weird_angel, posting in videogames4sale:
*(All games were rarely played, comes in original case, and booklets perfectly intact)*


DS:
Final Fantasy III - $13 shipped SOLD
Children Of Mana - $15 shipped

PSP:
Harry Potter and the goblet of Fire - $5 shipped
God Of War Chains of Olympus - $13 shipped


Thanks for looking :)

( Pics Behind The Cut )

linuxtoday:

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2009-11-10-022-35-NW-BZ-CY

linuxtoday:

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2009-11-10-021-35-NW-LL

linuxtoday:

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2009-11-10-020-35-OP-DT

linuxtoday:

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2009-11-10-019-35-RV-GM-SW

linuxtoday:

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2009-11-10-018-35-OP-BZ-HW

boingboing_net:

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/U3gATuvYvKA/real-calculators-mod.html

The product designers over at MintPass have created these concept designs for real life calculators that look just like the calculators that pop up on a Windows or Mac OS screen. via The Raw Feed

boingboing_net:

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/Wzk8fe4n1bw/jim-campbell-the-art.html

A man runs. He falls down. He struggles back onto his feet and he runs some more. It's a simple narrative. Even without much detail, you can understand what's going on. Pause the video, though, and the scene isn't nearly as clear. Movement makes up for the lack of other visual information. Your brain can read and understand a video at much lower resolution than it would need to make equal sense of a still frame.

Meet Jim Campbell, a former Silicon Valley engineer turned visual artist. Inspired by early Bell Labs experiments with pixelated images, and by his own engineering work with digital filters, Campbell makes art that toys with the human brain.

I first saw Campbell's work in early October, at a conference about LED lighting. He was there to teach the techie types about art--which is somewhat ironic because, in Campbell's case, art comes from a very techie place. Specifically, the November 1973 issue of Scientific American. Much of the inspiration for Campbell's current work comes from a story in that magazine, written by Bell Labs' Leon Harmon, about low-resolution images and the minimum threshold of information the human brain needs to recognize faces. The now-classic example Harmon used was a 252-pixel, grayscale portrait of Abe Lincoln.

Since the '70s, plenty of artists have worked in pixel mosaic, but Campbell was more attracted to the the question Harmon was asking: How low resolution can an image or video be before we no longer recognize what's going on?

This boxing match video--using only 88 pixels--is probably the furthest Campbell has pushed the idea. "Most people still get it, but it might take some people 10 minutes. I don't think anyone would get it at all if it were in black and white," he says. "With color you need fewer pixels total, because there's more information per pixel."

It's that extra information per pixel--particularly the information provided by movement--that makes Campbell's art understandable at all. While he's read a little about brain science, most of Campbell's theories about what's going on between his art and viewers' heads is based on simple observation and guesswork. The way he sees it, his art is tapping into a more primitive sort of seeing. "It's pretty well known that there are different parts of your brain that are just looking at movement and rhythm. Just as there are parts that only look at color or just at analytical things," he says. "I think when you take away the detail and it's just movement, the image doesn't have to be analyzed as much. It's just there. You're getting at that primal vision, the simple job of hunting and survival."

To see it in action, just look at a still image from the "Running and Falling" video. The extra information of movement makes all the difference between completely clear, and completely abstract.

The other big thing Campbell has noticed is that low-res images--even moving ones--make a lot more sense once you've put them through a filter. At the end of the boxing match video above, Campbell comes into the shot and removes a plexiglass panel, revealing the blinking LEDs underneath. Suddenly, even if you were getting the idea of a fight before, the image loses most (if not all) of it's meaning.

Filtering is important to Campbell's art. The idea is based on what he used to do, back when he was a full-time Silicon Valley engineer, with digital reconstruction filters for processing sound and images in a computer. According to Campbell, a digitized image has a "stair step" effect. It's essentially broken into a bunch of individual pieces of information that are next to each other, but not really connected. Reconstruction filters take these pieces and smoosh and blend them, combining a bunch of separate dots into a coherent whole. "I took that idea and just created an optical process, instead of an electronic one," Campbell says.

He does this in several different ways. Besides the literal plexiglass filter used in the boxing match video, Campbell has also found that simply turning the art away from the viewer can have a similar effect. That's what's going on in this last video. Campbell has a square panel, with LEDs around the edges of it. He hangs it up, with the lights facing the wall. Instead of seeing the individual dots of light, you see the smoothed out, low-resolution video projected on the wall. If you didn't know ahead of time that the piece was cycling through scenes of a fire, freeway traffic and a walk through a park, you'd probably still have trouble understanding what you were seeing. But without the filter, you'd likely never get it.

Videos and still frame used with permission of Jim Campbell.

linuxtoday:

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2009-11-10-017-35-OS-CY

boingboing_net:

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/x7IkMO77Amk/one-morning-in-a-fit.html

I was driving along the San Francisco waterfront one morning when a sign on a white tent in the Marina Green parking lot caught my eye. It said Reactt: The Only Real Boot Camp in San Francisco. I was curious, so I googled it when I got home. Originally, the term "boot camp" referred to the training program military recruits go through before they're deployed. In the mid-2000s, boot camps for rehabilitating juveniles caused a media frenzy when a boy's tragic death was caught on camera. These days, it has become a popular title for extreme fitness programs that start really early in the morning and command lots of repetitive hard core exercise under the watch of really buff instructors. Reactt is one of them, and since I've always wondered what being at boot camp might be like, I decided to try it out.

My instructors were two really buff guys with shaved heads and heavy boots. Sergio has an impressive personal trainer pedigree and Justin served in Iraq with the Marine Corps. Shortly after sunrise on a beautifully brisk Saturday morning, I arrived at their camp, where rows of equipment were neatly laid out on a patch of grass overlooking Alcatrez.

The concept of fitness boot camps is relatively new, but the tools we used here have been around for hundreds, even thousands of years. Here's a quick overview of the tools we used that day:

The kettlebell: A cast iron weight reminiscent of a bomb or a cannonball that originated in Russia centuries ago. It was brought to the US by a Russian special forces trainer named Pavel Tsatsouline, and is now a popular strength-training tool among martial artists. We did squats while pumping the kettlebells high above our heads.

Battling ropes: Braided manila ropes adapted for strength training by John Brookfield, a Guinness Record-holding fitness guru who once pulled a 24,000-pound truck over a mile. We made giant snake-like waves with the ropes, which become heavier as your arms get more tired.

Medicine ball: A weighted ballcommonly found in gyms and rehab centers that was once used by Persian and Greek wrestlers thousands of years ago, when they were just sewn animal skins filled with sand. We partnered up and threw one back and forth. By the way, if you want to make your own medicine ball, this web site has instructions on how to make one at home using a cheap plastic basketball.

For an hour, we did paced repetitions of these exercises, gradually upping the ante and trying really hard not to give up. Not using ultra-fancy gym equipment felt refreshing and authentic — even if it was nothing close to a real army boot camp. (I drove home and showered after the session, and I even got a friendly text message from Sergio the instructor thanking me for taking the class.) Also, it was fun! (Is boot camp supposed to be fun?) It was nice to exercise outside, I got a great workout, and I pushed myself way harder than I would have had I been on my own at a gym. I definitely felt the pain for a few days afterwards, though.

boingboing_net:

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/2ZRN_EK_ywk/animal-with-the-long.html

You'd think that acorn barnacles would have a tough time mating, being stuck to a rock and all. Fortunately, they evolved the "longest penis relative to their body size of any animal." The Brown University evolutionary biologists behind Creature Cast explain it in a new video shot by postdoc Stefan Siebert. Professor Casey Dunn assures us that the clip, and accompanying post, is SFW. Unless, perhaps, you're a barnacle. "Mating when you are stuck to a rock"

boingboing_net:

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/DuwJBW_Pe_w/solar-sails-to-take.html

For decades, scientists and science fiction writers alike have floated the idea of using solar sails to propel spacecraft across vast distances. One of those advocates was the late astronomer Carl Sagan. In honor of Sagan's 75th birthday, the Planetary Society, which Sagan co-founded in 1980, announced a series of forthcoming solar sail experiments. Funded by a wealthy, and anonymous, donor, the group will launch their LightSail system three times over the next few years. The first two missions will be in Earth orbit, and the target of the third is about 900,000 miles away, in a popular "hang out" zone for traditional satellites collecting scientific data. From the New York Times:

The (actual sail) is made of aluminized Mylar about one-quarter the thickness of a trash bag. The body of the spacecraft will consist of three miniature satellites known as CubeSats, four inches on a side, which were first developed by students at Stanford and now can be bought on the Web, among other places. One of the cubes will hold electronics and the other two will carry folded-up sails, (Planetary Society co-founder Louis) Friedman said.

Assembled like blocks, the whole thing weighs less than five kilograms, or about 11 pounds. "The hardware is the smallest part," Dr. Friedman said. "You can't spend a lot on a five-kilogram system."

The LightSail missions will be spread about a year apart, starting around the end of 2010, with the exact timing depending on what rockets are available. The idea, Dr. Friedman said, is to piggyback on the launching of a regular satellite. Various American and Russian rockets are all possibilities for a ride, he said.

Dr. Friedman said the first flight, LightSail-1, would be a success if the sail could be controlled for even a small part of an orbit and it showed any sign of being accelerated by sunlight.

"Setting Sail Into Space, Propelled by Sunshine"

boingboing_net:

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/I3r7P1_iq2M/starlings-swarming.html

Jeremy sez, "Video of a starlings swarming; rather amazing, and recalls for me many images from technology and nature."

Bird Swarm (Thanks, Jeremy!)

boingboing_net:

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/Bpk7zLdnaFQ/the-original-40-butt.html

In the thread about Warmouse's unauthorized and many-buttoned OpenOffice mouse, Don Simpson points to ProHance's illustrious original. 40 buttons! It requires DOS 2.0. [AtariMagazines]

I have a 40-button mouse, the ProHance PowerMouse 100, from around 1990. ProHance Technologies in Sunnyvale, CA also made 3-, 12-, and 17-button mice. If you think "ProHance" is so silly a name that no-one else would have used it, just try Googling it by itself

boingboing_net:

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/SNUW0sIJ1Ms/hypothetical-peek-in.html

I turned my Boing Boing post about Murdoch's mad pronouncements on the Internet into a column for the Guardian, called "For whom the net tolls."

What, exactly, is Rupert Murdoch thinking? First, he announces that all of Newscorp's websites will erect paywalls like the one employed by the Wall Street Journal (however, Rupert managed to get the details of the WSJ's wall wrong - no matter, he's a "big picture" guy). Then, he announced that Google and other search engines were "plagiarists" who "rip off" Newscorp's content, and that once the paywalls are up (a date that keeps slipping farther into the future, almost as though the best IT people work for someone who's not Rupert "I Hate the Net" Murdoch!) he'll be blocking Google and the other "parasites" from his sites, making all of Newscorp's properties invisible to search engines. Then, as a kind of loonie cherry atop a banana split with extra crazy sauce, Rupert announces that "fair use is illegal" and he'll be abolishing it shortly.

What is he thinking? We'll never know, of course, but I have a theory.

For whom the net tolls

scottbateman:
My little project of creating 10,000 drawings on 3x5 cards is over 13% done! Here are a few of the newest drawings:









See all 1300+ drawings on Flickr. Most drawings are available for $25 ($40 for two), including a nice dollar store frame.

linuxtoday:

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2009-11-10-017-35-NW-EV

linuxtoday:

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2009-11-10-015-35-NW-BZ

saladstore, posting in videogames4sale:
I ship internationally, and locally. I only accept paypal, and have extensive ebay/lj feedback.
All games include original case/manuals, and work as they did when they were first opened.

Thanks!

 

( click for pictures! )

PC | Battlefield 2 $15
PC | Just Cause $10
PC | Counter-Strike Anthology $10
PS2 | Final Fantasy X-2 $10
PS2 | Tenchu Wrath of Heaven $15
PS2 | Goldeneye- Rogue Agent $7
PS2 | Soul Calibur 2 $10
PS2 | DragonBall Z - Budokai Tenkaichi $7
PS2 | The Simpsons Hit and Run $10
PS2 | Killer 7 $15
PS2 | Grand Theft Auto: Vice City $7
PS2 | Ford: Mustang $7


Not Pictured:

PS2 | Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas $15
PS2 | Resident Evil 4 $15

linuxtoday:

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2009-11-10-014-35-MM-SS

linuxtoday:

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2009-11-10-013-35-OS-SW

linuxtoday:

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2009-11-10-012-35-RV-HW

brothers_brick:

http://www.brothers-brick.com/2009/11/10/drone-combat-scout-helicopter-18/

http://www.brothers-brick.com/?p=11847

I don’t know why, but I’ve been on a real dark-bley building kick lately. That means I seem to just keep adding creations to the Iron Mountain Legion’s arsenal, which is starting to turn into a largish group. This time, it’s another dual-rotored helicopter. I just love this configuration, even if the blades don’t mesh.

Some may say that building all in one, neutral, color is “easy” and perhaps a “cop-out” to avoid having to think about color I say that while this may be the case, it still looks good. It also makes sticker usage come to the forefront, as that’s where most of the contrasting color (mostly white in this case) comes from. There is a little bit of yellow and blue on this sucker, but apparently none of the photos are of that side of the chopper.

It also turns out that trying to photograph something with even a tiny bit of yellow on it against a yellow backdrop is a disaster.

linuxtoday:

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2009-11-10-011-35-NW-BZ

boingboing_net:

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/Qd3rtFQTScQ/panoramic-view-from.html

Dentistry in depth in Barcelona

Jeffrey sez, "Nico Roig created this fantastic visualization of a mouth at the dentist. The image of the dentist is a real photo, and the mouth is Nico's creation. If you ever wanted to see what it's like sitting on the tongue like a piece of candy... here you go."

Dentistry in depth (Thanks, Jeffrey!)

boingboing_net:

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/ssoXWALzyYw/brits-send-a-message.html

The Open Rights Group is collecting "Messages to Mandelson" -- that is, photos and brief textual messages to UK Business Secretary Peter Mandelson, who has proposed that you should lose your access to the Internet if anyone in your household is accused (without proof) of violating copyright law. You can upload your photo and message and let Mandelson know how you feel.

Message Mandelson (Thanks, Jim!)

linuxtoday:

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2009-11-10-010-35-SC-NT

linuxtoday:

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2009-11-10-009-35-NW-SV-UB

linuxtoday:

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2009-11-10-008-35-OS-SW-NT

boingboing_net:

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/HzH0P1FxrwE/science-fiction-from-1.html

Lavie sez, "The Apex Book of World SF is the first anthology of SF/F/H stories from around the world, including Yang Ping's tale of Chinese hackers in a future game world, Aleksandar Ziljak's Men in Black meets Boogie Nights thriller and S.P. Somtow's classic examination of post-World War II Thailand and its most notorious serial killer. This rare anthology of international SF sets out to showcase some of the best international writers have to offer and the different perspectives of people from outside the American-British sphere of publishing - with authors from Malaysia, China, the Philippines, Israel and Palestine, France, the Netherlands and elsewhere."

The Apex Book of World SF (Amazon)

Apex Book of World SF Released! (The World SF News Blog)

(Thanks, Lavie!)