Living legend and Philadelphia favorite Scott Derby rocks TeeFury.com once again with his latest old school tattoo-inspired design, this time paying homage to Tim Burton’s classic film Pee Wee Herman’s Big Adventure. Derby’s endlessly awesome artwork reminds me of a big cable knit sweater that someone keeps knitting and knitting and knitting and knitting…

BUT ACT FAST! A Loner, A Rebel will only be available for 24 hours tomorrow, Wednesday, January 11th. And priced at only 10 bucks, it’s your opportunity to be stylish AND frugal.

Don’t miss out!

Local game developer Cipher Prime, award winning creators of the games Auditorium and Pulse, have recently released an updated version of their addictive music/puzzle game called Fractal. Featuring colorful graphics, cool music, various play modes, and deceptively simple gameplay, Fractal will keep you hooked for hours.

Fractal’s main campaign starts you of creating “blooms”, which is when you connect a group of similarly colored pieces called fractals to create a giant hexagon cluster on the board. For every bloom you create, you also are rewarded with music. The more blooms you take off the board, the more music you hear within the level.

The catch is that you only have  a certain amount of fractals to put on the board while also trying to achieve a certain amount of points per level. As you move through the campaign, the difficulty certainly ramps up. Multiple colored fractals pop up on the board, suddenly making the player have to be aware that the upcoming fractal might destroy an attempted bloom combo.

While playing Fractal I was reminded of the game Lumines, but while that game had a style of gameplay very reminiscent of the classic puzzler Tetris, Fractal feels like it’s own thing. It has its own style  and pace. The campaign doesn’t have you trying to complete a level within a certain timeframe, nor does it suddenly ramp up the speed of gameplay. It all comes down to the player. How the player decides to interact with the level determines the tension and complexity of each level. Needless to say you can discover multiple ways of creating blooms within a level which certainly ups the replay value of the game. (more…)

Photo by Kate Lynch

Whether you want to admit it or not, the holiday season is here. Christmas music is blasting in every single store you walk into, there are wreathes and trees all over the place… sorry geeks, it is impossible to get away from. Luckily, all the fretting over presents for loved ones is easy to avoid, as the folks at the Hacktory are throwing together an awesome workshop perfect for whipping up unique, handmade gifts.

Fans of the Hacktory are no stranger to the Recycled Electronics Jewelry workshops they throw on an annual basis, and they’ve got another one going down on Saturday, December 10th from 1:00-5:00pm. Here’s some deets from a press release issued by the Hacktory.

The Hacktory promotes the combining of art, technology & recycling–so we created the Recycled Electronic Jewelry Workshop. You can add beauty and interest to the world by reusing electronic components that would needlessly end up in our growing landfills. It’s great fun and sparks creativity.

You’ll learn basic jewelry-making skills including design ideas, basic soldering and assembly skills, and how to choose materials for creating your own jewelry and small sculpture. You’ll also learn fun stuff about new & old electronic parts so you can talk about your creations. No experience necessary.

It only costs $20 to join in the workshop, and that includes all the supplies and materials you’ll need for basic jewelry makig. These tend to sell out, so RSVP while you can.

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CSI: The Experience is a hands-on exhibit that showcases the scientific techniques and disciplines used to solve crimes. Visitors interact with multimedia displays that explain different forensic science fields such as DNA identification, toxicology, and blood splatter analysis. Add in a high dosage of the CBS hit TV show and you have a fun way to learn about science.

I walked into CSI: The Experience at the Franklin Institute jaded. These types of experience exhibits always seemed cheesy. I expected a half assed exhibit that used the popularity of the CSI television program to get people to buy tickets. But by the end of my visit, I felt strangely proud that I had solved a pretend crime.

You could say CSI: The Experience needs to be experienced. YEAAAAAAAAAAAH! (more…)

If you read Geekadelphia, chances are you’ve fooled around in Photoshop once in your lifetime. Weather it be your actual profession, or if you just like to Photoshop yourself into photos with Joseph Gordon Levitt (aka Friday nights) there is a Photoshop event in Philly for you! On December 1st the Adobe Photoshop Philadelphia User Group is holding an event designed to get you in the middle of the Philadelphia Design community.

The event begins 7:15 on the campus of Philadelphia University. Nathaniel Dodson and Tony Profeta will provide a presentation featuring Adobe’s brand new Touch Apps with demonstrations of the applications on an Android tablet. You can check out some of the Adobe touch apps ahead of time at the following links:

• Adobe Touch Apps
• Adobe Touch App Video Demonstrations
• Adobe Creative Cloud Overview
• Adobe Photoshop Touch Overview

The event will also include a presentation from Michele McKeone M. Ed. from the Autism Expressed project. She is an exciting social entrepreneur and recent graduate of the UArts Corzo Center program, and will present the challenges in creating and delivering the unique vision of Autism Expressed. The project aims to help students with autism learn to effectively use various social media platforms and digital software like Photoshop.

And finally, to close out the event Robert M. Hall from Feasible Impossibilities and the Official Adobe User Group manager for the Philadelphia Flash Platform Group will deliver a presentation summarizing Adobe’s recent announcements regarding Flash and Flex.

For more information visit Photoshopphilly.com

As children we all remember how cool it was to be able to build things. You would take a pile of blocks and suddenly create a skyscraper to rival the Comcast Center. Or you would grab a box of Legos and build the perfect house. Or use an Erector set to build an actual building with real metal girders. It didn’t matter as long as when you were done, there was something there that didn’t exist before.

But you may wonder “Why did I love paying with these toys so much? How did someone come up with the idea for Legos anyway?”

Starting November 25th and running through February 3rd of next year, the Constructing Play Exhibition will attempt to answer those questions. You will be able to learn about all your old favorites as well as some building toys you may never have heard of. But more importantly you can learn why these toys are so vital and why they can play such a critical role in a child’s development.

So get your hardhats out and head over to the Philadelphia Center for Architecture for this FREE exhibition. The hours are Monday thru Saturday, 10:00am – 6:00pm and Sundays, 12:00pm – 5:00pm. The Constructing Play exhibition will make you want to run home, drag those Tinker Toys out of mothballs and get building again like when you were a kid.

Philadelphia Center for Architecture
www.philadelphiacfa.org

I stumbled upon this geeky art project at Girard and Franklin a few weeks ago and instantly had to know more.

It’s the brainchild of local artists Mike Smith, whose work with NomNow you’ve probably seen on walls in NoLibs, and Casey Catelli, a highly talented portrait and fashion photographer. The two made this 8′ x 4′ panel from Instagram photos taken in the area over the past year. The result: a powerful collection of bridges, friends, landmarks, art galleries and historic spots, revealing a whole lot about local life.

Geekadelphia caught up with the artists to hear about how the project came together, their love for iPhone photos and what’s next.

To start, can you both describe your different projects? What’s your background and how did you get together on this project?

Mike: I am a designer living and working in Philadelphia. I was raised in East Greenwich, N.J., and studied printmaking/design at Rowan University. Casey and I met while working at The Star Group together and have been dating for the past year.

Casey: I grew up in Newtown, PA and studied Photography and Communications at Elon University. I currently work as a production assistant for the Media & Marketing Group in South Jersey, and continue to do my own freelance and personal photography projects in my free time. Most of my recent photo projects are portrait or fashion projects for my portfolio. I also shoot some wedding, engagement, and family portraits as well. (more…)

The last couple of months have been busy for our friends at Titan Books as they continue to produce some amazing works focusing on artists who should be household names for fans of film and art, as well as branching out with new novels featuring classic characters of literature.

This time around they have re-released an updated collection of the personal artwork of Drew Struzan, as well as a collection of works of popular science fiction artist Chris Foss. Finally, they have also released a new Sherlock Holmes novel, The Breath Of God.

(more…)

From February 17-September 3, 2012, never before seen pieces of Rock N’ Roll Legend Bruce Springsteen’s life will be on display at The National Constitution Center.

Philly will be the only stop on the tour of “From Asbury Park to The Promised Land,” the comprehensive Springsteen exhibit, which features early audio cuts and newspaper clippings of The Boss’ time with forgettable acts such as Child and The Castiles, long before he hit it big with The E-Street Band and going solo. The coolest listening station making the tour, though, is the successful 1972 audition recording that secured The Boss a contract with Columbia Records.

While Springsteen was officially a Jersey boy, he’s part of our local DNA, on par with our cracked symbol of liberty and the goddamn cheesesteak. For those of us in our mid-thirties to forties, The Boss was part of our musical heritage moreso than Mick and The Stones ever could be. Most notably, Springsteen found a way to compose music based around Americana and the concept of patriotism without sounding like an asshole, which is an achievement unto itself.

The exhibit will feature more than 150 Springsteen trinkets, like the Fender Esquire that graced the cover of his timeless record “Born to Run,” his Academy Award for “Streets of Philadelphia,” his 1960 Chevy Corvette, and the saxophone used on “Jungleland,” once owned by the late Clarence Clemons.

Tickets for the exhibit will set you back $24.50 if you’re an adult, and only $12 for little Bruce fans age 4-12 (who were probably conceived to the sweet sounds of Born in the U.S.A. in the back of your Dodge Omni, anyway).

For more information, visit the Constitution Center’s official website.

Our friends over at NextFab Studios (the folks responsible for that epic mustache trophy at our Halloween party w/ Indy Hall) are running one hell of an awesome contest. Sure, we giveaway a lot of gadget swag, but this amazing set of speakers from NextFab are pretty special. See, they’re handmade.

Crafted by University of the Arts alum Jesse Gerard and his company Carrot Grant, these Symphony Cricket speakers are handcrafted by him and his creative team. They normally retail for about $400, and NextFab is giving you a chance to score a set for free.

All you have to do is give NextFab Studios’ Facebook page a like. Seriously, that’s it. They’re trying to build their community to over 1,000 fans. You can get more information here.

What are you waiting for? Go like ‘em! You’ve got til December 15th at midnight, but come on. You really don’t need that much time, do you?

For the 10th year in a row, First Person Arts is presenting the First Person Festival of Memoir and Documentary Art, November 10th through the 20th in and around the Old City neighborhood of Philadelphia. It will include events by both local and national artists that all have one thing in common; they are all based on real life experiences.

One event that will have you looking at memoirs in a decidedly different light is Arthur Jones and Starlee Kine’s (of the Hulu series Starlee and Arthur Review) latest collaboration, The Post-It Note Diaries. A collection of essays by some of the top authors and artists around, what makes it different is that Jones illustrates them all using nothing put a stack of yellow post-it notes and a black sharpie. The two provide a multi-media presentation while bantering back and forth in their trademark humorous way.

Sound like a good time? You can check it out starting at 5PM on November 19th at the Painted Bride Art Center, for just $15. You may just never look at a post-it note the same way again.

For more information on the rest of the festival, visit First Person Arts’ official website.

The First Person Festival of Memoir and Documentary Art
www.firstpersonarts.org/programs2/2011festival

Ever since Literary Death Match first arrived in our wonderful city last May, everyone has been wondering when it would return. Now at long last it can be told! Cancel your plans this evening, as Literary Death Match returns to World Café Live tonight!

Watch as poet Sean Toner, author Michael O’Hara, essayist Jamie-Lee Jossely and Courtney Bambrick throw down literary style in front of a panel of judges including Karina Kacala, Jonathan Valania (Editor-in-Chief of Phawker.com) and Cyrille Taillandier. Only one can emerge as the victor and claim the title of Philly Literary Death Match Champion! (Championship belt not included.)

So make sure you are there tonight at 7:00 PM for some serious literary smack talk. And at $10, it’s still cheaper than Wrestlemania.

Literary Death Match
www.literarydeathmatch.com