Scott Pilgrim, God Lives Underwater, tech news
Saturday, January 10, 2009
I actually haven’t been wasting much time on YouTube, webcomics and lolcats this year (yet), but I will share these few items collected since the New Year.
Scott Pilgrim
I’ve read the first four Scott Pilgrim graphic novels and eagerly await the fifth volume, due out on February 4, 2009.
Now, is there going to be a Scott Pilgrim movie? Officially, scottpilgrim.com says: “The Scott Pilgrim series has been optioned by Universal Pictures. They plan to make a movie from the concept. It will be live-action (not animated). Edgar Wright will direct. He and Michael Bacall wrote the screenplay, based on the books. Michael Cera and Mary Elizabeth Winstead will star. The film will be called Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. There’s no release date yet, nor have they started shooting, so keep your pants on.”
In related news, from the director: “Edgar Wright Teases You… In Pictures.” He’s posing all over the place, all Scott Pilgrim-like. Awesome.
God Lives Underwater
I’ve been following the latest rumors on the new God Lives Underwater (GLU) album for a couple of weeks now.
If you’re not a fan or don’t know what’s happened to the band since their 1998 album Life in the So-Called Space Age, the short version is this:
Lead singer David Reilly died unexpectedly on October 16, 2005 from complications of a coma brought on by pain medication for an abscessed tooth. He was 34 years old. Tour dates were scheduled at the time of his death, and the follow-up GLU album had not been completed. The album, How Humans R(x), was tentatively scheduled to be finished and released in March 2006 with guest vocalists filling in on a few incomplete tracks. But it didn’t happen.
Now, How Humans R(x) has been brought back to life and has a release date of 2009. A tracklisting and unmastered versions are available. Even more recently, it was reported that the mastering and artwork has been completed, with duplication being the next step. They are shooting for an official release date of May 5, 2009 to celebrate David’s 38th birthday. I’m excited to hear the final songs, at last.
Tech news
My friend Warren reports that Adobe CS4 Sound Booth has an auto-transcriber feature and it actually kind of works! He said it was probably 90% accurate on the audio clips he tried. (Warren later revised his accuracy estimate to around 60% and said the auto-transcriber was mainly good for kicking out a transcribed text file that could be manually edited. It didn’t work well for in-program subtitling.) See more about this feature on The Editblog: “Kicking the tires on Adobe CS4 speech transcription.”
In other news: “Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard.” I love The Onion.
OK, this is not exactly tech news, but it appeals to a similar audience: “Obama and Spider-Man appear in comic together.”