w00tstock 2.0

Last night I went to w00tstock 2.0 at the Moore Theatre in Seattle.  W00tstock is billed as "3 hours of geeks and music," but this was more properly "more hours, more geeks, more music."  The show that started at 7pm wrapped up just after 11pm, but still left everyone in the theatre wanting more.

The featured acts at w00tstock are Paul and Storm, a comedic singing duo who I've been fans of for many years now; Wil Wheaton, best known for playing Wesley Crusher in the Star Trek: The Next Generation TV series; and Adam Savage, half of the Mythbusters team and all-around geek.  

Wil Wheaton, Paul & Storm, and Adam Savage

(with Jason Finn on drums and Ceiling Cat on screen)

Over 1000 self-proclaimed geeks attended the show, which included many other special guests:  

Wil Wheaton was the somewhat master of ceremonies for the event.  Anyone like me who has never been a big fan of Wil Wheaton or his work, has obviously never seen him live and in person.  The man is absolutely hilarious, and I take back all of the bad things I've ever said about him.  Brilliantly geeky, and far exceeded my expectations.

Molly Lewis, YouTube star, and ukulele player (as if that's any bit of a surprise) performed a few songs.  I knew nothing about her (obviously I have selective immunity to viral videos), but she was pleasantly entertaining.  

LoadingReadyRun, a Canadian sketch comedy troupe out of Victoria, BC, and also internet phenomenon, showed up to provide some quirky comedic stuff.  One of their featured videos was shown, which was quite funny.  

MC Frontalot, a band who performs what they call Nerdcore HipHop performed right before intermission.  I think their music was supposed to be funny... but I have absolutely no idea because I could only understand about 3.14% of the words they sang.  This was probably partly due to the fact that we were sitting in the second row, right in front of the speakers.  But this was sadly the least interesting part of the evening for me.  

A surprise favorite of the show was Hank Green, another YouTube celebrity, but one who writes absolutely incredible geeky music.  By far the highlight was his performance of "What Would Captain Picard Do?", which was apparently his first time ever performing it in front of Wesley Crusher himself, who the entire first verse is based on.  

Countless Star Trek references permeated the evening, and to no surprise at least 90% of the audience got nearly every reference, even the most obscure ones.  Plenty of other geek references to viral YouTube videos, and video games.  Not being a gamer, most of the video game references went far over my head, but some were so old school I couldn't miss them.  

One of the other big hits of the show was Steven "Stepto" Toulouse, a Microsoft employee responsible for "keeping the peace" among the XBox Live gamer community, and laying the smack down on those people who don't want to play by the rules.  What ostensibly began as a 56-slide PowerPoint analysis of trends among bad gamers, quickly turned into a hilarious sermon preached from the pulpit of the Cathedral of Saint XBox.  

Moving on to one of the headliners of the evening, Adam Savage, Mythbuster-extraordinaire, told some amazing stories of behind-the-scenes at Mythbusters.  

Of course since he was among friends, he brought us some insider video from an upcoming episode of Mythbusters where they will be investigating the following YouTube video validity:  

What will happen?  You'll have to tune in in a few weeks and find out for yourself!

Of course, the real catalyst behind w00tstock are Paul and Storm, who never cease to amaze me.  The only disappointment here is that we didn't hear nearly as much of their fantastic music as I wish we would have.  This is the first time I have been able to see them perform live, and they certainly didn't disappoint.

Fans raise their virtual Zippo lighter apps in the chorus of Nugget Man.

The evening was fantastic, nearly 4 hours of non-stop geekiness.  I think w00tstock has a bright future at this rate.  Tonight Portland gets to experience what appears to be a mostly identical w00tstock 2.1, followed by Chicago (2.2.) and Minneapolis (2.3) in June.  If you're in any of these areas, and have any sort of geeky tendencies (or even if you don't), I guarantee you'll enjoy it.

I leave you with the infinite recursion of Wil Wheaton:

w00t!  

Expo 2010: The World Meets Shanghai

Is it just me or do World Expos never seem to be that big of a deal these days, until decades later when people think back to them?  The Space Needle, the definitive mark on the Seattle skyline, was of course built for the 1962 World's Fair, a constant reminder as I look out the window.  Or the great pavilions of the past that have become legends in their own right, such as this little pavilion that Walt Disney put together for the 1964 New York World's Fair, you might have heard of it... "It's a Small World."

But the fairs keep going on every few years, and this year's Shanghai Expo 2010 is the largest ever, with over 5 square kilometers and dozens of pavilions.  I've never been to an actual Expo while it was running, though who hasn't been to countless sites that once hosted a World's Fair.  I have to admit, this year's fair in Shanghai, China really has me thinking it might be fun to take a trip out there before it closes on October 31st, 2010.

Popular Science magazine has an online gallery of 35 pavilions at this year's fair, and they each look incredibly awesome.  A few of the more interesting ones:

United Arab Emirates pavilion

The UAE has some quite bizarre architecture in their pavilion, supposedly resembling a sand dune.  Though looking at this the only thing I see is something oddly resembling an energy-sucking creature that attaches to the USS Enterprise in Star Trek: TNG.  But I may be alone on that...

Japan pavilion

Leave it to our Japanese friends to make it look like a giant Jigglypuff has passed out in the parking lot.  Somehow I don't see this pavilion staying around after the Expo is over, but I could be wrong.

USA pavilion

Ah the great United States of America.  Land of endless innovation, countless modern marvels, and the most boring pavilion on the face of the Exposition.  Where most nations use the World's Fair to pull out all the stops and do something awesome, bankrolled often by the government itself, we can thank our various fiscally-conservative laws for preventing nearly any public funding from going to its construction.  That left American corporations to scrounge up a paltry $61 million dollars to put up this monstrosity.  Consider however that the US failed to even participate in the last 2 Expos, this is a step up from that.  If it's any consolation for the lack of creativity in the pavilion itself, you'll be happy to hear that it does feature both a Pizza Hut and a KFC.

Canada pavilion

Fresh off of their highly successful run hosting the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, Canada still has plenty left to put together an incredibly awesome pavilion.  When did Canada start showing us up all the time?  Seriously?  Can I just adopt Canada as my second country without actually going and living there?

Overall, it just looks cool, and actually quite reasonably priced thanks to China artificially keeping the value of the Chinese Yuan so low.  Around $20/day for admission to the entire Expo park, which is great.  Too bad you have the cost of getting over there, but this might be a good reason to pull out some of those frequent flyer miles I have stocked up.  We'll have to see...

Muppet Whatnots

Freakin' awesome:

http://www.fao.com/catalog/boutique.jsp?parentCategoryId=98&categoryId=793

Google Earth, meet Disney

What happens when the marketing gurus as Disney start talking to the techies? They come up with this:

Walt Disney World in 3D

Disney has designed a complete 3D rendering of Disney World, every attraction, every building, every hotel, everything. The detail they put into these renderings are amazing.

Perhaps I'm just too easily entertained. Despite the fact that it takes quite a while to load (and my computer suddenly gets rather warm trying to draw the whole thing), it's well worth a look. Almost makes you feel like you're visiting.