A Jedi shall know not anger, nor fear, nor low, low prices

Now you may all know that a bunch of crazy mofos in Britain tried to get “Jedi” made into an actual religion a few years back. Opinion is split on whether or not it became official but the “founder” of the church, 23-year-old Daniel Jones, was booted out of a supermarket in Bangor, North Wales according to the UK Daily Mail.

It seems Jones, also know as Jedi Knight Morda Hehol (sigh), was tossed from the store for refusing to remove the Jedi robe hood from his head. Apparently the Tesco supermarket forbids wearing things on the head because it is run by fascists or Sith Lords or something and asked Morda to leave without getting his daily dose of Lucky Charms.

This is the actual Tesco extra in question.

Jones claims he was “emotionally humiliated” by the incident but something tells me that if he claims he is a Jedi Knight and walks around all day in a Jedi robe, this is not the first time that he has been humiliated in public. .

Despite the fact that this guy is a total freaking moron for getting this bent out of shape, I WAS ready to blast the supermarket for making him take off the hood in their store. It just goes to show you the little freedoms we take for granted in the States. A Jedi in a Wal-Mart wouldn’t have attracted a second glance in the US. Even if he were asked to take it off, the employee would have gotten a Constitutionally protected “Fuck You!” in response.

I say WAS ready to because I took back everything when I read the Tesco spokesperson’s comeback to Jones’ claims of religious discrimination. He said “[Jones] hasn't been banned. Jedis are very welcome to shop in our stores although we would ask them to remove their hoods. Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda and Luke Skywalker all appeared hoodless without ever going over to the Dark Side and we are only aware of the Emperor as one who never removed his hood. If Jedi walk around our stores with their hoods on, they'll miss lots of special offers.”

That’s the best defense ever!! They played right along with this nut job’s delusion and made a great point. Jones claimed that Jedi doctrine says you must cover your head while in public but HE WROTE THE FRIGGING DOCTURINE WHEN HE FOUNDED THE CHURCH! And he didn’t even pay close attention to the movies before he wrote it.

Daniel Jones, right, at a Jedi religious service in Holyhead, North Wales.

And dude, if you’re reading this (which you probably aren’t) relax. You can claim Jedi is a real religion all you want but that doesn't mean you get the same respect as a Muslim headscarf. I think that’s a ridiculous religious rule as well but at least it comes from a real religion. Until you can build and wield a lightsaber and use the Jedi mind trick, you get no sympathy from me.

This may be the weirdest question I ever ask you…

Have you ever wanted to smell like Cthulhu? I didn’t think so. In fact, ever since I read The Call of Cthulhu in college I’ve woken up in a cold sweat several times hoping I never find out what the monster smells like let alone hoping I never get close enough to have its musky, manly scent left on me.

BUT…. if you are not like me, you can now smell like the indescribable horror from beyond thanks to the good people at Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab.

As part of their “A Picnic in Arkham” collection, the Black Phoenix people have culled together a number of fragrances inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft and his crazy ass mind.

That’s right boys and girls, it’s a “creeping, wet, slithering scent, dripping with seaweed, oceanic plants and dark unfathomable waters.”

Now Black Phoenix has a variety of scents from the weird annals of fiction and mysticism but the one that actually attracted me was the Hellboy Collection. Hellboy smells like “aftershave, candy wrappers, brimstone and cat”? Hell yes I want to smell like that!! The only problem I have with it is I don’t think anyone wants to smell like Abe Sapien… dude eats rotten eggs. That’s all I’m sayin’.

As long as we still got guns, we’re gonna fight!

Christmas is coming early for me this year, November 17 to be exact, the day that Left 4 Dead 2 drops.

For years and years I have loved killing zombies in video games because, frankly, they scare the hell out of me. While the Resident Evil games managed to hold me over for a while, I got tired of having to find three keys, two jewels and a crest to get into another area with even more traps and puzzles and about 100 zombies and me with only 13 rounds left. That’s why I was uber psyched when Left 4 Dead came out last year and all you had to do was shoot and survive. While the monsters in L4D aren’t exactly zombies but mutated rabies infected humans a la 28 Days Later, it’s all the same to me.

Now, L4D2 carries on a number of similar elements to the original game: from four immune survivors to multiple hour or so long missions modeled as movies to “common infected” and “special infected”. But there’s a couple of changes, including one you may notice in this trailer.

That’s right… melee weapons! I personally can’t wait to use the chainsaw because Dead Rising didn’t do it for me in the melee weapons department. I think it is because the focus wasn’t so much on the weapons and the damage they can do as the wide variety of them.

Set a few weeks after the original game and in New Orleans, this time our heroes are Coach: a high school football coach. Rochelle: a local TV news reporter. Ellis: a mechanic and Nick: a gambler and conman.

The game keeps the AI Director that changes up game play every time you log in to keep it fresh and continues the awesome feature of each mission being it’s own movie complete with poster during the load screen.

In addition to the oldies but goldies, there are three new classes of “special infected”; The Charger which can plow survivors out of its way; The Spitter which projectile vomits corrosive phlegm at the survivors and The Jockey which jumps on your back and steers you toward other infected. There are also new common infected roaming around who got infected while wearing clothes that give them an advantage against the survivors. Those bitten in riot gear are more resistant to bullets and those who were in Haz Mat suits won’t catch fire.

Here Coach tries to fight a flame-retardant infected.

There are also a few new weapons and types of ammunition available including silenced machine guns and incendiary ammo. Check out the trailer for the new incendiary ammo.

Personally I’m not sure those would be practical in real life. As we’re told in the Zombie Survival Guide, flames don’t kill zombies, they just create flaming zombies that come straight at you.

Check out the game’s official web site for more info and screen shots. Oh and if you want to play the original L4D with me while we wait, I play under the name rphutton.

Technorati Tags: video games,zombies,horror

I like Hello Kitty Island Adventure a lot more than this…

Ok, this is a couple years old but I just found it so I’m going pretend it’s brand new. Now, every fan of World of Warcraft has probably seen the South Park episode by now entitled “Make Love, Not Warcraft” in which the boys team up on the plains of Azeroth to defeat some nerd that has spent so much time playing WoW he now just goes around killing players and admins alike.

Enter Butters, the lovable rascal who desperately needs a hug from a stable parental figure. It turns out he doesn’t play WoW. Check out the clip at the 1:06 mark to see what I mean (but watch the whole thing if you want to see a good dig at the French).

Well, Hello Kitty Island Adventure does not really exist but when the episode first aired, it became a joke amongst my friends for when one of us didn’t like playing a certain video game and the rest did. They would be taunted with “go play Hello Kitty Island Adventure!” and then an insult that insinuated they were gay.

Well I was watching the episode recently now that Spence has finally talked me into playing WoW and I decided to punch Hello Kitty Island Adventure into Google and see what comes out and what do I find? Well WoW Interface has a download available to give you a Hello Kitty interface for the game!

While I will not be downloading it ever I’m sure someone wants this. At least one person wanted it because they took the time to program it. So now my friends and I can call each other gay while still playing WoW.

Technorati Tags: video games,WoW,South Park

Barack Obama… Knight of the New Republic

For over a thousand generations the Jedi Knights were guardians of peace… before the Dark Times. Before the Empire. Then out of the ruins of the Freedom Star came a lone Jedi would could rebuild the Old Republic into the bloated, cumbersome, monolithic democracy that allowed the Empire to take over in the first place.

Wait… what am I talking about again? Was this a movie or real life? Screw it. Here’s a photo of the leader of the Free World playing with a plastic toy!

When I was in 9th grade, Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace came to theaters much to the delight of geeks like me. One day after school, a bunch of guys in my class went to see the flick in Boston and came back to the school to grab the late bus home. It seems all 10 of them had bought lightsabers just like the one our president is holding and were having a massive battle in the parking lot. We were 14 and I remember thinking “Aren’t we a little old for this?” But hey, this shows the Prez is a geek with a good sense of humor and it’s not like he was playing with it while some little kid looked on without a toy of his own to play with.

God damn it Barack… I want to like you so bad. You’re the freaking President of the United States of America! If you knew this photo opp was coming, make sure the staff had an extra one on hand for the kid. Maybe a green one so you and the kid can play Obi-Wan and Qui Gon Jinn. And while you’re at it, have them toss a red, double bladed Darth Maul lightsaber to Hillary so you can fake a beat down on her for trying to brand you a Muslim extremist during the campaign.

Technorati Tags: Star Wars,Politics,Obama

Facebook: Now with 40% less website!

I recently heard that Facebook had released a “lite” version, something I needed to check out. I personally think that Facebook is way bloated with useless apps that clog up yours and everyone else’s feeds. I don’t care what kind of crappy domestic beer I am akin to (why are they never any good choices on that list anyway? ) and no I don’t want to help you beat up old ladies to get some street cred with your virtual crime syndicate.


If I do end up looking at someone’s Facebook page all I want it to look at is their wall, their pictures, and the information they put up there for me to read. “ooooh we like the same band”

Its called Facebook and to me that says show a face and some information about that face and put them all together like a book, and the book in the this case is virtual and held together not by glue but by social linkages. The day I received my first request to allow a Facebook app to run, was the day I cringed for Facebook. I am sure they have made more money than I will ever see ever, and I am sure the apps helped (I could probably find some numbers to back this up, but I am just a dude with an opinion and not a reputable journalist, Ryan can take the lead there*) but the apps for the most part add little actual social networking value and detract from the important things on the pages and in the feeds. I would much rather know that someone was “It is an absolutely beautiful day out, perfect day to sit on the porch and write resumes and cover letters!” than jerko from college had received 10 vassals today. Firstly, if I don’t care about the resumes and cover letters than I can just skip it, but jerko from college’s update has pictures and required a whole lot more scrolling to get away from and ignore. Basically the apps are just bloat.

The bloat that I have seen inflate and inflate around Facebook is exactly why I defected to Twitter for my primary means of social media. It is also the bloat that kept me away from MySpace, and why I embraced Facebook originally. Now there is an “opt in” version of Facebook with all the bloat and one without. Oh Happy Day! Now the people that want to play scrabble and beat up grannys while farming radishes can do that, and I can get back to what Facebook was meant for… stalking people… I mean being a book of faces.

Bloat is bad. Bloat has all but killed MySpace, and I was sure it was going to kill Facebook one of these days, but it looks like the people over at Facebook gave this some thought and given those among us who want to avoid the bloat a way to do just that. It is this kind of flexible thinking that, if Facebook keeps it up, will allow them to continue to dominate the social media space and change and evolve to keep up with the changing Internet.

*Ryan's Note: The data on the subject of profits from Facebook apps is mostly a year old and seems to indicate the profits boomed at first and was dying down by late 2008. Some sources say a developer can make as much as $1.5 million off an app in a few months and others say that amount could take a year to reach. The general consensus on how much Facebook makes off the apps peaked at $12 million mid way through 2008 and has since tapered off considerably. But again, little of this is current data and I do stuff like this all day, so 10 minutes is all I'll willing to spare at home.

iTunes number 9.... number 9... number 9

When saw that a new iTunes 9 was being released today, I checked the iTunes page repeatedly until the new link appeared.

First Impressions
• Largely similar in look to the previous version of iTunes, this is to be expected.
• The buttons look a little different.
• When you look through your songs, rather than have the section at the top where you could pick Artist, Album, etc. and it would narrow the list of songs below down to the ones you want, this new iTunes has the artist list on the left hand side. I like this a lot as I usually search for songs by artist. Within the podcast list they added a new icon next to the podcasts.
• The new icon indicates that a podcast has been partially listened to rather than being new or finished. I like this because sometimes I will listen to a part of a podcast and then when I go back I won’t be able to tell which ones I have started because they are now marked as finished.
• It is also supposed to have extras for DVDs and you can now download album LPs which have additional interactive feature. I have not bought any of these yet, but from the screen shots I have seen they seem cool.
• Apps for iPhones and iPod Touch can be organized in iTunes. (I don’t have either one so I don’t care)
• I think the two biggest changes are the Home Sharing and the Genius Playlists.

Home sharing will allow 5 authorized computers to share the library, so now you won’t have to copy or re-download the same songs to listen to them elsewhere in the house. This is a change from the “shared” library that was available in previous incarnation of iTunes. With the Home Sharing the authorized computers will have the tracks stored locally and not involve streaming them over the local network. I have a tendency to need to re-download songs to make playlists if I am someplace without my usual computers. It would seem that I can share my entire library with my roommate, so long as I am ok with giving him my iTunes log in and password while trusting he does not run up my bill buying every copy of Warren Zevon’s Werewolves of London. ( actually that song rules!)



The Genius playlists are the changes I am the most excited about. The old iTunes DJ sucks. It never picks songs I really want to listen to and while it’s intended for things like parties, it has never worked well. I mean if you are using it to turn your iTunes library into a party mix you don’t want your Monty Python clips mixing with your T-Pain or whatever people listen to at parties. It would just sound silly. The Genius Playlist will use the attributes of the song you pick to make a list of songs that are similar. I have tried this on a bunch of different songs and it does a really good job (listening to a Zeppelin, Stones, Hendrix playlist right now as I write this). Basically you can click any song in your library and it will try to make a playlist out of it when you press the ‘Genius” button in the bottom right hand corner. The only drawback to this feature is that first the Genius needs to scan your whole library and send the information to Apple. I am not typically a big fan of something scanning my stuff and then sending a company all my info, but in this case I will accept it since the Genius features are pretty cool. Let’s just hope that someday in the future Apple does not use all this information for something unfriendly.

Round Up:

Features I Like:
o Genius Playlist
o Home Sharing
o Updated look

Features I really don't care about:
o New DVD features
o New LP features for albums
o Apps organization for iPhones and iPod Touch

Features I would like to see in the Future:
• iTunes needs a better way to eliminate duplicate songs from my library. I have two types of duplicates. The first are songs that have the same title but are actually different version, like I have eight versions of You Enjoy Myself but they are all unique version of the songs, I also have at least two copies of many other songs that are just the same track twice. I could go through and delete them manually, but I want an easier way. Rather than just grouping the duplicates by the song title, compare all the Meta Data to determine which ones are actually the same and which are really unique songs with the same name.

Until it's time to not be nice...

Well, it took a few years but it seems cancer has claimed our friend Patrick Swayze. Swayze passed into The Great Beyond on Monday night and I mourned by watching Red Dawn, Road House and Point Break back to back over night and being extremely late for work on Tuesday.

Who could forget the Swayze of the 80’s and early 90’s – hot enough for your girlfriend to agree to see Point Break in theaters and cool enough to make boyfriends not hate Dirty Dancing.

Let’s not forget the wisdom he imparted to us in his classic films: such gems as “I want you to be nice… until it’s time to not be nice.” Or how about “If you want the ultimate, you’ve got to be willing to pay the ultimate price.” Or even “We’re all going to die, die standing up!” and “Nobody puts Baby in a corner!”

Now, you may be wondering what a tribute to Swayze is doing on geek blog… let’s not forget he was in one of the greatest geek flicks of all time! What was the fantasy of every high school nerd in the 80’s? To band together with his friends and fight off the Russians using brutal guerrilla warfare!

As a side note, I’d never seen that poster before and now I desperately want one.

I guess I’ll leave you with this. After searching YouTube for the perfect Swayze clip to out on I considered many, the lift scene from Dirty Dancing, the “I want you to be nice” speech from Road House or even the original 1983 trailer to Red Dawn – instead I decided to go out with another great tribute to the man. And while it pokes slight fun at him, you have to realize they never would have written the song if they didn’t love the man deep down. I present “A Patrick Swayze Christmas” MST3K style!

You’ve come a long way baby…

Remember when this was the best selling iPod on the market?

The iPod mini was introduced in 2004 and held an INSANE 4 GB of music, sported the original “click wheel” and a monochrome screen. A little over a year later it was replaced with the awesomeness that is the iPod nano. Now. the nano has had more versions released than any other iPod, save for the retroactively named “classic”, and with the exception of this chubby little guy…

… the form factor has not changed much as the storage slowly grew from 2GB to 16GB.

But last week, that all changed. The return of Steve Jobs wasn’t the only reason the Apple fanboys had a reason to get excited as the 5th generation nano was revealed to have lower prices, an FM radio tuner and a built in video camera. Move over Flip Videos of the world, there’s a new sherriff in town when it comes to low priced, on-the-go video recording.

See! See! It’s that little black dot in the lower left hand corner. Now there are a million “hands-on” videos out there if you want to see this new nano in action but sine we here at Casual Geekery don’t have the budget to buy one and don’t have the juice to get one sent to us for free I have a substitute for you. Pull out your cell phone, turn on the still/video camera and shoot some pictures/video. And there you have it. Odds are it’s slightly better than that with some cool filters including x-ray (which I question the legitimacy of) and cyborg mode which begs the question why would Apple admit to having developed cyborgs to take over the world?

Poking fun at the nano aside, I think this is a great step in the right direction of being able to carry one device in your pocket for almost anything. Add some internet support and a decent text input system and you’d have a very powerful device… oh right.

That’s called the iPod touch. Which, despite many, many reputable rumors to the contrary, did not get a camera with it’s third gen release. Other than more price drops and a bump to 64GB of storage, there’s not much new to report on my favorite not-quite-an-iPhone (I regretfully purchased a first gen). But the people over at ifixit have a good teardown of the new third gen complete with the conclusion that it has an FM transceiver in it and PLENTY of room for a camera. Despite Jobs’ assertion that customers don’t want video in the iPod touch. That’s right Steve, just keep telling yourself that. Just like you told yourself customers didn't want to watch video on small, pocket sized devices.

(Look for Spence’s take on iTunes 9 coming soon… the review that is, not iTunes 9. That’s available now and awesome.)