Stormtroopers Singin’ in the Rain? [Video]

You betcha. Or, a close approximation. So, this is clearly not the original Singin’ in the Rain, but something geeked up and rather, well, enhanced, shall we say? Definitely cute. That dude’s got better moves than I’ll ever have.



Celebs Who Go Geek

Someone recently asked E!Online’s “Answer B!tch” the question “Do any celebs quit Hollywood for real jobs?” Turns out that science and academia aren’t unusual career paths for celebrities (even very minor ones) who decide that Hollywood isn’t their primary career path. You probably know that Danica McKellar, who played Winnie in The Wonder Years, turned into a hot math geek who now teaches teenage girls that math is cool (and still does some acting on the side), but here are a few more:

  • Mayim Bialik – once better known as “Blossom” – has a PhD in neuroscience and is writing a book on parenting. (Though she still does some acting as well; you might have seen her on the season finale of The Big Bang Theory.)
  • Charlie Korsmo, who I remember best as the kid in Hook, is a law professor at Brooklyn Law School and teaches torts, corporate law, and land use.
  • Brian May, lead guitarist for Queen, is an astrophysicist. And he’s currently the chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University.
  • Ilan Mitchell-Smith, known for his role in Weird Science, has a PhD in English and teaches at California State University Long Beach.

Come to think of it, this isn’t exactly a long list. Anyone know of other examples?



In Regard to Scott Pilgrim

So, being a geek and a movie lover usually sucks big time. Year after year, I get to watch some of my favorite books butchered on the big screen; I have to endure the slings and arrows of, well, inaccurate slings and arrows in medieval films. I cringe when they miscast favorite super heroes and bring me to the verge of tears with terrible dialogue or horrendously “re-imagined” plot devices.

And then, there’s those torturous glimpses of films that were almost good, or televisions shows that were pulled past their prime. We geeks are forever at the mercy of the marketing gurus behind film and television, who so often have no clue whatsoever of how to help a show succeed, let alone promote it (yes in fact, I am still bitter about Firefly).

Going in to watch Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, I didn’t know what to expect. I mean, I knew it’d been touted as the next geekiest thing since a d20, but who am I to trust the bigwigs of marketing in Hollywood? No one. I didn’t read the comics, and I’d only seen a few previews, and I happened to stumble upon a few rather curious reviews of the film. You know the ones I’m talking about. The ones where the reviewers weren’t actually complaining about the film, they were complaining about the audience at the film. Yes, you read that right. The reviewers weren’t complaining about the film itself, but the people watching it. Super classy, eh?

Linda Holmes of NPR hit it right on the head with her recent article “Scott Pilgrim’ Versus The Unfortunate Tendency To Review the Audience” where she details some of the decidedly more cruel responses to the movie, including a reviewer at The Boston Phoenix who describes Scott Pilgrim as a “dork-pandering assault” and claims Michael Cera is “irritating” due partially to “the non-stop Pavlovian laugh track provided by the audience at the screening I attended.” Translation: Omg the geeks were all laughing and I didn’t get the jokes, so clearly this movie sucks.

Holmes continues with similar reviews from The St. Petersburg Times, The New York Observer (claiming the film is “directed at an audience with generational ADD”) and, one of my favorites, from The Philadelphia Weekly, calling it “an insular, punishingly alienating experience preaching only to the faithful, devoted hearts of arrested 12-year-old boys. It’s singularly fixated on video games and shallow visions of women as one-dimensional objects to be either obtained or discarded and offers no possible point of entry to anybody over the age of 30.”

And, important to point out, Holmes actually enjoyed Scott Pilgrim. As she puts it:

Here’s what I’m saying: I’m a woman, I’m in my late thirties, I can’t handle first-person shooters, I’m afraid of Comic-Con, and I really, really liked Scott Pilgrim vs. The World… I hope I’m not, you know, blowing your mind.

These whiny reviewers have missed the point by such a measure that I’m just, well, offended and irritated and doubtful as to whether anything I say will change their minds. I loved the movie. It was, hands down, the best film I’ve seen this year, and I haven’t laughed so much during a movie since I can remember. Yes, I’m a kid of the 80s. I grew up playing Mario and 8-bit games, and wishing my life had the same heroic capabilities of video games. And yes, I was in bands, and was an outcast, and fell in love and fell on my face. So, I’m your dream demographic, really.

But back to the nasty reviews. While it seems so obvious to say this, I’m going to do it anyway: if you don’t understand something, that doesn’t mean you have to make fun of it. Reviewers, really. Are we in grade school again? Are you honestly falling back to the schoolyard behavior of your childhood and poking fun at the kids recounting their D&D sessions over lunch? ‘Cause that’s all this sounds like. And it’s just downright shameful. If you can’t review a film fairly, maybe you shouldn’t be reviewing it at all.

Geeks move the movie market, folks. We may not always like what happens, or the result (that’s sort of part of being a geek in the first place), but take a look at Comic-Con and tell me we don’t move the market. Look at the highest grossing films of all time and tell me geeks have nothing to do with it. Shaking your fists at us because one little film panders to some of our more unusual tastes is low. It’s just as bad as making fun of country music fans for enjoying country music, or ridiculing bird-watchers for liking to watch birds.

Here’s my advice to all the Cranky McCrankypants reviewers out there: go have some fun, will you? De-twist those wadded panties, put on a t-shirt and some flip-flops, and chill. Take a deep breath. You don’t have to make fun of the geeks anymore. We’ve have lives, families, aspirations; we’re smart, we’re sexy, we’re balanced. We’re women, we’re men, we’re grandparents, we’re kids. We’re everywhere. And, frankly, we don’t care if you don’t get our humor. We’re not going anywhere. You’re not going to scare us away.

So get used to being the only one in a crowded theater who doesn’t get the joke. Or, you know, take a chance and actually try to walk in our shoes because, you know what? We’ve got one hell of a bright future. With jetpacks.

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Five Tips for Sharing an iPad

There are several reasons why the iPad is particularly suited for sharing: it’s comparatively expensive for a gadget, it’s portable enough to continually move around a home yet too big to be buried away in a pocket, and its the type of device likely to be a secondary machine rather than a main computer.

The problem is that as far as Apple’s design goes, the idea seems to be that everyone buys their own iPad. There are no Windows-style user accounts, and the general rule is that there’s only one setting for everything.

I’m not going to discuss the issue of who gets to use a shared iPadm because that’s the type of issue you need to either resolve personally, or take to a marriage guidance counselor if needs be! But there are some technical solutions which make it slightly easier for two people to use the same machine.

The key is to use separate applications wherever necessary, but there are some app-specific options which make things smoother.

Browser: If you don’t use the browser that much, and you aren’t overly worried about bookmarks, you can get both use Safari. However, things work far better if one of you uses Safari and the other a third-party browser. I’d recommend Atomic Lite, which is a fully-featured browser despite being a free app with a premium option. It also has an effective private browsing mode, which may suit whichever user prefers to, erm, shop for surprise gifts… One limitation is that only Safari can create bookmarks as shortcut icons on the home screen.

e-Mail: It’s possible to have multiple accounts on the main iPad mail function, but once you get into multiple users its a little more unwieldy. Things work much better if one of you uses a decent webmail service, particularly if that person accesses it through the alternative browser. It’s a couple of extra clicks, but keeps your respective mail completely separate. If one person particularly needs to get push notifications, it’s better for them to be the one using the iPad’s in-built e-mail. It’s also worth remembering that any app which allows you to e-mail a link will send it from the default account on the device.

iTunes: To keep things manageable, it really is best to only sync your iPad to one account. As long as you aren’t using the iPad for music collections, this works reasonably well, though its best to have all automatic syncing switched off and manually select what does and doesn’t update. For example, we have video podcasts set to sync, but manually add any movies. From a logistical standpoint its best to sync to a computer permanently based in your home. It’s also easier to only use one iTunes account for app management, though of course you can download apps on the iPad itself.

Social networking: As things stand, the Facebook website itself is probably the best way to access the service on the iPad, so the simplest solution is to each bookmark the site, complete with your log-in details (assuming you want them stored) in your respective browser. With Twitter you can use separate apps, but the best bet is Twitterific which offers smooth instant switching between multiple accounts.

Organization: At the moment this is still somewhat messy. The good news is that the iOS4 update coming later this year allows users to put app icons and website shortcuts into folders. This should make it much easier to arrange things so that each users can go straight to their preferred apps.

Do you share an iPad? If so, let us know any sharing tips you have via our comments facility below.

(Image credit: Flickr user Veronica Belmont)

Awesome Star Wars-Themed Short: Makazie One

Makazie One brings a new look and feel to the Star Wars fan film genre that will take you on a journey through intense ground battles and haunting imagery of death as an elite Imperial soldier tracks down a known threat to the Empire. Set in the Star Wars universe between Episodes III and IV and told through the Imperials perspective, if you’ve always loved the bad guys you won’t want to miss this film.

Lady Java [Video]

First, there was Java 4-Ever, and then this. The guys from Javazon really know their stuff about how to get developers to flock to their site!

Deleted Star Wars Scene – Luke’s Lightsaber

Captured at Orlando’s Star Wars Celebration, the official version of the scene will soon be released on the remastered Blu-Ray special edition box set to be released later this year. The scene shows Darth Vader reaching out to and calling Luke to the Dark side, while Luke builds his lightsaber on Tatooine. Enjoy!

[Via Geekologie]

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