Superman Classic

Superman Classic

by | Feb 9, 2011 | Animation, General

Robb Pratt gave us Superman fans a new little work of art to geek out over:

The character design is a departure from anything I’ve ever seen before on this subject material – it has an appeal that’s hard to define, but is immediately engaging.  The biggest problem is that it’s over all too quickly – but then, it’s also hand animated, and it really does take time to do this at all, let alone do it well.  It all makes more sense when you go to Mr. Pratt’s web site and discover that he’s a Disney animator and storyboard artist.

What an amazing discovery this one was.

— Gene Turnbow

Links

What the World Needs Now is More Ukelele

by | Feb 3, 2011 | Music

No, seriously.  It’s hard to listen to this and not feel all your stress and anxiety melt away.

Israel “IZ” Kamakawiwoʻole

— Gene Turnbow

The Major Scales on Guitar

The Major Scales on Guitar

by | Dec 7, 2010 | Music

Major scales on Guitar

I made up this for my guitar classes at the studio where I was working at the time. Click here to see the full sized image, then right-click and select ‘save’ to copy it to your own computer.

I used to teach beginning guitar to technical directors at Rhythm & Hues one day a week on my lunch break. I’d been relying on material made by other people for my classroom materials, but I couldn’t find anything to teach people the major scales that worked well with the way I teach, so I finally made one up myself.

Feel free to grab a copy of this and print it out for yourself if you’re struggling with this, or if you’re teaching a class yourself and need something like this for your students.

If you like this and use it, and want to help me out, consider signing up to donate a dollar or two to the SCIFI.radio Patreon campaign.  It’s cheaper than a cuppa coffee and it would help my radio station stay on the air.

— Gene Turnbow

Warp Drive – One Step Closer

Warp Drive – One Step Closer

by | Nov 18, 2010 | General, Science

The main problem with developing working warp drive apparently isn’t the math. We’ve figured that part out. What we need, though, is an unimaginably monumental supply of energy to power the thing.

The spokesman for CERN’s ALPHA experiment—Jeffrey Hangst of Aarhus University, Denmark—says that trapping these atoms was a bit of an overwhelming experience:

What’s new about Alpha is that now we’ve managed to hold on to those atoms. We have a magnetic bowl, kind of a bottle, that holds the antihydrogen […] For reasons that no one yet understands, nature ruled out antimatter. It is thus very rewarding, and a bit overwhelming, to look at the ALPHA device and know that it contains stable, neutral atoms of antimatter.

Well now we’re one step closer.  At CERN, scientists have successfully captured antihydrogen and can hold atoms of it for study in a magnetic bottle.  They know they’ve got antihydrogen, because when they release it, the expected annihilation takes place.

You’ve just gotta see this.

Why have I been writing about leaps in scientific knowledge and technology lately?

Because I feel that Humanity is reaching for its future with both hands, and that if we can solve the mysteries of the universe, it’ll make it easier to solve the problems of your everyday garden variety human beings as individuals. It is an exciting time to be alive. We are on the verge of a new frontier, and it all begins right here, right now. Our perspective and perceptions are shifting as our awareness and understanding of the very nature of reality itself expands.

On seeing the Enterprise’s warp engine while visiting the set of Star Trek: The Next Generation (where he would briefly play himself in the 1993 episode Descent, Part I), Stephen Hawking smiled and said: I’m working on that.

I feel like a kid on Christmas morning. I can hardly wait to see what’s under the tree.

— Gene Turnbow

 

Links

That Whole ‘Stop and Smell the Roses’ Thing

by | Sep 18, 2010 | General

I think I’m finally beginning to understand it.

When your life is a blur of work and driving to and from work and being so tired from work that you don’t even have the energy to sit up and watch television when you get home – when things you thought were being handled for you aren’t being handled at all and it all winds up on your shoulders anyway – you start to lose the meaning of it all.  Nothing matters anymore look what i found.  You start to wonder why you keep doing it day after day after day with no reward and no purpose, and no joy.

Stop and look around you.  No matter what, that tremendous weight of responsibility you carry is only made worse if you forget who you are, what makes you you and why you started down the road you took in the first place.  If you can’t remember why you started down that road, and you realize it’s taking you to places you no longer want to go, it’s not too late to turn around, go back up the road a piece, and pick a different one.

Better choose – you only get to travel so many roads in your lifetime.  You’d better make each mile count.  And on the way, don’t forget to look around and enjoy the things you enjoy.  You have a right to it.

Look yourself in the mirror every morning and ask yourself, “If I got to choose what I’d be doing today, would I voluntarily choose to do this?”  We’re not guaranteed a tomorrow.  Your lifetime might be ninety years – or only thirty-two years, and only one more day after that.  Your days are the most precious thing you have.

So it’s not idle frivolity to “stop and smell the roses”.  You need to stop and smell the roses once in a while to make sure that the roses are actually still there.  And if they’re not, you need to go find some.

— Gene Turnbow