Merry Christmas and a Happy 2008!

Lion King WakeUp Light

Our christmas present at work this year was the Philips WakeUp Light.

A few collegues came with the idea to combine the Lion King with the Philips WakeUp Light. So as part of the surprise I’ve created this small video with Adobe After Effects.

First appearance of the WUL is at 02:11

Waiting for the Samsung 81 series

Samsung is about to release their new 81 series, I might buy it in August.

The 81 series ups the ante with an LED backlight, bumping the contrast ratio to a measly 100,000:1, and also comes with 10-bit processing, 8ms response time, an ATSC / clear QAM tuner, CEC HDMI and USB.

More info at Engadget.

What kind of animal is this?

My mother does some animal welfare work, and someone who works there took pictures of this animal. It seems an unusual species for The Netherlands. Any clues?

Crysis DX9 vs DX10

The folks over at Crytek released two high definition videos, showing two different areas of gameplay. The first part of both videos is DirectX 9, the second part is DirectX 10.

Video 1: Jungle
Video 2: Hunter

Nvidia’s Human Head

Nvidia has released a new demo, which shows an amazingly realistic looking human head. Rendered with the GeForce 8800 Ultra and DX10:

Demo description
Demo video

StarCraft 2

StarCraft 1 was a very nice game. When I read that Blizzard was going to make a StarCraft 2, I thought well it will probably look like a bad version of C&C Tiberium Wars. This YouTube video turned me around though:

ThePirateBay works on TheVideoBay

Everyone knows the large TorrentSite ThePirateBay. The creator of the site is working on an video site (like YouTube) called TheVideoBay. He claims it will be uncensored. I wonder how long it takes before some great political material is posted there.

Fluteboxing Super Mario

Combine a flute and beatboxing and you get a great sound.
Greg Pattillo plays the Super Mario Brothers Theme:

ZamZar: convert files online

With all the different file formats nowadays you sometimes need to convert them. Normally you would download some program to do this for you. Now there is an easier way: ZamZar.

ZamZar allows you to upload a file and select which format you want to convert it to. No need to register, just leave your e-mailadress to get a notification when your file is done.
http://www.zamzar.com/

You can also use an URL, even directly convert a YouTube video:
http://www.zamzar.com/url/