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Stabbed in the Eye with Nerd Awesomeness

by Corey on July 24, 2010 in Alderdice, Comics, Corey, Entertainment, Games

As you may have guessed, I’m not at Comic-Con International this weekend. Thanks to the magic of the interwebs, though, I don’t have to worry about missing out on updates, livestreams, photos, and video from the hundreds of panels taking place. Seriously, people. DC and Marvel have a panel going on in just about every time block of the Con.

Better yet, I don’t have to worry about being stabbed in the eye by some crazy guy because I’m sitting in Hall H with 4,000 other people hoping to see the cast of the Avengers movie.

I guess we’ll just call it a break even situation. That is until I stumbled across this little bit of awesome-sauce this afternoon: the newest trailer for the Sony Entertainment/DC Comics massively multiplayer online (MMO) game DC Universe Online. Jim Lee, Geoff Johns, Marv Wolfman, and other major creators have spent the last five years working on bringing the world’s greatest super-heroes to life for the PS3 and PCs.

Check out the trailer and join me for a little chat, okay?

Video Games | DC Universe Online | Exclusive Who Do You Trust Trailer HD

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

You know what? Just go ahead and watch it again…or five more times. I’ll wait.

Back again? Good. CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS? I’m not even sure where to begin.

Corey’s Top 10 Head ‘Sploding Things in the DC Universe Online Trailer

10. Superman’s five-o’clock shadow.

9. Cyborg looks awesome. Please, DC. Realize this character has the potential to be a major player in the DC Universe and give him the respect he demands.

8. Joker uses Harley Quinn as a human shield.

7. Every hero in special armor means things are really, really bad.

6. Wonder Woman with a delicious Kryptonite-filled interior.

5. Deathstroke using Batman as a piñata thanks to Wonder Woman’s lasso.

4. You can never go wrong with Kevin Conroy as Batman and Mark Hamill as Joker. Seriously. After twenty years of two fine actors playing the characters, you’d think audiences would want the producers to move on to someone else. No…such…thing.

3. Superman burns off Black Adam’s face with his heat vision!

2. Black Adam calls down the lightning and destroys the entire city. C’mon. Why doesn’t the Shazam family get more love in the comics?

1. A storyline that is good enough to be a movie. Stop wasting time on these direct to DVD movies and simply make this happen. Villains win. Time travel. The trinity. Awesome animation. Great voice acting.

At least I know what I’ll be doing at 3 a.m. this November when Elliott won’t sleep.

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To the victor…

by admin on January 17, 2009 in Games

…go the Whoppers.

Managing to sneak in a sacrifice before Facebook banned the app – the hubs snagged a free Whopper. For the win!

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My New Appointment as Secretary of “Getting the Hell Out of Here”: Adventures in the Obama Spider-Man Variant

by admin on January 14, 2009 in Entertainment, Games, Literature, Memes, Merchandise, News, Politics, Science and Technology, Stephanie

If you’re a big ole’ comic book geek or a raving Obamaniac – then there’s a good chance that you went freaking ape-shit crazy today over the Spiderman Obama variant cover that hit stores today. If you’re neither of the two – allow me to fill you in:

You know how sometimes TV Guide will put out a week’s issue with a series of 4 different covers with different cast-mates of [Current T.V. show]. On the inside – it’s the same T.V. Guide. Same times. Same shows. It’s just the cover that’s different. With a comic book variant – there will be something sparkly and super duper special about a cover that is different from the one that’s in mass production. So say – out of 10 issues of T.V. Guide – 9 of them have Hurley on them, and only one has Sawyer. Sawyer is the variant. Got it? Easy peasy. Comic book with an insert about Spiderman saving Obama at the inauguration. Easy. Right?

Wrong. SO wrong. Because the one variant is invariably worth more than the regular issues.

But the thing about this variant: it was an [Edit: Super special screwy] incentive plan for Marvel. Marvel tells the comic book shop, “Say you ordered x-number of Spiderman issues last time. For every, say, 20 extra issues you order, we’ll give you a variant.” Not a big deal for your gigantic comic book stores, they can easily order more, somewhat difficult for your lower sized chains. There’s the first print ultra-limited edition with a blue background, that’s the one that came out today. So folks were lining up all over the place today to get their hands on the Obama variant of Spiderman. Here’s how I spent the most terrifying morning of 2009.

So – my resident comic book geek hubs – has been feverishly asking me to go pick up a copy of the variant for like, the past week. There’s only one comic book store in town and it opens at 10 a.m.

Hubs: “You have to get there early. Get there before 10.”

Moi: “Yeahyeahyeahwhatever.”

Hubs: “No. I’m being serious. You really need to get there early.”

Moi: “Mmmkay.”

So I get there at 9:55 and there are three middle aged men, god bless ‘em, standing in line outside the door. Part of me wanted to say, “If there are only three of you – you probably don’t need to be in a line.” But this was the Whopper Virgin in me coming out because, as I learned, fewer people does not mean less insanity.

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When the Universe beckons…Tetris treats head traumas.

by admin on January 8, 2009 in Games, Human Behavior, Information

I figure that the universe must be nudging me toward this nugget if I found the article on the New Scientist while hearing about it on G4′s coverage of the CES. Apparently – not only was Tetris useful in treating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder – but has also been shown to help treat head injuries. So – let this be a lesson to you – keep a Tetris app on your iPhone in the event you find yourself in a bar fight, spontaneous street hockey game or nasty Vespa accident.

Emily Holmes and colleagues at the University of Oxford theorised that Tetris would work like a “cognitive vaccine,” and immunise patients from future haunting memories of wars, crimes or accidents.

This isn’t the first time video games have been used to treat PTSD. Psychologists and computer scientists have successfully deployed virtual reality scenes to treat Iraq war veterans, months or years after their tours ended.

What’s different about Holmes’ approach is that patients play the game within minutes of a traumatic experience. Tetris is so engrossing and mentally taxing that geometric shapes replace images of exploding grenades, car crashes and human carnage, her team hypothesises.

This seemed to work, according to a preliminary study published today in the journal PLoS ONE. Forty volunteers, aged 18 to 47, watched graphic 12-minute clips of a surgery, fatal car crashes, and a drowning. A half-hour later, twenty of the participants played Tetris for just 10 minutes. The other half sat quietly for the same time period.

Volunteers kept a diary of their thoughts for a week and returned to the lab for a follow-up visit. Overall, the Tetris players experienced fewer traumatic flashbacks than the control group — three versus seven, on average.

It’s too bad ‘Bejeweled’ doesn’t have the same effect.

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Save the Date: March 24, 2009 – Ada Lovelace Day

by admin on January 7, 2009 in Advocacy, Games, Human Behavior, Information, Politics, Science and Technology, Videos

As a lover of all things internet, I just wanted to direct more attention to Boing Boing’s post about the Ada Lovelace Day pledge that’s going on for March 24th this year. Put yo’ bloggin’ pants on and git to goin’!

From the pledge via BoingBoing

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Over 300 people have already signed a pledge to publish a blog post, video blog or podcast episode about a woman they admire on 24th March 2009. We need 700 more people for the pledge to be successful.

Recent research by psychologist Penelope Lockwood discovered that women need to see female role models more than men need to see male ones. But in the tech world women’s contributions often go unacknowledged and role models are hard to find. Ada Lovelace Day is a chance for us to sing the praises of the women who make tech tick: entrepreneurs, innovators, sysadmins, programmers, designers, games developers, hardware experts, tech journalists, tech consultants… The list of tech-related careers is almost endless and we want to see examples from all of them!

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Minding your international manners

by admin on January 4, 2009 in Games, Human Behavior, Information

girltalk.blogs.com

Consider yourself global? Intercultural? Worldly? Think you could be plopped down at any international table for a meal and blend in with the locals? Or are you just struggling to not repulse your fellow diners each day?

If so – test your knowledge on this quick flash quiz on international dining customs and see how your manners stack up.

Don’t Gross Out the World

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