Haibane.info

Author: Otaku-kun

  • Martin Gardner, 1914 – 2010

    A legend has passed away last week: Martin Gardner, arguably the inventor of the term “recreational mathematics” and columnist for Scientific American for almost 30 years.

    Here are tributes to Gardner at Discover Magazine, Scientific American, and also some thoughts by Richard Dawkins. I find it interesting that Gardner is remembered for his skepticism; I wonder how many people praising him for it are also true believers in the Singularity? (a concept ever deserving of Gardner’s critique, if there ever was one. My skepticism on Singularity is a matter of record).

  • down the Hobbit Hole

    Looks like the Hobbit movie is still on hold, awaiting the fate of the MGM studio being sold to clarify the rights situation. Director Guillermo del Toro himself lays out the status, via AICN:

    Q: We’ve been following your production of THE HOBBIT, and every time the production gets delayed. Do you know when you’re actually going to start and get on set?

    Guillermo del Toro: There cannot be any start dates really until the MGM situation is resolved, because they do hold a considerable portion of the rights, and it’s impossible to make a unilateral decision by New Line or Warners to give the greenlight to proceed. We really believe that things will be known after the fact of MGM’s fate. Whether they stay and get supported, or they get bought, or they transfer some of the rights: nobody knows. We’ve been caught in a very tangled negotiation.

    Now I’ve been on the project for nearly two years. We have designed all the creatures; we have designed the sets and wardrobes; we have done animatics and planned very lengthy action sequences and scary sequences and funny sequences. We are very, very prepared for when it’s finally triggered, but we don’t know anything is sold.

    Q: The story that was reported earlier today that THE HOBBIT has been greenlit and will be shot in 3D, that is false?

    Del Toro: On both counts, there are no final answers. It is not greenlit. That is categorical. And 3D has been discussed literally once in the room. The budget and the schedule and everything that we are handling – the cost of the film, the number of days it would take to shoot – is being handled right now without looking towards 3D. Is there a chance it will become 3D in the future? Maybe. Right now, it’s not being planned as such.

    Well, there’s still the World of Warcraft movie to look forward to.

  • ISMRM 2010 follow up: posters, CME, and video

    If you attended the ISMRM meeting and were chased out of the poster session by angry Swedes for trying to take photos of the posters, then know that I’ll be uploading my own shots to Flickr later on. However, ISMRM is asking that everyone send their final PPT/PDF files of their posters as printed to posters10@ismrm.org, so they can post those online as well. Hopefully they will ask for these ahead of the meeting, and encourage people during the meeting to do so, next year. I suspect compliance will still be pretty low unless they market this more. Of course, they already have the e-posters, this is just regarding the traditional posters.

    Also, TODAY is the last day for submitting your CME online at: https://www.directsurv.net/ismrm.asp.

    Finally, they expect to have video of the oral sessions uploaded to the official site (http://www.ismrm.org/10) within a month. So be patient! An incredible resource, well worth waiting for.

  • welcome back to Reference Scan – the MRI blog

    Does this thing still work?

    Well, as far as hiatuses go, this one probably set some kind of record. Real life of course intrudes to varying degrees, but I am hopeful that I can start anew here and we can regain some of the lost ground.

    My aim is to make this a genuinely interesting resource for MRI scientists and also a means of enhancing our knowledge and career skills. So, let’s try again!

    welcome back 🙂

  • graphic calculators in the iPod/iPad age

    A friend of mine at work has an aging TI-92 – it’s a massive beast, and makes me remember just how obsessed we all were with graphing calculators back in college. There’s no truly equivalent app that replicates that sort of computational power in the various app stores that I am aware of (I looked for something akin to that for my iPod Touch, but no luck). Even a simple math scripting app, like SpeQ (sort of a mini-Matlab), would be a huge quantum leap in usability. I wonder if I am just missing something? I’d probably pay quite a bit of money for the ability to replicate the sophisticated graphing calc power of old on my iPod (and it would probably do even better in the iPad).

    This is what would literally turn iPads into Padds overnite.

  • Earthsea crossing the Pacific

    Looks like Gedo Senki is finally being released in the US:

    Disney has announced that it will theatrically release Studio Ghibli’s Tales from Earthsea (Gedo Senki) in the US on August 13th under its Touchstone Pictures banner. The movie, directed by Goro Miyazaki, the son of revered anime director Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Ponyo, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro) several books from Ursula K. Le Guin’s series of novel. The feature premiered in Japan back in 2006, and hit other English speaking territories, such as the UK and Australia since then, but its US release has been delayed due to the Sci-Fi Channel’s now expiring hold on the Earthsea rights.

    Cast for the English dub includes Timothy Dalton, Willem Dafoe, Cheech Marin and Mariska Hargitay.

    Reviews of the movie weren’t especially positive, especially by the standards of the frequently lauded Studio Ghibli, and it is generally remembered a cause of friction between Hayao and Goro Miyazaki. Le Guin was likewise cold to the work.

    Presumably, Disney will get the characters right on the box art! 😛

    For what it was worth, I really enjoyed the movie, especially the visuals. Obviously, UKL is the authority on whether the movie was true to her vision or not, but as a reader I have equal claim to interpret it, and I frankly thought the movie evoked the spirit of the Earthsea universe well. Especially the dragons. They really, really got the dragons right. The reviewer at TOR was also positive, but restrained, so your mileage may vary – but I definitely recommend this, especially for watching with older kids.

  • The Doctor is in

    I am really, really enjoying the new Dr. Who series. I confess I’ve never seen the older versions but the new one hits all the right buttons. I’m about 3/4 through season 2 and it’s really hard to pick a favorite thus far, though The Girl in the Fireplace probably comes close.

    One thing that especially appeals to me is the rigidity of the timeline. We see that t is possible to change events, but there are severe consequences for doing so – the universe “heals itself” by closing off paradoxes like an infectedd wound and then sending “antibodies” to excise it. And, alternate realities do exist but they are walled off in such a way that even the TARDIS can’t easily access them. Its not clear to me if this is how it always was or whether it’s a consequence of the Time War. In either case, though, it puts the show within a very specific (and unique, given the basic storyline features time travel so centrally) set of constraints. The exact mechanics of when the Doctor’s appearance makes him “part of events” and when he is outside those events are still mysterious to me but it’s good to have some unknowns.

    The show just really, really rocks. The only problem is that it has obliterated whatever token anime watching I was still trying to do on the side (especially now that I’ve completed Bebop).

    Also, I’m guessing that the Torchwood thing becomes more important later, since they’ve dropped a reference to it almost every episode since the Doctor regenerated.

  • Satsuki and Mai, together again

    I picked up the new deluxe edition of Totoro, to replace our mysteriously-vanished copy. I haven’t actually watched it yet (maybe tonight) but I already know I am going to miss the english voices of my old Fox version, especially Satsuki.

    My 8yr-old, who I think deserves to inherit the Fledgling Otaku label, noticed something both highly hilarious and deeply troubling on the cover of the disc box. It’s readily apparent on the cover scans on Amazon. See if you can find it.

    Totoro deluxe version
    What is wrong with this picture?

    I can’t stop staring at it, now. Yikes. Please, let there be better attention to detail inside the box than outside! we’ll find out tonight. Somehow I am not really confident about Dakota Fanning here.

  • cell phones don’t cause cancer

    If they did, then these gigantic multi-year studies would actually have found evidence of it, rather than being “inconclusive”.

    Consider this a public service announcement. I could say more about the impossibility of radio waves at these wavelengths to actually penetrate more than a few millimeters of skin, but that’s really a waste of time when dealing with this sort of issue.

  • The Secret of Kells

    Don had a short post linking to a tantalizing new animated film called Secret of Kells which seems to only be released in Irish theaters at present, but would be a prime candidate for torrenting (assuming Pirate Bay can get back online; I don’t torrent enough nowadays to be able to sustain a BakaBT account like Steven does).

    The animation has an exotic brushstroke painting feel to it, and there’s a gaggle of reviews online that are praising the storyline, with plenty of references to Miyazaki. I’m a little hesitant, since everyone universally praised Ponyo as the awesomest thing ever, but was a disappointment to me. Still, if this appears in local theaters then its a natural target for me and my 8yr old.