The Great Geek Manual

Wednesday, Demonoid went offline, and earlier this month, IsoHunt and TorrentSpy began barring Americans from their sites. Unfortunately, these are were three of the five best torrent sites I used regularly, and their restriction have severely restricted the selection of torrent available. So, of course, I’ve gone looking for new torrent source. These are the best of the remaining torrent search sites I know of:

The Pirate Bay – Far and away the largest torrent search engine on the Internet. Pirate Bay not only boasts the largest number of users of any site, it also has an immense database rapidly approaching a million torrents, which is the largest of it’s kind. The best part is that the site doesn’t seems to be in any legal danger of being taken down. The down side is that the proliferation of blinking dating and porn ads leave me unwilling to browse the site with other people in the room, and with waves of unwashed masses flooding into the site, ratios tend to be low, leaving torrents to depend on the sheer number of users to speed downloads along.

Mininova.org – nearly a quarter of a million torrents. Mininova is the true successor to Suprnova, one of the original big torrent databases which had succeeded Napster. After Demonoid, it is my favorite site, because it’s interface is crisp and clean, it’s torrents are well organized, porn files and scams are quickly removed, and the ads don’t leave you feeling as if you’re browsing a skeevy porn site.

Torrentreactor.to – formerly Torrentreactor.net

Torrentportal.com – one of the largest torrent sites, but with a somewhat cluttered interface
Read the rest of this entry » » »

The night before the release of Halo 3, MIT hackers transformed the statue of John Harvard in Harvard Yard into the Master Chief. John was wearing the signature helmet from the game and was holding one of the guns from the game until around 8am. In the game, the character’s “real” name is also John.

The Harvard statue that got hacked is known as the statue of three lies. The inscription reads, “John Harvard, Founder, 1638,” but it’s not a statue of John Harvard, John Harvard didn’t found Harvard University, and Harvard wasn’t founded in 1638.

Source: Bob Congdon’s Blog

Picture taken: 2010
Picture posted: 2007

Source: KludgeSpot

Movie: “Resident Evil: Extinction”

Tagline:
“Experimentation…Evolution…Extinction”
“All Bets Are Off”
Rating: R for strong horror violence
Release: September 21
Running Time: 1 hr 35 min
Starring: Milla Jovovich, Ali Larter, Oded Fehr, Mike Epps, Iain Glen, Ashanti Douglas, Chris Egan, and Spencer Locke… IMDB listing

Verdict: It’s everything that’s wrong with Hollywood, but, God help me, the only way I could love the ninety minute killing sprees that are the Resident Evil franchise more is if they somehow managed to remove the five minutes of plot that interrupt all the noise. I won’t buy the DVD, but I enjoy seeing it on the big screen and I will most likely spend untold hours vegging out in front of the television watching it when it hits cable.

Synopsis:
Years after the events of the previous movie, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, which chronicles the destruction of Raccoon City, Alice wanders the deserts that are all that is left of the world’s ecosystems. After a complete non sequitur in which she must kill the obligatory back wood family that inevitably crop up during the course of apocalypses, Alice is force to rejoin her fellow Raccoon survivors Carlos Olivera and L.J. on a convoy in desperate need of fuel. Determined to travel to Alaska, the convoy decides that the only way to secure enough fuel is by finding a gas station in a Las Vega that has nearly been lost to the sands of a shifting dessert. When one of the few remaining scientists of the Umbrella Corporation decides to intervene in order to capture Alice, the real action begins.
Read the rest of this entry » » »

Movie: “Superman: Doomsday”

Tagline: “Where were you the day Superman died?”
Rating: PG-13
Release: September 18 (DVD)
Running Time: 1 hr 15 min
Starring: Adam Baldwin, Anne Heche, James Marsters … IMDB listing

Verdict: If you’re over the age twelve or an actual comic fan, you’ll want to take a pass on this direct-to-video disappointment.

Synopsis:
While constructing a covert subterranean power station, Lexcorp unearths a mysterious extraterrestrial artifact from which Doomsday emerges with the smallest of provocations. In an all too short battle sequence, Superman engages the creature, which he finishes off with a super orbital body-slam that levels a city block and leaves both combatants dead. As the world mourns their fallen hero, humanity realizes it will never feel truly safe again. As Lois Lane struggles to come to grips with Superman’s death, the city’s criminals run amok in a crime wave of unprecedented proportions. Just when Lois Lane teeters on the brink of death, though, Superman returns to save the day. But before long, serious doubts arise as to the authenticity of the city’s resurrected hero.
Read the rest of this entry » » »

10. You met him at a Con and were brought together by your love of CosPlay.

09. He proposes… through a Diggnation podcast, through a news forum, through a search engine, through a webcomic, through an XBox game, through the webcam in front of an Apple Store, or using an iPod.

08. He proposes with a ring… inscribed with amino acid chains, inscribed with binary, inscribed with the word soulbound, or made from serial connectors.
Read the rest of this entry » » »

Click to Enlarge

If, like me, you’ve spent the past seventeen years reading and re-reading the spectacular Wheel of Time series as it was published, I’m certain that you’ll agree that there’s little humor to be had today. It seems that one of the greatest epics in fantasy literature will remain unfinished, and the author who penned it, a man who was a pioneer in using the Internet to maintain strong links to his fans, is dead.

According to his own official blog, bestselling fantasy author James Oliver Rigney, Jr., who was best know by his pen name, Robert Jordan, died yesterday at his home in Charleston, South Carolina of cardiac amyloidosis after a prolonged battle with cancer. He will be remember for his contributions to the world of epic fantasy, including his (now unfinished) Wheel of Time series and Conan novels, as well as the historical novels he wrote under the pen name Reagan O’Neill.

Visit the official Robert Jordon blog, Dragon Mount.