A few months old now, but so great: this cosplaying dad on the way to the movies with his son, both decked out as Minions, deserves a hooray:
Such an easy look to put together: overalls, yellow t-shirt and bag, plus commercially available Minions goggles that won’t break the bank. Making memories doesn’t have to involve grand gestures!
In Making Stuff occasional feature, we share fun arts and crafts done by us and our fellow geeks and nerds.
I seem to be in a Star Trek frame of mind. Having just finished (re)watching all of TNG, I guess that’s to be expected. Here’s a new spin on “Pump Up the Volume” by MARRS á la every Star Trek franchise:
Star Trek Pump up the Volume MARRS by Vernon Wilmer Video. Found via Tor.com.
I’ve certainly been bobbing my head and tapping my foot to this!
Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.
According to the fount of all human knowledge, the Wikipedia, the world’s first android phone was the HTC Dream, released on October 22, 2008.
I beg to differ. Undoubtedly, the first android phone appeared exactly 15 years prior, on October 23, 1993 in a tv broadcast:
The screencap above is from Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 7, episode 6: “Phantasms” where the android Data has to adjust to suddenly being capable of experiencing nightmares.
P.S. Yes, the joke is really, really, REALLY dumb. Sleep deprived brain is sleep deprived. 🙂
P.P.S. Incidentally, The HTC Dream would make a great name for a spaceship, don’t you think? If I ever got to name one, it would be an iteration of the northern lights – aurora borealis, nordlys (Danish), goleuadau gogleddol (Welsh – wow, looks so fun), or something in that vein. You?
Some things are just too silly not to share!
While doing some research on northern European hillforts recently, I found myself looking at some pictures of Dún Aonghasa (also known as Dun Aengus). It’s an impressive site. The fort is a series of concentric half-rings backing up onto 100-meter cliffs on the island on Inishmore off the western coast of Ireland. The earliest construction on the site has been dated to around 1100 BCE. Later additions were made around 500 BCE. It is one of the largest well-preserved examples of a type of structure that was built throughout northern and western Europe, from Spain to Sweden, in the prehistoric era.
There has been disagreement in the scholarship about the function of Dún Aonghasa and similar forts. While often identified as fortified settlements, some have suggested that they were actually sites of religious ritual. It has to be said that if Dún Aonghasa and sites like it were religious sanctuaries, they were amazingly well-defended ones. I think it is more likely that sites that were originally built for defense were centuries later repurposed as ceremonial sites, much like how medieval castles built for defense have centuries later become museums and tourist attractions.
It may be hard to believe that such an enormous fortification was built in so remote a place, but forts like Dún Aonghasa were once fairly common across western and northern Europe. Most, however, have been lost to decay, erosion, and the reuse of stones. It is only in remote places like Inishmore that they still survive.
Thoughts for writers
Just a simple thought today: the world is full of interesting possibilities. Fortresses don’t have to look like medieval castles. Religious sites don’t have to look like cathedrals or Greek temples. History is huge and there are amazing things out there to inspire your imagination.
History for Writers is a weekly feature which looks at how history can be a fiction writer’s most useful tool. From worldbuilding to dialogue, history helps you write. Check out the introduction to History for Writers here.
Alex Silver (of This Is Productions) made a charmingly comic-like Doctor Strange credits sequence that’s definitely worth seeing:
Doctor Strange Title Sequence from This Is Productions on Vimeo.
Found via Collider.
The actual dose of the Doctor is still a ways away – according to IMDB, the release date is November 04, 2016. I know next to nothing about the character nor the work of screenwriter Jon Spaihts or director Scott Derrickson, but I’ve enjoyed the work of confirmed actors Benedict Cumberbatch plus Tilda Swinton, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Mads Mikkelsen (in negotiations). It remains to be seen how the movie will tie to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.
Lots of women play video games, and lots of gamers are women. This is not news, yet for some reason we have to keep saying it.
The august Pew Research Center was the most recent group to say it. Here’s their Teens, Technology, and Friendships report from earlier this month about how teens use games, among other online services, to connect with one another. Among many other findings, 84% of teenage boys reported playing video games, as did 59% of teenage girls. All teens reported playing a wide variety of different types of games (which is to say: no, all those teenage girl gamers are not just poking at Barbie Sparkle Kardashian Krush on their phones; they’re doing everything from hacking up orcs in World of Warcraft to building imperial star destroyers in Minecraft).
So, if there are so many women playing games, why don’t male gamers see them? The results of another recent study, Insights into Sexism: Male Status and Performance Moderates Female-Directed Hostile and Amicable Behavior by Michael M. Kasumovic and Jeffery H. Kuznekoff showed that male gamers (specifically playing Halo 3) tended to be more aggressive and abusive in voice chat to players who sounded female than those who sounded male. Also not news. Anyone who’s spent time in any online chat environment is likely to have seen the kind of dreck that gets spewed at women who let their identities be known, so it’s understandable that many female gamers choose to conceal their gender when in mixed company.
The Kasumovic and Kuznekoff study offers another interesting detail, however. The abuse directed at the female-voiced player came primarily from male players who were performing poorly, while men who were doing well at the game tended to be positive or neutral in their comments.
I see three important takeaways from these two studies:
Of Dice and Dragons is an occasional feature about games and gaming.
Reddit user 86thdj shared their wife’s classroom, which she decorated with a Harry Potter theme. And it’s magical!
Make sure you see the rest of the photos on Imgur.
I just love the 9 ¾ door and the flying envelopes – very low effort but big impact. And that’s not all – first of all, every student will get their Hogwarts letter, and, later in the year, the kids will be quizzed and sorted into houses. The discussion on Reddit also touches on the kind of teaching that this room is meant for, so it should be helpful for other teachers.
Looks like it will be a lot of fun both for the teacher and the kids! I can’t but echo one of the commenters – “So awesome!! Keep being amazing!!”
In Making Stuff occasional feature, we share fun arts and crafts done by us and our fellow geeks and nerds.
Hugh Jackman might play the eponymous protagonist in the forthcoming Odyssey movie.
“[…] Jackman doesn’t have a deal in place yet but has had multiple conversations with the filmmaking team about playing Odysseus, the hero of the film who embarks on a long voyage home following the conclusion of the Trojan War.”
I rather like Jackman’s work, and it also turns out he has actual Greek ancestry which is nice. (Too bad that Chris Sarandon, who also is of Greek issue, is too old now; he’d make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts Odysseus.)
Image: Hugh Jackman on Twitter
Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.
The Roman empire had a problem. It was just too big. When a crisis developed on one frontier, it could take weeks for the emperor to hear about it, then months or even years to move troops and supplies into position to deal with it. The large frontier army consumed supplies which had to be delivered at great expense from the agricultural heartlands. The roads built by the Roman army helped make all this travel faster and easier, but if the Romans had built railroads they could have made it much easier still. A Roman empire with railroads might not have fallen apart in the fifth century CE. So why didn’t the Romans build them?
The obvious answer is that they didn’t have the technology of steam power, nor the resources of coal and iron needed to build a functioning railroad. It’s a good answer, but like many such obvious answers it’s missing something.
The biiiig thing in the SFF fandom this year has been the Hugo kerfuffle. Erik and I have followed and talked about it, but engaged more with the 2017 Worldcon campaign. Helsinki in 2017 is one of four bids, competing with D.C., Montreal, and Nippon.
I haven’t been involved with Worldcons before, but the prospect of a major international con in Finland, during our centennial of independence to boot, was just too good to pass. As a Finn and a part of the Finnish fandom, I know Finns put together smooth, professional, kick-ass events.
Site selection for the 2017 con was decided by voting among this year’s Worldcon members. Voting closed last night. Aaaaaand we won!
Kermit flail!
At this writing, the results are still unofficial, but as they are undisputed, it’s pretty much a given that we’ll have a Finnish Worldcon.
I’m so, so happy for my compatriots and co-geeks, and thankful to everyone who voted and spread the word. We did it! Suurkiitos!
Disclaimer: I’m a supporter of the bid, and also sewed a bunch of items bearing the bid logo for the bid to give away. More at my business blog and Flickr.
Kermit flail image: Via Walker—Bait on Tumblr.
Co-Geeking 
