Oh geez, how in the name of Zod is this month rocketing along at this pace? As you guys can probably guess, work has, once again, been absconding away with just about all of my free time as of late. Fortunately there was a enough of a break in the proverbial clouds this past weekend to take in a showing of Civil War, but it seems that such nerdery will likely continue to be of the guerrilla variety for the majority of this year. We'll get into the nitty-gritty of that in a future post but, for now, let's get down to the Week in Geekdom!
Happy Sunday everyone. Yep, I'm right back in the studying swing of things, but even the specter of another exam won't overshadow PAX East next weekend. Unsurprisingly, PAX crept up faster than I'd have preferred given everything else that's been going on this year, so it's not likely that there'll be any cosplaying from me this time around (unless I can whip one of my old costumes into shape in the next week or so). As this will be my only opportunity to cosplay in 2016 (more on this in a future post), it'd be great if I can make it happen. In the meantime, let's get down to the Week in Geekdom!
Comics
It was explicitly pointed out to us during the course of Episode VII, but we will learn exactly why C-3PO's arm was red in the film thanks to a new comic: Star Wars Special: C-3PO #1.
We're more more than a year and a half away from Episode VIII, but the rampant speculation concerning the plot of the next installment of Star Wars abounds, thanks in part to J.J. Abrams himself.
Thank goodness DC can occasionally possess a lick of wherewithal. Batman: The Killing Joke, slated to make its debut at San Diego Comic Con in a few months, will be rated R.
Google is pushing forward with its crusade to bring self-driving cars to a road near you after filing these patents that will allow its autonomous autos to detect the turn signals of other vehicles.
How do you go about repairing a critical chip or component while travelling through space? Well, if NASA has anything to say about it, the solution may involve bugs that have been engineered to both eat and excrete metal.
We've been big proponents of 3D printing these four years past, so it's only natural that we get a bit excited about the latest possibilities the technology presents: printable food.
Wait...are we...actually back online? Yes! Thanks for bearing with me guys. The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of work, studying, actual test-taking, and recovery from said exam experience. As mentioned a few times in posts from earlier this year, this pattern is going to prevail for pretty much all of 2016. However, that doesn't stop us from reveling in this bit of freedom while we have it. On to the Week in Geekdom!
If you have not partaken in the Rogue One trailer do not pass go, do not collect $200, but instead watch here:
Though the trailer for Rogue One looks amazing, there are plenty of people questioning just why so much time and energy is being spent on what's arguably one of the weakest narratives in present Star Wars canon.
If you are still irked over the 'cliffhanger' ending to season six of the Walking Deadyou have plenty of company.
Who's ready for a new state of matter? Physicists at the University of Cambridge may have just brought us proof the existence of quantum spin liquid, a physical state previously only theorized to exist.
As always, best wishes for an excellent week ahead!
Hey guys. It's been a while, I know, and for that I sincerely apologize. I'm about a month out from taking the first of the professional designation exams that are slated for this year, so the past few weeks have been all about the studying. Conversely, that means only four more weeks and we can get back to our regularly scheduled Care and Feeding of Nerds! In the meantime, let's get down to the Week in Geekdom.
If you were among the legions of horror fans that were grief stricken following the cancellation of the reboot of Silent Hills you now have cause to rejoice: the reboot is back on.
Lead Mass Effect writer Chris Schlef is leaving Bioware to join the ranks of Bungie.
This is a nifty little visual sample of the original negative of Episode IV contrasted with what a team of specialists have been able to coax from that fragile bit of film:
Science/Technology
Just how fast is the D-Wave quantum computer relative to, say your average everyday PC? This fast.
Next month will begin the effective last scientific call for the discovery of WIMPs. What are WIMPs and why are they potentially so important? Read here.
Solar eclipses have been regarded by humanity as alternately fascinating and terrifying, but imagine a planetary configuration in which such eclipses lasted three and a half years.
Jupiter's moon, Europa, hosts possibly the best conditions for life to exist on a non-terrestrial segment of our solar system, so why is it so hard to get out there to confirm that?
Hi guys. Happy weekend and best wishes for an excellent last day of con to all those of you attending PAX South right now. I know, it's been a little while since a new post went up on here. As mentioned earlier in the month, studying has been consuming just about every spare minute of my time and will continue to do so for the majority of 2016. Fortunately, a bit of a break will allow us to get down to This Week in Geekdom!
More disappointment for everyone who backed and/or is eagerly anticipating the release of the distinctly Megaman-ish platformer Mighty No. 9, it's now slated to come out in the spring of this year, assuming no additional delays.
This is the story of how a cousin of the zebra went extinct a century ago and how South African geneticists have been able to bring the species back to life.
2016 is off and running and we're officially back from our holiday break. Woot! Let's keep the momentum going, shall we? Down to the Week in Geekdom!
Books
Much to the surprise of exactly no one who has been following the exploits of George R.R. Martin, the author officially conceded what we've long since expected: that Winds of Winter will not be ready before Game of Thrones returns to the airwaves.
Movies/TV
George Lucas has taken just about every possible position with regard to the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney and the subsequent development of Episode VII but, following the smashing success of the latter, the director is no longer attempting to conceal his angst.
These are 12 of the most burning questions we have concerning the future of the Marvel cinematic universe. Fortunately, we'll likely get some answers to these this year.
Science/Technology
If you're on the hunt for fun, informative and all-around excellent sciencey podcasts, look no further.
What if the various computer programs you use every day never needed another update again but, rather, were continuously self-correcting? MIT and Adobe are teaming up to develop exactly that.
Happy New Year everyone! I hope
that 2016 is already treating you well and that the year is off to a great
start. Composing this post has become a fun tradition in itself both because it
elicits a little nostalgia when I look over similar posts from previous years
(speaking of, here are the entries for 2015, 2014, and 2013) and looking ahead
to all the forthcoming awesome is always fun. So let's get to it, shall we?
New Site Stuff in 2016
It's no secret that the pacing of
new posts has slowed in the past few months and that's something I think we can
all agree isn't the best. The goal is to change that, but, not gonna lie guys,
that's going to be tough to do in 2016. A good chunk of this upcoming year is
going to be devoted to studying for (and taking) a handful of professional
certification exams. If all goes well and I pass all the exams on the first try
then this will be the only year that gets consumed in this not-so-fun way.
Fingers crossed!
That's not to say that the Care
and Feeding of Nerds is going on ice. Not at all! There will definitely be
plenty of novel content and, hopefully, a few contests coming your way. It's
just that there will likely be a bit less of both in 2016 when compared to
previous years.
But there will be goodness! We'll
be bringing you coverage from at least two conventions: PAX East 2016 and the Boston Festival of Indie Games. There's a very good chance that we may add a
few conventions that have never been covered on the site before, which we're
really excited about.
Comics
The past two years have seen some pretty massive upheavals in the comics world, but 2016 is shaping up to be a bit more tranquil as most major publishers appear to want to enjoy their new status quo. Here are 5 upcoming titles that we can look forward to in the very near future and a whole heap more spanning the comic, manga, and graphic novel realms.
TV
January/February are often rife with mid-season premieres and introductions of fun new programs. Here's what we can add to our viewing queues in the next few weeks (premiere dates and times may vary based on your location and cable provider). Ahhhh...X-Files....Venture Bros!!
The Shannara Chronicles: (MTV) January 5th
Colony: (USA) January 14th
The Flash: (The CW) January 19th
Agent Carter: (ABC) January 19th
Arrow: (The CW) January 20th
Supernatural: (The CW) January 20th
DC's Legends of Tomorrow: (The CW) January 21st
The X-Files: (FOX) January 24th
The Venture Bros: (Cartoon Network) February 7th
The Walking Dead: (AMC) February 14th
Movies
As with most recent years, the trend in 2016 will be lots of reboots and sequels, with a bit of novel content tossed in here and there.
January
The 5th Wave - The Earth is devastated by successive waves of alien attacks. One girl asserts herself and bands with fellow survivors to reclaim the planet.
Ip Man 3 - Donnie Yen returns to the title role and takes a stand against a band of crooked property managers and cruel gangsters.
Synchronicity - A physicist invents a time machine only to have his work fall into the hands of a femme fatale.
Deadpool - The Merc with a Mouth gets to incite havoc on the big screen.
March
Allegiant - The cinematic version of the Divergent young adult novel series continues with this third installment. The content of the book bearing the name of the movie will be divided into two films, akin to what we saw with the Hunger Games.
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice - The Man of Steel and Gotham's Knight square off first against one another, then against a novel Earth-threatening foe.
April
Gods of Egypt - An ordinary thief finds himself drawn into a divine conflict.
The Jungle Book - The classic Rudyard Kipling tale will be the latest of Disney's animated films to get the live-action treatment.
The Huntsman Winter's War - Chris Hemsworth returns to the role of the Huntsman and faces the wrath of not one, but two evil sorceress queens.
Ratchet and Clank - The beloved title characters leap from the console to the big screen as they race to save the galaxy.
May
Captain America: Civil War - The tension wrought from the developments seen in Age of Ultron boils over into open conflict and threatens to tear the Avengers apart.
X-Men: Apocalypse - The world's first mutant, Apocalypse, intends to obliterate all life on Earth; the X-Men band together an an attempt to stop him.
Warcraft - The monolithic video game franchise expands to a new medium.
Independence Day: Resurgence - The extraterrestrials that first threatened humanity 20 years ago have spent the past two decades preparing for and plotting for their shot at vengeance.
July
The BFG - Roald Dahl's beloved tale is brought once more to the big screen.
Ghostbusters - This revisiting of the 80s franchise features a mostly female cast.
Star Trek Beyond - The next installment of the rebooted movie series has JJ Abrams' thumbprint all over it.
August
Suicide Squad - Some of Gotham's most notorious criminals are recruited to undertake black ops-esque missions in exchange for clemency.
Pete's Dragon - A remake of the 1977 original in which an orphan flees from his abusive adoptive parents to the company of his pet dragon.
Spectral - Supernatural beings have taken over New York City and a very special team of operatives are brought in to restore order.
September
Patient Zero - After humanity is decimated by a horrific pandemic that renders most of humanity into violent rage monsters, a lone survivor finds he's able to communicate with them.
October
Gambit - Not to be outdone by Deadpool, the Ragin' Cajun will get his own movie.
November
Doctor Strange - Benedict Cumberbatch assumes the title role as a ruined surgeon whose life is forever changed after encountering a sorcerer.
Moana - The only daughter of a chief of a South Seas tribe sets off to explore the wilds of the Pacific.
December
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story - The first of the Star Wars spinoff films focuses on a group of Rebels seeking to steal the structural plans of the Death Star.
Passengers - A spacecraft careens through the depths of space on a journey to distant planet when one of its stasis chambers malfunctions, causing a passenger to wake 60 years too early.
Assassin's Creed - Michael Fassbender stars in this movie adaptation of the wildly popular video game series.
Board Games/RPGs
As mentioned in a couple of our
round-up posts, most board game developers, even the largest ones, operate on a
quarterly schedule for their forecasts and releases with the latter generally
coinciding with major conventions. However, if all goes well we should see
several of the games we got a chance to try during Gen Con 2015. Also, the
always-excellent folks at BoardGameGeek have put together this compendium of what's slated to hit our tables in 2016.
Video Games
Video game releases tend to be a
bit more precise than their tabletop brethren in terms of their release
scheduling, but the volume of titles that will be available for PCs and
consoles is gargantuan. Game Informer did a commendable job of gathering up all those dates into this comprehensive list.
It's already shaping up to be an
excellent year! Here's to a very happy and healthy 2016!
Oh. My. We're still recovering from yesterday's viewing of Episode VII (a full review will be forthcoming in the very near future). It's killing me not to just starting talking to you about it right now, so I'll pour myself into the review literally the minute that this post goes up. <Kermit the Frog style flailing> Episode VII!! Ok, ok...enough of that for the time being. Less flailing and more of This Week in Geekdom.
The creators of Cards Against Humanity asked 150,000 of the customers who signed up for their Eight Sensible Gifts for Hanukkah some extremely personal questions and these are the hilarious results.
Or, if you need a fun Star Wars themed sciencey distraction while you wait for your showing, there's this comparison of the planets in our solar system to those in a galaxy far, far away.
It's been a very tough year for SpaceX, but the company isn't about to throw in the towel on 2015 just yet. NASA has confirmed that SpaceX was able to conduct a successful static fire test on its flagship Falcon 9 rocket. This has cleared the way for a full launch later today (watch it live here).
We occasionally chat about the ongoing development of driverless cars. Now, as the state of California begins to craft legislation that will govern this process, we have this breakdown of some of the challenges that lie ahead for these autonomous autos.
Just what does it take to re-create an image of the Earthrise from the Moon's Compton crater? Well, generally it involves this.
Happy weekend everyone! With the holidays (and Episode VII!) on our doorstep, it seems like the days just evaporate. The goal for the next week or so is to figure out when, exactly we'll get to the movies (and avoiding any and all spoilers until that point). While we wait, let's get down to a special Star Wars-themed Week in Geekdom.
Movies/TV
Anthony Daniels is the only actor to have appeared in every one of the Star Wars films. This in-depth interview details Daniels' interactions with J.J. Abrams and his tireless desire to own every part of his most famous role.
The latest edition of Nature Materials includes this research from MIT that, after combining microRNA strands into a triple helix, may be the foundation for a new type of cancer treatment.
Are you ready for your weekly dose of awesome photos from New Horizons? Well, wait no more.
Ok, we couldn't get through this section without at least one Star Wars reference. What's a realistic way to build a to-scale Death Star? The guys at JPL have a potential answer.
Feats of Nerdery/General Awesomeness
Check out this fully armed and operational Death Star replica
As always, best wishes for an excellent week ahead!
Holy December Batman. Seriously, how are you here already? Apparent distortions in the space-time continuum notwithstanding, I hope you're all having great weekends and wonderful holiday seasons thus far. Before we all dive back into our respective yuletide preparations let's get down to the Week in Geekdom.
It's been a few weeks since we had some new images of Pluto from New Horizons. Well, if you're a fan of the dwarf planet it was worth the wait, as the latest batch of pictures are the sharpest we've seen yet.
When you think of commonly occurring elements in the known universe, you may think of Hydrogen and Helium, but would you correctly guess that this is the element that would come next in that sequence?
While we're...sort of...on the subject of helium, the ultralight element is proving to be the key ingredient in next-generation high-capacity storage drives.
We talked last week about the burgeoning 'war' of privatized space exploration, but here's a far less bellicose facet of the Blue Origins side of things guaranteed to make you smile: the reactions of the 400 scientists and researchers that worked on their firm's reusable rocket.
We've talked a bit over the past few weeks about the centennial of the publication of Einstein's Theory of Relativity but, if we get right down to it, what is spacetime...really?
For decades researchers have been stymied by the concept of cosmic microwave background radiation, as it has proven incredibly difficult to detect by direct means. The latest edition of Nature presents what may be the solution to this mystery.
In honor of 'Giving Tuesday' Jason Gidman, the host of 'DC All Access', launched a campaign to send 10,000 comic books overseas to provide some much-needed escapism and entertainment for actively serving military personnel. Want in? Here's how you can get involved.
Ever wonder just how much either of the Death Stars cost or just would have happened to the Galactic economy following the destruction of said superweapons? The School of Engineering and Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis gave their best crack at coming up with a comprehensive response.
Mattel has brought back the Viewmaster in time for the holiday gift-giving season and the latest incarnation of this classic toy is a bit different than what you may remember.
This Lego-based kinetic sculpture of Sisyphus is both stunningly realistic and somehow very soothing to watch.
As always, best wishes for an excellent week ahead!
Happy Sunday everyone and belated holiday wishes to those of you who celebrated Thanksgiving on Thursday. If this was a long weekend for you, hopefully it has been filled with gaming and nomnoms and goodness. It's been a pretty awesome, if already busy, kickoff to The Holiday Season and we're hoping to get in at least a little rest before the mistletoe mania gets cranked up to eleven. In that spirit, let's get down to the Week in Geekdom.
2016 is already shaping up to be an amazing year for autonomous cars. Prepare yourself for Formula E: an all-electric autonomous racing circuit.
It may or may not, however, be a comparably excellent year for Apple. The technology mega-giant has announced that it will be making a massive change to its headphones that may not go over well with the consuming public.
China will be constructing its own super-massive particle collider. If the project is completed per the released specifications, it will be the largest collider in the world.
General Awesomeness
Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield and XKCD creator/former NASA physicist Randall Monroe have a little chat with one another and it is incredible that the universe was not immediately unmade given that raw quantity of awesome.
As always, best wishes for an excellent week ahead!
Hey guys; hope you're all having a great weekend thus far. We've been busy gearing up for Thanksgiving (lots grinding away in the office, but the premise of pie looms large in the immediate future). Mmmmm, pie. With a bit of vacation time incoming, I'm hoping to put in some serious hours in Fallout 4 and start putting together the 2016 cosplay lineup. In the meantime though, let's get down to the Week in Geekdom.
Despite the prevalence and potential functionality of the bluntly direct "just attack your target" methodology inherent in so many games, there's a lot that can be said of taking a stealthy tack. Here are some of the best examples of the latter.
In what is likely another step towards the Singularity, AI developed by the National Institute of Informatics (Japan) was able to pass the infamously difficult exam associated with admission into Japan's universities.
It's one of the most enduring and analyzed quandaries that we, as a species, grapple with: why do we exist? According to one Harvard cosmologist, the answer may be dark matter.
We all share this ability, but why? We're are uncannily adept at sensing when another human is looking at us. Here comes the science.
Do you love model-making? Are you a Star Wars fan? Do you have two or so years to dedicate to a single project? If you answered yes to all of those then this soon-to-be-released model kit may be the perfect holiday gift for you.
Happy weekend everyone! Hope you're all staying fed and hydrated among all the video game releases of this past week. If you're just now taking a break from your questing, here's the lowdown on the Week in Geekdom.
Extra Life may have been last weekend, but the charitable gaming continues! Watch here for the live stream of Desert Bus for Hope!
On Thursday fans of The Binding of Issac found that the latest bit of DLC for their beloved game was also the jump off point for an insane ARG. If you missed out on all the gaming goodness, PC Gamer covered the entire thing.
Nintendo announced its release schedule for the first and second quarter of 2016. Among the new titles was the introduction of Linkle, who will feature in Hyrule Warriors Legends on the 3DS.
It seems contradictory, but the latest research from a joint venture between China's ASIPP and the United States' General Atomics revealed that lowering the distance between pre-fusion plasma and the walls of the chamber said matter is confined in actually increasing the stability of the potential energy-producing system.
Canadian neurosurgeon Dr. Todd Mainprize has done what modern medicine has attempted to do for decades: penetrated the blood-brain barrier.
Computer scientist Laszlo Babai has allegedly developed an algorithm that allows the user to determine if two networks are the same, regardless of their respective complexity.
In the latest installation of What Can't 3D Printing Do is this art installation that features a printed ear derived from the DNA of Vincent Van Gogh. Extra eyebrow-raising is the fact that the ear can 'listen' to sound waves emitted into it.
The latest edition of Nature Communications contains this research from the Imperial College London that may introduce the world to a brand new, super efficient type of laser.
On the subject of gravitational dismantling, have you ever wondered if it's possible to see the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy? Here's how you could.
General Awesomeness/Feats of Nerdery
It's just a tad more luxurious than Vault 111. Welcome to the Oppidum, the world's largest 'billionaire bunker' for all your apocalypse-surviving needs.
Speaking of things that might be fun to own if you have all the monies, the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is being converted into luxury condos.
