geeking out
Attention Australian Gamers: Remember This Face
11:30AM Clem Bastow | Here’s one for those of you who think success is necessarily only facilitated by television and movies: an expat Australian actress took an odd call from her agency and her digitised form will now be seen by bazillions (note: may not actually be scientifically proven statistic) of gamers.
Welcome to the darkened bedrooms and LAN parlours of the world, Michelle Van Der Water!
The 30-year-old has scored an unique role as the heroine in the fifth instalment of hit video game Resident Evil, which will be released in October.
Makers of the horror game, set in Africa, have used Van Der Water as the model for Sheva Alomar, an agent who handles firearms and is involved in hand-to-hand combat. Alomar is also the partner of the main character.
For the part, Van Der Water had to be photographed dressed up in outfits with guns and firearms.
The digitised end product looks very much like her, she said.
“It was very exciting… I was pretty pleased,” Van Der Water said from Los Angeles today. “It came out really well.”
Michelle is onto a good thing here, as much as most will shrug and say “so what?” Geek fame is the best fame of all – it’s everlasting.
If Galaxy Quest has taught me anything, it means that, so long as you don’t piss off the faithful, you can go to comic-cons and open shopping centres and discount computer retailers for the rest of your natural life! More » 
Vale Tristram Cary, Aka AAP Don’t Know Their Arses From Their ‘Doctor Who’ Composers
4:22PM Clem Bastow | The geek in us shed a little tear this morning when we read that Tristram Cary had passed away aged 82.
The British born Australian resident was an electronic music composer and pioneer, musique concrète exponent, academic, and designer of sythesisers (he also had possibly the greatest 80th birthday cake ever).
But the geek in us also shed a little tear when we read the intro to this AAP piece that news.com.au were running:
Tristram Cary, the composer of the Dr Who theme tune and a pioneer of electronic music, has died in Adelaide aged 82.
Plenty of other news outlets have run with the story, including The Age.
Science fiction history, AAP, you’re doing it wrong!
Firstly, it’s Doctor Who, and secondly, the Doctor Who theme song was composed by Ron Grainer and Delia Derbyshire. Cary did compose for Who, but it was incidental music.
Honestly, do AAP know who they’re dealing with? Did they think the geeks just wouldn’t notice this sort of stuff up? Is it too much to ask for “The National News Agency” to get their facts straight before they offer them up for distribution and syndication?
Or do we just need to stop playing with our Dalek toys? More » 
