I guess Hollywood is finally listening to what consumers really want out of a film. You put some ninjas in this movie and you’ve got a holy trifecta of sweetness.
Also, Anthony Hopkins should narrate. And Morgan Freeman. They could double up and recite the lines at the same time. It would make up for the atrocity that is “Disaster Movie”.
This is what happens when the internet is used for good.
I like the idea of Chatroulette, but it seems to sadly fail in the execution. The setup is that you connect to random people across the world for a period of time via your webcam. It’s like Omegle, but with visual stimuli. While I haven’t actually tried the service yet, here is Geek Sugar-commenter Al Pavangkanan’s impression of it.
Typical chatroulette session: penis, penis, penis, jerk, bunch of kids, penis, penis, bunch of kids, penis, jerk, penis, normal person
I wouldn’t want to throw off the delicate balance they have going by adding another “normal person” to the mix, (nor do I wish to make anyone jealous by whipping out my “bunch of kids”) so I’ll keep my webcam chats confined to family members living far away for the nonce. Maybe someday I’ll go on and, when I do, I hope I get someone cool, like the French Moleskine guy.
Faith in humanity: +2 points.
Found at Geekadelphia.com
There’s a debate quietly raging out there on the web, about where girls fit into geek culture. Some male geeks think these ladies are just posing, wearing a bikini and a Stormtrooper helmet just to appeal to the lascivious natures of the many, many, unwashed hordes of male geeks out there. There are undoubtedly some falsely-bespectacled ladies out there who fit this description, but they are the exception, not the rule.
Let me make one thing clear: girl geeks ARE geek culture, at least as much as male geeks are. The girls who are posing are eventually found out when asked to weigh in on the merits of asynchronous packet-switch technology, but the majority of geeky girls are geeky because they honestly enjoy nerdy stuff and have found a place where they fit in. One becomes a geek by actions. I didn’t embrace my geeky side for many years. I didn’t consider myself a geek until a friend pointed out that the things that I love tend to be very geeky: comic books, science fiction novels, cult films, building websites, learning PHP, gadgets, taking things apart, performing social experiments, trivia, video games, soldering electrical components in my bass guitars, etc. I was a geek long before I identified as one, and many geek guys and girls out there are the same way.
And the posers? Well, they’re simply trying to affect the mannerisms and style of a culture they like, and that’s okay too. People have been doing that for many years. Sure, they rob true geek-girls of credibility, but no more than handsome guys who fake an Italian accent rob real Italian guys of credibility. If geek girls have got a problem with the posers, they’ll take care of them on their own or, more likely, ignore them because they are of no consequence. The system will regulate itself.
The fact that some geek girls use their femininity to attract followings on social media is just part of them being feminine entities on the web. Pretty girls attract followers, fascinating people attract followers, hence pretty girls who also happen to be fascinating people attract TONS of followers. Many geeks are particularly fascinating people (especially to other geeks), so geek girls tend to have a lot of followers too. I follow many geek girls on Twitter (as well as an enormous herd of geek guys) because they are interesting and offer a refreshing perspective. Really, though, what the hell do I care that they’re girls? I’m married, happily. That effectively takes attraction out of the equation for me when it comes to following people or interacting with them through social media.
Do I think it’s a little lame that if I were a girl who played bass, coded my own PHP, and “drew” my own webcomic, I would have 10 times as many followers as I do now, as a male who does all that stuff? Yes. But that’s why I wear that oddly feminine hat in my Twitter avatar pic, to help bridge the sex-gap a little. But I certainly don’t hold this against any geek girls out there. If I did, I’d be an asshole.
I’m all for women getting involved in areas of culture that have long been held as the last bastions of men. Fresh perspective is always needed and we men tend to allow our little worlds to stagnate sometimes, in much the same way that cultural areas dominated by women can benefit from a male perspective. Guy geeks need only see a geek girl doing what she loves to understand that they are pretty much just like us.
The battle rages on. Guy geeks not taking girl geeks seriously, girl geeks saying that men are a bunch of sexist jerks for not taking them seriously, and geeks from both teams showing up because the word “sex” was mentioned. Speaking of which, anyone interested in seeing a snowball fight between Lara Croft and Slave Leia? At least with that, the sexism is overt and easy to spot.
Check out this post by GeekGirlDiva for more about the mythological geek girl.
My new webcomic now has its own website. If you like laziness, movies, comic books, chicanery, piffle, grammar, mustaches, turn-of-the-century gentlemen, and occasional humor, you can find the adventures of Phineas and Tim at:
We’ve already covered such deep and meaningful topics as the Incredible Hulk’s genitals and… err… Han Solo’s genitals. An unintentional theme, I assure you.
Just remember, for better or worse, the Geek Sauce webcomic wouldn’t be possible without your support. Thanks for clicking!
The wife and I celebrated our fifth anniversary by going out to dinner with friends, then going to see Avatar in 3D. Between those events, though, we had some time to kill. Positioned geographically between the Olive Garden and the movie theater megaplex, there was a place that the wife has been wanting to check out for the last few weeks: The Burlington Coat Factory. I thought we might get to see the factory floor and, hope beyond hope, a few coat-making robots, but, alas, it was a department store. To waste some time we tried on coats, many of which made me look like I was attempting to wear an already-inflated life raft. The wife ended up buying a purse, because she absolutely gay for purses like that.
And then she found the hat section. Disappointingly for me, there were only women’s hats. She tried on a few and asked me to take a few pictures with her camera phone. So I did.
Then she informed me that it was my turn. I told her to forget about it, that I wasn’t going to embarrass myself by trying on what were clearly women’s hats, and that IF I tried on ONE hat for her pleasure (sicko) and she took a picture? Well, that the picture would never ever make it online, no way, no how, not in a million years. I shall NOT be made a fool in front of the Internets!
That was, of course, before I saw how the picture came out. I don’t usually like how I look in photographs, but this one? Weapons-Grade Hawtness. Seriously. Yellow is the new R-Pattz.
After that fun, we went over to the cinemas and saw Avatar in 3D. After all the hoopla and what with the phrase “game-changer” being thrown around so much, I was disappointed that it didn’t completely change my life, make my hair grow in thicker, and give me clear, beautiful skin. It was pretty damn good though and I think the wife may have summed it up best when she turned to me as we walked out of the theater and said, “I want to be a blue cougar-person! ME! I WANT THAT! ME ME ME!”
There certainly was a lot of blue skin in that movie. And there were flying raptors. With so many reviews out there and the fact that it’s already come and gone from the public eye, there’s not much else to say. Was it worth seeing? Definitely. Were the effects really that great? Heck yes, they were amazing, the best I’ve ever seen. Was the story epic? Eh, no. It was predictable. Were the female Na’vi sexy? Disturbingly so!
A good time was had by all. The spirit of adventure that night was not only followed; it was captured, skinned, and is now a decorative throw-rug in the bathroom. After five years, I’m still totally gay for my wife. Marriage, dear Internets, is a helluva drug.
Although I promised myself when I started this blog that I would avoid writing about political issues like I avoid watching films/shows that feature Andy Dick, I regard the following statement as more than political; these are human issues, fundamentally rooted in who we are as a somewhat intelligent species on this planet. I’ll gladly leave the reporting and commentary on your run-of-the-mill seat-swapping and adulterous philandering scandals to more qualified, albeit duller, bloggers.
To my friends and family, my condemnation of the Catholic Church’s actions regarding child abuse, gay rights, and evolutionary ignorance is (or should be) well known. I watch the local (California) news with my mouth agape and my mind reeling and twitching, wondering how we humans, who have come so far in areas of technology, art, science, and medicine, can fail so spectacularly when it comes to basic decency towards our fellow man.
When our grandchildren look up at us someday and ask why our generation allowed other human beings to be openly persecuted and denied basic civil rights and access to the knowledge that would have saved their lives, I won’t know what to say, other than that many of us fought against it, but the vast majority simply did nothing, never stood up, gave there silent assent, and allowed it to happen for so long. I hold hope that in time our actions may be excused as ignorance, but I know right now that it’s simply not the case; it’s blind animosity, fear, inertia, and political kowtowing to religious juggernauts with ample campaign money who are the true enemies of mankind, the forces working maliciously against a better world.
With unmatched eloquence, Stephen Fry gave the following speech at the Intelligence² debate, and touched on quite a few points that were very interesting (the Church’s campaign of lies regarding the use of condoms in AIDS-ravaged Africa, Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus, etc.) and went on to propose an innovative, if somewhat unlikely, way that the Church might go about fixing things.
This happens more often than you’d think. The trick is to stop the training before getting into hand-to-fin combat and edged weapons.
“No, I swear, it was the dolphin! The dolphin acted alone! You have to believe me!”
Like all of my desktop wallpaper, I don’t know exactly where I picked this up but this sweet Pink Floyd/Star Wars mashup was created by James Lillis. You can see some cool t-shirts created by James by following this link.
Click to embiggen.
I’ve been working (writing articles) so much that the outside world feels shocking and new to me again. The air is crisper, the car engines are throatier, and the roaming gangs of turkeys in my neighborhood? Well, they’re warblier than ever.
I’ve been mostly writing for Demand Studios lately, which I really enjoy as it gives me the chance to make a decent living while indulging in my favorite pastime: being wickedly obsessive over things for a short burst of time, learning everything possible about it, then filing it away in the back of my brain. Then, later, topics bubble back up to the surface of my brain and come right out of my mouth with very little realization on my part. Like the time when I explained to the bag-girl at the local grocery store about how to bore-sight a bolt-action rifle. In retrospect, I don’t think she was very interested.
I’ve also been working on a multi-part article for EmailServiceGuide.com on Email Marketing. My latest post (Part 2) is a review of MailChimp, ConstantContact, EmailBrain, and LetterPop and a few reasons why it’s better to go with a third-party email marketing website than just trying to do mass-email blasts yourself.
The holidays are done and gone, and yet the most important days of the year for me are still to come. The wife was born on Valentine’s Day, which makes that date particularly important for us. We’ll be going out to Dim Sum and possibly minigolfing for that occasion. Because what else says “Happy Birthday” and “Let’s Get It On” like minigolfing, right? And, in addition to that, our five year wedding anniversary is on Feb. 11th! I keep telling the wife that five years is the “wood anniversary” but she’s just not having it. We’ll probably be doing dinner and a movie that night, nothing huge, just some quiet time to enjoy each other’s company. And then we’ll probably just come home and pwn some noobs on Halo 3 until the wee hours of the morning.
On the blog-front, I’ll be moving my little Geek Sauce webcomic over to its own domain in the next few weeks (www.geek-sauce.com), so it’ll have a new home. Check back next Friday for the third episode.
Tootle, pip.
That’s the worst name ever. It makes it seem soft, not sleek and cool. It makes it seem like you might rip it if you’re not careful. It’s so close to “iPod” that it invites confusion. I won’t even get into the whole slew of feminine-product jokes on this one. I’m better than that and, for crap’s sake, this is a family blog. Sort of.
Why not the “iTablet”? Or the “iTouch XL”? Or boost the buyer’s ego by calling it the “iSmart”? Or maybe just break with your whole lower-case iTheme and call it “The All-New Apple Hoopla”? Oh, no, wait, I’ve got it: “The HyperTouch”. See, doesn’t that sound awesome? Call me next time, Apple, and we’ll brainstorm.
According to Gizmodo, the iPad does not support Flash, doesn’t have a built-in camera, doesn’t support USB (unless you’ve got a special adapter), has a big ugly touchscreen keyboard, and does not support multi-tasking. You really can’t have more than one application open at the same time? That is ridiculous. This thing really is just a big iPod Touch. Which is okay, I guess, but certainly not the huge technological breakthrough we were all hoping for.
Check out 8 Things That Suck About The iPad on Gizmodo.
