Civic Geek Catalog Update 11/23/2014

So here’s your pre-Thanksgiving roundup of good causes and civic geekery to get involved in, from a comic historical guide to the infamous Desert Bus.

As always you can find the Civic Geek Catalog at CivicGeek.com, where it’s sorted by Geekery and by Category.

Anime

  • Academics
    • Anime And Manga Studies – Focuses on news and articles on the academic studies of anime and manga. It’s owner also does a symposium an Anime Expo.

Comics

  • Academics
    • Comics Research – A curated guide to books and resources about comics books, comics trips, and fannish information. Open to contributions of material and suggested resources.
  • History
    • Digital Comics Museum – An enormous archive of researched, curated, public domain golden age comics available free – and always open for donations and assistance!

Video Games

  • Charitable Work
    • Desert Bus – Since 2007 Desert Bus has been raising money for Child’s Play via webcasting marathons of the infamous never-ending bus driving game “Desert Bus.”
    • Donate Games – Partners with publishers and collects donations of games and equipment, then re-gifts items or sells them when appropriate to raise money.
    • Game To Aid – A charity that raises money via broadcast video-game marathons, often with various creative (and at times painful) themes.
    • Games Done Quick – Does game speedruns to raise money for charity.
    • Gaming For Others – A UK group that does marathons for charity, and works with Special Effect.
    • Global Gaming Initiative – Delivers positive mobile games – and then contributes 50% of the proceeds to appropriate causes.
  • General
    • Genes In Space – A game that uses game data and environments to “gamify” analyzing cancer data.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

Geek Job Guru: In Defense Of Remakes

Whirlpool

Back when I was writing on nostalgia, Jason Sacks had commented that we should be aware remakes provide constraints and constraints can be virtuous creatively.

That idea got me to stop in my mental tracks and think this over. Now I’m not fundamentally opposed to remakes, but I’m getting a bit tired of seeing them so often. But his comment made me think that, yes constraints are valuable and indeed I’ve been a bit (only a bit) unfair to remakes in our modern culture.  Certainly there are ones I like, agree are good, or want to see.

So I think it’s time that I, geek job guru, culture commentator, and creative guy, give some thought to when I think remakes are legitimate and even good. It may give you some food for thought, inspire you, or make you think “He’s full of it” and ignore me – but at least you’ll ignore me for a reason.

So without further ado, Steve’s List Of When Remakes Are A Good Idea.

Read more

Get Deep Into Comics With Denny O’Neil

Bryan Stroud over at Comics Bulletin is interviewing comics great Denny O’Neil.  It’s well worth reading and this is only part one.  It covers stuff like:

  • History and how historical ideas limit us.
  • Parents.
  • Being a writing.
  • Traditional media.

And more.  Give it a read if you’re into comics!

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.