Inception has made its mark as one of the most thought provoking films ever made in recent history. What surprises me is that Inception’s IP isn’t being milked for what it’s worth. Call it respect for the franchise or something much deeper. I don’t know. Nonetheless, when I read about a card game based on INCEPTION from planet China, I was intrigued.

Yes, that’s serious trademark stuff there. But that’s not stopping it from being way epic. The art is amazing. The gameplay — well I really have no idea how it plays but I can surmise that the game has the following components based on the subtexts and captions:

a. You can either play as one of the Extractors that needs to get into the final dream level or play as the Mark that needs to prevent the Extractors from achieving their goal

b. Winning the game entails getting through all four stages and opening the “safe” to unlock the secret of the Mark. Extractors typically work together but there can only be one winner. If, by the time the draw pile is finished the mission isn’t accomplished, everyone wakes up and the Mark wins.

Looks pretty straightforward. Well ,the mechanics are. But the character cards start to boggle you after you do an initial look through. In fact if you take a look further, it goes farther away from INCEPTION and puts familiar characters into play: Nicolas Cage from Lord of War, Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender, Ezio from Assassin’s Creed, a hybrid of Joker / Sith Lord (with matching lightning fingers!) .. and a couple more.

Mind-boggling. It’s a total fan mashup that makes use of Inception’s plot to bring forth game mechanics that don’t seem to suck.

[SOURCE]

Where I come from, pirated DVDs are commonplace, and I am surprised that I never came across one that looks just like this particular version. Not that I am promoting the creation and purchase of these illegal items, but they do have their uses. Just take one more look at the back of the DVD cover up there, will you? It showcases the ingenuity of whoever made the cover. (According to a commenter in the original article where I found the images, the review is actually for another movie and that “Geirot Free Press” is actually “Detroit Free Press.”)

Here’s the cover of the DVD, which contains more elements that will make your eyebrows skyrocket.

With the exception of Baltar – everyone looks pretty good to me. Now I haven’t finished the entire series, so I don’t know if the end is really like “Saw.” I haven’t seen the Enterprise make an appearance as well. Stargate’s still MIA – at least in the version that I am watching, whatever that is. So tell me, BSG fanatics, am I missing out on not buying this particular version of the series? That would totally blow. Maybe I should go to the nearest bazaar and look for this copy.

The Chinese geeks were what came to mind when I found out about a group of four young men from Fudan University; and unlike the characters in the TV series, these guys are for real. Wang Xinyu, Xu Jian, Zhang Kan, and Lu Yuanda have become celebrities in their country and have even been dubbed as the “Chinese Big Bang Theory” guys.

I am not surprised in the least bit. Someone was bound to do a Big Bang Theory thing one of these days…

They started out making videos of themselves giving “lectures,” called Room 5023 Lectures. Obviously, that’s the number of their room at the dormitory. Their room is typical of what you’d expect from four young men living together in school – messy, cramped, and cluttered. There’s something special about it, though – everything can be controlled remotely. In a dorm where there is no cable TV access, these men somehow have their own cable TV (thanks to a computer they configured). They also have all sorts of inventions lying around.

So what has made them famous (in China, at least)? I watched some of their video series on their web site i5023, and I have to admit I didn’t understand a thing despite the translation that Google Chrome offered me. It seems that they are having a lot of fun, though, and I actually found myself chuckling every now and then even if I didn’t understand a word they were saying. They’re definitely not Sheldon and Leonard, though!

I would really love to understand their videos. Anyone here speak/understand Chinese???

Take a look at this rather bizarre bike. Apart from the fact that its wheels don’t have spokes, they’re not round either.

The front wheel is a rounded off pentagon while the back one is a reuleaux triangle (yeah, I went to Wikipedia too).

Apparently it’s quite smooth to ride, though it wasn’t completed in time for the Beijing Olympics that it was supposed to be in sponsorship for.

Never mind, it wouldn’t have won any medals.

Take this Gemei HD-660. Sadly it’s only available in China at the moment, but it features a 4.3-inch LCD with a 480×272 resolution and can handle most popular video and audio formats (AVI, FLV, MPEG, MP3, WMA, FLAC and more).

Now, obviously, playing back 720p video (or even standard DVD video) on something with this resolution is fairly pointless as you won’t see the difference but it comes with an external video cable so you can hook it up to a TV.

It even has a remote control so you could take it with you, plug it in to a home entertainment system and control it from the comfort of your chair. 32GB of memory means you should be able to fit a decent amount of high definition video onto it, or tons of music.

(Via Akihabara News)

In what can only be called another example of its power, China has launched its own High Definition standard, HD NVD, thus escaping any licensing fees.

The HD NVD standard has been realized with support from exclusively Chinese companies and the Chinese Government. Technically HD NVD will offer discs up to 12GB and still make use of the more classic red lasers. Because red lasers, known from CD players and DVD players, are used manufacturing will be possible in existing factories thus reducing production costs massively.

Biggest problem with this new standard will be the movie studios. Will they allow their content to be released on this platform in China? Then again, they might as well collaborate with the Chinese Government because otherwise they will find their products on the black market. But are they _that_ smart already?

Via Numerama (French).