COOL STUFF: "Gourds & Artificial Life" (7 November 2007)

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TOP: "At your leisure, my Lord"

Quoth the Cylon Jack-O-Lantern.

Hi All,

Simple post today because I enjoyed the above graphic so much and took a gander at the Galactica Watercooler web site yesterday...

Thanks for the cool graphic, Miranda!

And a few links:

The Galactica Watercooler can be found here:
http://www.galacticawatercooler.com/

One of my absolute favorite pumpkin carving sites:
http://www.extremepumpkins.com/

And for those of you who didn't know the Cylons have a sense of humour, check out this campy dialogue excerpt from the 1978 film:

Cylon Centurion: Our Raiders are all destroyed.
Imperious Leader,: All destroyed? How? We took them by surprise.
Cylon Centurion,: Apparently it was not as big a surprise as we had hoped for.

Have a great Wednesday!

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.

Notes regarding photos / pictures / videos: These are not all my images and videos. I am using various images and videos from around the web, mostly from public sources and/or private sources used with permission. I have tried to include only images and videos under public domain, creative commons, or fair use. If I have inadvertently violated any copyrights, please inform me and I will remove your image/s (if it is indeed an infringement).

COOL STUFF: "The Ko-Dan Armada — For Real!" (6 November 2007)

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TOP: The Last Starfighter movie poster from 1984!

Hi All,

Way back in 1984, one of my favorite sci-fi movies ever debutted, The Last Starfighter, a fun little romp of a film that helped to pioneer the use of CG (computer generated) special effects. One of most entertaining details of the movie back in the 1980s was the use of a video arcade game unit in the film as a recruiting tool to find star pilots for a fantastic galactic force of Gunstar starfighters to defend the universe against bad guys everywhere. The idea was that if you could beat the video game, you'd make a good starfighter pilot since you'd have the right eye-hand coordination, reflexes, and all that. It worked in the movie at any rate and after the film came out, young people everywhere scanned video game arcades everywhere for Last Starfighter units hoping to enlist in the galactic force, but... a video game of the movie was never made... until now!

Check out this excerpt from a cool Galactica Watercooler post:

As we discussed at length in DTA Podcast #1, we all ran out of the theater after seeing The Last Starfighter hoping to find a Starfighter game in the arcade — so we could blow our little hometowns home planet forever. Well, now you can have a Starfighter game of your very own — but you’ll have to build it yourself.

Here’s the skinny: the great folks at Rogue Synapse — a resource for movie-aficionados and game cabinet builders — have not only researched the details of the game cabinet from the movie, they’ve also developed a working version of the Starfighter game. This is the game that should’ve hit arcades right after the movie but never did. And it’s a free download!

Post continued at the Galactica Watercooler...

Galactica Watercooler entry for the new Last Starfighter video game:
http://www.galacticawatercooler.com/2007/10/31/fight-the-ko-dan-armada-for-reals/

So, alright already, let's go out and blow up the Ko-Dan Armada!

TOP: A REAL The Last Starfighter video game unit.

And if you've never seen the film, go out and rent it soon. It's a family-friendly film and just good, clean fun. I'm including two links about the film below if you'd like to learn more about it.

IMDb (International Movie Data Base) entry for the The Last Starfighter:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087597/

Wikipedia entry for the The Last Starfighter:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Starfighter

TOP: The awesome CG Gunstar space fighter from The Last Starfighter.

And if you ever wanted to get a miniatures model version of the Gunstar, this is the place:
http://www.minimodelmadness.com/store/

Mini Model Madness has all sorts of fun resin replicas of movie vehicles. I've seen games use MMM models before for miniatures wargaming... They're a bit pricey but they paint up nicely.

Have a great Tuesday!

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.

Notes regarding photos / pictures / videos: These are not all my images and videos. I am using various images and videos from around the web, mostly from public sources and/or private sources used with permission. I have tried to include only images and videos under public domain, creative commons, or fair use. If I have inadvertently violated any copyrights, please inform me and I will remove your image/s (if it is indeed an infringement).

MINI WARGAMING: "Necrovores: A Blast from the Past!" (17 October 2007)

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TOP: Cyborg Trucker's (CT) "Necrovores" shamble across a bridge.

Hi All,

Robots have been one of the staples of science fiction since "scientific romances" came into vogue around the early 1900's. And one of the earliest themes to be explored has been the relationship between man and robot, and particularly the theme of what happens when man and robot are mixed. In the early days of science fiction, these man-robot mixes were still called robots, but sometime in the 1960s, the term "cyborg" came into usage after two scientists, Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline, used it in an article about the advantages of self-regulating human-machine systems in outer space. And the term has stuck ever since, becoming a part of several science fiction genres, and most notably, the cyberpunk novel.

Here are a few of the better know appearances of cyborgs in popular culture:
- Terminator movies
- The Borg from Star Trek
- The Cylons from Battlestar Galactica
- The Necrons from GW40k
- a variety of cyberware enhanced humans from the Cyberpunk sci-fi genre
- Darth Vader from Star Wars
- etc.

A link about the history of cyborgs here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyborg

A link about the cyberpunk sci-fi genre here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk

TOP: CT's Necrovores wander an urban wasteland.

Now, one of my favorite fellow gamers is Cyborg Trucker (CT) USA! And the reason I wrote this post is to congratulate him on his article recently published on The Miniatures Page (TMP). Mazel Tov and congratulations, CT! CT has been putting out some of the most imaginative content on the web for some time, from goofy brains encased in robot walkers, to creepy mutated things, to Gamma Marauders turtle-bots, and much, much more. The guy's imagination must be brewing with fun sci-fi themes all day, and I imagine being a truck driver, that's a good thing to have in the back of your head when you're hauling cross-country. CT is also a great guy to chat with over the 'Net, a very enthusiastic person always happy to share ideas.

Mazel Tov, Cyborg Trucker!

A link to Cyborg Trucker's TMP work bench article here:
http://theminiaturespage.com/workbench/595567/

A link to Cyborg Trucker's blog here:
http://cyborgtrucker.blogspot.com/

A link Cyborg Trucker's Photobucket album of miniatures images here:
http://s165.photobucket.com/albums/u48/CyborgTrucker/

And Bill from TMP writes this about the Necrovore figures from CT's article:

Bill: The Necrovore figures were produced by Ral Partha as part of the Space Knights license from Steve Jackson Games. The license has since expired, and the figures are no longer available.

TOP: A Necrovore with an "energy sword."

TOP: Necrovore troops armed with energy weapons of arcane design.

Have a great Wednesday!

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.

Notes regarding photos / pictures / videos: These are not all my images and videos. I am using various images and videos from around the web, mostly from public sources and/or private sources used with permission. I have tried to include only images and videos under public domain, creative commons, or fair use. If I have inadvertently violated any copyrights, please inform me and I will remove your image/s (if it is indeed an infringement).