Yes, the mask has been ripped off and it is plain to see that this whole time, nerdist.com was simply domain mapped over hardwick.typepad.com. Well not anymore! Please head over to the newly minted site. Also, please replace the old RSS feed here.
Good day to you, Typepad...
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I SAID GOOD DAY!!!
I know, this news is DAYS old. However, I can never resist the urge to post the drawing I made. I even went as far as to register icanhasstevezburger.com in the hopes of having you post LOLcat pics of Steve Jobs. The main problem is that there aren't as many pictures of Jobs as there are of cats. Oh yeah, about Steve not being at Macworld: I DON'T CARE. I don't need the Talking Turtleneck to tell me that the Mac Pros are being refreshed. I'm still gonna buy one. And as far as Apple extracting itself from a crying Macworld, zipping up its pants and turning around to say, "You were ok, Baby," it's not that much of a surprise. The whole convention thing is costly and not really necessary anymore. The same disenchantment happened to NATPE in the TV biz. They still have it, but it's not the crazy circus orgy it once was. Conventions are so pre-Vatican II.
Yes, I have decided to pull my blog's limp body off of Typepad and give it its own server with the Wordpress vibe. What's more exciting than hearing about the nuts and bolts of a person's operation??? GETTING TO EXPERIENCE THE SCREW-UPS IN THE PROCESS.
This will be happening over the next few days and you may experience turbulence while the DNS propagates...ladies???? This also means that you will need to re-subscribe to the RSS when the new site goes up and give up on any links you may have re-posted. The Nerdist 2.0 (and believe me, I hate using "2.0" as the refresh code. "2.0" seems so over-used but I had no other ideas.) has been re-imagined by my genius art pal Chris Glass, who is responsible for my favorite t-shirts at Wire&Twine.
The launching of this site in August was really just an experiment to see if I would stay consistent with it. I believe I have done that, for the most part. Also, the response has been good thanks to you Nerdists out there who keep the geek dream alive. For this reason, you deserve a better site with more, MORE, MORE!!!
Salt & Vinegar Chips,
Chris
A couple of weeks ago I was enjoying some delicious Thanksgiving morsels at a friend's house when I got into a nerd-versation with a delightful chap by the name of Arnie, who doesn't just love comic books, he nurtures them. I assume that every night before bed he gives them some sort of Cider House Rules tuck-in treatment. Now, I'm not a huge comic guy. My grade school buddy, Mike Soper, scared me away from it. Every week he would buy two copies of EVERYTHING. One to read, and one to keep in the mylar--and the ones he read he still put back in mylar. The depth and breadth of his collection and its organizational system made me say to myself, "Screw this A LOT," and I promptly became obsessed with chess, D&D and computers. The moral is, WE BOTH LOST. Back to my original point, I really liked Arnie so I asked him to start doing the occassional "Comics Nerdist" report so as not to deprive the young nerdlings who don't get that need satisfied by my snarky gadgetry talk. Here is his first entry:
EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN.
Okay so it's official, DC wants the Silver Age back. Well, I'm being liberal with the term, "Silver Age", what I really mean is the status quo that DC enjoyed right before Crisis On Infinite Earths.
It's been a bit of a slow, almost subtle build up. Over the last few years we've seen...
1) The return of the late Oliver Queen/Green Arrow.
2) The return of the late Hal Jordan/Green Arrow.
3) The return of the late Carter Hall/Hawkman.
4) Black Canary being slightly de-aged and having her Canary Cry returned.
5) The reintroduction of the Kara the Kryptonian Supergirl.
I'm sure I'm missing a few... and I'm sure someone will let me know...
Anyway, ever since Infinite Crisis hit in 05/06, the brakes on this particular train have been cut...
1) Superman was Superboy as a young man again.
2) Barry Allen, the Silver Age Flash, is back!
3) The original Pre-Crisis Legion of Superheroes is back.
4) Wonder Woman is now Diana Prince again (love the white jumper).
5) The original New Teen Titans (ground breaking George Perez/Marv Wolfman era) have reformed as the Titans.
6) The current Justice League Roster looks more like the Satellite era League than what we've seen in years.
7) Earth 2, THE Earth 2 is back giving us the return of the Helena
Wayne Huntress and the Adult Robin plus many others that were done away
with in their post-crisis existence.
8) The return of the original Challengers of the Unknown.
9) The Freedom Fighters, the Outsiders, the Global Guardians and the
Doom Patrol have all reformed with somewhat altered line-ups.
Once again, I'm sure I'm missing something.
The question is: is this return to the 80's status quo a bad thing?
Me, personally, I think it's pretty cool.
I was there reading about these character the first time around and
consider them to be "classic". Maybe I'm reliving the wonderment of
reading these tales as a tween boy. Only now, they're being written for
me as an adult. Comic fans are older now, and as a result the books are
skewed for an older audience. I've said it before and I'll say it
again, "I grew up with comics and comics grew up with me".
The whole point of the original Crisis was that DC felt that their established multi-verse was too complicated. Well, I was 12 and the concept of Earth 2,3,S,X, etc. made perfect sense to me. It was cool. Don't get me wrong... at the time I thought Crisis on Infinite Earths was an amazing comic (still do as I sit here typing in front of my oversized poster of Alex Ross painted over George Perez ' pencils poster of said Crisis) and I voraciously read everything (nearly) published after the "Man of Steel" mini-series that helped established the new, streamlined DC continuity.
So welcome back multi verse, welcome back Silver Age.
I missed you.... Without even realizing it.
My predictions for the future?
1) Arthur Curry returning from the dead to resume his role as Aquaman
2) Barbara Gordon becoming Batgirl again
By Your Pal, Arnie: The Hero in His Own Comic Life.
"I'm totally bi... I like Marvel and DC."
I REALLY dug this thing. I'm hoping the company will offer handwriting-to-text soon, but it's still a nifty device with boatloads of potential.
from the official Gadget Pr0n site:
* While you're writing, the smart pen will pick up any audio near you and you can adjust the mic settings, so it'll work well even if you're taking notes in a lecture hall
* Then, all you have to do is play the session back and it plays your audio along with it, either from the pen or through the livescribe software
* The software recognizes words so you can search through your notes, even if your handwriting is terrible
* It won't convert notes into computer text, but there's already third party software to do so
* You can make a flash movie out of your notes and audio, and it's fun to see how everything played out while you were drawing or writing
* Upload your notes and audio to your Livescribe account so you can access it anywhere
* The main graph is used to get to each feature, and this is at the bottom of every page along with the other shortcut buttons
* You very rarely have to tap twice and there's very little lag while navigating
* This makes all the other features work well too
* The translator demo will translate a word you've written from English to a few different languages
* The piano app lets you draw a piano that you can play
* Developers have already started writing apps for this, so it has serious potential
* If you're always taking notes for college classes, meetings, or stand-up, it works like a charm
* PRICE: $150
I did a quick walkthru of the "Attack of the Show" set a couple of hours before taping the show today. On the way, I ran into a VERY SPECIAL Justic Leaguer...
To be more accurate, it's really New Zealand's fault for this one. A Kiwi chap got busted for child abuse after posting footage of himself swinging his kid around airplane-style, so the NZ PSA Strike Force issued this commercial. At first you think that it's either a joke or that the new season of the Conchords has taken a melodramatic turn. BUT NO--but both of those are erroneous. It is real, proving once again that Kiwis are HILARIOUS, no matter what they do.
In order to warrant a whole PSA it occurred to us that this must be some kind of national sport, so naturally Kevin and I had to be the first to play it on American soil.
I am really enjoying live streaming video on qik. Every year WIRED mag opens a brick and mortar store around the holidays, so I decided to do a herky and jerky iPhone-camera walkthru of the store to give you the full breadth of lifestyle tech that it has to offer. The store is also online but you can't rub germs all over stuff on the Web.
This was a super-fun field review of the Canon EOS 50D. It takes amazing pictures, but is a tad more complicated and expensive than the Nikon D-90. It's a shame that I don't really understand or care about football. That's right, I don't care about football and I am not ashamed! Though, I hope I don't get stripped of my citizenship. Anyway, I've always abhorred the meathead stereotype that "dudes just think about beer and football." We straight guys who are indifferent to watching this sport must unite! Unite and...I don't know...do something else...I guess.
