What a full restoration of “Metropolis” could be

 art, awesomeness, history, science, science fiction, youtube  No Responses »
Sep 042022
 

Someone jacked footage from “Metropolis” up to 4k, boosted it to 60 frames per second and colorized it. It’s incomplete and imperfect; the scenes from the utterly craptacular recently discovered archival bits were not fixed up. Doing so would be a *major* chore, but with new software and AI, it might be practical soon. Convert the whole movie to this level of quality, and it looks like I’m springing for another copy. Add an alternate soundtrack where actual dialog and sound effect are added and include a fully restored and upgraded yet still B&W version, and that’s a hundred-dollar package any day.

Same folks did the same to the 1902 “A Trip to the Moon.” The colors tend to jump around a bit.

 Posted by at 2:26 pm

AI starts to replace artists

 art, history, Hmm..., news, science, science fiction  No Responses »
Sep 032022
 

Womp womp….

An AI-Generated Artwork Won First Place at a State Fair Fine Arts Competition, and Artists Are Pissed

The “artist” used a piece of software called “Midjourney” that used his text prompts to produce the image, which he upscaled and printed off. And then he won, and artists are cheesed off because, like the factory workers before them, they are finding that automation can do a better job than they can.

 

It’s definitely an interesting piece of art, and the controversy is likely to make it popular enough to make a few bucks off of.

 

We are rapidly approaching the day when AI *and* robotics can do anything humans can do, and do it better. This is a subject science fiction has covered over the years, and it’s something that society had damned well better figure out how to deal with before it comes along and drives *everybody* out of a job.

But for now…. *snerk.*

 Posted by at 11:55 pm

Huh. Slapped together a new “War With The Deep Ones” tale

 blather, books, My Fiction, science fiction, War With The Deep Ones  No Responses »
Sep 022022
 

I haven’t completed a WWTDO story since 2018, but a few days ago I completed an all-new one: “The Camp Commanders Conundrum.” This followed after cracking open my WWTDO folder and taking a look at a number of incomplete stories last saved four years ago… a few of them carried out to some length… and I can’t for the life of me remember where I was going with them. D’oh. Hopefully as the Wu Flu cognitive effects fade away and my noggin returns to normal some memories will reemerge.

The first books worth of stories was completed in about a month four or more years ago; I then started work on two different books. The first book was a collection of separate stories from the first few days of the war; the second book would have covered a span of some months. The other book I started was something of a prequel. A third book, with nothing yet written, would cover a span of a few years, up to the end of the war (no spoilers on how it ends, but it’s in the Lovecraft mold, so go ahead and guess). I’ve another Book 2 yarn in mind that I might scribble down soonish, as well as returning to the incomplete ones. I think that when I’ve got the third book finished I might take a stab at finding a publisher. Shrug.

 

 Posted by at 1:24 am

Hokey religions and ancient weapons…

 art, history, Hmm..., news, science fiction, weapons  No Responses »
Aug 292022
 

… are no match  for nearly a million dollars:

‘Star Wars’ blaster sells for $900,000 at Rock Island Auction Company

I probably shoulda gone to look at it while it was on display a few miles from here. Well… one real good way to feel inadequate *real* fast is to realize just how far short you’d fall if you tried to buy something like this. It sold for two to three times the original estimate.

This link says that the blast sold for $1,057,500. I assume that factors in the fees and such.

Han Solo’s DL-44 Blaster from “Star Wars” smashes auction records

The budget for “Star Wars” was $11 million in 1977 money, or something like $52 million today. So about 2% of the movies budget could have been paid for by selling one prop… and sending that money back in time somehow.

 Posted by at 8:41 pm

Dumb controversy for today

 Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., Meh., science fiction, weapons  No Responses »
Aug 032022
 

Disney slammed for ‘Andor’ trailer featuring an AK-47: ‘Pissed me off’

“5 seconds into the trailer and you’ve already pissed me off,” one fan raged. “The guy has got a f–king AK-47! IN A STAR WARS SHOW! YOU’RE SO LAZY! You couldn’t be bothered to design a space gun. I’m so tired. So very tired.”

Oy. The guns in Star Wars were almost entirely based on real-life firearms, dressed up to one degree or another with added details to make them look like “space guns.” Han Solo carried a modified Mauser C96 “Broomhandle” pistol. The Stormtroopers were armed with Sterling submachine guns and MG34 machine guns and Lewis machine guns, all with minor to modest cosmetic alterations. That there would be something that looks a whole lot like an AK-47 in that universe – a galaxy with billions of inhabited worlds – should hardly be surprising.

 Posted by at 9:20 am

Clones from stem cells

 critters, Hmm..., news, science, science fiction  No Responses »
Aug 022022
 

Using only skin cells, Israeli lab makes synthetic mouse embryos with beating hearts

“Synthetic embryo” is an odd turn of phrase. They got them to grow for eight days outside of a uterus, getting to the point of having brains and beating hearts.

They are similar to regular embryos, but are not viable for implantation.

He foresees a day when sick patients may give skin or blood cells for the growth of artificial embryo-like structures, which could in turn yield the cells needed to grow organs.

I saw that movie… had Boromir, Black Widow and Obi Wan.

In any event, if this line of research continues successfully, the implications could be remarkable. never mind growing organs: this will allow people to clone themselves. This also involves “incubators” that are effectively artificial wombs, allowing people to have babies without the bother of carrying babies… no need to put the mother life, health, comfort at risk. No need, in fact, for a mother at all: this sort of thing will allow a man to grow a clone of himself.

How long before the *ability* to grow clones becomes the *expectation* to grow clones? As in… when this technology is made practical, how long before “non-traditional” people start demanding that insurance companies and the government pay for this so they can have babies that nature would not otherwise allow?

 Posted by at 10:08 pm

Woke Trek at high speed

 AARRRGH, blather, history, Hmm..., science fiction, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jul 302022
 

So some friends and I are watching through “Star Trek Discovery.” We’re Trek fans from *decades* back, so it might surprise some that it’s taken us this long to get around to wading through all of STD. We’re well into season three… and we’ve made an important decision.

Star Trek, whether the episode was good or bad, was always pretty much *fun.* But STD is *not* fun. A lot of it is downright painful. So while we’re generally interested to see where the plot goes, the characters themselves are often just nightmarish. So the decision was made to stand by on the Fast Forward button. Someone starts crying? Fast forward. Someone starts a monologue about how awesome someone else is, or any form of emotional validation? Fast forward. That cringy Trill/human “couple?” They show up… fast forward.

We’re getting through episodes *really* fast now. More than anything, this cringe-edited version of STD reminds me of those Super 8 versions of sci-fi movies that were available in the late 1970s.

I remember seeing, circa 1979-1981 or so, a desktop “unit” that had a film cartridge that showed Star Wars boiled down to maybe five minute on a display just a few inches across. Until VHS, that sort of thing was the only way to watch Star Wars on demand. And fast forwarding is the only way to watch STD *at* *all.*

 Posted by at 8:16 pm

“Max Headroom” reboot

 art, history, Hmm..., news, science fiction  No Responses »
Jul 302022
 

Well, it’d better be weird.

‘Max Headroom’ Series Reboot Starring Matt Frewer In Works At AMC Networks From Christopher Cantwell & Elijah Wood’s SpectreVision

Matt Frewer is said to be onboard to play Max again. One wonders if the way to go this time will be to use *actual* computer generated characters. That seems obvious… but maybe it’d be appropriately weird to stick with prosthetics.

 Posted by at 4:29 am
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