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Jimmy Fallon enlisted the help of The Roots and the cast of Star Wars: The Force Awakens to each sing a part of John Williams’ Main Theme from Star Wars. And yes, Mark Hamill is nowhere to be found yet again.
via The Awesomer
Star Wars A Capella

Hello! I have posted this entry on the MySQL Server team’s blog:Using the aggregate functions ANY, SOME, EVERY with MySQL  .
via Planet MySQL
Using the aggregate functions ANY, SOME, EVERY with MySQL

Since real lightsabers don’t exist (yet), Google and the studios behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens are offering the next-best thing: A program that turns your smartphone into a lightsaber, which then takes out bad guys on your computer screen. Lightsaber Escape is live now — open it in your desktop browser and then punch in the unique URL on your phone (or vice versa), and you’re good to go. Your phone becomes a lightsaber handle and, as you move it around, the actual glowing sword moves on the desktop.

Lightsaber Escape is a Chrome Experiment that Google made in conjunction with Lucasfilm and Star Wars visual-effects studio Industrial Light & Magic. It uses WebGL for the 3D graphics, plus WebRTC and WebSocket for the real-time communication between your phone and desktop. It may be a Chrome Experiment, but this one works in other browsers, too.

If Chrome and Safari can get along, maybe there’s hope for the First Order and the Resistance, after all.

via Engadget
Your phone is a lightsaber in Google’s desktop browser game

We all know about the motion effects in iOS, but it turns out they’re tucked away in OS X as well. OS X Daily points out that the Photos app has it, and you can speed up performance by turning it off.

Open up Photos, then Head to Photos > Preferences and select the General tab. Click on “Reduce Motion” to disable the various animations, and you’ll be on your way to making Photos a little less cumbersome to use. If you feel like your Mac’s been pretty slow lately, you might try disabling a few other animations.

http://ift.tt/1O3Bunl…

Speed Up Photos App in OS X with Reduce Motion | OS X Daily

via Lifehacker
Speed Up OS X Photos by Reducing Motion

Brant W. Williams is the owner of Frontier Firearms, a gun store and shooting range in Kingston, Tennessee. Williams read the news of attacks on Christians in mass shootings in Oregon and in Charleston, South Carolina. He read of … Read More

The post Frontier Firearms Offers 5% Discount for Christians, Sells Christian Carry Pins appeared first on The Truth About Guns.

via The Truth About Guns
Frontier Firearms Offers 5% Discount for Christians, Sells Christian Carry Pins

via kottke.org
Official BBC instructions for knitting Doctor Who’s scarf

Since 1997, George Lucas has been hell bent on ruining the original Star Wars trilogy. Every new release—in theaters, on DVD, and on Blu-Ray—comes with more added garbage than the last. This fan-made version of the original trilogy is the best version of Star Wars you can watch.

http://ift.tt/1IQW6TN…

Between adding a silly Jabba the Hutt scene to the first movie, putting an absurd musical number in Return of the Jedi, and Greedo shooting first (a change so convtroversial it has its own Wikipedia page), it’s like Lucasfilm is trolling us. I mean come on—what does a big CGI alien walking in front of the shot possibly add to the movie? At this rate, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Jar Jar Binks in the the 4K release of Return of the Jedi.

Unfortunately, you can’t buy the original version of the movie anymore, and it was never released in very high quality. The closest you can get is buying the laserdisc versions for $150 on eBay (and if you don’t do that, you’ll have to break out those old VHS tapes from your closet).

But, with the help of many dedicated fans and video editors, an originaltrilogy.com forum user named Harmy decided to recreate the original, unaltered trilogy in high definition. He calls it the Despecialized Edition, and it’s the version of Star Wars we’ve all been clamoring for the last 20 years.

What the Despecialized Edition Does

The Despecialized Edition is a “fan preservation”, aiming not to create a new version of the movie, but to restore the original trilogy exactly as it was in the 70s and 80s—little flaws and all. To recreate the original 1977 version of A New Hope, for example, he used clips from:

• The 2011 Blu-Ray edition
• An HDTV broadcast of the 2004 Special Edition DVD
• A low quality version of the original trilogy from the special features of the 2006 DVD, affectionately called George’s Original Unaltered Trilogy (or the “GOUT”)
• Various scans of 70mm and 35mm film prints and still images from the films

With the help of many other originaltrilogy.com members, Harmy took bits and pieces of the above sources and edited them together with the Blu-Ray footage to recreate the theatrical version of the movie—in 720p HD. Watch the video above to see how it was put together—it really is fascinating.

Not all of the Special Edition changes are bad, of course. (I rather liked the redone CGI space battles.) But there is no doubt that this is the best version of the film you can get today. The color correction alone puts it so far ahead of the Blu-Ray that it’s the only version I’ll watch.

You can see a full list of Harmy’s changes, with screenshots and descriptions, in this Google+ album. You can also read more on the Despecialized Edition’s forum post at originaltrilogy.com, as wells as the threads for Empire Strikes Back’s Despecialized Edition and Return of the Jedi’s Despecialized Edition.

How to Find and Download the Despecialized Edition

Since this is an unofficial community project, the only way you can get it is…well, “unofficially”. The legality of this project is up in the air, and while some have made a Fair Use argument in the name of preservation, Harmy doesn’t offer the movie as a simple one-click download. You’ll have to do a bit of legwork to download and watch it. The creators also request that you legally own a copy of the Star Wars Blu-Rays, so that even if you aren’t on the most solid legal ground, you’re on solid moral ground.

TehPARADOX.com is the most “official” place to download the Despecialized Edition, though obtaining it is a fairly complex process using a program called JDownloader. I have not been able to get this method to work properly (it reports most of the download links as dead), so while you can try it using these instructions, know that you may not have very much luck.

By far the easiest way to obtain the movie—albeit a little shadier—is through BitTorrent. Just visit your favorite BitTorrent search engine (like torrentz.eu) and search for “star wars despecialized edition”. You’ll probably find quite a few options. Remember to use a VPN or proxy to keep yourself anonymous when you download.

I know that seems like a lot of hassle, but trust me: once you’ve watched the Despecialized Editions, you’ll never go back.

via Gizmodo
Watch the Original Star Wars Trilogy As It Was Before George Lucas Screwed It Up

When Justin Lin signed on to direct the third Star Trek film, Star Trek Beyond, you knew the action was going to be bigger. But in the first trailer for the film, it really does feel like a Star Trek version of the Fast and Furious.

Pumping the Beastie Boys’ Sabotage (which was also in the first movie), Kirk and his crew seem to have lost the Enterprise and get sent off on an adventure filled with lots of new alien creatures and wanton beaming. No look at Idris Elba’s villain yet (or is there?) but we do get to see Sofia Boutella’s character, who looks like something out of Metal Gear Solid.

The trailer feels like a perfect, 90 second tease, to let anyone who still feels hurt by Into Darkness know, this franchise is not dead yet. This kind of over-the-top energy is almost the opposite of what Star Trek is known for.

Star Trek Beyond opens July 22.

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Contact the author at germain@io9.com.

via Gizmodo
The First Trailer For Star Trek Beyond Is Both Fast and Furious