Tag: Saved for Later

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 

Jeff Goldblum spent 20 years getting the planet ready after Earth was first invaded: now, the aliens are back. The first trailer for Independence Day: Resurgence has arrived!

The trailer for this looks like it’ll be quite a bit of fun, with all the beats of the original, and then some. We’re treated to the original film’s iconic speech, along with a montage of scenes showing off just how much has changed in two decades. In the years since, it looks like humanity has adopted the alien’s technology into our own, but even though we’ve been getting ready for another invasion, it isn’t quite enough.

Here’s the full trailer:

Independence Day: Resurgence will hit theaters on June 24, 2016

via Gizmodo
We Always Knew They’d Come Back: Here’s The Trailer For Independence Day Resurgence

The Star Wars Prequel trilogy flat out sucks: it’s the one thing that’s holding most fans back from super high expectations for the next Star Wars trilogy. That said, there are ways to redeem them, and one editor has made some edits that make them watchable.

http://ift.tt/1SJ6kFC…

Intrepid Youtuber JeremyMWest-Esquire has gone through and re-edited the entire prequel trilogy, taking out all the dumb bits: scrambling up crappy dialogue from the Neimoidians and Jar Jar Binks, and so forth. The result is a movie that’s actually watchable.

Here’s some of what he removed from The Phantom Menace:

– Nemoidian and Gungan voices are re-vocalized with alien dialect and subtitled.

– Journey to Gungan underwater city removed

– Jar Jar is now a useful character instead of an annoying tag-along

– Nemoidians are much more devious and less cowardly

– Childish Battle Droid dialog removed

– Queen Amidala’s voice is pitch-shifted back to her normal pitch. (Still could not remove her horrible British accent)

– Naboo pilot Ric Olié’s endless plot exposition removed when appropriate

– Midichlorian references removed

– Anakin immaculate conception removed

– All fart and poop jokes removed

– Anakin is edited to be a more deliberate hero instead of an accidental one.

– Removed as many “Yippe!” and “Whoa!” and “Whee!” exclamations as possible.

– Removed the two headed pod race announcer

– Shortened the podrace intro scene and tightened the whole race for more tension

– Removed the entire sequence of trying to capture the Viceroy at the end.

Attack of the Clones:

Following in my tradition of editing the Prequels, I give you the Anti-Cheese version of Attack of the Clones. This film had some cool stuff in it, but was horribly mangled by the awful dialog and acting, especially between Padme and Anakin. There was also a lot of extra cheese in this one as well that needed to go. So, Anakin and Padme’s scenes were drastically edited to make Anakin way less whiny and petulant, and most of the cringe-worthy dialog was removed. Jar-Jar’s voice as well as the voice of the Neimodians were either removed or replaced. Several scenes were removed entirely, most notably Anakin’s breakdown in the shop at the Lars homestead after killing the sandpeople, and R2 and C3PO are removed entirely from the ending battle in the droid factory and the arena. Those scenes were just too much cheese for my liking. There’s about 100 other little edits that tighten things up and helped this fatty lose about 20 minutes of run-time- and frankly I think it’s for the better. Again, your mileage may vary.

Revenge of the Sith:

As the final chapter in my Prequel Anti-Cheese anthology, I present to you my edit of Revenge of the Sith. Before you ask, yes- I took out Vader screaming “NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” at the end. Honestly, I thought that was about all I needed to do, because Jar Jar only said 2 words in this film so I thought it would be an easy edit. Turns out that I needed to cut about 15 minutes of cheese in order to get this baby down to about 2 hours and 5 minutes.

This sort of reinforces my theory that the prequels aren’t necessarily irredeemable: there’s good material in there for what they are, and most of the excess was just indulgent crap that George Lucas thought was funny. (Sort of like the Ewoks) While they still don’t hold a candle to the Original trilogy, they can be tightened up and improved. Maybe Disney will do their own ‘Special Editions’ at some point.

[Polygon]

via Gizmodo
Include These Anti-Cheese Star Wars Prequels While You Prepare For The Force Awakens