Happy weekend everyone and sweet dreams to everyone who's finishing Extra Life 2015. This year's gaming marathon has raised nearly $6.4 million USD and counting! So many kudos to everyone who participated this year, now go get some much-deserved rest. And rest is definitely needed, as this upcoming week is chock-full of much-anticipated releases. For those of you still conscious, let's get down to the week in geekdom.

Comics

Did Snoopy ruin the Peanuts?

Games

Need a little post-apocalyptic pick-me-up to get you through to the release of Fallout 4? You got it.

Movies/TV

It's official: Star Trek is coming back to the small screen in January of 2017. Caveat: everything subsequent to the pilot episode may be tough to come by.

We're approaching the t-minus one month mark in the countdown to Episode VII. If a month is still too much to bear, Den of Geek has put together this massive compilation of all the posters, trailers, and assorted images that have been released to the public.

Every James Bond gadget ever.

Peter Capaldi is NOT happy about the way that the current incarnation of Doctor Who has played out on the BBC.

In happier BBC news, the network has greenlit an 8-part series based on Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials.

Oh hi there World of Warcraft trailer

Science/Technology

A team of researchers comprised of participants from UC San Francisco, the University of Michigan, and Washington University at St. Louis have identified a compound that, when applied as an eye drop, may clear up cataracts in humans. Their findings can be found in the latest edition of Science. 

That same edition of Science also contains this research from the University of Toronto that may upend everything we thought we knew about how blood is made and maintained in the human body.

There are myriad examples in film and, increasingly, in real life wherein humans show more than a bit of disdain for AI programmed to be 'friendly' or otherwise helpful. As this sort of technology becomes more integrated into our lives, how will our behavior impact the way we relate to other humans?

NASA's JPL and the University of Texas at Austin have been working together to use satellites in order to observe patterns in the Earth's ocean currents. What they've found so far does not bode well in terms of the potential impacts of climate change.

This past Wednesday marked the exact centennial of Albert Einstein's historic, gravity-redefining lectures at the Prussian Academy of Sciences. Here's the story of how none of this would likely have come to pass were it not for the school of thought/obsession with a fictional planet. 

How is it that supermassive black holes are capable of of flaring? Thanks to NASA's Explorer mission Swift and the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, we may be closer than ever to answering that question.

Here is the brief, spirally history of the Strypi-type rocket. 

We've been following the development of a potential EM drive as best we can and, allegedly, there have been a few new details released into the interwebs concerning this physics-defying device.

Happy 15th birthday to the International Space Station!

If you think the Hubble is the be-all and end-all of telescopic prowess in the universe, check out what gravity itself is capable of.

General Awesomeness/Feats of Nerdery

These two 17-year-olds, communicating only through Facebook and Gchat, may have just paved the way for interstellar travel.

As always, best wishes for an excellent week ahead!

November what? Seriously? Sheesh. It's been kind of a hectic week over here at the Care and Feeding of Nerds but, fear not, for there are plenty of posts headed your way in the not-so-distant future. In the meantime, let's get down to the Week in Geekdom.

Games

2015 has not been very good to Nintendo, and the immediate future doesn't seem to contain any respite for the beleaguered game maker. On Thursday Nintendo announced that its first mobile game would be delayed until March of 2016, preventing them from capturing any holiday season sales.

Movies/TV

Heads up Whovians, a very familiar not-so-canine K9 companion will be getting the big screen treatment in 2017.

Jar Jar Binks: possibly the single most loathed character in the Star Wars universe. But what if we've been massively misjudging this Gungan all along?

Science/Technology

How do you go about providing internet service to remote areas? Well, if you're Google, you develop these stratosphere-bound balloons and beam it in.


The latest edition of Nature includes the surprising data collected by the Rosetta spacecraft as it passed the comet 67P. The surprise was the quantity of molecular oxygen present around the comet, as this may indicate that the universe may not have been formed with a Big Bang after all.

On Tuesday the FDA approved the use of a genetically altered herpesvirus for the treatment of the skin cancer melanoma, paving the way for the use of similar virus-based treatments in the future.

It's not often we get a bit of good news on the climate change front, but this new study from NASA indicates that the ice and snow related mass gains on the Antarctic Ice Sheet are actually greater than the sum of the losses sustained on said Sheet due to melting.

Fresh out of the Tokyo Motor Show is this honest-to-goodness transforming car.

Sorry for the short round-up this week guys, but there's more headed your way (I promise!). As always, best wishes for an excellent week ahead!

Ok guys, we're at the FINAL COUNTDOWN! A little over three days from now the doors will open for Gen Con 2015. The GIR and I are in the midst of packing, shipping out some of the components for Steampunk Hawkgirl, and trying to staunch the small-child-on-Christmas-Eve levels of excitement that are abounding in the house. There will be a separate post up early next week detailing our full schedule and how you can find us/say hi during the con if you'll be joining us in Indy. In the meantime, as a nice little distraction, let's get down to the Week in Geekdom!

Games

10 years after its release, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II got an official update.

The Electronic Sports League announced on Thursday that it will be implementing a drug-testing regimen for those seeking to compete under its name.

It's a question that's come up more than once among gamers: Are there too many titles on Steam?

Movies/TV

We know we're a bit biased, but this may be the greatest video mashup in the history of mashups


These are the 10 minutes that convinced ABC to make a new prime time Muppets show.


We may be seeing Benicio del Toro in Star Wars: Episode VIII.

Science/Technology

Ok, so it's the year 2015 and more than one person has asked, "Where are our flying cars?" If the MIT-affiliated company Terrafugia has anything to say about it, the answer may be this.

Lexus is trying to take the concept car to a whole new interactive level with this one-off vehicle that uses biometrics to display the driver's heartbeat. 

NASA, fresh off the discoveries of the past few weeks, announced that they had been able to locate what is the most Earth-like planet we've seen outside our solar system to date.

It was a mystery that stood unsolved for 300 years, but we finally have hard evidence that Saturn's moon, Iapetus, is actually half-light and half-dark.

Researchers at the University of Alberta are toiling away at the development of a pill that would allow those afflicted with celiac disease to be able to tolerate gluten.

Speaking of grains, the latest issue of Nature contains this research indicating that a new GMO strain of rice not only produces very high yields, but also significantly less greenhouse gasses.

Google's new Timeline feature will show you everywhere you've traveled (and just how much information Google can collect from you).

General Awesomeness/Feats of Nerdery

What if Star Wars had been animated as a set of ukiyo-e woodblock prints?

This week we learned the official cause of the explosion that led to the failure of SpaceX's CSR7 mission. Yesterday, Kerbalnaut Scott Manley created this dramatic re-enactment of the launch and fateful explosion using everyone's favorite Space Program.

If you're a pinball fanatic and happen to be in the vicinity of Ronks, Pennsylvania then that town has a train that's pretty much custom-made for you.

As always, best wishes for an excellent week ahead!

It's Sunday again? Seriously? Well alright then. Now that we're 30 days out from Gen Con 2015 my days have pretty much been all costuming all the time. You guys will get to see the fruits of those labors and get the details of how everything has come together in the very near future, I promise. However, for now, let's get down to the Week in Geekdom.

Comics

It's official, Miles Morales will be Spider-Man in the upcoming post-Secret Wars run featuring the webslinger. 

Top Cow Productions has confirmed that Witchblade will be coming to an end this October.

A day in the life of Admiral Ackbar.

Games

After over two decades on the market, Settlers of Catan will be getting a new look and a new name with the release of its fifth edition.

Can't wait until November to get your fix of Avalanche's Mad Max game? They were kind enough to give us this trailer to help tide us over.

Take one part SpaceChem and one part absurdity, then add a heaping helping of felines and you've got The Cat Machine.

Apparently Rocksteady learned nothing from the experiences of Ubisoft as the former has temporarily suspended sales of Batman: Arkham Knight to address the myriad of issues that have been plaguing the much-anticipated PC version of the title.

Table flipping has now passed from ubiquitous psuedo-meme to a live, playable arcade game.

One intripid Redditor attempted to pre-order Fallout 4 by shipping over 2,200 bottlecaps to Bethesda. This week, the company decided that was a fair exchange.

Do you feel that Doom is too violent a game! Really? Bethesda has this to say to you.

Want a jetpack in Grand Theft Auto V? Fear not, for modders have given you exactly that.

Movies/TV

Some of the biggest names of the cast of the new Star Trek films have signed on to return for at least two more sequels.

We're going to see Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. shift away from its current trajectory in season 3 in order to tie-in more closely with the comics.

Here's why you won't see Will Smith in Independence Day: Resurgence. You will, however, see Jeff Goldblum.

Hawkgirl will be the next character from the DC universe to get her own TV series.

We have an official trailer for the live-action Attack on Titan.

Science/Technology

Londoner Nicky Ashwell was the recipient of the "BeBionic", what's been touted as the world's most precise and anatomically accurate prosthetic hand.

Meet MoDe:Flex, Ford's eBike that can alert you to potholes in the road and break down to fit in your trunk.

Did Lexus really just give us a functional hoverboard?

Researchers now feel that vaccines made in the 1960s made those who received said inoculations more susceptible to getting chlamydia. Now they believe they've solved the mystery as to why that was the case and what it could mean for the development of future medications.

Novartis, the makers of Excedrin, have teamed up with Oculus Rift to create a simulation that will allow 'players' to experience what it's like to suffer from migraines.

The latest edition of Ecology Letters includes this contention that Darwin's finches have reached genetic equilibrium.

Two years ago a Dutch artist was charged with coming up with a way to dampen ambient noise levels surrounding Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. This is the solution he came up with.

General Awesomeness

Do you love Disney princesses? Did you see Jurassic World and now you can't get enough dinosaurs? Behold, the Velociprincesses.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard dance mashup. Enough said.

Feats of Nerdery

This incredible Starcraft 2 fan film just might give you pause the next time you unleash a Zergling rush on a Terran outpost.

Speaking of Starcraft, check out this record-breaking Minecraft 'tapestry' made by artist Thorlar Thorlarian from 1.1 million of the diminutive digital blocks.

It took over a year and $10,000 USD worth of materials to build, but this fan-built rendering of Scrooge McDuck's money vault is gobsmackingly, insanely accurate.

A Japanese Mad Max fan wanted to share the film with his son, but the 5th grader is too young to be admitted to the theater. Solution: build a Doof Wagon model completely out of Lego.

As always, best wishes for an excellent week ahead!

Hi guys. Hope you're all having a great weekend thus far. The past few days have been a nice respite from the hustle and bustle of the past few weeks (and the torrent of amazing gaming news coming out ahead of E3). It's giving me a chance to push ahead with Steampunk Hawkgirl and for all of us to tackle the last few entrants to the Playtesting Lab before we put the latter into Gen Con hiatus (the Lab will open again on August 11th). Gah, Gen Con is so soon! But ok, let's get back to the Week in Geekdom.

Comics

This week Marvel undid one of its most controversial decisions and Spider-Man may never be the same.


Not content with just that change, Marvel is on the cusp of launching the reboot of its entire roster. We got a glimpse of what the new incarnations of our favorite characters will look like earlier this week.

The horrified gasps you may have heard (or uttered yourself) earlier this week were doubtless from readers of the new Marvel Star Wars comic line. Star Wars #6 gave us the first real taste of what life will be like in the new Expanded Universe (warning: link contains spoilers).

Action Comics #41 gives us this look at the newest incarnation of Superman.

Games

The past week has been chock-full of gaming news, not least of which was 2K's enormous announcement that XCOM 2 is not only very real, but will be coming our way later this year. We got a few more details about humanity's struggle with the alien invaders. And, if you missed it, take a gander at the announcement trailer.


We also got our first look at Fallout 4. As the Care and Feeding of Nerds is based in Boston, we were particularly fascinated by how Bethesda depicts our fair city post nuclear apocalypse.

Just in time for the forthcoming Summer Sale, Steam put forth a new refund policy that's sure to make our wallets weep just a bit less.

The policy was only one bit of big Steam news this week. Valve also released long-awaited details concerning its controller and Link system. Both items are now available for pre-order and will allegedly ship in October.

Turbine confirmed on Tuesday that it will be shutting down the free DC-centered MOBA Infinite Crisis. The game will go dark on August 14th.

The first peek we'll get of the Episode VII universe will come from Star Wars: Uprising, a mobile game.

Movies/TV

Big Trouble in Little China will be the subject of a remake and the Rock will be in the starring role.

Mega Man is already prepping for his 30th birthday celebrations. The diminutive Capcom icon will be getting a 26-episode animated series airing in 2017.

George R.R. Martin gives us 5 characters from a Song of Ice and Fire that he wishes weren't missing from Game of Thrones.

Science/Technology

We've been following the upcoming release of Windows 10 for a bit now, but this week we got an official release date. You'll be able to upgrade beginning on July 29th (and can put in your 'order' for the free upgrade right now if you're running a Windows OS by clicking on the little icon in the lower right-hand corner of your UI).

Physicians in Brazil have pushed the boundaries of what's possible with 3D printers after implanting a portion of a human skull printed in pure titanium.

What would you see if you were to fall into a black hole?

At first glance, it may seem like ordinary black paint but this substance may be the key to harnessing solar energy like never before.

The latest edition of Science includes details concerning this test that can reveal every virus you've ever contracted.

We may have already developed pharmacological weapons against the Ebola virus and just didn't know it.

If you're one of the millions of people for whom sleep doesn't come easy, MIT would like you to try on this hat.

Beginning this past Wednesday, the Large Hadron Collider ran (and will continue to run) at full power.

A group of British doctors have released data indicating that dual-faceted treatment with a pair of drugs is immensely effective against melanoma.

Feats of Nerdery/General Awesomeness

Meet Boyan Slat, the Dutch 20-year-old whose ambitious plan may be humanity's best hope to rid our oceans of man made debris.

ASUS, Republic of Gamers, and In Win have combined their powers to create this gobsmacking 'transforming' PC tower.

After years of a decidedly antagonistic relationship, Godzilla and Tokyo have officially buried the hatchet as the former was made a citizen and ambassador of the latter.

I'll leave you guys with this video footage of a remote-controlled R2-D2 fridge! As always,  best wishes for an excellent week ahead.

Hi everyone. Hope you're all having a great weekend thus far. The GIR and I are still a bit giddy after our first foray into 5th Edition D&D yesterday. It felt so incredibly good to be back at a table again. We've done a handful of online-based games, but there's definitely something to be said about gathering friends around a screen and physically rolling our dice. But enough reminiscing; let's get down to the Week in Geekdom.

Comics

The big buzz this week centered primarily around the release of Age of Ultron. If you or your friends were inspired by the movie and want to dive into the source comics, this is an exeellent primer to help you do so.

Check out these extremely cool custom manga covers on the Japanese translations of the Song of Ice and Fire series.

Games

The PC version of Grand Theft Auto V may be only days off the proverbial release block, but Rockstar Games has allegedly already put the kibosh on the development and use of mods.

Four years after it was released in alpha, Kerbal Space Progam touches down in the annals of in PC Gamer.

Movies/TV

One of the most fun and enjoyable scenes in Age of Ultron is the fight between the Hulk and Tony Stark wearing the Hulkbuster version of his Iron Man armor. If the trailer or the movie has you wondering just how hard Tony had to hit the Hulk in that scene, this is your answer. 

Speaking of Ultron, the Blu-Ray release of the film will include extended footage and an alternate ending.

News out of Dimension Jump Convention included this confirmation that the classic sci-fi series Red Dwarf will be making a comeback. Not one, but two new incarnations of the show will be appearing on the UK's Dave network in 2016 and 2017 repectively.

Director Josh Trank would like to set the record straight concerning his departure from the Star Wars franchise.

This may be our first look at Will Smith as Deadshot in the upcoming Suicide Squad movie.

Science/Technology

40 years ago NASA scientists began gathering satellite images of the Earth. These are some of the time-lapse videos that came out of that collecting and they provide us with some stunning video clips illustrating the footprint that we've created on Earth's surface.

Speaking of NASA, earler this week they bid farewell to MESSENGER, their Mercury orbiter, after the latter ran out of fuel and smashed onto the surface of the diminutive planet.

As the agency turned its eyes away from the center of our solar system and looked out to the farthest reaches of the latter they were met with what appears to be a polar ice cap on the most controversial of the dwarf planets.

They're also allegedly working on an ideal way to get from point A to point B by edging closer to making a functional warp drive.

IBM appears to have solved one of the most persistent problems plaguing quantum computing.

Duolingo, the free app designed to help familiarize users with another language, has added Klingon to its list of teachable tongues. 

Have you ever wanted to hack a Tesla? You may get your chance this summer at Defcon. 

Researchers at the University of California at San Diego are hard at work developing sustainable plastics from oil products derived from algae. Their first commercial-level results? Surfboards.

Meet the latest weapon in the global fight against Tuberculosis: highly trained giant African rats.

You can also get acquainted with Chilesaurus, the newly discovered so-called 'platypus dinosaur'. 

The latest edition of PLoS Computational Biology includes this study indicating that the current rule set concerning the drafting of scientific abstracts may be missing the mark.

Researchers at the Salk Institute believe they have breached new ground with regards to the human ability to 'edit' mitochondrial DNA.

General Awesomeness/Feats of Nerdery

There's loving Legos and then there's remodeling your house to accommodate your love of building with plastic blocks. Seattle architect Jeffrey Pelletier did the latter to astonishing organized and comprehensive effect.

She'll do the bedtime run in less than 12 parsecs. One particularly crafty and nerdy father built this amazing bed shaped like the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon for his (hopefully grateful) son.

Tony Stark, you may have some competition in the near future from this guy, who made a fully functional Iron Man glove.

As always, best wishes for an excellent week ahead!

Hi everyone, and I don't know if it's technically a convention, but best wishes for a happy event (con) to those of you at SxSW this weekend. I've never been, but that seems like a really unique experience. Maybe the GIR and I will add it to the List of Events to Try Out (along with Emerald City Comic Con and SPIEL). Anyhow, on the subject of cons, we're finished decompressing from last week's PAX East 2015 and are ramping up preparations for Gen Con, which is only 135 days away as of this writing. Gah! There'll be plenty more written about the latter in the coming weeks but, for now, let's get down to This Week in Geekdom.

Books

Image Source: the Washington Post

On Friday the world got a bit darker with the passing of Sir Terry Pratchett. 

Bill Watterson gave this extremely rare interview to the Washington Post and talked about why you should definitely get your eyes on his new book.

The upcoming Star Wars novel Star Wars: Lords of the Sith will add a new layer of diversity to the characters that inhabit that galaxy far, far away.

Comics

Authorities in the Cayman Islands announced late this past week that they were suspending their search for DC/Marvel artist Norman Lee, who is now listed as having been lost at sea.

Movies/TV

It's one of the the most prolific sound effects in the history of film: the Wilhelm Scream.

People of Springfield, Illinois be warned: Cobra Commander has been given control of your city!

Netflix regularly invites its developers to mess around with its code, which sometimes yields amazing results. Other times, like at this year's first 'hack day', they end up with amusing, if wholly impractical, things like being able to port the streaming service into an original NES.

HBO is clamoring to have Game of Thrones stretch into 10 seasons rather than the originally planned, ties-back-to-the-number-of-books number of 7.

Kevin Smith has confirmed that he's working on a sequel to the 1995 cult film Mallrats.

Science/Technology

IBM is allegedly working on a Bitcoin-eqsue technology that would create viable all-digital currency.

It's been over a year since China's Chang'E-3 mission successfully landed on the moon, but its lunar rover, Yutu, is still working hard and sending back novel data about our favorite satellite. 

We've chatted a bit about some of the ambitious and sometimes fantastical projects that NASA is working on. On their present to-do list is this: building the world's most efficient passenger plane.

Image Credit: NASA

Our Sun is so omnipresent that it's kind of astounding to think that we didn't even know the particulars of how it worked until the 2000s.

Ever wondered what would happen if you stuck your head in a particle accelerator?

Today is the 30th birthday of the .com domain name.

General Awesomeness

Artist Stuart Witts is big on minimalist posters and, in his latest round of work, he brings us these interpretations of vintage computers.

Antarctica just had its first sunset of 2015. Here's a shot of the otherworldly frozen terrain.

Crowdfundables for Your Consideration

There are 10 days remaining to lend your support to the legal visual novel Regeria Hope. The Kickstarter for all this courtroom goodness ends on March 25th.

Adorable Pandaring, the fast and, yes, very cute game by Asmadi Games is fully funded, so there's little stopping you from using the Kickstarter to get your own copy of panda panda pandas!

Speaking of fully funded, Dwarven Forge's latest campaign, this time featuring urban versions of their trademark terrain tiles, is over 1000% funded, meaning you can benefit from their many, many stretch goals if you support the Kickstarter now.

As always, hope you all have an excellent week ahead!

Oooh boy. Convention exhaustion is such a bizarrely good feeling. Your feet are aching, but so is your face after so many hours of consecutive smiling. We also collectively have something of a soft spot for PAX, as it's partially the reason you're reading this now. This post might be a bit on the short side, as we're in the process of gathering up as much convention goodness as we can while the doors are still open. We'll have a formal, comprehensive PAX East 2015 round-up ready to go in the next few days but, for now, we'll just get down to the Week in Geekdom.

Movies/TV

Intrepid YouTuber ThomasHuntFilms compiled all of the Star Trek films into a single video featuring just the clips of the various Federation starships.

General Awesomeness

Last fall, Machinima brought us a Super Power Beat Down pitting Darth Vader against Batman. We now have an alternate ending to this epic matchup:

Games

It's one of the most anticipated games of the year. Here is the often odd and twisting evolution of Blizzard's Heroes of the Storm.

On Wednesday, Valve announced that their Source 2 game engine will be available to developers for free. 

Science/Technology

It's one of, if not the singularly most famous equation in existence. But what if you had to explain E=MC2 without the math? This very well written article not only does exactly that, but indicates that a qualitative exploration yields very interesting facets of Einstein's work.

Speaking of Mr. Einstein, physicists from Heidelberg University, with the help of the ESA's Planck satellite mission, are putting some of the famous theorist's conclusions regarding dark energy to the test.

NASA is also out exploring the cosmos with its own unmanned missions, including the Dawn probe which is now in orbit around the dwarf planet of Ceres. 

It was a big week for NASA. On Tuesday, the agency celebrated its 100th birthday! 

Why is gravity so completely different from all the other known forces in the universe?

The January edition of the journal Nature Physics details the detection of the Higgs boson in a superconductor entirely separate from the Large Hadron Collider. 

While scientists are keen on any and all new evidence of the Higgs, others are marveling at the fact that Homer Simpson correctly predicted the mass of the elusive particle over a decade ago.

It's a concept that often gets treated like a joke: that using smartphones actually makes us dumber. This study from the University of Waterloo in Ontario (published in the most recent edition of Computers in Human Behavior) may be the first proof that this phenomenon is indeed real.

We've talked a bit about capacitive fabrics and the many applications for this high tech cloth. Well, U.S. Naval Academy researchers are bringing this concept one step closer to reality.

New York state is getting aggressive about how solar power will be produced and distributed. Their efforts thus far not only appear successful, but may just provide other states with a blueprint of how to integrate new power sources into their existing utility grid.

The city of Stockholm is also keen to invest in alternative energy sources, though their ideas may prove to be a bit more offbeat than what New York has deployed. If city planners have their way, Stockholm may be home to an enormous vertical wind farm powered by colossal turbulence-capturing tentacles. 

Mercedes would like you to know that Google is not the only company out there trying to get self-driving cars on the road. Here is their insanely futuristic-looking autonomous prototype.

Drones: they deliver packages, take pictures, and serve in our armed forces. We can now add 'discoverers of lost civilizations' to that resume.

Smart watches may be getting all the buzz right now, but Monohm would like to introduce you to their alternative. Meet the Runcible, a smart pocket watch. 

Crowdfundables for Your Consideration

We mentioned it last week, but there's still plenty of time to get your own copy of extreme cuteness in the form of Adorable Pandaring by Asmadi Games. It's fast, engaging play with all the pandas you can handle (including red pandas!) The Kickstarter will be up and running until April 9th.

There's only three days left to lend your support to the very first Singaporean game to appear on the Care and Feeding of Nerds. Hitman Holiday, the hidden roles game of 'sunshine and death' is on the cusp of being fully funded. You have until March 12th to back the Kickstarter and snag your own copy.

There's a bit more time to explore the campaign to bring more chapters of Regeria Hope to life, but only a bit. The gavel will fall on the Kickstarter for this visual novel on March 25th.

As always, best wishes for an excellent week ahead!

It feels so good to be back on a regular publication schedule. Rolling out our new look for the site has been pretty awesome too. Thanks to you guys, the site has been growing pretty much week over week. Given all this goodness, we thought that the interface and overall design could do with an upgrade. Most of what you see now is the handiwork of Kay Luxe Design. We're very happy with Kay's work and hope that you enjoy the new site. We may or may not be having too much fun rolling perpetual nat-20s on our 'Got a Game' dice widget. 

And, for once in what seems like far too long, it's not snowing! <> Ok, ok. Enough dancing and more This Week in Geekdom!

Comics

That yawp of joy you may have heard earlier this week was likely from fans of the animated TV series Invader Zim as they learned that their favorite characters will get new life in the form of a new comic series. The series is being published by Oni Press and the first issue will be available in July of this year. Certain authors here at the Care and Feeding of Nerds are doing a happy dance of their own.

Fight Club is getting a sequel, but not on the big screen. The story will continue as a comic. The comic run will be published by Dark Horse and will be available beginning in May of this year.

Games

File this one under: Why would anyone do that? It's a paid app for your phone that plays an RPG by itself, with no input from actual players.

New streaming platform D!ingIt.tv is trying to give Twitch a run for its money so far as broadcasting eSports is concerned? What's D!ingIt? It's this.

On Wednesday a group of Civilization V fanatics deployed their mod that would allow the game to play itself (via 42 different civs).

The long and storied history of one of the first major PC sports titles: Football Manager.

Paradox wants more Goat Simulator, less Call of Duty.

Movies/TV

Cartoon Network has confirmed that it will be rebooting the animated series the Powerpuff Girls. The reboot is slated to launch sometime in 2016.

Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice is still over a year away, but we got another glimpse into the new DC movieverse this week with this promotional shot of Jason Mamoa as Aquaman.

Speaking of movies we won't be seeing for quite some time, 20th Century Fox has confirmed that it will be working with director Neil Blomkamp (Distrinct 9, Chappie) to develop a new sequel to Aliens. Bonus: this project is completely separate from Prometheus 2.

Science/Technology

Toyota seems to be taking emissions control for its cars very seriously. The automaker has apparently been reviewing research into catalytic converters that have the ability to control car-formed pollutants at the quantum level.

Snow has been the source of more than a few complaints on here during the past month. It turns out that accurately forecasting snowfall is one of the most difficult things meteorologists can do. Here's why.

Real Life Superhero

Our proverbial hats go off to the University of Toronto, whose researchers have set up and provided a 3D printer in order to make cheap, but effective, prosthetics for Ugandans in need.

General Awesomeness/Feats of Nerdery

We will be getting a new Dr. Seuss book on July 28th. The posthumous title comes to us via a manuscript recently discovered by the author's widow and his secretary.

Though fans of Hellboy won't be getting another movie featuring their favorite character anytime soon, they can console themselves with this Hellboy-inspired beer.

Did you miss Toy Fair 2015 last weekend? No worries, Topless Robot put together this helpful highlight reel of all the best new toys.

For reasons we're still not clear on, the Canadian army has decided to build a real-life version of the Assault Rifle from Halo.

If the real-life Assault Rife isn't available to you, you can get yourself one of these street-legal Master Chief motorcycle helmets.

Well that's certainly one way to make it so. Star Trek fan ThePlanetMike went and built this warp core table lamp. Check it out in action:
Crowdfundables For Your Consideration

On Friday, we got a chance to talk with Dominic of Medieval Lords Games about the innovative secret roles assassination game Hitman Holiday. The campaign for the game is still open if you're up for a bout of sunshine and death.

Another of the active campaigns associated with projects from our Developer Dialogues series is the Kickstarter for Amino. You have 13 more days to get in on the molecule-building fun.

As always, best wishes for an excellent week ahead!

Hope everyone's having a great weekend thus far, particularly those of you lucky enough to be wandering the halls of SPIEL right now! We're now under one week until Extra Life 2014, and the GIR and I, along with hundreds of other gamers, are gearing up for 24 straight hours of gaming to benefit our respective local Children's Miracle Network hospitals.

Given that we'll probably be barely functional or unconscious at this time next week, there probably won't be a This Week in Geekdom on October 26th. So this post may have to tide us all over for two weeks. Let's get down to it!

From the department of We Didn't Make This Up: Digital Extremes, the developers behind Warframe and the Darkness 2, are now owned by Sumpo Food Dealings, one of the largest chicken producers in China.

It's no secret that, for most indie game developers, the effort that goes into making a game is truly a labor of love. Here's a solid account of how these intrepid creators approach an often unforgiving market and how they endeavor to turn their pet project into the next big mega-hit.

On Wednesday DC announced that they will be delivering the long-asked-after movie featuring Wonder Woman. The as yet untitled project is scheduled to hit theatres in 2017 and is part of DC's extremely dense cinema docket that extends to 2022.

Marvel was not without big movie news of its own. On Monday the publisher announced that Robert Downey Jr. will have a starring role in Captain America 3. This tidbit set comics news sites ablaze with speculation as to how the current array of Marvel films may treat Civil War. 

From the annals of last weekend's NYCCC comes this panel featuring the interviews of the cast of Star Trek: the Next Generation moderated by none other than Captain Kirk.

Fans of Gundam have a new reason to rejoice: the entire series will be coming to the US. The DVD/Blue Rays are slated to be available for purchase in early 2015. Because giant robots!

After two years of downtime filled with extensive upgrades, the Large Hadron Collider is on the cusp of coming back online.

The X-37B, better known as the US Air Force's Orbital Test Vehicle, has returned to Earth after spending the better part of the past two years in orbit. The weird thing: no one knows what it was doing up there.

Speaking of strange satellites, researchers at Cornell University believe that there's something amiss with the shape of the orbit of one of Saturn's moons. Their contention is that Mimas (which my brain keeps reading as Minimus...thanks Kerbal) has an oscillating orbit potentially due to the presence of a subsurface ocean.

It's a question that's stymied scientists and armchair physicists alike: What is Dark Energy? Well, we may have a few answers for that.

For those of us planning to remain on Earth for the foreseeable future, a potential bit of good news: research featured in the latest edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicates that most climate change models may have been underestimating the capacity of plants to absorb carbon dioxide.

Feats of Nerdery

Disney-Lucasfilm has embraced this incredibly detailed and well-executed minimalist fan remake of the Empire Strikes Back.

The Black Glove is billed as an 'eerie, surrealistic first-person experience' and it comes to us courtesy of Day for Night Games, an indie studio staffed with the developmental minds that brought you Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite. The Black Glove aims to take point-and-click narrative-driven games to a new level by entwining the choices and actions of the player with the events and world around them. If funded, the Black Glove will be available for PC, iOS, and Linux, and will be delivered in late 2015. Check out the Kickstarter for full details and a peek at some of the amazing artwork.

As always, best wishes for an excellent week ahead!

It's really Sunday again? Well ok then. The past couple of weeks have been pretty busy here on the blog and hopefully you guys feel that any recent changes have been reasonably good ones. Last week I mentioned that the medium-to-long term goal for all these shenanigans is to turn the Care and Feeding of Nerds into something a bit more sophisticated, or at least more robust, than just my occasional digitized mutterings. Part of getting to that goal will be publishing more content, so we're hoping to get to the point where there are at least 2-3 posts a week in addition to this weekend wrap-up. Obviously, if any of our new features isn't working out, let us know on any of these. The idea is to make the site better, so let us know if we've gone astray. Fingers crossed though that our internet mad sciencing produces some goodness. But enough administrative chat; let's get down to the week in geekdom.

Movies/TV

In the bad-but-also-perhaps-good news category is this confirmation that a movie version of Y: The Last Man is officially dead.

It may have had its release date bumped back, but Jupiter Ascending is doing its best to prove that the delay is worthwhile with this new trailer. 

Apparently live TV musicals are going to be a thing. After last year's live production of the Sound of Music, Peter Pan will be getting similar treatment. Bonus: Christopher Walken will be Captain Hook.

As if Pride and Prejudice and Zombies didn't merit enough nerdy anticipation, it has been confirmed that Lena Headley, Charles Dance, and Matt Smith will be joining the cast.

Bryan Singer will be directing the third installment of the new X-Men movie franchise: X-Men: Apocalypse.

William Shatner will have a special cameo in the still-untitled third volume of the rebooted Star Trek series.

Comics

After decades of squabbling, Marvel and the estate of Jack Kirby have reached a settlement concerning the intellectual properties of the comic book legend. 

Games

On Tuesday Blizzard announced that, after seven years of development, that they would be cancelling their next-generation MMO Titan. When asked for a reason as to the cancellation, Blizzard responded that they, "couldn't find the fun." Right.

The amusing retelling of live-action Oregon Trail.

Halo 5: Guardians as retold in Minecraft.

Science/Technology

It's one of the most beloved features of the reading experience: a deep waft of book smell. But where does that storied smell come from? Here comes the science.

Researchers from Oxford University believe that the roasting process may be the culprit behind severe peanut allergies.

On Wednesday, Okayama University Hospital announced that it successfully completed a novel procedure that allowed a mother to donate segments of her lungs to her ailing son.

Wednesday also produced exciting new developments for India's space agency as their Mars Orbiter Mission (a.k.a. MOM) successfully entered the Red Planet's orbit.

Anthrax has a long-held reputation has a weaponizable bacterium. Now a group of MIT researchers hope to give the much-feared ailment a new, more positive role as a potential vector for chemotherapy drugs.

Robot butlers are not only becoming a reality, but may be available in a store near you in as little as one year's time.

It's only mere molecules in breadth, but a team from Penn State University believes that their research has produced in the strongest material in the world.

The latest edition of Physical Review Letters contains a description of what may be the closest we've come to producing significant amounts of energy from a fusion reaction.

The entire history of the universe in 10 run-on sentences.

However, there may be a challenge to that universal history. This alleged new theory posits that our universe may have been the offspring not of a Big Bang, but of a hyper-dimensional black hole.

Conversely, a physics professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has produced this research indicating that it is mathematically impossible for black holes to come into existence. Make up your minds people!

In 2006 the International Astronomical Union handed down one of the most controversial verdicts of our time: that Pluto was no longer a planet. Eight years later, the debate over Pluto's Fate has new life and may result in reclassification for the 'dwarf planet'. 

The latest edition of Science features this research from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy that indicates the discovery of complex organic molecules in deep inter-stellar space.

What do the current crew of the International Space Station and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy have in common? The number 42.

Have you ever wanted to go to space? Perhaps pioneer the celestial bodies beyond our exosphere? Cyanide and Happiness has just the video for you!

If you're convinced that staying on Earth might be a good idea, then a team of chemists from the University of Pennsylvania have good news for you. The researchers claim that they have been able to observe and study the chemical reaction that keeps our atmosphere clean. 

A new DARPA program called Electrical Prescriptions, or ElectRx, aims to give participants in the program highly advanced healing abilities via microscopic implants. There's been no word on the construction of implants that will provide the bearer with adamantium claws.

 General Awesomesness/Feats of Nerdery

Members of the US Fox Valley Composite Squadron have captured the Guiness World Record for Highest Paper Airplane Flight (from a High Altitude Balloon). The paperboard aircraft bore a 14" (35.56 cm) wingspan and was able to cover a distance of 82 miles (131.97 km) after being released from a weather balloon.   

This is what happens when the good people behind Cirque de Soleil get their hands on some drones

Crowdfundables for Your Consideration

Woot for new feature! As the name suggests, every week we're going to provide brief descriptions for a handful of fun, innovative projects that are in the active crowdfunding phase and the corresponding links for you to find more information and/or offer your support. If you have a project that you'd like to bring to our attention, let us know.

First up is an unorthodox-looking game from the trio of minds behind Big Potato. Their project, Bucket of Doom, is a fast-paced, think-on-your-feet party game for terrible people in the vein of Cards Against Humanity. It aims to merge the absurdity of Cards with the storytelling aspects of other excellent party games like Snake Oil. There are only 9 days left on the Kickstarter, so don't delay if you want in on this fun!

That Which Sleeps has already surpassed its crowdfunding goal, but you may want to give this project a look anyhow. This offering by King Dinosaur Games bills itself as a re-imagining of the Black and White style god game. Players take on the role of a Cthulhu-esque Old One and wreak havoc on an unsuspecting populace all which avoiding being forcibly returned to their demonic slumber. The game will be available on all operating systems (yes, including Linux) and aims to be distributed through both Steam and the Humble Bundle Store. Check out their Kickstarter page for more details or vote here to get the game greenlighted on Steam.  

   

As always, best wishes for an excellent week ahead!