Dark Void to Become Movie

In a move that will surely bring yet more curious individuals into the interesting realm of Tesla technology, Brad Pitt's production company "Plan B" has secured the copyrights necessary to turn the game Dark Void into a feature film.

I first stumbled across this exciting information at BLIC Online, which appears to be a Serbian news site, while doing my routine Google News searches for all things Tesla. The article features what appears to be an in-game picture of the main character conversing with the legendary scientist, depicted with his signature moustache.

I was then able to find the corresponding article on Variety.com which confirms the story and suggests that Pitt himself will play the lead role. Presumably, the film will be another year or two down the road, and will likely be met with comparisons to Iron Man which is due for a sequel in or around May 2010.

Both movies feature a kind of jetpack propulsion system (Iron Man has his built into the suit whereas in Dark Void it appears to be more of a strap-on accessory), however it would be neat if they try to go for a bit more of a steampunk feel with the Dark Void film to set it aside from all the other superhero stuff out lately.

As part of the advertising blitz for the game, which is due out January 19th,  a contest to win a Tesla Roadster has been announced. Unfortunately, upon eagerly reading the rules I was disappointed to learn that the competition appears to only be open to those living within the continental United States.

Dark Void: New Game with Tesla, Jetpacks

During one of my frequent Google News searches for the terms "tesla" or "tesla motors", I happened upon this article from http://games.venturebeat.com about a startup studio called Airtight Games and their initial offering, Dark Void.

The article explains that Dark Void's story line centers around a pilot getting lost in the Bermuda Triangle and somehow linking up with Nikola Tesla to fly jetpacks and battle extraterrestrials. If the whole Tesla-Triangle thing isn't quite enough to convince you that this game is clearly going to rule, check out the graphics on the teaser/trailer site:
http://testflight.darkvoidgame.com/

According to the Wikipedia entry for Dark Void, the game will come out for the 360, PS3 and Windows on Jan 12, 2010.

My 2008 Tesla Roadster

Would you believe they're selling these at Safeway now? As awesome as that would be, the harsh truth is that this is a Hot Wheels from Malaysia, and without some combination of Indian In The Cupboard and Honey I Shrunk the Kids technologies I won't be cruising around in it any time soon.

Still, it is pretty cool to be able to pick up a tiny replica of a Tesla Roadster. I am keeping my eyes out for one in Electric Blue, since that would probably be my colour in a full-scale model, should I ever be lucky enough to own one.

Check out some more interesting paint jobs here: http://hotwheels.wikia.com/wiki/2008_Tesla_Roadster

NVIDIA Tesla

Seeing these two words together is like witnessing some form of holy high-tech union. The NVIDIA Tesla line of uber-performance GPUs is a truly a delight to behold. The concept is wicked, a portable, plug-in style box featuring some serious graphics hardware, taking any regular computer and turning it into a rendering dynamo. Or any other high-res task that would normally take something like a farm or grid of machines working day and night to process.

It also comes in server-mountable and desktop-installable flavours, and while tasty, these aren't quite as delicious-sounding as the

Tesla D870 Deskside Supercomputer

Imagine some hardware hacker figures out how to mod an LCD into the side and hauls this baby over to a LAN party... bound to happen sooner or later.

Tesla's Heritage Subject of Edit War

Whenever I'm explaining who Tesla is, which seems to be frequently, it's always a bit unclear where exactly he's actually from. I usually go with Croatian or Serbian. I was amused to find the matter had evolved into a full-scale edit war on Wikipedia's Tesla Article, and has made it onto the Lamest Edit Wars page. The latest seems to be "an ethnic Serb of the Austrian Empire."

Tesla Cooling Technology

While reading a link from hackedgadgets.com about a DIY-Laser etcher setup, I got sidetracked onto the Wicked Lasers site and began admiring their new Blu-ray offerings. I know a few laser hobbyists and as far as quality is concerned these are considered the best.

Imagine my surprise to find the Spyder II GX and BX series lasers have a cool logo advertising their Tesla high-efficiency thermoelectric cooling system. Tempting, to say the least.

The Prestige

So I finally saw The Prestige on Saturday. I had forgotten that it was directed by Christopher Nolan, of Batman Begins and Memento fame, both of which were excellent. Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale, who in my opinion played an excellent Batman, are competing magicians. The Prestige refers to the third and final stage of a good illusion. The kicker, if you will.

David Bowie does an excellent job playing Nikola Tesla, who instead of having a brief cameo like I was expecting, was actually fairly central to the plot. Apparently he has developed teleportation technology, except instead it turns out to be duplication technology. The illusionists are interested, of course, because it makes for impossible feats, and begin to understand the implications of having clones running around.

The Tesla Technology looks excellent. In the trailers for the movie you only ever really see this wooden cabinet that is the receiving end of the tele-duplicator, but the initation pad is under a huge steel ball pulsating with huge streams of electricity. There is a kind of Tesla stage-show indoors with more impressive streamers.

Michael Caine plays kind of a backstage engineer and I like how he made a clear distinction between the two prestidigitators, and Tesla, the actual wizard. Let's refer to Arthur C. Clarke's 3 laws of prediction, care of Wikipedia:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is
   possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is
   impossible, he is very probably wrong.
   
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a
   little way past them into the impossible.
   
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.