IGN has revealed a series of photos from the new Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, this time showing off the “new and unimproved” Orcs of this age. And for once, worse is actually better here.
In an interview with Jamie Wilson, head of the prosthetics department on The Rings of Power, and Lindsey Weber, an executive producer for the series, we get more details on how the forces of evil will operate in this period of Tolkien’s vast fantasy saga. “We spent a lot of time talking about what it would mean to be an Orc in the Second Age. It felt appropriate that their look would be different, part of a wilder, more raw, Second Age, Middle-earth, closer to where the First Age ends.” Weber said, describing the more desiccated, haunted look of the orcs that we see in the preview images that IGN has been given. “As we meet them, they’re not yet organized into armies, they’re a little more scattered and they’ve been scavenging. So it’s just a different time in their total story.”
Wilson is what’s known as a “Sevener” on set. This means that he’s worked on all the filmed Lord of the Rings productions: the original Peter Jackson trilogy, the Hobbit trilogy, and now The Rings of Power. He’s been around these specific prosthetics and makeup for decades, and has spent a lot of time thinking about how orcs look on screen… and how to make them look that way.
“Time has changed a lot,” Wilson told IGN. “You go back 20 years and we used a basically foam latex, which is like a porous-y kind of rubbery, spongy material with a smooth or whatever textured surface. It was great at the time.”
He mentions that silicon was only in use during the original trilogy towards the end, when they were able to make some pieces for John Rhys-Davies as Gimli. Times, he said, have changed dramatically. “All the ears, noses, Orcs pieces are all made in encapsulated silicon, which is basically two layers of silicon with a moveable piece of silicon in the middle, so when it’s applied to the actor’s face, they can move and it works,” he explained. “It also gets the same temperature as their skin. And you can see the translucency and then you gently paint on the top of it, a bit like doing makeup on a human rather than having to seal and heavily paint like we did in the old days.”
Both Wilson and Weber also noted that while the prosthetics and practical makeup are incredibly advanced, there is still a lot of CGI in Rings of Power. The show, Weber explains, is simply not reliant on it to make the orcs look good—a lot of the digital enhancements will occur in larger ensemble shots. Close up, you’ll get to see the orcs in all their garish, practically-designed glory.
Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power debuts September 2 on Prime Video.
When you feel burnt out, it’s a good plan to take time for yourself. But taking a break sometimes causes everything to come crashing down. Maggie Mae Fish’s relatable short film about living with ADHD explores some of the feelings you might experience when you emerge from your everyday distractions. (Thanks, Rob!)
Toyota vehicles are known for their durability and reliability. But even a Land Cruiser can’t stand up to explosions without the help of some armor. Vehicle security company Inkas shows how their armor systems can help protect occupants of the SUV by hitting it with ammunition, grenades, land mines, and dynamite.
The following is a short HOWTO about deployment and use of Benchmark-kit (BMK-kit). The main idea of this kit is to simplify your life in running various MySQL benchmark workloads with less blood and minimal potential errors.
Generally as simple as the following :
$ bash /BMK/sb_exec/sb11-Prepare_50M_8tab-InnoDB.sh 32# prepare data
$ for users in12481632641282565121024do# run OLTP_RW for 5min each load level..
bash /BMK/sb_exec/sb11-OLTP_RW_50M_8tab-uniform-ps-trx.sh $users300
sleep 15done
This viral video out of Phoenix quickly got people talking about lawful self-defense over the weekend, and since the politicians are pushing super hard to disarm us all, I’m glad to see it.
Attorney General Dave Yost has issued an updated manual summarizing Ohio’s concealed carry laws and explaining the two ways you may now carry in the state, with or without a license.
Whether you plan to carry with a license or without one, I highly recommend you read this manual, which covers a number of important topics, including:
Two Ways to Carry Concealed
A Crucial Difference Between CHL Holders and Permitless Carriers
Other Changes in Ohio’s Concealed-Carry Law
Training and Educational Requirements for a Concealed-Handgun License
Special Considerations for Members of the Armed Forces
Forbidden-Carry Zones
Transporting in Motor Vehicles
Traffic Stops and Other Law Enforcement Encounters
Private Property and the Workplace
Reciprocity
Open Carry
Deadly Force
Criminal Issues
Civil Liability
Self-Defense
No Duty to Retreat
Castle Doctrine
Burden of Proof
Defense of Others
Defense of Property
Dispute Resolution
In addition to reading this manual, I urge you to take a concealed carry class from an experienced and competent instructor, even if you do not plan to apply for a license. It is vital that you are familiar with Ohio self-defense law to help you make better decisions and act legally.
Dean Rieck is Executive Director of Buckeye Firearms Association, a former competitive shooter, NRA Patron Member, #1 NRA Recruiter for 2013, business owner and partner with Second Call Defense.
Warped Perception has made several project vehicles that incorporate small turbojet engines. For this video, he built a custom transparent housing for one of the jets so we can see exactly how it works to create thrust. Along the way, he offers a great layperson’s explanation of jet propulsion systems.
Sci-fi flicks have to be fueled by imagination but still seem grounded. When you dress up existing items as props, you can do both.
As such, over the years, I’ve picked apart movies and television shows that utilize real guns in fictional frames. I took my own nerdism and translated it into a list of my favorite fiction firearms with a rear firearm at their core.
Without further explanation, let’s dive into my favorites, and at the end, I hope you add your favorites.
Best Fictional Firearms That Used Real Guns
1. Moses Brothers Self-Defense Engine Frontier Model B – Taurus Model 85
The Moses Brothers Self-Defense Engine Frontier Model B is both a mouthful to say and the chosen sidearm of Captain Malcolm ‘Mal’ Reynolds of the Firefly-class vessel the Serenity.
We see Mal use the Model B dozens of times in the show and movie, and he appears quite proficient with the handgun. He’s a quick draw and accurate enough to shoot a rope during a high-speed chase.
Captain Mal Reynolds with the oses Brothers Self-Defense Engine Frontier Model B
The Model B looks and functions like a semi-auto handgun. As a space western, you get the classic revolver-style grips and aesthetics of a Volcano repeating lever-action pistol.
It’s free from most space-age do-dads and presents a simple appearance with simple sights, with lots of industrial age lines and ridges to make it distinctive.
Inside the Model 5 sits a Taurus Model 85 revolver with a futuristic shell built around the gun.
It’s an interesting take on a sci-fi blaster. They took a revolver and turned it into a semi-automatic and dolled it up to produce a rather fine-looking futuristic handgun.
The Model B is so closely associated with Nathan Fillion’s character that it pops up in other shows, like Castle, as a subtle reference to the classic character.
2. M41A Pulse Rifle – Thompson SMG and Remington 870
The Space Marines of 2122 carry the M41A Pulse Rifle into combat, and the squad in the film Aliens mostly packs the M41A.
This select-fire weapon fires 10mm caseless ammunition with a total magazine capacity of 99 rounds — although it’s mentioned in some lore that Marines only load the magazines to 95 rounds to prevent jamming.
Even in the future, the Colonial Marine Corps can’t perfect their rifles. Outside the 10mm main gun, the M41A rifles are fitted with pump-action 30mm grenade launchers mounted beneath the barrel.
The M41A is a short carbine and isn’t too far off from the use of the M4 with an M203 in the modern-day.
In real life, the M41A pulse rifle utilizes a Thompson SMG fitted into a futuristic shell with a bottom-mounted Remington 870 fitted with a SPAS 12 heat shield and foregrip.
The use of a Thompson makes the M41A complete a rather larger circle. Marines carried Tommy guns as early as the Banana Wars, and the circle comes complete with the famed Colonial Marines carrying the M41A.
The combination of the rifle and grenade launcher makes the M41A pulse rifle an awesome weapon for destroying alien scum. You can see it in plenty of hero shots involving Ripley, Vasquez, and Hicks.
This setup also used .45 ACP blanks, which meant massive and sweet-looking muzzle flash.
3. M56 Smart Gun – MG 42
I don’t want to fill this list with guns from one series or another, but I simply couldn’t choose between the M56 Smart gun and the M41A Pulse Rifle.
What can I say; I’m a machine gunner and have a bias. After becoming a machine gunner, I saw the actual benefits of the M56 Smart gun. Also, I appreciated that the machine gun team of Vasquez and Drake were tight and worked together.
The M56 Smart gun mounts a machine gun to the body of the gunner with a harness. This allows them to better carry their heavy weapon and utilize it in the standing. An advanced sighting system allows shooters to engage from the hip with accurate fire, and the weapon can aim autonomously.
In real life, the M56 Smart Gun is an MG 42 machine gun that certainly gives the gun that old-school look and feel, but the armorers dressed it up for that future-proof design.
MG 42
The MG 42 has a famously fast firing rate of 1,200 rounds per minute and earned the name Hitler’s buzzsaw by American G.I.s in World War II. It’s a medium machine gun and one of the first true general-purpose machine guns.
For the mounting system, they used a camera Steadicam mount. Heck, they used motorcycle parts with a linkage to the trigger to make it fire when carried in such an odd way.
It’s an ingenious setup, and the M56 Smart gun was all kinds of cool.
4. Auto 9 – Beretta 93R
When you have a massive cyborg police officer, you give him a massive gun. You can’t give RoboCop a Glock 17 and call it a day.
A big gun was needed, and filmmakers tried the Desert Eagle…but the Desert Eagle of all weapons was still too small.
RoboCop’s Auto 9.
So, they went to the shop and created their own — the Auto 9. RobCop’s Auto 9 was no standard pistol but a machine pistol that seemingly integrated a targeting system into Robocop’s visor.
We see him shoot a variety of people without ever aiming with seemingly perfect accuracy.
In real life, they dressed up a Beretta 93R. The Beretta 93R took the Beretta 92 series and added a burst feature to the fun. This allowed the weapon to be selective fire with a 3-round burst or semi-automatic.
As you’d imagine, it was too small for Robocop’s hand. To make it look bigger, they made the grip and barrel longer with a full-on shroud that added higher sights and gave it a look straight out of 2028 Detroit.
RoboCop demonstrating his skills with the Auto 9 at the range
Part of that shroud appears to be a compensator that would reduce recoil and muzzle rise fairly well. It also granted the filmmakers some intense muzzle flash which always looks cool on film.
The Auto 9 is the first time a machine pistol has been practical.
5. Lawgiver MKII – Glock 17
2012’s Dredd was a sleeper hit but an overlooked gem. This film stuck to the source material of the famed comics and created a grisly and violent world devoid of Stallone yelling that he is the LAW!
Instead, we have Karl Urban playing Judge Dredd as the brutal and efficient killer that he is. In his hand is the famed Lawgiver MKII pistol.
Karl Urban as Judge Dredd
This sidearm features a biometric identification mode that only Judges can use. It’s more than just a handgun.
The Lawgiver also utilizes a variety of modes, including the full auto “rapid-fire” mode, an armor-piercing mode, suppressed mode, stun rounds, incendiary rounds, and high explosives. Plenty of options for any situation in which a Judge might find themselves.
(Photo: Yourprops.com)
To keep track of all those modes, a display shows the current ammo count, mode, and other information to use such a complicated weapon.
The Lawgiver MKII in real life is a Glock 17 Gen 4 or Gen 3. We see the finger grooves that lock it down to those two generations.
Oddly enough, the Glock 17 makes a lot of sense since Glock pistols arm the majority of police officers in the United States.
Glock’s polymer frame pistol has dominated the market since its inception and created an awesomely reliable pistol that is both simple and robust for law enforcement.
6. Deckard’s Gun – Charter Arms Bulldog
In the film Blade Runner, Deckard’s gun never gets any official designation, so we’ll just call it Deckard’s gun.
Deckard is a biological robot-hunting police officer tasked with bringing escaped “skinjobs” down.
Blade Runner is far from an action film, but Deckard’s gun is prominently shown over and over throughout the film. It’s always been a different kind of cool — bizarre but realistic. Deckard’s blaster seems to be issued by the LAPD, and we see it in the hands of another Blade Runner.
In real life, the armorer took the classic Charter Arms Bulldog and morphed it into one of the most unique weapons in film.
The Charter Arms Bulldog is a .44 Special revolver that barely clings to its compact designation. Air Marshals in the 70s apparently carried the Bulldog, and it’s easy to see why.
It fires a big, heavy, and slow round that packed a decent punch for the time. Deckard’s blaster took the Bulldog and mounted the bolt-action from a Steyr Mannlicher Model SL to the top of the gun. There was a series of LEDs, a second trigger, and a really cool grip.
Deckard’s blaster might not be named, but it has a special place in all our hearts.
7. DL-44 Heavy Blaster Pistol – Mauser C96
I could make an entire list of real guns modified to be in Star Wars, but maybe that will be something for a later article.
Since I had to choose one, the gun I settled on comes from Star Wars’ most lovable rogue, Han Solo. He shoots first, and he does so with the DL-44 Heavy Blaster Pistol.
This handgun arms our hero through four films, and he clearly has an affection for it.
Also, interestingly enough, Solo’s gun features an optic and muzzle device, like most Gucci pistols in 2021. The DL-44 Heavy blaster pistol hits hard and makes Storm Trooper armor rather useless.
In real life, the Star Wars prop team utilized a Mauser C96 to form the distinctive pistol. The propmaster attached an early 4X optic made for German sniper rifles, a heavy barrel, and the muzzle device from an MG81 machine gun.
Mauser C96
Ultimately, the whole package became the gun that Han Solo would wield in many a film, comic, video game, and book.
The Mauser C96 shares the pride of being an early successful semi-auto pistol – the 96 in C96 comes from 1896! This gun originally came in the 7.62 Mauser but later chambered everything from 9mm to 8mm Gasser.
It was used by both sides of World War I — sticking around for decades due to its robust design and reliable nature.
8. Colonial Handgun – Smith & Wesson 686
Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica. The early 2000s series might easily eclipse the classic series it aimed to remake. This series brought us Edward James Olmos, the Beretta CX4, and Katee Sackoff’s abs to make us feel a little bad about that last Reeses.
It also brought us the Colonial Handgun.
The Colonial Handgun takes some cues from Blade Runner and uses a revolver as its core design. It’s seen in the hands of dozens of characters and appears to be the standard-issue pistol of the Colonials.
This handgun takes a 2.5-inch Smith & Wesson 686 and propels it to the future with a CNC machine aluminum shell.
We get the classic wood grips and DA trigger, but the hammer is fully enclosed, as is the cylinder. The cylinder release has also been removed.
The S&W 686 is one of the more modern .357 Magnum revolvers on the market, and it’s an awesome pistol. Heck, you might even argue it’s the company’s current flagship revolver. It’s a 6-shooter, but a 7-shot plus model exists.
If I needed to carry a revolver on duty, it would likely be this gun.
9. The Resistance Rifle – AC556 in a Muzzelite Stock
I love the Terminator series, and as a kid, some of my favorite scenes were of the brutal future war between man and the machine.
We saw more than a few firearms shooting lasers in these short portions, and the unnamed resistance rifle always stuck out to me. We know very little about the weapon but can assume it worked well for killing Terminators.
Kyle Reese mentions that they’d be tough to kill with weapons from the 80s, and the Terminator mentioned a phased plasma rifle in the 40-watt range. So maybe it’s a plasma rifle. What we do know is that it’s a bullpup rifle outfitted with a massive scope.
In reality, the rifle of the Resistance is an AC556, a.k.a. a select-fire version of the Mini 14. The film’s armorers shoved it into a Muzzelite stock that creates a bullpup platform.
(Photo: Terminator Wiki)
On top of the gun is an iMatronic Lasersight LS45. This is not an optic you’ll look through but a massive laser that tossed a simple red dot downrange.
To make it look more optic-like, the armorers added what appears to be eyepieces of some type or another. The combinations of this sight, the stock, and the rifle might make this the most 80s gun ever.
It offered a more traditional alternative to AR-type weapons and used a design very similar to the M14. The Mini 14 series offered a light and semi-auto rifle in .223 that wasn’t the futuristic and not-so-traditional AR-15.
They weren’t known for their accuracy but tended to be robust and handy guns.
If you’ve never handled a Muzzelite stock, don’t worry, you aren’t missing out on anything. They feel exactly how they look. They made trigger abysmal but were a true drop-in design that greatly shortened a Ruger rifle.
Final Thoughts
You can tell when a sci-fi gun isn’t based on anything real. It’s often an impractical and unergonomic mess that makes no sense from a practical perspective.
The best sci-fi guns are always gun-based on real guns, which adds a certain degree of realism to the sci-fi design.
Plus, if they didn’t use real guns, nerds like me couldn’t pick them apart to an extreme degree.
Developers, deliberately or unknowingly, build their coding standards in the process of project development. A coding standard is a style that is applied to your whole codebase to shape a coding discipline and make the codebase more consistent and readable.
Why is it so important to implement a coding style?
The first and foremost essential factor is related to the discipline of coding. Shaping discipline and creating a coding style makes it easier not only just to understand the existing code but also makes it easier to develop the codebase further.
On top of that, discipline with the coding style is also crucial for effective collaboration within the development team. This attitude makes teamwork much more straightforward and efficient. Besides, that way, the new developers will be able to comprehend the code easily. It will also help developers not to get upset with individual code style preferences.
However, we should also note that maintaining the coding standards with bare hands might be a highly complex task requiring time and effort. Therefore, there is a Linter concept in almost every programming language. With this article, we will dig down to understand Linting and how you can apply it to your Laravel Project by using PHP CS Fixer. So let’s get started.
What is Linter?
Linter is a common tool that helps us develop a specific coding style and find errors.
In most cases, Linters are used in conjunction with the IDE. Linters are activated once a specific event fires and suggest a correction. You can also run Linter using a CLI to highlight and/or fix the errors in your codebase.
Does PHP have a Linter?
The short answer is Yes.
Nowadays, Laravel is the most popular framework in the PHP world. However, Laravel itself frequently uses the components of the other very popular framework – Symfony. The founder of Symfony, Fabien Potencier, created a PHP Linter called CS Fixer. So let’s talk more about it.
How Can we Install CS Fixer in the Laravel Project?
There are several ways to install CS Fixer:
Install globally using Composer
Install globally without using Composer
Install per project, using the Composer
In the following example, we will discuss how we can set up PHP CS Fixer in a per-project approach and connect it to VSCode and PHPStorm. Connecting to the other IDEs is a similar process.
First of all, we need to go to our Laravel project in the terminal and install PHP CS Fixer with Composer by running the following command:
composer require friendsofphp/php-cs-fixer --dev
Then if we see executable files in our project /vendor/bin directory we will see that one of them is php-cs-fixer.
If we run this command in the root folder of our project:
./vendor/bin/php-cs-fixer
We will see that CSFixer has been installed successfully and will display the following:
We made sure that PHP CS Fixer really works 🙏
CS Fixer in the VSCode
Let’s move to the VSCode.
First, we will need to install the appropriate extension for CS Fixer in VSCode.
Pay attention to the fact that the author of this extension should be Junstyle.
Then we should create a .vscode folder in our project and a settings.json file in it where we will set configurations:
There are three things we need to configure:
Run PHP Formatter on save
Tell VSCode the address of php-cs-fixer (/vendor/bin/php-cs-fixer) executable
Tell from where the php-cs-fixer configuration file should be read
Consequently, JSON configuration will look like this:
The only thing left is to create a .php-cs-fixer.php file in the root folder. We can set up formatting rules with that configuration file. Here is an example rule configuration file we use for some of our projects: PHP CS Fixer Config File.
CS Fixer in the PHPStorm
Open the desired project in PHPStorm and go into the PHPStorm settings:
Then we should find the Quality Tools under PHP; this is where the PHP CS Fixer section should be:
Click the button with the three points and point out our CS Fixer binary file address which is located in the vendor/bin folder:
Click Validate and make sure that everything works fine.
Then we should move to CS Fixer Inspection and set several parameters:
We should mark PHP CS Fixer validation. Severity should be set to Error, and we should choose Custom in the Ruleset. This means that we need to give PHP CS Fixer our rule file which defines how our codebase should be formatted.
Before we configure which file should be used as a Ruleset by PHPStorm, we should create a .php-cs-fixer.php file in our Root folder. Here is an example configuration file we use for some of our projects: PHP CS Fixer Config File.
Then we should navigate to Inspections and find our newly created configuration file in PHPStorm:
Then we can save our configuration, which means that PHPStorm will already start analyzing our codebase and format it according to our ruleset.
However, this is still not enough. For the development process to be smooth, it would be better for PHP CS Fixer to make autocorrections. This is why we need to add the File Watcher.
For this we should navigate to File Watchers in the PHPStorm settings.
Now we should choose Custom in Templates and write a new Watcher configuration.
