Star Wars X-Wing Origami

Would you like to create your own Star Wars X-Wing starfighter out of paper? Just use a square piece of paper and fold it in to this famous Star Wars starfighter.

I am sure it won't fly, but it can be good knowledge to impress your son, sibling or any other younger Star Wars fan.

Follow this origami instruction and soon you have your X-Wing starfighter in your hand.

If you think this origami is too hard or if you don't think it is fancy enough, you can try to print out the Star Wars X-Wing starfighter parts with your computers printer, cut them out and glue them together to something that looks like the thing here.

On this site you can find the free down-loadable parts to a lot of different Star Wars objects. They really look amazing! I guess you need a lot of patience to cut out all the fine details and a steady hand to glue them all together. I dare you to try!

Chinese weiqi cartoon

A new Chinese cartoon about weiqi might give some hope for old Hikaru No Go fans.

I have not seen the cartoon so I have no idea what it is about, but it really looks like there is a lot of weiqi involved. I will ask Girlwing later what it is about.

Star Trek 11 - Great reviews

Currently the new Star Trek 2009 movie is getting a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes from its 17 reviews. These reviews are supposed to be made of respected film critics, so it is not any hard core Star Trek nerds posting these reviews.

The 100% means that this many critics have given a positive review. The actual score the movie have received so far is an average rating of 7.6/10 which also is very good.

The director J.J. Abrams is getting a lot of positive feedback about how he managed to revive the magic in Star Trek and how he successfully tells the story about young James T. Kirk and Spock.

The premiere will be next week on 7th of May.

I'll be there! Will you?

Star Trek - New trailer

The 8th of May the new Star Trek movie will have its premiere. I will be there! This seem to be a great movie that they have put a lot of effort in. It will tell the story how the original series started off with its young crew.

Check out the new trailer!

Play Ogg!

I'm writing today to ask you to support the Play Ogg campaign.

Are you tired of constantly being prompted to download proprietary software and plugins to play the videos and listen to the music you want? Are you fed up with seeing new gadgets that only use incompatible and restrictive audio and video formats? Did you know that it's not a lack of technological know-how that causes this, but software patents and other legal restrictions?

Increasingly proprietary software companies like Microsoft, Apple and Adobe are pushing video and audio formats that restrict access and restrict software developers, but there is an alternative that can be played on all computers without restriction—Ogg.

Ogg provides professional grade multimedia formats. Ogg is used extensively by free software projects, artists and a growing number of music and video distributors.

Soon over a million children and their families will be receiving the One Laptop per Child XO computer designed to play and create Ogg files. By advocating now for Ogg we can help ensure that those children will gain access to, and not be unnecessarily restricted from thousands of educational resources and materials on the web.

Join us in advocating for Ogg right now by taking 4 Easy Steps: Install VLC multimedia player, sign-up for the PlayOgg advocate mailing list, find and share Ogg friendly sites, and put PlayOgg Buttons on your web site or blog. After all that, if you are still looking for more to do, consider encouraging others to do the same.

Start here: http://playogg.org/

We all love R2D2

Have you seen Star Wars? Yes I am sure you have. Most people have seen at least one episode of Star Wars. Some think they are silly space movies and some (like me) think they are really great epic space adventures. In these films we have some characters like Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia Organa, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Yoda, C-3PO, R2-D2, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader and more.

Which is your favourite? For me it is very hard to choose between the human like characters because they are all so very different individuals and there is really nothing not to like. When it comes to the robotic characters there are a bit easier for me to choose. C-3PO is a lot of fun and stupid while he is an expert servant droid. R2-D2 is an extremely talented astromech droid and at the same time extremely cute both in shape and in its squeaking sounding beeps. I like cute stuff so R2-D2 is my favourite robot.

Wouldn't it be great to have your own R2-D2 unit? Or any astromech for that matter? They are as smart as humans and designed to serve or be your friend. You can play chess or a game of go against it and be sure to lose every time. It might even be able to teach you something of the games. It will walk (or what you call it) around in your home, minding its own business or maybe cleaning it for you. Pick up your dirty socks and tell you where you put your mp3 player when you think you lost it. Like any good behaving wife. ;)

Well... that day might soon be here... and while you are dreaming you can start to build your own astromech droid and then you can post pictures and stories about your progress at the official website of the R2-D2 builders club astromech.net. Check it out! This is really great nerdy sci-fi stuff! :D

IQ - Take care of yourself

Recently a new TV commercial started to go frequently in Swedish media. Directly it catches your attention with its brilliant representation of a "typical" Swedish wedding party including a lot of alcohol, talking, laughing, dancing, flirting, sex, jealousy, arguments, violence, sadness, despair, anguish and regret. The short movie is very clever in its way to catch what is happening during this wedding party and the people are miming the lyrics in sync with the message in the music while looking directly in to the camera. It is so intense.




Listen to the lyrics:
När vinet glöder i de fyllda glasen
och vi börjar bli i gasen
då lossnar tungans band
Vi som gått omkring och vart så blyga
vi slutar upp att smyga
modet kommer efter hand

Hej tjo och klackarna i taket
nu visar vi helt naket hur modiga vi är
Inga ord kan bli för stora
vad har jag att förlora
Så är det med det!

Senare när berusningen har lagt sig
och det som jag har sagt dig
verkar ganska meningslöst
Då undrar jag över hur du ser mig
man får se upp hur man beter sig
och då skrattar jag nervöst

Mitt hjärta har en frusen inneboende
med pajat självförtroende
som inte mår så bra
Hon plockar fram allting jag gömmer
och minns allting jag glömmer
Hon säger att hon är jag

Written by Peps Persson and perfomed by Lill Lindfors in 1978.


Last year IQ had another controversial commercial for a controlled consummation of alcohol. It was good then but I have to say that the new one takes it to a much higher level and it will be interesting to see how they can top this next year.

The Dark Knight

Girlwing and I went to the cinema to see The Dark Knight. We went for the early movie at 14:50 so we were almost alone in the big theatre... only three others sitting behind us. A bit luxurious. :)

I really liked the first movie Batman Begins. It is still science fiction but believable. It is not a hero with super powers but a well trained person with expensive gadgets that help him. It is not preserving the comics look transferred to real actors (like the old Batman movies), it is instead the comics converted to something that could have been in real life. That makes the movie look good and believable even when we see some unbelievable things. I like that. I like to see some logic in the illogical.

The new movie is as beautiful as the first one but it is not as good (still it is a good movie). I early got disappointed when Batman with one hand bent a rifle pipe while the "bad guy" was still holding the other end. Such an act is easy calculated in your head that it is not possible to do. If Batman is strong enough to bend the pipe, the bad guy is not strong enough to still hold the rifle as one usually do when he is about to shoot. Such simple details might be cool for young teenagers without knowledge about basic physics... but please try to avoid them in movies in the future. (There are several others small and bigger logical mistakes in the movie, but I will not mention them here so I don't spoil your viewing pleasure.)

Another big mistake about the movie is the usual "sickness" that Hollywood movies often have. Once they done a great movie and they make a follow up movie, they feel an urge to make it bigger and faster and louder and cooler and bloodier and everything else more. I guess they think that it will not sell otherwise. So stupid...
I think that once they found a concept that works, they should refine it. Keep what is great and tune some parts and some details. Then write a good story! Everything is about the story and without it... the cool effects are just cool effects.

Of some (for me) unknown reason, the woman playing Batman's "girlfriend" is switched with some other actress. Not only is the new one much less pretty, she has also completely changed personality. It seems like the makers of the movie or the new actress didn't put any effort in trying to keep the same feeling for the role.

The great addition to this movie is The Joker. This character is made in the way that makes me like the new Batman movies. He is not made into a comics clown like in the old movies. His face has been cut up and then healed to ugly scars and then painted in red making a giant smile. The character shows up a sharp intellect with seriously disturbed aspects, making him to the murderer he is. We can only guess if he in his insanity cut his own mouth open or if someone else did that to his face and driving him to insanity.

Many are celebrating the actor behind Joker. He got a lot of extra PR due the fact that he killed himself after making the movie and that helped to rise many voices for him getting an Oscar. I am not the one saying if he deserves an Oscar or not, but he did a very good job in this movie. He was actually better than Batman in this movie. If not Batman himself makes you want to see this movie, you should go and see it for the Joker...