Samsung Unveils See-Through Monitor. Also, Japan is Still Weird.

That's cool, I guess.  But where's my rocket car?

Also!  A friend of mine, currently living in Japan, pointed out this video (or rather, a related one, but I like this one better) that I felt I had to share.  This is Hatsune Miku, a character mascot from a music software program called Vocaloid...  And she's giving a live concert here.  In holographic form.



S1m0ne is getting more and more prophetic every year.  Incredibly, I find myself wondering if Jem was similarly prophetic, but down that road lies madness.

And yet, I can't help but admit that this is kinda awesome.

The Afganistan Withdrawal Hornswoggle

For years now, we the public have been told that 2011 will be our last year of involvement in Afganistan.  As most are likely aware, this is no longer the case - Harper has announced that we'll be keeping 400 Canadian soldiers there to operate in a training capacity, and the Liberals countered his announcement with the suggestion that we should increase that number to an even thousand because...  well, because they're Liberals and the Liberal party is pretty shit right now.

Of course, this move surprises no one who's been paying attention.  Pogge pointed out, way back at the beginning of October, that the official line from both U.S. and Canadian governments weren't really meshing well with their own message:  namely that our planned withdrawal was putting the mission at jeopardy, that "it will be impossible to replace Canada's more than 1,000 combat troops without diminishing forces elsewhere in the country."  The reason this objection didn't make much sense is that our withdrawal was meant to occur at the same time as the planned drawdown of American troops in Afghanistan - which suggests that, in truth, the U.S. Government has little intention of actually reducing their forces.

The number of troops we're going to be keeping there during this farce of nation-building is yet to be determined - don't think for a second that the four hundred number Harper gave is in any way accurate, not with the Liberals giving him ample opportunity and excuse to boost that upwards considerably, nor with the concerted campaign to convince us that we really actually don't want to pull out anyway.  Our withdrawal may not even end up as a drawdown, at this rate.

Let's see... Tuesday? It's grey. I'll stay in bed.

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The Tim Burton Movie That Almost Was...

Back in the 90's, there were persistent rumours of a Tim Burton-directed Superman movie. Few details were known, but I recall one of the theories was that it would involve the electric Superman (dubbed Superman Blue) rather than the more classic supes, since that's the version that was in the comics at the time.

Turns out the rumours were pretty much spot on, as a gallery has recently been unveiled for what would have been Tim Burton's Superman Lives. You can view it here for epic lulz.

Really dodged a bullet on that one.

Tracy Butler is an Art Goddess

For she has done a thing! And much like most things she does, it is a beautiful thing!

Very illuminating to see her process, not the least because it really shows you exactly why so much time passes between her webcomic pages.

Retinal Chip Helps the Blind to See

Some smart folks in Germany figured out that they could help people with a certain kind of hereditary blindness see by inserting a subretinal implanted chip beneath the retinas of the blind.

One of the patients surprised researchers by identifying and locating objects on a table; he was also able to walk around a room unaided, approach specific people, tell the time from a clock face, and describe seven different shades of gray in front of him.

The particular type of eye disease this alleviates affects 200,000 people worldwide. The chip functions by "[replacing] the retina's cones and rods - its light receptors - which were lost in retinal degeneration."

The down side is that the test worked with 11 subjects; only three of them received any benefits, the others' conditions having progressed too far.

Still, it's a pretty major breakthrough in the fight for vision.

Hal-Con Report

This is a bit overdue, but I've been recovering from the trip.  Better late than never, though - regular posting returns tomorrow.

So, my thoughts about Hal-Con...

1.  It was way, way too crowded.  I think the organizers either were locked into the location after it became clear how many people were going to show up, or else they really didn't know what a thousand people would really be like.  At any rate, they needed at least twice the area they had.

2.  They were understaffed.  By 2 PM on day one I was already seeing Hal Con staff getting incredibly frazzled and short-fused.  Things only got worse as time went on, and sometimes innocent Con-goers would get on the wrong side of the volunteers' exhaustion.  They needed at least twice the staff they had to keep things working.

3.  Special mention for the security staff.  From what I could see, they had it worst of all of the volunteers, and it wasn't uncommon to find them yelling angrily at each other into their walkie-talkies, usually over something that's gone wrong.  But I'd neither seen nor heard about any of the security staff acting short-tempered with any of the Con-goers, so kudos to them.

4.  There weren't enough programs by a pretty huge margin.  In fact, they didn't even have enough programs for all the pre-registered guests.  Really, there's no excuse for this - why wouldn't they at least make sure they have enough for the people who'd paid for their tickets in advance?  They ran out of programs before the first day was half-over, and had to print out emergency single-day schedules - which they also ran out of quickly.  People who were showing up only for Saturday or Sunday weren't even given anything, despite paying $32 dollars.

5. The events themselves could have used more thought; the costume contest, for example, allowed so many last-minute entries that hardly any non-contestants were able to watch.

6. A number of the workshops and seminars were pretty cool, but were placed poorly.  About eight people had to walk out of the Writing Comics workshop, for example, because there weren't enough seats and they didn't feel like standing for the whole hour.

It was a rather poorly organized event, really.  Some of the things I'm willing to cut the organizers some slack with because this was their first Con and it was a learning process for them, but other things (like the lack of programs) are really inexcusable.


Now, despite all this, I did have fun...  But it was often in spite of the Con, rather than because of it. 
The real test will be next year - if the organizers have learned from their mistakes and avoid them next time around.