This Star Wars Flash Drive Just Blew My Mind

As noted previously, Geekanerd occasionally gets mail from the good folks at Mimobot, purveyors of adorably anthropomorphic flash drives and occasional gross misinformation. But their latest ad email utterly blew this Star Wars fan's mind, without even trying.


Take a quick glance at the new Mimobot in the center of this picture. Why, it's that evil jerk Anakin Skywalker, looking all mean and angry like he always does. Kid killer. He's clearly just been placed in his full body prison, the technological terror that is the Darth Vader armor. Neat.

But things are not always as they seem. Learn the eye opening truth about this figure, after the jump...


That's not the father, but the son! The jagged remains of the faceplate tip the savvy viewer that this is not in fact Anakin, but Luke's horrible vision in the Dagobah Mystery Cave. What threw me was the evil smirk - that's like the Anti-Luke face! I don't think Luke is even capable of making that expression.

The fact that I mistook Luke's little cartoon face for Anakin's really got me thinking about how scene at the Dagobah cave fits into the Star Wars saga, now that we've got the Prequels. If watch Empire without the Prequels, this scene comes off as a pretty typical "you will become what you fear most" sort of dream. However, if you watch the series from I to VI (and like it or not, that is how future generations will watch these films), the Cave dream takes on a new sense of dread and horror. With the events of the prequels in mind, there is no mystery about Luke's parentage by the time you get to Empire. So while we lose the "I AM YOUR FATHER" jawdropper, we gain a terrible ocean of dramatic irony. When we see Luke's face in the Vader mask, he may not understand the symbolism, but the audience certainly does. Luke is approximately the same age as Anakin was when he was turned, and the visual of Luke's face in the Vader mask now directly recalls the "earlier" visual of Anakin being sealed inside. These are the real stakes of the film; the possibility of two Evil Skywalkers running around the galaxy, being just awful.

But how similar ARE Luke and Anakin? Their personalities are very different, but much of that can be chalked up to nurture; Luke spent his entire life on remote farm with a caring family and Anakin spent the first half his life as a slave and the second half as a fanatically revered demigod. When you take this into account, Anakin's personality really isn't so bad. The only thing he and Luke really share is an easily confusable one-track mind, and it's this quality that played a big part in Anakin's fall. In the earlier scenes on Dagobah, we've seen that it's Luke's short-sightedness that's holding back his Jedi training, so the Cave dream is especially urgent. While Anakin was never a particularly likable character, Luke is thoroughly decent and kind, and prospect of his fall to the Dark Side is a lot more upsetting than Anakin's.

So yeah, flash drives! The Vader Unmasked Luke Variant is only available at this year's Comic Con, so if you're unlike us and have a ticket, stop by the Mimobot booth to see it with your own eyes.

The Future is Coming: Ion Engines!

Just when you start to think that space nerds are good for nothin' besides predicting our doom, they go and do something cool like this: they invented the Ion Engine! That's right! The envy of the Romulans! The workhorse of the Empire! (what, you didn't know that TIE stood for Twin-ION-Engine?!? n00b) On April 6th, NASA switched on the ion propulsion engine of their Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Explorer (or the much cuter GOCE!) and reports that it's operating normally! The ion engine is perfect for keeping this cute little guy hanging in low orbit so it can do its science thing. We here at G'Nerd are less about the science, and more about the fiction-so I won't pretend to truly understand what's going on here-but long story short, GOCE is floating in low orbit using nothing more than solar power to keep it up there. That sucker is gliding at an impressive 20 milliNewtons of thrust-that's an acceleration of less than the width of a human hair per second squared.... wait, what? Hurm... rocket car pancake this is not. But all amazing science miracles have to start somewhere. I'm sure the first lightsaber was really just a warm swiss army knife.

Item! Mimobot Ad Copy Spreads Inaccuracies About Boba Fett!

Please take a look at this Boba Fett Mimobot ad I received today and see if you can tell what's worked me into a fit of nerd rage.

Can you believe that?  I mean, who fact checks this stuff?  Did the copy editor call in sick?  

MANDALORIA?  *snort*  Where's that?  Somewhere in made-up fantasy land? I seriously doubt Boba Fett is headed back to Mandaloria.  Because Mandaloria is not a place that exists.  How can he be going to a place that doesn't exist?  He can't.  It's impossible.

Maybe he's on his way to MANDALORE, his adopted home planet and base of operations.  That sounds like a more likely scenario to me, in all honesty.

JEEZ.

PS:  If you'd like to own that promotionally incorrect yet still undeniably attractive flash drive (the helmet comes off and you can see his face!), head over to the online Mimobot Store.

Zunes Commit Ultimate New Years Eve Party Foul, Die

Are you one of those brave and noble souls who bucked the iPod trend and went with the road less traveled by? Well, jokes on you, Contrary Mary! As of December 31st, 2008, folks with the 30GB Zune found their music gone and their players frozen. Microsoft has posted various fixes on their site, though some folks on the forum appear to still be having problems.

The whole media is jumping on this story with shadenfruedic glee, but Computer World Magazine is the first one I've seen to report that the whole mess is due to the fact that this 2008 was a Leap Year. So Microsoft can probably just shift the blame to the Pope.

iPod Aesthetic Watch: New Development

This is a picture I found on gizmodo after reading about this thing on Kanye West's blog. They have a lot more photos, so you can see how cool this is. I'ma start lifting weights now so I can carry this around when it comes out.

Here's the thing with gadgets. I know we like things small, like this like .00001-inch-thick piece of foil Steve Jobs is calling a computer:
But I see big as the way to go with your carryarounds between 2008 and 2020. Especially since liberal Berkeley types won't let us have big cars anymore. I'm saying, where we have options, let's make some interesting choices. Also the ghetto blaster looks like it's smiling at you.

Protect Your Gadgets With Gelaskins

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Promotional Link

Indulge yourself with some brand new iphone cases with cool concept designs.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

You put your ipod in your pocket, and in your pocket are your keys and a pen that, unbeknownst to you, sprung a leak yesterday.

The moment will come when you feel like listening to the “No One” by Miss Alicia Keys.

You reach for your ipod and see this:





There’s a crapload of ink dried up permanently covering almost 2/3 of your screen. Friend: “Hey what song is this?” You: “I DON’T KNOW.”

That scratch takes itself right through the touchwheel.

Don’t hate yourself. It’s not like you were about to velcro your ipod into a forty-dollar accessory like it’s about to go on a trip to Mars. If you’d wanted to cart around a refrigerator-sized device that plays music, then you could just put your home stereo system into a wagon. Tell me I'm wrong. No, you wanted an ipod that was shaped like an ipod. And don’t step over here with an idea about some translucent royal blue holiday saran wrap googity moogity that, while sure it maintains your junk’s silhouette, is about as nice to look at as the CIA headquarters in DC and about as good at protecting you and yours as the CIA has been in recent years. Tell me I'm wrong.

There's hope. Four weeks ago, I was at an event with my friends A. H. Robe and Albertson Rather.

I came upon two gentlemen selling these. They're gelaskins. Check out how nice.

They come for a variety of ipod models, and some phones and computers too. Most importantly, they look good.

These gelaskins are made of a special adhesive designed for use on buses and cars. The adhesive is tough. Your keys won’t be able to scratch up your nano no matter how much they want to.

The gelaskins peel right off, too. Maybe you get tired of the beautiful artwork encasing your ipod. Well, remove it. Go ahead. What’s that, you applied your gelaskin last year? That shit peels off like it’s late for a meeting, no matter how long it’s been in place.

And the gelaskins collection is well curated. This is one of those opportunities to give the world a lot of information about yourself. What kind of person are you? A dreamy kid? Troy McClure? Proudly into golf?

Here’s my 2nd generation nano today: protected on all possible sides (there’s even a gelascreen on my screen protecting it from scratches).


Here’s a jacked-up modification AHR made using the sassy steam punk gelaskin she got at an expo. It’s for an iPod touch, not her classic kind, but she wanted to look cool, so she’s trying to make it work.

Preserve Your 7th Grade Mix Tapes For The Benefit of Future Generations

If you're of a certain age, let's say old enough to have owned a un-ironic He-Man shirt, you probably have a bunch of old cassette tapes slowly disintegrating in a box somewhere. Some tapes may be easily replaceable. Others you may have no desire to replace. But if your tape collection includes home recordings of your junior high school garage band, or taped-off-the-radio music blocks complete with early '90s commercials, or even that awesome Muppet Babies soundtrack that is now out of print, if you can believe that....these are artifacts of the past that may actually be worth preserving.

The USB Cassette Achiver allows you to easily transfer cassettes to your computer via a USB port. You can save the content as an Mp3 that will live forever in digital immortality. Of course immortality isn't cheap, and this highly specialized machine is currently going for $169 (and that's the sale price). Still, serious archivists and techheads with a weakness for nostalgia may want to add this to their Decemberween wishlist.

Via Cool Hunting

Photos: Oddities at Digital LIfe

The Geekanerd team took in the sights and sounds of Digital Life yesterday, most of which were distinctly robotic in nature. This is a robot's world, folks, we just live in it. Here's a selection of some of the convention's most notable displays.

At the iRobot keynote address, typical human opinions about robots were projected onscreen...

Roomba is not impressed by our illogical natterings.

Roomba eradicates dissent with the same ruthless efficiently it applies to ridding the world of fluff and dander.

That's all nice and foreboding, but Roombas are old news. The real excitement came when Colin Angle, iRobot's C.E.O. and Co-Founder, introduced a new member of their pizza-shaped robot family, the ConnectR. The ConnectR may look like a bedpan...
...but is in fact a stay-at-home proxy of you. That's right, YOU, yourself. The ConnectR is a set of remote controlled eyes and ears within your home, to be utilized when you're away on business but would still like to get some quality time in with the children. Gaze upon this photo, workaholics of America, and witness your future!

Controlled via your PC over a private network, this little robot can move back and forth, tilt it's unblinking electronic eye 360 degrees, and transmit your voice to your beloved, slightly unsettled family.  What the above photo doesn't show is the mess your robot surrogate will make when it sails across the Monopoly board in an attempt to push it's piece to Marvin's Gardens. "Daaaad!"

To be honest, I do see the appeal of a "Virtual Visiting Robot". I've got a baby half-sister in California, and here I am on the other side of the country in New York. It would be great to have a real, concrete presence in her every day life, even if that presence had to be slightly scary and electronic. But the idea that the baby would grow up believing that a talking plastic hubcap was her actual sister gives me pause. Still, it's kidna cute, right?

Hewlett Packard's address lacked robots and was therefore pretty dull, despite the fact that VP Phil McKinney was rocking the dressed down Steve Jobs look. The part that got my attention was when McKinney screened this old highly speculative game demo for HP's Mscape technology, and mentioned that some cynics on Digg thought the video's proposed application of technology was a tad unbelievable.


Then, as if to silence those doubting Thomases once and for all, Phil whipped out what he said was the actual device that will at last make gamers' augmented reality dreams come true, and will turn them into heroes in a never-ending video game as expansive as the entire earth.

Or maybe it was just a little rectangular piece of plastic the boys in marketing whipped up. Either way, McKinney did not go so far as to claim the thing worked like in the video, or would be produced as an HP product, or was not a PSP with a orange sticker over the screen.

Finally, Gateway introduced their new line of computers that look like giant iPods, but not before serving a basketful of these alarming muffins...
For more in-depth coverage of the coolest tech at Digital Life, check out our video features on the Novint Falcon (an awesome "force feedback" game controller) and our old friend the ConnectR.

Funny Windows Errors Evoke Nostalgia From Traitorous Mac Users

Many of us at Geekanerd's are long-time PC users who switched to Macs several years ago (or in some cases, about a week ago). And while I personally have gotten far better usage out of my Mac, I have a certain lingering allegiance to the wacky world of Start Menus and Critical Errors. I guess that's why looking at this collection of strange and infuriating windows errors felt like a stroll down memory lane. Stockholm syndrome, anyone?

Commenters on the post have pointed out that several of these are almost certainly Photoshopped - the image above even has some very suspicious distortion around the text that smacks of a shoddy PaintShop job. But you never know with Windows; that could just be the desktop disintegrating before your very eyes.

Via Haha.Nu

Team Fortress 2 - Cartoons Never Looked So Badass

Since the PS3 and XBox360 came out I've wondered how long it will be before video games begin using character animation sophisticated enough to make gameplay indistinguishable from say, a Pixar movie. Turns out the designers at Valve are in fact hard at work creating gorgeously rendered, chunky-yet-smooth cartoon character designs for the upcoming Team Fortress 2.


Illustrative Rendering In Team Fortress 2

This behind-the-scenes vid is refreshingly technical and info-packed, but those who, like me, don't include the words "clamped lambertian" in their volcabularly might get lost around 2:13. Might. I'm not saying I did.

For high-res vids of these hot graphics in action, check out the game teasers, which show off a great sense of humor as well.

Via Bleeding Pixels