I didn’t grow up to become an illustrator, but the drawings by David Sutherland, on Dungeons and Dragons book covers, sure did influence my coterie of internal visual contexts.

I also don’t care when celebrities die, but I actually find myself kind of sad to hear that Mr. Sutherland passed away [boingboing.net].

No, there’s not some great new scandal akin to the Strawberry Shortcake debacle [penny-arcade.com]. Instead, Tycho had this to say about the warnings against movie piracy playing before actual movies:

I can’t imagine how counterproductive those MPAA clips before movies have proven to be. It may be that you have not yet been insulted by one of these, but the only way to one-hundred percent guarantee that you will be harangued thus for piratical acts is to enter a theater and see movies legally

Amen, brother.

Here’s Penny Arcade’s current read.

The best part about this is the bit about Colin Baker – the article [news.bbc.co.uk] has to be read to be believed.

Story ganked from BoingBoing.net.

You can read the actual post that the maven of independent role-playing games wrote, if you want [sjgames.com], but I’ll summarize: he hates Mac OS 10.4

Steve Jackson has a lot of opinions that he is regularly unafraid to communicate, and he does not shy away from criticizing Tiger for making his valuable time less productive. He bitches about Spotlight, for instance, because it works as it was intended to work. It can be slowish, I admit, but my 768MB of RAM seems to handle it just fine; sure, it starts populating the search as soon as you start typing, but I actually quite like that feature, having fallen in like with it via iTunes.

Widgets, as I have said before, are doubleplusgood. It saves the hassle of loading Safari or Firefox every time I want to search Amazon, and a certain widget I use allows me to post to this blog without going through a slow, bulky Jave interface. I can check the weather, search Wikipedia, Amazon, local movie times, local tv listings and the goddamn dictionary without opening a browser, and I can use the calculator without actually opening the program. Small time saving things, certainly, but I appreciate the flexibility. Oh, and I can see it all at once.

I love Steve Jackson Games. I love GURPS. I kind of like Steve jackson.

Mostly.

Technical: solid production values throughout. The audio is clear and in stereo, the bitrate is just compressed enough to be a relatively small file with clear output. One benefit to the stereo setup that I had never really noticed in other group podcasts: the arrangements of the Geeks is such that each voice has a consistent place in the audio landscape. It’s much easier, in almost a subliminal way, to parse out who is speaking by where their voice comes from through the headphones.

The Podcasters: As with any group of actual humans, the Geeks of GeeksOn have distinct personalities and quirks that make them definable characters. Aaron is a nerdy geek, easily exasperated but also the heart of the show, often taking the MC role. Don is a well-spoken geek-of-all-trades with strong opinions and a penchant for expressing them. Peter is a geek of high reason and intellectualism, and has an uncanny vocal resemblance to Cory Feldman. Matt is an actor geek with wide-ranging interests and a biting, good-natured sense of humor whose Bruce Lee impression gave me a fit of the giggles. Each of them has a distinct voice with enough difference to be easily distinguished, and they all share an excellent command of the language (not surprising, since they’re either writers or actors). Also, their command of the subject matter is impressive, though this is not a strange quality to see in self-proclaimed, proud geeks. They acknowledge the stereotype and embrace it honestly. They release a show a week, very consistently. Only one week saw no GeeksOn episode, but extenuating circumstances, made clear through the website, explained it. After all, even Geeks have lives.

Variety: A short form cast has room to meander, but not so for a cast like this one, clocking in at about 1:15 each show. They keep it interesting by having multiple segments with different themes, including a variety of thought puzzles at the end of the cast, which taps into that favorite geek pastime of sharing opinions on trivial, short subject quizzes of creativity. Some examples: a “Who Would Win” matchup, a technobabble contest.

Suggestions for improvement:
I definitely don’t have many; I think GeeksOn is the best podcast out there, especially for niche audience members like me.

The guest geek, Lisa, was a refreshing change in the usual podcast. More guest geeks, especially considering the ‘cast’s proximity to LA. Oh, and I’m always available! I can use Skype! Please?

And aside from that, Geek Aaron’s sister was on Firefly, as Mal’s sometimes wife! She’s a Geek Goddess waiting for her seashell, and GeeksOn can give it to her.

Also: I’d love some photographs of the Geeks, of the studio, of the session, whatever. It would be nice to have faces to go with the voices.

Final Verdict: A+. My favorite podcast.

I’m not even sure that’s an accurate facsimile of the Shakespeare quote that everyone misuses, but I’m too goddamn tired to care.

Anyway, I installed Tiger on my new iBook, and it’s truly changing the way I think about file folders. Why should I have to organize my documents (after spending so much time doing so in the past), when I can simply access them in auto-updating smart search folders?

I haven’t answered that question yet. And yes, I’m uploading this post via a new widget.