This year Gizmodo (along with Kotaku and Boing Boing Gadgets) is going to be hosting a Funde Razor event in San Francisco. What's Funde Razor? It's a chance of you to help raise money for the Penny...

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/12/2008-Funde-Razor-Final_small.jpg" align="left" hspace="4" vspace="2" width="500" height="647" style="display:block;" /This year Gizmodo (along with Kotaku and Boing Boing Gadgets) is going to be hosting a Funde Razor event in San Francisco. What's Funde Razor?/p pIt's a chance of you to help raise money for the Penny Arcade Child's Play Charity by going to an event, playing Rock Band and drinking alcohol. Sound good? You'll also get to hang out with some Giz folks, such as Adrian and myself, so you won't want to miss it. We'll be at the San Francisco event, but if you're in Denver or NY and want to attend the other ones, feel free! It's for a good cause. Oh, and there are also door prizes, such as a Chumby, Xboxes, Zunes, Xbox games, and LEGO. Thanks to the respective sponsors who made this possible! [a href="http://www.funderazor.com/"Funde Razor/a]/p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=23a96abd3de333472bf02d9bfb3ec8c1p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=23a96abd3de333472bf02d9bfb3ec8c1p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=23a96abd3de333472bf02d9bfb3ec8c1" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=DXKJfExh"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=wjqRyIEa"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=wp1TscO1"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=wp1TscO1" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=RjJZqai2"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=RjJZqai2" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/ICeY0p8_80M" height="1" width="1"/

This year Gizmodo (along with Kotaku and Boing Boing Gadgets) is going to be hosting a Funde Razor event in San Francisco. What's Funde Razor? It's a chance of you to help raise money for the Penny...

I took at look at some of the highs and lows of DC Special a while back, so I thought that it was only fair to do the same for a Marvel series. If Marvel Premiere this was started as a try out title, they certainly gave their initial characters pretty long auditions. Granted, Adam Warlock only had two issues before moving on but Doctor Strange and Iron First were given 12 and 11 issues, respectively.

I’m not here to talk about any of those runs as those characters are very well known and have been spotlighted a million times. I’m here to talk about the more obscure one, two and three-shots that popped up over the final 30 or so issues of the title. I don’t have room to comment on every issue or characters (in fact, there so much good stuff that I’ve spread it over two installment) – so my apologies if I’ve missed one of your favorites.

Let’s start with the Liberty Legion, a two-parter linked into the Invaders series. Now, I love the Invaders stuff, but these two issues were truly the first signs that Roy Thomas’ obsession with Golden Age heroes was possibly an illness. Nobody needed these heroes to return and the Heroes vs. Heroes angle was so clichéd by the mid-70s. You’ve got a couple of decent Kirby covers, but Don Heck’s pencils and flattened terribly by Vinnie Colletta’s razor-thin inks.

Woodgod has become somewhat of a cult favorite over the years, and the cover simply screams 70s camp. The thing is, it’s a pretty decent concept – basically a mash up of Shelley’s Frankenstein and Stevenson’s Dr. Moreau. Bill Mantlo provides evidence of his fertile imagination and the Giffen/Jansen artwork is quite nice. Sure, there are lots of great Woodgod jokes out there, but this is a pretty decent issue and it would be nice if her were more than a footnote in the Marvel Universe.

Next we have Monark Starstalker, one of Howard Chaykin’s many anti-heroes. I actually really dig this book – Chaykin shows that he has his own vision and creates a very believable future. His layouts can get a little confusing and it’s a bit talky at times, but there’s a lot to like. Bounty hunters make excellent characters if you can get them unwillingly entangled in some righteous cause (see Han Solo). Chaykin was getting there with Starstalker and it’s too bad this wasn’t given more than a single issue. As the years pass by, I’m more and more impressed with Chaykin as auteur. There’s also a lot of great Gil Kane influence in the artwork.

We’ve got more Chaykin with issues #33 & #34, The Mark of Kane, as Roy Thomas does what he does best: adapt Robert E. Howard stories. The first issue is a real treat, introducing us to Solomon Kane and his rather intriguing adversary; Le Loup. I’m a suck for adventure stories set in the past so they’ve got me hook, line and sinker. More Kane influence here; and Chaykin really shines. The second issue is much weaker, but I’ve got a thorn in my side about stories that take place in ‘savage Africa’ – too much voodoo hoodoo. These two are worth picking, especially since Thomas does a nice one page overview of Solomon Kane’s pulp history.

Do I have to talk about 3-D Man? I do? Oh well, I guess it’s a fun read if you are in the mood for comics that represent the nadir of Marvel in the 70s. Once again, Roy Thomas tries to convince readers that the past is better than the present with very lackluster results. The problem is that it’s takes itself too serious be enjoyed as just silly fun. Thomas’ earnestness as a writer can be his Achilles’ hell at time. I’ve met Jim Craig a couple of times and he seems like a nice guy, but his artwork has really never done much for me. A few years ago, I audited a very awkward exchange between Thomas and Craig at a convention. Craig was suggesting to Thomas that they should work on a 3-D Man re-launch. Thomas’ response indicated that he thought it was a character whose best years were behind him. I’m not sure he ever had any ‘best years’.

The history of Moench & Ploog’s Weirdworld is actually quite ‘weird’. This series started in the one-shot black and white mag, Marvel Super Action (the super expensive one with Frank Castle on the cover), a single issue here at Marvel Premiere, 3 issues in the color mag Marvel Super Special and then onto Marvel Fanfare (I think). I’m not exactly the biggest fan of all things elvish, but this is pretty decent stuff as it really doesn’t take too much from Tolkien (but that’s some smooth marketing). I’d actually suggest that you track down the Marvel Super Special issues (that’s a mag I’ll be profiling at some pointed), as the artwork is very interesting (an airbrushing over John Buscema pencils). Marvel probably should collect all of these stories just to appease the handful of fans knocking themselves out trying to put together a collection.

Stayed tuned for Part 2 as well get a dose of Daleks, Pinkertons and the KKK!

For more fun talk about all thing ‘classic comics’, drop by my blog: Seduction of the Indifferent

Please send along any comments to Scottshouldbegood at yahoo.ca

1 Comments

• At December 2, 2008, suedenim wrote:

  Did Roy Thomas figure out how to indulge his Golden Age obsessions more smoothly when he did All-Star Squadron, or ...

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/12/cleft_unto_the_suck.jpg" width="220" height="211" align="right" hspace="4" vspace="2" align="right"/Merlin Mann doesn't crank out posts on software, focus, time-savers, and the other realms of "productivity pr0n" anymore, but he's still got a razor-sharp focus on the kinds of thinking that move things forward. He writes at 43 Folders about trying to get better at his personal photographs, and fighting off the mental nags that try to pull him off-path:br / blockquote... Even if a given shot is sh*t — and, most certainly, the vast majority of all my photos are varying degrees of sh*t — you still learn from the bad ones and no damage is done. Truth is, at the level I’m playing, there’s no real cost associated with failure. Unless, you count the damage of working with unrealistic expectations or the paralyzing joylessness of the conventional wisdom that only some are “Blessed with Creativity...” [insert Tinkerbell glissando]/p/blockquote pThe full post gives a tight, clear view on what it takes to learn, and learn honestly, from mistakes and making improvement a real goal. Similar in topic to a href="http://lifehacker.com/398068/ira-glass-on-getting-creative-work-done"Ira Glass' advice on working past the awful/a, and pretty funny, to boot. emPhoto by a href="http://flickr.com/photos/craigmdennis/3027962567/"craigmdennis/a./em div class="related"a href="http://www.43folders.com/2008/12/01/courageous-sucking"Photography, and the Tolerance for Courageous Sucking/a [43 Folders]/div /p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=58414250afd4e13d348bd42cffd5ebc6p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=58414250afd4e13d348bd42cffd5ebc6p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=58414250afd4e13d348bd42cffd5ebc6" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=rS51ZRpv"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=aHefealH"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=H1ashTGD"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=H1ashTGD" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=5a46J7H1"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=5a46J7H1" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/EQ45V987gV8" height="1" width="1"/

Merlin Mann doesn't crank out posts on software, focus, time-savers, and the other realms of "productivity pr0n" anymore, but he's still got a razor-sharp focus on the kinds of thinking that move...

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/12/cleft_unto_the_suck.jpg" width="220" height="211" align="right" hspace="4" vspace="2" align="right"/Merlin Mann doesn't crank out posts on software, focus, time-savers, and the other realms of "productivity pr0n" anymore, but he's still got a razor-sharp focus on the kinds of thinking that move things forward. He writes at 43 Folders about trying to get better at his personal photographs, and fighting off the mental nags that try to pull him off-path:br / blockquote... Even if a given shot is sh*t — and, most certainly, the vast majority of all my photos are varying degrees of sh*t — you still learn from the bad ones and no damage is done. Truth is, at the level I’m playing, there’s no real cost associated with failure. Unless, you count the damage of working with unrealistic expectations or the paralyzing joylessness of the conventional wisdom that only some are “Blessed with Creativity...” [insert Tinkerbell glissando]/p/blockquote pThe full post gives a tight, clear view on what it takes to learn, and learn honestly, from mistakes and making improvement a real goal. Similar in topic to a href="http://lifehacker.com/398068/ira-glass-on-getting-creative-work-done"Ira Glass' advice on working past the awful/a, and pretty funny, to boot. emPhoto by a href="http://flickr.com/photos/craigmdennis/3027962567/"craigmdennis/a./em div class="related"a href="http://www.43folders.com/2008/12/01/courageous-sucking"Photography, and the Tolerance for Courageous Sucking/a [43 Folders]/div /p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=58414250afd4e13d348bd42cffd5ebc6p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=58414250afd4e13d348bd42cffd5ebc6p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=58414250afd4e13d348bd42cffd5ebc6" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com:80/~f/lifehacker/full?a=rS51ZRpv"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com:80/~f/lifehacker/full?a=aHefealH"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com:80/~f/lifehacker/full?a=H1ashTGD"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=H1ashTGD" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com:80/~f/lifehacker/full?a=5a46J7H1"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=5a46J7H1" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/EQ45V987gV8" height="1" width="1"/

iJournal of Mathematical Psychology, Vol. 44, No. 1. (March 2000), pp. 205-231./ibr /br /What is model selection? What are the goals of model selection? What are the methods of model selection and how do they work? Which methods perform better than others and in what circumstances? These questions rest on a number of key concepts in a relatively underdeveloped field. The aim of this paper is to explain some background concepts, to highlight some of the results in this special issue, and to add my own. The standard methods of model selection include classical hypothesis testing, maximum likelihood, Bayes method, minimum description length, cross-validation, and Akaike's information criterion. They all provide an implementation of Occam's razor, in which parsimony or simplicity is balanced against goodness-of-fit. These methods primarily take account of the sampling errors in parameter estimation, although their relative success at this task depends on the circumstances. However, the aim of model selection should also include the ability of a model to generalize to predictions in a different domain. Errors of extrapolation, or generalization, are different from errors of parameter estimation. So, it seems that simplicity and parsimony may be an additional factor in managing these errors, in which case the standard methods of model selection are incomplete implementations of Occam's razor.br /iM Forster/i

Better, brighter, faster games--and perhaps more profits--are in Nintendo's future
Hardcore gamers may still scoff at Nintendo's Wii for catering to casual gamers. But hidden behind its Clark Kent facade are some impressive financial muscles.

Nintendo rocked the gaming world when it brought out the Wii gaming console three years ago by turning an entirely new demographic of users on to gaming. Middle-aged and senior citizens stood in line to buy Wiis on the strength of games like Wii Fit, which audiences found more fun than workout DVDs.

To date, Nintendo has sold nearly 35 million Wiis, including 12.6 million in the U.S., Nintendo's biggest market. That's lower than Sony's (nyse: SNE - news - people ) PlayStation 2, which has sold 43 million units since 2000. But it's still pretty high for a console that, at launch, was technologically a generation behind its chief competitors, Sony's PlayStation 3, with 13 million units in users' living rooms, and Microsoft's Xbox 360, with 23 million units. This year, the Wii is expected to sell more than the best-selling PS2 sold in its best year, 2003.

Just as interesting as how Nintendo has changed the gaming world, however, has been its business approach. Nintendo sells games along the time-honored razor-razor blade model, namely pushing out the console and then enticing users to buy more games.

"More casual players aren't as likely to be attracted by hardware features, so it's all about delivering a fun, easy-to-use and addicting game experience," says Anita Frazier, toy and video game analyst at NPD Group.

Another factor in enticing those casual users is keeping its console cheap. "The key thing about Nintendo is they want their things to be at price points that anyone can respond to," says Hiroshi Kamide, director of research at KBC Securities Japan. Nintendo's strategy is to buy inexpensive components instead of making them in-house, allowing the Wii to sell for $260 while the PS3 costs $300.

But here's the winning point: Unlike its competitors, Nintendo has figured out how to make money from its console sales. Sony loses money on each Playstation sold. Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) might just break even. But every Wii brings in $6 of operating profit for Nintendo, says David Gibson, an analyst at Macquarie Securities.

Nintendo also sells 60% of Wii games itself, compared with 30% for Microsoft and 15% for Sony. Wii users are expected to buy the most games this year, 220 million, compared with 120 million PS3 games and 125 million for the Xbox 360.

The top three Wii games--"Wii Play," "Super Smash Brothers Brawl" and "Super Mario Galaxy"--are all Nintendo's own titles, but the top three for PS3--"Grand Theft Auto IV," "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare" and "Assassin's Creed"--are all from outside developers, not from Sony.

By making most of its games itself, Nintendo (other-otc: NTDOY.PK - news - people ) risks sacrificing the chance to earn licensing fees from as many third-party developers as its competitors. It also prices games cheaper--at $50 versus $60 for the other two consoles. But so far the gambit has paid off: Wii locks in fans because many of its most popular games appear exclusively on the Wii. And Nintendo has a higher gross margin on game software than the others at 65%, compared with between 50% and 60%.

Those only-available-here games sell better than games that have been ported to other consoles because the Wii's unique features--the motion-sensor remote, for instance--make it hard to translate into other systems. PS3 and Xbox 360 games can be ported between those two systems fairly easily, but developers that want to make a game for all three consoles need a dedicated Wii team to write the Nintendo version.

Ubisoft's new "Shaun White Snowboarding" game, which shipped in late November, uses the Wii Fit motion board to simulate full-motion snowboarding; its Xbox and PS versions push online virtual snowboarding with friends.

http://www.forbes.com/personaltech/2...s-1201wii.html

So I updated to this mouse from a G9, er so far so good, the glowing pulsating snakes are pretty damn neat, its alot more reponsive and precise than the G9, and I can actually hold it without getting a sore hand wOOt, anyhow just thought I would updated you all with my latest piece of kit that I dont actually need. :nuts:

I would recommend it!

Les modes Daytime et Nighttime sont disponibles dans cette démo jouable qui permet de s'essayer à la conduite de la voiture Razor sur le circuit Trixter Park.

pFiled under: a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/aftermarket/" rel="tag"Aftermarket/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/tunertuesdays/" rel="tag"Tuners/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/supercars/" rel="tag"Supercars/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/audi/" rel="tag"Audi/a/pp align="center"a href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/ppi-razor-gtr/1194242/"img vspace="4" hspace="4" border="1" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/12/ppi_razor_gtr_audi_r8_live_001-1130-950x673_450op.jpg" alt="" //abr /strongemsmallClick above for a high-res gallery of the PPI Razor GTR/small/em/strong/p pThe a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/11/28/gt3-spec-audi-r8-lms-formally-unveiled-at-essen/"GT3-spec LMS racecar/a wasn't the only a href="http://www.autoblog.com/tag/AudiR8/"Audi R8/a to grace the show floor in Essen. PPI Design brought their latest version of the Audi supercar dubbed the Razor GTR. The a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/02/06/ppi-puts-porsche-on-notice-with-audi-r8-razor/"standard version of the Razor/a made its debut at the show last year, featuring an additional 40 horsepower, 19-inch wheels, custom leather interior, and a full carbon fiber aero kit. The GTR takes the R8 to yet another level, with more power, reduced weight, and improved aerodynamics./p pPPI has fitted a supercharger to the 4.2L V8 which now puts out 580 horsepower and 443 lb-ft torque, good for a 3.7-second sprint to 100 km/h and a top speed of 206 mph. The widebody kit is constructed completely of carbon fiber and feeds cool air to the brakes and radiators, while the engine cover, also constructed of the lightweight material, includes integrated ram air inlets. The wider body also allows for wider rims and tires -- lightweight MAG11 forged wheels wrapped with Michelin Pilot Sport 2 rubber. Other performance upgrades include a KW coilover suspension, and larger brakes: 15-inch discs with six-piston calipers in the front, and 14-inch discs in the rear. Carbon fiber also coats the interior, alongside custom leather seats and a PPI steering wheel. Follow the jump for the PR from PPI, and be sure to indulge in the gallery below. /p pdiv class="postgallery"pstrongGallery: a href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/ppi-razor-gtr/"PPI Razor GTR/a/strong/pa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/ppi-razor-gtr/1194242/"img src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/12/ppi_razor_gtr_audi_r8_live_001-1130-950x673_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/ppi-razor-gtr/1193898/"img src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/11/ppirazorgtr_01_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/ppi-razor-gtr/1193899/"img src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/11/ppirazorgtr_02_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/ppi-razor-gtr/1193900/"img src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/11/ppirazorgtr_03_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/ppi-razor-gtr/1193897/"img src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/11/ppirazorgtr_04_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //a/div/p p[Source: PPI via a href="http://www.motorauthority.com/ppi-previews-new-razor-gtr-audi-r8.html"MotorAuthority.com/a]/ppa href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/01/ppi-unleashes-razor-gtr-in-essen/" rel="bookmark"Continue reading emPPI unleashes Razor GTR in Essen/em/a/pp style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/01/ppi-unleashes-razor-gtr-in-essen/"PPI unleashes Razor GTR in Essen/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.autoblog.com"Autoblog/a on Mon, 01 Dec 2008 10:01:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/01/ppi-unleashes-razor-gtr-in-essen/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/forward/1386737/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/01/ppi-unleashes-razor-gtr-in-essen/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/MD8uGvSk-eTJGdUarWZriy_roA8/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/MD8uGvSk-eTJGdUarWZriy_roA8/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=A5YJUIhN"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=A5YJUIhN" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=ESc9JKWO"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=ESc9JKWO" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/autoblog/~4/HNiRShJrwMU" height="1" width="1"/