Archive for June, 2005

Electronic Paper

by Glenn Vance on June 17, 2005 in Science with No comments
watch

I’d read about E-Paper a cou­ple of years ago, but this is nice tech. A micro-thin Cit­i­zen clock.

It uti­lizes E-Ink, which relies on neg­a­tively charged black par­ti­cles and pos­i­tively charged white par­ti­cles. When a back­ing layer of cir­cuitry either charges neg­a­tively or pos­i­tively, it will draw or repel the par­ti­cles based on their charge. The dis­play also has an inher­ently sta­ble “mem­ory effect” which requires no power to main­tain the image, dras­ti­cally increas­ing the bat­tery life. The result is 1/100 the power con­sump­tion of tra­di­tional dis­play options.

Cit­i­zen has not yet announced a launch date for the prod­uct, but it is expected to be sold in Japan start­ing this year. Plans for the inter­na­tional launch are under con­sid­er­a­tion, along with other design interpretations.

Give. Me. One. Now.

Tiles That Reduce Pollution

by Glenn Vance on June 17, 2005 in Science with No comments

An Ital­ian tile man­u­fac­turer known as Gam­barelli has def­i­nitely been think­ing out­side of the box with a new kind of tile they’ve devel­oped. Called the Oxy­gena line, the new tile, when exposed to sun­light acti­vates a reac­tion sim­i­lar to that of chloro­phyll pho­to­syn­the­sis in plants. In lab tests one square meter of tile has been able to purify 72 cubic meters of air.

Coated in tita­nium diox­ide, the tile’s pho­to­cat­alytic prop­er­ties cause a reac­tion between air and sun­light where active oxy­gen is pro­duced which, when it comes in con­tact with pol­lu­tants such as nitro­gen monox­ide and diox­ide (found in vehi­cle emis­sions) acti­vates a chem­i­cal reac­tion which destroys the pol­lu­tant, trans­form­ing it into harm­less salts.

So, could you sea­son a ten­der­loin with some pol­lu­tion? Pretty cool.

Say… That’s a Nice Bike…

by Glenn Vance on June 17, 2005 in Science with No comments
embrio

Look at this bad boy. It’s called the EMBRIO (what it stands for is a mys­tery to me) and it’s being designed by some Cana­dian com­pany called Bobadier. From Gizmag–

This hydro­gen fuel cell pow­ered, gyro­scop­i­cally bal­anced, one-wheeled recre­ational and com­mut­ing vehi­cle pro­vides an extra­or­di­nary vision of the kind of per­sonal trans­port we could be using 20 years from now. The design brief for Bom­badier EMBRIO Con­cept was to “cre­ate highly inno­v­a­tive, func­tional and excit­ing prod­ucts to exceed people’s recre­ational needs” and find the “next thing” in recre­ational vehi­cles. The result is a futur­is­tic and min­i­mal­is­tic one-wheeler that is as about far away as you can get from the con­ven­tional image of a uni-cycle – a mode of trans­port nor­mally asso­ci­ated with cir­cuses and street parades. The rid­ing posi­tion will be sim­i­lar to a motor­cy­cle with a com­plex series of sen­sors and gyro­scopes bal­anc­ing pas­sen­gers on the sin­gle wheel. The rider acti­vates a trig­ger on the left han­dle­bar to accel­er­ate and turns are made by shift­ing body-weight rather than actu­ally steering.

Sweet. I’d ride one. Very “Minor­ity Report”.

Batman Begins

by Glenn Vance on June 15, 2005 in Movie Reviews with No comments
batman

Back in 1989 when the orig­i­nal Bat­man film came out me and my whole gang of friends went to see the film open­ing day. It was sum­mer and we’d hit the North­park I and II in antic­i­pa­tion of see­ing Bat­man. I, per­son­ally, was stoked, and we had this goofy thing that we were all going to hold hands until we saw Bat­man on screen.

We didn’t have to wait long for­tu­nately, or my ADD addled mind may not have stayed in phys­i­cal form. At the time I really liked Tim Burton’s take on Bruce Wayne/Batman, but I don’t think its aged well. It’s too flashy, too neony (is that a word?), too car­toony and the whole Prince score thing left me a lit­tle desen­si­tized to the film. Also, who ok-d the killing of the best bad guy you’ve got from your canon in the first film? Unless Jack Nichol­son was only con­tracted for one film it was an idi­otic move that could have fed sequels for years.

Killing off the Joker led to a down­ward spi­ral of lesser and lesser bad guys (Bane, Poi­son Ivy, Two Face), until we hit rock bot­tom with the embar­rass­ing Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger as Dr. Freeze (“Adam and Evil!”). George Clooney scratch­ing old-school style on the Batmobile’s CD player, Chris O’Donnell’s inces­sant com­plain­ing and whin­ing. Blah, blah, blah. I’m sure that dur­ing Bat­man For­ever (wasn’t that a dou­ble album by Queen in 1974?) I prayed “make it end, just make it end, dear lord.”

Star­ring:
Chris­t­ian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Nee­son, Katie Holmes, Gary Old­man, Mor­gan Free­man, Tom Wilkin­son, Rut­ger Hauer, Ken Watan­abe
Directed By:
Christo­pher Nolan
Release Date:
June 15th, 2005
MPAA Rat­ing:
PG-13 for intense action vio­lence, dis­turb­ing images and some the­matic ele­ments.
Dis­trib­u­tors:
Warner Bros. Pic­tures Dis­tri­b­u­tion
3.5 Star

And now all of that garbage that came before has been wiped from my mem­ory hard drive, washed down into the sewer sys­tem of the new, grit­tier, more real-world Gotham in Christo­pher Nolan’s new film Bat­man Begins. Gotham is a real city now, not some Tokyoesque-city-of-lights car­toon like in the first film. Wayne Manor is A MANOR where peo­ple who loved each other lived and played and watched out for one another. Bat­man has been made real finally, not a car­toon char­ac­ter that sprang forth from some MTV-addicted com­mer­cial director’s brain with flashy style and bright lights and thun­der­ing bass. What we’ve had made for us is the story of Bat­man, with his quirks and faults and guilt and vic­to­ries; he’s a per­sonas well as an icon.

It seems as if this take on Bruce Wayne’s alter ego was pre­or­dained; every­one in the film is as whom they should be. Michael Caine is Alfred, Bruce’s con­fi­dant and But­ler. Gary Old­man is Cap­tain, then Lieu­tenant, Gor­don. Cil­lian Mur­phy is creepy as Dr. Johnathan Crane, mag­is­trate of Arkham Asy­lum and the future Scare­crow. The other play­ers (Mor­gan Free­man, Tom Wilkin­son, Liam Nee­son, Ken Watan­abe, Katie Holmes, et al) do good jobs, a com­bi­na­tion of both fine act­ing and an excel­lent direc­tor pulling good per­for­mances out of them. Of them I enjoyed Free­man the most for his jolly per­for­mance. He forks away from his Mil­lion Dol­lar Baby role as a wealthy man put into a dead-end job but who loves what he does nonetheless.

So, lastly, is Chris­t­ian Bale any good? Or is he going to be another Val Kilmer? I didn’t have high hopes when I went in. I liked him, as a teen, in Empire of the Sun, but hadn’t had a lot of inter­est in see­ing him in any­thing else since that film. He did a bunch of films I never saw and then he was in Amer­i­can Psy­cho, a film I never wanted to see based on a thor­oughly rep­re­hen­si­ble and revolt­ing book. Then he did some stuff I wanted to see but never got around to (The Machin­ist and Equi­lib­rium). Will I see them now, based on his per­for­mance in this film? Yes. The man nails it. He’s brood­ing and even funny some­times. I was impressed by him. He goes from a Chi­nese prison camp at his low­est to sav­ing the city that his par­ents attempted to save. Along the way the loner makes some valu­able allies as well as some ter­ri­fy­ing ene­mies, but with the panache that some­one raised in wealth would have been groomed to have. Of the pre-Nolan Bat­mans, Michael Keaton was my favorite, mostly because I didn’t feel he was as wooden as his fol­low­ers. I liked him in a Connery-vs.-Moore kind of way. Keaton is now #2. Bale owns the role.

So, do you think I liked it?

Ha.

Newer Entries →