Category: Around the Intertubes

Desert Bus for Hope 4 rolls out… for the children!

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As a liberal-minded geek, I try and donate to charity whenever I can because I believe that helping other people and being altruistic is a pretty cool thing. Also as a kid, I spent almost an entire week strapped to a bed at the Childrens Hospital of Orange County in California after a kidney surgery.

As a result, every year since Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik from Penny Arcade started their annual toy drive called Child’s Play, I’ve tried to buy a toy from the list that I know will be used to help a kid just like the one I was. Whole groups of people have created satellite organizations to help raise more money for the charity, and my favorite out of all of them is Desert Bus.

Two years have passed since I originally blogged about their efforts, and I thought that this time, I could recap a little bit about the typical things you could see the Desert Bus Crew doing if you happen to tune into the live driver cam at 4:00 am local time in Victoria, B.C. for about an hour: Continue reading “Desert Bus for Hope 4 rolls out… for the children!“ →

How Padme Amidala, Yoda, and the Internet are standing up to bullies for a Star Wars-loving mini-geekette

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Katie and Catherine Taber are proud that they love Star Wars (c) Carrie Goldman and Dana Patrick

No matter what kind of geek you are, there’s something that all of us share in common which makes us different from aficionados, hobbyists, and dabblers.

When we were younger, we got teased and bullied. A lot.

In his book The Happiest Days of Our Lives, writer/actor Wil Wheaton wrote extensively of how being a little smarter and a little more shy than other kids in his elementary school classes lead to his taking one in the face during an “innocent” game of dodgeball. The fact that Wheaton went on to star as an actor in such geek-centric TV series like “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Eureka” doesn’t completely obscure the fact that he still feels and remembers that pain from over 25 years ago.

Katie, a first-grader in the metro Chicago area, had her own “dodgeball moment” recently. See, Katie really loves the Star Wars franchise. In fact, she loves it so much that according to her mother Carrie Goldman, a blogger at ChicagoNow.com, she asked for a Star Wars water bottle to go with her backpack when they went shopping for school supplies at the beginning of this school year. However, four days ago, Katie changed her mind about her special find: Continue reading “How Padme Amidala, Yoda, and the Internet are standing up to bullies for a Star Wars-loving mini-geekette” →

Trisha’s Quote of the Day: How Angelina Jolie gets around the Bechdel Test

Trisha Lynn

I felt it was a weird thing that every time you ask for a strong female role, it’s written in this strange way where it uses sexuality far too much. Or it’s all about being a woman and beating a man. So it wasn’t a surprise to me that the only way to do a strong female role properly was to not have originally written for a woman.

—The agent-and-publicist-less Angelina Jolie on why she decided to star in Salt, courtesy of the December issue of Vogue.

(Many thanks to indie blogger Anne Thompson for the link.)

Trisha’s Quote of the Day: When Webber pulled a Lucas

Trisha Lynn

Let me also point out that the Phantom sounds like a petulant child. Let’s compare some of his lines from the original: “Floating, falling, sweet intoxication/Touch me, trust me, savor each sensation.” Yeah, it’s a bit Chester the Molester, but at least he’s trying to be sexy. (And he could be pretty funny, too, especially at the expense of the managers and Piangi.) His new verbal pyrotechnics? “I don’t see the problem/This is ancient history!” I mean, I can hear a cheating husband say that on Springer any day of the week, though possibly not in song.

–LiveJournal user brouhaha, illustrating precisely why Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber never should have created Love Never Dies

(And now, I wonder if she’ll take requests to recap Jerry Springer: The Opera.)

Trisha’s Link of the Day: Well played, Rob Liefeld

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When I was a nascent comics fan in the mid-1990s, one of the most important things I learned about the art was that Rob Liefeld can’t draw feet.

Since then, I’ve learned that the former Marvel Comics wunderkind who created X-Force and one of the founding members of Image Comics also can’t draw women, men, guns, pouches, and quite a few other things. In addition, by not fixing these kinds of errors, I always got the impression that he didn’t seem to care that he was a bad artist; one family friend of his told me back then that he was “laughing all the way to the bank.”

Even now, after all these years, my impression of Liefeld and his work has never been a positive one… until now. Continue reading “Trisha’s Link of the Day: Well played, Rob Liefeld” →

Trisha’s Video of the Day: “Africa” by Toto with rain sound effects

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Considering what happened last Friday on Questionable Content by Jeph Jacques, I thought this a rather appropriate video to view heading into this week’s strips:

Perpetuum Jazzile is a Slovenian jazz choir which was founded in 1983. You can download some of their music at their site, and I strongly urge you to check out their online store as well.

Trisha’s Link of the Day: New tools for both spies and freedom fighters alike

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Police detain a protestor in the wake of the 2009 Iranian Election * Image courtesy of a Creative Commons license

When you think of the tools in a modern-day spy or investigative journalist’s toolbox, you picture tiny lipstick cameras or gigantic rooms housing servers dedicated to encryption and decryption. Now, thanks to a team at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, you can now add Yahoo!-owned photo hosting site Flickr and a home PC to that box.

According to Jim Giles at New Scientist.com, grad student Sam Burnett, assistant professor Nick Feamster, and professor Santosh Vempala have created a system that will allow a user to encrypt several news stories into digital images which can be uploaded to Flickr or perhaps any other widely used Internet .jpg hosting site.

Dubbed Collage, this program will be available for wide use in “a few weeks,” though the New Scientist.com article says it was available four days ago.

Though Mike Spector and Lauren A.E. Schuker at the Wall Street Journal say we’re about a month away from the rescue of the James Bond franchise (and other films and franchises) from ailing movie studio MGM by Spyglass Entertainment, I can’t stop thinking about what new and interesting gadgets, tools, and techniques will crop up in that film.

And considering that “Leverage” creator and writer John Rogers has said many times that he and his researchers find that what’s going on in reality is far more stranger than what they concoct for their idealized Crime World, I wouldn’t be surprised if Hardison hasn’t already downloaded this program into his hacker arsenal… just to be on top of things, you know?

Trisha’s Video of the Day: Hawaii gamers bring new meaning to the words “defending home base”

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When you’re gaming late at night at your favorite Internet cafe, you don’t expect to become fodder for your local news channel; however, that’s exactly what happened to some PC gamers in Hawaii last week:

Just like the reporters at local channel KHON, I don’t think that everyone in this sort of situation should fight back; however, given that the staff eventually knew who the alleged assailants were, I’m sure that Dylan Hays knew he’d be okay when he started fighting back.

Kudos to the midnight crew at PC Gamerz for defending their home.

Trisha’s Take: How Hollywood may still be “doing it wrong” in the world of web entertainment

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When it comes to being a writer or actor, we currently live in interesting times—and by “interesting” I’m using the “Chinese curse” definition of the word.

Computers and the Internet have not only opened up a new distribution method for people to see their work and give them money for it, but also a way for people to view their work and keep from giving them money for it. The main point of contention during the Writers Guild Strike of 2007-2008 and the threatened Screen Actors Guild Strike of 2008 was over residuals from “new media,” and how much a production studio would pay them for re-broadcasts of the material over time beyond its initial broadcast.

To briefly summarize, rather than use the old mathematical formula created in the 1980s when home video became a concern or wait a few years to see exactly how profitable distribution on “new media” is and create a new formula, the WGA wanted the producers’ guild (the AMPTP) to create a new formula right now which would potentially address any and all concerns about how writers would get paid for work that has the potential to be seen and consumed in innumerable ways that aren’t easily tabulated thanks to things like click rates and online piracy.

Because that formula hasn’t been perfected yet and online piracy is still a problem, anyone who wants to start releasing their content on the ‘net is trying to figure out who their loyal paying audience (aka their True Fans) is and how to best get a hold of that person’s entertainment dollar.

About a month ago, Indie Wire.com blogger Cameron Carlson went to the “Producing Web Entertainment” seminar at the American Cinematheque in California, and came away with eight things he learned about how to best reach an Internet-based audience. However, the people on that panel and the series they were talking about were people I’d never heard of personally, which made me wonder: Exactly who are these guys and why would I want to believe their words on this topic?

After doing lots of clicking and a bit of research, I present to you my own list of five things I think these particular content creators are doing correctly and incorrectly when it comes to reaching out to a ‘net-savvy audience: Continue reading “Trisha’s Take: How Hollywood may still be “doing it wrong” in the world of web entertainment” →

Keeping Tabs, SDCC Edition: Helen Mirren loves Harvey Pekar, and more

Trisha Lynn

Until a miracle happens and I’m able to justify spending gobs of money to go, it’s highly unlikely that I’m going to be able to provide the kind of coverage of Comic Con (aka “Nerd Prom”) or any other major geekfest that you deserve. However, what I can do now and going forward is to highlight the stuff that really turned my crank:

  • “The Gray Lady” may have been able to make the con relatable to its older readers and audiences, but Michael Buckner’s photograph of Dame Helen Mirren—star of the upcoming Red, based on the graphic novel by Warren Ellis—stole that panel’s show and put things in perspective by showing up in a T-shirt memorializing recently deceased American Splendor creator Harvey Pekar. I’d like to think he would have gotten a kick out of that. (Source: The New York Times)
  • Did you realize that there was an Iron Man anime series? No, not “animated” as in the 1994 TV series starring the voice of Airplane‘s Robert Hays as Tony Stark, but a new series created by Studio Madhouse (Ninja Scroll, Black Lagoon) in conjunction with Marvel Studios. At the SDCC panel, new executive vice president and head of television Jeph Loeb (“Heroes”) and Madhouse COO Masao Maruyama confirmed that the series will launch in the U.S. and Canada in 2011, after its debut in Japan on October 1 on the G4 network. Other Marvel anime series which will also appear on the network in the U.S. are Wolverine, X-Men and Blade, and it sounded like negotiations were forthcoming on whether or not all four would also appear on G4 in Canada. (Source: ANN)
  • If anyone took director Guillermo del Toro up on his offer to show him their work, I’d love to hear the story. No, seriously; this is what he told fans at his Q&A panel:

    “I cannot read screenplays, but if you have a portfolio, or you have a short you want me to see, fuck it, give it to me. If you see me on the floor, accost me,” he challenged the crowd. And he also gave his public email address for them to contact him.

    (Source: The Hollywood Reporter Heat Vision blog)

  • It was sing-a-long time at the “Big Bang Theory” panel, moderated by TV’s Wil Wheaton, where the Barenaked Ladies performed the entire theme song and not just the TV edit to a room full of fans. (Source: The Hollywood Reporter Live Feed blog)

More to come when I’m feeling less tired.