This Week in Geekdom

Hi everyone, and I don't know if it's technically a convention, but best wishes for a happy event (con) to those of you at SxSW this weekend. I've never been, but that seems like a really unique experience. Maybe the GIR and I will add it to the List of Events to Try Out (along with Emerald City Comic Con and SPIEL). Anyhow, on the subject of cons, we're finished decompressing from last week's PAX East 2015 and are ramping up preparations for Gen Con, which is only 135 days away as of this writing. Gah! There'll be plenty more written about the latter in the coming weeks but, for now, let's get down to This Week in Geekdom.

Books

Image Source: the Washington Post

On Friday the world got a bit darker with the passing of Sir Terry Pratchett. 

Bill Watterson gave this extremely rare interview to the Washington Post and talked about why you should definitely get your eyes on his new book.

The upcoming Star Wars novel Star Wars: Lords of the Sith will add a new layer of diversity to the characters that inhabit that galaxy far, far away.

Comics

Authorities in the Cayman Islands announced late this past week that they were suspending their search for DC/Marvel artist Norman Lee, who is now listed as having been lost at sea.

Movies/TV

It's one of the the most prolific sound effects in the history of film: the Wilhelm Scream.

People of Springfield, Illinois be warned: Cobra Commander has been given control of your city!

Netflix regularly invites its developers to mess around with its code, which sometimes yields amazing results. Other times, like at this year's first 'hack day', they end up with amusing, if wholly impractical, things like being able to port the streaming service into an original NES.

HBO is clamoring to have Game of Thrones stretch into 10 seasons rather than the originally planned, ties-back-to-the-number-of-books number of 7.

Kevin Smith has confirmed that he's working on a sequel to the 1995 cult film Mallrats.

Science/Technology

IBM is allegedly working on a Bitcoin-eqsue technology that would create viable all-digital currency.

It's been over a year since China's Chang'E-3 mission successfully landed on the moon, but its lunar rover, Yutu, is still working hard and sending back novel data about our favorite satellite. 

We've chatted a bit about some of the ambitious and sometimes fantastical projects that NASA is working on. On their present to-do list is this: building the world's most efficient passenger plane.

Image Credit: NASA

Our Sun is so omnipresent that it's kind of astounding to think that we didn't even know the particulars of how it worked until the 2000s.

Ever wondered what would happen if you stuck your head in a particle accelerator?

Today is the 30th birthday of the .com domain name.

General Awesomeness

Artist Stuart Witts is big on minimalist posters and, in his latest round of work, he brings us these interpretations of vintage computers.

Antarctica just had its first sunset of 2015. Here's a shot of the otherworldly frozen terrain.

Crowdfundables for Your Consideration

There are 10 days remaining to lend your support to the legal visual novel Regeria Hope. The Kickstarter for all this courtroom goodness ends on March 25th.

Adorable Pandaring, the fast and, yes, very cute game by Asmadi Games is fully funded, so there's little stopping you from using the Kickstarter to get your own copy of panda panda pandas!

Speaking of fully funded, Dwarven Forge's latest campaign, this time featuring urban versions of their trademark terrain tiles, is over 1000% funded, meaning you can benefit from their many, many stretch goals if you support the Kickstarter now.

As always, hope you all have an excellent week ahead!