 100 percent pure, old fashioned, home-grown human. Born free. Right here in the real world.

So, to celebrate being on this ball of rock and water for thirty-five revolutions around the sun, I’m going to list a couple of great geekeries that came out Anno Donini:

Jaws

One of the greatest horror films of all time, and the movie that put director Steven Spielberg on the map.  This movie’s influence was so impressive, that it literally forced an entire generation to rethink going “back into the water” (yes, I know that’s from Jaws 2, but I’m making a point).  With an impressive cast, the perfect amount of tension, and a cunning play on our fears, Jaws managed to work despite the fact that the shark quite often didn’t.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

The film that started a cult phenomenon (doot-doo doo-doo-doot!).  Already a stage show by this time, the film opened to lackluster success.  But over time, Rocky Horror became something more.  Now known as the longest-running theatrical release in history, the movie continues to be shown regularly all over the world.  It’s even spawned its own culture.  Impressive for a movie about a guy wearing fishnets.

Betamax

Ah, poor Betamax – the little videotape that couldn’t.  Sony introduced the first home video system using this technology in 1975 with a price tag of over $2000.  Sadly, this would lead to the first in many “format wars” that would occur over the next thirty-five years.  Despite a higher quality in picture and sound, Beta’s smaller capacity caused it to lose to VHS (also, the porn industry chose VHS over Beta).  But in an interesting twist, most news channels around the country that haven’t gone full digital still use Beta tapes.

Musical Notes

Alice Cooper releases his first solo album – “Welcome to My Nightmare”, a concept album that takes the listener through the nightmares of a boy named Steven.  The stage show is considered one of the biggest stage spectacles of that decade.  And Drew Struzan, most notable for his movie poster work, designs the album cover.

Iron Maiden forms.  My friend Dan Taraschke, still a toddler at the time, starts rocking out for what seems like no reason.  He would find out later in life what exactly happened, helping to form the metal man he would one day become.

Peter Gabriel leaves Genesis.  Oddly, both end up doing better career-wise.  Fans of the original line-up are still butt-hurt to this day.

Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” hits number one in the charts.  Wayne’s World fans have to wait seventeen years to find out what all the hubbub is about.

The Pearly Gates

The Altair 8800 is released, introducing the first microcomputer.  Bill Gates and Paul Allen develop the programming language BASIC and start a little company that, for some reason, never went anywhere called Micro Soft.  I wonder what happened to those guys.

“Live, From New York…”

Saturday Night Live debuted in October under the name “NBC’s Saturday Night”.  Featuring a much looser format, the show featured its original “Not Ready for Prime Time Players” in comedy skits that poked fun at pop culture, politics, and pretty much everything else, as well as more musical segments, stand up, and even a segment that featured new Muppets created by Jim Henson.  The first episode was hosted by comic legend George Carlin, with first appearance by Andy Kaufman.  The show continues to this day, much to the surprise of a lot of people.

Blip…Blip…

Atari released its first console game through Sears – PONG!  My parents actually owned one of the original consoles, and at the time it was some innovative stuff.  Of course, attention spans were a lot longer back in the seventies, so a game where a white dot bounces back and forth between two white lines could entertain someone for quite a long time.  Nowadays, anything less than tons of blood, boobs and hundreds of hours of gameplay is considered a baby’s toy.

That’s all I got for this week.  Yes, I know there are probably plenty more I could have included, but these are the ones that stand out most to me.  Oh, and as an added bonus, you can now find me on movie website CHUD!  I’ve recently been taken on as one of the official CHUD Bloggers, so if you can stomach more than a dose of me a week, you can find more entries there.  In fact, I already have an entry up this week!

Now, as the thirty-five year old in me would say – “Get off my lawn!”

The Don needs a warm glass of milk and a nap.

I dunno what it is, but I just can’t seem to stop thinking about TRON: Legacy.  Between the viral marketing, watching the original a couple of weekends ago with Krellion, and the latest trailer that I shared with you last week, the new film has quickly become one of my most-highly anticipated releases of 2010.  I’ve even made screencaps (horizontal Olivia Wilde on a glowing couch for the win!) from the trailer to use as wallpaper for my laptop.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t even come out until mid-December.

Great Scott!

It hasn’t helped that details on the film have been few and far between.  That is, until recently…

A couple of days ago, Quint at Ain’t It Cool News was finally able to post a portion of his experiences at a press junket for the film that he attended last year.  Within that report he was able to share a slew of juicy little nuggets about the film.  There are a few of them that have particularly piqued my interest:

Clu is back. And he isn’t quite the good guy we saw in the first film.  Producer Sean Bailey describes him as “Clu version 2.0”.  Current buzz is that he may actually be the one running things in the computer world this time around, not modern Flynn.  Either way, 1982 Jeff Bridges looks incredible, and we may just see a showdown between both Flynns.  You have to be some kind of crazy to not want to see that happen in the new film.

The new TRON suits are a completely new design. For anyone who has seen and remembers the first film, in order to get the glowy circuitry effects on the original outfits, each actor wore a white suit with the circuitry design stenciled on.  All of the computer world scenes were shot in black and white, with the light effects added in post through rotoscoping.  This made for a unique and cool effect.  The new suits are actually black rubber with the lighting effects done in real time on the suits themselves.  This is achieved through a new, rubberized lamp that is flexible enough to move with the wearer.  The actors actually light up during filming.  This is necessary because the computer world scenes are being shot in 3D, and rotoscoping is difficult to add to a 3D shot in post-production.  Frankly, the live lighting is one of the aspects of the new film the really gets me excited.  We’re already seeing animated light-up T-shirts and other apparel on geek sites and in pop culture stores.  How soon before clothing stores start incorporating the flexi-lamp tech into their merchandise?

The color-coding has been updated. In the original film, it was more or less established that the good guys were blue and the bad guys were red/orange.  In the original screen-play for TRON, the good guys were yellow while the villains were blue.  Shortly after the film was shot, this was changed to the red/blue distinctions.  But if you notice, there are a couple of shots in the first film that still reflect the old color scheme.  In Legacy, the color palette for the goods and bads have been updated, almost in an amalgam of the conflicting choices in the first movie: evil is represented by oranges and yellows, while the protagonists are highlighted by whites, greens and blues.  I think this will be one of the things that symbolizes the evolution Encom’s computer world has gone through since the events of the first film almost thirty years prior.

TRON the game exists in the movie universe. A friend of mine watched the trailer the other day and was a little irked that Flynn’s son discovers a hidden room behind a TRON game cabinet.  Problem was, there was never a TRON game in the original film.  TRON was the name of Alan’s program, to be used as a security program.  And to some degree, my friend is correct.  However, before all of my fellow geeks cry out in geek terror over such a frivolous and irresponsible error on the side of meta, check out the official Encom website.  There is a timeline of events established that incorporate the first and second film, as well as all the events before and in between.  According to the timeline, Flynn did indeed create a TRON game a year after the events that occurred in the first film.  It apparently became an even bigger hit than Space Paranoids, Flynn’s previous gaming success.  So, relax.  It looks like the writers did their homework.  You can have your meta and play it too.

The computer world in the film is an isolated net. If you remember from the first movie, the world of TRON was a private network on Encom’s mainframe.  The MCP at one point even told his user Dillinger that he wanted access to the mainframes of each country’s government so he could run things better.  According to the info made available at the press junket, Legacy’s computer world is also an isolated net created by Flynn and hosted on 1989 servers.  It has evolved and grown over the past twenty-plus years.  Whether this new world is based off of Encom’s original mainframe or a brand new creation remains to be seen.  Either way, I kinda prefer the idea of it being its own isolated realm.  I think the story could have gotten too unwieldy and overwhelming if these characters were playing around in our world wide web.  This way, Flynn and Clu will be much more fun to watch playing around in a universe that has a slightly claustrophobic feel to it, giving the moviegoer more tension to chew on.

Fans of Bladerunner should at least enjoy the movie stylistically. Syd Mead, who designed the world Decker got to chase replicants down in also did the design work for TRON and Legacy.  So, expect a dark film with a lot of Bladerunner influences.  I think that stylistic choice should fit this new film perfectly.  It’s one of the major aspects of Legacy I’m really looking forward to.

And if none of the above is enough to get you excited, I leave you with this (didn’t I mention this?):

(You can embiggen it.)

The Don feels a presence.  Another warrior is on the mesa.  Oh, it’s just a C.O.W.-Boy.

There’s an old saying where I come from, and it goes something like this:

“If you can’t come up with a Spwug article for the week, just make something up.”

How anyone in my home town even knew there would ever be a web site called Spwug some day in the future is a riddle that we may never solve (radiation spill).  Be that as it may, today it just happens to be good advice.  I’m having a frazzleweek (not to be confused with a Fraggle Rock) this week, and it’s making it tough to come up with anything substantial to offer.  So instead, I once again break out the odds and ends that I have come across over the past couple of days, plop them all into a stew pot, add some seasonings, stir, and serve it to you with some blue milk, courtesy of the charred corpse of Aunt Beru.

What?  It’s not like the Lars family was going to be drinking it anymore.  It was just sitting there on the table.

Megaman 10 is out.  Rockman continues to cry at the injustice.

For those of us still clinging to the nostalgia of our 80s roots (and who really isn’t these days?) and were feeling a little like we got repeatedly crotch-punched by the last fanboy-pleasing offering, Capcom once again gives us the retro-NES-looking goodness of Megaman 10.  While the last installment offered Proto as DLC, this time he comes ready-to-play, with Bass being the DLC character this time around.  All of the graphic and gameplay charm of 9 returns, but this time you can save yourself a cranial bruising from beating your head against the wall – Megaman 10 includes an “easy mode”.  Meanwhile, the Japanese continue to laugh at us while they exist in their superior universe.

Final Fantasy XIII also came out this week.  World buckles at the contradiction.

I stopped playing this series a long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away…), sometime after X or XI or XVIC or whatever that one was with the different characters (stupid Roman numerals).  I’ve read that there have been a few changes, one of which is that the battle system is set up similar to Advent Children.  I’ve heard mixed feedback.  A few of my friends seem to enjoy it, while a few others do not.  And still a few other others are still wondering how there are thirteen of them when it’s the “Final Fantasy” (and even more when you count the spin-offs).  I still maintain that three six is the best one Square has ever done, and they will never be able to top just how well that game is.

The new Tron Legacy trailer is online.

Some of you may be a wee bit too young to remember the movie that put CG animation on the map and laid the groundwork for what Spielberg, Cameron, and Pixar are doing today in film.  Tron didn’t pull in a very large box office when it opened back in 1982, but it has since gained a cult following – enough of one that Disney finally greenlit a sequel last year.  Jumping on the viral marketing bandwagon, Disney has kept the details scarce on this new movie, but has made discovering the details rather fun and exciting.  Most recently, people around the world had the opportunity to go on hide-and-seek missions to find an individual wearing a “Flynn Lives” t-shirt in several major cities around the globe.  The reward?  Exclusive swag, and the ability to unlock an online page that featured dates and locations for a “secret” showing of the new trailer for Tron Legacy.  For those who could stand to wait a few extra days, the trailer went online for everyone this week.  And it is badass.

Speaking of movie trailers…

I’ve got two words for you: “briefcase armor”:

Click here to view the embedded video.

One of these things is not like the other…

Word has it that John Krasinski has landed the role of Captain America for the new Marvel film.  You may know him from the American version of “The Office”.  The rest of you may know him as the guy completely wrong for the part.

And that concludes this broadcast day!  I know I said before that I would be making stuff up, but I decided not to… or, at least not entirely.  One of the things I mentioned above is not at all true (or is close to the truth but not true).  Can you figure out which one?  Ooohh!  Puzzles!  I’m guessing that this one won’t be enough of a challenge to keep you busy until next Thursday, will it?

Probably not.

There’s nothing special about The Don.  He’s just an ordinary program.

I also had another project come up that needed done ASAP.  And in another clever, M. Night Shamalamadingdong twist, I can use this moment to shill that project to all you fellow Spwugnerians in this space:

I’m currently working for my film friends at Darkstone Entertainment writing episode blurbs for director John Johnson’s new Choose-Your-Own Adventure web series called “Spade”.  Episodes air every other Thursday, with the first episode airing two weeks ago.

That means the second episode is online now!  At the end of each episode, viewers are given a choice as to how they want the plot and/or characters to proceed.  All they have to do is make with the clicky on the choices that are presented.  Then, two weeks later, the option that won the most votes will appear as the next episode.

I give you your first taste with episode 1:

Click here to view the embedded video.

And here’s the newest episode!  Vote and choose what you would like to see happen next!

Click here to view the embedded video.

See you next week with a regular installment!

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First up, a couple movies I caught earlier this afternoon:

First was The Princess and the Frog, Disney’s latest animated feature. This film went back to Disney’s roots, using a traditional hand-drawn animation style and incorporating multiple character-sung songs. It also introduces Disney’s first African-American princess, Tiana. Overall, I think the movie was great; it was definitely following in the footsteps of their previous animated musicals, like Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast. I’m even thinking about picking up the soundtrack.

After Princess was the just-released Avatar. Being James Cameron’s first non-documentary film in twelve years (since 1997’s Titanic), there has been a major amount of hype generated which I believe it lives up to. I enjoyed it greatly. There were no parts that appeared to drag on to me. The CG was probably some of the best I’ve ever seen. The Na’vi looked so realistic that at times I was thinking that they had painted the actors blue and digitally manipulated their performances instead of them being full-CG creations. This film takes what was done for Davy Jones and his crew in Pirates of the Caribbean and raised it to a whole new level. Now since these were only humanoid alien characters, the movie easily managed to keep out of the uncanny valley, so I’m really curious about what the technology will be able to do when it comes to rendering regular human characters.

I will definitely be picking up both of these when they’re released on Blu-ray.

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I finally got around to ordering a copy of the full version of Windows 7 Professional. I hope to get it installed sometime after the holidays. Meanwhile, the RC is still going strong on both of my systems.

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We’re full-on into the holidays, and Christmas is only a week away. I’m sure some people will be doing the long-distance traveling thing to see family, and I just want to tell you to be sure to travel safely. Make sure your vehicle is good to go, especially if you’re traveling to locations where you might experience winter weather. Tires (proper pressure, good tread), make sure your windshield washer fluid is topped off, don’t let your fuel get to too low of a level, etc. Be aware of road conditions, watch out for other drivers that think they need to be wherever they’re going faster than you; there has also been reports of newer LED traffic signals getting covered up due to them not generating as much heat. Get there and come back safely.

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That’s it for this week’s post. Enjoy whatever your holiday of choice is!

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Sorry for the last of a post last week, I was following the standard holiday herd mentality and visiting family for Thanksgiving. I hope everyone reading this had a good Thanksgiving as well.

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While I was visiting said family, I was able to go see Mannheim Steamroller in concert again thanks to them having a show in Detroit on the Friday after Thanksgiving. I had managed to see them in my local area last year, but they chose not to come back this year (my bet it was the area’s traffic that did this). I had my mom join me for the concert and she enjoyed it as well.

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Gotten from an IRC chat that I spend time in, I give to you 25 Hilarious WiFi Network Names. Note that this may not be safe for work. It gave me the idea to set up an access point with the name “The Black Hole” and have it constantly dump all traffic sent to it.

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That’s all for this week’s post!

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Sorry about the lack of a post last week, I was quite busy helping the Tech Crew of Nekocon’s Main Events room. It was very tiring, but I’m happy to say that most things went off without a hitch.

I almost missed making this post as well; between almost getting swept away by the nor’easter that came out of the remnants of Ida (ok, not really, but I did see quite a bit of flooding), and keeping myself busy with some coding I had been meaning to do (when my power wasn’t out due to the former), I’ve been busy these past few days.

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Still running the release candidate of Windows 7; I’m hoping to be able to hold off changing over the release version until I get my new system built sometime early next year. Speaking of my new system, I decided that I’m going to try to go for one of the new six-core i7 processors instead of the current quad-core versions. Yeah, I currently don’t know what I’d do with all of them (with HyperThreading, it makes a total of 12 virtual cores), but I’m sure I’ll find something.

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I’m a fan of the TV series Numb3rs, and while the producers try to do their research, they don’t always get things right. Take, for instance, last week’s episode: The FBI is trying to find a couple of hackers and one of the characters suggests that they keep an eye out on Internet Relay Chat (IRC) for them. Now IRC is real, but some of the things mentioned about it in the episode aren’t completely true. The episode makes it seem like there’s only one IRC server on the internet (there are hundreds of different IRC networks, if not thousands), that it’s totally anonymous (not true on most networks), nothing is tracked (again, not true, some channels on IRC have bot programs whose purpose is to track stats of the channel), and that all users speak leet (yet again, not true; a lot of users just chat normally in their language of choice). Just remember that this is a TV show and sometimes (or most of the time) the facts are stretched to keep things interesting. Not to say that there aren’t IRC networks out there where this stuff isn’t true, but it is usually not the norm.

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That’s it for this week’s post!

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Ah, Hallowe’en Eve, otherwise known as Devil’s Night in the metro Detroit area where I grew up. Not that I did anything bad, but I did always look forward to the local cable company’s attempt to limit the chaos by making all of the pay-TV channels (HBO, Cinemax, etc.) free to view for that one evening. I wonder if they still do that…

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A couple of weeks ago, I posted about components I’d like to upgrade my computer to when the time comes, one of which was the monitor. I forgot to mention a couple of additional aspects I’d like to see in the next monitor I get: LED backlit (like I mentioned for the next TV I’d like) and multi-touch support (got to make the most of Windows 7 whenever I get it ^^). You hear that Dell? Make me proud!

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It appears that the wave that Nintendo has been riding since the release of the Wii may have finally crashed upon the shore: It was recently posted that their profits weren’t as high as expected. A local news anchor commented that it may be due to the Wii’s popularity: Everyone already has one.

Nintendo also announced the DSi XL, which is exactly what its name implies: It’s an enlarged version of the DSi. Besides having larger screens (still having the same resolution as the DS and DSi, meaning the pixels will be VERY BIG), it comes with a larger stylus. This may be mainly to make it more accessible to older people who have a hard time seeing the smaller screens and holding the standard (and quite thin) stylus.

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There are indications that Sony is at work on the PSP 4000, which will continue to support UMDs. I guess many people didn’t like the PSPgo’s lack of it. Sony may make the 4000 more go-like, to include built-in storage.

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Netflix also announced the near-future availability of their Watch Instantly service on the PS3. At the start, a special Blu-ray disc will be used to access it (free via the link), but it appears that Sony will add built-in support in a future (sometime in 2010) firmware update. I (and others) wonder if this will force Microsoft to remove the X-box Live Gold requirement on the 360’s version. There are also indications that the service may become available on the Wii as well.

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The next Final Fantasy XI update is close, with a release date of Monday, November 9th. This is also when the third mini-expansion, “A Shantotto Ascension”, goes live (it became available for pre-order earlier this week). SquareEnix did a pre-update update yesterday, downloading around 1700 files totaling 30MB in size.

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That’s it for this week!