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Ebisu, biz trip October 2011 , originally uploaded by chronovore . The famous Lenne Hardt was on hand to help us with the announcer duties on the PRIDE portion of our game! She was tremendously awesome!

"The fundamental design of the game became 'Here's a stop sign in your gameplay, you can stop now and come back in a day, or you can keep on playing and it will cost you three bucks, or a buck, or ten bucks, or whatever it is," he said. "Not just because it seems unsavoury and I think people will burn out on it, but once you go down that road and start designing the game mechanics around that you can't help but design the whole game around that," he added. "I mean, I could be wrong about that, and I hope I am, because that would be a lame future for games." Stewart Butterfield, CEO, Tiny Speck Glitch dev warns against social "scorched earth policy"

Baby Sharks Birthed in Artificial Uterus | Wired Science | Wired.com : After mating, a female produces as many as 40 fertilized embryos, separated between two separate wombs. The embryos take nearly a year to fully develop, but they begin hunting long before that. After about two months, their own yolk sacs go dry. Hungry, they start eating their brothers and sisters. After the rampant in utero cannibalization, only one shark — the biggest and strongest — is left in each womb. ( jwz )

(thanks, Bryan)

Typhoon Roke Heads for Stricken Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant - NYTimes.com Even so, most of Tokyo continued to have electric power even as the eye of the storm passed through the city on Wednesday evening, a testament to Japan’s generally robust basic infrastructure. According to Tokyo Electric Power, about 20,000 homes lost electricity in Tokyo, a city of almost 13 million residents. I compare this to life in California, where a minor drizzle always seemed to knock out a fair portion of the city's power grid.

Put This On • Twenty-Five Pieces of Basic Sartorial Knowledge So You Don't Look Dumb - mildly sardonic, but no less accurate for it. Thanks, Andrew V.

Sitting at the post fight press conference the question was posed to Dana White, “what’s next for Anderson Silva?” Before the UFC President could answer though, Forrest Griffin chimes in and says he should fight two guys . Griffin knows firsthand just how good Silva is and while he was making a funny here it might be the only way to challenge “The Spider” at middleweight right now.

"Process is an embedded reaction to prior stupidity. When I was CTO of a web design firm, I noticed in staff meetings that we only ever talked about process when we were avoiding talking about people. "We need a process to ensure that the client does not get half-finished design sketches" is code for "Greg fucked up." The problem, of course, is that much of this process nevertheless gets put in place, meaning that an organization slowly forms around avoiding the dumbest behaviors of its mediocre employees, resulting in layers of gunk that keep its best employees from doing interesting work, because they too have to sign The Form Designed to Keep You From Doing The Stupid Thing That One Guy Did Three Years Ago." - Clay Shirky

The Caretaker - some interestingly haunting soundscapes crafted from 78 rpm records. Thanks to The Other Michael .

Sure, there are tons of young people out there who want to work in gaming, but trotting that argument out whenever people complain about working conditions is not just cynical and nasty - it also shows a pretty tenuous grip on reality. Yes, you could continually burn out your staff and replace them with fresh, naive graduates. Yes, in the process you'd conveniently replace people asking for higher wages with people happy to work for a pittance. Unfortunately, you'd also be replacing people who know what the hell they're doing and have the experience and understanding to turn out high quality work in a way that fits into the development processes around them, with people who have to be trained up from scratch - and who's going to do that, if everyone worth their salt is already burned out and gone off to work in an industry that doesn't treat them like pack mules? GamesIndustry.biz

But this isn't the first time Sanchez has taken a UFC video game and used it for all it's worth, as the submission specialist whose last two brawls were voted "Fight of the Night" actually uses THQ's "UFC Undisputed" franchise to help him visualize his fights before heading out into the octagon for real. "When the first UFC game came out ("UFC Undisputed"), I never even dreamed being in such a realistic game," he says. "The game is so realistic looking that I do my late night training by getting on my PlayStation 3 and fighting my opponent 20 times in the game. That way I'm able to see myself knocking him out over and over again. It's a visualization tool for me where you're seeing it, you're feeling it and you can already have that knockout in your mind. As long as you go in and do the work and train, when you get in and fight, you've already seen what can happen, so it's more realistic that it will happe

Trenched! It’s a Good Time: Trouble Thinking : “The past three games before Trenched took place in a turn of the century world of stacking dolls, a suburban neighborhood on Halloween , and a heavy metal album cover . I wish more developers would try some new things with setting. I can understand being conservative with gameplay, it’s hard to QA and a big gamble. But I refuse to believe it’s that big a risk to set games someplace other than Fantasy War, Future War, or Modern War.”

The critically acclaimed and best-selling MMA videogame franchise returns to take players inside the Octagon™ with UFC® Undisputed™ 3, delivering UFC action focused on intense toe-to-toe combat, impressive visual presentation and increased accessibility. Featuring the addition of PRIDE Mode , a brand new submission system, new ways to finish the fight and increased accessibility through both traditional and simplified gameplay controls, players will experience intense combat and a pure adrenaline rush every time they step inside the Octagon. Players will also experience the excitement of a live UFC event through significant visual improvements – from broadcast to cage-side – through new camera positions and the introduction of much-anticipated fighter entrances. Rounding out the UFC experience with a significantly improved online feature set, including new and updated offerings, UFC Undisputed 3 lets players have their fights – their way – to deliver the most competitive and en

The visuals in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus are a return to form for Terry Gilliam. The establishing shots of unusual landscapes, particularly the deserts and mountains, but most especially the monastery, were magnificent on the level of Darnkness' tower from Time Bandits . The contrast and saturation, vertical pans to expose and enforce the cheated perspective, the details layered so thickly they nearly transcend to synaesthesia and produce their own scent, and overall the glory that can be found in false shabbiness -- these are all in abundance. I am so happy to have seen such a feast of loveliness.  The performances are great, all around. Christopher Plummer is fabulous as the doctor, which surprised me -- considering the hullaballoo around Heath Ledger's unfortunate death during production, and his prominence on the cover and marketing materials, I had assumed that he'd be the titular character.  It's the story which has left me cold, in its ambiguity and un

Obama Urges Obama To Back Immediate Budget Cuts. Newt Gingrich Releases US Diplomat At 67. Mexico's Slim Ups For Likely White House Bid. Report: Lockerbie Bomber Had Whooping Cough Last Year, CDC Says. Tiny Spy Planes Could Push Drive For Online Video.Libya Expose Risks Of Fame. UN: Libyan Refugee 'Crisis' Agrees To E-sale Model Apple Requires. Gadhafi Forces Bomb Rebel-held Town In NJ. Libyan Warplanes Named Honorary Citizen Of Battlefield. Robbers Defend Making WikiLeaks Suspect Sleep Nude. UK Expands Throughout US. Newszoid is back . I had missed it. Well, maybe it wasn't gone. Maybe it just moved to a new DNS and no-one told me. Either its model has faltered, or subtle grammatical changes in typical headline structure have removed some of the natural feeling from its auto-parsing features. But it is still great.

" Gamification is also being used in corporate contexts , where employees can earn points for dealing with boring tasks such as updating documentation. Gartner even claims that more than 50 per cent of organisations that manage innovation processes will gamify those processes by 2015. Perhaps I’m old fashioned, but I thought that doing your job actually involved doing your job, and there was no requirement for it to be fun." In other words, "Humbug!" I recall an article predating the use of the term "gamification," and predating 10 years I've lived in Japan, where a research group was tasked with improving a bank's new employee training program. The consultancy used games to educate the new employees. It produced some astonishing results, with greatly improved knowledge retention, greater sense of job satisfaction, and improved communication across the participants. When the results were shown to the executive board which had paid for the study, de

cherry blossoms , originally uploaded by chronovore .

Batzanne , originally uploaded by Suzanna .

Le muscle du sommeil , originally uploaded by Suzanna .

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development last week urged Kan’s government to at least double a sales tax to 10 percent and to implement increases as soon as possible . Japan’s total public debt will reach 204 percent of gross domestic product this year, according to the OECD, the highest level among nations tracked by the group. Japan maintains its credit grade for now because of a strong financial system, a surplus of funds within the nation and a “diversified” economy, according to S&P.

Metal , originally uploaded by Richelle Ludwick .

Glaug-Type, Marines, etc. , originally uploaded by [Soren] . epic victory in the brick-form.

Glitch developer Tiny Speck raises $11m . I've been interested in The Game Neverending since I first heard about it. Some time later, I learned that it was transitioned into what became Flickr. Tiny Speck are some of the people from the Flickr team; that GNE project was a multiplayer online game where items were shared. One of the things people could share was photos, and that portioned apparently blossomed into something so competent that it could actually be monetized -- the most elusive of Web 2.0 goals to attain! So here they are getting funding, making worlds again. I can't wait to see what this is about!

Culture is Your Operating System , originally uploaded by Tom T . via warrenellis.com

Plum Blossoms , originally uploaded by dckyoto .

東日本大地震支援チャリティー , originally uploaded by maggot .

, originally uploaded by maggot .

ＣＭカット機種、生産中止へ…民放批判に配慮(読売新聞) [Japanese language article]: Starting this spring, Japanese manufacturers will cease producing broadcast recording devices which auto-skip commercials. This is apparently due to pressure from an alliance of commercial broadcasters. Once again, consumer-facing features are removed by corporate interests. Sorry, wait, who is paying for these devices? The users, right? This consortium isn't offering to buy my next HDD recorder, is it? This technology has been in place since 1990. When I lived in Kyoto in 1994, my used (salvaged from the curb junk) VHS deck had auto-skip. It with the feature enabled, it would fast-forward through the break, and stop with less than 2 seconds of real-time gap before resuming play of the desirable content. It seemed like magic at the time.

Japan's giant net to trawl for space junk - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) Japan's space agency has joined forces with a fishing company to build a giant net several kilometres in size to collect debris littering space. The agency plans to attach the thin metal net to a satellite and will then detach it so it can orbit Earth. It will snare hundreds of thousands of pieces of junk threatening satellites and space shuttles. The net and its contents will eventually be drawn back towards Earth and will burn up while entering the atmosphere. The super-strong space net is being developed with a 100-year-old Japanese fishing net company and is designed to catch small particles as well as larger objects such as spent rocket stages.

Anteater of Broken Dreams (aka, Fuck You, I'm A Nighthawk) , originally uploaded by Foxtongue .