With a Spooky Girl Like You: Horror and Video Games

I adore being scared. Not the “ew-blood-and-gore-and-oh-god-are-those-brains-I-can-see-pouring-out” kind of scared, but the “tiptoeing through the dark woods and hearing a noise you can’t identify and holy-crap-maybe-it’s-a-killer-or-a-werewolf-or-a-sparkly-vampire” kind of scared. But alas, I am now in a relationship with someone who is pretty ho-hum when it comes to scary movies, so I don’t really get a chance to watch them anymore. Who would want to watch a scary movie alone? Half the fun is clinging to your partner in faux fear when that mystery sound finally pops out of the woods. So I have found an alternative to the scary movie genre in my life: survival horror video games. Read more…

Why Apple’s Trackpad isn’t that Magical

This morning, Apple released the long rumored Magic Trackpad for $69. This device is basically the trackpad from their Macbook Pro torn from the machine and attached to a bluetooth receiver, the Magic Trackpad adds all the multitouch gestures that users have come to know from the iPad, iPhone, and Macbook line. Although the Magic Mouse has most of these gestures, the Magic Trackpad  ensures a seamless gesture experience across the Apple platform. Read more…

Internet Live – Episode 06: 7/27/10

On this episode of Internet Live, we talk about exciting twitter upgrades, Brandon’s over abundance of Julia Allison knowledge, and one slightly fat guy. You give us ten minutes, we’ll give you the internet. While technically this is our sixth episode, this our first with a much faster pace, and geared for the YouTube audience in mind.

Please Subscribe!

Your Week in Geek #2, July 24, 2010

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to another (day-late) round of Your Week in Geek.  San Diego Comic-Con is in full-swing as of Thursday, and a mother-load of potentially jaw-dropping-ly, world-shatteringly awesome nerd news has been dropped so far this weekend.  As such, you can consider this week’s roundup to be but the tip of the veritable nerdy iceberg, poised to sink the metaphorical Titanic that is your free time, extra spending money, and social skills when the awesome stuff announced this weekend is released to the general public.

Read more…

The Death of the Bargain Bin

Recently, while at my local Barnes & Noble, I discovered they were having a massive summer clearance blowout. Hardcovers, which normally go for five times the price, were being liquidated at $4.95. Knowing I had a sizable pile of books at home I had yet to read, I kept myself to just purchasing Steve Martin’s Born Standing Up.

Lately, I have been buying almost all of my media in digital form. As a person with unwieldy collections of books, albums, and movies, I was actually embracing how I have been getting back some space. My iPad has pretty much converted me on the last hold out, eBooks. The ease of downloading, always having a backlight, being able to carry dozens in my bag at once…

Unlike stores that sell physical products, digital good stores can only run out of space when they run out of server storage. With no material or shipping costs, the only costs to be paid before profits start rolling in are the royalties to the publisher and creators. When a store runs out of space, they liquidate, knowing that they can make more money on newer products – hence bargain bins. Stores either make little or even take a hit on a product just to get it out of the store. They are basically paying the customer to buy the product. Read more…

Do Nothing But Read – Episode 12: The Joy of Cooking Woodchucks

In this volume, Amanda and Brandon tackle cookbooks that are good readin’ and eatin’, making meatloaf for your pathetic reserve boyfriend, and cathedral construction. Read more…

Inception: What happened?

This is not a review.  I saw Inception, but I am not clear on what exactly happened.  I’m asking the MDP community for a little help… This unlike the excellent review by Jon is spoiler heavy!

I want to start this post by saying “Not since The Matrix have I viewed a film so unique, engaging, and thought provoking”. Unfortunately, that type of statement is so iterative that I feel I would be doing the movie a huge disservice.  Therefore I will simply open with, Inception what a concept!

It is at this point in my thought process where I usually say something like, “spoilers to follow” but in all honesty I am not entirely sure that what I got out of that movie will be what you might.  As I left the theater I was already arguing with my wife about how the movie ended, what was real, and what was not.  This is most certainly a movie that demands repeated viewing. Read more…