Month: December 2006

Sunday’s Astronomy Photo of the Day was an Apollo 17 Panorama:

What would it be like to explore the surface of another world? In 1972 during the Apollo 17 mission, astronaut Harrison Schmitt found out first hand. In this case, the world was Earth’s own Moon. In this recently compiled panorama of lunar photographs originally taken by astronaut Eugene Cernan, the magnificent desolation of the barren Moon is apparent. Visible above and by scrolling right are lunar rocks in the foreground, lunar mountains in the background, some small craters, a lunar rover, and astronaut Schmidt on his way back to the rover. A few days after this image was taken, humanity left the Moon and has yet to return.

Very nice…

SCI FI Wire reports that

Producer Jordan Kerner told the Moviehole.net web site that his upcoming feature-film version of The Smurfs would be computer-animated. “It’s a 3-D/CG Smurfs,” Kerner told the site. “You just can’t make those guys live. It’d be a little weird. But a 3-D Shrek world of them—that’s fantastic.”

I’d have never even guessed that a Smurfs movie was in the works, much less one that was all CG. I’m not sure that I’m as enthusiastic about the prospect as this producer seems to be…

Check out this fun Cartoon Montage (YouTube video) of TV cartoon superheroes from the ‘80s and ’90s.

David Ahmed’s MakingMusic is a collaborative Flash project collecting information about musical instruments throughout the world, presenting audio clips as well as historical and geographical information about each instrument. The interface is very well done, and the overall presentation is quite thorough and entertaining.

Scary Mary Poppins Trailer is another recut movie trailer, this time making Mary Poppins look like a horror movie. Quite creative…

I think they’re missing some classics, but GIANT Magazine’s feature The 50 Greatest Commercials of the ’80s does a decent job. Watching the included YouTube video clip links made for quite a nice nostalgic trip…

The Wikipedia entry Back to the Future timeline painstakingly tracks events in the eight overlapping timelines in the Back To The Future trilogy.

dj BC’s Christmas mash-up compilation Santastic II: Clausome is pretty fun…

MSN Money reports that

The annual PNC Christmas Price Index, based on the cost of the items in The 12 Days of Christmas, rose 3.1% this year, with the sharpest increase coming from the 44% jump in pear tree prices.

Damn pear futures… 😉

Leslie Harpold’s Advent Calendar 2006 is “25 fun filled days of surprises.” Very nicely done as usual…

Update: You may have noticed that the Advent Calendar has not been updated for a couple of days. I found out yesterday that Leslie Harpold, the creator of popular online Advent Calendars since 2003 (among many other endeavors), died over the weekend at the age of 40. kfan has taken the time to collect links of remembrance in del.icio.us and there is a nice MetaFilter thread in her honor. 🙁