Since the alphabet is the building block of our language, the Powet Alphabet is the building block of what makes us geeks.

Media is great in the many different streams and tributaries its developed over the past decades. First came movies and television, then the music industry started taking hold. Computers came much later, and when those started becoming more common, video games started making the scene. So the entertainment industry saw all of this, and thought “Why haven’t we combined any of these media aspects together? The result has to be twice as good as either of the original parts!” Surely, musicals combined the ancient medium of theater, and later movies, and combined them with the constant melody of music. The music industry got a huge boost when it realized it could combine songs with mini-movies, and thus music videos were born and thrived. (at least until reality TV came about and usurped it) After the video game industry started making its big push into the mainstream in the early 90’s, the film industry took notice and asked itself the previous question: “A mix of the two can only lead to great things!”

(ye be warned…..)
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Since the alphabet is the building block of our language, the Powet Alphabet is the building block of what makes us geeks.

It’s happened to all of us. You’re playing your favorite game, and you’ve thought of ways you could make it better. Maybe you were playing Marvel Ultimate Alliance and you were wondering what the game would be like if you could bring DC or Capcom characters to battle alongside the X-men and Avengers. Maybe you had an idea for a kick-ass new track for Forza or Gran Turismo. Maybe you wondered what would happen if you put Starcraft’s Zerg against Warcraft’s Scourge. Or maybe you wondered what your favorite WWII shooter would be like with Zombie Nazis (oh wait a sec, Treyarch already thought of that one). Ever since the beginnings of PC gaming, it’s been increasingly easier to turn games on their heads. Thanks to the success of games such as LittleBigPlanet, the console gaming market is able to get in too (well, without the need for warranty-voiding console hacking at least). These past several years have seen an increase in games which utilize user-created content, almost to the point where the entire game is driven by it.
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Since the alphabet is the building block of our language, the Powet Alphabet is the building block of what makes us geeks.

The whole world is 3D, so maybe I should be more specific. This article is to discuss the optical effect of making something appear 3D to a human viewer. This effect can be done a number of ways, but in pretty much all instances this is achieved by having each eye see a different image to create the illusion of depth.

Close one eye at a time and you’ll see that each eye sees something slightly different. This is the real trick to 3D called paralax. The left eye needs to see an image as it would appear from a few inches to the left than the right eye and your brain is smart enough to use this to extrapolate depth. An easy way of showing this to be the real source of the effect is to try closing one eye while using pretty much any kind of 3D technology, and you will see the effect disappear.

Iconic blue and red 3D glasses

Since the alphabet is the building block of our language, the Powet Alphabet is the building block of what makes us geeks.

The sixteen bit era of video games is considered by many to be the bridge between the past and modern eras of video gaming, and there were two kings of the ring: Nintendo’s Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega’s Genesis. Though there were more powerful systems that sprang up around the time, it would be these two that would outlast and outperform all of them, thanks to their accessibility. This was due not only to the technologies that the two systems boasted under the hood, but also with the library of games that were released for the two. It also gave rise to some of those most heated fanboy wars of our hobby. If you think system wars are bad now, you should have seen how bad it was during the 16-bit days, especially when system manufacturers were openly taking pot shots at each other. However, it was pointless for fanboys of both systems to argue with each other, as both systems not only had an equally impressive library of games (even if many multiplatform releases on the Sega Genesis tended to have inferior audio and visual quality to their SNES counterparts), but they outlasted and outsold the more powerful systems that sprang up around the same period. Click below to take a look back at one of gaming’s most exciting eras.
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Since the alphabet is the building block of our language, the Powet Alphabet is the building block of what makes us geeks.

Zombies – they’re a staple of film and games alike. Pioneered by the likes of George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” and its sequels, and followed by the slightly less-serious “Return of the Living Dead” movies and scores of others in the horror genre, zombies have been a tool of the entertainment industry for decades. Games began using them as early as the late 80’s, with Castlevania starting the trend of pixelizing the undead, and the idea taking off with subsequent games such as DOOM and the less-than-terrifying “Zombies Ate my Neighbors”. The idea of the dead coming back to life in order to devour the living has been used to great effect in all types of media, and tend to do rather well because of a good chunk of the populace having a morbid fascination with not only the undead, but more importantly – killing the undead. Capcom decided that, by the mid-1990’s with video games starting to become mainstreamed in the media, that it would try its hand at capitalizing on the concept.

Enter Resident Evil (Biohazard) in 1996 for the Playstation. [Read the rest of this entry…]

Since the alphabet is the building block of our language, the Powet Alphabet is the building block of what makes us geeks.

Not long ago, there began a somewhat off-kilter TV show with an unbelievable premise that nonetheless captured the hearts and minds of America. Guest stars who were associated with it went on to have long careers of their own, even as the principals struggled to escape its overpowering shadow. Despite the sometimes-inexplicable twist and turns of the plot, what really attracted audiences were the touching and realistic character pieces that this show delivered week after week.

I could be talking about ABC’s LOST, but before LOST was NBC’s Quantum Leap. Read on to find out why this show held, and twenty years later continues to hold, a special place in the hearts of science geeks, acting geeks, history buffs, and non-geeks alike.

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Since the alphabet is the building block of our language, the Powet Alphabet is the building block of what makes us geeks.

Today is P for the Powers of Grayskull. The Powers of Grayskull was a line proposed in 1987 that would serve as a sort of prequel to MOTU as we had known it. While some of the figures made it to the prototype phase and licensing material was sent out to interested companies, nothing ever materialized as far as a full scale toy line. After the jump we’ll dig a little deeper into what was really planned for the series based on what has been found.

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Since the alphabet is the building block of our language, the Powet Alphabet is the building block of what makes us geeks.

Gary Oldman doesn’t seem like the usual geek icon. He’s well known by film fans and critics as one of the great actors of this generation, but he’s not what you’d call a movie star in the way Will Smith is.

Still he’s had some really impressive roles both in fiction and as historical figures. Its also amazing how weirdly different he looks in all these movies. While by no means a comprehensive list, I’ll spotlight some of my favorite faces of Gary Oldman. [Read the rest of this entry…]