In my Christmas haul this year, my father was astute enough to get me a wonderfully geeky toy. I received a collectable Matrix toy. The item barely qualifies as a toy though. It seems that the McFarlane company produces detailed models for genres like Spawn, the Matrix, and Aliens/Predator. I received a lovely rendering of Morpheus in his classic red leather chair. The line of Matrix toys also includes a marvelous Sentinel model and a dramatic pose of Mifune in his A.P.U. firing wildly. Great models.

Posted at 12:00 AM

A funny thing happened to me the other day when I went over to my girlfriend's house. She had picked up a video on CD that had some amusing joke/drama/whatever that claimed that Macintoshes suck somehow. I usually find any attempt for her to tell me that Macs aren't as good as PeeCees fairly amusing in itself, since her knowledge of computers is next to rudimentary (and she still owes me towering technological fealty for expunging the accidental installation of Linux from her beloved Windows box).

Far more amusing was the fact that she couldn't get the CD to mount. Three times while waiting for the CD to spin up, Windows froze and required a forced restart. Cleaning the CD made no difference. I explained that some of the newer, cheaper recordable media can sometimes have trouble playing in older drives (hers is an 8X CD-ROM). She suggested that if I'd brought my iBook along that we could probably play it in that. "Probably, but I'd sooner kiss a wookie," I was tempted to say, but I knew she'd never get the reference.

I've now seen Return of the King twice, and I'm still reeling with Tolkieny goodness. I can't explain how truly great the film is without spoiling it for anyone who hasn't seen it. What I can say is that the film manages to convey the primary ideas that Tolkien was getting at in the book. Seeing the events that the characters experience and grow through really move you as a viewer. There were a few times when I almost had to wipe away a tear, before I realized Allen or Chris D. might see and think I was a wuss. Oh well... Long story short, if you haven't seen it already, go see it.

Posted at 12:00 AM

Geekman's World has been officially launched. Though I've run other sites before, this is the first time I've had the guts to buy my own domain name. If you're lucky enough to be Canadian, it's really cheap. Just $20 CDN for a year of www.whatever.ca goodness. Special thanks go to my friend Andrew for hosting this site out of the goodness of his heart. If you need reliable and affordable site hosting, you might want to check out his new business, Atomation Web Solutions Inc. Anyhoo, feel free to run around the site and explore. I'm still finishing off bits and pieces, so more stuff is on the way.

Posted at 12:00 AM

In a recent comic at Penny Arcade, Tycho talked about the inclusion of an ultra-powerful rabbit creature in the Final Fantasy XI MMORPG. Like the evil bunny from Acheron's call, this was yet another nod to the killer rabbit from Monty Python's "The Holy Grail". Its come to the point where I believe that every fantasy genre should somehow include an evil killer rabbit. Tycho's name for the creature was particularly delightful: "The Omega Hare". This can be roughly translated as "The Rabbit that Ends". I had created a version of the Monty Python bunny as a joke card for Magic: The Gathering a while back, but the Penny Arcade comic inspired me to create a couple of variations, and rename them with Tycho's wonderfully apt designation.

Posted at 12:00 AM

PvPOnline, the geeky webcomic, did a strip the other day about Christie's auctioning off a gaming die from the Roman era. The obvious punchline for geeks being that Romans played roleplaying games. I immediately headed over to Christie's web site to see if this was a joke. Sure enough though, there was posted the aution details for a 20-sided glass die dated at 1,800 years old. The symbols have been identified as Roman but the game for which such dice were used in unknown. It has been suggested that the dice were used by Roman soldiers for the grizzly pastime of divying up the goods on dead enemies. Fun...

Posted at 12:00 AM