Geek Illustrated - Features

Google Wave, my two cents

In a reply to my earlier post about Wave, Paul of the PC Thoughts blog posted a comment with a few questions about Wave. I decided to reiterate and elaborate on my response here:

GI Pin-Up: Felicia Day

If you know your way around nerd neighbourhoods, you'll know Felicia Day. Her acting work includes demon staking alongside the eponymous cult heroine of Joss Whedon's Buffy The Vampire Slayer and fighting the forces of role-playing evil in The Guild, her own award-winning online series. Most recently she firmed her status as geek goddess playing a socially sensitive songbird in Whedon's trailblazing web serial, Dr Horrible's Sing-A-Long-Blog. All of which qualifies her as one kick-ass geek pin-up.

Monsters 101

Melbourne geek, writer and cinephile Emma Westwood has assembled a pocketsized compendium of the monster on celluloid that for some will become as indispensible as their iPhone. We caught up with Emma to talk monster goodness.

Touch me Will Robinson

Inspired by University of Maastricht�s artificial intelligence researcher, David Levy�s thesis 'Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners,' erudite Aussie sex blogger Ell ponders the complexity and the sensuality of our relationships with our gadgets and machines.

Geek Chic: The evolution of fashion or a moment in history?

A meditation on the evolution of a 'geek chic', in reality and fiction.

GI Icon: Link

The teenager strides across the room, dressed in a simple green tunic made of cloth. A hood covers the top of his head, also green, but this is trimmed in gold. His long blonde hair bursts from its seams. His legs are bare, but on the end of them are brown boots. They once looked to be of the highest quality leather; now they are stained with travel.

Coolest Girls in School

Aussie geek girls Holly Owen and Karyn Lanthois have created a new mobile game uniquely for young women that shakes and stirs old school stereotypes, much to the chagrin of some. Get ready for the Coolest Girl in School.

Digging that girl

She�s part Nancy Drew, part Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A sweet natured girl with a big heart and brain to match. Intrepid and impertinent, the world of technology is her meta-mystery, and she�s dedicated to solving it component by component (while lending a helping hand to needy folks along the way). GI chats to Cali Lewis - spy, geek, spunk.

GI Icon: Lara Croft

In the blokey realm of computer gaming, it�s no wonder the heroines stand out like stilettos in a boardroom. Of course, the most famous pixel chick of them all was created by Englishman, Toby Gard. But she's long transcended any archetype to become a full fledged geek icon.

Ideas: Fandom, Rank and Phile

From campfire tales of heroic adventures and deistic misadventures, to Homer's Odyssey, to the comic book birth of Superman in 1938 and the pre-millennial X-Files of Mulder and Scully, words and pictures that capture our imagination can take on an epic, transcendent quality, becoming part of our cultural consciousness. What these stories also do is create a unique, vociferous strata of sub-cultures where creativity is key.

Re: Jonathan Coulton, Geek Superstar & Babe

Most geeks have heard of Jonathan Coulton, and if they haven't, they should. Coulton (aka JoCo) is an indie music hero. In 2005 he left a day job writing software to pursue music full time. In the grand tradition of writing what you know, he writes tuneful, funky songs about the web, Flickr, coding, gaming, zombies and more. GI pins him down for closer inspection.

The Wiki-Master

Jimmy Wales is the co-founder of Wikipedia, a portal credited with changing the way we look at the web, information, and online networks. His lifework is living proof that technology is a force for positive change - and that's not just geek spin.

Ideas: Virtual Romance

Geek Illustrated gets up close and personal with Flickr's favourite couple, David Goodman and Valerie Pehrson.

Ideas: The Long Now

10,000 years from now, when you ask, "What time is it?" what kind of answer will you get? A group of very smart folks have risen above a mainstream lack of foresight, and put their considerable brains together to come up with the means to an answer.

David Hewlett: Wagging the Long Tail

As a child in England, David Hewlett was a big fan of Doctor Who. A young man, he became a self-taught computer whiz, happy to nut away in Perl and play with dancing one�s and zero�s. These days he attends sci-fi conventions around the globe, attracting legions of fans who clamour for his autograph. In his rare down-time, he writes screenplays, less Perl.