So, I’ve totally been meaning to get some work done around here, sort out certain linking issues and the what not; but instead, I’ve been sidetracking myself in the best way possible by playing Antichamber all weekend… Well, actually there was some time spent drinking involved too. But even then through the boozing, the vomiting and the mandingo fighting, my mind was thinking all about this insanely good puzzle game.

Developed by one guy (Alexander Bruce) over several years, it’s a first-person puzzle game that’s set entirely in a non-Euclidean geometric world, where the levels are all very smartly designed to ignore typical notions of normal space and the puzzles are cleverly made and fiendishly taxing at times; though that’s probably because your sense of logic and reasoning just haven’t quite realigned as much as needed yet. And oh, it will.

As you navigate through the levels, the levels can change on you, based purely on your perspective and how you move through them. This, in tandem with the game’s brilliant minimalist ascetics, creates a wonderful psychological backdrop that forces one to constantly readjust their thinking in order to solve the puzzles and explore the game.

It can sound frustrating at times, and at times it can be, but the puzzles themselves aren’t of malicious design and often the solutions are revealed to be quite simple in their complexity and totally rewarding when you solve them.

Brilliantly inventive and refreshingly good on every level. This is totally something for fans of puzzles, games, art and basically anything good. This is one of them.

From 1A4 Studios, a Moscow based uh… animation studio? At least, I think they’re in Moscow. Am not actually sure on any details beside the name as my Russian is about as good as Google Translate which well… didn’t do so good there. But anyhow, this short condenses The Matrix into a fun 60 seconds and is the second in a hopefully on-going series.

Also, their other series Animirus is definitely worth a watch too; particularly Postmas, Scio and aw hell, all of them really. Go nuts.

• HEAVILY ARMED SEX CRAZED DOLPHINS on RAMPAGE in Black Sea
  (new ‘best headline ever’ nominee)
• Scientists have gotten one rat brain to ‘talk’ to another using electronic link
• A study has shown that using a handsfree kit while driving can be just as dangerous as being over half the legal alcohol limit. Texting? You’re totally shitfaced.
• Gender differences in education scores persist regardless of gender equality
• A story full of aww: How a newly wed couple found their son in the Subway
• An illuminating article on How Disney bought Lucasfilm — and its plans for ‘Star Wars’
• Great short essay: The many wonders of Christopher Walken
• Scathingly brilliant – An Oscar voter’s brutally honest ballot
• Nice op-ed on design: Why we love beautiful things
• The King Clone is estimated to be the world’s oldest bush, dating around 11,700 years
• Atlas Obscura: The Skeleton Lake of Roopkund, India
• Vice answers: What do hate groups think of Jennifer Lawrence?
• Your obsessive love or hatred of me means nothing in the grand scheme of geological time by (not) Justin Bieber
• Video: Hitler finds out Google Reader is shutting down
  (Looks like me and Hitler finally agree on something)

David A. Reeves is a 28 year old Rhode Island native studying photography at NSCAD University in Halifax, NS and makes these great cut-out silhouettes of various pop culture medias. With an interest in music, photography and movies, he’s greatly inspired by video games, films and tacos.

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[ Official Tumblr ]

First two are great stop-motion pieces of amazing design and quality. The last one is just a delightfully hilarious short about a hand’s creation not quite going to plan and tiny animated destruction ensues.

Black Books “Favorite Place”

Directed by Christophe Thockler

Shugo Tokumaru “Katachi”

Directed by Kijek/Adamski

‘Fight For Everyone’ Music Promo for The Leisure Society.

by Persistent Peril

Scott Campbell (Scott C) is a maker of paintings, illustrations, comics, kid’s books and video games. He studied illustration at the Academy of Art in San Francisco, focusing on comic and children’s book illustration. He now works for Double Fine productions as an Art Director on such games as the critically acclaimed Psychonauts and Brutal Legend. Alongside this career in games, he has published numerous comics and created paintings that have appeared in galleries and publications around the world.

[ Official Website ] [ Great Showdown Gallery ]

Can now take some of the shrink-wrap off this new blog design. Took a bit longer than expected; turns out you can have quite the busy life when not online. Well, that, and there was a lot of time spent self-revising on how the hell wordpress works and what tinkering had been done since the last edit. The fact that this site was last properly updated over three years ago didn’t help either.

But anyhow, here’s the first stage of what will be the new site. Think of it as something in a very early beta version with lots of wierd misplaced husks attached. While there’s plenty of tinkering and adjustments to be made, it’s at least stable enough to not shit itself daily and finally frees up time to concentrate more on blogging stuff, clearing out the ridiculous number of saved bookmarks and work on the finer points of this site to figure out just what the hell I’m doing with the whole damn thing.

Oh and also, to the far future alien cyber-archeologists that will one day uncover this blog post, to give you some context to the above: the last blog design was awesome. This new one is awesomer.

Whoops. This was meant to be posted weeks ago…

The Unsettling Beauty of Lethal Viruses

• If you can’t manage comments well, don’t offer comments at all
• Love of Musical Harmony Is Not Nature but Nurture
• How to turn living cells into computers
• Small-molecule drug drives cancer cells to suicide
• Declassified: America’s Secret Flying Saucer
• The village with a 9,000 year old history
• A cleaner form of demolition – Japan’s incredible shrinking building
• What it’s like to leave Westboro Babtist Church (for Megan Phelps-Roper no less)
• Stop pretending cyberspace exists as a mythical country
• Damnit science… Germans developing weed-controlling laser armed drones
• Techno Viking and the curse of internet celebrity
• Top 11 Biggest Lies of Mainstream Nutrition
• Unable to afford life insurance, Apollo 11’s crew got creative in providing for their family
• How to win arguments by pretending to be a simpleton
• Cinema Tarantino: The Making of Pulp Fiction
• Link: a 404 page where you save Lemmings
• The search for the genetics of intelligence
• The giant camera resolution tests scattered across America
• Inside China’s genome factory
• Three Plus One Geometries of the Universe
• Kubrick’s rejection letter to Anthony Burgess on their Napoleon collaboration
• “Ok, Glass, record a video”: Google provides another glimpse of Glass