Dreams Of Noise

• TUG, a really fascinating RPG experiment. Seriously, watch the six-minute video on this one and see what you think.
• Lawless Jerky, small-batch hand-crafted beef jerky with some great-sounding flavors. I'm going for the Hawaiian Teriyaki. Or the American BBQ. Or maybe the Bacon, Salt & Pepper. Only a few hours left on this one.
• Adventure Maximus, an RPG that both kids and adults can play... and run!
• Gigabot 3D Printing, wherein you can get your own 3D printer for something near reasonable cost. Another one ending soon.
• Creating a RepRap 3D printer, so a guy with no prior experience in 3D printing can prove it's not that big or expensive a deal to make your own (and then he'll print you something with it). Ending in just two days.

Australian scientists have successfully revived and reactivated the genome of an extinct frog. The "Lazarus Project" team implanted cell nuclei from tissues collected in the 1970s and kept in a conventional deep freezer for 40 years into donor eggs from a distantly-related frog. Some of the eggs spontaneously began to divide and grow to early embryo stage with tests confirming the dividing cells contained genetic material from the extinct frog.

[...]

Although none of the embryos survived longer than a few days, the work is encouraging for others looking to clone a variety of currently-extinct animals, such as the woolly mammoth, dodo, Cuban red macaw and New Zealand’s giant moa.

[...]

“We’re increasingly confident that the hurdles ahead are technological and not biological and that we will succeed. Importantly, we’ve demonstrated already the great promise this technology has as a conservation tool when hundreds of the world’s amphibian species are in catastrophic decline.”

• Argo was excellent, very exciting, and Ben Affleck was cheated out of a Best Director nomination... although my favorite performance in the whole thing is that of John Goodman, who is amazing as usual.
• Les Miserables was simply beautiful. And anyone who complains that Russell Crowe (as Javert) is not as good a singer as Philip Quast... well, you have a point. But Crowe does everything he needs to, and does so with style, and who knew Amanda Seyfried had such a lovely voice, and oh my god Jackman and Hathaway and Sacha Baron Cohen.
• Anne and I finished watching the Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes series -- really, REALLY well done -- and have moved on to Ultimate Spider-Man, which is so frickin' cool I recommend it completely. There is great heart in it, and a lot of laughs, with a Scott Pilgrim sensibility around the whole thing (or maybe Ouran High School Host Club). And Doctor Octopus, who has not yet had a full visual reveal, is just creepy.
• Must catch up on the past three weeks of Top Chef.
• Still haven't caught up on last year's Doctor Who.
• Have started downloading Arrow.
• Am having a blast, finally watching Face Off. Not as good as Top Chef in a number of ways, but the visuals are spectacular, and there isn't the sense of cutthroat aggression so prevalent in TC.
• Sometime next week, I hope to watch Django Unchained.
• Last but not least, Anne and I went to see Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters. This is not a good movie. But it is an amazingly fun movie, if you're in the right mood, which we were. The medieval milk bottles with the parchment drawings of missing children set the tone exactly. The performances are not the problem -- everybody does at least what they need to, and Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton as Gretel are both very good (and there's not even a creepy incest vibe!). What doesn't work with this movie is the fault of the writer-director, Tommy Wirkola, who has a good story and a good handle on action sequences but not the best script or non-action set pieces. Still, it was way fun, utterly silly (if you like First Knight you'll like this), and a very riffable way to kill two hours.