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Geek Culture

For no other reason than the geeky amusement it will provide, here’s Wil Wheaton in a clown sweater:

ensign_crusher_report_to_my_ready_room

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The Star Trek Movie’s Second Trailer

by Joey deVilla on November 18, 2008

Here it is, the second trailer of J.J. Abrams’ upcoming Star Trek movie, all hellzapoppin’ and complete with an homage to the "chicken run" scene from Rebel Without a Cause.

I’m keeping in mind that it’s the job of the people who produce trailers to make a movie seem more interesting and exciting than it actually might be, but I’m still holding out hope that Abrams has been taking the story-crafting skill he hasn’t been using on the TV series Fringe and pouring it into Trek. I guess we’ll find out in a few months…

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The Star Wars Storybook

by Joey deVilla on November 18, 2008

It’s a busy day for me: I’m gearing up for my first presentation on behalf of "The Empire", which will happen at Microsoft’s TechDays event in Calgary (Wednesday, December 10th and Thursday, December 11th). More on that in a later post.

In honour of this preparation, I thought: here’s an opportunity to riff on the theme of “The Empire” (and to provide you with some reading material)  — I can present the storybook version of Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope. Of course, back in those days, it was known simply as plain ol’ Star Wars.

The book came with a vinyl record that was meant to be played along with the book; I’ve included its audio below in MP3 format:

The voice work on the record is terribly off – whoever’s playing Darth Vader sounds more like Count Dracula, but you have to keep in mind the book was released in 1979, well before Star Wars had firmly established itself as part of the pop culture canon. Enjoy!

star_wars_story_book_part_1
star_wars_story_book_part_2

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Linux Bloat

by Joey deVilla on August 8, 2008

Slide: Linux Symposium T-shirt sizes in 1999 (mostly medium) and 2008 (mostly XL, followed by large and XXL)

It could be that programmers are getting larger, but it also could be that Linux Symposium is using American Apparel shirts. They’re supposedly not made in sweatshops and are made from really soft cotton, but they’re about a size smaller than the corresponding Hanes Beefy-T’s.

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Fear and Loathing at RailsConf

by Joey deVilla on June 26, 2008

In Fear and Loathing at RailsConf, Giles Bowkett examines what it means to “Keep RailsConf weird”. It’s worth a read, especially if you’re attending, planning or gate-crashing RubyFringe.

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2008 Batman, Meet 1966 Batman

January 4, 2008

The Adam West Batman, hurling his batarang

What happens when you take the audio from the latest trailer for the upcoming Batman movie, “The Dark Night” and mix it with scenes from the campy 1966 Batman movie with Adam West?

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“Now, While Rails is Weak, We Must Strike!”

January 2, 2008

Preview: Rebel pilot briefing from “Star Wars: A New Hope”, with some Rails-specific changes made to the display of the Death Star

Of all the responses to Zed Shaw’s Rails is a Ghetto rant, the one in Jesse Stay’s blog is the most hilarious…

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The Star Wars Holiday Special

December 17, 2007

So Bad, Even George Lucas Wants Nothing to Do With It!
Even as an eleven-year-old back in 1978, I knew as soon as voice-over went…

with special guest stars…Beatrice Arthur! Art Carney! Diahann Carroll! The Jefferson Starship! Harvey Korman!

…that something was about to go terribly, terribly wrong with the Star Wars Holiday Special, a show so terribly [...]

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Pythagorean Pick-Up [Updated]

December 15, 2007

Don’t you wish stuff like this actually happened?
Click the comic to see it on its original page.Comic courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.
You get bonus bragging rights if you spotted the missing precondition.

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Automan!

October 31, 2007

I’ve been tied up with all sorts of work- and life-related things, hence the lack of posts over the last few days.
By way of apology, allow me to offer the so-bad-it’s-good nerd TV show from the 1980s, Automan! Loosely based on the movie Tron and driven by the then-new interest in personal computers (this was [...]

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Geekery Meets Pop Culture

October 20, 2007

A Different Kind of “Code Smell”
First, let’s look at a new ad for Axe body spray…
Image courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.
I think the suggestion in the ad goes double if you start pointing out what’s wrong with the code (“you == understand.this? get as an object name? Couldn’t they have hired a real programmer to [...]

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Shipping Container Geekery

October 19, 2007

Enterprise Computing in a Shipping Container
The idea of setting up a computing center in a shipping container isn’t new. Sun has Project Blackbox, “a prototype of the world’s first virtualized datacenter–built into a shipping container and optimized to deliver extreme energy, space, and performance efficiencies”. The idea is create a computing center that you could [...]

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Nerd Culture Tidbits

October 12, 2007

I’m working on an article (working title: Walled Garden…or BEER Garden?), so here’s something to keep you amused in the meantime…
My Obsessions, Circa 1980
Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.
The “Star Wars Trumpet” Video
Well, I can’t make a reference to Battlestar Galactica (the 80’s version) without making one to Star Wars, can I? How ’bout the [...]

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The Winning Bid on the “Ms. Master Chief” Statuette

October 9, 2007

Remember the eBay auction for the statuette of “Master Chief” — the character from the Halo series of games — recast as a hot woman?
(In case you missed it, I covered “Ms. Master Chief in this posting.)
The auction ended last Thursday at 9:47 Eastern, and the winning bid was US$2,222, placed by “vetusnox”.
My heartiest congratulations [...]

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“Facehooked” T-Shirt Design

October 4, 2007

[Found via Illustration Friday] Luke Ramsey submitted this “Facehooked” design to Threadless. Let’s hope it becomes available soon!
Want to see another cool T-shirt design? There’s one on my personal blog, The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

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