Free Comic Book Day (5/3/08)

Free Comic Book Day is today (Saturday, May 3). In Easton, you can head down to Phantom of the Attic, 125-129 3rd St. and check out a whole bunch of free books from a dozen or so publishers.

Radio Active #64: Opening New Portals to Geek Parenting

This is old news now, but I figured it was still worth a crosspost: Radio Active #64 is available over on Nuketown. It's got a review of the excellent puzzle game Portal, reviews of the Critical Hits and MacMommy blogs, and speculation on when Jordan should see Star Wars.

And on an entirely different note ... this is the 400th blog post on The Atomic Age. Not bad for a little backwater blog I only remember to post to about half the time.

Hanging out at the Dire Cafe

I have this blog for cross promotional purposes, so I might as well do some cross promotion. The Dire Cafe is the UncleBear.com-spawned social network for escapist geeks. So sayeth the Bear: "If you're a casual fan of movies, scifi, fantasy, horror, comics, or tabletop rpgs you're in the right place." Go there. Hang out. Have fun.

Nerds!

What Be Your Nerd Type? Your Result: Literature Nerd   Does sitting by a nice cozy fire, with a cup of hot tea/chocolate, and a book you can read for hours even when your eyes grow red and dry and you look sort of scary sitting there with your insomniac appearance? Then you fit this category perfectly! You love the power of the written word and it's eloquence; and you may like to read/write poetry or novels. You contribute to the smart people of today's society, however you can probably be overly-critical of works. It's okay. I understand.
Gamer/Computer Nerd
Social Nerd
Science/Math Nerd
Artistic Nerd
Anime Nerd
Drama Nerd
Musician
What Be Your Nerd Type? Quizzes for MySpace

No big surprises here. There weren't much in the way of coding/computer questions, else my possession of a vintage Timex Sinclair and my code monkey day job might have pushed me into the computer nerd category.

Radio Active #43: New Year Goals, Accidental Survivors, Free Comics and RPGs

Radio Active's long dark tea time of the soul ends with Episode 43, in which I discuss a crazy January that saw my Xbox fall under the spell of the red rings of death while I destroyed my "integrated home theatre system" with a static electricity-empowered touch. Looking ahead to 2007, I talk about some of my personal goals, including reaching a weight of 190 lbs., coverting my campaign web site to a wiki, and writing a novel. In Net News I have a review of the Accidental Survivors podcast, share the 360 Voice that enables your Xbox to blog, and explain how to get free stuff with this year's Free RPG Day and Free Comic Book Day.

Save the show. Save the world.

The Geek Tree 2006 Photo Set

For years, people have been asking me for pictures of the Geek Tree, and for years, I've been promising to find a way to take them. This year, I finally did. Check out the Geek Tree in all its glowing glory in this Flickr photo set.

I experimented with a couple of different approuches, but ultimately I hit upon taking the photos with my Sony Cybershot DSC-L1 digital camera on "auto" mode with multi-point focus enabled and the flash turned off. The baseline photos this created were not spectacular, but using Adobe Photoshop Element 3's "Auto Smart Fix" enhancement at 25-50% effectiveness I was able to improve the brightness and contrast of the photos without making them look bland and washed out. I'm pleased with the result -- the shots aren't spectacular, but they nicely illustrate the tree.

Geek Gazette

Yes, the Atomic Age has been quiet for a while, but I figure promoting a fellow geek's web site is a good exercise for it. All power to Google!

The site in question is the Geek Gazette, a monthly to bimonthly (hey, publishing is hard!) PDF-based ezine. Its content spans the breadth of geekdom itself, from movies to games to TV to comics to, well, everything that makes up geek life! Pick it up and geek out!