Hey boys and girls! For those of you with Trekkie significant others, here’s something you can consider adding to their lunchboxes for quite a lunchtime surprise: The USS Meaterprise!
The USS Meaterprise: To boldly go where no meat has gone before. Er… that sounded kind of… wrong… somehow…
[Via Walyou]
A few days ago, Redditor Tax_Ninja submitted this picture to Reddit along with this note:
My kid designed his own scientist costume for career day (including the “to do list”). I feel like I’ve succeeded as a parent.
All we can say is: Indeed! Good job Tax_Ninja!
[Via Reddit]
This is hilarious! Watch as fictional Crayola CEO Michelle Perry thanks protesters for making Crayola-brand markers the most used tools for creating protest signs.
Edit: Closing the comments section on this post. I just posted this as most people thought it was funny. Obviously, it was a bad idea.
If you’re a geek of a certain age, the chances are you’ve at some point sniggered at the mention of a 3.5″ floppy. Those days are over with Sony effectively announcing the death of the floppy disk drive.
Created in the early 1980s as a smaller, higher-capacity successor to larger formats, the 3.5″ initially had a capacity of around 280 kilobytes. With models available in both single and double-sided versions, along with three different densities, the format could eventually hold 1.44MB. To put that into context, it’s about enough to store a minute or so of audio.
Aside from size and capacity, the major difference between the 3.5″ and its 5.25″ predecessor was that despite the name (which referred to the disk itself), the 3.5″ disk came in a solid plastic casing. This made it both less susceptible to accidental damage, and much more a challenge to deliberately destroy.
The physical design of the 3.5″ disk created a couple of other unofficial characteristics. One was that it was just about the right weight to make it a particular pleasure to use the spring-loaded eject button on the drive: I pity anyone who worked in an office of any kind in the early 90s and didn’t take part in a contest to shoot the disk as far as possible.
The disk casing could also be cracked open when attempting to destroy it for security reasons, with the disk itself then cut to shreds with scissors. This may be a personal quirk, but the metal-on-metal cutting always made me feel downright queasy.
The format is believed to have overtaken its 5.25″ predecessor in 1988 and was the main recordable media format through much of the 1990s. Eventually, though, it was superseded by recordable CDs, which had a drastically higher capacity.
Sony, which was the last major 3.5″ disk manufacturer and had wound up with a dominant market share, has now announced it limited supply to only cover a few markets in March and will cease production in Japan early next year.
PCWorld notes that while 12 million 3.5″ disks were sold in Japan by Sony last year, the total data which could be stored on them wouldn’t fill one side of a Blu-ray disc.
Created as a collaboration between World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Ben Lee and Leo Burnett, “Space Monkey” carries a message about our planet, and features Ben Lee’s track, “Song for the Divine Mother of the Universe.”
[Via TDW]
So, being loyal Geeks are Sexy readers, you’ve surely all tried making some artery-jamming Krispy Kreme bacon burgers since we’ve posted about them almost 2 years ago, right? And if you didn’t, you probably thought that these burgers were the ultimate in unhealthiness, and rightly so.
But lo and behold folks, the king is dead. Enters the KFC Krispy Kreme Double Down. Long live the king.
[Via Buzzfeed]
Barnes & Noble has unleashed twin weapons in its battle with the Kindle and iPad: the company is updating its Nook reader to offer both chess and sudoko games!
OK, OK, that’s not the main selling point. The firm is also adding an “experimental web browser” which will run in the main grayscale window rather than the smaller color touchscreen. It will only work on Wi-Fi.
The publicity for the update somewhat downplays this feature, which probably suggests it doesn’t want to invite comparisons to the web experience on other devices, including those with color screens. One benefit it has noted is that users can now access Wi-Fi networks which use a log-in page.
There’s also a particularly creative offer: Nook users will be able to spend up to an hour a day reading books from the Nook catalog without charge. The catch is that it only works when the user is at a physical Barnes & Noble store. It’s possible this feature will mainly be used by freeloaders and cheapskates who’ll be slow to splash the cash, but it’s certainly one way to get people into stores.
It’s not yet entirely clear if the entire online range of books will be available, or just a selection. Barnes & Noble has confirmed users will be able to read books that aren’t physically stocked in a store and that it will be adding magazines to the free reading options later.
This all sounds great, but the problem for Barnes & Noble is that the device is still struggling to find a market where it can lead. If you want something that does everything well in a pleasing way, there’s the iPad. If you want something that does everything well and offers full computing power and control, there are netbooks. If you want something that does one thing — e-Books — well, there’s the Kindle. At $259, it’s hard to think of many people for whom the Nook would be either the best value or the perfect solution.
Okay, so technically there is no such thing. But stay with me a moment and let me explain.
So I totally missed the ball yesterday for Earth Day. I’m sorry, Earth. It’s nothing personal. It’s not like I was dumping garbage around my back yard and leaking batteries into the soil. No, I took a nice walk. I marveled in the beauty of Mother Earth, and got some good old fashioned Vitamin D from the sun. And during that walk I started to think about other Earths, alternate Earths.
You know what I mean—Earths from fiction or film that are just so slightly different from our own that they act like a mirror, distorted just enough to feel foreign while retaining that same sense of familiarity. Like Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, or the Marvel Universe (comic books make particular use of this concept in the “what-if” Earth scenario).
All throughout my life, I’ve wanted to dwell in alternate Earths. So, in lieu of writing a post about our Earth, I thought I’d share two of my favorite alternate Earths in hopes that you’ll share some of yours (from comics, books, movies, whatever.)
Jacqueline Carey’s Terre D’Ange: If you open up Carey’s books you’ll find that the map looks like our own world, but upon reading the first few pages it’s quite clear that history took a huge turn at some point. She creates cultures which mirror many of those we’re familiar with, including kingdoms in France, the British Isles, and as far away as the Middle East. She even bases the religion of Terre D’Ange (the French-based kingdom) loosely on Judeo-Christian mythology—but turning it from monotheistic to polytheistic in practice. The result is that Carey’s world becomes as much of an exploration for the reader as the characters. With each new journey, there’s a sense of deja-vu amidst the discovery, and a thrill to see what she’s done with the culture. A highly recommended series of books, especially if you like a little sauciness and sexiness with your world building.
Cherie Priest’s Seattle & United States – Steampunk literature, in my opinion, sometimes suffers from a little too much in the way of alternate history without good alternate world building. The result ends up feeling like name dropping, with authors working to include Tesla, Babbage, and Lovelace in everything they write without really exploring the what-ifs of the world itself. But in Boneshaker, Priest’s much lauded book, the world building is top notch and decidedly different. In fact, her Blight-infected Seattle—while rooted in historical detail (down to the street names and buildings)—is a truly new world. You can almost feel the city breathe and wheeze through the pages, and it becomes as much a character as anyone in the book. In Priest’s world, the Civil War has not ended, and we get hints throughout the book of its impact on the West Coast—but those little details are just so tantalizing. Not to mention it’s downright gritty, as opposed to much of the gaslight romance stuff out there. Part of her Clockwork Century books, Boneshaker will be followed up by Clementine and Dreadnought.
So how about you? What are your favorite alternate Earths? Any you wish you lived in? Any you have nightmares about?
Tags: alternate earth day, alternate history, cherie priest, earth day, jacqueline carey