Good voice acting can’t save a bad game, but talented actors can imbue a game script with genuine emotional freight. Some of the best in-game voice work is not the long bits of dialogue in boring cut-scenes, but tiny, subtle bits of atmosphere. In Tomb Raider, Lara Croft’s quiet, voluptuous moans as she hurled herself…
GREETINGS. MY BROTHER, THE LEADER OF A FOREIGN NATION, WAS RECENTLY DEPOSED BY A VIOLENT COUP THAT DESTROYED ALL KEYBOARDS CAPABLE OF PRODUCING LOWERCASE LETTERS… GREETINGS. I AM NOT THE BROTHER OF A RECENTLY DEPOSED LEADER OF A FOREIGN NATION WHERE KEYBOARDS DONT HAVE LOWERCASE LETTERS. I AM INSTEAD SOMEONE WHOSE WEBLOG HAS RECENTLY BEEN…
The group’s volunteers pose as kids, and when an adult hits on them, they publish the person’s picture, phone numbers and e-mail address on the site so the group’s supporters can hound the person by phone and e-mail. Perverted Justice has made more than 600 such busts since it was formed in July 2002, and…
Well. Those Brits do have some different standards. I just can’t see that happening here. At least not any newsroom I’ve worked in. You might find yourself all over Romenesko in the morning. I seem to remember a pretty big stink over the Post-Dispatch’s disappearing Coke can and National Geographic’s magical moving pyramids. It’s not…
[T]he main thing that’s hard to do in IF is build a story where there’s a lot of internal character development as opposed to external action. There are some ways to approach it, but they’re all challenging, and there aren’t very many examples of IF where people have done it successfully before. Whereas if you’re…
It is still dark when I get up, the suitcase carefully packed the day before. I will be away almost a month, the preparations have been exstensive, at work and home. The little plane takes off, and carries me into dawn. —Transit – but going where? (Thinking with My Fingers) A lovely, haunting little travelblog from…
Some experts charge that the $1.4 billion antivirus industry is content with perpetuating a business model that is profitable for the companies, but onerous for the user. —Michelle Delio —Cashing In on Virus Infections (Wired)
A new poll suggests fears that “The Passion of the Christ” would trigger anti-Semitism were unwarranted…. A leader of Jews for Jesus considers “The Passion of the Christ” a Godsend for Jewish evangelism…. The Vatican said Pope John Paul II has met with Jim Caviezel, the actor who portrays Jesus in “The Passion of the…
These were the men who broke out of Nazi Germany’s supposedly escape-proof camp Stalag Luft III on a moonless night in March 1944, creating one of World War II’s most enduring legends and inspiring a classic war film. The Great Escape itself was 60 years ago but Squadron Leader Jimmy James, one of the 76…
The Great Figure I’m about to teach Death of a Salesman in my “Intro to LIterary Studies” class. It’s part of a unit on literary criticism, so after we discuss such topics as “Is Willy Loman a Tragic Hero?” and the formal experimentalism called for in the stage directions, I’m hoping to ask my students…
Using voice-recognition middleware developed by ScanSoft, Lifeline can recognize over 5,000 words and 100,000 phrases. In practice, that means that the game’s main character, Rio, will understand anything that’s relevant to her predicament, as well as many things that aren’t. Lifeline is thus a unique step toward deeper player immersion in the game world, but…
“The Windmills of Your Mind” is too crazy to be anything but a piece of its crazy time, and it is almost airily psychotic: “Is the jingle in your pocket/Or is the jingle in your head?” A question like that made a lot of sense in 1968. —Mind the Windmills (http://boynton.ubersportingpundit.com) Boynton has collected a few…
A new object has been discovered in the Solar System; it’s nearly as large as Pluto, but 13 billion kilometres away. Tentatively named Sedna, the Inuit goddess of the Sea, it’s approximately 1,700 km in diameter, which makes it the largest Solar System object found since Pluto was located in 1930. —Astronomers Find a Second…
On a platform before a crowd of curious onlookers, the scientists eagerly ripped open a box of CDs containing data from a newly released million-second-long exposure taken by two cameras onboard the Hubble telescope, and struggled to transfer the data to nearby computers as they answered a multitude of questions shouted out by reporters and…
Nobody won. Nobody even came close. But that didn’t stop organizers of the DARPA Grand Challenge from declaring an unusual race across the Mojave Desert a spirited success. —Marsha Walton —Robots fail to complete Grand Challenge (CNN) We’re safe, for a little while longer, from the robot rebellion that will inevitably overwhelm us.
A story in a campus paper has alarmed administrators of one of journalism’s highest awards, prompted a crackdown by the university and sparked a debate over journalism ethics, privacy and freedom of the student press. —Michael Weissenstein —Student Article Sparks Ethics Debate (Newsday/AP) Hmm… I think the faculty member was probably out of line. I think…
The effects of music on performance on a computer-mediated problem-solving task were examined. Participants completed the task in anonymous dyads as they were exposed to either Classical music, Punk music, or No Music. Results indicate that those in the Classical music condition performed better on the problem solving-task than those in the Punk music or…
I Want My Jerz. Tough on Dirt, Gentle on Jerz. Today’s Jerz, Since 1903. The Appliance of Jerz. When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Jerz. Hope It’s Jerz, It’s Jerz, We Hope It’s Jerz… Make Fun of Jerz. —The Advertising Slogan Generator (The Surrealist) About that last one… Huh?
Can you identify the candybar by looking at the cross section? Make a guess and click on the cross section to find the answer. —Name that Candy Bar (Science Museum of Minnesota) I gave up chocolate for Lent, so naturally I’m tormenting myself on this site. Via Page’s Page.
For decades, elementary schoolbooks have maintained that the Great Wall of China could be seen from space – but now the books are being rewritten. —China ends Great Wall space myth (BBC)