Etsy: The Summer Squid Report

I’ve written about octopuses in art before, but today I bring you their cousin, the squid. Squid typically have two tentacles and eight arms, which most people confuse. We often refer to all cephalopods as having tentacles, but that just isn’t the case. A tentacle is a long projection with suckers only on the end; the other, more multi-suckered appendages are called arms. The number of tentacles and arms varies by cephalopod.

At any rate, I’ve got a thing for squid. It starts with terror and ends with amusement, beginning when I was a kid watching Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Good gracious, was that a terrifying squid! The beak! The arms! The noises. Of course, looking at the footage now makes me laugh. But at the time there were few unparalleled horrors (except maybe Unico, but that’s a different post).

Thankfully there are quite a few squid havens on the internet, but few show as much variety and beauty as Etsy, where the artists seem to truly share my love of all things tenacled and aquatic. Since I spend a good deal of my time trolling the Etsy reaches (and since it’s summer and therefore quite a beachy time in my mind) I thought I’d share some of the more unique and geeky squid finds I’ve located. Remember: Etsy is a treasure trove of hand made art, by artists all around the world. If you see something that strikes your fancy, wrap your tentacles… I mean click your mouse their way and bring it on home!

Dan Bob Thompson
Etsy artist Dan Bob Thompson‘s art really appeals to me. The bright colors, the contrast, the framing technique. And his giant squid print called, well, “Giant Squid” (pictured at the top of this post) is perfect for any geeky decor. See those gorgeous tentacles? And those enormous eyes (some of the largest in the entire animal kingdom, to boot)? Just spectacularly tentacular.

Meatspider Studios
Okay, so Cthulhu isn’t technically a squid. But I couldn’t pass up mentioning the work of Meatspider Studios in this post. Specializing in Lovecraftian delights, Meatspider has a variety of tentacled lovelies to dangle on your person. My personal favorites are the severed tentacle and the Cthulhu pocket idol. I mean, you never know when you’ll need to show your allegiance to the Old Ones, so why not be prepared? Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn….

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Comic Con 2010: User Submitted Pictures

Comic-Con is over, and attendees have been back to the real world for a few days. Meanwhile, we’ve had a chance to look at some of the pictures that our readers sent in, taken at the event. Here are some of our favorites!

From Daniel, a stormtrooper with a new batch of hardware (and a lot of style):

From Vlad, a tumble down the rabbit hole… Moxxie from Borderlands.

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Flamethrower Vs. Fire Extinguisher: Fight!

A very cool (and very weird!) music video featuring two crazy-looking dudes firing at each other. On one side, we’ve got a guy with a flamethrower, and on the other side: a fire extinguisher. Enjoy!

[Via Geekologie]



Nintendo does badly at currency game

The video games industry may be looking on to see if Sony’s Move and Microsoft’s Kinect hurt sales of the Wii, but Nintendo has just lost a bunch of money for a very different reason.

The company has announced a loss of $289 million in the April-June quarter. That’s 25.2 billion yen, down from 42.3 billion yen profit in the same period in 2009. From a financial perspective that can be explained entirely by Nintendo deciding to mark up a 70.5 billion loss to take account of the money it has missed out on thanks to currency fluctuations. The yen has been particularly strong over the past year, meaning sales outside of Japan are worth less money to the company.

Still, even though without that adjustment the profit would have been slightly up on last year, the news from the financial figures is still somewhat gloomy. Most notably, revenue from the DS is in a slump: console sales have almost halved in a year, revenue dropped even more thanks to price cuts, and games sales are down more than 20%. The latter is being blamed on a lack of major new releases.

Things were mitigated by the Wii, which sold 3.04 million in the quarter, compared with 2.2 million in the same period last year, though game sales were down a little.

Nintendo is certainly hoping the release of a 3D edition of the DS boosts both hardware and software sales. Despite selling 3.15 million DS units since April, it’s predicting total sales of 30 million in the current financial year.

The company also confirmed that it will announce the 3DS pricing and release date on September 29. So far its only said the release date will be this fiscal year (ie before the end of March 2011), but both the September announcement schedule and common sense point to a pre-Christmas release.

Pricing remains a mystery: there’s some speculation of $250, while Nintendo’s UK marketing manager hinted that it won’t be ludicrously more expensive compared to existing models. My guess would be a $299 list price, giving a fair bit of room for retailers to play with discounts or game bundles.

(Picture credit: Flickr user supercharger5150)

How Low Can They Go? New Kindle Priced at $139

While the publishing industry, and indeed readers themselves, are still figuring out just exactly what to do with e-readers and e-books, Amazon’s certainly not flagging. Engadget, and about 200 other media outlets, reports that Amazon’s new Kindle—in WiFi only format, of course—is going to be a paltry $139, just in time for the new school year.

Engadget reports a good smattering of improvements in the device itself, including better storage, purported quicker loading, and availability in two different colors (white and gray—oh, wow… such choice there, guys…). It’s also lighter and smaller than its predecessor. And, as always, if you want to continue selling your soul to AT&T, just as before, you can go with the $189 version that supports3G.

But still, we’re talking about the Kindle here, which by and large is very much built for one thing: reading books. I don’t own a Kindle, but there are plenty of folks out there who do—and I’ve probably heard more people go on about the joys of their special brand of e-ink than any other. Sure, other e-readers out there can juggle more things at once, including colors, but for the true bookish geek out there, the Kindle seems to be the way to go if you want your page to look as close to real print as possible. Apparently there will be a Webkit based browser with the new Kindle, but this is, as Engadget indicates, totally experimental. We’ll see what the verdict is on that, later.

As we’ve updated on the e-reader wars here at Geeks Are Sexy, you—the readers—have offered a number of options. Many of you prefer to read on your iPhones/smartphones, others take the Kindle anywhere including the beach; some just go with netbooks, while others are adamant about never giving up paperbacks (from your cold, dead hands… we know, we know!). And for those of us left over who just haven’t decided (myself included) or think you even have to decide (does getting a Kindle mean you have to burn all your books? … um, no) the price war is quite amusing to watch. How low is so low that these gadgets just become as common as iPods or cell phones?

One particular facet that the Kindle hasn’t really jumped on is the multitasking bandwagon, as with gadgets like the Nook or, of course, Apple’s iPad. But that’s just not what Amazon is about. Engadget is a little more tongue in cheek about it, but they do point us to this quote by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos:

“For the vast majority of books, adding video and animation is not going to be helpful. It is distracting rather than enhancing. You are not going to improve Hemingway by adding video snippets.”

On a level, I agree. A book is absolutely about imagination. But the Kindle, and e-readers, are not books. They’re gadgets. And for gadgets to really become integrated into the daily lives of people—even those in the non-geek crowd—I think inherent flexibility is paramount. As lovely as the ink looks on a Kindle, and as enticing as the price is, I’m just not willing to buy something that’s for one single purpose. Maybe if I read 100s of books a year, I’d consider it. But as it is, I manage a handful a year.

And just to serve by way of anecdote. I recently finished my current novel, and was in discussion with my very geeky, gadget-minded husband as to the easiest way for him to read it. The conversation ended up with him going, “Can you just print it out? Y’know, make it look like a book?” I rest my case.

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This is Why the Internet was Invented [Picture]

Behold: A picture of Chewbacca fighting Nazis while riding a giant squirrel.

[Via Huffington Post]

Psychedelic Flower Warfare

From Freddie Wong, the same guy who produced the hilarious Jedi A-Holes, here comes Flower Warfare, a video featuring Freddie and his girlfriend fighting off invaders with guns that fire deadly flowers. Enjoy!

[Via Neatorama]

Apple jailbreaking verdict: what happens next?

As we reported earlier this week, a revised interpretation of copyright laws means it is now legal to jailbreak an iPhone: that is, to modify it so it can run any software, including apps not approved by Apple. But the real question is what difference it will make.

From a legal standpoint, the answer appears to be “not much”. Let’s be honest: jailbreaking may previously have been assumed to be illegal, but it wasn’t a law that anyone was going to enforce. For Apple to have tried to get convictions over jailbreaking would have been a public relations nightmare: regardless of the letter of the law, society generally takes the view that once a manufacturer gets paid for a device (whether the customer pays outright or through a carrier subsidy), the owner should be able to do what they like with it as long as it isn’t directly cheating anyone of any money.

From a practical standpoint, Apple’s position isn’t changing. The company has reiterated that it advises against jailbreaking and that doing so automatically voids the warranty. That may seem harsh, but is probably fair: while most people with the technical savvy to jailbreak a phone are smart enough to take precautions, it does put security out of Apple’s control, so it’s going to be difficult to conclusively blame them if things go wrong.

What remains to be seen is whether Apple will continue taking steps to deter jailbreaking. For example, it now has to decide whether to continue the cat-and-mouse game of each software update undoing the most common methods of jailbreaking the phone. That raises some intriguing legal questions now that jailbreaking has been declared legitimate. Does Apple have the right to undo a legal action performed by a handset owner? And what, if any, legal obligation does Apple have to make software updates available to all customers: are people who don’t want their jailbreaking undone still entitled to the latest operating system, or are updates simply a discretionary bonus?

The people with the most to gain from the ruling appear to be the major manufacturers of unapproved apps which only work on jailbroken phones. There’s a theory they’ll now hit the jackpot with new customers piling in. I’m not convinced by that though: to me the real barriers to jailbreaking have always been the technical knowledge required and a fear of screwing up a handset, not the risk of facing prosecution. For the vast majority of iPhone owners, the 200,000+ officially-approved apps is plenty to be going on with.