We’ve already covered cyborgs and robots in our previous discussions, but it seems a lot of people simply aren’t comfortable with the idea of replacing parts of themselves, or entire humans, in order to get laborious jobs done. Frankly, I think you’re screaming wussies, but that could just be me.

So if you’re not prepared to be replaced by robotic labour, and you’re not content with hacking off one of your own arms to get a cybernetic upgrade, what are you going to do?

The answer lies in augmented exo-suits.

The suit most people are probably familiar with is the classic heavy load power lifter that Ripley hops into in Aliens. Cyberpunk fiction, and robot filled anime in particular, is choc full of them. Works of Masamune Shirow, such as Appleseed, come to mind.

These sorts of heavy labour and, dare I say it, combat suits are actually not very far from becoming a very practical reality.

There are two major firms involved in this race:

1) The American based Sarcos, manufacturers of the XOS (pronounced “Eck-soss” as in Exoskeleton) suit, which is being billed as the real life Iron Man. Together with a nice fat grant from DARPA, this is assuredly going to end up being for military applications after they’ve made it larger, more armoured, and with tactical mount points… oh yeah, and figured out a way to give it more than 30 minutes of operational effectiveness if the battery isn’t breached.

2)  The Japanese based (I shit you not) Cyberdine Corporation. No, they really did give themselves the same name as the company that brought about Skynet in the Terminator series. To make matters worse, their suit is called HAL 5. Add some AI into it, and we’re amazingly fucked.

Interestingly enough, the HAL suit has been in development for less time, has been designed for more medical and restorative means than the XOS, but is ready to go into commercial production next year. Perhaps more interestingly is that it looks better and currently provides better armour and battery life than the American product, which could probably use a bullet proof corset underneath it. Whether this has something to do with the Japanese insistence that form be a part of function, or they’re just trying to make sure that it looks like a friendly piece of techno-oriented fashion, as opposed to some sociopathic death bot, who knows.

Fact of the matter is that both of these are going to revolutionise the building industry. No longer will fat, lazy brickies be able to say that they can’t possibly lift those four bricks. No longer will carpenters claim that they haev bad knees or backs and can’t kneel down to fire off nail guns into the boards. Strain injuries will be a thing of the past.

Instead, the new claims will be getting too much tomato sauce into the joints, and that the missus forgot to plug the suit in overnight.

So, let’s get on to the questions that no one else is asking:

1. Will young punks figure out a way to make this a cool form of transportation that senior citizens demand be removed from their lawn?
2. Will people start playing sports in these? And if so, how far away will a 3 point shot have to be when there’s an ability to lift and shift 400kg?
3. How are hoons going to start hot rodding their exo suits?
4. 

   Couldn't resist

   What kind of response can we expect from law enforcement agencies when these start getting used in crimes? Is it ok to assume that these are deadly weapons, like steel capped boots, and therefore shoot someone in the face? And can you use explosive ordinance if their exosuit has a faceplate?

5. Will they bother making models aimed specifically at women, like the Holden Barina? If so, will they have breasts on the chest plates, or armour pleated plated skirts?

Twist recently pointed me at a rather interesting article by Paul Duffield, one of the artists working on the Freak Angels comic.

He writes about marketing decisions behind content, but as someone who’s been both a creator and a publisher, I feel he misses a vital point: It’s not his money if his product is a major fucking flop.

You know what I really love? Quirky art-house movies, novels that have an amazing amount of exposition and social commentary, and weird trippy comics… All things that are usually massive market failures, only propped up by the commercial success of other intellectual properties! The music industry is the primary example of this, but it exists across all content/creative industries, from movies to video games.

As everything pretty much has to balance the budgets, you’re only going to see the big titles, unless you’re going to a specialist book shop, such as Science & Swords (Ask for Ruz, tell him I sent you) and actually getting a recommendation from the guy behind the counter, because sales are so low on obscure titles that they’ve got few customers as all the big books are on sale for 30% below RRP at Borders and Kmart anyway, so these guys have nothing better to do but read their obscure books all day. It’s part of the reason they work at those kinds of shops in the first place.

If you’re wanting to make a title that you’re just wanting to have put out there as a piece of art, that’s fantastic… But if you’re expecting someone else to pay for it, it’s also the height of vanity, and you’ll just end up in fights between creative and bean-counting types. See picture above.

Nowadays, even this vanity publishing market is well catered for, thanks to eBooks and print on demand publishing services like LuLu.com. Authors don’t have to spend any money on publishing themselves. No money on marketing, either, if they don’t want to.  The only time a cost is incurred is when a customer orders a book, and they pay for every part of the production process with these P.O.D. books, with authors getting a similar amount of royalty.

It’s win-win for authors and publishers, but lose-lose for non-chain bookstores and readers. Non-chain bookstores simply can’t afford to be a part of this process, and customers aren’t going to hear about any of these authors that may be good,except via word of mouth. Consumers can’t do any due diligence as they can’t check the actual book out, flick through it like they might at a store. The only way to see is if the P.O.D. site has No# of sales listed, or allows for other customers to do reviews… And even then, avaricious authors can game the system by writing their own reviews.

With that said, a good independent author will often put their work up somewhere else for people to see it before hand… quite often a blog.

For those that like David’s post though, and wish to follow up on it, his blog is here: http://spoonblog.blogspot.com/

Just got back from watching Coraline.

Wow… I don’t think I’ve ever seen a kid’s movie that was less appropriate for children other than perhaps Urotsukidoji. In seriousness though, it was a fantastic adaptation of the book. There was a slight deviation from the book (there always is, isn’t there) in the creation of the character ‘Wybourne’. Why he was added baffles me, and I can only thing it was to add some sort of love interest, because all preteens need one of those, right? But hey, read the book for yourself and decide which version you like better. I think the character of Wybourne adds a little bit more depth to Coraline’s character.

Casting for this movie was pretty well done. Dakota Fanning as Coraline. She’s a precocious brat, so it works nicely. Whilst I didn’t exactly agree with the casting of Terri Hatcher as the mother, that they made the animated figurine look somewhat like she used to in the old Lois & Clarke series helped it along nicely and seemed to ease her into the  role… the flat head helped especially. The Cat, for me at least, was the most interesting pick. You’re going to watch this film and scratch your head wondering where the hell you’ve heard this guy’s voice before… because he’s in every bloody Xbox game worth playing! And he was also Goliath in Gargoyles, which you know you watched as a kid, even if you’d like to pretend you didn’t.

Visually speaking, this movie is amazingly good. Stop motion animation is always hard, and there are two recognised masters of it, Aardman films, and Burton’s team on Nightmare Before Christmas. The fluidity of animation, particularly of the ‘Other Mother’ after she’s transformed, is astounding, and to be honest, rather creepy at times.

The choice of soundtrack was interesting. As the movie is based of a children’s book, and is ostensibly aimed at children (very fucked up children who are going to be come the next generation of Goths, just like NMBC did with all the kids in the early 90s), it would be safe to assume that the sound track would also be somewhat aimed at children. However, you’d be amazingly wrong. The score, or at least the parts you’re going to remember, are a bloody creepy children’s choir for the ‘real’ world, and rather up beat orchestral melodies for the ‘other’ world… It fits the mood perfectly.

It needs to be stated that I saw this film in 3D, which I think really probably added to the experience in a big way. The added depth of field helped in no small way when it comes to the suspension of disbelief, and I’m thinking that a lot of animations will probably seem more “real” using 3D display technologies. With that said, the effect was let down by the a lot of red/green shift happening to things further back in the depth-of-field when they were dark colours. Just something to keep in mind if you decide to see this in 3D as well.

In the Goth Club movie rating system, I give this film four spinning blue penises.

Go and see it in 3D before it finishes atthe cinema, because the 60″ screen with 7.1 Doly surround sound that you call a home theater system is still 2D bile  in comparison.

As it turns out, there was a 3rd drink made the other week, alongside the Mandarin Hunter and Blue Rage, although I wasn’t really paying much attention at the time as it was hastily made by Jaz for our erstwhile friend, Twist.

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