Last month’s Gadget Geeks of London turned out to be lots of fun! I was nervous for most of the night though, mainly because I was doing one of the presentations. My presentation went really well, and after I finally had done it I could relax a bit and enjoy the evening. I still have to write up a proper blog post of that evening (but it’s been busy as usual).

It’s time though for our next meetup: Movie Geeks of London! It’s less than two weeks until this year’s Academy Awards and we couldn’t resist organising an Oscar themed meetup.

The idea of the evening is to discuss the Oscar nominations with other movie geeks. And we’ll be holding our own award ceremony on the night, where attendees can vote for their favourite Oscar nominations. Make sure you sign up on the site, cause we need to know how many people are coming along!

Here’s a special Valentine’s Day Link Love edition:

• Sexy Geek Guys Just For You: Ooh, nice roundup of sexy geeks by Geeks Are Sexy!
• Vanilla Chocolate Sandwich Cookies: These cookies look good. I’ve been baking much more lately, but none of the cookie recipes I’ve tried so far have worked.
• Cute Overload: Hold that pose!
• Alamo Drafthouse Valentine’s Day Menu: I’ve never been to Austin, but I so want to go to the Alamo Drafthouse one day. For Valentine’s Day they had 4 special menus for 4 movies: The Princess Bride, West Side Story, Chocolat and Eat Drink Man Woman. The Twue Wuf Truffles sound delicious.
• Pick Your Cupid: This made me smile.

Happy Valentine’s Day! I came across this via Twitter yesterday and they’re just so sweet! And perfect for the science geek in your life:

My favourite is the “Life does not compute without you” with Ada Lovelace. The cards are available from the Oodles etsy store for £10.

If only I lived in New York! I came across this New York bakery called Ruby et Violette and they do these amazing sounding cookies and brownies. They’ve currently got 40 flavours to choose from, but they change their favours throughout the year doing over 100 different flavours! And those flavours sound AWESOME.

The best thing is that they’ve got boozy cookies. My favourites (as much as I can have a favourite without actually having tasted them) are the Black Russian and Champagne Strawberry. Kahlua in cookies? Why have I never attempted this before? The other boozy flavours are Creme De Menthe, Mimosa, Pina Colada and Rum Raisin.

Besides those cookies, here are my other favourites:

Stuck on You – Butterscotch, caramel, marshmallows and chocolate. Nuf said?

The Breakup… His Story – This is the answer to any bad day. Oatmeal, peanut butter, caramel, dark chocolate and smoked salt. The result: Breakup?…What Breakup?

The Breakup… Her Story – Each side of a breakup has similarities – in this case, oatmeal, peanut butter and caramel – but it’s the subtle differences that really matter. Her Story has the sweeter twist of maple syrup and white chocolate topped with maple sugar crystals.

Exotic Seduction – Who would have thought curry and chocolate would marry well? Luckily – we did, because this is unbelievable.

First Kiss – Intensely rich, deep dark chocolate, topped with sea salt for that extra bite of flavor.

Rose – Dark chocolate creates a delicate harmony with crystallized rose petals.

Don’t they sound amazing? I need to go to New York now to try these cookies! They ship to anywhere in the US, but they also have a cafe in NY (which also sells ice cream and more).

Check out more flavours on Ruby et Violette’s site.

Okay, this just looks awesome:

I wasn’t really looking forward to this movie, until it’s was announced that it’s being directed by Matthew Vaughn. I love Kick-Ass and Stardust, so it’s going to be interesting to see how this X-Men turns out!

It was announced last week that NBC has greenlit a Wonder Woman pilot by David E. Kelley (Ally McBeal, The Practice, Boston Legal). Now I’ve never read a Wonder Woman comic or even seen the old TV show. You’d think that with my love for Greek mythology Wonder Woman would be THE comic for me to read, but I have no clue where to start (if anyone can tell me, please leave a comment behind). Still, as addicted as I am to TV shows, a Wonder Woman one sounds great to me and I thought it would be cool to brainstorm a bit about possible casting.

There are a couple of script reviews around (here’s Bleeding Cool’s review) and it sounds as if Wonder Woman might have a bit of a cheesy girly vibe. Hmm. To be honest, I watch plenty of cheesy girly shows, so I’ll tune in even if it does turn out like that, but I’m hoping it’ll be a bit more watchable than that.

So what do we know of our new Wonder Woman? Well, she’ll have to be tall, preferably brunette and able to kick ass. Age will be somewhere between 25 to 29 (although this doesn’t necessarily mean the actress has to be in that age range, she just needs to look as if she’s in that age range). She’ll have two alter egos: Diana Prince, a mousey Clark Kentish type, and Diana Themiscyra, a powerful business woman and head of Themiscyra Industries. Not much to go on, but let’s see if I can come up with some actresses that might be considered. I’m not saying each of these will be perfect for the role, but I thought I’d suggest some actresses more likely to appear on a TV show (side note: I tried to google most of these actresses’ heights, but I’m not 100% sure they’re correct).

Katie Cassidy

Most people will know Cassidy from her recent roles as bitchy blonde in Melrose Place and Gossip Girl, but before that she played a much more likeable character in Harper’s Island (and was brunette there). At 5’7″ she’s not the optimal height, but taller than some names I’ve heard suggested for this role. I think she has the skills to pull this off, and she currently isn’t attached to any upcoming TV projects.

Sarah Lancaster

Seeing as she’s currently a regular on NBC’s Chuck, you’d think this might be unlikely, but hear me out. She’s got the looks, the height and the acting skills to be a great Wonder Woman, plus she’s already part of the NBC family. As much as I love Chuck, I’m getting the feeling that the writers aren’t expecting to be renewed this season (have you seen the latest episode?), leaving Lancaster perfectly available to be our Wonder Woman.

Taylor Cole

Cole currently has a recurring gig on NBC’s The Event as an assassin, so we know she can kick ass! She’s 5’8.5″ and is definitely interested in playing Wonder Woman: she even dressed up as her last Halloween. I’m not sure whether she has the acting skills to be the core of a TV show, but I thought I’d include her because of the NBC connection (and because of the following photo).

Mandy Moore

I somehow always imagined Mandy Moore to be tiny (not sure why I thought that), but it turns out she’s 5’10”. I thought her guest appearances in Grey’s Anatomy were great and she was brilliant in Tangled (even though we don’t actually see her). She might be a bit too sweet to be Wonder Woman though…

Amber Stevens

I love Amber Steven’s character on Greek, which we already know is ending this year.She was briefly attached to the US Torchwood thingy, but that role ended up going to Alexa Havins. Another 5’10”-er, Stevens has got the height and looks to pull off Wonder Woman. I’ve only seen her in Greek though, where she tends to be very bubbly and cheerful, but then that might be perfect for the cheesy girl vibe we’ve seen in the script.

Olivia Wilde

Wilde is mainly on this list, cause I think she’s awesome. With her appearing in more and more blockbuster movies, I don’t think she’ll be returning to TV (unless it’s to House to fullfil her contract). Still, I think she’d make  a great Wonder Woman.

There are a couple more actresses who I think could be great, but who I really think won’t be cast. Cobie Smulders and Morena Baccarin were likely candidates when the movie was still in the works, but now with it being a TV show it’s very unlikely either of them will be considered. They’re both attached to their own TV shows and it’s only in the case that those get cancelled that they might try out for this.

I’m still not exactly sure who sent it, but last week I got an email whether I’d be interested in attending an “exclusive” Nintendo 3DS event. So I signed up and last Saturday made my way down to Brick Lane where I got to play with the 3DS for the first time.

After arriving at the venue, we got ushered into a darkish room where we got to see a live Streetfighter fight (see photo below). And then we were rushed through an outbreak area with Claire Redfield protecting us from zombies. Yeah, it was pretty cheesy, but a fun introduction to the 3DS. We then got (I think) 15 minutes to play around with the Nintendo 3DS and some of the new games.

To be completely honest, I wasn’t expecting much at all. 3D sometimes still seems as a gimmick to me, even though by now there are some movies where the 3D does look gorgeous. But on a handheld console? For games? Yeah, gimmick, I thought. “Let’s add 3D. Nobody has done that yet. Everyone will want to buy one. Cause it’s new. And shiny. And 3D”. It’s as if 3D has become this magical thing: you add it to your product and it becomes “better”.

So how is the 3D in the Nintendo 3DS? Well, I think it depends very much on the game you’re playing. In some games it seemed as if I was looking into a little box where these awesome things were happening just beyond the screen. With other games I thought it failed miserably and barely made an impact; for me, in the worst case it looked layered, like a pop-up picture book (although some people might find that cool). It also depended per game how wide the viewing angle was. With some, I only had to move my head slightly and the image became blurry and annoying (this happened the entire time with Nintendogs for me), while with others I didn’t have any problems.

What really surprised me though was the Augmented Reality stand. I’ve blogged about AR before and I haven’t been that convinced by it for mobile phones. But for the 3DS? It’s a brilliant idea. And I can already imagine the cool things that it could be used for.

Here you had to place a piece of paper with a golden box printed out on it before you on the table and the 3DS would focus on it. After having recognized it, 6 little 3D golden boxes appeared on the screen, overlaying the real world. Clicking one of the boxes started up a mini game, where you had to shoot at targets. The cool thing was you actually had to maneuver around in the real world to get into the right position to shoot at your targets. The final level had a dragon throwing flames at you which you had to slay!

It looked great and I can’t wait to see how this will be used. Personally I think it would be awesome for Pokemon. Last year I got to see a demonstration of AR with a Pokemon card and my main complaint was that I couldn’t imagine a kid picking up a mobile phone to scan their cards. With the 3DS though it seems much more likely. I wonder also if it will actually be integrated into the game. For instance, you can only collect certain Pokemon if you scan a real life object, like a trading card or a magazine or any spin-off collectable product.

I was surprised how much I liked this first hands-on with the Nintendo 3DS. Will I buy one? Not sure yet. It depends a lot on the quality of the games coming out, but it looks better than what I was expecting.

You all know how much I love my geeky tees; if you’ve seen me around at events, you’ll have seen me wearing some of them (although I also have my fair share of pretty dresses). I can’t resist some of the tees I come across online; I’m starting to run out of cupboard space!

So when J!NX asked me whether I’d like to try some of their tees, I of course went “yes!”. They sent me a selection of three tees, of which the Regiment one is my favourite:

I don’t usually like white tees (for obvious reasons), but I’m really digging this one. The black and turquoise design is great and I love how it looks paired with my purple top! The tee is a little bit on the thin side and is a tad see-through (you can’t get away with wearing a bright pink bra under this), but that lighter design is perfect for layering.

The tee is available on J!NX.com at the moment for only £15 (three different types: girly, guy and guy premium).

I’ll be posting photos of the others tees later this week. But check out J!NX for more geeky designs!

Valentine’s Day is in 7 days time! Yeah, I know it tends to be a cheesy and commercial “holiday”, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy it! So in the next 7 days I’ll be doing some Valentine’s Day related posts (next to the more normal posts, of course). First up, this cute video:

Interesting, cute, funny and most awesome links of this week:

• Super Bowl Trailer Twitter Buzz: Cool comparison of the amount of tweets there were for each trailer that aired during the Super Bowl last night. I was expecting Captain America and Tranformers to be quite high, but Thor? Hadn’t wee seen most of that trailer already? And how can Drive Angry And Fast Five have created more buzz than Super 8?
• Dancers Among Us: Photography project featuring dancers in everyday situations in New York. Some of this shots are amazing; I marvel at the skill required to pull off some of those poses!
• Internet Movie Poster Awards – The Not So Serious Categories: LOL.

• The Nicholas Cage Matrix: Nicholas Cage… you can’t really compare him to other actors. Sometimes he’s so over the top awful and sometimes he’s over the top brilliant; you always have to wait to see per movie which way it can go. This graph is a cute visualization of Cage’s movies.
• London’s Labyrinths and Mazes: I really should try to visit some of these. Mazes are like cool.
• Race Tracks Of The World: I’m not that much of a racing fan, but these wooden race tracks would look great on any wall.

• Unevolved Brands: How many of these brands can you recognize? They’ve all been simplified to only contain circles…
• Abed’s Chart: Remember that Community episode where Abed tries to figure out the girls menstrual cycle and feed them chocolate according to mood. Yeah, he actually made a chart.
• Assassin’s Creed 2 Puzzle and Codex Analysis: I’m loving Assassin’s Creed 2! I wasn’t expecting this game to be so full of historical facts (I actually feel as if I’m learning something from playing this game). One of the interesting side missions has you searching for special glyphs on the sides of important buildings (like the Ponte Vecchio in Florence or the Torre Dell’Orologio in Venice) which lead to cryptic puzzles. The link I shared contains quite a deep analysis of those puzzles; interpreting the things we sort of find out there and explaining in more detail which historic figures are mentioned.