The Golem: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and the Road to Armageddon

Another conspiracy theorist, Michael Collins Piper, has written book where he refers to the Israeli Nuclear arsenal as the Golem of today. One of the original stories say that the Golem is created to protect the jews from their enemies, so yeah, he must have been glad when he got that idea. Piper is noted for his anti-semitic ideas and has also been called a holocaust denier, so of course he's a loony too. A real one this time. Nice book cover though. I read about the book here.

The Golem Spotify Playlist

I'm posting a spotify playlist. Don't know what it's got to do with Golem, but I can at least say it's inspirational, and something I'm listening to right now when I'm making my game. Maybe it's not easy listening, some of it is noisy disted rock, some live recordings and some are electronica. It's a mixture of old alternative and new Pitchfork, Hipster music. It starts of with Major Lazer, Planningtorock, and Peaking lights and goes on with Baroness, White hills and an old liverecording with Joy Division. There is also Ariel Pink's haunted graffity, Edward Sharpe & the magnetic zeros, Micachu & the shapes  (great band names by the way), Caribou and Anna Calvi. Enjoy!

http://open.spotify.com/user/len130/playlist/6mbeRUZfa8Yitw9k0XGMqg

Down syndrome has been invented by people who are too lazy to...

Funny, when I first read it I believed the blogpost was for real. I guess nothing suprises me about the big country in the west, which seems to contain every radical political view and religious believe there is. I should of course have been suspicious when it was written by the alias - Cranky old man. People who actually think like this probably don't have such self-irony.

Cranky old man

"Down syndrome has been invented by people who are too lazy to study, too lazy to work and even too lazy to wipe their own butts. By acting like complete idiots they avoid scrutiny and get passed all checks in our system to receive free care and free money without ever having to do anything to actually deserve all that. Parents who are too lazy to properly raise their children teach their children to behave like drooling idiots so they no longer have to fulfill their parental duties."
"Increased rates of autism is thus a will of God, because He wants to see how good the parents are in guiding their children to Jesus. If you want the test to end or become less intensive, all you can do is to spank your kids diligently."
http://www.landoverbaptist.net/showthread.php?t=68675

Landover Baptist Church is a fictional church in the fictional town of Freehold, Iowa. The whole website and the Forum with over 34000 members is a satire of fundamentalist Chritianity in USA.
Cranky old mans blogpost 10 reasons why god is hating Sweden, headed with a danish flag, is also extremely funny.
http://www.landoverbaptist.net/showthread.php?t=44379

I wonder though if some of the members of the Forum, like I did, believe it's for real. There are some critical voices in there who has been labeled - Confirmed enemies of god, Banned from landover, Aeternal damnation assured. So I guess I have it coming too.

Working on woodchopper animation

Working on a woodchopper animation based on a Muybridgeplate.

The animator's survival kit

Richard Williams, animation director for Who framed Roger Rabbit, wrote and drew this book. A great resource for 2D animation of people and animals. A lot of walkcycles, jumpcycles and good descriptions of how old school drawing animation was made.

First playable test of Golem game

In the following link you can run a playable first testversion of the Golem Game. It's very rough with no backgrounds or sound and it's only the first room of long adventure. The task is to get the key from the cat, unlock the door and leave the room. I doesn't look like much but a lot of the essential features and object's are included, like the movement of Golem, attacking, an inventoryobject, a creatureobject (the cat), destroyable objects, climbing of ladders and more. These objects will be reused in the following programming. What is left to come of the main functions is a conversation system with people, saving game and Golem charachteristics depending on how the player chooses to play the game. Good or Evil? Even in this first test version there is a good way of solving the puzzle and an evil way. Catlovers be warned.

Use this link to try a webversion of the game.
http://web.comhem.se/linusersson/golemGameHtml/

Terminator Golem

Last week I saw the Terminator movies with my son and now I found the real thing. The Cyberdyne systems of the movies are in real life called - The Golem Project.

The GOLEM project for artificial life

This is an interesting project by two american professors in Artificial Intelligence AI. As I understand it they've made a lifelike robotic system (computer program?) that designs robots by itself. I'm not sure though whether the designs that are made in the program also are produced in real life. The images show both computer 3d models but also some real 3d models. There also seems to be a downloadable screensaver program you can run on your own computer that have this AI intelligence and that designs these robots while you're inactive on your computer. It also said that this program can communicate with other Golem Project screensavers and exchange structures.

 "In the Golem project (Genetically Organized Lifelike Electro Mechanics) we conducted a set of experiments in which simple electro-mechanical systems evolved from scratch to yield physical locomoting machines. Like biological lifeforms whose structure and function exploit the behaviors afforded by their own chemical and mechanical medium, our evolved creatures take advantage of the nature of their own medium - thermoplastic, motors, and artificial neurons. We thus achieve autonomy of design and construction using evolution in a limited universe physical simulation, coupled to off-the-shelf rapid manufacturing technology. This is the first time robots have been robotically designed and robotically fabricated. "

These are the guys behind it.
Jordan Pollack and Hod Lipson