STUFF: News, Technology, the cool and the plain weird

[oliverdst]

Baby Dolphin Dies After Idiot Humans Try To Take Photos With It

A bunch of beachgoers in Argentina last week inadvertently killed an endangered baby dolphin when they scooped it out of the ocean and started taking pictures of it.

Vida Silvestra, the local arm of the World Wildlife Fund, claims that tourists in the town of Santa Teresita found the dolphin in the ocean and brought it ashore, passed around the smartphone-brandishing crowd. It later died. The dolphin was a Franciscana dolphin, which is a species that gets particularly weak when removed from the water from extended periods.

The diminutive dolphin species grows to be slightly longer than five feet long, and it’s classified as “vulnerable.” According to Vida Silvestre, there are fewer than 30,000 individuals in the wild. The organisation claims that it’s unlikely the species will recover.

Put the dolphin back in the water. The selfie’s not worth it.

I read some hours ago that the dolphin was alrady dead when it was removed from the water.

[MIKA27]

Cell is set to give a signal boost to a new kind of zombie movie

"It’s got a really clear beginning point, which is that… it’s really not a zombie film,” says director Tod Williams. “We ended up being surprised at how hard we had to work to make it not be a zombie film. Because Stephen King dedicated the book to Romero...” Williams is chatting to us from New York about his latest movie Cell, heading to our screens soon. And for a film that’s definitely not a zombie movie, there’s a lot of talk about zombies...

The premise, then: “It takes place one day, one fine day. Everybody who’s using their cell phone gets a signal in their ear that essentially wipes their brain clean and resets them to the sort of violent animal [state]. And there’s a series of revelations about what they’re actually becoming,” explains Williams. Based on a 2006 Stephen King novel, Cell is a mix of science fiction and the occult, with the strong family strand King’s works are known for. John Cusack plays New England artist and survivor of the pulse, Clay, who bands together with fellow survivors Samuel L Jackson and Isabelle Fuhrman to discover the source of the mysterious signal and to find and reunite with his son, while the mindless and violent ‘Phoners’ are growing more organised and more threatening.

Unlike zombies then, King’s Phoners aren’t undead and decomposing and they can still talk. “It’s not something you can catch, but there’s ways – ‘The Pulse’ [as the original signal is called] continues to find victims,” says Williams. “So the thing grows. But essentially, yeah, it’s about one moment in time when most people are either converted or not. People who are not, are almost immediately killed. So there are very few survivors left.

“But then there are moments when our little band of survivors almost becomes more brutal than the Phoners themselves. There’s a wonderful biologist at Harvard named Edward O. Wilson who writes about ‘eusocial animals’ [from the Greek ‘good/real + social’]. There’s social animals, which include the social and the eusocial animals – humans, ants, bees, wasps and termites – which have dominated the planet to an astonishing degree. Human beings are the most social. “But the eusocial animals, which are like the ants and the bees, are essentially one organism – so a hive of bees is not actually a group of individuals, but it’s one organism. And it’s very, very successful. There’s some selflessness in that that’s admirable. We thought a little bit about Wilson’s theories of eusocial animals, in terms of what these creatures are.”

Williams says despite a modest budget we can still expect action set-pieces. “What was fun to me was, unlike a lot of the great current crop of zombie things like The Walking Dead and 28 Days Later, which usually cut to some time after [the outbreak], we actually show the event, which was ambitious for a small film,” Williams says. While in the original novel Cusack’s character Clay experiences ‘The Pulse’ from Brooklyn Common, the film version has opted for a more claustrophobic environment, re-locating the key moment to an airport.

“Because of this book, I’ve become kind of anti-the internet, anti-cell phones, anti-anything-digital,” laughs Williams, talking to us via his cell phone. “As you think about it King sort of sees something satanic, almost, in the digital world. And the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became. But one of the places I feel we as a society allow ourselves to become our most base selves is once we pass through security in an airport. We give up our sense of responsibility. Airports have become these stations of consumption. People indulge massively in all kinds of ways. It was in airports that I felt people most connected, most wanted to be connected. You see people plugged into these power sources all the time. I don’t know. It just seems like, to me, the digital future is going to look and feel like that.

“A modern airport could be on the back side of the moon. It’s this digital, soulless environment. I love planes, but I’m talking about the other part, the fear-filled mall that precedes flying. After you’ve gone through security where you’ve given up your adult responsibility. What’s also interesting is that people aren’t armed. Once you get through security, you’ve all been stripped of your weapons in some way. So that’s where we find our hero when ‘The Pulse’ happens.”

Shot in January 2014 over 25 days in a combination of real locations and sets in Atlanta, Georgia, the airport scene was partially created in a convention centre, with Williams and the director of photography given permission to go to a real airport later to get further environment shots (“So we’re interlacing reality with our created reality”). But Atlanta came with some baggage too in the form of The Walking Dead (much of which is shot in that area).

“We’re looking for things we need to put in our apocalyptic city, which we’re not in very long and my team found me this burned-out bus, and they were like, ‘This is so awesome, this burned-out bus. We can drag it here. It’ll look great,’” Williams recalls. “But that burned-out bus was in the pilot of The Walking Dead. I was like, ‘Come on, man.’ The challenge of shooting in Atlanta was avoiding The Walking Dead. And yet, there were also some really great experienced people that we called upon who were Walking Dead alumni – both to learn what they knew, and avoid what they had done. One of the things we had to very quickly figure out is how do these creatures move. It’s really easy to say to an extra, ‘Stagger around.’ But instantly they look like The Walking Dead.”

The team had to call in a different kind of expert to develop their own unique set of movements, which adapt and change as the Phoners evolve throughout the film. “We went over to the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago and got a bunch of dancers to workshop with us and a bunch of improv actors. We spent three or four days just trying to come up with movements that reflect more like flocking behaviour, rather than zombie behaviour,” William says.

“We found some stuff we really liked. Then on weekends, we invited a group of local dancers to spend their Saturdays with us, as we ran around in large groups trying to teach people how to move. And it really helped. It was done as volunteers, really. The second somebody would start moving like a Walking Dead zombie, I’d have to cut. Cut and reset.” Williams is probably best known as the director of Paranormal Activity 2 though he previously also adapted and directed the John Irving novel The Door In The Floor starring Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger, so Williams says he wasn’t necessarily looking to do another horror when Cell came along. According to Williams it was the stars who initially swayed him.

“The project came to me with John Cusack already on board. John is a huge fan of the Romero films, and very knowledgeable about all things zombie,” says Williams, and when Jackson signed up he couldn’t have been happier. “John is an unbelievably warm-hearted person, and Sam’s a pro and a gentleman. [Working with them] is kind of like getting in a BMW 7 Series. It’s easier to drive because you’re in the bomb!”

Mixing technophobia with insect psychology, zombie tropes with ballet moves, Cell looks set to be a complex epic. Williams assures us there’ll be hints of humour too, as well as a mix of practical and digital effects (“in a movie that’s a sort of anti-digital manifesto,” smiles Williams, aware of the irony, “but sometimes you can’t be a purist”). It may not be a straight up zombie movie but it still has its roots buried in horror.

“There’s some gore in it, but I wouldn’t say it’s excessively gory,” considers Williams. “I think that the experience of the film is very tense. I’d say there’s a sense of suspense throughout the entire thing, that you’re living in a world you’re unsure of. It’s unlike the zombies that we’ve come to know, where you understand the rules, which are: they bite you, you turn into a zombie; if you shoot them in the head, they die. That’s very consistent.

“What Stephen King is more interested in isn’t a static set of rules. It’s a continually changing evolution of some future version of humanity. So, there’s a lot of mystery in what’s happening. King is comfortable with mystery remaining. I think that’s what draws me to it. It’s unresolved, unlike a lot of horror. I think that’s something I’m a huge proponent of, and something I loved when I worked on the Paranormal movies – especially the early ones. There’s a desire to layer rules onto things. For me, when you get rules, you start getting away from the subconscious and away from the mystery, away from the unknown,” he ponders. “And that’s the heart of horror.”

[MIKA27]

An Original Film Print Of Star Wars Has Been Restored And Released Online

Whether or not you see George Lucas’ tinkering with the original Star Wars trilogy as harmless meddling or the greatest sin committed in cinematic history, it’s a shame that fans don’t even have the choice to purchase HD versions of the original theatrical cuts. But now, at least, a restored version of the first Star Wars is available online.

This isn’t a “despecialised edition” like many other fan attempts to revert Lucas’ changes. Somehow, a group of fans dubbing themselves Team Negative One found an original 35mm film print of the first Star Wars movie, and have spent years cleaning it up, scanning each frame of film and digitally restoring it to make the cleanest version of the original movie as possible. You can check out a video comparing the state of the original film reel and the final, cleaned version below:

Team Negative One’s restoration is meant to be more faithful than the only publicly released HD version of the theatrical cuts made available as DVD bonuses in a 2006 release of the original trilogy (which themselves were taken from the Laserdisc release of the movies and suffered from detail loss in the transfer process). It’s by no means a perfect restoration, with some graininess and colour differences, and you won’t get the sharp image of the Blu-ray releases, changes and all, but it’s the closest there’s ever been to a true restoration of the original Star Wars.

Due to the highly dubious legality of releasing the restoration, Negative One has remained relatively quiet about putting the restored film online; it began seeding its way through the internet about a month ago, but it’s only just started receiving wider attention as more and more fans discover it. Obviously because of this, we can’t directly link to where to download the restoration, but should you desire to see it, it’s not exactly difficult to find if you go looking.

You can check out the link below to see more comparisons between the restoration and the original print, as well as the 2011 Blu-ray release of the film.

[MIKA27]

Australian Researchers Have Created The Technology Needed to Make 'Smart' Contact Lenses

Researchers at RMIT University and the University of Adelaide have joined forces to create a stretchable nano-scale device to manipulate light.

The device manipulates light to such an extent that it can filter specific colours while still being transparent and could be used in the future to make smart contact lenses.

Using the technology, high-tech lenses could one day filter harmful optical radiation without interfering with vision — or in a more advanced version, transmit data and gather live vital information or even show information like a head-up display.

The light manipulation relies on creating tiny artificial crystals termed “dielectric resonators”, which are a fraction of the wavelength of light — 100 to 200 nanometers, or over 500 times thinner than a human hair.

The research combined the University of Adelaide researchers’ expertise in interaction of light with artificial materials with the materials science and nanofabrication expertise at RMIT University.

Dr Withawat Withayachumnankul, from the University of Adelaide’s School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, said “Manipulation of light using these artificial crystals uses precise engineering.

“With advanced techniques to control the properties of surfaces, we can dynamically control their filter properties, which allow us to potentially create devices for high data-rate optical communication or smart contact lenses.

“The current challenge is that dielectric resonators only work for specific colours, but with our flexible surface we can adjust the operation range simply by stretching it.”

Associate Professor Madhu Bhaskaran, Co-Leader of the Functional Materials and Microsystems Research Group at RMIT, said the devices were made on a rubber-like material used for contact lenses.

“We embed precisely-controlled crystals of titanium oxide, a material that is usually found in sunscreen, in these soft and pliable materials,” she said.

“Both materials are proven to be bio-compatible, forming an ideal platform for wearable optical devices.

“By engineering the shape of these common materials, we can create a device that changes properties when stretched. This modifies the way the light interacts with and travels through the device, which holds promise of making smart contact lenses and stretchable colour changing surfaces.”

Lead author and RMIT researcher Dr. Philipp Gutruf said the major scientific hurdle overcome by the team was combining high temperature processed titanium dioxide with the rubber-like material, and achieving nanoscale features.

“With this technology, we now have the ability to develop light weight wearable optical components which also allow for the creation of futuristic devices such as smart contact lenses or flexible ultrathin smartphone cameras,” Gutruf said.

The work, which has been published in leading micro-/nano-science journal ACS Nano, was undertaken at RMIT’s state-of-the-art Micro Nano Research Facility and supported by the Australian Research Council.

[MIKA27]

This Year's Best Press Photos Include A Shot Of Bondi Beach

The winners of the 59th annual World Press Photo contest have been announced. Ranging from the Syrian refugee crisis and China’s Tianjin explosion to the wild orangutans of Borneo, these are the best that the year of photojournalism had to offer. They are all amazing.

The images were selected out of 82,951 photos captured by 5775 photographers from over 125 different countries.

Top prize went to Warren Richardson for his photo (above) of a man passing a baby through the fence at the Hungarian-Serbian border in Röszke on 28 August 2015.

Top prize in the Nature category went to Rohan Kelly for this unbelievable shot of a “cloud tsunami”. Love the sunbather who appears to be oblivious to the spectacle.

Don’t look down, buddy. This photo taken by Tim Laman shows a Bornean orangutan climbing over 30 metres up in a tree in the rainforest of Palung National Park in Indonesia.

This photo of Tianjin in China won first prize in the Contemporary Issues category. The hazy image was captured by Zhang Lei.

Russian photographer Sergey Ponomarev won first prize in the General News category for this photograph of refugees arriving by boat near the village of Skala on Lesbos, Greece.

Roberto Schmidt took this photo of a cloud of snow and debris triggered by an earthquake flying towards Everest Base Camp, just moments before it flattened parts of the camp in the Himalayas. This photo won second prize in the News stories category.

Top prize in the Nature Stories category went to Tim Laman for this photo of a Sumatran orangutan who’s threatening another nearby male in the Batan Toru Forest in Indonesia.

Czech Republic’s Ondrej Bank crashes during the downhill race of the Alpine Combined at the FIS World Championships in in Beaver Creek, Colorado, USA. This first prize Sports photo was captured by Christian Walgram.

Kevin Frayer of Canada won top prize in the Daily Life category for this photo of Chinese men pulling a tricycle next to a coal-fired power plant in Shanxi, China.

Chen Jie’s aerial view of Tianjin shows the extent of the explosion on 14 August 2015.

This photo won second prize in the Nature singles category. Captured by Mexico’s Anuar P. Floriuk, it shows divers swimming around a humpback whale and her new calf near Roca Partida in the Revillagigedo Islands, Mexico.

Check out many more photographs here.

[MIKA27]

Don't Invite Melisandre To A Baby Shower

Don’t invite Melisandre from Game Of Thrones to a baby shower. It just doesn’t go well. Remember, the night is dark and full of terrors. Especially with toddlers.

On another note, I posted the below John Snow episode last year. In case you wish to view that one also.

[MIKA27]

A Scientist Fulfils A Promise To His Dead Wife In Short Film Goldilocks

In this intriguing short film, Goldilocks, Earth has been devastated by solar storms, prompting a search for another home planet for humanity. In orbit, a scientist named Kharon is working hard to adapt plants to a new world, fulfilling a promise to his long-dead wife.

There’s some hints of 2001: A Space Odyssey here, and this is an interesting short film with some striking visuals. There’s some stretches of the imagination here, starting with the very notion of a space station being a bit more secure for research in orbit than on Earth (you know, with a magnetic field to protect you), but we’ll let it slide.

[MIKA27]

Here Is Your First Look At Virgin Galactic's New SpaceShipTwo, A Space Tourism Plane

wo years ago, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceshipTwo, the space plane it hoped to use to send tourists into space, failed on a test flight and crashed in the desert. Now, Virgin Galactic has unveiled a brand new version of SpaceShipTwo.

Virgin Galactic rolled-out the new SpaceShipTwo in their Mojave desert-located hangar today, and also released a series of photos, which you can check out below. If this brand new plane already looks pretty familiar to you, though, there’s a reason.

This new space plane is incredibly similar — with some small mods — to the one that crashed in the desert due to an “in-flight anomaly” during Virgin Galactic’s test flight in 2014, killing one pilot and injuring its other pilot. It’s a similarity that Virgin itself noted, saying this newest plane was “so similar to its predecessor, we benefit from incredibly useful data from 55 successful test flights as well as the brutal but important lessons from one tragic flight test accident”.

Replicating all that prior testing means that, for today, the new SpaceShipTwo won’t be leaving the ground at all. Once on-ground tests have wrapped up, it will eventually head out for a paired flight, where it stays attached to a mother ship. From there, it goes through a series of glide tests, where a pilot will steer the plane through escalating low-altitude drifts. Only when all of these have been finished, will SpaceShipTwo finally get its rocket test. Initially, it will be going on lower sub-orbital flights which, at 30,480m will still be enough for weightlessness. Their eventual plan is to hit “official astronaut distance” — over 80km above our surface.

Of course, for many people the more important question isn’t when will testing be finished, it’s when will they start taking tours up there — and that remains the big open question. Certainly, space tourism is what Virgin Galactic has its eyes fixed on (in addition to flights, Richard Branson has also tossed around the idea of a space hotel), and they have already started construction on a third space plane of the same model for commercial use. The crash of SpaceShipTwo’s successor has raised questions, though, about both the safety and plausibility of sending tourists in the near future.

For now, SpaceShipTwo (and its currently in-construction successor) remain firmly on the ground, and with so many rounds testing ahead it is not likely to be a particularly quick process to get it up into space. For those of who hope to have the chance within our lifetimes to someday book space tours of our own, though, SpaceShipTwo certainly at least has our attention.

[MIKA27]

The Man With The Iron Balls

Recently in the city of Luoyang in China’s Henan province, a martial arts gathering was held. Amid the tai chi and brick breaking demonstrations, one individual stood out: the guy getting hit in the nads.

Let’s see that from another angle.

According to Record China, this gentleman with the “iron crotch” has been training his nether region to withstand blows.

Apologies.

To withstand the brute force of being rammed with hard rocks.

Now, everyone try!

Record China reports that many of the locals were impressed, but one international visitor was quoted as being miffed by this particular demonstration.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsmuNroBf-4

[MIKA27]

JAMES BOND’S SPECTRE HOLSTER

This is the leather holster used by Daniel Craig in the most recent James Bond film “Spectre”, it was used during filming and is one of five leather shoulder holsters hand-made for Bond by armourer Dave Evans.

If you don’t have a Walter PPK handy the holster could still find use as a mysterious addition to the coat rack next to your front door. [Purchase]

[MIKA27]

Fiji Just Got Hammered by One of the Most Powerful Tropical Storms Ever Recorded

The most powerful tropical storm ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere battered Fiji on Saturday with winds up to 177 miles per hour, leaving thousands without power on the island nation.

Fiji's prime minister declared a 30-day state of emergency on Saturday.

Tropical cyclone Winston hammered nearby Tonga last week, and then intensified to a Category 5 storm on Friday afternoon as it traveled over open water in the South Pacific. The storm made landfall on Fiji's main island Vitu Levu after the government-imposed curfew began at 6pm local time. The storm had sunk or destroyed boats and caused flash flooding on some of Fiji's outer islands.

An elderly man was reportedly killed when he was struck by a roof from a house that had become unattached in the heavy winds. So far, no other fatalities have been reported.

The UN office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) say the extent of the damage caused by Winston is "yet to be ascertained."

Frank Bainimarama, Fiji's prime minister, urged Fijians to prepare themselves for the worst. "We cannot afford to be complacent," Bainimarama said, according to Australian broadcaster ABC. "I am especially concerned that some people in urban areas do not appear to have heeded the warnings about the seriousness of the threat."

"As a nation, we are facing an ordeal of the most grievous kind," Bainimarama added in a Facebook post.

Suva, Fiji's capital, wasn't hit directly by the storm, but OCHA said it did suffer "damaging gale force winds, heavy rain and power outages." The islands are now preparing for the aftermath, when storm surges can push the sea inland several hundred meters. The Red Cross said it was "fully prepared" in case of flash flooding.

National Disaster Management Director Akapusi Tuifagalele told FijiLive that officials were well prepared for potential havoc wreaked by the storm. "Our officers are stationed in every part of the country to assist our people and evacuation centers have been set up for people who may be at risk in their respective homes."

The government issued a list of 758 evacuation centers across the country, which has a population of around 900,000.

Iris Low-McKenzie, the chief executive of Fiji's Save the Children office, told the Guardian that the storm could cause "catastrophic damage."

"This is a slow moving storm that's tracking an unusual pattern and has already hit Tonga twice," she said. "It looks as though the storm could pass over the international airport in Nadi, which, if significant damage is caused, will make the humanitarian response all the more difficult."

Earlier this week, Fiji's parliament unanimously voted to ratify the UN's climate change agreement, becoming the first country to do so, and has committed itself to fully transitioning to renewable energy in the next 15 years.

Pacific islanders from nations such as Fiji, Kiribati, and the Marshall Islands are living on the front lines of climate change. Andy Pitman, the director of climate science at University of New South Wales, has said that "low lying atolls" like the South Pacific islands are "the canary in the coal mine for climate change." He expects many islands in the region to be "uninhabitable" by the end of this century.

Two years ago, rising sea levels meant residents of the Fijian village of Vunidogoloa had to pack their bags, making them the first citizens to be relocated under Fiji's "climate change refugee" program.

The worst of Cyclone Winston has passed over Fiji for now, but heavy rain continues to fall and lasting damage remains to be seen.

[MIKA27]

2017 Jaguar F-Type SVR

Ahead of its debut at the 2016 Geneva Motor Show, Jaguar gave a closer look at the all new 2017 Jaguar F-Type SVR, which, incidentally, is the first F-Type to don the SVR badge. It is also the fastest production vehicle made by Jaguar, with a top speed of 200 mph for the hardtop that is the combined result of a 575 hp supercharged V-8 and a titanium and carbon-fiber diet. No less impressive is the 516 lb/ft of torque that gets the F-Type from 0 to 60 in 3.5 seconds, making this very competitive with the Porsche 911 series. Putting all this power to the tarmac are brand new aluminum alloy wheels shod in Pirelli P-Zeros. Available in the summer.

[MIKA27]

Multi-function Folding Shovel

This practical multi-function survival tool is made with a high carbon steel construction, and can be used as a shovel, axe, hoe, hammer, screwdriver, knife, screwdriver, magnesium rod flint, small knife, wire cutter, tourniquet, window breaker, whistle, extension bar, ruler, bottle opener and plenty of other ways, all in a body that breaks down into many disparate parts for simple packing, cleaning, and use. The hollow body could also be used as waterproof container. Comes with a portable camouflage bag.

[MIKA27]

THE QUIET MAN IRISH WHISKEY

Inspired by the father of managing director Ciaran Mulgrew, who tended bar for over 50 years but told no tales, The Quiet Man 8-Year-Old Single Malt Irish Whiskey has just hit US store shelves. The 8 year variety is finished in first-fill bourbon barrels and boasts a high malt percentage that helps provide a smooth finish. It's also the first Irish whiskey produced in Derry, Ireland in more than 100 years.

[MIKA27]

PAGANI HUAYRA BC

The Huayra was already a speedy beast of a machine. The Pagani Huayra BC is justspeedier. With the BC, the company has managed to massage 789 hp from the twin-turbo 6.0L V12 engine, and paired it with a brand-new seven-speed automatic that cuts shift times in half while also weighing less. Indeed, lighter weight was also a goal for the car, as it's nearly 300 lbs. lighter than the "standard" model, thanks to upgrades like a new titanium exhaust system, lighter Brembo brakes, custom forged wheels, and a revised, more aerodynamic body made from an all-new composite material that's 50 percent lighter yet 20 percent stronger than carbon fiber.

[MIKA27]

John Wick 2 has a new inventive title and a 2017 release date

Yep, John Wick: Chapter Two (I told you it was inventive) now has a release date. Keanu Reeves will be returning to the silver screen as the cool action-hungry assassin Wick on February 10 2017. Last we heard, hip hop artist and actor Common had signed on to play a major villain in the movie and shooting started in autumn last year. Common joins the star studded cast of Ruby Rose, Ian McShane, Laurence Fishburne, Bridget Moynahan and John Leguizamo.

Co-director of the original movie, Chad Stahelski is on director duties this time around, with a script from original writer Derek Kolstad. Lets hope for more of the same absurdly brutal action this time around.

[Scrubber]

John Wick 2 has a new inventive title and a 2017 release date

Yep, John Wick: Chapter Two (I told you it was inventive) now has a release date. Keanu Reeves will be returning to the silver screen as the cool action-hungry assassin Wick on February 10 2017. Last we heard, hip hop artist and actor Common had signed on to play a major villain in the movie and shooting started in autumn last year. Common joins the star studded cast of Ruby Rose, Ian McShane, Laurence Fishburne, Bridget Moynahan and John Leguizamo.

Co-director of the original movie, Chad Stahelski is on director duties this time around, with a script from original writer Derek Kolstad. Lets hope for more of the same absurdly brutal action this time around.

Looking forward to this. Absolutely loved the first one. Great action and lots of fun.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[MIKA27]

Warner Bros. Is Sticking With Zack Snyder For Justice League No Matter What

Warner Bros. has announced that Zack Snyder’s two-part Justice League film will start shooting on April 11. That’s mere days after the opening of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice — and the news comes after several weeks of speculation and uproar overs rumours that the studio was worried about Snyder’sBatman v Superman.

Setting a start date so soon after the release of that film may not guarantee its quality, but it absolutely shows the studio’s confidence that it’s going to be a success. It also suggests that Snyder is the man Warner Bros. wants to continue to drive the train.

Entertainment Weekly, a publication formerly owned by Warner Bros.’ parent company Time Warner, broke the news so it’s as official as it gets. Filming will take place at “Warner Bros. Leavesden studios in southeast England, as well as various locations around London and in Iceland” for its eventual release on 16 November 2017.

[MIKA27]

This 4.7-Inch Organic LCD Wraps Right Around Your Wrist

Your smartwatch screen may soon be rather more impressive: This 4.7″ organic LCD display is flexible enough to wrap right around a wrist.

Produced by FlexEnable from the UK, the screen squeezes a full-colour organic LCD onto a sheet that measures just 0.2mm thick, which makes it highly conformable. The company claims that it can easily run vivid colour and smooth video content, which is a sight better than most wearables.

It’s not the first flexible display, of course. LG already has an 18″ OLED panel that has enough flexibility to roll into a tube that’s an 2.5cm across. But this concept — which, sadly, is all it is right now — is the first large, conformable OLCD designed for wearables that we’ve seen.

EDIT: Just added a video of this screen below

[MIKA27]

The Maserati Levante SUV Has Arrived

Eager to make its mark in the luxury crossover market, Maserati has introduced its first ever SUV—the Levante. Based on an earlier concept, the Levante effortlessly combines a more utilitarian aesthetic with the signature styling of this iconic Italian brand. Despite few details being released ahead of its Geneva Motor Show debut, the Levante clearly shares similar design attributes with the Maserati Ghibli, notably the front grill layout and triple side vents. And with a starting price of around $78,000, the all-wheel drive Levante will fit nicely between the Ghibli and Quattroporte in the Maserati lineup.

[MIKA27]

TODD SNYDER X PF FLYERS RAMBLER HI SNEAKER

An updated take on the classic silhouette, the Todd Snyder x PF Flyers Rambler Hi Sneaker pairs well with a wide assortment of ensembles. The Cheveux leather upper comes in black or white, with a debossed ankle patch, and perforations down the side and on the tongue to add visual interest while increasing ventilation. A light gum rubber midsole provides contrast with the monotone upper, the cushion insole is complemented by pigskin lining, and the rear features Todd Snyder's signature logo loop. Good for everything from a business meeting to a lazy day grocery run.

[MIKA27]

RAY-BAN CLUBMASTER WOOD SUNGLASSES

It's difficult to make any changes to iconic glasses like the Clubmaster from Ray-Ban. But the Clubmaster Wood is an iteration we can get behind. The frames are treated and then lined so they remain comfortable and flexible. The full rim wooden frames are available in walnut, maple, or cherry versions — each one providing an updated yet classic look from one of the best sunglass manufacturers on the planet.

[MIKA27]

Disney's Jungle Book Is Nearly 100% Green Screen, But It Looks Realer Than Real Life

This April, when audiences sit down to see Disney’s new live-action movie of The Jungle Book, they aren’t going to think about its technical achievements. Ideally, they’re going to get swept up in a story about a boy named Mowgli and his adventures in the jungle with a bunch of talking animals. But technical achievements are almost all director Jon Favreau has been thinking about since day one.

Despite the lush environments and realistic looking animals, none of The Jungle Book was shot on location. Actually, all of it was shot in a big empty building in downtown Los Angeles. Meaning that everything you see on screen — with the exception of actor Neel Sethi, who plays Mowgli — is computer generated and animated. And yet, this isn’t Inside Out or Frozen. This is still considered a live action movie, and making the action believable was one of the biggest challenges facing Favreau as he tried to bring Rudyard Kipling’s classic tale to life one more time.

Favreau and his visual effects supervisor Rob Legato spoke to a group of press in Disney’s El Capitan Theatre in January, and talked all about the challenges and goals they had on this latest incarnation of The Jungle Book.

Favreau’s resume is filled with effects movies, big and small. From Zathura and Elf, to Iron Man and Cowboys and Aliens, he’s done a little of everything. And yet, the director made some big claims about The Jungle Book. “This process is so technical, and so different from anything I’ve done,” he said. “And quite different from anything anybody’s done before.”

Obviously he’s not just talking about using a lot of visual effects. Plenty of movies use a lot of visual effects. What Favreau means is using visual effects for a film that’s not a big blockbuster. The Jungle Book isn’t Avatar or The Hobbit. It’s a small, family-friendly, character driven story, that most people already know.

“Big action spectacles are the only films that seem to make studios comfortable enough to use this level of artistry and technology in storytelling,” Favreau said. “And so the unique opportunity I’ve had is to use it for humour and emotion. Showing nature, showing animals — and really getting into that deep, mythic imagery, that always marries well with technology and always has. And so that’s fun for me.”

Luckily, Disney was in a unique position to make that happen. The company has seen huge success with live-action adaptations of its classic animated films (Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Maleficent and so on) so the executives felt taking a gamble on this process, and Favreau, might pay off similarly.

“The idea of going out to the jungle and shooting this just felt like it wouldn’t have the magic the ’67 film had,” Favreau said. “There was a dreamlike quality to it. There was a surreal quality to it. It was a high-water mark for character animation, because of the character and the emotion and the music. And that’s what I remember about it, and so I wanted to make sure we preserved that.”

So Alan Horn, the head of Walt Disney Studios, told Favreau to look at Life of Pi or Gravity, films that depend on technology without flaunting it. “Why not use the technology to create a whole world that transports you?” Horn asked Favreau. “Why be limited by going off and shooting plates? Let’s really embrace this new technology and see what we can do if we push it to its limit.”

Because of the expense of this effects-driven film-making process, the film-makers couldn’t afford to shoot anything that they weren’t going to use. So The Jungle Book was made with a similar process to Disney and Pixar’s animated films, with a real focus on nailing the story before moving forward.

“You’re constantly reinventing and exploring,” Favreau said. “We started off as though it was an animated film, with the story department, and we really stress-tested the story as you would with an animated film — because you don’t want any scenes on the cutting room floor.”

When they actually went to shoot, the stages were largely empty, comprised of nothing more than lots of green screens, cameras and actors in motion capture suits.

“We had a motion-capture volume, we had actors playing the parts, we had suits, we had sets that were lined up with what the digital set looked like. And then we captured it,” Favreau said. “First we had an animatic version, as you would on an animated film, then a motion-capture version that we edited, and then finally we took that and shot the kid as though he were an element.”

Actor Neel Sethi is Mowgli, who was usually on set alone.

And yet, filming was the easy part. Translating the actors into animals was a little less easy, but doable for top notch effects houses like the lead one, MPC. But the biggest challenge facing the crew of The Jungle Book was the main element that’s not at all realistic.

“Making the animals talk was the hardest part of the process,” Favreau said. “It was done on a shot by shot basis. There are certain animals that talk well. Other ones, it’s harder. A snake is harder, because you don’t want to make it move in the way required to make the sound. So we always erred on the side of subtly. Plus we’re really smart about the camera angle, lighting, and where the camera is. Look at Bambi again. You’ll notice a lot of the time the camera is not on who’s talking.”

And while they could cheat from time to time, most of the time they couldn’t.

“If the animals don’t look like they’re talking, the movie doesn’t work,” Favreau continued. “Forget about tracing, water simulations, and all the technology. If you don’t have them talking [it won’t work]. So I brought in footage. Let’s look at Beverly Hills Chihuahua. What did they do wrong, what did they do right? Let’s look at Dog With A Blog, let’s look at everything.”

At this event, Favreau screened four clips for the press, and the talking issue was a moot point. Actually, everything tech-wise was a moot point. The movie looks like live action, plain and simple. We’ve always wondered if you could push animation far enough to duplicate reality, and The Jungle Book may be the closest thing we’ve seen to that yet. And the question of whether these backgrounds are real stops mattering, once you start following the characters and action on screen.

Unlike the 1967 film, this Jungle Book isn’t a musical. But there are musical elements. So expect to hear Baloo (above, voiced by Bill Murray) do something with The Bear Necessities.

The first scene we saw featured the tiger Shere Khan (voiced by Idris Elba) coming down to the watering hole and smelling Mowgli. Next we saw the panther Bagheera (Ben Kingsley) trying to get Mowgli away, only to battle Shere Khan to facilitate the boy’s escape. Next was a scene of Mowgli being presented to the giant ape King Louie (Christopher Walken) and finally, one of the first scenes of Mowgli meeting Baloo (Bill Murray). Each scene looked picture perfect, and had the good-humored sense of adventure that you’d expect from the film.

Whether or not all of those scenes will come together to capture the “dreamlike quality” Favreau is going for, we won’t know until we see them in context on April 7. But there’s little doubt that — like Life of Pi, Avatar, Gravity and other films before it — The Jungle Book has done its due diligence to push digital effects to another level.

We were contacted by Christopher Glass, the production designer on The Jungle Book, to clarify that there were some sets built for the film. But those were then added to and sometimes replaced digitally.

We did build “slices” of sets — of varying sizes — sometimes no set at all. But typically wherever Mowgli (Neel) would touch, directly interact with or many times where his shadow fell, we built very precisely designed and plotted sections of sets — complete with dirt and plants. Those are the sets Jon speaks of that were lined up with the digital or virtual versions of the sets.

We made most of the sets in the virtual, CG world first. Then, through the motion capture phase, figured out exactly how little or how much of a certain set we would need to build via a process called Tech-Vis. A lot of the times our sets looked like fashion runways of dirt and jungle with a bigger area for the scenes to play out on one end. Sometimes sets were nothing more than blue shapes and some real branches (just to get the physics of Mowgli’s movements right) which were replaced with CG. A couple of times, we built bigger sets that were more like traditional film sets.

He also said the “green screens” were actually “blue screens” on set, to contrast the green plants.

MIKA: Hope this post doesn't get deleted as it may offend someone from PETA

[MIKA27]

Sydney's Light Rail Construction Road Closures

Construction for the new CBD and South East Light Rail network with start near Sydney’s The Rocks region on 11 March and continue for the rest of 2016, Transport for NSW has announced. This means traffic changes for the area. Here is everything you need to know

• George Street will be closed to southbound traffic from Alfred Street to Grosvenor Street from March 2016 to December 2016
• A single northbound lane will be open to general traffic from Alfred Street to Grosvenor Street to allow access into The Rocks
• No westbound traffic will be permitted on Alfred Street from Pitt Street to George Street (buses, coaches and taxis are excepted)

Transport for NSW said in a statement it is “working closely with the residential, tourist and business community to ensure The Rocks remains a great place to live, work and visit during and after light rail construction.”

A drop-in session for businesses and residents is being held on Wednesday 2 March where representatives from Transport for NSW and ALTRAC Light Rail will be answering questions about the timing of the work, access to roads and parking, freight and delivery services, support for businesses and travel planning.

“The CBD and South East Light Rail will provide high capacity and reliable public transport from Circular Quay, through the CBD, to Kingsford and Randwick via Surry Hills, Moore Park and Kensington,” Transport for NSW stated.

The light rail is expected to be ready for commuters in 2019.

[MIKA27]

These 3D Headphones Will Instantly Calibrate To Your Head

When I mentioned these headphones, one of my colleagues immediately quipped that it sounded like snake oil. And I can understand their reluctance, because it sounds too good to be true.

A set of 3D headphones so advanced that they instantly calibrate to your anatomy the second you put them on. It’s a Kickstarter project. It has almost two months to go, but it’s already surpassed its funding goal three times over.

They’re called OSSIC X, and according to their creators they’re a world first. “By pairing advanced 3D audio algorithms with head-tracking and individual anatomy calibration, we deliver incredibly accurate 3D sound to your ears,” the Kickstarter page proclaims.

The project promises better immersion and “drastically improved sound localisation”, although it doesn’t really go into specifics about how the calibration is achieved. It does mention that eight drivers within the headphones are used to “play back sound to the correct portion of your ear”, and that head tracking is employed to make sure “sounds will appear to come from outside your head”.

Where the real benefits start to kick in, however, is with virtual reality. As this GIF is trying to describe with some funky effects.

I wonder if this is what playing EVE: Valkyrie with touch controllers is like. This next marketing GIF kind of reminds of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive when they changed the sound. The bloke in the picture is actually playing Counter-Strike too: you can see the HUD icons and from what I can make out, it looks like the inside staging lobby for Terrorists (near the hut at top site).

The value of 3D sound isn’t quite as handy in Counter-Strike as it used to be, since CSGO doesn’t allow you to shoot people in the head through reinforced steel and inch-thick concrete the way you could in CS 1.6. But being able to identify footsteps clearly in shooters is pretty hand.

It also promises to offer the best possible sound for movies and music without shelling out on a full 5.1, surround sound setup. It sounds a little arcane to me, so here’s the OSSIC team putting forward their best pitch.

If you want to ensure you can get a pair of the headphones when they start shipping it’ll cost you US$220. Those who jump in now will get their pair around Christmas, whereas everyone else will have to pay US$250 and their headphones will arrive in January.

When the headphones are released they’ll be priced at approximately US$400, which sounds about right given the technology they’re promising. Whether it’s as awesome to use in practice, mind you, is another thing entirely. But if you’re interested, have a look at the Kickstarter campaign and decide for yourself.