Hello

to all of you just checking CCG out for the first time, please join us on facebook. the website is a work in progress, but facebook is where all the action is for now!

Code Monkeys

I'm about 6 months late on this story, but G4 did not renew Code Monkeys for a third season! I can't understand why, this was one of the few good shows they had. It's not as if they're replacing it with new content, since they don't generate any regular TV content except for Attack of the Show and X-Play. G4 has become nothing more than a syndication channel; cops, cheaters, old 80's movies; yet if you look at their website, they have 7 webshows they could easily turn into TV shows. Why not just play repeats of Attack of the Show, or create some new TV content? We're not looking for million dollar sci-fi production, just something to watch that has to do with video games and technology.

At least TechTV would make some filler shows, and then run repeats of them.

Check it out.....

So I've been slacking for the past month now. I've been meaning to write something for the blog but haven't. I could think of nothing thus far worth sharing with you all.....until today. A friend of mine had been bored at work lately and decided to make his own comic strip. The first was so surprisingly funny and well received that he's just been whipping them out for the past month. After posting on facebook and gaining a bit of an audience he created a blog to showcase them. These comic strips are nothing short of hilarious. I don't want to give anything away. You really have to see for yourself.

http://jrock07.wordpress.com/

GeekFaction: Models

When I was a kid, one of the highlights of Christmas was going to see the Wise Ave Firehouse train garden. The other was setting up a 16' x 4' train garden with my father in our living room. I love a world in miniature, the only thing that would have made either of those two better, was if they were little more true to life, I wanted more realism.

I told my wife that when we bought a house, there would be a HO model railroad in it somewhere. Now that we have a home, there is a table, and a work area in the basement. I haven't got a lot to show for the past year or so in terms of complete projects. But, I figure I've got another 60 years to finish it, and I'm in no hurry. I'm doing it slowly and honing my skills, so it can be as realistic as possible in the end.

(My prototype brick wall technique)

Railroad modeling is detail oriented, obsessing over realism, with the greatest achievement being when someone looks at a picture of it and doesn't know if it's real or a model. However, I've come to find wargaming miniatures much more interesting. The "scratch building" wargamers are doing blows away what railroaders are doing in terms of creativity, detail and interest grabbing elements.

One of the best sites I've come across is Necromundicon. There's no kits on here, all these pieces are scratch built from junk laying around. If I had to compare all my work against his, I'd just give up the hobby right now because his work is amazing.

Also check out TerraGenesis, most of the threads on TG contain Work-In-Progress pictures of the models as the people are building them. If you've ever wondered how modelers get such great looking stuff from junk, this is the page to check out.

Once your amazed at the structures, you'll probably want to make some characters, Musketeer Miniatures isn't updated enough in my opinion, but what posts are there are solid gold, especially this tutorial on his creation of a Pirate.

Just in case you think all wargamers are playing with Orcs and Knights, check out The Warfactory for an assortment of various genres of miniatures.

All that being said, I don't even own any wargaming miniatures, or go to any games, I just admire it as an art.

8-bit trip

A stop-motion Lego tribute to 8-bit video games

Geek Show Podcast

My job has me driving all over Baltimore, DC and Virginia, which sucks. What sucks harder is listening to the radio. It's not the bland standardized music that makes me insane, is the annoying commercials. In marketing they say repetition is recognition, which is why they'll just spout off the same 1-800 number 4 times in a row, 6 times an hour. But for me, it was the reason I bought commercial free satellite radio, and then moved on to a full schedule of Podcasts.

One of my favorite podcasts right now is The Geek Show. 5 or 6 geeks sit around a table for an hour or two a week (sometimes they also upload mid-cycle additional content), and talk about the latest comic book news, sci-fi movies and TV, and any other assorted geekery that's going on. Lots of inside geek jokes about Saturday morning cartoons and quotes from Star Wars make this an exclusive for our people.

When I first started listening, the story that got me hooked was about one of the guys driving down the sidewalk on a little scooter. He saw these two jocks, and one had on a Cobra T-shirt, so drove over and stopped in front of them and said accusingly "Quick, who's your favorite member of Cobra!" and when the guy didn't have an answer, he yelled "HA! Posers" and burned out on his little scooter. The visual image that left in my mind, of a true fan of a franchise defending it's honor, and the fact that he was yelling at guys twice his size, then relying on a scooter to get away, locked me in.

Go into Itunes, find The Geek Show and subscribe to it, you're here reading this, so I already know you'd like it. Even if you don't subscribe, go to their website and listen to their interview with Chris Claremont, who wrote The Uncanny Xmen for 17 years (1975-1991), and is now returning to pickup where he left off.

Full Moon Fever! The Wolf Man Trailer

The Website Is Down

The website is down has been around for a couple years now, and although some people think there are 'web rules' that say you shouldn't blog about old items, I disagree.

Episode 1 is the best of the bunch, it's 10 minutes long and seriously funny if you've ever had to provide any sort of tech support. "Did you try rebooting?" "Yeah, three times, just like you said, I always reboot three times".

On their blog, they have a section Datacenter from hell, that has some pretty funny posts from sys admins. This takes me back to the early days of the internet, when entire websites would be nothing but text files of jokes. A popular section on those sites was always the Sysadmin from hell, about sysadmins torturing their users, or the You're too stupid to own a computer stories from the tech support trenches.

PS3 getting undead goodness!!

For those of you who have yearned for some good ole fashioned zombie killing via your PS3,

you're in luck.

At GamesCom today, Housemarque (the folks who brought us Super

Stardust HD) announced Dead Nation, a zombie gore-fest exclusive to the PS3. I can't even express my excitement over this. I finally broke down and bought Left4Dead for PC (since the good folks at Valve

keep making amazing games exclusive to 360 WTF!!!), but I really

want something that I can play on my console. Hopefully this will

answer my prayers. If they happen to throw in multiplayer and some

trophy support, then we may just have a certifiable zombie classic in

the making!

Check out the awesome trailer!

Harvard Professor lectures about the science of zombies

A random thought about zombie evolution spurred a discussion on my personal facebook page the other day, which has lead me to further ponder the subject. I'm attempting to create a plausible explanation for past zombism, and how it can evolve going forward. During my research today, I came acorss this 40 minute video of Dr. Schlozman of Harvard Medical school.

Click here to watch it on The Boston Phoenix