A nice piece of home-made self-help botching, some-one has outfitted an ice fishing sledge with a rattle-reel, a super-sketchy homebrew detonator (the trigger involves a guitar pick) and a launch pad. Now, I know when a fish bites because a rocket launches.
He reports that since building it no-one has lost a hand, but he has lost two rockets. With a longer shorter rope and a bigger rocket, he wouldn’t even have to reel in the fish!
Take-Two has reported its financial results for the third quarter ended December 31, 2010, posting net revenues of $334.3 million (£208m) and profit of $40.9 million (£25.5m).
During the same period a year earlier, revenues were higher at $360.4 million (£224.3m), but profit was lower at $37.9 million (£23.6m).
In its financial highlights, the company cited eight million Red Dead Redemption units sold-in to retail since its May 2010 launch, and four million copies of NBA 2K11 shipped. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said: “Strong holiday sales enabled Take-Two to continue to deliver better-than-expected revenue and earnings in the third quarter.
“Our results year-to-date clearly demonstrate the Company’s ability to translate its world-class creative resources and diverse portfolio of triple-A franchises into meaningful profits.”
He added: “Looking ahead to the balance of the year and fiscal 2012, I have never been more enthusiastic about our diverse line-up of upcoming releases.
“From unique, groundbreaking new titles such as L.A. Noire, to the long anticipated return of Duke Nukem, the interactive entertainment industry’s most irreverent hero, we will deliver a broad array of entertainment experiences that promise to delight audiences around the world.”
The film is a “Wizard of Oz” prequel, apparently with no name yet, that tells the story of how, the man who eventually wound up as the Wizard we all love ended up in a hot air balloon to Oz, later standing behind a curtain in the Emerald City. And Spider-man’s James Franco is going to play him.
Apparently, he was a con man who had the hots for Glinda, the good witch. Who knew?
Robert Michelson, 21, of Farmington, Conneticut, called 911 to inquire about the possible legal consequences of growing a marijuana plant. He’s now been charged with marijuana possession and “other crimes”.
Farmington police say a dispatcher told Michelson on Thursday night that he could get arrested for growing pot, and Michelson said thank you and hung up.Officers went to Michelson’s house and seized a small amount of marijuana and drug paraphernalia. Michelson has admitted he bought seeds and equipment for growing.
The first picture is Grande Hotel in Beira, Mozambique, a 50-year-old luxury hotel that is currently booked solid, by several thousand squatters who live there without electricity or running water. JG Ballard would have had a field day with this one — a large self-organizing community of refugees living in what was once a palace of excess. Belgian filmmaker Lotte Stoops recently completed a documentary about this amazing self-organizing community of refugees living in what was once a palace of excess.
There were originally 110 guest rooms, but now every bit of space in the building is now used as a living area. The telephone booths have been cut off and made into a room’s, there is an estimated 350 families living there.
There is little inside the hotel to hint at its former splendor. Glass has been taken from its windows and sold, while wood from the interior has been used to build fires.
Farisai Gamariel is an English teacher in Beira, but at weekends he works as a tour guide, showing cruise ship passengers around the city. One of the stops on his tour is the Grande Hotel.
“Tourists come from England, Germany, Austria,” he said. “They are quite curious to go and see what it’s like. “Some actually refuse, they think it’s not a good place to go, they are scared. But it’s not really scary, it’s just like a community.”
Harmonix has laid off an undisclosed number of staff today to “bring it into alignment with current product development plans”.
The Rock Band developer went independent in December after breaking from former owner, MTV parent Viacom.
Speaking to Joystiq today, a Harmonix spokesperson said:
“Harmonix is restructuring our organization to bring it into alignment with our current product development plans. Unfortunately, this means reducing the number of full-time staff.
“We sincerely appreciate the work of each and every one of these employees. Harmonix is working to ensure that those affected are well taken care of as we make this change.”
The company is thought to be working on an unnamed music title for Nintendo 3DS. It most recently created Dance Central for Kinect, which won positive reviews from critics.
Joystiq notes that the creation of future DLC for Rock Band 3 and Dance Central will remain unaffected by the cuts.
Sky Sports is taking heat from media regulator Ofcom for displaying “blatant” and “irrelevant” EA Sports logos alongside some of its football match graphics.
During both live football coverage and pre- and post-match commentary, EA Sports’ logo appears alongside certain match statistics, leading a viewer (yes, a single viewer) to complain that the branding is “unnecessary”.
According to Media Week, Sky’s since explained that EA is contracted to the Premier League as the “Official Sports Technology Partner” and it’s contracted to display an on-screen credit. I’m more than confindent, without doing any actual research, that the viewer that complained is neither a gamer nor aware of the franchise agreement the pair has.
Sky Sports added that “no specific product or service” is mentioned and that no “sales messages” are present as part of the EA Sports logos.
However (this is where it gets complicated), Ofcom is arguing that EA Sports is not actually an official technology partner as it does not supply any of the match data itself, and seems to feel that its nothing really more than product placement. I could be, what’s wrong with that?
Thus, the telly watchdog says it does not accept that there is any editorial justification for Sky to display the EA logos, and claims the broadcaster’s broken a number of rules.
So to summarise, it’s OK to emblazon the FIFA 11 logo along the side of the pitch, just don’t put it in the match graphics, OK?
I Love REAL football. Or what the USA calls soccer, twinned with the fact that I live in the UK, I’m not a huge fan of American football. I usually pick a team without knowing anything about them and root for them the whole time. The one time that the UK actually cares about American Football is when the super-bowl is on. More often than not I get swamped by my mates that swear blind they actually know the rules and insist I join in. So I just pick a team, this year I went for the Green Bay Packers. Not really interested, preparing for the game can be as much for me as they seem to have watching the Lame version of rugby. Armour? Really?
The first thing to do thing to do is grab your laptop or your ipod, a Nintendo DS usually scores quite high in this sort of situation. With a laptop you can tell everyone you are chatting to friends about which team will win while you are actually on facebook chat with a friend who is also suffering.
Second, only pay attention to the commercials. Glance at the screen and shout “Oh!” when everyone else does. But pay special attention to the commercials so you aren’t bored out of your mind, and so you have something to talk about after the game other than the actual game.
The third thing to do, in the UK this is fun the USA probably not so much, is a drinking game. Have a shot/swig of beer each time one player smacks another players ass. You will lose count. HOW MANLY! The UK actually considers the whole thing pretty silly TBH and outrageously homo-erotic. Everyone usually end up having fun, so Girly looking rugby game on in the background or not, watching the super-bowl is pretty good fun.
The secretive copyright treaty reveal that governments all over the world were pissed off that the USA and Japan wouldn’t let them discuss the treaty with their citizens and industry.
More importantly, they explicitly confirm that the reason that ACTA was negotiated in secret among rich countries was that this was seen as the most expeditious way of getting a super-extreme copyright agreement passed with a minimum of fuss, and that all the poor countries who were excluded from the negotiation would later be coerced into agreeing to it anyway.
“Our analysis of the cables will probably be completed by others, but for now it seems that these US diplomatic cables do not bring anything entirely new to our understanding of ACTA. Rather, the details surrounding the history of this dangerous trade agreement reinforce the impression that ACTA is an outdated trade agreement primarily designed to export the war on sharing knowledge and culture to developing countries…….”
Putting models together and painting them are not easy. Finishing them and making them look great takes skill. And skill is expensive.
At this weekend’s Wonder Festival, a collectible figurine showcase, in Chiba, Japan, Kyoto’s “Mr. Big” offered completed garage kits of Bayonetta from the self-title action game Bayonetta and Ayane from the fight games Dead or Alive. Mr. Big deals in completed garage kits, and the Bayonetta one alone took two months to finish.
The completed Bayonetta was priced at a cool ¥18,000 or US$1,820, while the Ayane was asking ¥15,000 or US$2,184. Both come with handsome base stands for the figures, and Bayonetta even has a pair of 1/1 scale glasses.
Attention to detail like this is not cheap! In fact, it’s very, very expensive.