Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Forecasters predict that northern lights could be visible to the naked eye late tonight and early tomorrow morning across Canada, northern parts of the U.S., and possibly the United Kingdom.

Solar storms caused a large ejection of plasma from the Sun’s surface on Sunday, and the plasma is heading directly towards Earth. The plasma, a cloud of rapidly moving hydrogen gas atoms and subatomic particles, is expected to reach us late Tuesday. The plasma will interact with the Earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere, which will cause northern lights, or aurora borealis, to be visible much further south than is usual. Northern lights usually appear as green or red rivers of lights across the sky.

“It’s the first major Earth-directed eruption in quite some time” said astronomer Leon Golub of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The eruption was detected by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which was launched in February 2010, and is currently orbiting the Earth.

The Sun goes through approximately eleven-year long activity cycles, with the last maximum occurring in 2001. Sunday’s eruption is a sign that the many years of inactivity is over, and the Sun is heading towards another maximum.

Tuesday, December 26, 2017

Yesterday, at least four were killed and eleven were injured near the Slavyansky Bulvar Metro station in Moscow, Russia, after a bus ran down the steps at the entrance, officials stated. According to an emergency services source reported through state news media, fifteen were injured, and five died in the incident.

The incident happened in an icy situation. The bus drove onto the pavement and down the steps leading to the station. The police reportedly arrested the driver. News agencies reported the driver was not under the influence of alcohol. The driver told investigators the bus suddenly moved, and although he tried to stop it, the brakes did not work. A reported emergency services source said the accident might be due to brake failure.

According to Interfax news agency, the bus was less than a year old. Moscow’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin said he had ordered all Moscow buses to be inspected.

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Tuesday, March 22, 2005 Imax cinemas in several southern US states have begun to refuse screening of films that deal with evolution and the big bang, fearing they will drive away customers. This step follows pressure from customers claiming such films are blasphemous to the Christian religion and are counter to biblical teachings which fundamentalists take to be the literal word of God.

Some of the affected cinemas are located in science museums often visited by families. Carol Murray, the marketing director of the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History in Texas, commented that trial customers complained, “I really hate it when the theory of evolution is presented as fact,” a view reflected by several others. Conversely, a producer of an Imax film entitled Volcanoes of the Deep Sea, James Cameron, said that he was “surprised and somewhat offended” at some of the reactions.

Films suppressed by this controversy include Cosmic Voyage (which deals with the big bang), Galapagos (dealing with the development of evolutionary theory by Darwin) and Volcanoes of the Deep Sea (about deep-sea thermophiles).

Although this move only affects about a dozen Southern US cinemas, it has proved significant due to the manner in which Imax operates. Imax presentations are filmed and projected using specialized equipment in specially adapted theatres. Imax films also have tight production and marketing budgets. At any one time, an Imax film may be shown at only two dozen locations. As such, profits may be significantly reduced if just a few locations refuse to show a given film, swaying producers to avoid producing films on contentious subjects which may be construed by Christian fundamentalists as blasphemous.

Saturday, November 4, 2006

On November 13, Toronto residents will be heading to the polls to vote for their ward’s councillor and for mayor. Among Toronto’s ridings is Toronto Centre (Ward 28). One candidate responded to Wikinews’ requests for an interview. This ward’s candidates include Howard Bortenstein, Holly Cartmell, Baquie Ghazi, Connie Harrison, Yaqoob Khan, Pam McConnell (incumbent), and Catherina Perez.

For more information on the election, read Toronto municipal election, 2006.

Monday, January 2, 2017

On Friday, Tyrus Wong, a Chinese-US painter who inspired the style of Disney animated film Bambi, died at home of natural causes in Sunland-Tujunga, Los Angeles, according to his daughter Kim Wong.

Born on October 25, 1910 in Guangdong province, China, Tyrus Wong left the country with his father at the age of nine under fake names “Look Tai Yow” and “Look Get”. Wong’s father taught him the art of calligraphy using water instead of ink on newspapers.

Wong used to work as a houseboy after school in Los Angeles earning half a dollar per day. Wong’s principal in junior high school helped arrange a scholarship in Otis Art Institute for his art skills. At Otis, Wong studied Western art and graduated in 1935. In 1934, a landscape of Wong’s appeared in an exhibition organised by the Art Institute of Chicago which also featured a Pablo Picasso etching, “Two Nudes”. For two years, from 1934 to 1936, he worked for the Works Progress Administration to create paintings for public buildings.

In 1938, Wong began work in the Disney animation studio as an in-betweener — creating hundreds of intermediate images for the appearance of motion. Walt Disney noticed his work. Wong’s forest paintings of deer strongly influenced the style of Bambi. Wong worked at Disney for only three years before he was sacked in 1941, following an employee’s strike in which Wong did not participate. Next year, Wong became a Warner Bros. concept artist, drawing storyboards and set designs for live-action films. Films he drew concept art for included The Sands of Iwo Jima, Rebel Without a Cause, and The Wild Bunch. After more than a quarter century at Warner Bros., Wong retired in 1968. Wong gained US citizenship in 1946.

Wong influenced animator Andreas Deja, the creator of Lilo from Lilo & Stitch and Jafar from Aladdin. Wong also worked as a janitor, designed greeting cards, and picked asparagus during the lows in his career.

Wong was named a Disney Legend in 2001. Wong is survived by three daughters and two grandchildren.

Tuesday, April 4, 2006

Rumours in London and Merseyside have linked Paul and Oliver Collyer, creators of the football management series Championship Manager, with a possible bid for Premiership football team Everton.

The Goodison Park club, under the chairmanship of former Coronation Street actor Bill Kenwright, were subjects of a failed takeover bid in August 2004. After suffering the blow of failing to get beyond the qualifying stage of the Champions League, Kenwright is known to have recently sought additional investments in the club.

While a move is not thought to be imminent, the recent takeover of the brothers’ games development company Sports Interactive by game giant SEGA could well prove the catalyst for action by the lifelong Evertonians. The company’s PR guru Miles Jacobson was forced into an official denial of the story soon after the takeover news broke on Tuesday morning. The Collyers themselves have as yet been unavailable for comment.

Sunday, May 21, 2006

Three days after the Internet release of the free content 3D short Elephants Dream (see Wikinews coverage), we exchanged e-mails with Ton Roosendaal about the reaction to the film, open source filmmaking, and the changes to Blender that resulted from the production. Ton Roosendaal is the lead developer of the Blender 3D rendering and modelling software that was used for the movie. He is also the chairman of the Blender Foundation, a non-profit organization which was formed in support of the software and projects like Elephants Dream.

How much money did the Blender Foundation spend on producing the movie? Has the money been fully recouped by DVD orders and donations?

We still have to finish the final bookkeeping for this project. It has been executed in co-production with the Netherlands Media Art Institute, and we each had our own internal budgeting for the project. When you exclude expenses of pre-production and producer personnel, the total budget was about 120,000 €, of which we covered half. Our contribution was roughly covered half by the DVD sales, and half by European Union support (http://www.uni-verse.org consortium).

One of the most common criticisms of CGI films is focus on technology over content. For instance, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within flopped with audiences, in spite of being an undisputed technical milestone. I’ve seen many reviews that criticized the plot of “Elephants Dream” as too bizarre or confusing. In retrospect, are you happy with the story development process?

Haha, I knew the story and plot would get a mixed acclaim. There’s a couple of reasons I’d like to mention for it.

First of all; the criticism resembles how people witness Blender itself, too. Many people expect that Free Software is an easy accessible mass audience product. We get a lot of complaints by non-artists that they can’t get into the software easily, whilst the complexity of commercial products like Maya or Houdini is perceived as a confirmation of its “quality”. Apparently an Open Movie created similar expectations with the audience.

Luckily we also got many positive reviews of the artistic result of the movie. It is quite abstract, but definitely has many layers of information, inspiring many of the viewers to see relevant real life messages hidden here.

For this project we’ve teamed up with the Netherlands Media Art Institute, internationally renowned as a resource for video art. So for Elephants Dream, we’ve had the luxury to challenge ourselves to create real independent artistic content as well. The artists had a lot of freedom from the start; they were responsible for the concept, story and creative development of the entire movie. This has resulted in a lot of quite personal choices, based on what the artists liked to do themselves. I really cherish such an approach, it has resulted in a very motivated team working crazy hours the last months to get it all realized.

But, most importantly; the main target of our project was not only to create a 3D movie short, but to experiment with ways to improve the efficiency and quality of open source development. On this aspect only, this project was just a huge success, and the main reason for our sponsors (the DVD pre-sale) to support it. I know they might have liked a cartoonish funny movie with furry animals better, but for that you get already pretty well served by the bigger 3D animation studios. 🙂

I’m the first to admit that – looking back especially – certain aspects worked out quite weakly; there’s loose ends and questionable decisions, especially in story development and continuity. That’s just the risk of doing experiments, and nothing I regret really. The five artists from our user community who were invited to make the movie were young people with no professional background in filmmaking. Their personal incentive to participate in this project was also to learn from it, and to create a good portfolio for their future career. I’ve witnessed them grow in competence in the past year enormously, something I’m incredibly proud of.

On the technical level, the only major criticism I’ve seen of “Elephants Dream” is the character animation, especially in the opening scene — many reviewers felt that the movements seemed a bit unnatural. Do you agree with these criticisms? If so, what do you think can be done to improve on that level?

Yeah, the challenge the artists set themselves – to use quite realistic personages – is also something that easily works against you. In many animation movies they introduce characters in the beginning in a way you get used to their specific characteristic movements, so you accept a certain level of non-realism easily. (Check the weird walk cycles in The Incredibles for example). Another aspect is that we’ve started work on the first scenes, and ended with the last scenes. I can clearly see the animation quality increase, and that whilst the ending scenes were done in much less time due to time constraints.

We also didn’t schedule to do 9.5 minutes of animation either…. Originally it was more like 6. But, it’s always easier to look back to define the right decisions, eh? 🙂

I’m very happy with the reviews we got so far; luckily the movie was perceived as a professional quality product, and reviewed based on comparisons with what the big studios come up with. Even when we couldn’t satisfy all these quality demands, it has luckily not been branded as a pathetic presumptuous attempt by amateurs!

Do you think there is hope for a full-length open movie project in the near future? Would the Blender Foundation be interested in such a project, or do you intend to continue focusing mainly on shorts?

I’d like to wait a little while with defining what a next project would look like. Given the constraints of “organizing projects to improve open source development”, we might have not much choice either. It would probably mean to work with a new team each time, so most likely be based on shorts only. On the other hand, there’s also clear signals that this approach works well, and creates excitement and involvement of a lot of people, also from producers and sponsors. That might enable us to set up a next project based on larger targets. For a full-length feature film however, we should involve a sufficient amount of experienced film makers as well, and/or invite the first team to participate again. That would put a lot of pressure on the required budget…. You can’t do that based on a 1000 DVD pre-sale target. Would more be like 20,000 or so…. 🙂

How did the process of making the movie feed back into the development of Blender? Are there major technical changes that were made only or primarily because of the film?

Already during the pre-production phase the artists have defined the key targets for Blender development. This then was coordinated with the online development community too. I’ve done the most crucial (re-)development mostly myself, though. Especially on the character animation tools, on the rendering pipeline and compositing tools.

It is especially the latter I’m most satisfied with. In 3D movie production the compositing stage creates a giant content bottleneck. By transparently integrating this in our render-pipeline, a very efficient workflow has been achieved. And, not to forget, Blender now also offers the first production-level open source compositor on the market!

The current summary you can find in our work-in-progress release notes.

What are the key technical features in Blender you want to add or improve for future movie projects?

Depends on what the movie is about! There’s always hundreds of features you can work on. However, we’ll have to work on that anyway, movie project or not. There’s a lot of professionals using Blender now, and they can’t wait for the Blender Foundation to do movies! Look at this studio for example: http://www.plumiferos.com/

I read that at least one proprietary software package, Reaktor, was used for the sound effects. Is this because no equivalent free software solution exists yet? Will future projects have a “free software only” policy?

We’ve limited the “Open Source tools” requirement to our own Studio Orange only. That was what we could keep in control at least, and I can tell you it was not always easy even… 🙂

For sound and music we’ve decided from the beginning to seek an external sponsor. We have chosen to work with the best quality studio and composer we could find, preferably using open source, but not as a prerequisite.

My own competence is solely within the CG [computer graphics, Ed.] side of movie making. When it comes to music editing, or video encoding and DVD authoring, I could only decide to choose to work with external parties with proven competences in that area. I have to be practical in projects like this, especially to ensure it will be realized.

Hopefully, now we’ve got so much attention world wide, we can involve more non-CG open source next time, too. I will definitely strive for the maximum here, but it will fully depend on the amount of professional support we can get.

Blender itself was originally closed source freeware, until it was “liberated” through a fundraising campaign. If you could choose one proprietary application to “set free” where such a goal could be realistically achieved, which one would it be?

Well, the “realistically achieved” demand makes it quite difficult. 🙂 Looking back at similar cases, like Mozilla and OpenOffice.org, it was always very circumstantial. It just happens sometimes, you can’t organize something like this to happen in advance. The only common denominator is “a company in troubles”… so, who’s in trouble now?

What is your personal favorite computer-animated full-length film?

Uuuh… that differs every week! Probably Ice Age (the first one). Mostly because they didn’t overdo showcasing 3D technology so much, but created truly adorable characters and great funny gags.

Monday, September 26, 2005

Microsoft announced today the official launch of MSN adCenter in France and Singapore. adCenter allows advertisers to target specific demographics using information provided by Microsoft’s Hotmail and Microsoft Passport Network users.

“The launch of adCenter in France and Singapore is a great first step to delivering on our global vision to connect advertisers to consumers in a much more meaningful way,” said Yusuf Mehdi, senior V.P. of MSN Information Services & Merchant Platform.

Advertisers will be able to target ads based on geographic location, gender, age range, time of day, and day of the week. If MSN has no information on the visitor it will display ads based upon keywords. Additional features include a cost estimator and a site analyzer that will recommend keywords based on the content of the advertiser’s website.

MSN currently has a contract for Yahoo ads that runs through 2006, and they are expected to slowly phase them out, although MSN has not confirmed this.

adCenter has been in testing in France and Singapore since March. Testing in the US will begin in October. Microsoft plans to eventually sell ads on websites outside of MSN.

This initiative is a part of a broader strategy that Microsoft has launched to compete against Google’s AdWords service, in operation for several years, which allows advertisers to bid on specific keywords and ensure ad placement on the company’s search engine and other online properties. Microsoft’s chief executive vowed to “kill Google” in an expletive-laden tirade against the firm, according to US court documents filed by Google.

Many internet users choose to block web page advertisements from both Microsoft and Google, using several different techniques of ad filtering, such as adblock in the firefox web browser.

Monday, May 14, 2007

Buffalo, New York — A massive warehouse complex of at least 5 buildings caught on fire in Buffalo, New York on 111 Tonawanda Street, sending a plume of thick, jet black colored smoke into the air that could be seen as far away as 40 miles.

As of 6:40 a.m., the fire was under control, and firefighters were attempting to stop it from spreading, but could not get to the center of the fire because of severe amounts of debris. Later in the morning, the fire was extinguished.

“The fire is mostly under debris at this point. It’s under control, but it’s under some debris. We really can’t get to it. We’re just going to have to keep on pouring water on it so it doesn’t spread,” said Thomas Ashe, the fire chief for the North Buffalo based fire division who also added that at one point, at least 125 firefighters were on the scene battling the blaze. One suffered minor injures and was able to take himself to the hospital to seek medical attention.

Shortly after 8:00 p.m. as many as 3 explosions rocked the warehouse sending large mushroom clouds of thick black smoke into the air. After the third explosion, heat could be felt more than 100 feet away. The fire started in the front, one story building then quickly spread to three others, but fire fighters managed to stop the flames from spreading onto the 3 story building all the way at the back.

According to a Buffalo Police officer, who wished not to be named, the fire began at about 7:00 p.m. [Eastern time], starting as a one alarm fire. By 8:00 p.m., three fire companies were on the scene battling the blaze. Police also say that a smaller fire was reported in the same building on Saturday night, which caused little damage.

At the start of the fire, traffic was backed up nearly 4 miles on the 198 expressway going west toward the 190 Interstate and police had to shut down the Tonawanda street exit because the road is too close to the fire.

At one point, traffic on the 198 was moving so slow, at least a dozen people were seen getting out of their cars and walking down the expressway to watch the fire. That prompted as many as 10 police cars to be dispatched to the scene to force individuals back into their cars and close off one of the 2 lanes on the westbound side.

One woman, who wished not to be named as she is close to the owner of the warehouse, said the building is filled with “classic cars, forklifts, and money” and that owner “does not have insurance” coverage on the property. The building is not considered abandoned, but firefighters said that it is vacant.

Officials in Fort Erie, Ontario were also swamped with calls to fire departments when the wind blew the smoke over the Niagra River and into Canada.

It is not known what caused the fire, but a car is suspected to have caught on fire and there are reports from police and hazmat crews, that there were also large barrels of diesel fuel being stored in one building. Firefighters say the cause of the blaze is being treated as “suspicious.” The ATF is investigating the fire and will bring dogs in to search the debris.