Considering you only learned of its existence a few hours ago, it might surprise you to learn that North America and Europe are just around a year away from playing Final Fantasy XIII-2. But that's exactly the case according to the US PlayStation Blog, which pegs the English version of the sequel-sequel for "next winter." Of course, this is the time of Netflix Instant Watch and Fast Food Sushi, so a year can feel like an eternity, or at least a year and several months. To help tide you over, we've got the first leaked trailer for the game after the break, but be warned: You probably shouldn't watch unless you finished Final Fantasy XIII.
Originally developed for Xbox Live Arcade as the first of OneBigGame's for-charity titles, music-based puzzler Chime is one step closer to release on PS3 via PlayStation Network. Already rated by classification boards in Australia and Germany, the game has now received an "E" rating from the ESRB. Now this PS3 version of the game just needs to be, y'know, announced. (Hopefully with Portal's "Still Alive" included.)
Vicacopter (don't forget the "c"). that's Jack Crossfire's baby..it's a tricopter instead of quad copter so one of the engines rotates via servo. You can read many of his bloges here on DIYDrones. He's also got a monocopter (i.e. one blade and th?
A former Swiss banker provided the names of more than 2,000 prominent tax cheats to Wikileaks, which has promised to quickly release details of the evasion — unlike governments and the media, which apparently buried the scandal. More »
In your should-be-a-holiday Monday media column: WPIX goes minimalist, Ken Auletta takes on AOL, the Comcast-NBCU merger is almost ready to close, and Piers Morgan will have his first and most-watched episode on CNN tonight. More »
Just though you guys might like to see my latest Arduino project - animatronics for costuming! I show how to make a nifty little Arduino servo driver board based on the Arduino Pro Mini and there's several code examples to get people started. I expect to see some cool Predator costumes next Halloween.
In a time when some schools are trying to encourage science and
engineering education, Franklin High
School in Portland, OR not only
tried to shut down FIRST team 1432 but
is keeping their tools, equipment, and $7,500 the students raised for
their team. An
article in a local paper called The Bee quotes one of the team
members:
“We found ourselves standing outside the auto shop waiting to get
in on
October 21st. Three times previously, Principal Shay James refused to
let us have our robot for the OMSI display on October 23. Finally, James
allowed us to remove the robot only. All of our computers, parts, and
tools are still locked in the auto shop.”
To get an idea of how the school's actions are affecting the team,
here's a quote from Team 1432's
website:
It appears we will lose $3,540 from Intel and another $3500 from the
grant money that came through FIRST – M.J. Murdock, Oregon Community
fund. <...> The school seized all of our property – 7 years
of gathering
tools, equipment, building materials and computers and kept it from us
for the last 31 days. We find out on Monday what they will let us have
back. This has kept us from doing Girls Generation, Bunny Bots, and a
second regional. It has also cost us half of our new members because of
the instability and uncertainty.
The school claims none of its 100 staff members are willing to act as
"advisor" for the group. The principal declined to be interviewed for
The Bee's article and according to Rebecca LohKamp, "In all the years
we’ve been there, a Principal has never come to see us". This apparent
lack of interest was confirmed by the school's business manager who told
the paper that the robotics team would conflict with
plans for a more academic, classroom-based, "smaller scale" robotics
curriculum.
We'd bet if this were the football team rather than a club that
promotes educational activities, the school administration wouldn't have
any problem finding the resources to support them. But until Shay James
and the other bureaucrats get a clue, might we suggest
that local robot clubs around the country get in touch with Team 1432 and ask how they can help out?
One thing that might help is if a 501(c)(3) group could become their
fiscal sponsor and help them recover some of their funds from the
school. And it probably wouldn't hurt to let the Franklin
High School staff or the Portland
Public School system know what you think.
Update: The latest update on the team's website
clears up a few things from The Bee article. They confirm there
were at least 5 teachers willing to act as advisor but school staff
"talked them out of it". The school now claims it has returned most of
the team's money to the donors.
This Kindle hack relies on a few Python scripts to remove the DRM from books already purchase via the Kindle Store. The scripts, of course, require Python to be installed; the hack also uses the Kindle for PC application so you'll need to run this on a Windows machine.