If you haven’t had a chance yet, go play the video game mashup of Super Mario Bros. Crossover The game is playable for free online. The programmer went to great detail to bring Link from Legend of Zelda, Bill R. from Contra, Mega Man, Samus and Simon from Castlevania into the world of Super Mario. Each character is given a range of weapons and upgrades from mushrooms and Fireflowers, like Simon getting the Flaming whip or link getting the Blue Ring. The best part is that the full songs, music and sound effects are used for each character! Now go waste 30 minutes of your workday lunch hour!
A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Steve Jobs does his best to convince a skeptical Rebel Alliance that the iPad really is a game changer.
In the following clip, you’ll see an absolutely amazing quadrotor drone making making a bunch of crazy maneuvers in some really tight spaces. Check it out:
I, for one, welcome our new autonomous quadrotor overlords.
Among the many storytelling techniques which made Lost what it was were the non-linear approaches. In a major twist, flashbacks became flash-forwards, flash-forwards became flash-sideways (or, as it transpired, flash-intotimelessafterlife), and much of season 5 involved brain-frazzling time travel.
If that captured your imagination, there are many other examples of non-chronological film and television shows you should try out. (Probably best give Flashforward a miss for the moment as seeing both Penny and Charlie talk about the event which upset linear time might be too baffling.)
There will be few GeeksAreSexy readers who’ve never seen Pulp Fiction, but for a much earlier example of scenes appearing out of order, you might want to try the 1956 Stanley Kubrick film noir movie The Killing. Ironically, despite mirroring the non-linear approach of Pulp Fiction, you’ll probably find yourself reminded much more of Reservoir Dogs in the storyline of the aftermath of a heist which doesn’t go smoothly.
One of the benefits of this unconventional approach is that viewers can see the same scene more than once, viewing it in a different context as they come at it with more information. One example of this is Elephant, a 2003 film about a high school shooting spree. It’s an excellent way of establishing that every character involved has their own story, their own personality and their own life.
In some cases, the approach is integral to the plot, such as Charlie Kaufman’s Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind. It’s based around a company offering a service to remove specific memories, usually of a previous lover to help ease the pain of break-up. Without giving too much away for those of you unlucky enough not to have watched it yet, the non-linear approach means you get to see the same couple falling in love twice, the second time in a more poignant context.
And when it comes to the combination of memory as a plotline and an effect on the chronology of a movie, there’s nothing to beat Christopher Nolan’s Memento. It’s commonly described as being in reverse chronological order, though in fact it alternates between two different “storyline”, one in the correct order and one with the scenes reversed, with the relationship between the two sets of scenes becoming clearer as the movie progresses.
There are two reasons why this works better than any other movie. One is that the movie doesn’t rely on it: watching it in the correct chronological order (an option available on some DVD editions) reveals a movie that, while not as striking, is still perfectly passable. The other is that it allows the viewer to mirror the experience of the central character, who suffers from a condition which leaves him unable to form new memories. Both he and the viewer have to cope with the way that whenever we learn a new fact, we have no “past” experience to put it into context, meaning normal methods of processing information are out the window.
In the following clip, Mythbusters host Adam Savage explains how the Discovery Channel rejected one of the myths his team wanted to bust after looking at the somehow gruesome but hilarious footage they had recorded for the show. Check it out.
ArcAttack, the band behind most of the tesla coil music you’ve heard on the net in the last few years, performed one of their old classic at this year’s edition of the Bay Area’s Maker Faire: The Dr. Who Theme.
If you’re interested in listening to a longer performance of ArcAttack, we interviewed the band 2 years ago while they were playing at Maker Faire Austin. Our video features a brief explanation of how music can be played on a tesla coil, plus a few awesome songs, including “Popcorn” and the Dr. Who theme.
A week may have passed, but I’m sure many of you are still sharing my pain at no longer having new episodes of either Lost or 24 to look forward to. The network schedulers responsible for ending both of these long-running shows in the space of two days are clearly evil incarnate.
So for the rest of this week we’ll be running through ways in which the world of on-screen drama can help fill these gaps. For everything you loved about Lost and 24, there are other productions — and related activities — which share the same qualities: think of them as the TV and film equivalents of nicotine replacement patches.
So the obvious place to start when talking about two of the best TV shows ever (albeit arguably in different degrees of artistic quality) is with the greatest TV show ever: Carnivale.
I may well be preaching to the converted, but with audiences falling to as low as 1.7 million at the end, Carnivale is not a widely-remembered show. It ran for two seasons on HBO from 2003 to 2005 before being dropped.
Answering the question “What’s Carnivale about?” is simple: it’s set in the Great Depression and follows a priest experiencing strange events and a fugitive who joins a travelling carnival. It’s about good vs evil, light vs darkness, mythology, science and wonder, and much much more.
Most reviews I’ve read get bogged down in listing the characters, and it’s a trap I’ve had to struggle to avoid. Simply take it that of the ensemble cast, arguably the majority of actors put in the finest performance of their lives, including one who spends most of the second season communicating solely through the expression is his eyes.
Story and performance aside, perhaps the biggest strength of Carnivale is its cinematography. It’s period drama television truly produced in the style of an epic Hollywood movie. Each episode cost a reported $4 million dollars, and it looks it. It’s perhaps the only TV show to ever have a budget for dust, and if I were to encounter somebody who watched it on a pan-and-scan 4:3 television set, I wouldn’t be responsible for my actions.
I have no qualms about urging, nay pleading, that you buy both seasons on DVD, but will add some notes of caution. One is that the show was fully sketched out to run six seasons and is by no means complete. However, the good news is that it was always planned to be broken into three “books”, each of two seasons, so what was made does stand by itself. It’s largely the same situation as if Tolkien had died immediately after writing The Fellowship of the Ring.
Another point to remember is that the first season is undeniably slow going at times. If you demand Prison Break-style plot development in every single scene, you may not get the best enjoyment of Carnivale. But stick with it: the second season picks up the pace and soon builds up the inevitable climax.
It’s also a show which does require that you pay attention: it’s not hard work as such, but you won’t be able to cook dinner or check your Twitter feed while watching. It’s also a show where the mysteries really are answered, but it won’t be until the second viewing that you realize just how explicit and clear the revelations really are.
If you have to listen to only one of the sound effects this guy reproduces, you have to hear the gelatinous cube at 1:36. Best gelatinous cube impersonation EVER!
As a graduate student, I’m certainly not a high-roller financially, but for the first time in my life I’m making more money than I spend. It’s certainly not much, but it’s gotten me thinking: should I be more proactive about my savings?
Over the last few weeks I’ve looked at money market and CD options, but they all seem to have high minimums, extremely low interest, and some of them have additional fees or requirements. My savings account offers only slightly less interest. Two days ago, I was pleased to stumble across a new startup called Betterment, which just received the award for Best New York Startup at Tech Crunch’s “Disrupt” conference. They seem to offer, in this blogger’s opinion, a much-needed alternative to more conventional investment strategies.
Before I continue, I want to add that GeeksAreSexy.net does not officially endorse Betterment or give any financial advice. Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I am personally using Betterment’s service at the time of this publication. The graphics below use made-up demo data.
Betterment’s overarching principle is value paired with simplicity. They see savings accounts (which offer stability but very little growth) and the financial products mentioned earlier and recognize a void where something else could fit.
So what do they do differently? Well on first look, their site is very slick. The front page spells out the entire plan very clearly and even provides a semi-functional demo interface so you can get an idea of how the day-to-day management works. Also, they lay out a lot of security and financial stability infrastructure which seeks to gain your trust and confidence.
The long and short of the plan is this: they have two funds, one that is stable and one that is more high-risk. The stable fund (constructed of treasury bonds and other sound investments) will provide a fairly small amount of net growth at a predictable rate. The higher-risk fund is based in the stock market and is intended to do as well as or better than the market as a whole. You choose how much of your invested money goes into each fund. If you want a long-term stable return, you can move the slider toward the stable fund. If you want a potentially higher gain over a shorter term, you’ll shift the slider toward the stock market fund.
There are other funds that essentially do the same thing as Betterment, but the difference that will probably appeal to geeks (and young people in general) is their obvious grasp of the web. Their site, as mentioned before, is very slick and it’s also very easy to use. The interface not only has direct controls for your money (and few decisions to make), but also offers advice based on your goals and shows you what other customers chose to do.
You’re probably asking by now, “How does Betterment get a cut?” Well you can’t get something for nothing. Betterment takes 0.9% of your yearly average balance as their one and only fee. Think of this as $9 for every $1000 you hold. As a person who likes to nudge and customize my settings, I like the idea of having a flat fee and no penalities (there is also no minimum balance, so you can move funds or even empty your account whenever you please).
Those are essentially the “facts” of the service. The question now is…should you go for it? Personally, I’ve already made the choice to try it out for a while, but I’ll give you my reasoning as well as some negatives I considered.
In favor of the service is its simple offer. The fee is fairly negligible if you have a small balance and the sole “choice” to be made is how you want your money divided between the two funds. The lack of any transfer or transaction fees gives you the freedom to draw from your account at any time (minus the standard time for an electronic transfer, which is 3-4 days to add funds and about 6 days to withdraw funds). Lastly, while you may not make a LOT of money, any return is likely to be better than the interest from a traditional savings account.
There are some downsides or cases where I’d say there are better options. If you don’t have ANY savings or you really can’t afford to have even a small loss, I’d rule out Betterment. It’s LIKE a savings account in many ways, but is NOT one because it is not protected from loss by the FDIC.
Also, if you have MORE than a few thousand dollars lying about, I would also veto the Betterment route. First of all, Betterment is brand new and does not have a long history upon which to base your confidence. I don’t think they’re going to vanish with your money, but there is some chance they could perform poorly, both financially and in terms of customer experience. Secondly, larger sums of money can probably be more wisely invested (essentially you’ll probably receive better deals from investment companies if you can offer up a lot of money).
Aside from the size of your savings, the other factor to consider is YOU. If you already pick and choose stocks (and LIKE doing that), then Betterment might not be for you. People who are already “in tune” with the market and enjoy trying to beat it may or may not be better off with something more stable like Betterment, but they certainly won’t enjoy it as much. This isn’t quite a “black box” which manages everything for you, but as I said before, it sits somewhere between a savings account and a CD or money market account.
So that’s the skinny on Betterment. They’ve still got that new company smell and there are no scratches on the paint job, but we’ve yet to see how they’ll perform in the long term. Also, they have mentioned plans for an automated transfer service (to automatically save a certain amount each month) as well as other financial products down the line (that might make more sense for larger sums). I can’t tell you whether to try them out, but for now I think they’re the right fit for me.
How does Betterment sit with you? Do you like/dislike their plan? Let us know in the comments below!
Over the last few weeks I’ve looked at money market and 
