Monday Morning Nerd News Top 5

1. German teen struck in hand by meteorite. Still waiting for hand to develop sentience, superpowers, bloodlust.

2. The trailer for The Time Traveler’s Wife is out. Millions of unsuspecting women are exposed to CGI for the first time. Controversial footage of Erica Bana time-traveling to halt production of Ang Lee’s Hulk before it begins not shown. Ha ha ha ha ha! Burn. (Alternate joke: Erica Bana also played a time-traveler in Star Trek, so he time-traveled in both movies … so that’s funny too … )

3. Spent weekend reading Soulless, by Gail Carriger, about a Victorian London in which vampires and werewolves are integrated uneasily into the general population. It’s great. It’s not out till September, but Erica Bana got me a copy. Aha. Ha. No, I just got an advance copy at BookExpo.

4. Penny Arcade has posted the third of its three new large-format, high concept projects. You choose which they pursue first. Yes You! (After some initial hesitation, I’m voting for “Lookouts.”) (Possibly in response to this PvP has gone large-format and non-continuity too, adding Binwin Bronzebottom (from the PvP/PA/WW D&D sessions) to the Ding! universe.)

5. Incredible piece in The New Scientist (via io9) about the struggle to bust the Conficker worm.:

“The thing could use domains like oxygen,” says Rick Wesson of Support Intelligence, a network security company in San Francisco. “If you take them over, the fire should go out.”

Plus bonus wargaming porn. This from ARMA II, which is out for PC later this month. (Via Kotaku):

Will Google’s Insanely-Fast Kansas City Network Shame U.S. ISPs?

Google’s highly-anticipated plan to build an ultra-fast city broadband network kicked into gear Monday with the search giant’s announcement that it will begin laying miles of fiber-optic cable across Kansas City, Kansas and neighboring Kansas City, Missouri. Google said it aims to create a new “high speed infrastructure” that will allow local citizens to enjoy data speeds 100 times the national average. Google’s goal? To show off its telecom engineering chops and showcase next-generation web-applications. Oh, and maybe shame the big national broadband providers into improving U.S. Internet service speed, which currently lags behind many other countries around the world.

Kemper

1) I’m pretty certain that the Cornficker worm is a Cylon virus.
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2) Will Eric Bana travel back to the Island in 1977 and try to stop The Incident?
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3) My new M.O. will now be to hound Lev with BSG/ Lost comment combos.
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4) At the risk of exposing myself to extreme ridicule, I actually like the novel of The Time Traveler’s Wife and want to see the movie if the reviews are decent. Not all time travel has to be about wars with robots, destroying planets or making sure that Star Wars gets written correctly.
http://youtube.com/churchhatestucker Church

Erican Bana cannot actually travel through time. As proof, I submit the continued existence of Galactica:1980.
lostepic

Heard that the time traveliers wife was a good book but never got around to reading it.
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@kemper: perhaps the BSG/Lost one-two punch will work for you. I have moved on.
Kemper

@ Church – *groan* Oh, geez. I had completely blocked the Galactica 1980 thing. Flying motorocycles…ugh. Wasn’t the dad from the Brady Bunch in there too?
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Also, we should start a betting pool regarding the kid who got hit by the meteor. My money is that he follows the Stephen King Creepshow scenario and starts turning into a plant thanks to the ‘meteor s***’.
Rorschach

The way you described Soulless makes it seem like a ripoff of The Southern Vampire Mysteries that True Blood is based on.
tyrantking

Thanks for making me full-fetal again. I had forgotten all about the time traveler’s wife. Man i can’t stand that book. And how did the blonde little girl turn into a brunette?
suiter

Did the german kid work at a Mr Clucks? – Conficker was also probably why Dr Candle didn’t want the computer in the Swan being used for anything other than entering the numbers..
rosseau

Time Traveler’s Wife looks like Journeyman from the wife’s point of view. Can we have a moratorium on novels entitled The______’s Wife/Daughter? It’s supremely annoying. In casting news, according to EW, Hugo Weaving reprises his king of the elves in Del Toro’s Hobbit movies.
suiter

@Rosseau: As do Andy Serkis (Gollum) and Ian McKellan (Gandalf) :)
Kemper

@ suiter – Re: The german kid working at Mr. Cluck’s. Brilliant!
dennitzio

Speaking of FX, thanks to Digital Domain, we have the technology to create a crappy performance of Ian Holm as young Bilbo with head replacement. Questionable whether Weta will choose fully CG crappy performance instead.
masurix

@tyrantking: My mom was a platinum blonde little girl who grew up to have dark brunette hair. Weird, huh? But it does happen outside the movies.
masurix

Also, I love the top five thing. Keep it coming!
dennitzio

My reactions to ARMA II:
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Wow.
Great SFX.
Really great at putting me in the action.
So who are the bad guys?
Woah! Carpet bombing!
Are those aliens up there? What are those blobby things?
Sure takes a while to get there.
Interesting scope design.
Kinda feels like those artificial documentaries, like Cloverfield. Nice.
Where’s he going?
Oh, those blobby things are smoke.
Look! Another guy!
Oh, we’re going past him.
OK, we made it to the trees! Let’s fight!
Ah, nothing to see there, I guess.
Wow, this is a big sandbox.
Really great SFX. I love the crickets.
Still not there?
Where are we?
What are we trying to do, anyway?
Ok, this is getting kinda boring.
Bore, boring, bored, borelicious, borumpus…
I wonder if I still have carrots in the fridge.
A carrot sounds good right now.
I wonder if I can make it to the fridge and back before anything happens.
Ah! We made it to the tanks!
Oh, something hit us! Sounds like we got jumped! Pull the knife!
Bombs. Ah. Dead. Gee willikers, that was fun. Woo hoo. Carrot time.