Welcome to the first This Geek in Review, a weekly column where I share some of the internet’s geek side.
Last week we lost the creator of Spongebob Squarepants, Stephen Hillenburg, to Lou Gehrig’s disease. One of his early animations from animation school is available on Youtube.
The Guardian has posted some great pictures from the production of the original Star Wars Trilogy. I love all of the model work, especially of the Imperial Walkers on Hoth.
Researchers have concluded that Wizard of OZ is the most influential movie of all time (via ArsTechnica). Star Wars was number 2, and the top 20 movies all were made before 1978.
If you’ve ever used a USB cable, you know that they defy the laws of physics and mathematics, whereas 80-90% of the time you will be holding the end wrong when you attempt to plug it in. Now Amazon has you covered with a 3-pack of reversible micro USB cables. I added these to my Amazon Christmas wishlist, maybe I’ll get a set and see if they work as well as the reviews state. And along with these technological marvels comes the Amazon Alexa enabled Big Mouth Billy Bass which is now available for preorder. Unfortunately, it needs to be paired with an existing Echo, you can’t use it by itself. For some reason, all I can think of is Jeff Goldblum:
Barnes & Noble Announces New NOOK® 7” Tablet Just in Time for Holiday Shopping. Amazon has had a cheap 7″ Kindle Fire tablet for a couple of years, but this Nook has something the Kindle Fire does not have, the Google Play store. That means the Nook has access to all of the apps in the Google Play store, where as the Kindle Fire tablet can only use the Amazon App store. For bonus points, install the Kindle app on the new Nook and buy books from both Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
Meanwhile, in Beilstein, Rhineland-Palatinate.
