Archive for the ‘Fun’ Category
Announcing: Skytemple Space Division
Skytemple Design is proud to announce our latest project,
SKYTEMPLE SPACE DIVISION
Until now, Skytemple Space Division has been kept top secret. Skytemple staff have been legally bound to nondisclosure agreements. We have lived the last year in the shadows while secretly preparing to lead the way into the final frontier for web design companies.
Finally, our story can be told.
All the way back in 2011 a strange discussion erupted at one of our weekly meetings concerning the news of actor Ashton Kutcher’s recent purchase of a $200,000 ticket aboard one of Virgin Galactic’s new sub-orbital space ships.
Richard Branson, the billionaire head of the Virgin Group claims to have already sold 500 tickets aboard Virgin Galactic’s as-yet launched sub-orbital space fleet.
This got us wondering: why doesn’t Skytemple have a Galactic Space Fleet? We couldn’t come up with an answer.
So after months of soul-searching, we started construction on our proposed Orbiting Sky Temple and our fleet of Skytemple Space Cruisers.
It is thanks to these efforts that we are able to offer our celebrated services in a whole new way.
Websites, in SPACE!
The orbiting Sky Temple hosts three shuttle docks and an impressive array of anti-drone space missiles. Inside its fifty-thousand square foot interior, it boasts impressive living quarters including 70 bathrooms, a full space tennis court, a zero g sauna, and a staff of over three hundred robots. It is 4G and Space Wi-Fi integrated.
Each of the six Skytemple Space Cruisers is staffed by a crew of seven pilots, three engineers, and four attendants. In-flight meals are prepared by master space-chefs and include ‘Astronaut’ versions of all your favorite foods. Freeze-dried ice cream, freeze-dried open faced portable mushroom paninis and freeze-dried foie gras are just a sampling of the vast menu.
I know what you’re wondering. Will Skytemple still make great websites and offer expert consultation for all of my marketing needs? Of course. We will simply be doing it from our gigantic orbiting Sky Temple from now on.
Check back often for future news and information about how you can apply to live in the orbiting Sky Temple!
Doomsday Faire Aims to Bring Armageddon to New England
Ancient Mayan calendars prophesy that the world will end December 21, 2012. Although the end of the world has been a long time coming, the topic is more infamous now than ever before. You might want to set up your underground shelter and make some alliance decisions for the Zombie Apocalypse. Everyone’s doing it.
But the folks behind Doomsday Faire 2012 aren’t just talking about the end of the world, they aim to bring The End to Connecticut this summer.
Every culture and faith has their own stories of what it will be like. Some predict the dead will rise from their graves, fire and brimstone will fall from the sky and God himself will appear to bring final judgement during mankind’s final hours. More modern strains of endgame prophesies predict rogue planets, geomagnetic upheaval or flash pandemics turning man against man in an often-burning and shelled out post-apocalyptic arena. Scientists and political leaders have been quick to point out the flaws in these predictions, as well as to reassure the public that Zombies, Aliens and Demons, are, of course, not real.
But what if they were wrong? What if predictions of the end of the world started to come true? Doomsday Faire will be a grand smashup of apocalyptic scenarios. Imagine Zombies roaming a countryside alongside aliens and human survivors, all on a landscape ravaged by celestial cataclysm.
“There are no stores, no malls, no Judicial system, few roads, limited communication, but amongst the utter destruction humanity survived.”
Visitors will wander wartorn streets of a post-apocalyptic world and experience firsthand “what it would be like to celebrate survival in a world full of zombies, aliens, strong and crafty human survivors all dealing with the harsh realities of the end of the world, and making the best of what they have.”
For more information and how to be a part of the Doomsday Faire, check out the site below or “Like” Doomsday Faire on Facebook for news.
Austin Stowell in Dolphin Tale
Austin Stowell helps a boy save a dolphin with the aid of prosthetic’s doctor.
Stowell, originally from Berlin, Connecticut has known he wanted to pursue a professional acting career ever since his high school days in Austin.
It was during his years at Berlin High he met and formed a strong relationship with Skytemple’s CEO, Curtiss Hayden. Stowell went on to graduate Berlin High School in 2003 and was accepted to the University of Connecticut where he pursued his love for acting in more depth, participating in many productions including, Julius Caesar, and It Can’t Happen Here. Currently, Stowell is well known through his acting on the ABC Family show, The Secret Life of the American Teenager. In his new movie, Dolphin Tail, Stowell finds himself playing oposite veteran actors such as Harry Connick Jr, Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman. It is an exciting and robust new role for Stowell who plays a disabled war veteran in the film.
The movie itself is based on a true story concerning a young boy named Sawyer who finds an injured dolphin washed up on shore. His dogged pursuit of helping the dolphin, who eventually loses it’s tail (providing the obligatory family film titular pun), leads him to one Professor Cameron McCarthy, played by Morgan Freeman, who’s work had been, up to that point, concerning human prosthetics.
As only a young boy with no money trying to save an aquatic animal in a family film could, Sawyer convinces the doctor who then convinces a prosthetics manufacturer to help his dolphin at no cost. At first the Dolphin rejects the tail, smashing repeated rebuilds until a new padding for the sock holding the tail to the dolphin is developed using a gel like material. A material that is now currently used to attach prosthetic limbs. The film itself has a wonderful message about determination and thinking outside the box and is at heart an incredible true tory of technology helping nature. Dolphin Tale is currently playing in theaters and in some places in 3D.
Mirror Mirror on the Wall
The mirror on the wall may soon reveal more than your appearance, becoming a two-way mirror for advertisers
Designed by MIT student Ming-Zher Poh, the Medical Mirror uses a complex algorithm to detect vital signs through optics with a simple camera
Two years ago, MIT student Ming-Zher Poh managed to turn his laptop’s webcam into a heart rate monitor. At the time he was looking for a way for doctors to check vital signs in the least invasive way possible. The method he came up with was fairly simple: As each pump of the heart sends fresh waves of blood through your veins, the light that penetrates your skin and bounces off your muscles fluctuates subtly. When these fluctuations are analyzed by a computer and camera, they can be translated into heart-rate data.
Although the technology is not new, Poh created a new algorithm which allowed a much less sensitive standard laptop webcam to isolate the blood flow light pattern from other light collected by the camera. Using an adapted process to extract single sounds from a noisy recording, Poh, managed to cleverly tie this into a way for even a lower resolution camera to isolate data and even track multiple subjects.
So what did he do with it? He built a mirror that could look inside of you.
A webcam mounted behind a two-way mirror monitors your vitals invisibly as you gaze upon your visage, displaying your heart-rate reading. Poh imagines improving the system further to measure other vitals such as respiratory rate and blood oxygen levels.
Still years away from the market, Poh plans to bring the mirror to consumers after, he hopes, he finishes his PHD later this year. Poh remains hopeful of the devices uses saying,”This shows your inner health. Maybe as people use it, they’ll say, ‘This is part of my identity. It’s not just how I look on the outside.”
Good News Everyone
Ming-Zher Poh goes on to imagine tele-medical screening tests over a webcam or even a cell phone and hands-free vital scanning of burn patients and newborns, all of which seem like positive applications for Poh’s research.
As with all new technologies though, other possible real life applications seem darker. Although Poh is currently developing the Mirror for medical uses, it’s hard to imagine the technology staying in the box, so to speak. If all it takes is an algorithm to turn a cell phone into a medical scanner, albeit a primitive one, what is in the way of this algorithm being added quietly to all devices via standard updates? If a Doctor can access your vital signs from as little as a built-in webcam who else might want this information?
While the answer to the first question might be a difficult web of consumer-protection issues, the latter question is easy to answer.
Advertisers, marketers and corporations have already spent a fortune in the field of figuring out what we feel before we do, and the tide seems far from abating.
As the recent acquisition of NeuroFocus (a company devoted to turning neurological research into useable market data) by Nielsen (of Nielsen Ratings) shows us, advertising and market analysts are taking serious Science’s promise of conquest through measure and number.
NeuroFocus grew out of a frustration by advertisers in their inability to predict what consumers wanted. And they take this quest very seriously. Just a few months ago NeuroFocus announced it had developed the worlds first wireless EEG headset, and it runs on bluetooth.
Looking a bit like something out of the movie Strange Days, the device can capture brain activity 2,000 times per second and relay that information via that bluetooth connection to your smartphone, tablet or home computer. The device has many uses, one being a hands free ‘mouse’ controlled in one incredible TED Conference video, by mere thought. Another is watching the brain for ‘happy’ or ‘sad’ readings as you scan your digital paper or watch a commercial to then relay that information to marketers and analytics teams to offer realtime insight for advertisers.
“NeuroFocus leverages ground-breaking neuroscience and expertise to measure consumer attention, engagement and memory retention through brainwave, eye-tracking and skin conductance measurements.” The company stated in a recent press release.
With so much hardware already in place, touchscreen phones can register the force of our taps and built-in cameras are in just about everything digital these days, how long will it really be before your computer can tell when you’ve had a long day and need some soothing music or maybe suggest a new restaurant based on your subconscious reaction to a commercial you recently saw for italian food?
All Streaming Viacom Content to Expire on Netflix
Breaking news from Reddit, The rapture is happening digitally for all shows from MTV, Comedy Central, and more. Read the full list below.
Expiring content:
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BET
CBS
MTV
Nickolodean
Paramount Films
We recommend pulling an all-nighter and watching the following if you’re not at a rapture party:
Shows
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Avatar: The Last Airbender
Aeon Flux
Chappelle’s Show
Invader Zim
Upright Citizen’s Brigade
The Guild
Mystery Science Theater 3000
Meerkat Manor
No Reservations
Movies
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Punch-Drunk Love
Fargo
The Fly
Cat People
The Shining
The Ten
The Terminator
Zombieland
Black Dynamite
Rashomon
Seven Samurai
