The Great Geek Manual

It’s been nearly two years since it was first announced that Game of Thrones, the first book in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, would be making the jump to television. It’s only now, though, with just weeks left before the series’ premiere that we’re getting a substantive taste of what this series is going to look like. Entertainment Weekly posted this new trailer for Game of Thrones earlier this week, and it’s the best yet.

In addition to the trailer, HBO announced a scheduled preview of the series on April 3rd at 9:00pm. The preview will run approximately 15 minutes, and it will offer a sneak peek at the first episode, but it’s not clear yet whether the preview will be a mix of interviews or a full fifteen minutes of the first episode.

Game Of Thrones premieres Sunday, April 17 only on HBO.

Real-Life Superhero of the Day: Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Some random dude from Seattle, apparently.

22-year-old “real-life superhero” Phoenix Jones, leader of the Rain City Superhero Movement, roams the streets of the Emerald City clad in a “skin-tight, rubber, black-and-gold suit” fortified with a bullet-proof vest, stab plates, and a “ballistic cup.”

While at least one man credits Phoenix Jones with scaring away a would be carjacker, others say the crime was staged, and local police could not confirm that anything actually happened, adding that KIRO 7 Eyewitness News may have been “punked.”

Source: Kirotv

Simon Brindle, the supervisor of the costume armor department, talks about the process of creating the various armor suits for the TV series.

The Walking Dead has only been off the air for a week and I’m already Jonesing for a zombie fix. Well, here it is. Someone has gone and compiled ever zombie kill in the series into a single, brilliant clip montage sixty-nine seconds long.

Source: Collider via SFSignal

HBO has released another ten minutes of behind-the-scenes footage from the upcoming series Game of Thrones. This is the first featurette that really reveals the sheer scope of the production’s scale. I’m happy to say that from its immensity, this is clearly not going to be the SyFy miniseries disaster I’ve been fearing. (Let us never forget the tragedy of the EarthSea miniseries.)

On the other hand, I’m having difficulty understanding how they’ve abridged the series. The set from Jon’s tenure on the Wall stands out, but I don’t see the extensive sets for Winterfell that I’d expect if the series were being kept true to the books. Is it possible that HBO is keeping the action and intrigue and chopping out all of the establishing scenes that make fantasy novels so difficult to produce for the big screen?

Either way, I’m eager to see the series. There are faaar too few fantasy mini-series floating about for my liking. If this turns out to be success, maybe we’ll see a surge of high quality fantasy series.

It wields enormous influence, acts as a catalyst for social change and empowers its users to become both consumers and creators of information on a global scale. This March, the BBCs international news services – BBC World Service, BBC World News and BBC.com – are exploring the ways in which the internet is transforming the world in a special season of programming called Superpower.

Here’s the trailer for the upcoming television series The Walking Dead, which premieres on October 31st on AMC. It looks great, even compared to the original comic itself.

It’s been eleven years to the day since Freaks and Geeks premiered on NBC. In just eighteen too short episodes, the show established a cult following and left a profound impression on pop culture that can clearly be seen to this day. Widely homaged and often imitated, no series since has ever captured the essence of what it means to be an outsider in a midwest high school as successfully or as humorously as Freaks and Geeks. Unfortunately, it was all over too soon. The last we ever heard of Lindsay Weir, she was heading off in a VW bus to follow the Grateful Dead on tour, never to be from of again.

It’s very difficult for geeks to let go of their favorite cultural icons (trekies, I’, looking at you here), but we shouldn’t let brevity ruin the ride. Even though we wonder what a second season might have held for the series, there are still plenty of lessons to carry away from the series. And so, in no particular order, here are a few of the lessons I’ve carried away from Freaks and Geeks.
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