E3 Gears of War Judgement en vidéo

Après avoir dévoilé deux premières images, Gears of War : Judgement a fait une apparition vidéo lors de la conférence de Microsoft. Rien de bien nouveau en soit, mais c'est avec plaisir que l'on observe ainsi nos héros en action, toujours en proie avec les Locustes.



Pour rappel, il s'agit d'un prequel à la série mettant notamment en scène Damon Baird et Cole Train, deux acolytes de Marcus Fenix lors de la première trilogie. Sans surprise, le jeu reste une exclusivité Microsoft qui devrait débarquer sur Xbox 360, et c'est People Can FLy (épaulé

Blizzard communique sur le Projet Titan

Alors que World of Warcraft : Mists of Pandaria vient tout juste d'arriver sur nos machines, Blizzard profite de l'occasion pour communiquer sur le toujours très mystérieux Projet Titan. Officialisé pas plus tard que l'année dernière, le jeu que l'on nomme déjà comme le successeur de World of Warcraft refait parler de lui aujourd'hui.

C'est en effet Rob Pardo, Vice Président du Game Design chez Blizzard, qui s'exprime à ce sujet lors d'une interview donnée au site communautaire Curse. Si l'on en croit les paroles du bonhomme, le Projet Titan en serait à la moitié de son développement (lequel a débuté en 2008). Il précise également qu'une équipe forte de plus de 100 membres travaille actuellement sur le jeu. Et si vous espériez en apprendre plus, il faudra attendre au minimum jusqu'à la BlizzCon de 2013, sinon plus longtemps, puisque le géant californien ne tiendra pas de salon cette année.

· Forum Projet Titan

Rumeur Un nouveau Mana dans les cartons

Les fans de la licence Mana, connue aussi sous le nom originel de Seiken Densetsu, commencent à être aux aguets. En effet, Square-Enix vient de déposer plusieurs noms de marques et parmi elles, on retrouve un certain Circle of Mana. Pas de quoi sauter au plafond donc, mais voilà qui est particulièrement intéressant sachant que la série n'a donné aucune nouvelle depuis 2007.

Il s'agissait alors de la sortie du dernière épisode de la saga, nommée Heroes of Mana. S'écartant du genre action-RPG pour rallier un système de stratégie en temps réel, il avait déçu de nombreux fans. Beaucoup espèrent donc un retour aux sources pour la série, reprenant le concept de base initié

Games Workshop, SEGA et Creative Assembly main dans la main

En bon geek que tu es cher lecteur, tu connais certainement ces trois grands noms du loisir ludique. Games Workshop n'est autre que le créateur de Warhammer, jeu de plateau médiéval fantastique à succès. Quant à SEGA et Creative Assembly, leur association a déjà donné naissance à l'excellente série des Total War.

Via un communiqué de presse très enthousiaste, ces trois entités déclarent avoir conclut un accord. Ainsi, Creative Assembly se fait fort de développer un jeu (de stratégie sans doute) aux couleurs des petites figurines à monter soi-même. Vu le passif du studio britannique, on est en droit d'attendre un jeu de grande qualité, ce qui redorerait le blason de Warhammer sur le plan vidéoludique (aucune adaptation jusque-là n'a convaincu les foules). Reste à savoir si le jeu verra le jour sur d'autres plateformes que le PC, qui est le terrain favori de ce studio de talent.

Patience toutefois puisque le communiqué proclame que le jeu ne verra pas le jour avant 2014 au plus tôt.

documentary sidebar “collapse”

Let’s face it — we, as a species, are completely, hopelessly, unequivocally, irrefutably fucked.

You know it. I know it. And Michael Ruppert sure as hell knows it. And while we may not have the guts to admit to this basic truth in polite company, Mike’s got no such hang-ups.

Ruppert is a former LAPD narcotics unit detective who was run off the force when he refused to play along with CIA drug running into his district in the early 80s. Thus began a remarkable exodus of sorts for Ruppert that lead to attempts on his life, homelessness, and finally, independent investigative journalism.

Documentarian Chris (American Movie) Smith ran across Ruppert when researching a project on The Company’s involvement in the crack cocaine trade, and eventually abandoned that project in favor of Collapse, an 82-minute soliloquy wherein Ruppert sits down in front of the camera, chain-smokes, and lays out the whole score on everything. Prepare to be scared. Damn scared. In fact, Collapse is easily the most frightening film of 2010, and probably the flat-out scariest movie we here at TFG have thus far reviewed.

It’s also as close to an absolutely essential piece of filmmaking as you’re ever likely to witness.

According to ex-detective Mike, as well as countless geological experts, the oil on planet Earth is running out, and at a rate much more rapid than our leaders are willing to admit — even though they certainly damn well know it. And that’s essentially the cause of every major geopolitical grand scenario we say playing out before us today, from 9/11 to the turmoil in the Middle East to the economic meltdown to — well, you name it.

Oil, you see, is about a whole lot more than oil itself. It’s also about transportation, food, jobs, and the underlying social order itself. Notice how at the stores these days it’s not just the price of gas that’s going through the roof? I paid nearly six bucks for plastic trash bags the other day. What’s plastic made of? You got it — petroleum.Even more importantly,? what’s the key ingredient in most pesticides and fertilizers that enable mass food production? You got it. Petroleum.

When the price of oil goes through the roof, as is the case these days, the price of food goes up, the price of? transportation of any and all goods goes up, the price of everything goes up. Welcome to the end, my friend. Pull up a seat and catch the show.

Ruppert doesn’t pull any punches in this interview-cum-monologue, and frankly he says exactly what we all need to hear. We’re hopelessly hooked on oil for the very survival of our civilization, and pretty much none of the alternatives are going to work, even if we got way more serious about implementing them than we apparently have the political will to. Ethanol’s a joke. Hydrogen’s a joke. Hydroelectric’s a joke. Wind and solar have some potential, but on the scale we’d need them to be up and running it’s already too late. Nothing will replace oil because nothing can. It’s the most public secret in the world, but it’s one nobody’s got the guts to face. It’s so damn scary to contemplate that we just plain can’t do it.

And therein lies the rub — because if we want to survive, we’ve got to. Plain and simple. Ruppert lays out an interesting comparison between two countries that were completely dependent upon Soviet oil imports, Cuba and North Korea, both of which ended up SOL when the “evil empire” collapsed. North Korea had no plan in place and as a result, they’re still completely fucked. Cuba, on the other hand, didn’t exactly have a plan, but adapted on the fly and, after a few rough years, not only survived, but thrived. The grow food on every piece of arable land. They practice sound crop rotation. They save driving for absolutely essential occasions. They decentralized, and localized, their food production and economic trade. And so far they provide the only possible model of success for society as a whole to build on in the trying times to come.

There’s just one rub, though — Cuba is an isolated, self-contained island. On the other hand, there are over six billion of us out here, all dependent, to one extent or another, on oil for our survival.? It’s not gonna be pretty when it all comes down, folks, especially for those of us that live in major metropolitan areas. Ruppert lays out some potential strategies for long-term survival for those of us willing to listen, but frankly, there are no guarantees, and all bets are off.

Collapse got some limited theatrical burn, but if you missed it, now’s your chance, since it’s just been released on DVD from MPI Media Group. While the only extra to be had is an updated interview with Ruppert on his life since the film’s release, the fact is you’ll be so shell-shocked after watching the main feature that you won’t care about silly things like DVD extras anymore. You may not want to face up the reality of what our guy Mike’s got to say, but your one overriding thought from start to finish while watching him go at it will be “Holy shit, this guy’s absolutely right.”

Ruppert boils down his message to humanity in stark and simple terms — it’s time to either evolve or die.

What’s it gonna be?

2012-12-21-240

3D Printer prints cartilage for implants

Many afflictions, including Osteoarthritis, are largely caused by the degradation of cartilage in the joints. Unfortunately, cartilage has very limited healing capacity - once its damaged, or gone, theres usually little the body can do naturally to replace it. In recent years, science has found ways to compensate, and efforts have been made to regrow the tissue using a variety of methods, including a bio-active "hydrogel" which induces tissue regrowth, and biodegradable nanofiber spheres which can carry new cells to wounded areas of the cartilage to help it heal properly. Now, scientists at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in North Carolina, have created a new method, by way of a 3D printer which can make artificial and implantable cartilage.

This is how the cartilage printer works

3D bio printers have already been implemented to create artificial arteries, but the process of creating cartilage is a little different and has to use a combination of technologies in order to manufacture a material that would properly fulfill its function. The unique technology which must be implemented is called electro-spinning, where an electric current is used to create fine strands of polymer fiber. The fiber acts as a porous base, a sponge to put it simply, into which cartilage cells can be injected and stabilize as a solid structure. The fiber also acts as a reinforcement for the finished cartilage structure, lending it more stability than previous efforts.

The team of scientists, led by Professor James Yu, extract the cartilage cells from rabbits ears, and then inject them into the electro spun material by means of inkjet printing. As with other 3D printing technologies, thin layers of electro spun mat and cartilage cells are layered on top of each other, until a finished structure has been completed. The resulting cartilage disc, which is completely implantable, is 10cm in diameter and 4mm in thickness.

The finished cartilage pieces were stress tested to see how they would handle wear and tear. Some implants were also tested on mice. After several weeks, the implants had assumed properties expected of natural cartilage. It may thus one day prove successful in humans as well.

has the world finally run out of interesting people

Well, no (although it certainly seems that way sometimes!), but the fine website “Comic Book And Movie Reviews” chose, for whatever reason, to interview me — rather than numerous other far worthier subjects — anyway. Here’s the link for your edification and/or amusement :?

Jay, who runs the site, is a good guy and a darn fine internet scribe in his own right, so do yourself a favor if you follow the link and “choose to peruse,” as they say, the entire contents of his burgeoning cyber-enterprise, you’ll certainly be glad you did! Other than that, all I can say is that never having been “interviewed,” per se, before, I hope I don’t come off as too big a dweeb, douchebag, or some even-less-tolerable combination of the two. It was fun to answer Jay’s questions, even if some of them made no sense to me at the time (and still sorta don’t, but hey, it’s his show, not mine!), and it gave the opportunity to sit down and think about things on a really concrete and reductive level in a way that I haven’t done for some time. When somebody asks you a question like “what are your five favorite movies?,” or “what are your five favorite comics?,” you really do have to stop and think about it for a good few minutes — at least, if you’ve seen as many films and/or read as many comics as I have (and I’m sure this distinction applies to most of you, my dear readers, as well) you need to. So the experience was interesting, new, and it made me sit back and think for a bit, so I must say, thanks again Jay, and to any and all of you reading this, once more, please give his very high-quality site a look-see — you’ll thank me for it later, I promise!