Eppu – Page 44 – Co-Geeking

First Captain Marvel Trailer

September 18, 2018January 27, 2019Eppu3 Comments

The first official Captain Marvel trailer just dropped today, and it’s AWESOME!

Marvel Studios’ Captain Marvel – Official Trailer by Marvel Entertainment on YouTube

The below reaction is pretty accurate:

Okay, granted, it doesn’t show much yet beyond glimpses. I know nothing of the comic book version of Carol Danvers to begin with, nor do I know whether a rumor saying the movie won’t be dealing with her origin story is true or not. What impressed me, though, is how much the trailer highlighted her determination, standing up time and again after falling down.

It was also great to see younger, sprightlier Nick Fury. Not to mention Coulsooooon!

(As an aside and half-serious at that: as someone who’s going to turn into a little old lady at some point, I hope there’s a darned good reason for Danvers’s punch!)

Last, a LOUD-AS-HELL YAY for no boob armor, nor sexy boob-butt-thigh poses. Frickin’ finally!

The movie opens March 8, 2019. Can’t wait!

Images: Tom Hiddleston as Loki whee gif via a comment on io9.com. Gifs of Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill from The Avengers’ blooper reel via The Playlist on Tumblr. Evangeline Lilly as Hope Van Dyne screencapped from one of the stingers at the end of Ant-Man.

Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.

WoW’s Dalaran Cupola Library vs. Real Round Libraries

September 12, 2018September 11, 2018Eppu7 Comments

I was browsing my WoW screencaps for something entirely different when my eye fell on two shots from the Dalaran inscription trainer’s place. (This is in the Legion version of Dalaran.) Both are actually from inside the book-filled cupola: the first looks up towards the impossibly high ceiling, the second down towards the trainers’ room floor.

Neat, right? Well, I wondered whether anyone’s actually done anything similar for real and hit the Internet. And I found some!

Stockholm Public Library in Stockholm, Sweden

The functionalist stadsbibliotek was designed by Gunnar Asplund and opened in 1928.

Round Reading Room in the Maughan Library, King’s College London in London, UK

The Round Reading Room of Maughan Library, the main university library of King’s College London, can be found on the Strand Campus.

Picton Reading Room in Liverpool, UK

The Picton Reading Room, completed in 1879, is now part of the Liverpool Central Library.

A home in Toronto, Ontario

Designed by Katherine Newman and Peter Cebulak, this two-level library is in a private residence in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

The Octagon Room, Islamic Studies Library at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada

The library is situated in the neo-Gothic Morrice Hall building that previously housed the Presbyterian College of Montreal from 1871 to 1961.

None of them are exactly the same as the game library cupola, of course: apart from the the scale of the rooms, the scale and direction of the bookcases might differ. But apparently it isn’t terribly far-fetched to make a round multi-storey library and pack it chock-full. 😀

Images: Stockholm Public Library by Marcus Hansson on Flickr (CC BY 2.0). Round Reading Room of Maughan Library by Colin via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). Picton Reading Room by Terry Kearney on Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0). Toronto home by Tony Soluri via Architectural Digest. Islamic Studies Library at McGill by Klaus Fiedler, McGill Library.

Out There is an occasional feature highlighting intriguing art, spaces, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.

Oldest Surviving Maya Codex Declared Authentic

September 5, 2018October 11, 2020Eppu

According to CBC News, a thousand-year-old Maya text has been authenticated by scholars at Mexico’s National Institute of History and Anthropology (Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, or INAH).

The pictographic calendar-style text was made between 1021 and 1154 CE, and is the oldest known pre-Hispanic manuscript from the Americas. It was made from three layers of amate paper (bark paper). Only 10 pages of a conjectured set of at least 20 sheets currently survive.

The document’s authenticity was questioned on the basis of two main concerns: missing archaeological records of its original context (due to it having been looted and traded), and its differing style compared to other authenticated Mayan codices.

According to Sofia Martínez del Campo from the National Coordination of Museums and Exhibitions (Coordinación Nacional de Museos y Exposiciones del instituto, or CNME, at INAH), quoted in the INAH announcement, the current analysis included making a detailed photographic record, as well as examining the dating, materials, entomology, iconography, chemical-mineralogical characterization, morphometry, chronology, style, and symbolism, among others.

The specialists found the presence of Maya blue color (azul maya) and pigments based on cochineal dye as well as leftover drops of a chapopote resin. (Britannica says: “[…] chapopote [was a] a native asphalt commonly applied to clay figurines as a decoration; occasionally, chapopote entirely covers the figures, while in other examples it is used to decorate only the face, mouth, or eyes.”)

In addition, INAH announced that the folding book will no longer be known by its previous name (Grolier); instead, the work will be known as Mexico Maya Codex (Códice Maya de México).

The Mexico Maya Codex will be shown to the public for one month, from September 27 to the end of October, 2018, as part of the International Book Fair of Anthropology and History (Feria Internacional del Libro de Antropología e Historia, or FILAH).

Also during the FILAH book fair the book El Códice Maya de México (The Mexico Maya Codex) will be released. It will include a facsimile edition of the pre-Hispanic text in addition to academic and scientific articles.

Only three other pre-Hispanic codices are known, called Madrid, Dresden, and Paris (for the cities where they are kept).

Visit the INAH announcement in Spanish for more details and a link to the announcement video.

Found via N. K. Jemisin on Twitter.

Apparently someone somewhere deemed an earlier analysis (reported e.g. by the Smithsonian.com in September of 2016) not conclusive enough, even though that one also authenticated the Mexico Maya Codex. (My Spanish isn’t good enough to spot any specific reasoning for the 2018 study in the INAH announcement.)

In any case, getting more information on traditional Maya religion and life before Europeans destroyed it can only be a good thing in my book—if you’ll pardon the pun. 🙂

Images of individual pages by Martirene Alcántara; laboratory analysis by Alba Barrios-Laboratorios, INAH; all via INAH.

Out There is an occasional feature highlighting intriguing art, spaces, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.

Quotes: Hating Didn’t Change Things

August 29, 2018July 7, 2018Eppu

“Hating didn’t change things. The world went on regardless, far beyond the feeble lives of humankind. People could change only if they changed what lay in themselves.”

– Mai in Spirit Gate by Kate Elliott

I’ve been thinking of emotions this summer, especially negative ones. Partly it stemmed from having had to enforce my personal boundaries against an insistent violator and the outcomes from that, partly from the upsurge of racist and hateful behavior in the U.S.

I know hatred can feel like a driving force, but I also know how draining it is to live with such a strong emotion long term. I suppose in the end the universal “too much” rule of thumb applies: too much of one thing at the expense of others will lead to atrophy, both on small and large scale.

Elliott, Kate. Spirit Gate. New York, NY: Tor, 2006, p. 434.

Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.

A Pompom Solar System

August 22, 2018November 16, 2025Eppu

Love this – Lisa Tilse at We Are Scout turned our solar system into a pompom mobile:

We Are Scout Lisa Tilse Pompom Solar System

So clever! The blue and green Earth is the best, closely followed by Saturn with its rings and the colorful Jupiter.

Visit her site for the tutorial.

This post has been edited.

In Making Stuff occasional feature, we share fun arts and crafts done by us and our fellow geeks and nerds.

Visual Inspiration: An Underground Fire from 1962 Is Still Burning

August 15, 2018July 29, 2018Eppu

Apparently in Pennsylvania, there’s a town—Centralia—all but abandoned due to a coal mine fire that’s been burning underground since 1962.

There is disagreement over the cause of the fire. It seems that one way or another a surface fire moved into the system of mining tunnels below the town.

The effects are indisputable and scary: unstable ground, sink holes, damaged roads, plumes of hot steam, vents of smoke and toxic gases (like lethal levels of carbon monoxide), and, finally, evictions plus abandoned and/or demolished buildings.

Speculative fiction that takes place in a post-catastrophy world of some sort immediately comes to mind, and no wonder. Even the little that I read gave me a glimpse on the variety of reactions people can have to major environmental disruptions and their aftermath. Not to mention that photos of the abandoned parts of Centralia are stunning. They remind me of Pripyat after the Chernobyl nuclear accident, which is the closest equivalent I can think of from my childhood in Finland.

Found via Paul Cooper on Twitter. (Visit his Twitter tread for additional photos & info.)

Images: Cracked old Route 61 by t3hWIT on Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0). Coal fire in 2011 by Kelly Michals on Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0). Sinkhole from Feb. 14, 1981, by AP Photo via dfirecop on Flickr.

The Visual Inspiration occasional feature pulls the unusual from our world to inspire design, story-telling, and worldbuilding. If stuff like this already exists, what else could we imagine?

DIY Star Wars Marquee

August 10, 2018July 7, 2018Eppu

Ashley DIYed a really cool Star Wars marquee. It even lights up!

The base is a handmade wooden sign stenciled, painted, and varnished.

Wow. I don’t think I’d have the patience! Full props for such a meticulous job!

See the full tutorial at Handmade with Ashley.

In Making Stuff occasional feature, we share fun arts and crafts done by us and our fellow geeks and nerds.

Quotes: Trust Isn’t a Gift

August 8, 2018July 8, 2018Eppu

“Trust isn’t a gift […] You earn it, and it’s not cheap.”

– Harper Blaine in Kat Richardson’s Greywalker

However long I live, I cannot understand how some people can’t (or won’t) grasp this concept.

Richardson, Kat: Greywalker. New York, NY: Roc, 2006, p. 185.

Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.

1970s Concept Art of Space Habitats Courtesy of NASA Ames Research Center

August 6, 2018August 5, 2018Eppu

In the 1970s, NASA designed potential space habitats in three basic shapes—toroid, Bernal sphere, and cylinder. Artwork depicting some of the plans has now been published in several sizes without copyright restrictions. Here’s the NASA description of the images:

“A couple of space colony summer studies were conducted at NASA Ames in the 1970s. Colonies housing about 10,000 people were designed. A number of artistic renderings of the concepts were made.”

Below are some of my favorites.

A version of cylindrical habitats has since been seen in popular media—Babylon 5, anyone?

The residential buildings look kind of cutely 1970s. (And I say this as a non-fan of the 70s aesthetic!)

Apparently all of these designs were meant for thousands of people: the toroid and spherical stations could house around 10,000 and the cylinder a million. Wow. They certainly did not dream small!

Finally, two images of a Bernal sphere habitat:

Visit the NASA’s “Space Colony Art from the 1970s” page for more images and links to high-res scans.

Found via The Public Domain Review.

All images courtesy of NASA Ames Research Center: Cylindrical habitat / interior view looking out through large windows (NASA ID number AC75-1086) and toroidal / cutaway view exposing the interior (NASA ID number AC75-1086-1) by Rick Guidice. Bernal sphere / construction crew at work (NASA ID number AC76-1288) by Don Davis. Bernal sphere / cutaway view (NASA ID number AC76-1089) by Rick Guidice.

Out There is an occasional feature highlighting intriguing art, spaces, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.