Tron 2 film confirmed.

Intrigued, I did some digging and came across an article on IGN that described a trailer that was shown unexpectedly on Thursday at the end of the Walt Disney Pictures panel. It shows a light cycle chase and much more sinister-looking Flynn (again played by Jeff Bridges) before ending up with the number 2 in the Tron logo font as the letters T, R, and N appear around it (to form TR2N) and then fade back out.

This morning there was a Slashdot article that in turn pointed to articles on Gizmodo and Filmstalker with a bootleg video of the trailer (presented below Update 7/28: I grabbed the embed from the Filmstalker article, but as you can see, it’s been pulled. The Gizmodo article still has a non-embeddable version for the time being. Update 7/29: Someone did a pretty decent job cleaning up the video and posted it to YouTube, so it’s back.). The quality is poor as no videotaping is supposed to be going on during the video segments, but it’s good enough to get a feel for what’s going on. Hopefully, an official version of the trailer will be released soon.

Talk of a sequel has been slowly building momentum for some time now. At one one point it was rumored that Pixar wanted to do a remake or a sequel. Around the time of the film’s 20th anniversary, writer and director Steven Lisberger, talked about his interest and ideas for a possible sequel. However, Disney didn’t seem to show any interest in continuing the franchise until it released the game Tron 2.0 in 2003. A first-person shooter set in the computer world, it cleverly extended the metaphors originated in the movie to include modern computing technology such as firewalls, PDAs, and the internet. It was said that the game was going to be used to gauge interest in a sequel, but nothing more was really heard until 2005 when Disney hired a pair of writers to come up with a script for a sequel. It would be two more years before Disney would hire Joseph Kosinski to direct the film (now being written by a writing team from the show Lost). The Hollywood Reporter article detailing this most recent bit of news included this tidbit:

…sources said one of the things Kosinski will be doing is working on a sequence involving the movie’s Light Cycles to work out his vision for the movie.

It would appear that the footage shown at Comic-Con is the culmination of that work. It’s exciting to see that actual progress is being made and that (at least visually) it seems to be faithful to the spirit of the original, but I’m going to try to stay cautiously optimistic until more concrete details are available.

Starring Neil Patrick Harris as Dr. Horrible, Nathan Fillion as Captain Hammer, and Felicia Day as Penny, the story follows Dr. Horrible as he attempts to gain admittance to a super villain organization and work up the nerve to talk to the girl of his dreams (Penny), who he has inadvertently introduced to his arch-nemesis (Hammer). As the name suggests, the show is a musical and features Joss’ quirky, irreverent sense of humor.

The show is presented in three 15-minute acts that were released over the course of this week for free on the internet. After today (July 19), it will only be available for purchase on iTunes until the DVD is released sometime in the coming months. Joss came up with the idea during the writer’s strike and explains the motivation behind it in a note to his fans:

Once upon a time, all the writers in the forest got very mad with the Forest Kings and declared a work-stoppage. The forest creatures were all sad; the mushrooms did not dance, the elderberries gave no juice for the festival wines, and the Teamsters were kinda pissed. (They were very polite about it, though.) During this work-stoppage, many writers tried to form partnerships for outside funding to create new work that circumvented the Forest King system.

Frustrated with the lack of movement on that front, I finally decided to do something very ambitious, very exciting, very mid-life-crisisy. Aided only by everyone I had worked with, was related to or had ever met, I single-handedly created this unique little epic. A supervillain musical, of which, as we all know, there are far too few.

The idea was to make it on the fly, on the cheap – but to make it. To turn out a really thrilling, professionalish piece of entertainment specifically for the internet. To show how much could be done with very little. To show the world there is another way. To give the public (and in particular you guys) something for all your support and patience. And to make a lot of silly jokes. Actually, that sentence probably should have come first.

I’ve heard he’ll be making the rounds of the talk show circuit to promote the movie. He should also be making appearances in Disney theme parks no doubt giving Push a run for his money.

It was initially thought that the hard drive did not survive the reentry, but when it was discovered to be largely intact albeit severely damaged, the project team sent it to a data recovery service. The contents of the drive came back about 99% complete, but it still took several years to analyze the data. The results were published just last month and confirmed that xenon experiences a sudden change in viscosity known as shear thinning when it is stirred vigorously. This effect is what allows whipped cream and ketchup to from flowing smoothly like a liquid to holding their shape like a solid.

While this wasn’t necessarily an earth-shattering experiment, it was fortunate that it could be completed as the lead investigator, Robert Berg, expressed in this Scientific American article:

He notes that the experiment could have only worked in microgravity, to prevent the xenon from settling under its feather-light weight. With NASA’s priorities shifting away from basic research, he says, “this is the sort of experiment that won’t be duplicated for a long time, if ever.”

Computer World has a more technical explanation of the data recovery process.

Engadget also had a story from Maker Faire about Ultimate Wall-E that included a video (from Techie Diva, embedded below). This video better showcases Wall-E’s range of motion, including his head, arms, and eyes. The rep also demonstrates his collision avoidance and directional sound sensors. And while not implemented in that prototype, the rep explained that he’ll also respond to small number of voice commands.

After seeing this new video, I can’t wait to get my hands on one of these.

Update: A friend pointed out that video changed at some point. It would appear that the embed code I got from Engadget points to the most recent Techie Diva video instead of this particular one. (Incidentally, the original Techie Diva story is showing the same incorrect video) You can find the original video at Blip.tv.

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Jump ahead about a year-and-a-half. I got a new job closer to home. About 2/3 of the new commute was the same as part of the old commute. Instead of getting on the freeway, I stayed on surface streets, which meant that I now had to drive through the neighborhood the house was in, but I still never took the time to go looking for it.

Over time, I started trying different routes to work and finally settled on one that I have been using for a little over a year. So, not too long a go, I was on my way to work and happened to look to my right as I was passing through a particular intersection, and there it was. I can’t believe I have been driving by it nearly every day for over a year and never noticed it. The Fisher & SonsDiaz sign may be missing, but the house itself is pretty distinctive.

On the left is screen capture from the pilot episode. On the right is a photo I took.

If you’d like to see it for yourself, the house is on the southwest corner of Arlington and 25th St. in the West Adams neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Disneyland celebrated its 50th birthday on July 17th, 2005, however my story actually begins the day before. Disney was letting as many people as they could fit into Disney’s California Adventure stay the night in that park with the promise that they would be allowed into Disneyland before everyone else the following morning.

I had spent most of Saturday in San Diego at Comic-Con, but I got back to Anaheim in time to check into a nearby hotel room under the assumption that I would get a few hours of sleep before heading over to the resort to get in line. Not surprisingly, I couldn’t really sleep so I made my way to the parking lot tram and hotel shuttle loading area east of the esplanade. When I got there about 2:00am, the line was considerable, snaking back and forth filling about half of the tram/shuttle area. By the time they started letting us in, the area was completely full.

As we passed through DCA’s turnstiles, each person was given a colored wristband roughly denoting the time they entered and a pair of golden Mickey ears with the date stitched on the back before being sent off to search for the end of the line. For me, that was Paradise Pier where California Screamin’ crosses the walkway between the Maliboomer and The Orange Stinger. A few hours later when it was time to move us over to Disneyland, the line was bunched up into groups based on wristband color, and wave after wave of people were directed out the DCA main gate into a cordoned off path that led straight to the Disneyland main gate on the stroller rental side.

Once inside Disneyland, we could see the main gate cast members getting ready for opening. There were considerably more of them than usual since they had to give out those golden ears to everyone that came through. There were a bunch more CMs lined up on the sidewalk from the Opera House to about halfway up Main Street cheering, high-fiving us, and shaking our hands as they welcomed us home.

Upon reaching the hub, there was a choice to go left through Frontierland up to Big Thunder Ranch where the anniversary merchandise was being sold or to right into Tomorrowland to ride Space Mountain. I opted to head into Tomorrowland to get something to eat at Tomorrowland Terrace before making my way back to Main Street to find my friends.

The big ceremony was to begin at 10:00am and there were video screens set up all over the park so that everyone would have a chance to see what was going on. We found a spot in front of Coke Corner before all of Main Street became a sea of of golden Mickey ears. The ceremony began with Art Linkletter recalling time he spent with Walt Disney and ended with Walt’s daughter, Diane Disney Miller, reading his dedication speech from opening day. Bob Iger, Michael Eisner, and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger also made appearances along the way, but those were the best parts.

Afterward, as the massive crowd slowly thinned, I received a very pleasant surprise. A woman emerged from the crowd and threw her arms around me almost before I recognized who it was. It was my friend S. She’s the kind of person who hugs you like she means it and a hug from her right at that moment, when the energy of the day seemed to be at its height, was the perfect complement to whole experience and is at the heart of my memories of that day.

The rest of the day is a bit of a blur. There was the MousePlanet meet-up at Hungry Bear in the afternoon, trying to nap in the Opera House, fireworks, a group ride on Space Mountain, and the cupcakes. Way too many cupcakes.

Looking back on that day, that Sunday in Disneyland, and that hug from S, I’m reminded of all the Sundays that I’ve spent there and all the people I’ve met on those Sundays. Some have been acquaintances confined to those Sunday visits, while others have become close friends and important parts of my life. Never would I have thought that an introvert such as myself would be surrounded by such wonderful people.

For example, some friends have a voice activated R2-D2—a Wall-E version of that seems like a no-brainer. Well, last night I came across this Gearlog story (by way of Engadget) that would appear to be just that.

Ultimate Wall-E is a programmable robot with 10 separate motors and sensors that will let him react to his surroundings. He’ll be out sometime this summer for $190 but will be introduced to the public at Maker Faire this weekend (not the 29th as mentioned in the Engadget story).

Users will be able to create an unlimited number of creatures and let them loose into a play area to see how they will look and move in-game. Once Spore is released in September, they will be able to import their creations into the full game.

EA did something similar with The Sims, releasing an item creator ahead of the actual game to generate buzz. That turned out to be a great move as user-generated content became a huge factor in the success of that game. Spore will have a more fully integrated infrastructure for user-generated content from the beginning, so it is likely that this tool will have a greater impact on the long-term success of the game.

I will definitely need to make a computer upgrade before the full game is released, but it is not likely to happen before the Creature Creator is released. Hopefully, my current computer will be able to handle it.