ORIGINALLY AIRED: 3/2/2005
Steve Niles, Sims University, Sand Drag Racing
Episode #5036
| McGruff Gets New Sidekick: Faux Paw the Techno Cat (also the “First Cat” of Utah) keeps children safe from the internet.
Free Ice Cream! Yahoo! celebrates its tenth birthday with free treats. Haven’t We Seen You Someplace Before? Intel announces its intention to pursue the consumer electronics market with bold, new ideas about something called the “digital lifestyle” and with PC concepts that look remarkably like an Apple Mac mini. Ingenious! |
| The Photo Marketing Association show is one of the biggest camera product events in the world. Brendan Moran was on the scene to report on the newest digital camera models. We have a roundup article by Lab Rat Hahn Choi for your reading pleasure. |
| We want you to send us your most brilliant Blockland creations! Recreate scenes or famous paintings, make funny jokes, build amazing feats of architecture... just make sure they have some sort of concept.
Download Blockland at Blockland.us. Make a .jpg of your Blockland model and mail it to usercreated@gmail.com. Be sure to put “Blockland model” in the subject line. The deadline is Wednesday, March 9—in the morning, not the afternoon. To see our favorites from last week’s Maya challenge, head over to the Sarah 3D page. |
| Steve Niles got his start in the comics biz with a combination of tenacity and good luck: At age 19, he wrote letters to horror authors such as Clive Barker—and actually bought the rights to do comics based on their works for a mere pittance.
Since then, he’s made a name for himself as one of the best horror writers in comics with titles like Bigfoot (“It’s our answer to Harry and the Hendersons, which ruined Bigfoot for me.”) and 30 Days of Night (vampires invading a small town in Alaska). The very successful 30 Days of Night had humble beginnings when Niles had a hard time finding a publisher. “I pitched it forever, but everybody would say, ‘Oh, there’s already Buffy, and there’s this movie Blade…” So he went ahead and produced it himself—and ended up starting a bidding war for the property. It’s now being developed for film by director/producer Sam Raimi. Niles also just wrote his first novel, Savage Membrane. To get the full scoop on Niles’ comics and other projects, head over to www.steveniles.com. |
| Tom Rowles headed to Yuma, Arizona to explore firsthand the exciting world of sand drag racing—which is, yes, drag racing on sand. Visit the American Sand Drag Association or the American Sand Racing Organization to learn more about this new sport, and click on their schedule to find events in your neck of the, uh, desert. |
| In tech topics...
Sir William of Redmond: Queen Elizabeth dubs Bill Gates a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Turning Japanese: Microsoft signs up more high-profile Japanese game designers for Xbox2. Outta Gas: Steve Fosset’s attempt to become the first person to fly solo around the world without refueling may be called off… due to fuel problems. Warp Factor 3: Anonymous donations to the effort to rescue Star Trek Enterprise total $3 million. |
| The Sims 2 producer Tim LeTourneau dropped in to unveil the game’s first expansion pack: Sims 2 University. As your characters enter young adulthood, they can now go off to college for some higher education. That means all sorts of new social interactions that college students like to do, as well as some zany features such as the “cow plant.”
“If you don’t take care of it, it becomes a little hungry,” Tim warned, hinting that characters might start disappearing. “We always have fun with expansion packs. The base game is there, so it’s just us being creative.” Log on to the official Sims 2 site for more info. |
| With but a few dollars worth of steel mesh and wood or plastic, you can make your own parabolic reflector antenna to boost your Wi-Fi signal. You can get complete instructions here, as well all sorts of DIY antenna projects at www.freeantennas.com. |
| Instead of using Brita water filters like the two Kevins did the last time they tried to filter crappy booze, you can now use this professional filtering product: Gray Kangaroo. It’s basically a charcoal filter in a plastic sleeve that allows you to dump cheap liquor into an empty bottle in a presumably filtered and better-tasting state. (Beware of charcoal residue.)
Learn about the amazing powers of the Gray Kangaroo at GrayKangaroo.com. |
FEATURES
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Sarah in 3D
Here are the favorites from our "User Created" Maya challenge featuring a 3D model of Sarah Lane. |
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PMA 2005 in Review
Highlighting the latest cameras and accessories from PMA 2005 |
RELATED LINKS
> Check out the American Sand Drag Association's schedule
> Official site for The Sims 2
> The PMA 2005 camera show
