Ah, the Rick Roll. It's part of our geek culture, sure, but it's old news. We need something fresh. Well, the team is here for you with our picks for the next Rick Roll replacement songs (after the jump).

For all of our picks, check out episode 15 of I Am Nerd.

There comes a time in every nerd's life where they go through...changes. They start to notice girls (and how they go unnoticed by girls) and start to find bitterness and cold shoulders where there once was none. It's a magical time before we give up and settle on whomever is willing to stick around because we're still naive enough to believe we can have standards--a time we call "dating".

But how do you know that special lady in your life is really the one that won't toss out your Babylon 5 DVDs because they take up too much space? Ed, Mike, and Andy have the solution with their Geek Girl litmus tests...

As I mentioned in my initials yesterday, I'm going to do a very piecemeal review of my experiences with GTA IV as I play through it. Now that I have some quality time with the game under my belt, I'm ready to give you part one.

Last night I waited at a local Wal-Mart, listened to some impromptu "freestylin'" from a gentleman, and snagged myself a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV for the XBox 360.

Now, it's extremely difficult for us to write reviews. We aren't on anyone's list to receive review copies and I don't make any money from this site (note the current lack of ads) so any games we play come out of our own pockets. These factor in to our inability to review a game when everyone else does their reviews (note the lack of reviews)--especially for large games like GTA.


I figure, then, that I'll change up my approach to give my opinions of the latest Rockstar installment. Instead of spending the next two months getting the playtime needed to do a review proper, I'm going to keep a journal on the site of my experiences while I play the game. Think of it as a piecemeal review, if you must.


Because I've only spent a couple of hours with the game thus far, I'll wait until tomorrow to put up part one of my impressions.

This is an odd News Dump for me, since I was GONE the whole week, so I wasn't able to keep up with nerd news much (I DID get to watch an unhealthy amount of C-Span though). I guess we can catch up on what we missed together:



As our US readers ALREADY know, Tuesday was SUPER Tuesday. This means all the political peeps voted for who they'd want to vote for later on. Senator McCain was the republican favorite and senators Obama and Clinton was too close to call (Obama had more states, but Clinton had more important states). For those of you interested in the the nerd prospective of the political machine, check out TechCrunch's primary coverage.

Wednesday Silicon Alley Insider reported that Ask.com and Digg revealed their joint project. Called "Big News", the new page gives a more, let's say, "professional" look to mainstay Digg features. For instance, I don't notice ONE article about why the "XBox is the suxors".

Mark Friday, Feb 8th, as the day the WGA strike [via Gizmodo] finally ended. Just when I was getting used to life without television...

Friday ALSO marked the day that Yahoo! decided it's fate [via TechCrunch]. The week before Microsoft through it's hat into the "I wants Yahoo! too" ring, which quickly became a headache for them and was later (actually, TODAY) rejected. Word on the street is the move would have given Yahoo! and Microsoft an extremely strong foothold in the Google-centric online advertising market.

Hey all, indi here~ I’m usurping Andy’s role as The Vault meister this week, and I will be focusing on geek culture from the East – that includes anime, import games and movies. For this week, I will be featuring two anime movies by the great Katsuhiro Otomo.


The first up is Akira, which is - to me at least - the quintessential must see anime film for everyone, so quintessential that it’s almost cliché. This was the very reason why I was reluctant to feature this in the first place when Andy first mentioned it, and this is why I’m offering a second Otomo film, Steamboy (or Suchîmubôi).





Click to see the rest of the review & previews>>

Even though I'm currently in the apparently forgotten section of the Orlando International Airport, I'll do my best to report the news I found interesting in an extremely condensed fashion. We like to call it the "News Dump".


On Monday (the 28th) Sarah Michelle Gellar (the name she chooses when she's not balancing school life with slaying vampires) reminded us that a movie based on American McGee's Alice is still in the works. I hate it when she teases.

Tuesday we learned why I much rather be flying Virgin America right now. Not only do they have the "sexitude" of Ethernet ports on the plane, they now offer video podcasts (specifically Revision3 programming) as in-flight entertainment! Daddy likes.

January 30th was "Delete You Myspace Page Day". Obviously the social networking site has been shown the door and are now crying little emo girl tears. I'm glad we're done with that place....right?


Kotaku reported Thursday that the president of the UK's "The Entertainment & Leisure Software Publishers Association's Intellectual Property Crime Unit" (say THAT three times fast) claimed that "in America it's thought 90 percent of Nintendo DS users are playing pirated games". The US community counted with a resounding "WTF dude", and then the following day ELSPA denied ever saying that.



Well, it looks like my flight's about to board. GTG! See you Thursday/Friday!

Welcome to the second edition of "Tripping the Art Fantastic". Each week, we're taking a look at the creative expression that is fan art. This week we're going to look at a more recent entrance into the collective nerd world: The Orange Box.




Created by Valve Software, The Orange Box is actually a collection of several games including Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode 1, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2. Originally, I was planning on covering Portal alone, but I made a last-minute call to share the love.

Hit the jump for this week's picks.

Yes, another new feature. It's because we love you guys...really. Here's the skinny:

The "News Dump" takes a look at the last week and condenses everything you're supposed to care about...at least some of it. The idea is to give you a summary of the news, which will be a mix of things we posted and things we didn't. Hell, we're new--don't expect us to catch everything just yet. Now, without further ado...



Tuesday, January 22nd, we came across the saddest news of the week: the death of Heath Ledger. Best known for his parts in movies like "Brokeback Mountain" and the upcoming "The Dark Knight" film, Ledger was found in his NYC apartment after a lethal drug overdose. Of course, just because a man dies, doesn't mean everyone decides to be respectful.

Wednesday XBox Live! owners where treated to an apology in the form of Undertow for free. If you haven't accepted the apology YET, today's your last day. Once the clock turns to midnight, the price goes from 0 to 800 points.

On Thursday we learned the name of the 22nd Bond flick. It's called Quantum of Solace and stars, once again, Daniel Craig. Finally, a name bad enough to take the heat off "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull".

To finish things off, Saturday marked the second apology garnered by gamers over "Right Wing" vs Mass Effect. This is a subject I plan on talking about on a future episode of the podcast, but here's the summary:

1. First author and talk show host Cooper Lawrence claims Mass Effect is nothing but "porn" sold to children on Fox News.


2. This prompts EA to write a strongly worded letter to Fox News (I believe upper caps may have been used).


3. Fox News then claims EA was invited to defend themselves on the show, but turned them down.


4. Now, less than a week into the debacle, Cooper Lawrence admits that she made a mistake. Of course, this was AFTER gamers trashed her book on Amazon.

I wanted to start another new feature on this site, The Vault, where we highlight a work of entertainment that is a "must view" for any geek. These are the books, television, movies, music, or games that define geek culture and are the kind of things you'd raise your children on to make sure they grow up just as awkward and socially inept as you did.






My first submission for The Vault, Pirates of Silicon Valley is actually one I recently shared with my geeky lady, Crystal, a few days ago. It's a made-for-TV movie detailing the rise of not only Apple and Microsoft, but Steve Jobs (Noah Wyle) and Bill Gates (Anthony Michael Hall). The movie isn't entirely accurate but is still an amazing bit of our culture and the impressions of the two corporate gods are surprisingly well done.


As it happens, I stumbled across what seems to be the entire film over on Google Video...so you can save yourself the Netflix queue and watch the move after the jump. Otherwise, you can pick up a copy of the DVD on the cheap over at Amazon.