From the makers of Machinarium comes another PC game set to endear every gamer. Botanicula is a point-and-click puzzle game developed by Czech Republic-based Animata Design that takes us into a dazzling, imaginative adventure.
The game tells the tale of five creatures–namely Mr. Twig, Mr. Lantern, Mr. Poppy Head, Mrs. Mushroom, and Mr. Feather–living in a tree created by a falling star. This tree is overflowing with glowing life force, thus making it attractive for parasites to feast on. The five friends have to work together to save their home and the lives of other inhabitants.
The visuals remind one of macro lens photography as these tiny creatures appear larger than actual scale. Gamers are bound to be amazed by the sheer whimsy of Botanicula’s world. Meanwhile, its lack of spoken lines (the characters communicate by chirping) further enhances the challenge in playing this game. You have to understand the subtle cues, such as hieroglyphs etched into a branch or the chirp of a bug, to understand what the puzzle is all about and how to solve it. Each character has individual abilities that may or may not be helpful in solving the challenge at hand.
However, do not be deceived by the unusual cuteness this game brings. Most of its puzzles, although not easy, are very clever. For instance, using pink fluffy micro-sheep on pollen planetoids as springs or recognizing a group of colorful blotches as your characters wind across a maze.
Playing Botanicula is more enjoyable because of its brilliant soundtrack that combines jazz, indie, and big beat, thus creating an eclectic sound profile.
Botanicula is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Its developer offers a Humble Botanicula Bundle on its launch–including other Animata titles like Machinarium and Samorost 2–at a price that is up to you to decide. Pay above average (US$ 8.77 as of this posting) and you also get Kooky (a full-length feature animation) and another point-and-click game called Windosill. Part of the proceeds goes to the World Land Trust, an international conservation charity organization.
- New sonar image described by monster hunters as totally unexplained
- Experts have ruled out the ‘sighting’ being any other fish, seal or debris
By Lawrence Conway
PUBLISHED: 06:25 EST, 20 April 2012 | UPDATED: 09:26 EST, 20 April 2012
It is one of the greatest mysteries of the deep, and its legend has outfoxed score of investigators over the generations.
Stories, pictures and rumors about a monster living below the surface of Scotland’s deepest loch go back for decades.
But it is now hoped this grainy image of a long ‘serpent-like creature’ may finally unlock the mystery of the Loch Ness Monster.
Questions: This exciting new image of has revived belief that there’s something unexplained out there
The sonar picture, that shows a large unidentified living object deep underwater, was recorded by Loch Ness boat skipper Marcus Atkinson.
The mysterious being was recorded at a depth of 75ft in the murky water and measured nearly 5ft wide.
Mr Atkinson’s sonar fish-finder device records the width of objects in the depths directly below his tourist boat every quarter of a second.
Image produced when his vessel was in the Loch’s Urquhart Bay showed a long moving object that had followed the boat for more than two minutes.
The consistent marks on Mr Atkinson’s sonar create a horizontal mass, which is not an indicator of length.
But excited Loch Ness monster experts have ruled out the ‘sighting’ being any other fish, seal or wood debris and believe it is proof of an unknown creature in the Loch.
Skipper: Martin Atkinson said he’d never seen anything like it, adding weight to previous alleged sightings such as this one (right)
The picture taken on Mr Atkinson’s mobile phone of his sonar screen, has won him first prize in the Best Nessie Sighting of The Year Award run by bookmakers William Hill.
Mr Atkinson, 43, from Fort Augustus in the Scottish Highlands, said: ‘I was dropping customers at Urquhart Castle and then got my boat out of the way of the other tour companies.
‘I moved out into the water and looked at the sonar and saw this image had appeared.
‘The device takes a reading of the depth and what is below the boat every quarter of a second and gradually builds up a picture, so it covered a time of about five minutes.
‘The object got bigger and bigger and I thought “bloody hell” and took a picture with my mobile phone.
‘There is nothing that big in the Loch. I was in shock as it looked like a big serpent, it’s amazing. You can’t fake a sonar image. I have never seen anything returned like this on the fish finder.
‘It is a bizarre shape to me. I have shown it to other experienced skippers and none of us know what it was.
Size: The sonar image potentially showing a large unidentified living object deep underwater
‘I have seen a lot of pictures in 21 years of being here but this is the most clearest image yet. Undoubtedly, there is something in the loch.’
Steve Feltham, 49, a full-time Loch Ness monster hunter said: ‘There are no animals in the loch as big as the image here, the biggest thing we see are seals which are nothing compared to this.
‘It’s also totally unexplained and can’t possibly be fish because in water 75ft down you just wouldn’t find them.
Alert: The unusual sonar image was unlike anything Loch Ness boat skipper Marcus Atkinson had seen before
‘It’s very exciting and the best evidence we have had in donkey’s years. There is usually a mundane explanation yet no one has come up with one for this.
‘It’s images like this that will keep me going with my hunt for the next 20 years.’
But other marine experts claim the mystery object may well have been algae in the water.
Dr Simon Boxall, from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, said: ‘The picture is built up slowly as the boat moves.
‘So it’s not a snap shot and thus the image is not an image of a single object unless it is very still.
‘The image shows a bloom of algae and zooplankton that would exist on what would be a thermocline.
‘Zooplankton live off this algae and reflect sound signals from echo sounders and fish finders very well.
‘They will appear as a linear “blob” on the screen, just like this.
‘This is a monster made of millions of tiny animals and plants and represents the bulk of life in the Loch.’
This image from 2011 shows a pair of humps which soon disappeared under the waves of Loch Ness
While Ron Paul may be unlikely to win the Republican Party nomination, his supporters continue to spread his message of libertarianism through various means. One such supporter, DS Williams, is developing a browser-based video game that he hopes will be released this summer.
The game, called The Road to REVOLution, is a side-scrolling action game that is a bit reminiscent of Super Mario Brothers and Sonic the Hedgehog. The player controls Ron Paul as he travels through all 50 states of the USA collecting gold and delegates, while defeating the nasty bosses of the Federal Reserve in the process. The bosses appear as you collect enough gold coins to unlock each of the 13 branches of the Federal Reserve. Ultimately, Ron Paul battles the money-hungry final boss and save America from the cudgels of capitalism.
The video game is built in HTML5 and will be free-to-play. Williams hopes to have the beta version available by mid-June, while its final version roll out by July 2012. The project is being funded in Kickstarter and has reached its $ 5,000 goal in just three days, thanks to a feature from a Ron Paul support website, but funding will remain open until May 1. Williams says that every dollar in excess of the $ 5,000 target he received will be used in developing the mobile version of the game.
Source: Digital Trends
Did you know that Mozilla Foundation, the organization behind the Firefox browser, is developing a mobile OS based on HTML5? News has been hovering around about Boot to Gecko, the mobile OS set to battle Android, which is said to be designed with web apps in mind although with the functionality and device integration similar to native applications.
Mozilla claims that users of Android smartphones with unlocked bootloaders will be able to install BtG onto their device. But for people with less knowledge about booting another OS into their phones, the groups is said to be shopping for partners.
So far, Brazil’s Telefonica has accepted the OS with loving arms. According to Brazilian tech blogs, the carrier will be selling BtG smartphones by the end of the year or in early 2013. And that is not just speculation, since Mozilla’s CEO Gary Kovacs himself made the announcement in São Paulo just recently. What he did not say, however, is what kind of phones will run the web-based OS.
A representative from Telefonica, meanwhile, indicated that the handsets will be unlocked and cost as much as a feature phone. In other words, dirt cheap, just as how we like it.
Source: ZTop.com, via Engadget
Another round of iPhone 5 rumors surfaced. If talkative Korean sources are to believe, the next iPhone will be cased in “liquidmetal” and that it will arrive in October at the earliest.
Earlier reports claim the upcoming iPhone will debut this summer, so why the delay you ask? Apparently Qualcomm, the manufacturer of some of the smartphone’s necessary chips, cannot churn out production fast enough.
Meanwhile, the “liquidmetal” casing can be described more accurately as a glassy metal. Standard glass is traditionally made of silicon dioxide, a type of metallic material; and metals grow crystalline structures within them as they cool. Researchers have long looked for ways to make metals without such crystalline structures; that is where the “glass” part comes in. This can be achieved by cooling the molten metal at millions of degrees per second, thus resulting to a piece of metal with no internal crystals.
The metallic glass casing can do wonders on the iPhone’s sturdiness, which has long been criticized for being easily-broken. This new case is less likely to break than plastic, almost easier to recycle, and will not chip nor crack. And no, this glassy material is opaque, so your dreams for a see-through iPhone are dashed.
To give you an idea what metallic glass is like, check out the special tool Apple handed out in removing the SIM card in iPhone 3. That is made of metallic glass, which Forbes speculate was for Apple to see how it fared in real-world usage.
Source: The Register, via Forbes
