Escape From City 17: Part 2 Is Finally Here!

Way back in 2009 I posted about an amazing Half Life fan film called Escape From City 17. It was a 4 minute or so short film which featured high production values, cool effects and was said to have been made for only $500. On top of that, the video ended with a preview of more to come.

Well, it's been two years, but it's finally here. Escape From City 17: Part 2 has been released, and it certainly does not disappoint. It's 14 minutes long, and it's glorious! This time the budget is said to be only $250.

I swear, between this and yesterday's Portal fan film, there is no reason for poor quality fan made films anymore. The bar has been set very high here folks! Personally, I'm just waiting for the day when some fan releases a full length live-action Legend of Zelda movie with Lord of the Rings quality special effects. It's bound to happen sooner or later, you know it is. I'm just hoping it's sooner.

Computer Geeks In Movies

As part of the promotional material for this year's New York International Latino Film Festival (NYILFF), ad agency Wing New York created a series of rather musing charts and graphs which highlight a number of well known movie cliches such as six round revolvers never needing reloading and the inability of the villain to ever actually hit the hero when they are shooting at them.

You can see the whole series here, but the graph you see above was easily my favorite of the set (for what should be obvious reasons). Oh those crazy movie computer geeks. They can topple invading alien armadas with nothing more than a macbook, but they can never manage to see to get those darned office printers to work correctly.

Super Awesome Portal Fan Film

The above short film is called Portal: No Escape, and it's by far the best piece of Portal related fan-made material I think I've ever seen. The production quality of this short is phenomenal. I would love to see a longer film made if it looked like this.

Even if you've never played Portal and don't know anything about the game or its universe, you should still watch this short film. It's an excellent piece of work and absolutely no knowledge about the game is required to enjoy it.

The bit at the end is perfect!

Which Option Will You Choose?

You are walking through the streets of Los Angeles when you come to a road crossing. On that road crossing you see the above sign. Which option will you choose. Make sure to take your time, weigh your options and choose carefully. One false move could result in a very unpleasant death.

Knowing the streets of LA like I do, I would go with option #4 personally.

(Via Dorkly)

Suicidal Astronauts

I, like many other science geeks I'm sure, was very saddened when the Space Shuttle program recently ended. As sad as I was though, it looks like I wasn't as hard hit by the loss of the program as these poor astronauts were.

The above photo is but one of many in a series called Suicidal Astronauts in which our hapless, faceless space exploring hero has decided to end his or her life after the recent ending of the shuttle program.

To see the whole series of pictures, go HERE.

Poor little astronauts. Cheer up! We'll be going back to space soon on gigantic rockets. President Barack Obama even recently pushed for manned missions to mars by the mid 2030's. The future of space exploration isn't done yet.

(Via Geekologie)

Doctor Who's Let's Go Kill Hitler Prequel

In the now immortal words of Doctor Who's River Song, "Spoilers"! So if you are a Doctor Who fan and are not caught up with what is going on and don't want to know DO NOT WATCH THIS VIDEO!

But if you are caught up and have not seen this video you should watch. It is a little over a minute and it is both funny and tragic all at the same time, as all us fans know Doctor Who can be.  And with a little under a week to go before the second half of Season 6 begins it is just what the Doctor ordered.

Nerds Doing Good! Zachary Levi vs. The SDCC 2011 Panels

Each year SDCC has grown by leaps and bounds. There are longer lines for everything, the floor is consistently packed and the ticket prices keep going up and up, not to mention it is getting harder to get a ticket. Having attended the con for the last18 years and seeing it grow, not always for the better, I become increasingly disheartened with the whole process. But, the one thing that has been nice to see over the last few years is how much the Gaslamp District has gotten into basically becoming an extension of SDCC. And it is nice to be able to find new, undiscovered gems. Happily, I found one of these gems this year.

About a year ago, Zachary Levi of NBC's Chuck fame started a website, TheNerdMachine.com, in order to bring nerds together to share news, talk about cool events, gadgets, etc., and provide a comfortable online forum for nerds to meet and converse. This year Levi, in conjunction with the website Break.com, decided to turn Jolt N' Joe's, a billiards bar located in Downtown San Diego, into NerdHQ.

They moved out all the pool tables to set up gaming consoles, a cool little schwag booth and a stage (that may have already been there, but it had been years since I had been actually in that bar so I couldn't say). But, the coolest thing that came out of NerdHQ was the series of panels held upstairs from the bar everyday during Comic Con. For $20 per ticket, you could attend a panel featuring the likes of people such as Felicia Day, Seth Green, Nathan Fillion, the rest of the cast of Firefly, Jared Padelecki and more. 

I know what you might be thinking. Why would I want to attend a paid panel when there are so many great free panels at SDCC? Well, for one, no lines and no having to get in line at 5am just to ensure you got a seat. You bought your ticket online and it was based on the order you bought your ticket in that you were assigned a seat. Second, the room only had room for around 200 seats, which means there really were no bad seats. And perhaps the best thing, that $20 you spent to be 10 feet or less away from the nerd of your choice without having to sit thorough countless other panels you didn't care about to ensure that you saw them, all went to benefit the charity, Operation Smile.

Unfortunately, I did not find out about this cool little venture until a good portion of the panels I would have like to have attended sold out. And a great many of them were during panels at the convention center that I had already planned to go see. I did get to see the panel of "The Geek Girl I would most like to be stranded on a desert island with", Felicia Day. That was one of the main highlights of my SDCC 2011 experience. I was less than 5 feet from her in an extremely intimate setting. And while I also saw Ms. Day on the Eureka panel the next day, it just didn't have the same magic the Nerd HQ panel held for me.

I am really hoping they make this a yearly thing. In addition to the panels, I heard they had some killer parties in the downstairs bar at night where you could hang out with Alan Tudyk and play video games with him or where you could schmooze with the likes of Wil Wheaton, Felicia Day, Zach Levi, Seth Green and many many more. At SDCC 2012, NerdHQ is probably going to be the place to be and I expect that this might be exactly where you will find me.