Spore: Creature Creator

Spore
Spore is an upcoming game from the creator of SimCity and the Sims. It's basically an evolution game where you take some little creature and "evolve" it until it controls a galactic empire. This is a terrible way of describing the game, but I don't feel like writing a lot.

The thing I want to talk about is the Creature Creator which they've released a demo of. Although the parts are limited, people can make an absurd number of different creatures quite easily and they are well animated. I wanted to share some of my favorite creations.


This is my first creature, Fibber. He once caught a fish that was THIS BIG!


This is Lightfoot dancing with one of its offspring. The creator automatically generates baby versions of the creatures.


Slouchy, the laziest creature I created.


Sneaky, the most devious animal ever. I bet you thought it was just a harmless little bird.


Spindly has some issues with his legs.


This is what happened when I told Spindly to sit.


I have no idea what happened here.

First PetaFLOPS

Top 500

The first PetaFLOPS computer has made it onto the Top 500 list, ending the 3 year reign of BlueGene as the fasting computer. In fact, the average speed of the top 10 increased by 116%, the second fastest increase since the list started in 1993. What's even more impressive is that the total FLOPS computed by the top 500 increased by nearly 68%, the highest increase ever. Three hundred of the computers that were on the list last November are no longer on the list, unless they were upgraded.

The new top computer, Roadrunner, can compute more FLOPS (floating-point integers per second) than the the entire Top 500 list from June 2004.

Who Cares?

Barack Obama
I was reading the SA forums today, and some guy posted pictures of Obama helping out with flood relief. This immediately reminded me of the recent South Korean presidential election. About a week before the vote, there was an oil spill off the coast of Korea. The candidates were falling over each other to be the first to help the clean-up. So I decided to see was McCain was doing in response to the recent floods.

John McCain
Apparently McCain felt the flood was only worth a two-sentence statement. I'm starting to think Republicans hate flood victims.

Sure, Obama could just be doing this as a publicity stunt, but there still a big difference between helping out with dubious motives and doing, literally, the least you could do.

Great things are happening in Sweden

I think I obsess about Sweden a bit too much, but I've noticed something recently, all the musicians I've become interested in the past month are all Swedish. There's just something about the kind of music coming out of Sweden right now to be fantastic.

Firefox AK vs. LAID
I actually saw Firefox AK perform when I was in Uppsala. It was great concert and I wanted to buy her CD then, but no one could tell me where or if they were selling it there. On a different note, I don't understand the whole "vs." thing when electronica groups collaborate.

I ARE DROID
These guys kind of remind me of Muse.

Maia Hirasawa
This singer's voice is just like Regina Spektor, but the music is a bit different. The video is kind of cute too. Also, her last name isn't Swedish, in case anyone was confused.

Koop
A bit old-fashioned, but very enjoyable music. The singer in the video I linked isn't a member of Koop, in fact it's just two guys using sound samples to make the instrumental parts.

Oh hey, what's this?