Qualcomm wanted to demo how powerful the Snapdragon 600 chip can be, and decided to create a cool bullet time photo booth using 130 HTC Ones on window mounts attached to a spiraling rail.
Actors (and dogs) were placed in the midst of the ring, and caught in a full 540-degrees of excellent special effect footage that freezes space and time much like Neo can do. OK, so they just took stills from live video at the right time and stitched them together in an animation, but the former sounds way cooler.
This isn't really new, as you can find similar footage all over YouTube, but it is pretty slick to watch. They also have a poll to see where to send the roving studio next, which you can find at the source link. Be sure to vote for your closest spot, and if you get a chance to check it out make sure to use your Android to get some cool footage of it all.
This weekend I bought 3,000 baseball cards. They cost $30. That’s because nobody wants baseball cards anymore; the industry has shrunk to one-seventh of its peak size in the last 20 years. Baseball, too, has shrunk. Once America’s most popular sport, it’s now a distant second to the NFL, barely ahead of college football in terms of primary adherents. The age of baseball supremacy is over.
But not in my house. This is what my son’s desk looks like:
Photo courtesy Jordan Ellenberg
My son is 8, and he just finished his first season of Little League. Before he goes to bed each night he needs an update on the scores in the playoff games. And when he gets up in the morning the first thing he asks is how they ended. He can tell you everything you’d want to know, and actually somewhat more, about beloved Brewers like Carlos Gomez, Caleb Gindl, and Aramis Ramirez, whose jersey he wears to school as soon as it’s clean, once a week, summer and winter.
If baseball is antique, boring, and doomed, why does my kid like it so much?
One reason: It’s a kid’s game. The old story of Abner Doubleday writing down the rules of baseball in Cooperstown, N.Y., was debunked years ago. John Thorn’s magisterial 2011 book Baseball in the Garden of Eden tells a more historically grounded story. I used to make fun of Brooklyn hipsters who played kickball, but the truth is that the sport exists today thanks to the early-19th-century version of those hipsters, office workers who thought it would be a kick for grown-ups to play a popular children’s game, and to bet on the outcome for good measure.
So baseball started out with the benefit of the evolutionary honing that all informal playground games do. On top of that, it’s had almost two centuries to smooth down its rough spots as a formalized pursuit. No wonder it’s perfect. Baseball is to sports as ketchup is to condiments: something that doesn’t change much, not because of stuffy conservatism, but because almost any change would make it worse. It’s amazing, how effective the lure of baseball still is, how fast it grabs you. My son, before age 7, was willing to watch any sporting event with me, in a distracted, OK-daddy-is-there-going-to-be-ice-cream-at-this-thing fashion. And then, suddenly, baseball kicked in. He saw how it worked and he was hooked.
Some people find baseball boring, yes. But some people find ketchup boring. Those people can keep their jalapeño mustard and their March Madness.
But what about PEDs? What kind of terrible lessons is my kid learning from a sport whose biggest stars, like Milwaukee’s Ryan Braun, are failing drug tests and getting suspended, or, maybe worse, failing drug tests and getting off on technicalities?
Here’s the thing about Ryan Braun. Kids in Wisconsin love Ryan Braun. He is undisgraced here. I see a kid in a Ryan Braun shirt every other day. As you can see in the photo above, my son has two Ryan Braun bobbleheads on his desk. Kids are smart; they understand what a rule is, that when you break a rule you get punished, and then after the punishment things go back to normal. And they understand baseball much better than scoldy sportswriters do. You cheer for the guys on your team because they’re on your team, not because you can assign them roles in whatever anxious moral drama keeps you up at night. Baseball isn’t a metaphor for the decline of society, or for our pastoral heritage, or for the idea of fair play. It isn’t a side you can take in a culture war. It is itself, and only itself. And it definitely isn’t here to teach us lessons.
I tried to make my son into an Orioles fan, like me. But the day at Miller Park he saw Carlos Gomez steal second, then third, then break for home, scoring on a wild pitch, like he was playing Atari baseball against a team of hapless 8-bit defenders, he became a Brewers fan for life. (To be precise, he describes himself as 70 percent Brewers, 30 percent Orioles.) We get along fine, in our mixed household. The inconsistency of our rooting interests doesn’t bother him. If there is a lesson baseball can offer us, it’s one about our deepest commitments; that they’re arbitrary, and contingent, but we’re no less committed to them for that. If I’d been born in New York, I might have been a Yankees fan, but luckily for me, I was born in Maryland, so I’m not. Jerry Seinfeld once remarked that baseball fandom, in the age of free agency, amounted to rooting for laundry. That’s not an insult to the game, as Seinfeld, a giant Mets fan, surely understood; it’s a testament to its deepest strength. My son’s love for the Brewers, like mine for the Orioles, is a love with no reason and no justification. True love, in other words.
After watching the last scene of Sunday’s Homeland, the fourth outing in its third season, many viewers may want to revisit the last few episodes. “I’m hoping that’s the general consensus,” executive producer and showrunner Alex Gansa tells The Hollywood Reporter. “This should answer some questions for people.”
For those who’ve yet to see “Game On,” spoilers ahead.
Carrie (Claire Danes) finally made her way out of her forced institutionalization – and though circumstances seemed to be pushing her towards turning her back on the CIA, the last scene of the episode reveals that she and Saul (Mandy Patinkin) have actually been working together all along. Carrie and her mentor choreographed her second turn being thrown under the bus by her employers in an attempt to bring down the terrorist network involved in the bombing.
Gansa, who chatted with THR about the big twist, explains that the unseen wheels were set in motion as soon as the second season faded to black, where Homeland is shifting its attention now and how Brody (Damian Lewis) will fit in down the road.
How long have Saul and Carrie been in cahoots? We started the year by talking about what had happened at the end of season two. Carrie and Saul are together, standing there with all of the bodies around them. Clearly, they are culpable for what happened -- Saul and Carrie together. As intelligence officers, the first thing that they would try to do is to turn this tragedy into something positive. That’s what they went to work on the day after the bombing. How were they going to catch the guys responsible for this? A plan was hatched quite quickly in the aftermath of the attack on the CIA.
Does this mean the CIA fallout will play a lesser role now? We view season three in three movements -- each being four episodes -- with this being the end of the first movement. It was a long con that they played in order to draw out this Iranian intelligence officer, Majid Javadi [Shaun Toub].
The cast and producers were very candid about a lot of early season three plot points during in the summer. Was that intended to play up the red herring? We were also playing a bit of a con here from the story room. That said, one of the thing we’ve learned from our CIA consultants is that the most successful intelligence operations are 95 percent true – and the 95 percent that’s true, in this case, is that Saul and Carrie were culpable and that, largely, the CIA as an organization would look for a scapegoat to lay the blame on. Saul and Carrie were playing on that natural, institutional inclination to find a scapegoat. They used that, but when you go back to the first three episodes, you can see the toll that it’s taking on both of them. The con also has its consequences.
Like that moment between Carrie and Saul in the hospital at the end of the second episode. It comes down to the line towards the end of this episode when she says, “You really should have gotten me out of the hospital.” That was one step too far. That was the part of her role-playing that hit too close. Although they are in this ruse together, it’s painful for Carrie to admit that she’s to blame for what happened and to think that because she was on her meds, she missed stopping the attack. All of that is true and playing through her head.
What does the next movement focus on? They are now in the process of luring him out into the open and landing this guy. That’s the substance of the second movement.
How will Brody figure into all of this? I will say that Brody becomes a principal player in the architecture of the last sweep of episodes. His predicament down in Caracas and his separation from Carrie and Saul is really tantamount as we move into the next two movements of the season.
Did you have any reservations about having an episode (“Tower of David”) that was almost exclusively from Brody’s point of view? It was really a function of how much story was to be told there. Just anecdotally, some people felt we were with him too much and others felt we were with him too little. It felt right to us to establish his predicament and to parallel his plight with Carrie’s. These are two people in some very desperate circumstances. The show has paralleled their stories before and some of the most successful episodes that we have done have drawn comparisons between their predicaments.
Stylistically, the episode was very different from the rest of the series. I sort of leave it to the audience to tell us if we were successful or not, but it’s fun for us to mix up the show a little bit and not tell the same story over and over again -- to take a risk here and there. We also teased the audience by not having Brody in the first two episodes, so we have them a healthy dose of him in number three.
The Brody family storyline has really been dominated by Dana (Morgan Saylor) this season. When did you decide you’d focus so much on her? Because Brody was not on screen and not part of the story in those first couple of episodes, we really wanted to tell the aftermath of the bombing in a more personal way. The relationship between Dana and her father is very strong. It’s stronger than his relationship with Jessica [Morena Baccarin] and certainly stronger than his relationship with Chris [Jackson Pace]. Going back to the first season… the first time that Brody came back from captivity, he gives his wife a hug -- but it’s kind of a tentative one. The first time we see him open up, it’s in response to his daughter. That led to the end of season one, when she talks him off the ledge when he’s about to explode that vest inside the bunker with the vice president. Her role grew through season two, and she just felt like the logical person. For the weight of what her dad did, it just landed on her in a more profound way.
How much does the story stick with Dana moving forward? You’ll see in the next four episodes, and certainly the last four, that she doesn’t play as big of a role. She’s not physically on screen a lot, but her presence is there in a profound way for Brody and for Carrie.
How was all the secret-keeping for you personally? We’ve taken a degree of pleasure in it. I was an amateur magician when I was a kid, and for me, the best tricks were the ones where the magician convinces the audience that he’s made a mistake – only to prove at the end that he’s been ahead of them all along. We’ve been leaning into that idea a little bit, and hopefully it will have paid off in episode four.
LONDON – Merlin Entertainments, the U.K. operator of such attractions as Madame Tussauds and the London Eye ferris wheel on the river Thames here, is planning an IPO.
The firm is Europe's biggest operator of visitor attractions and is believed to rank second behind Walt Disney worldwide in key metrics.
The company runs Madame Tussauds venues in London, Hollywood, New York, Sydney, Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong Amsterdam, Berlin and various other locations. It also operates Alton Towers, Britain's most-visited theme park, Legoland in several European locations, California, Florida and Malaysia, dungeon attractions across the U.K. and Warwick Castle.
The company plans to list its stock in London.
Merlin, currently owned by private equity firms, overall runs 99 attractions in 22 countries. The Guardian said it is believed to be worth as much as $4.8 billion (£3 billion).
The company didn't immediately detail how many shares it would offer and at what price. Merlin plans to use the proceeds from the IPO to pay down debt and invest in its business.
Its revenue for its latest fiscal year topped $1.6 billion (£1 billion).
Alton Towers recently unveiled a deal with BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the U.K. public broadcaster, that will lead to the creation of CBeebies Land, an area featuring characters from the BBC's kids channel. The companies said the themed area would include rides, "immersive play areas," live experiences, character appearances and seasonal events.
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Webb Simpson opened a four-stroke lead Friday in the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open, taking advantage of perfect scoring conditions at TPC Summerlin.
Making his first start since helping the U.S. win the Presidents Cup, the 2012 U.S. Open champion shot an 8-under 63 to reach 15 under. He had nine birdies and a bogey — on the par-5 16th in his opening nine.
"The ball is really going far," Simpson said. "I was wondering why the scores were so low yesterday morning because I thought the ball might go a little shorter. But the ball was getting out there and the golf course played a little shorter than I thought it would, and I just putted well and kept going.
The 63 matched the lowest round of his PGA Tour career.
"There's no wind, no clouds in the sky and it's really quiet, so it's easy to kind of daydream," Simpson said. "You've really got to focus on what you're doing and talk to your caddie, at least for me. I talk to him about what we're trying to do here, where we're trying to hit the ball."
The four-stroke lead broke the tournament second-round record of three set by Lon Hinkle in 1984 and matched by Rich Fehr in 1996 — both when the event was 90 holes.
J.J. Henry followed his course-record 60 with a 71 to join John Senden, Jeff Overton, Chesson Hadley and Jason Bohn at 11 under. Bohn had a 64, Senden and Hadley shot 66, and Overton had a 68.
"I need to keep on making birdies out there," Senden said. "It's not as much building a score, it's just about doing a great job on making birdies, and if that's good enough to do it, well, hopefully it'll be me."
Hadley, the Web.com Tour Championship winner last month, is making his fourth career PGA Tour start. He tied for 72nd last week in California in the season-opening Frys.com Open.
"It was a great day," Hadley said. "It's been a fantastic start to the week, and to be at 11 under and to have a chance going into the weekend is awesome. I've been in this position before as far as Web.com Tour, and certainly a little bit different stage out here on the PGA Tour. Just looking to manage the nerves tomorrow and just realize it's just golf, and let's just go have some fun."
Henry had three bogeys and a birdie on his first four holes.
Defending champion Ryan Moore and Russell Knox were 10 under. Moore shot 63, and Knox had a 65.
Argentina's Andres Romero, second after a first-round 61, had an 81 to miss the cut.
Zach Johnson, the highest-ranked player in the field at No. 11 in the world, made a cut on the number at 3 under after a 70. Jimmy Walker, Frys.com Open last week in California, also was 3 under after a 68.
Forget North, Kim Kardashian had us looking south at her latest Instagram photo — a revealing selfie-in-a-swimsuit that even drew boyfriend Kanye West into the spirited online reaction.
The photo, simply captioned #NoFilter, has more than 650,000 likes and 57,000 comments on Instagram, and shows the now-blonde reality TV star in a white bathing suit with her famous backside pointed at a mirror.
After the image hit Kardashian's Twitter feed, West responded early Thursday with an all-caps shout-out to the mother of his 4-month-old baby girl (and his 10 million followers): "HEADING HOME NOW."
A week ago, West was on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" discussing Twitter, his recent rant against the talk-show host and how people feel it's "OK to treat celebrities like zoo animals."
DuJour magazine profiled Kardashian in March, saying she was "fearless in the face of scrutiny and a hopeless romantic in a cynical age" — good thing, considering some of the comments on her new photo. In that article, Kardashian, 32, said, "My boyfriend has taught me a lot about privacy. I’m ready to be a little less open about some things, like my relationships. I’m realizing everyone doesn’t need to know everything. I’m shifting my priorities."
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/PYZGtIqwU8k/story01.htm
