Shouting Grounds

With 12 apps being offered for $39.99, you can’t beat the deal and with 25% of all orders going to charity you can even rationalize your purchase as being a gift to those less fortunate. Win-Win

I’ll talk about one of the major apps in the list that caught my eye.

Kinemac, the 3D motion graphics application, tops the app list as far as retail value ($299). If you’re a Mac user with at least a marginal amount of interest in media production, I would say based on its inclusion you would be hard pressed to find a reason not to buy this bundle. While it doesn’t quite measure up to apps like Apple’s Motion or Adobe’s AfterEffects in the realm of features, it’s certainly intuitive and easy on the eyes.

Some of the more powerful features in Kinemac include being able able to drag damn-near any image type to any surface for mapping. You can map not only 2d raster images but text, 2d vector (svg), and video files as well! If you don’t fancy building your own models using the limited primitives (sphere, cube, cone, cylinder, ring, star, 3D text, etc) provided in-app, you can drag over 3D obj and 3ds files made using other 3D modeling software. All of these features are implemented in realtime so you get a machine-specific representation (I’ll touch on this in a moment) of your animation immediately without rendering. Key framing is full featured with full bezier editing via a timeline. You can add backgrounds with alpha to export Final Cut compatible exports for video overlays.

Now the hiccup:
Some things I noticed about Kinemac that concern me are the fact that your export options are limited by your graphics hardware (another reason to pony up for Pro’s verses standard macbooks), shadows as a result of lighting are seemingly unsupported (unless you’re talking about text effect shadows), and 3d modeling (as far as creating, forming, and exporting your own meshes) is not supported.

Using an Intel graphics chipset means that you don’t have support for anti-aliased exports of your projects (kinda weak), it also limits (possibly removing) your motion blur options. Even on my Dual G5 with an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro motion blur export controls are disabled, though I can add anti-aliasing (yay). The lack of shadows made me pause, because it seems like such a no-brainer to include, but technically since this software does everything in real-time it is limited in what it can represent without a proper ray tracing engine. We all know that real-time shadows as seen in video games are generally of poor quality (see cheating) so perhaps this is why they didn’t bother to include this as a feature. Finally the copy of Kinemac that you purchase is tied (via hardware signature/online activation) to a single workstation. A pretty inflexible arrangement in this day and age of extreme workstation mobility to be sure, but hell, why not buy to bundles? You will still be saving tons of money.

Running at a fraction of your $39 investment you will certainly get tons of use out of Kinemac despite any technical hang-ups you may notice. If you’re a mac user, I suggest taking the plunge.

Here’s a list of the other apps being offered (and some that will be unlocked as more buyers commit).

read that

Per BBC News:

The object, known as 2009 DD45, thought to be 21-47m (68-152ft) across, raced by our planet at 1344 GMT on Monday.
The gap was just 72,000 km (44,750 miles); a fifth of the distance between our planet and the Moon.

Considering the name of the object, the absolute earliest we’ve known about it would have been January 1st of this year. Three months time is a very small window before a potential impact with an object “68-152ft across”. Enough mass to annihilate many cities (and some states) and significantly alter the landscape of our Earth. We would only have had, a most, three months to prepare for its arrival. This doesn’t fill me with too much confidence that any known method of altering the trajectory of threatening space debris would do the least bit of good. I’m not saying that we are prepared for a “Armageddon” style interception of any kind, but it is a sobering report to say the least. I hope that people eventually realize that we have to start making more substantive efforts towards protecting our planet from the possibility of a calamitous impact from space.

At this point in our understanding of these objects would authorities on the subject even bother to predict where such an object (or larger) would strike? Would such information do more harm, in terms of widespread panic, than good, considering we are in no way prepared to prevent it and we would have potentially so little time to evacuate? Would the response be to quietly shuffle support structures into place to prepare for the aftermath? I would hope that we would risk panic to save more lives, but who knows?

Yup.

Czech this madness out, the hydraulics on this 14-year-old’s office chair gave way and shot metallic debris up his asshole, eventually killing him. from Geekologie.

While I realize that the death of a 14-year-old is not typically funny, just help yourself out and imagine the person sweating in that blue chair was a fat Repub…and fate decided to turn his comfy, cotton-clad office wheelie into a bouncing bettie.

So this guy spent 2 years creating 6000 paintings to animate into this vid, at 20pps (paintings per second).

Khoda from Reza Dolatabadi on Vimeo.

Magic John Stone back with your stupid ass for another Oscar LiveBlog. Even though no one will be F5′n this mother fucker during the show, I’ll be posting up like the Mailman every few minutes to let you know how lame the Academy is this year.

7p central, Oscar Fashion Handjob Pregame (blueballs mix)
- Just like last year, forgot that hollywood thinks we tune into the Oscars to find out who these overpaid screws gave too much money to for their dresses and suits…what a joke. Maybe seek out the stars to ask them interesting questions instead of cupping their genitals like total fuckups.
- Diane Lane…num num.
- Amy Adams is pretty hot, short but hot…like a little hot pocket. Tuna Croissant Pocket.
- Sarah Jessica Parker is still a Gremlin, Matthew Broderick is still a retard.
- Now this cheese dick is interviewing Valentino? WHO FUCKING CARES?! Movies, assface!
- Good to see Danny Boyle brought half of India to the show…wonder why no one cares what they’re wearing?
- Mickey Rourke is the ugliest Pimp in Hollywood. It’s gotta be hard out there for a Pimp.
- Vanessa Hudgens looks different with clothes on.
- Robert Downey Jr is cool.
- Viola Davis, from Doubt, is up for Best Supporting Actress…I think she was in the movie for like 4 1/2 minutes. And yeah, I saw that shit.
- How old is Miley Cyrus again?
- Anne Hathaway…num num.
- The douches with the winning envelopes have plastic smiles.
- Meryl Streep’s daughter is bangin’! But there’s always the fear she’ll age like mom.
- 16. Miley Cyrus is 16…
- Jack Black knows how it is…he’s dug in at the bar. And he made the interviewer look like the tool he is.
- Marisa Tomei…num num. Yes please.
- Seth Rogan and Judd Apatow are dug in with Jack Black at the boozer. Smart peoples.
- Segment about the thinking behind the production of the Oscars…slightly interesting.

End of Pregame, I’m unsatisfied.

- Huge Assman is hosting…this should be interesting. Wonder if he’s the first guy from the Criminal Continent to host?
- Kate Winslet is a serious MILF
- Huge Assman is playing it like SNL…pretty smart.
- Shit…he can really dance too. That makes me nervous.
- Nice, he wonders too why The Dark Knight’s not up for best Movie.
- LOL…overall one of the better intro Montage/Performances I can remember. I think it’s partly because Huge actually thought it was funny too.

- Angelina Jolie, good god. They should clone her or something.
- Ew…Tilda Swinton creeps me out.
- Guinan! Red light y’all! I’m sure Whoopi will find some reason to slow down and complicate the Oscars.
- I think Huge should give Anjelica Huston the old Croc Dundee Dick-Check…she’s looking like she picked up a Y-chromo or two somewhere.
- Goldie Hawn’s 1 drink away from dreamland, and 1/2 inch away from showing her complete pec’s to the Academy.

**AWARD**
Best Supporting Actress – Penelope Cruz for Vicky Cristina Barcelona

- Penelope Cruz? Really? I think that was Marisa Tomei’s award…or the woman from Ben Button. Once again the Academy shows its tendency to give awards away to foreign movies. Just a little conspiracy theory of mine.
- Great…Steve Martin. Maybe as soon as his mouth opens someone will shoot him.
- Shit…that didn’t happen.
- Tina Fey is hot, but I gotta say there’s something not right about her hair.
- I haven’t heard of any of these fucking movies for Best Original Screenplay.
- Oh wait, In Bruge! Shit yeah! Now Milk, here we go…what were those first two movies?
- Now WALL-E? Really?

**AWARD**
Best Original Screenplay – Dustin Lance Black for Milk

- Milk was a good movie, I can accept this award.
- Fuck, this guy is young.
- Have a feeling Slumdog’s gonna win Best Adapted Screenplay.

**AWARD**
Best Adapted Screenplay – Simon Beaufoy for Slumdog Millionaire

- Good award, fantastic movie. I think this guy’s wearing a Pleather Tux. Probably pretty warm.
- I think Jennifer Aniston’s about to lose her shit being this close to Angelina Jolie.
- The Animation 2008 montage wasn’t too inspiring…

**AWARD**
Best Animated Feature Film – WALL-E

- WHOOP-E
- Philip Seymor Hoffman’s wearing a seaman’s watchcap and holding a bible or something.

**AWARD**
Best Animated Short Film – La Maison en Petits Cubes

- PURE EXCITEMENT.

- Sarah Jessica Parker’s got some grapefruit tits.
- Daniel Craig is a man’s man. He should do us all a favor and choke the Gremlin to death.

**AWARD**
Art Direction – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

- Yeah yeah yeah. So it was good…but you know I wanted TDK to win.

**AWARD**
Costume Design – The Duchess

- A Dude just won an Oscar for designing ridiculous women’s dresses. An Irishman to boot… What’s the world coming to?
- So far, this show is like Mountain Dew that you can watch. Xtreme!
- That was a joke…

**AWARD**
Makeup Artist – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

- TDK’s now 0 for 2 on the night. Just so you know.
- You know how they have that pre-award show for technical acheivements? How about boxing all of these stupid ass costume/makeup/set awards into that and shorten this goddamn show?
- How the fuck does the sleepy cuntrag vampire-pussy from Twilight end up on the Oscars? And presenting the “Romance 2008″ montage. Pheph!

- Natalie Portman…nummie num num.
- Cinematography, Slumdog or Button?

**AWARD**
Cinematography – Anthony Dod Mandle for Slumdog Millionaire

- 0 for 3.
- Slumdog’s gonna sweep up.
- Guess I’ve never seen Danny Boyle, he looks like a functioning retard.
- Ohmigod, Jessica Biel. NUM.
- Awesome, a Pineapple Express short film! w00t!

**AWARD**
Best Live Action Short – Spiiegle’sland or something

- This guy’s a nat-zi.
- I want to bone Meryl Streep’s daughter.
- Wanna take a moment to throw a shout-out to my boy Redscape watching the Oscars from the West Suburbs…
- Assman’s doing the big Broadway again. Damn…Beyonce…Damn…
- Huge Assway. Broad Assman. Think about it.
- The ‘Musicals’ performance, pretty good. Some classic showbiz right there.
- Here’s Best Supporting Actor…Heath Ledger HAS TO FUCKING WIN THIS.
- This has to be the closest Cuba Gooding’s been to the Academy since Rod Tidwell. What a shame.
- Ironic he’s complaining about RDJ in Tropic Thunder, stealing the black man’s role. Cuba’s been too busy making diarrhea to get a good role.

**AWARD**
Best Supporting Actor – Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight…FUCK YEAH

- He deserves it…
- I wish he was around to receive it. I’d really like to have seen him get the recognition.
- Follow that up with a Documentary montage? Really? y4wn.

**AWARD**
Best Documentary – Man on Wire

- zzzzz…maybe it’s a spoof of Man on Fire? Maybe it’s about a guy that is hopelessly obsessed with the Wire? Maybe not.

**AWARD**
Best Documentary Short Subj…ah fuck it.

- PFFT!
- Action 2008 montage. Now we’re talkin’…jack it up! Xtreme.

**AWARD**
Outstanding Visual Effects – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

- I suppose that makes sense, Iron Man and TDK, while fantastic in the VFX dept, were slightly more pedestrian than all the Ben Button shit.

**AWARD**
Outstanding Sound Editing – The Dark Knight

- Well, at least they got two.
- SNORE, how’s that for sound editing?

**AWARD**
Sound Mixing – Slumdog Millionaire

- How can two different movies with Sound Editing and Sound Mixing? Let’s face it, assholes, it’s the same fucking thing. (no matter what JT says)

**AWARD**
Film Editing – Slumdog Millionaire

- Will Smith’s apparently paying his dues for wasting his load on shitty blockbusters by presenting the mid-show F/X awards.
- Redscape thinks this Slumdog Film editor is fucking Moby. I don’t wanna know how he’d know that.

**AWARD**
Gene Hershaw Humanitarian Award – Jerry Lewis (presented by Eddie Murphy)

- Who is Eddie Murphy? He looks familiar but I can’t place him…

**AWARD**
Best Original Score – A.R. Rahman for Slumdog Millionaire

- Do they get a discount on statue plaques if they’re all the same, say Slumdog?
- The Best Original Song performance was good.

**AWARD**
Best Original Song – A.R. Rahman for Slumdog Millionaire, “Jai Ho”

- Really? Hopefully Slumdog sweeping the Oscars will just inspire people in general, not open the door for shitty Bollywood movies to head West.
- It’s 10p central, this show should be wrapping up right now…but you know we have another hour left, right? Ridiculous.

**AWARD**
Best Foreign Language Film – Don’t Bother from Magic John Stone

- I think that Liam just read the nominees for a different award…none of what he said matched the screen, nor did the winner…that’s just bad as balls.
- Oh god. Queen Latifah. Queen of what I ask you? Queen of horrible comedies? We need to find the Queen’s Castle and sack the shit out of it. Then guillotine her shit.

In Memoriam montage…notables:
- Bernie Mac
- Michael Crichton
- Roy Scheider
- Isaac Hayes
- Ricardo Montalban
- Stan Winston
- James Whitmore (Brooks)
- Charlton Heston
- Sydney Pollack
- Paul “Fucking” Newman (bytheway)

- Heath Ledger died on January 22nd last year, guess he was in last year’s montage…I was waiting to see him up there.
- I want to punish Reese Witherspoon. Wrecking Crew style.

**AWARD**
Best Director – Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire

- Surprised? Me neither. He deserves it…good director.
- His head is enormous.
- Nicole Kidman looks like she just blew the band, Sophia Loren looks like a nightmare

**AWARD**
Best Actress – Kate Winslet for The Reader

- She did a great job in that movie, justifiable
- Kate Winslet should have to accept the trophy naked, and her dad looks like Hannibal Lecter back there…
- And she’s genuinely happy, no notes or political murmurs or other bullshit.
- I haven’t seen Jack all night…where’s he at?
- They got quite a crew of dudes up there…for some reason I’d like Ben Kingsley to punch Adrian Brody in the schnozi-ola-ola
- I think Sean Penn’s the man for best Actor, but I’d like to see Mickey Rourke or Brad Pitt win too

**AWARD**
Best Actor – Sean Penn for Milk

- Well, there you go. Good chips.
- Penn’s surprisingly humble, that’s cool. He’s had some great roles.
- STEVE! Where you been Steve?
- The Best Picture montage is bad ass.
- It’s gonna be Slumdog Millionaire…

**AWARD**
Best Picture – Slumdog Millionaire

- It was certainly in the cards. Milk and Button could easily have won in different years…
- I didn’t get to see Nixon, but Slumdog was the Best Picture of the lot that I saw.

done…I’m going to bed.

Not to belabor the topic, but what is this? Fucked in the skull game month?

If you though kids were jittery and lack focus during their studies, wait until you see this onslaught of attention span collapsing japanese hand/eye torture.

The idea is that you have to kill and level up like a standard RPG but in 30 second increments. You must meet the level goals in 30 seconds to move to the next event and refill your timer. Totally insane. Holy Shit

Okay, normally these fan made jobs come out looking like flame broiled asshole but this is actually pretty fuckin good. According to the creators…

Originally envisioned as a project to test out numerous post production techniques, as well as a spec commercial, it ballooned into a multi-part series. Filmed guerilla style with no money, no time, no crew, no script, the first two episodes were made from beginning to end on a budget of $500.

I suppose a live action Half-Life film, if done right, could be a good thing. I’m nominating Guy Pearce as Gordon Freeman.

Toss some specs on him, trim that hair up, and put him in one of those EV suits and he’s a dead fuckin ringer!

Amirite?

Is this what passes for a PSN game these days? lol

Still confused…this should help…

This is completely fucking insane. Seriously, what the fuck are these assfucks doing over at Microsoft?

I took some screen shots of the disaster as it was unfolding. Kinda sucks that the definitive source for live Apple news from within Macworld was harrassed in such a manner. As of 11:40am CST macrumors.com is still down.

After this last screenshot the site was pulled, most likely by macrumors’ staff to deal with the security issue and prevent any further malicious disinformation.