Sir Arthur Charles Clarke was born on the 16th of December 1917 in Minehead, England. Perhaps best known for his contributions to science fiction, and his inventions, his achievements will certainly not be forgotten anytime soon.

Clarke served in the Royal Air Force as a radar instructor from 1941-1946. It was there where he invented & proposed the idea of communications satellites in 1945 — an idea that materialized quickly and we now know, use and depend on to sustain our societies. His proposal won him the Franklin Institute Gold Medal and in 1994 he was nominated for a Nobel Prize. Consequently he became the chairman of the British Interplanetary Society.

He collaborated with Stanley Kubrick to create, in my and many others’ opinion, one of the greatest films of all time — and concurrently developed what later became a novel of the same name: 2001: A Space Odyssey shook the world and continues to inspire and provoke thought.

Moved to Sri Lanka in 1956. Knighted in 1998.

A Hero Passed Away on March 19th, 2008.
Arthur Charles Clarke will be missed.

I admit I wasn’t entirely convinced when I saw the teaser for Pixar’s new Wall*E movie a few months back, but damn me for having ever doubted the minds at Pixar! The consequently released plot details plus trailer have me chuckling and wishing for a closer release date than the 27th of June 2008. Wall*E (short for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) is a robot left behind on Earth to clean up our trash after we’re forced to leave the planet. After hundreds of years sifting through mountains of junk, Wall*E meets a new robot which sparks the plot of the main storyline (which I’ll leave unsaid).

The darkly under-toned scenario is brilliantly meshed with the childlike demeanor of Wall*E (cute-factor around 90%) following the renown Pixar recipe for memorable and innovative, all-enjoyable features. His body-language alone has you laughing. Catch the trailer over at Apple Trailers and make sure you watch the HD version — this is no doubt Pixar’s best 3D work!

Tim Burton has something coming this Christmas that’s worthy of adding a post to my otherwise seldomly used Films & Literature category. Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter looks pretty interesting. A potential candidate for this years best Christmas movie, if you ask me.

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I finally gave the Doctor Who series a go. It was mainly the fantastic title song to thank that I did. I’ve had it on a CD for ages and have found myself humming it regularly. I don’t usually enjoy sci-fi with that much a fantasy element and assumed the same would go for the good Doctor — but I was delightfully surprised with the series! You’ve gotta love the Daleks. Not to mention the Doctor’s wacky personality. The video below particularly cracks me up, a scene from the second season.

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Some relate the idea of open-source only to software. The idea, however, has much more potential than that. Todays post is not on A.I., but is breathtaking nonetheless and tightly related to computer science: The open source movie project A Swarm of Angels was initiated in 2006, with the ambitious goal of producing a feature length film, raising a budget of $1.9 million USD. They are well underway, and if this goal is met, they will have succeeded in producing the world’s first internet funded, manned and distributed feature length film.

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I’ve ranted and raved in the past few months about the upcoming Watchmen movie directed by Zack Snyder. Now it seems the movie’s producers are reconsidering. Why? Well, do you watch Heroes? Have you read Watchmen by Alan Moore? Warning: Serious plot spoilers ahead.

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Used in over 1000 universities in 91 countries, Artificial Intelligence, A Modern Approach is one of the most popular textbooks on Artificial Intelligence. If you’re interested in diving head-first into AI studies, and want a comprehensive overview of the field’s history, common problems and solutions, I recommend this book. It’s also a great reference book for anyone that’s working on AI (No I’m not getting paid for this, unfortunately). See the AIMA table of contents here.

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I just read the news: Kurt Vonnegut, author of novels such as The Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five, died on wednesday in Manhattan at age 84.

I see no better way to acknowledge his achievements then by reciting one of his quotes.

Check out this recently released exclusive interview with Zack Snyder on his upcoming Watchmen adaptation. It’ll be the first R-Rated superhero movie — which I’m very happy to hear, as I think the story/characters would lose depth if they’d have to sugarcoat it. He also mentions that there’s a role for Gerard “Gerry” Butler in it (he played Leonidas in 300).

Warning: the interview contains a very, very short description of a scene in the comic. Most probably won’t consider it warn-worthy, but I never want to hear even the slightest detail regarding interesting movies, so I felt compelled to warn. Just in case there actually are people like me out there (hello?).

Glancing over the frontpage I suddenly noticed similarities between images of two posts — and simply couldn’t resist combining them. I’m still chuckling even as I post this.

If you’re reading this at a later time, compare the 300 post with the death by robot post and then come back to this one.