While there is always hope, we have to accept that the vast majority of GeeksAreSexy readers will never travel from space to their own street in a single smooth journey. But Google is offering the next best thing.
In the current edition of Google Earth, its possible to zoom in so close that you move from seeing the entire planet (well, as much as you can see of a globe) to an aerial view of a particular building. If nothing else, it’s great fun imagining you are using a live feed and operating a spy satellite.
But in the newly released edition, Google Earth 6, you’ll be able to switch seamlessly between the 3D bird’s-eye view of Google Earth and the pedestrian-eye view of Street View. That’s done by having the Street View icon (who turns out to be named Pegman) included with the traditional Google Earth controls.
Unlike the main maps feature, the Street View accessed in this way also allows users to “walk” back and forth on a street simply by rolling the scroll-wheel on their mouse, or using the arrow keys.
There are a couple of other changes to the system. Google has begun adding 3D models of specific species of tree wherever appropriate. It’s also making it clearer where historical imagery is available for a location: if you see a date at the bottom of the screen, you can click on it to bring up a timeline slider to see how the area has changed over time.
Of course, this is all very impressive, but I’m still waiting for Google to announce that Street View is being used for its most obvious purpose: as the mother of all plugins for the Grand Theft Auto engine.
Cowboys versus Ninjas? Seems like a win-win situation to me! Too bad they didn’t throw a few pirates along, it would have made the movie oh so much more awesome.
Mark Edlitz, the director of Jedi Junkies interviewed Daniel Wallace, the writer of The Jedi Path. Wallace, who has written extensively about the Star Wars universe, authored or co-authored The New Essential Chronology to Star Wars, Star Wars: Year by Year: A Visual Chronicle, Star Wars: The Essential Atlas, The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia and Star Wars: The Ultimate Visual Guide.
Few books tied to iconic movie series are as playful or as well-thought-out as The Jedi Path. From the conceit that the book consists of a series of documents discovered “near the ruins of Byss” to the inclusion of coins, badges, and other artifacts, the contributors have managed to create a tactile and delightful addition to the Star Wars canon. Introductory sections set out the Jedi Code and history of the Jedi Order, while later sections discuss such subjects as the three pillars, becoming an apprentice, and advanced lightsaber techniques. Not only is the text copiously illustrated, but some pages are mischievously ripped out (the Prophecy of the Chosen One) and supposedly handwritten annotations by Obi-Wan Kenobi and others add to the experience. [Source]
Mark Edlitz: What is the The Jedi Path? Daniel Wallace: The Jedi Path is both a book and a box of souvenirs. It’s presented as if it were the last surviving copy of an ancient Jedi textbook once owned by Yoda, Obi-Wan, Anakin, and other famous Jedi, containing their graffiti-like scribbles as well as treasures that they tucked away inside the pages such as a metal coin, a starfighter patch, a severed Padawan braid, and more. The book is packaged inside a metallic mechanical vault that hisses open when you push a button. The overall experience is really one-of-a-kind.
Did the concept of the book change over the course of writing it?
From the start we knew The Jedi Path would be written as if it were an in-universe artifact, but we didn’t know exactly what form that would take. We had to figure out the lineup of Jedi Masters who wrote the main text, the chain of ownership of who would have written in the margins, the number and nature of the souvenirs, all of that evolved organically as we refined the concept.
Writing an “in-universe” artifact must have presented some unique challenges.
The most obvious challenge being, where to put the Star Wars logo? In fact once you remove the outer packaging there is no obvious indication that this is a movie product tie-in – well, except for a publishing-mandated indicia page, but we put that as far back as we possibly could! We really wanted this to feel like it was something that could have been plucked from Yoda’s nightstand.
Seems like finding the right tone for the text must have been tricky. You have to impart a lot of info without making it sound too dry or too much like a Wiki entry.
That’s right, and the key there was establishing some unique voices for the text’s authors. Rather than treating it as an info-dump, I made up a list of seven Jedi Masters with names, backgrounds, and personalities, then assigned different chapters of the book to each of them. From that point it was easy to speak through their voices and allow individual quirks to come through in the writing. I wouldn’t describe it as an authoritative text as much as I would the collected opinions of a diverse group of people who aren’t necessarily correct.
Based on your previous books about Star Wars you obviously already had a great deal of knowledge about the universe. What kind of additional research did you need to do for the book?
First and foremost, I didn’t want to get any of the lore wrong. This required going back to the movies to see what they established about the Jedi, and diving into certain bits of the Expanded Universe to make sure all the facts were correct. The video games have done quite a bit of extra work regarding the Force, as have the role-playing games. The various styles of lightsaber combat have been explored extensively too. But also, I didn’t want to only include information that superfans have already read and really worked to include new facts, bits of history, and hints to other bits of history that I left open-ended.
What did you discover about the Force and the Jedi way while working on The Jedi Path?
There would be a lot of controversy over the Jedi in the Star Wars galaxy. Clearly they have superpowers and they also have history and politics behind them – they’re basically knights who serve the crown. But their practice of taking babies away from their families to be raised in the Jedi Temple would surely be unpopular with parents, and the movies indicate that the Jedi have a problem remaining open to new ideas – for example, the Temple librarian who insists that if the Jedi don’t know a fact, then that fact essentially doesn’t exist. Therefore I think the Jedi were a great force for good, but were hamstrung by their own sense of rightness that they weren’t able to see the danger that was right under their noses. And this is why they were annihilated during the Clone Wars.
Your observation that the Jedi were great forces of good who were limited by their own dogma is very interesting. One of the messages behind Star Wars is that it’s healthy for a society to challenge authority and not accept the status quo. That is why the heroes are the “rebels.” However, because the Jedi are the moral center of the films audiences tend to overlook their flaws.
I’d agree with you on that. Because the are set against the Sith, who are unambiguously evil, it’s easy to think of the Jedi as unambiguously good. But the movies are quite clear on the fact that the Jedi are fallible, and I’d argue that their greatest flaw was their inflexibility. Anakin, in fact, had the right idea in questioning why he wasn’t allowed to save his mother or protect Padmé. If the Jedi had tried to address his concerns he wouldn’t have felt he had to seek out knowledge from the Sith.
Did you add any information/customs/philosophies to the Force or Jedi way that didn’t previously exist in the books, movies or Expanded Universe? If so, what?
By necessity I needed to do a lot of filling in the cracks. The process of how a Padawan becomes a Knight is something that has never really been explored, for example. There’s a mention of the Jedi Trials but it hasn’t really been clear what those Trials were all about. I explored those in detail, and came up with a hundred other tiny details about life in the Temple. For a book written by the Jedi, I also tried to work in counterpoints to Jedi philosophy here and there.
One of the more unexpected additions to the Jedi tradition in the prequels is the notion that Jedi shouldn’t marry and fall in love. The Jedi in the book (like the fans themselves) disagree over this.
It’s an interesting question and one that I had to understand from both sides in order to write about it. For the Jedi, it’s essentially a sin to have extra love for your spouse, or your family. The Jedi believe in serving all without prejudice, and commitments run counter to that. But while that’s a logical argument, you can see how it’s tough to deal with emotionally. In their insistence on no marriage, or on taking babies from their families, the Jedi can seem a bit too Spock-like even though they are acting with the best of intentions.
Fans did not universally embrace the introduction of midi-chlorians in the prequels as an explanation as to why some are powerful in the Force. I love your explanation about midi-chlorians. “I urge you not to think too much on this necessary biological symbiosis but to instead cast your focus wider. After all, we do not drink the bowl but the soup contained within it.”
The midi-chlorians are an example of a theme of symbiosis that George Lucas wanted to bring to the table in Episode I. And I like them as an example of a microscopic lifeform that exists in symbiosis with our own cells, and that both we and the midi-chlorians are part of the Force. That being said, the fact that Anakin had a midi-chlorian count of over 20,000 is where it starts getting sciencey and I can sympathize with fans who don’t like that element. For what it’s worth, The Jedi Path leaves the door open on that subject, stating how even rock-based organisms that don’t technically have living cells at all can still become strong in the Force.
Some fans prefer the Jedi to be more in the spirit of the popular perception of the Knights of the Roundtable: brave and skilled heroes fighting for what’s right. But Lucas has said that thinks of Jedi as “warrior monks.” Lucas doesn’t want viewers to ignore the religious elements of the order.
I think both can work quite well. The warrior monk characterization was foremost in my mind while I was writing The Jedi Path, but there’s something to be said for the romantic King Arthur version of the crusading knight. But of course, the crusading Knights were crusading on behalf of their religion, or at the very least on behalf of their king who was said to have a divine rulership mandate by God. So religion is wrapped up in all of this iconography, and I definitely tried to incorporate elements of Jedi philosophy as a religious tradition.
Can you talk about writing in the voices of Luke, Ben Kenobi, Anakin and Yoda.
Writing the scribbles in the margins of the pages was a lot of fun, and it wasn’t hard to capture the voices of characters like Luke and Yoda since I’ve been exposed to their voices as a fan for so long. Each character generally had a role to play in the annotations. Anakin’s comments are challenging, Qui-Gon’s comments are empathetic, the Emperor’s comments are sneering, Luke’s comments are wise with hindsight, and so on.
Part of the fun of the book is that the annotations create a dialogue of sorts between characters from both trilogies. So, in effect, Luke has direct contact with his father. Before his transformation into Darth Vader.
Creating chains in the annotation comments was something I tried to do as much as possible. A chain from Obi-Wan to Anakin to Ahsoka Tano is interesting because all three know each other, but their comments were written from when all three were Padawans, so a relative newcomer like Ahsoka gets to see a veteran like Obi-Wan in a new light. In the case of Luke, this book would be a revelation. Not only his father, but “old Ben” and Yoda are all writing here, decades before Luke’s time. I tried to imagine what it feels like to uncover a box of old letters from your parents or grandparents.
I love the napkin included in the book that is (supposedly) the napkin that Ben Kenobi used to draw the design of his light saber. How did that come about?
The idea for the napkin came from becker&mayer’s design team, I believe, and it’s one of my favorite removables. If I remember correctly, I was the one to suggest that it be Obi-Wan’s napkin, based on the fact that he’s clearly a frequent customer of Dex’s Diner and I could imagine him sitting at one of the booths with a cup of Ardees and furiously sketching as he keeps himself caffeinated. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ardees
What’s your favorite artifact from the book?
Other than the napkin, my favorite is probably the metal Jedi credit. Unfortunately it’s also the easiest artifact to lose! I’ve dropped it and had it roll under the couch more than once.
What was the process of working with Lucasfilm?
I worked with the book producers at becker&mayer and we both worked with Lucasfilm. Ultimately Lucasfilm has approval over the project and has veto power over any item if they don’t think it fits in the Star Wars universe. Luckily, after we hashed out the outline there was very little controversy over the contents and I did fewer revisions on The Jedi Path than on most other projects I’ve written.
Any feedback from George Lucas himself?
I heard from someone at Lucasfilm that George saw The Jedi Path in action and asked where his copy was. I can only imagine that George got his copy very quickly after that comment!
Luke’s journey in the original trilogy would have been very different if, along with the hologram of Leia, R2D2 handed him a copy of your book.
This is true! And because it’s so true, we really had to struggle to figure out a point in the timeline when Luke could have possessed this book without it acting as a spoiler. Ultimately we figured that Luke couldn’t have possessed this type of knowledge until at least 20 years after Return of the Jedi!
Hans Rosling’s famous lectures combine enormous quantities of public data with a sport’s commentator’s style to reveal the story of the world’s past, present and future development. Now he explores stats in a way he has never done before – using augmented reality animation. In this spectacular section of ‘The Joy of Stats’ he tells the story of the world in 200 countries over 200 years using 120,000 numbers – in just four minutes. Plotting life expectancy against income for every country since 1810, Hans shows how the world we live in is radically different from the world most of us imagine.
On the Monday after Thanksgiving, retailers are keen to sell a lot of stuff. Including, it appears, the idea that there’s something inherently special about the day.
It’s a well-established tradition that the day after Thanksgiving is “Black Friday”, with many retailers (particularly of electrical goods) selling goods cheaply. While waiting in line from the early hours may seem crazy, the existence of the sales at least makes sense: many Americans who have a rare weekday holiday want to get away from relatives who’ve outstayed their welcome, and with Turkey Day over, are ready to begin the countdown to Christmas.
But the idea that Cyber Monday represents the online equivalent may be overhyped. As CNN points out today, the phrase only dates back five years and was created for use in a press release by Shop.org, a trade association of online retailers.
The only real evidence in that release of a claim was that 77% of online retailers reported a substantial increase in online sales on the day, though it wasn’t said what this was in comparison with. And the explanation for this rise? Apparently shoppers waited until they got back to work to sneak a few minutes on broadband connections in the office to do their shopping, rather than on dial-up modems at home.
That’s a kind explanation, albeit one that’s looking shakier five years of broadband take-up later. To be fair, retailers can’t really admit that any pattern is more likely a case of people being so dejected at returning to the office after four days of overindulgence that bargain hunting is more appealing than spreadsheets.
In reality, though, Cyber Monday isn’t *that* big a deal. Most of the figures touted as evidence of the day bringing an annual boost to sales are simply comparing one Cyber Monday with its predecessor, not with other days of the year.
CNN quotes internet traffic monitoring and analysis firm ComScore as saying that usually Cyber Monday is in the lower regions of the top 10 days for visits to online retailers. Last year was an exception (it placed second for the year), which appears to be a case of economic confidence being so low that people really were showing unusual levels of bargain hunting.
Of course, that they thought to do so on the Monday after Thanksgiving suggests the marketing phrase may have become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If you’re like me, thinking about gifts this season is a little stress-inducing. While the recession is technically over, here in the states, many of us are still feeling the crunch. And while I like to try and make most of the gifts we give during the holidays, that’s not always practical. The truth is, time these days is about as scarce as unobtanium.
Avatar reference aside, rather than going blue in the face this holiday, rest easy. I’ve compiled a list of 10 gifts perfect for the geeky gal in your life. Don’t be swayed by stupid commercials proclaiming every woman wants a diamond or a car. Geek girls know better. We have a sophisticated palate, tempered by years of geek immersion.
Literary action figures: I happen to believe that you can never be too old for action figures, and it certainly doesn’t matter if you’re a girl or a boy. A quick glance up at my office shelf reveals some Ninja Turtles and Hobbits. But to up the ante, there’s the Jane Austen action figure, as well as a plethora of others, including Charles Dickens and Shakespeare. There’s also a Librarian action figure, if your lady is into books as a career. For roughly $10 a pop, you don’t have to choose!
Long Underwear from L.L. Bean: Got a geek gal in your life who’s a costumer? Someone who likes the really retro look? L.L. Bean has some darling long underwear–just add a cap and slippers and she’ll be ready to re-enact Twas the Night Before Christmas. If you live in a cold climate, there’s nothing so nice as really warm, snuggly pajamas. I think these are absolutely adorable! Not to mention, kinda-sorta sexy.
Urban Decay’s Eye Potion: First, it’s a potion. And potions are awesome. So it won’t make you fly or restore your HP, but Urban Decay’s Eye Potion performs a near magical task: it prevents eyeshadow from flaking off or caking. Like me, many geek gals love dressing up, whether it’s in costume or otherwise. Spending lots of money on eyeshadows that just don’t stay on is frustrating. But for $18, this eye potion (personally tested and approved by yours truly) is honestly nothing short of a miracle. Makeup stays in place all day long, and looks fabulous. A perfect stocking stuffer! Urban Decay, in general, is one of my favorite makeup lines. You should check out their whole set of offerings for other gift ideas.
Pwn That Shower Soaps from Darkness Studios on Etsy: For whatever reason, the holidays always provide a proliferation of good smelling gifts. And soaps are usually on the top of that list. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but does everything have to come from Bath and Body Works? Through the magic of Etsy, and the curious thought processes of Etsy artist rainbowdarkness, we have soap with dice in them. Yep, d20s. Beautiful? Sure. Functional? Definitely. I don’t know about you, but I think I’d feel a little more excited about facing my day if I started off with a d20 lather. Hee hee. Also check out her potions necklaces. Tres geek chic.
Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal:This is a fantastic little book. The premise is simple: what if there was magic during Jane Austen’s time? And what would her novels be like, if there was? The resulting book reads like Austen penned it herself, yet retains Kowal’s talent for character and setting. It’s witty and whimsical, a welcome departure from traditional fantasy. Plus, it’s got a good heap of romance, too.
Octopus Brooch from BeanDoll on Etsy: Yes, I have a problem when it comes to cephalopods. No, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. A cursory look on Etsy tells me that I’m far from alone. I’m particularly partial to this octopus brooch by BeanDoll, which seamlessly blends my love of all things tentacled with the steampunk aesthetic. Plus, it’s my favorite kind of jewelry: a pin! Not to mention it’s a total steal at $14.00.
Hermione’s Wand: Is your geeky gal Potter fan? Does she adore Ms. Granger like no other? Believe it or not, for only $35 you can buy a replica of Hermione’s wand from the Noble Collection. While this isn’t made of wood, like some of the far more expensive ones, according to the reviews it’s pretty darn impressive.
Artist’s Imagination Locket from Anthropologie: Sure, Anthropologie might not be the first place you think of for cheap or geeky. But the quirky clothing (and accessory) company has really found its way to my heart. Their unusual items often hearken to my geeky side, and this little locket is no exception. The outside looks like a landscape scene from a Jane Austen novel (and you’ll find many geek gals love our Jane Austen, see above ) and inside is a locket. The perfect blend of artistic and romantic, sure to get you a kiss or three under the mistletoe. And at $48, a very decent price point.
T-Shirts from Her Universe: I ran across the Her Universe booth when I was at Dragon*Con earlier this year, and fell in love immediately. Not only do most geek t-shirts not come in women’s sizes, but they’re just not designed with women in mind. While I can’t say that the Star Wars Prequels rank terribly high on my list, I do have to say that their Art Nouveau inspired Padme t-shirt makes me squee like an Ewok (see top picture). Gorgeous, just gorgeous. Most of their t-shirts hover around the $30 mark, and they’re both trendy and geeky. A total win in my book. Not to mention, Her Universe also looks as if it will start carrying jewelry, soon. Truly worth a stop on your holiday shopping list.
Mark Edlitz, the director of 
Daniel Wallace: The Jedi Path is both a book and a box of souvenirs. It’s presented as if it were the last surviving copy of an ancient Jedi textbook once owned by Yoda, Obi-Wan, Anakin, and other famous Jedi, containing their graffiti-like scribbles as well as treasures that they tucked away inside the pages such as a metal coin, a starfighter patch, a severed Padawan braid, and more. The book is packaged inside a metallic mechanical vault that hisses open when you push a button. The overall experience is really one-of-a-kind.
Urban Decay’s Eye Potion: First, it’s a potion. And potions are awesome. So it won’t make you fly or restore your HP, but 
