YouTube with revenue

A new way of distributing movies
Perfect for machinima.

As well as being available on DVD, Stolen Life is now available streamed and via direct download.

This system is perfect for all kinds of machinima. At the moment the Si-Mi web site has many short clips available for a few cents. There is at least one other feature film I know of on this site. It’s like YouTube with revenue.

This new system allows us to offer Stolen Life for much less than the DVD.

Follow the links from the Stolen Life web site to check out this new service.
http://www.zipworld.com.au/~raz/nima/SL_Tumb/sl_ss.html

Space Elevator

It’s Jack and the Beanstalk on photons. Spaceward’s vertical race is on again.

The Spaceward Foundation runs an annual contest in the fashion of the “X” prize. They are attempting to drag the science fiction concept of a cable car to Earth orbit into the real world of practical science.

Nanotubes now make it theoretically possible to make a tether strong and light enough to reach from the Earth’s surface to geostationary orbit.

The contests consist of two main types. The first pits rival nanotubes, two at a time in a tug of war to find the strongest.

The second is a one at a time race of prototype elevators up a few hundred meters of vertical ribbon.

They don’t have an extension cord long enough to reach orbit so they are throwing the power up at the rising elevator. They are using Infra-Red, microwaves, White light, whatever is handy.

Learn more:

Claudia Black interview Part 2

Fetish Aesthetic Part 2
Season 2, Episode 35: Claudia Black Part 2,
This interview of Claudia Black continues from the previous Scapecast, which was centred around the feature length machinima movie Stolen Life starring Claudia Black. She talks about her latest projects and experiences.

Scapecast Hosted by: Kevin Bachelder and Lindy Rae
http://www.scapecast.org/

Claudia Black at DragonCon 2007

I have just received confirmation that Claudia Black will be attending DragonCon in Atlanta this year. I will post more details here as they come to hand.

A Star in a Bottle

Scientists are doing real physical experiments to investigate fusion and anti matter propulsion alternatives to conventional rockets.

http://science.nasa.gov/NEWHOME/headlines/prop12apr99_1.htm

The 4th Dimension

A new, low budget black and white movie.
A solitary character discovers what seems to be Albert Einstein’s journal on his unsolved Unified Field Theory in an old clock.

http://www.4thdmovie.com/

Buffy Animated

I stumbled over a machinima using a soundtrack from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That’s all fine and dandy but this one has got a very strange feel. All the characters seem to be using some kind of deaf signing while they speak. It gives them movement in the scenes but it’s just really odd, in a good way.

Buffy Vs Dracula – Animated! – Part One by ADAMBELL2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKmIWq00_Vo

An Artificial Brain One Cell At a Time

The Blue Brain project is the first comprehensive attempt to reverse-engineer the mammalian brain

IBM’s Blue Gene supercomputer is being used to create a biologically accurate, functional model of the brain.

The Blue Brain project
http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/

Phoenix

The picture says it all.

And Emily Lakdawalla says a bit more
http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001068/

Machinima Distribution Tactic

We have been offering the Stolen Life DVD as prizes in robot contests around the world like robot soccer and robot Sumo. There are even some dance contests. And of course search and rescue.

I’m really enjoying the responses from the robotics groups. They are very much use to the idea of robots as heroes.