Navy Death Ray

The Navy has been developing a ship bound defence FEL (Free Electron Laser). A FEL produces a laser by using something similar to a particle accelerator to speed particles up and shoot them out instead of using crystals or inverted prisms to focus light. As of now it has been used to shoot down countless drones, can burn through about 200 ft of steel per second, produces a 14-kilowatt beam, and was just recently run for eight hours at 500 kilovolts. The goal is to eventually develop a one megawatt laser that can burn through 2000 ft of steel per second. Hell yeah to real life Star Wars!!!

Ultramarines A Warhammer 40,000 Movie

Ultramarines was released a few months ago on dvd. Warhammer 40,000 is a British tabletop game produced by Gamesworkshop. The game has been adapted into many things including hundreds of books and multiple videogame adaptations. The only media form it hadn't entered was TV/Movie, and every fan of the game has been waiting along time for that, and as a fan I can vouch for that. It was produced by Codex Pictures, directed by Martyn Pick, and the screen play was written by my favorite author Dan Abnett. The movie fallows the Ultramarines (superhuman soldiers bred to combat the enemies of mankind, the xenos scum and chaos heretics) as the answer a distress beacon from the planet Mithron. When they arrive they find the planet tainted by chaos and it becomes a fight for survival. The film is all CGI and used Image Metrics animated facial capture for the animations, and the film runs about 76 minutes. I of course enjoyed the movie because I'm a fan of Warhammer, but over all I thought the production value of the film was pretty good for having a lower budget.

LA Noire

LA Noire is an upcoming game by Rockstar Games (best known for the GTA series). Based on the title you can probably guess that the game draws heavily from the film noir style (dark mood, high contrast between light and shadow/low-key lighting) for both its look and narrative. In the game you take up the role of a detective and have to solve a series of murders in 1947 LA. The game is using two advanced technologies in its production; real-time global illumination technology (used to obtain the distinct film noir style look), and motionscan (actors are filmed by 32 surrounding cameras to capture facial expresion at every angle, so that when interrogating suspects you can tell whether or not they're lying). The game is scheduled to release on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 in spring of 2011, and Rockstar recently released an in-game trailer. The game looks very good and I can't wait for its release.

Halo Movie

One of my favorite videogame series is the "Halo" series. Though the controls and game play are standard FPS style, it's the story that makes it. You assume the role of a superhuman soldiers in the middle of an intergalactic battle between mankind and the Convenant (army of different alien species) and he has to risk his life not only to save humanity, but the entire universe. As of now, every "Halo" fan should estatic because of a certain rumor that has been floating around. Even though it's still considered a rumor there is a lot of evidence to mark it as fact. The "Halo" movie will finally be coming out. It was originally supposed to be produced by Peter Jackson, and directed by Neil Blomkamp, but it fell through and they ended up making "District 9". It is now believed that Steven Spielburg is looking into making the movie, and that there is a very high chance of it actually happening, finally.

Homework 3

Panasonic released a new 3D camera, the AG-3DA1 3D Professional AVCCAM Camcorder. It weighs approximately 6.17 lbs. and costs $21,000. It combines both cameras/lenses in one package with controls for both. Has dual HD-SDI out, HDMI (version 1.4), two XLR connectors, a built-in stereo microphone, and a 3.2-inch LCD screen that provides left, right or overlay image display. It can also record in full HD 3D.

Homework 2

Mitsubishi announced that they will start selling their OLED (organic light-emitting diode) screens. They have been intended for advertising and public display perposes. The size of the screen can be virtually limitless, and it doesn't have to be flat, do to the fact that the large screen is actually made up of smaller screens that measure 384 millimeters square with a resolution of 128 pixels by 128 pixels. Due to the pixels being slightly larger than normal, it is recommended that the screen be viewed from at least 2 meters away.

Mr. D's Weekly Homework

Recently Grammy-award winning music producer Christopher King released a new album that consists of war songs from 1924-1939. The album is called Bloody War: Songs 1924-1939. There are 15 tracks on the album, all of which are folk songs from the early 2oth century. So far the album has gotten good reviews, which is a plus because I plan on buying the album for two reasons. First off I'm a fan of folk music, shocker. Second off a portion of all procedes go to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America foundation.