Boarding: Stories & Snow

From March 24-28, 2005, The Banff Centre will hold a Storyboarding Summit featuring guest speakers from Pixar Animation Studios, Sony Imageworks, as well as other independent producers. There will be workshops on Storyboarding as well as opportunities to learn to Snowboard or Ski at nearby Sunshine Village.

The event is fast approaching but it has taken a while to finalize all details. Please pass the information on to friends, associates, relatives, and others you think might be interested.

You can download the PDF with more details right here.

Register online by clicking here.

For additional information, please contact:

Lindsey Aufricht
Special Events Coordinator, Accelerator
Program, Banff New Media Institute
Banff, Alberta, Canada
403.762.7591
lindsey_aufricht@banffcentre.ca
BanffCentre.ca

Dr. Philip Currie Joins the University of Alberta

Congratulations goes out to our good friend, Dr. Philip Currie, one of the world's leading Palaeontologists. Starting October 1, Dr. Currie will become a professor with the University of Alberta's Palaeontology program, here in Edmonton.

Along with his many accolades, Currie was recently chosen as one of three Canadians to receive the 2004 Michael Smith Award for outstanding achievement in the promotion of science in Canada. The award was presented by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada on November 22 of 2004.

While this is great news for the University of Alberta and Edmonton, it is sad news for the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller. The world-class museum and research institute loses not only another world-renowned expert, but also an engaging representative of the facility.

We wish Dr. Currie the best of luck in his new role!

You can read the story in the Edmonton Journal here.

Photo courtesy of Time Magazine.

Update: CBC also has a report on Currie's new position and how it could lead to more dinosaur finds. You can read more at this link.

Mulder, Scully, and Kimball?

C.W. Oberleitner at O-meon.com offers a story about a link between legendary Disney Animator Ward Kimball and UFOs.

You can read about the intriguing connection in this story.

Thanks to Animated-News.com for the link.

King Tut Not Murdered Violently, CT Scans Show

Recent CT scans performed by Dr. Zahi Hawass and his research team seem to conclude that the 19-year-old ruler of Egypt, King Tutankhamun, was not murdered violently. A blow to the back of the head had been suggested as one possible cause due to findings in X-rays performed in 1968 and 1978 which showed a bone fragment in Tutankhamun's skull.

However, the discovery of a break in the left thigh is causing the team to differ their opinions on whether the fracture happened before or after death. An open wound from the break could have caused a life-threatening infection and been the real cause of death, but the fracture may also have come from the embalmers, which doesn't seem likely, given the great care they put into preparation of the bodies. A stronger possibility is that the break occured during Howard Carter's original excavation in 1922 when the mummy was removed from his tomb. This seems a more likely scenario given the damage that happened to many mummies during that time period.

Artistically and scientifically, I've always held a fascination for ancient cultures, notably the Egyptians. The dedication poured into everything from the grand scale of their architecture to the colorful, detailed art of murals and funerary masks is nearly unmatched by anything we see today. The discovery of King Tutankhamun's remains by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon was also exciting for the fact that so many artifacts were found along with the mummy. Even more remarkable is the fact that centuries after the demise of the Ancient Egyptian culture, we continue to make new discoveries about their lives.

You can read more about the recent CT scan at National Geographic.

The Incredibles Wins Two Academy Awards

Congratulations to Brad Bird, Pixar, and Disney! Keeping the momentum going, The Incredibles collected two more awards last night. The Disney/Pixar film which had four Academy Award nominations, won two of the four categories it was entered in. The action-packed superhero film won the Oscars for Animated Feature Film and Sound Editing. Add these to the numerous other awards the film has already received, and the statue shelves at Pixar are going to need reinforcement!

If you haven't pre-ordered your DVD already, head over to Luxo and support the site by purchasing the film through the Amazon links.

Note: The above image was inspired by the photo of Brad Bird in the 12.06 issue of Wired. You can find the article and photo online by clicking here.

Can This Black Box See Into the Future?

Not quite Minority Report, The Time Machine, or Back to the Future but certainly intriguing. Check out this link.

More on the project can be found here.

For the skeptics, this article, with one of the project members dismisses the prediction notions.

As suggested by some, if the 'device' can't provide any usable information before the events, is it really capable of predicting the future? Perhaps the whole thing is nothing more than humans looking for a correlation between the results and real-world events?

AirPort Card: Disable During Air Travel

I wonder how many people actually remember to do this on their wireless-enabled laptop computers?



Though it refers to Mac OS 9, I'm assuming it should be the same idea under Mac OS X and Windows.