In unholy-army-of-the-night news, scientists have a new way to turn swarming beasts of the sea into unreasoning killers. Nothing is safe from their merciless aggression. Not . . . even . . . you. More »

Dear god. The guys who made the extremely clever God of War-as-an-indie-movie trailer are back, with an outright brilliant Legend of Zelda movie trailer, as if it had been made in the '80s by John Hughes at the height of his powers. These guys perfectly, and I mean perfectly mesh the Zelda games with The Breakfast Club and Say Anything and more -- even the film stock looks appropriately VHS. It almost hurts that this isn't a real movie, that's how good it is. Infinite thanks to Strangways for the tip.

Chrome: We love tweaking Gmail to our liking with extensions like Minimalist Gmail, but if you've wanted to do the same to Google Calendar, Minimalist for Google Calendar will let you remove links, tweak buttons, and change the colors of your Calendar. More »

James McAvoy explains how his portrayal of lead mutant Charles Xavier in X-Men: First Class is different from Patrick Stewart's. Zack Snyder explains what Christopher Nolan has brought to the latest Superman movie that was missing from the previous ones. Plus the worlds of Harry Potter and Twilight collide in futuristic prison movie Incarceron, the new Red Sonja has found its director and maybe its star, the latest Battlestar Galactica prequel starts filming, and the minds behind Fringe reveal what's next for the craziest love triangle in history. More »

Building a PC is great, but Linux users have always had to do the extra legwork of finding out which components were Linux-friendly. Now, Ubuntu developers Canonical have released a comprehensive list of hardware certified to work with Linux. More »

​Each new Final Fantasy game sticks to certain rules. One of those rules is "Change enough to piss off half the fans who liked the previous game," but Final Fantasies still have many common sights. There'll be a band of heroes striving to overthrow some dark and mystic force. There'll be an airship or two. There'll be a weird mixture of technology and medieval trappings. There'll be a tragic sacrifice. There'll be chicken-ostrich Chocobos and all-important crystals. And there'll be at least one highly appealing character who the story neglects.

Final Fantasy games like to irritate you by introducing exceptionally cool characters, perhaps even sticking them in the player-controlled party for a while. Then they're yanked away by some plot device or an untimely demise. And you'll never get them back. You'll just spend the rest of the game wishing you could play as a nerd revolutionary or a besuited corporate thug instead of some annoying robot cat riding a stuffed moogle. We're here today to recognize these underused and often underappreciated supporting characters from the Final Fantasy series. We're also here to spoil a bunch of story twists along the way, so be warned. Continue reading "10 Coolest Underused Final Fantasy Characters" >

That you can hold a phone up to music these days and identify it is amazing. But which smartphone song-finding app is more amazing? We researched and road-tested the two most popular song ID apps to see which was a better install. More »

Plug-ins can open vulnerabilities in even relatively secure browsers like Chrome. Even coders, like Jeff Atwood, can fall victim. Here's how to reign in plug-ins like Java, or disable them entirely, in Google Chrome. More »

http://criticscircle.org.uk/film/?ID=176

for her role in The Ghost.

Congratulations!

Today we got our first glimpse of the X-Men: First Class trailer, an elegant, retro-thriller about the origins of the mutant superhero team. And we can't stop thinking about it. More »

Speaking of the incentive to get a costume crew going! My "Cosplay Photography Done Cheap" panel has been scheduled (tentatively for Sunday) and I'll need

http://www.esquire.com/women/women-we-love/summer-glau-0311?click=pp

She'll be featured in her own provocative photo feature.

Ah yes, George Tekai... also Elvira if it floats your boat. ... Ah yes, George Tekai... also Elvira if it floats your boat.? On Thu, Feb 10, 2011 at 10:33 PM,

No I did not say anything it was a day dream. But in my day dream there were others too. Like capt. Sulu from Star Trek and some chick all dressed in black.

Really think we should definitely have some officialish presence there... I'll pester the Tucson folks. I wanna go, sounds exactly like what I've been wanting

So yours truly got to go to the Phoenix Comicon Kickoff tonight and get to be the one to share the news! Robert jumped the gun, but he is correct. Ruins the

http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/31189/a-rude-awakening

The play has been reported on here - found a couple of reviews.

Gaydar Nation's Review (play photos at the bottom of review), Interesting article about the playwright and A Rude Awakening.

We have so few examples of female military leaders on Earth that only science fiction offers a glimpse of what it will be like when women are leaders during wartime. And that's one of the many reasons you'll get sucked into Lois McMaster Bujold's classic novels Shards of Honor and Barrayar (now collected into one volume from Baen called Cordelia's Honor). They're a realistic picture of a woman, Cordelia Naismith, who becomes a military leader - and who has to juggle that responsibility with her ethics, as well as a burgeoning love affair and eventual marriage to a man who is her planet's sworn enemy. Oh and just to make things more complicated, Cordelia's husband Aral Vorkosigan comes from planet Barrayar, whose culture does not welcome female leaders of any sort. More »

For our last lesson, we're going to take a look at how to use Photoshop to layout and mock up a web design from scratch. More »

http://twitter.com/#!/KPChatShow/status/35540577718116352

They are looking for more questions and tweet 5's. It streams live at 3pm PT this Sunday at the Kevin Pollak Chat Show site.