Tag Archives: Star Wars

I kissed a nerd

The only way to follow up that CONvergence post is with this.

Friday Links: Happy 4th of July Weekend edition

• Brace yourself for a whole new slew of Mad Men Yourself avatars.
• T-shirt of the week: Home Sweet Taun Taun.
• Scampd exists to celebrate the rich, diverse and criminally underused art of illustration in advertising and design.
• Top 100 Star Wars Figures.
• The Creative Brief: A Research Project.
• Living the brand.
• Amazon bought Woot, you should read the e-mail. It’s funny.
• Translation from Apple’s unique dialect of PR-Speak to English of the ‘Letter From Apple Regarding iPhone 4’ (warning, herein lies swearing so if you’re offended by the F-dash-dash-dash word, don’t click that link).
• Most competing products have the same flavor and you pick your favorites based on other cues – like the packaging.
• Building code violations for the Love Shack.
• Wonder Woman got a makeover, it’s not so good.
• 5 Epic Apple Fails. We had a QuickTake camera at the student newspaper I worked at in college. The camera was awful, but it came with a leather cozy and we called it Spanky. We only used Spanky to take quicky mugshots.

Great Moments in Nerdery: Carleton students turn observatory into R2-D2

via Julio Ojeda-Zapata who has links to more pictures for your perusal.

Now there really is no need to actually watch Star Wars

If I’d been more eagle-eyed I’d have posted this yesterday on “May the 4th be with you” day. But, well, I wasn’t. As someone whose never actually watched Star Wars (yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it all before), I found this pretty enlightening and entertaining. Plus, it’s made with Legos. Best of all, it’s only 2 minute and 13 seconds. Full of win, it is.

Friday Links: Advice for marketers, agencies, and designers

• Agencies need to think like software companies
• It’s October now, time to start thinking Halloween. So I present you Dogs in StarWars costumes
• Dear Marketers: YOU don’t decide what goes viral. Any marketer who asks for a viral anything should, well, they should be flicked in the ear. Hard. (and I only say that because I’ve wasted months of my life in meetings with people who wanted us to create something that would “go viral.”
• Sometimes the commercials are hard to spot. Brand references as jokes on Jay Leno
• MIMA Summit goes gadget happy.
• Pancake making robot!
• How to effectively respond to design criticism (they don’t suggest flicking people in the ear).
• In the interest of fair and balanced linking: 1984 spoof casts Apple as the villain

Friday Links: Rokken with Dokken

• ’80s hair band Dokken catapults Norton onto viral video chart (Just so you know, Mark Malmberg bragged all week about how he saw Dokken live in the 80s)
• A Where the Wild Things Are fashion collection inspired by the movie.
• Twitter appears to raise $100 million
• If you follow any of coffee-drinking member of The Nerdery on Twitter, you’ve undoubtedly heard talk of our coffee-making skills (or lack thereof). Perhaps we should all take a gander at How to make the most of office coffee.
• Star Wars in concert
• Arial vs. Helvetica
• Twin Cities leading the way in digital marketing.
• How brands can build successful App strategy.
• This cracked me up: one man gets Oscar Mayer and Wonder Bread on the phone to figure out why there are 10 hotdogs in a pack and 8 buns in a pack.
• Hacked Big Mouth Billy bass recites tweets rather than sing “Take Me to the River.”

Great Moments in Nerdery: The name’s Jankov. Julius Andreas Gimli Arn MacGyver Chewbacka Highlander Elessar-Jankov

Said Norwegian bus driver Andreas Jankov, who legally lengthened his name to Julius Andreas Gimli Arn MacGyver Chewbacka Highlander Elessar-Jankov (seen here displaying new drivers license): ”I wanted to show that it is possible to be serious and at the same time take the name you like. I wanted to see how far I could take it with respect to the number of names.”

Mr. Jankov, we salute you. See you at a Vikings game?

Friday Links: 50 things killed by the Internet plus Star Trek cologne

• 50 things that are being killed by the Internet. Includes: polite discourse, photo albums, our memories, and solitaire among others.
• Probably the most amazing collection of Star Wars junk you’ll ever see.
• The Tracy Awards are the cream of the crap of advertising.
• Facebook’s Twitter-like tagging, useful or tiring?
• Hack2Work: Essential Tips for the design professional
• Star Trek Cologne, for the nerd who doesn’t shower nearly enough?
• Negative space illustrations
• Cheese or font? Go ahead, click it, it’s just a game.
• 5 grammar mistakes that make you look like a chimp.

Friday Links: Star Wars Design Fails & IKEA font kerfuffle

• IKEA switches to Verdana, much teeth gnashing and garment rending follows.
• The Social History of the MP3, yes, yes a Pitchfork link, but it’s an interesting piece.
• Top 10 UX Myths
• John Scalzi’s Guide to the Most Epic FAILs in Star Wars Design
• Confessions of a Comment Addict
• If famous graphic artists were web designers
• What Apple.com might look like in 1983 (it’s just a picture go look at it)
• Vital Tips for effective logo design

CONvergence: Army of nerds hold Twin Cities hotel for four days

While others were picnicking and watching fireworks over the long Fourth of July weekend, two embedded reporters from The Nerdery instead enjoyed the great indoors at CONvergence, a four-day nerdathon attended last weekend by hundreds of sci-fi/fantasy fanatics. Following is a secondhand account based on interviews with Kai Esbensen, our manager of quality assurance, and Kris Szafranski, our director of software development.

Kai and Kris at CON (not pictured: Kai and Kris)

CONvergence (CON for short) is run by its parent organization, the Minnesota Society for Interest in Science Fiction and Fantasy (Misfits). A four-day pass was $45 in advance and $70 at the door, plus room fees for outstate nerds – but the Sheraton in Bloomington is just a couple miles from the Nerdery – stumbling distance.

Both Kai and Kris found CONvergence to be excellent people-watching at almost every turn, particularly poolside, where people would gather to eat and have sword (or light saber) fights. Also, both found it hard to look away from the kissing booth – 30 seconds for a buck. The Anti-Klingon Room was filled with hearts, muffins and the kind of pleasantries most Klingons list as turnoffs. Down the hall there was Klingon belly dancing and an Agony Booth (acting!). The Romulan pub had four primary colored mystery beverages in unmarked decanters. Dr. Horrible’s sing-along room was packed with people belting out nerdy tunes as if their lives depended on it.

“There was a lot of pent-up dorkdom being released at CON,” said Kris. “It’s a time and place for people to completely geek out. They can just be themselves, or whoever they want to be – whether it’s a zombie, a Steampunk or that “this is Sparta!” guy from “300.”

I nodded as if I got I the reference. As an intrigued outsider, I get how Tom Wolf must have felt when he met the Merry Pranksters and set out to write The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test; I’m not fully “on the bus” with sci-fi culture but I do enjoy it vicariously. But my enjoyment pales in comparison to Kai’s.

“There’s so much positive energy at CON,” Kai said. “Everyone’s approachable, there’s no attitude or hostility – just disarmed sweethearts being adorable, happy, free … it’s like a nerdy Woodstock with tech hippies.”

Summer of Love revisited

This was Kai’s sixth year at CONvergence and the first (but not last) time for Kris. By day, conference rooms have film screenings, theatrical performances, speakers, art shows, collectable dealing, and panel discussions. Kai gave high marks to a panel he went to on critical thinking. Kris came away from a panel on sci-fi-movies-that-are-so-bad-that-they’re-good with a long Netflix wish list.

Paul Stanley and Spidey - together at last

During the evening and wee hours, attendees roam the hallways room to room, hitting variously themed parties. Some were duds. “You couldn’t just put out a bowl of candy corn and expect people to hang around,” said Kai.

But there was nearly always a line for The House of Toast, where you could pick up to three toppings (about a hundred were listed). Kris and a friend decided to order for each other (and had they made a puke pact only one of them would have held up their end of the bargain). Kris ordered Nutella, Tabasco, and turkey gizzards for his friend, who countered with chocolate frosting, salsa and peaches. Other foodies took leaps of blind-faith at The Glory Hole of Snack Food – literally a who-knows-what-you’ll-get-hole-in-the-wall where bold patrons press their mouth in anticipation/apprehension.

Food and beverage is always available to CON attendees (50 pizzas are delivered every hour). Kai remarked that the constant techno music in the grand ballroom and at food stands was maybe too cool/not nerdy enough. “I’d have preferred some DEVO or maybe They Might Be Giants (the band that once begged the question from David Letterman: “When will we know?”)

Other costumes: A three-year old kid dressed as Han Solo. A women in her 70’s dressed as a sort of mystic. Godzilla. Tron and a slew of other video game characters. Knights. A molecule of zinc. King Kong. Kris did not dress up and said it made him feel a bit out of place, while Kai wore a lab coat (a company man; he puts the “lab” in Nerdery Interactive Labs). Many others were dressed as their ancestors did a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Next year’s theme: The bad guys of sci-fi. Will you give in to the dark side?

The Captain gets the last word.