Create Your Superhero Image!

Behold, the portrait of Captain Smackdown! Thank you to Victor Giminez of victorsmoviereviews for drawing me to it. It’s really quite simple, just follow the link, select your profile type, and begin tweaking the particulars.

As you can see, I went with a Punisher-type costume, but only because they didn’t have the logo I wanted (a fist!) However, the guns and armor were certainly fitting, and the mad fighting skills are pretty clear from that frame, right?

I encourage all members of the Revengers to get over to this site and create an image for themselves. Between Victor and myself, we have two, and that just leaves ten to go. Move your butts Revengers, this is your Captain speaking!

http://marvel.com/games/play/31/create_your_own_superhero

The Bane Costume!

Well, I did it, I went through with it and decided to be Bane for Halloween, bald head and all!. And as promised, here are some of the pics to prove that I’m not lying through my teeth. Personally, I felt it came together pretty well- the clothing was planned out but I didn’t make any special purchases. And I ordered the mask through Amazon so no credit is due there. But the real work came in the form of the  head-shaving, which took a good hour at least. I don’t think I invested in a very good electric razor, and I can tell you that for the next few days I will be applying lots of lotion to make sure I don’t chafe!

And of course the feedback I’ve gotten so far has been pretty interesting. When I wore it to the grocery store to compare costumes with the local staff, they all laughed and thought it was pretty good. The children and casual shoppers… not so much! I had to assure one little man that it was all just an outfit and that it would be coming off soon.

And when I went to pick up my darling bride from her friends house that night, they were both pretty scared! My wife has not looked at me the same way since. Mainly she just looks at my bald head and smiles! Ha, she wasn’t smiling when she saw me enter with the mask on and heard the perfectly intoned British voice!

Anyway, here are the top three pics. Front profile, front posing, and side profile. Let me know what you think, and please post pics of whatever you got up to this Halloween! I especially want to hear from my superhero kin on this one. Consider it a test run for our official Revenger uniforms. If we can pull of some real life costumes that bear just the slightest resemblance to our Revenger profiles, we’d be in the best of business!

Oh yeah, and happy Halloween everyone! May your evenings be filled with plenty of fright and excitement, and plenty of sugary swag!

Star Wars: The Old Republic trailer

As far as the gaming world is concerned, this trailer is old news! But, it’s news to me, and I thought it was pretty darned cool. Not sure how I missed it, since during 2010 I felt I was pretty up on all the news surrounding SWTOR, the third installment in the Knights Of The Old Republic  (or KOTOR, for short) video-game series. Guess not. And of course, when fan reviews began to pour in saying that the game was not all it was cracked up to be, I kind of lost interest.

However, news is beginning to circulate that the KOTOR franchise might actually be the basis for the next Star Wars trilogy. I kid you not, not only is LucasArts deep into deals with Disney to produce the next three installments, there’s also a great deal of speculation as to whether or not they will be sequels or further prequels. But more on that soon enough. Right now, enjoy this video. It’s like Star Wars meets 300 with some Matrix for good measure!

Endeavour’s Final Mission Caught on Video

Several weeks ago, the shuttle Endeavour returned to Earth after performing its 25th and final mission. It was then treated a hero’s tour as it was driven about LA before being brought to its final resting place in the California Science Center. However, before any of that happened, Endeavour got a hero’s send off as it was flown all over California on the back of a 747 with two Air Force F/A-18’s flying escort.

And wouldn’t you know it, one of those pilots took some grand aerial footage of the whole event. The 15-minute segment is about as close as anyone can get to actually being there, complete with radio communications going back and forth. And in what many people are sure to appreciate, there is no soundtrack or narration to take away from the authenticity. Word of warning though, the video is long, so be sure your schedule is clear for the next 15-20 minutes before hitting play. Enjoy!

Engineering Life for Mars

And we’re back with some more news of and about the Red Planet! Thanks to Curiosity’s ongoing efforts to discover potential life on Mars, scientists back at home have begun to seriously contemplate engineering life that will help in our own colonization efforts someday. The rational seems to be, “why search for life on Mars when you could create it?”

And the reasons for this seem pretty straightforward. Though Mars may have supported life at one time, it is not an especially hospitable environment right now. If in fact human beings settle there someday, survival won’t be easy. The average surface temperature of Mars is minus 60 degrees Celsius, and the almost-nonexistent atmosphere is 95 percent carbon dioxide.

And although water exists in Mars’ ice caps and there’s some evidence that oceans once existed, today it’s essentially a deep-frozen desert. If the would-be settlers ever want to live beyond sealed domes, and eat something other than hydroponically grown food and melted ice that is constantly being recycled, efforts to be got underway to ecologically engineer the surface.

And one such group is a team of undergraduate students from Stanford and Brown Universities that are busy applying synthetic biology to space exploration, outfitting microbes to survive the extreme Martian conditions and produce resources needed to sustain a human colony. According to Ben Geilich, the team Captain, the benefits are obvious: “Obviously, bringing up heavy machinery or building materials is going to be really expensive. The benefit of having bacteria that can do this for you is they’re really small and very light. Once there, they could grow food, produce medicine, extract minerals, and build building material.”

The fruit of their labor is the Hell Cell, a genetically engineered assemblage that could enable a bacterium to withstand extreme cold, dryness and radiation. It includes genetic modules, or BioBricks, based on DNA from a variety of ultra-tough organisms, including a cold-resistant species of Siberian beetle that makes “antifreeze” proteins, a radiation-resistant bacterium that sequesters large amounts of the element manganese, and E. coli, which produces a nutrient that confers cold and drought resistance.

It’s part of a process that Andre Burnier, one of the team’s mentors and a lab technician at NASA’s Ames Research Center, described in the following way: “You go into nature and find genes, and then you can recombine them into circuits that you cannot find in nature.” After presenting their Hell Cell during the regional International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) challenge this month, the team has since moved on to developing bacteria that could extract minerals from Martian sediment or recycle rare metals from spacecraft electronics. In addition, they are also investigating heat and acid-tolerance mechanisms that could be useful in other planetary environments, particulary Venus, which as you may recall, is also a candidate for terraforming.

Needless to say, Geilich is excited by all the doors theirs and the research of others is opening. “In the coming years,” he says, “I think we’re going to see a huge boom in stuff done with bacteria, only limited by our imagination and creativity.” But of course, not all agree. As Burner indicates, there are ethical implications that are likely to upset some, should the concept ever be made viable. After all, if there is no life on planet to begin with, then there are no ethical implications about transforming it. But send in the bacteria to change up a world that already boasts life, and you are essentially committing eco-genocide.

All of this puts me in mind of the Genesis Project from Star Trek II and III. There, scientists created a device which could alter the configuration of any planet within minutes. With a name like “Genesis”, the purpose was pretty self-explanatory – to create life from lifelessness. But this made it absolutely necessary to find a lifeless planet, otherwise whatever was already there would find itself permanently altered.

Funny how science fiction predicts real science, up to and including the ethical implications. They were pretty good movies too, go heck them out. And follow the link below for more reading on the subject!

Source: Wired.com

Joss Wedon’s Viral “Zomney” Video

Does it seem funny how Presidential elections always fall so close to Halloween, but none of the candidates ever seem to take advantage of that fact to call their opponent a ghoul or a zombie? Or perhaps they might say that their opponent is the kind of person who would hand out toothpaste and dental floss on Halloween instead of sweet, sweet candy. I’d be less inclined to vote for them!

Well, finally, someone is putting their money where their mouth is and using this occasion to do a little Halloween-inspired mud raking. As I’m sure most people are aware by now, the person is Joss Whedon. And the method is the new viral video that claims that Romney is the man to lead America to something far better than economic recovery or general prosperity: the Zombie Apocalypse!

With the election just weeks away and the popularity of shows like AMC’s The Walking Dead, this video could not have been more timely. Going viral almost immediately after Whedon posted it, the video has gone on to attract some 1.8 million years. In essence, Whedon details how the policies proposed by Romney would create just the right environment for the walking dead to take over. These include cut backs in health care, education, social services, reproductive rights that will guarantee poverty, unemployment, overpopulation, disease, rioting; basically all the things that make a zombie apocalypse so very successful and inevitable.

What’s more, he believes that the zombie apocalypse will create a new kind of one percent – something Romney approves of – which will be composed of people who can run really fast, know parkour, and can make explosives. But by far the best line in it was “(are you) ready for the purity and courage of Mitt Romney’s apocalyptic vision? Mitt’s ready. He’s not afraid to face a ravening, gasping horde of subhumans, because that’s how he sees poor people already.” Regardless of your political inclination, you have to admit, that’s gold!

However, the real significance of this video, in my humble opinion, is in how demonstrates just how much this election is being influenced by the internet. Along with many other memes – such as Binders Full of Women and Big Bird being just two examples – have millions of people talking and are even upstaging conventional media outlets. Clearly, any campaigner who intents to win elections in the future will be the one who is new media savvy, a lesson which the Obama campaign has taken to heart. So far, they have clearly been leading the race in terms of internet promotion, but that would seem to be an indication of something else at work here.

For example, a clip featuring Girls creator Lena Dunham that equated voting with losing one’s virginity was posted just last Thursday has already gained over 2 million views. That, and Whedon’s video, are just two of half a  dozen videos that endorse Obama, each with roughly 2 million views apiece. While the Romney camp has posted a similar number of videos online, not one of them can measure up in terms of  sheer following or the impact they’ve had. Clearly, Obama has a numerical advantage when it comes to support, one which embraces the young and tech-savvy. And in an age of information, that’s a good edge to have! As I’m sure people are bound to say very soon, when it comes to internet campaigning, “Go viral or go home!”

Check out Whedon’s and Dunham’s videos below. Again, regardless of your political affiliations, I think you’ll agree that both are poignant and quite funny!

 

The Future is Here: The Mind-Reading Headband!

Okay, it might not exactly represent mind control, or the pinnacle of mind-machine interface, but it’s certainly a step in that direction. Known as the Muse Headband, this device is capable of reading a wearer’s brainwaves through a series of sensors implanted in the band. It then transmits the information in real-time to a computer or mobile device and lets the user know what kind of state they are in.

In short, the device will be capable of letting a wearer know if they are stressed, losing focus, relaxed, or in a state of deep concentration. According to Interaxon, the developer, people will be able to use this device to develop their concentration skills, learn to keep their cools better, and practice relaxation techniques. The company is currently raising funds for development and intends to include a brain fitness app that will be stocked with guided lessons to exercise your memory, attention span, and relaxation skills.

However, the real potential comes in the form of developing devices that can read brainwaves and use them for the sake of remote control and communications. Just think of it – being able to play your video games, conduct IM chats, and type out those troublesome spreadsheets and essays without ever having to push a button or stroke a key. A new era of laziness will dawn! But perhaps future generations will also be more honed mentally, able to hold their concentration long enough to compose a simple sentence without any errs or ahs. Who knows? Even true telepathy could result!

Hey, we’re venturing into science fiction territory here, nothing is too farfetched! And in the meantime, check out the video below of the Muse Headband in action.

Source: news.cnet.com, indigogo

Calling All Superheroes!

Attention to all those who signed up to become part of the New New Justice League/The Revengers. I am still waiting on some people to complete their bios and their profiles before I can complete our superhero registration form. Yes, they make you fill these out if you want to fight crime or commit them, it’s like a union thing or something. We don’t want to be scabs now do we? If we don’t register soon, they’ll blackball us from all the parties and we won’t be notifications for important seminars, webinars and retreats.

So… please submit your paperwork to HR in a timely manner so I can get out squad up and running.

Okay, seriously though, this is actually been pretty cool! People have come forward to create superhero identities which I think might actually work, and I wouldn’t mind putting them all together and seeing if we can’t create a serial from this or something. Sure, many of our characters are all slightly comedic and satirical, but that’s okay. People like a good comedic rip-off of their old favorites! So to commit to this enterprise which I started as a sort of goof, I am hoping people can finish their characters by making sure they’ve taken the Superhero Challenge parts two and three. If not, I shall be forced to pencil in your details, and I will not be gentle! I will be cliched, humorous, and even a bit tongue-in-cheek.

And I should also mention that in the spirit of things, I have created my own character. Captain Smacdown is his name! Here are his specs, as they will appear in the final installment of our Superhero Challenge, once all characters are registered and complete:

Captain Smackdown

Alter ego: Matt Williams, mild mannered educator/writer/blogger
Appearance: Molded armor suit, dark gunmetal grey, fist logo on the chest, utility belt with tons of guns, smoke grenades, incendiaries, and assorted cool gadgets. Cigar in mouth, scarred cheek, eye patch over one eye. Expressions range from shit-eating grin to a scowl.
Abilities: Mad Fighting Skills, Guns, Gadgets
Backstory: Once an educator with inner city youths and part-time writer, Matt was traumatized when a student of his was murdered in front of him and he was left mortally wounded. Saddened, angry and broken, he joined a private security firm and learned the art of weapons and tactics, but soon became disillusioned with their methods. Realizing that the world was full of evil and that the line between right and wrong was something one could easily find themselves on the wrong side of, he began trekking across the world, learning martial arts and philosophy in East Asia before returning home to fight crime on his own. After many years of battling scum and criminals in the streets, he rose to become head of a new order for fighting evil wherever it reared its ugly head. The New New Justice League/Revengers!
Catchphrase: “Here comes the Smackdown!”

Halo 4 Trailer!

A new series of trailers have been making the rounds lately, designed purely to get gamers salivating! After many years, it seems that Halo will be releasing a fourth installment in its ongoing series, one which promises some changes and new challenges. The first trailer premiered at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (aka. E3) back in June of this year and previewed the new game’s storyline. The second trailer, titled “Scanner” was released just this month and offers some additional clues as to what the game will be about.

Basically, it is four years since the Earth-Covenant War ended, and the UNSC has once again began colonizing new worlds. However, the maiden voyage of the “Infinity” is interrupted when some mysterious force teleports it to a distant world. Once again, the Master Sergeant is called in to investigate and kick some ass, but get’s captured along the way. The new enemy, some “Ancient Evil” as the trailer suggests, appears to be Forerunner in nature. They have awakened from several thousand years of sleep and are out to protect the Galaxy from the scourge that is humanity. Bummer…

Official release date is Nov. 6th, 2012, for those gamers who don’t already know. Enjoy the trailers!

*Sidenote: I also managed to find a third trailer over at the IGN website, but unfortanately, it won’t let me embed it here. However, some additional clues were provided there – particularly the identity of the new enemy – and I have included them here. You’re welcome 😉


Superhero Challenge Part III: Catchphrase and Outfit

Just one last hurdle remains before I can declare the New New Justice League complete and ready to fight crime… or cause it, whichever the case may be. And that is the selection of an outfit and a catchphrase. To be fair, some of you have already done this, specifying that you want to fight in high-heels or erotic dress (wink, wink). However, the majority of us who have created characters still need to stress how we are going to appear in public and what they plan to say when busting up their enemies.

Keep in mind, the costume is absolutely key. It is the visual personification of your superhero ethos, your motivation and modus operandi encapsulated in a few feet of tight leather, spandex, or super-resistant high-tech fabric. So choose carefully, and keep in mind the following options:

  1. Mask – this is especially important since it hides your true identity. For some, its enough to simply remove their glasses and add a cowlick to their hair (who you fooling Superman?). For others, a full mask that not only covers but protects is key (Batman), and others still get by with a simple eye-covering addition. And let’s not forget the bad guys who turn masks into deadly and scary appendages (hello Bane!). Just make sure your opponents can actually hear you and understand what you’re saying.
  2. Cape – a classic when it comes to fighting crime or being a flamboyant villain. Sometimes, its even used as a a tool of weapon (you again, Batman). But even if its strictly decorative, its an important part of the ensemble, and can hold your logo or just carry your colors.
  3. Skin-tight suit – men and women enjoy this option! Composed of leather, indestructible fibers, or molded plastic, having a suit that fits your form and enhances all the right things (i.e. pecs, shoulders and boobs), the suit can be intimidating and distracting to the enemy. Just remember, sacrificing form to function only goes so far! Looking good is important, but not as important as being able to comfortably, run, jump, and kick ass!
  4. Armor – There’s no rule that says you can’t look good and afford ample protection. But for those who don’t want to be seen wandering in around in skin-tight skivvies, a suit of body armor is a safe and effective option. Not only that, but it can be shaped to enhance your natural physique and make criminals and your personal enemies think you’re a lot bulkier (or bucksome) than you actually are.
  5. Mits/Boots – you may not think so, but what you wear on your hands and feet can be just as important as what you have covering your face. For example, rough and tumble superheroes tend to wear armored gloves so they can bash in their enemies faces, while your crime-fighting lady superheroes of the past tended to wear arm-length gloves to give them that demure look. Much the same is true of feet apparel, with the men sporting heavy boots and the ladies using high-heeled shoes or something else completely impractical. In modern times, things have gotten a bit more sensible, with female superheros wearing more combat-friendly, sensible shoes and hand gear. Though some ladies (such as Catwoman) still seem to prefer high-heeled boots to flats because, let’s face it, they look kick-ass!
  6. Distinguishing Marks/Disfigurement – in some cases, the superhero/villain are themselves their costume! This is the case with the Hulk, the Toxic Avenger, and guys like the Joker. Beyond the occasional article of clothing (like Joker’s purple suit) there really is no costume. The makeup and the scars are what identify him. And in the case of the Hulk, transformation into a giant green beast is what identifies him. Oh, and speaking of beasts, there’s Beast! Like Mystique and Nightcrawler, the outfit is a permanent part of their person.

Catchphrase time! I can’t specify any rules or parameters here, since there really are none. The only thing that matters is that it be appropriate to your characters motivation and/or persona. Keep it short, sweet, and direct. Intimidation factor is a must, but then again, so is comedic value. And remember, you get bonus points for play-on-words and puns, provided they are clever! Go to town!