This Wednesday, February 8th, Nerd Nite Philadelphia returns to Frankford Hall with (as always) a handful of awesome speakers. From a talk about using chemistry to “blow sh*t* up” (with demonstrations!) to a lecture on skydiving, this is easily the best line up I’ve seen Nerd Nite produce yet.

There are some great happy hour specials as well, including $5 half-liter drafts ($10 for a full liter), $6 for a beer and pretzel, or $8 to substitute that pretzel with a sausage. Nom!

Check out the list of the speakers and what they’re talking about, below.

Nerd Nite Philadelphia
Wednesday, February 8th, 7:30pm
philadelphia.nerdnite.com/updates

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BuyStarWarsCostumes.com has more officially-licensed Star Wars costumes for sale than any other site on the web. I was treated to a nice X-Wing Fighter Pilot costume. I’ll be wearing it to our Mustache Madness Halloween Bash with IndyHall on the 28th at Tattooed Mom.

Why?

Because I’m one mustache way from a Biggs Darklighter costume. Behold.

There’s no shortage of all sorts of Jedi and trooper costumes for men, women, children (even toddlers). Heck, ever have the urge to dress up like Plo Koon? They can get you started. You, with the deep pockets, could be evoke me with supreme envy. Pick up an Imperial Guard Costume. Or perhaps you could don this terrifyingly authentic Darth Vader costume? What’s the best SW costume? Not sure.

There could be an innumerable amount of things we could argue regarding the Star Wars Universe. Who shot first, Han or Greedo? How much do you hate Hayden Christensen, a little bit or a lot? Why does Lucas feel the need to make more updates to his films than an angsty teen did to their journal at the height of the Xanga days? Some of these things are dependent on film revision, extended universe or just subjective opinion.

There’s one SW-related thing you can’t dispute. What can I do on the website, “BuyStarWarsCostumes.com?” As their company name might indicate, you can buy Star Wars costumes. And we want to give two of you a $70 credit toward our new favorite website to do that, just in time for Halloween. Keep in mind, they have more than just costumes, like this Wampa Floor Rug.

Enter this contest. Comment below, with a valid email address and tell me who you’d most like to dress up as from the Star Wars Universe. Before end of [business] day tomorrow, I’ll pick two random winners and put you in direct contact with a rep from BuyStarWarsCostumes.com.

Alison Haislip is one of today’s coolest gamer chicks, and she happens to be locally grown… well, close to locally, anyway. I had a chance to ask this Attack of the Show! co-host some questions. Read on to find out about her experiences as the co-host for American Ninja Warrior, some interesting facts about the Japanese crepe trend, what her favorite games are, and how little I actually know about the geography of New Jersey.

I understand that you’ve just returned from Mount Midoriyama in Japan, where you were filming the second American Ninja Warrior. Can you tell me about that?

This past trip marks my 3rd trek to the Land of the Rising Sun, and every time I go back there, I’m more and more impressed by what I see at Mt. Midoriyama. I don’t think many people realize that the entire competition is run in one day! It starts around 9:30am and depending on how far competitors get, it could last until 4:00 or 5:00 IN THE MORNING. While I can’t say how our American Ninjas did this time around, I can say we had a late night. American Ninja Warrior starts airing December 8th, so you’ll have to tune in to see why! I promise our viewers won’t be disappointed.

How did you become the co-host of American Ninja Warrior?

G4 asked me if I wanted to do it, and I said ‘Hells yes!’ Last season, I hosted with G4’s very own Blair Herter, and this year, I’m hosting with Sports Soup’s Matt Iseman and MMA commentator for Bellator’s Jimmy Smith. All these guys have been a dream to work with, which makes the show that much better. But beyond the hosts, it’s really the competitors that make this show. It’s one of the few game shows out there where people come to compete not for any prize (although there’s a HUGE one of $250,000 being offered this season to anyone conquers Mt. Midoriyama), but for the shear opportunity to get to say you did it. To say you ran the actual Ninja Warrior course in Japan. And because of that, the athletes who turn up for this show are the most focused, ego-free people you’ll ever meet. And THAT is really the joy of hosting this show. Although the free trip to Japan doesn’t hurt either.

Did you get a chance to do anything fun in Japan? If so, please elaborate!

It was a super quick trip this time around, but I did get the chance to do some serious shopping and get a crepe. Many people ask me why on earth you would get a crepe in Japan. Well, much like we’re going through a ‘self-serve frozen yogurt’ craze here in the States, Japan is having a ‘crepe’ craze. There are crepe stands that offer over 80 different kinds of crepes. They’re wrapped up like large ice cream cones, so you can eat them while you walk, and you can get everything in them from ice cream, fruit, graham crackers, and even a piece of cheesecake to tuna and lettuce. They make them fresh on the spot and they are delicious, so people need to stop knocking my Japanese crepe cravings.

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Last night, I spent the evening being wowed at XIX, the gorgeous and ritzy restaurant located on the 19th floor of the Hyatt at the Bellevue. I know, I’m just as surprised as you are. You’re looking at the same guy who tweets about wanting the McRib while passing the McDonald’s in Rittenhouse Square. XIX certainly isn’t my scene. But when offered up a chance to scope out thousand dollar Christmas trees… well, it’s hard to say no.

That’s right. Christmas trees starting at $1k.

The Bellevue was hosting a fundraiser for the Philadelphia Orchestra, auctioning off stunning, beautiful Christmas trees crafted by artisans all around the city. Beautiful Blooms, Papertini, Styled Creative... several florists, boutiques, and agencies donated their time and skill to creating one-of-kind Christmas creations for this charitable event. But let’s be honest. It’s hard to make a Christmas tree that isn’t beautiful. It isn’t like a Christmas sweater, where the result is inevitably awful. Throw some paper snowflakes up there, some popcorn, some white lights… bam. Done and done. Gorgeous tree.

Our friends at the Philadelphia based design firm and ad agency, Red Tettemer, clearly know this, and that it takes a little extra to create something truly unique and outstanding. Leave it to this insanely creative agency to think outside the box… and outside the tree.

Behold, the Lady Gaga Christmas tree.

Crafted with vinyl, steel, awesome steampunk-esque goggles, and multicolored lights, this ‘Monster’ of a tree (did you see that? did you see what I did there?) was absolutely stunning, and stood out in the gorgeous hotel restaurant. Hands down stole the show, and was absolutely worth highlighting in a blog post. Well done, Red T. Well done indeed.

I took several more photos of tree, as well as the other expertly crafted Christmas trees on exhibit. Have a look at them in the Flickr gallery below, and huge thank you to XIX for inviting me to the event. It was wonderful.

Excitement levels were high Thursday morning as Ted x Philly guests were milling around the Kimmel Center. The buzz continued until we were all secure in our seats, and ended in applause as the hosts, Roz Duffy and Chris Bartlett, came out for a brief welcome. They challenged us to take a break from technology for the day, to turn everything off and meet new people. “Instead of tweeting, turn to the person next to you and start a conversation,” Chris encouraged.

After a message from TED Curator Chris Anderson, we were thrown right into the day’s speakers, the first section of which was entitled “Systems & Society.” It started off with Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, a recovering cube worker who dreamt of becoming a writer and decided to make that dream a reality. Opening with some presidential trivia and a poem, she explained her discouragement: “Being a writer was as realistic as being a princess – I knew it could happen, but it didn’t happen to anyone I knew.” Aptowicz now works as the ArtsEdge Writer-in-Resident at the University of Pennsylvania and is working on a book about Thomas Dent Mutter, founder of the Mutter Museum.

Chris Lehmann, founder and principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, was up next. His great message was that our high school education system is set up like an assembly line in a factory – but it doesn’t have to be. The purpose of school should be to learn how to live, not how to work – if we train kids to be workers, that’s all they’ll be; the goal is to train them as citizens instead. His own students were in and around the crowd, videotaping and photographing guests and speakers all day.

The third speaker was urban farming activist Nic Esposito, the co-founder of Philly Rooted. Instead of scaring everyone with doomsday scenarios, he planted his ideas with enthusiasm, encouraging everyone to think pragmatically about sustainable solutions.

The final speaker from the first group was Jay Coen Gilbert, co-founder of a B Corporation entitled B Lab. He explained how B Corporations evolved from the idea that government and nonprofits are necessary but insufficient means to solve social and environmental issues, and that the answer lies with harnessing business power.

That was a lot for the first hour and a half. Emotions were already running high. A half an hour break was barely enough time to catch my breath and head back inside for more.

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The director of Toy Story 3, Lee Unkrich, was kind enough to sit down and answer a few questions about his life, film, etc. Unlike a good bit of the staff at Pixar, Lee actually got his start in live action films and television as an editor/director in the early 90′s on such TV series as Renegade and Silk Stalkings. Remember those?

Lee joined Pixar in 1995 and he was first tasked with being an editor on Toy Story and after that, next time Woody and Buzz hit the silver screen he was co-directing on Toy Story 2.

It was working on Toy Story 2 that John Lasseter himself picked Lee to direct the next installment of a what has become one of the most beloved and successful film franchises in animation history.

So check out my Q&A where I ask the hard questions, like will this REALLY be the last Toy Story (Tom Hanks and Tim Allen both are contracted for one more film) and where is Andy’s dad anyway? Warning, there are some spoilers.

What lead you into directing?

I’ve always loved movies, and grew up watching lots of films. My mother is also a film fan, and she exposed me to many different kinds of films when I was growing up. When I was twelve, I saw Stanley Kubrick’s film The Shining, and it ignited a passion for filmmaking that has never abated. I went to the USC School of Cinema to study film, and although I wanted to direct, I ended up specializing in film editing. It was my work in editing that brought me to Pixar, which ultimately gave me the opportunity to start directing again.

You were co-directing for a long time before having the chance to direct a film.  Can you tell us how new talent is trained at Pixar, so that they have the possibility one day to direct a feature film?

Pixar is an amazing place, filled with people from many different backgrounds. I originally came to Pixar from a live-action background, and was one of the few in the company who had worked in that field. I ended up bringing a vital live-action sensibility to the films we were creating and thus, became an indispensable part of the core team. John Lasseter made it clear to me that he wanted me to eventually direct at Pixar. After being given the opportunity to co-direct many films, he finally asked me to direct Toy Story 3 solo. That was my personal path, but the directors at the studio have each had their own individual path. I wouldn’t say folks are groomed to direct, but rather, their singular voices as filmmakers are recognized and nurtured.

Making a second sequel to Toy Story after all these years must have been a rather big decision. You must have felt some pressure, right? What convinced you to commit to directing Toy Story 3 in the end?

It was a HUGE amount of pressure, not only to be making a new Pixar film after an unbroken string of ten hits, but also to make a sequel to two of the most beloved and critically-acclaimed films of all time. However, we love Woody and Buzz and the rest of the gang, and we felt that there was more story to tell. We would never have made another sequel if we didn’t feel like we had a story worth telling. Once we came up with the idea of Andy being grown up, and the toys having to face, head-on, their own obsolescence, we knew we had to make the film. It just had too much rich, emotional potential to pass up.

Directing a sequel while the original director is looking over your shoulder can be daunting. How involved was John Lasseter during Toy Story 3‘s development?

It’s true, when John first asked me to direct Toy Story 3 I was simultaneously flattered and intimidated. Luckily though I’ve worked closely with John since the very first Toy Story. We very much made Toy Story and Toy Story 2 together. John trusted me to take the reins of Toy Story 3, and made it clear from the very beginning that he wanted this to be my film. That being said, John was involved in the film and contributed creatively throughout the four years of production.

More after the jump! Spoiler alerts… you’ve been warned!

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Oh. My. God.

From the YouTube page:

Canadian couple Todd and Meaghan learned about the Mural Arts Program’s (MAP) Love Letter Tour and coordinated an extended layover in Philadelphia (while traveling to France) to experience this wildly popular tour.

Todd contacted the MAP tour office to let them know he wanted to propose to Meaghan on the tour and MAP offered a clever idea in making his marriage proposal extra special.

This video is a result of MAP’s partnership with The University of Pennsylvania — Penn Singers Light Opera Company and Penn Glee Club. We’re excited to share with you the biggest surprise of Meaghan’s life!

Amazing. Warmed my heart this chilly November afternoon.

At this point it’s pretty clear that location-based services aren’t going anywhere. Foursquare is huge in the city of Philadelphia, and thanks to visitPA there’s incentive statewide. Folks like Tommy Up of PYT will surely attest to the fact that it’s definitely been a great value for businesses like his. The state even recognizes this:

“We’ve been pleasantly surprised by the overwhelming enthusiasm for our partnership with Foursquare,” said Mickey Rowley, Deputy Secretary for Tourism, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, “What was initially just one piece of our summer tourism campaign has become fodder for a case study in the mobile evolution of tourism and travel. It has transformed Pennsylvania into a game board for Foursquare fanatics.”

Feel like this is a game you’ve fallen behind on? Well, you’re slacking even worse than I was when it came to writing this post. However, you’re in luck. VisitPA’s partnership with Foursquare is continuing indefinitely.

Our friends over at Red Tettemer, whose fantastic work you might remember from VisitPhilly‘s With Love campaign, took tourism to a whole new level for visitPA. Those three badges (Shooflyer, 4 Score & 7 and Retail Polka) can be unlocked by visiting locations that stretch between every corner of the state. (Spoiler alert: it’s actually pretty feasible to unlock all of them in Philly.)

Linus Graybill, a senior developer at Red Tettemer built this wonderful data app utilizing Foursquare’s API and 100% all-natural unicorn blood. As of writing this, visitPA has over 15,000 followers on Foursquare checking into the 176 participating venues. The top of which are unsurprisingly Center City and Old City locations, with the addition of our favorite mega-colossal urban renewal project/super-plaza: The Piazza at Schmidt’s.

Red Tettemer has a live chart and graph on their website that details the numbers, from followers to participating venues. This screenshot above doesn’t do it justice.

Want to see those numbers? Check out Red Tettemer’s VisitPA Foursquare stats from its launch in May through to the end of the summer. Win.

Bradley Cooper’s new film, The Dark Fields, is currently filming here in Philadelphia… and earlier today, they transformed 19th and Market into 52nd and 6th Avenue in Manhattan. Reader Erik B. emailed in some photos…

Walking along Market Street at 19th on my lunch break I somehow ended up at 52nd and 6th Avenue in Manhattan. After some investigation, I learned that I was still in fact in Philadelphia, but near the set of the movie The Dark Fields. They temporarily transformed our great City into the Big Apple.

Erik saw Philadelphia born Bradley Cooper being whisked off the set into a car immediately after snapping these pictures. Have a look!

Earlier this month I had the pleasure of interviewing Felicia Day at the Farpoint 2010 sci-fi convention in Timonium, Maryland.  I am a huge fan of Felicia’ s work and I am pretty sure most of you Geekadelphia readers are as well. I tried to ask a lot of questions that you don’t traditionally hear in interviews with her. We all know she was in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, starred in Doctor Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog and eventually solidified a name for herself as a creator/writer/star of her webseries The Guild.

Read on, as we talk about everything from comics, to video games, to what she thinks of female role models in new media. I’d apologize for this being such a long post, but I think it’s worth the read. Enjoy.

So, you attended college at age of 16 and graduated as valedictorian with a double major in mathematics and music performance. What inspired you to suddenly move to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting?

The thing that inspired me to movie to LA to pursue acting was kind of a blind enthusiasm [laughs] in a sense. I had always been doing theater everywhere I went. Actually, the two running themes throughout my childhood were doing Community Theater and online gaming. Because I was moving around so much I never had a consistent friendship with anybody because I always just left.

So either I kept in touch with them on the computer through like Prodigy [laughs], like total old-school internet stuff, like total old-school; or I met new people through community theater. So it had always been like a family to me, and for some reason I just always had this idea I would really love to go be an actor in LA. So a little bit of not-good planning led me to LA shortly after I graduated college.

I heard that the genesis of The Guild was a WOW intervention where the result was you going cold turkey and quitting the game; can you tell us a bit about that dark time in your life and were the characters you eventually wrote in The Guild pilot based off of anyone you knew personally? They all seem very believable.

Yeah, so I wrote The Guild after I had been gaming like 30-hour weeks, I was definitely a hard-core raider at the time. I really enjoyed it (gaming) and I don’t think it was necessarily a bad thing. I am a little bit obsessive, so I tend to take things personally and seriously. So I definitely let it take over my life in a way, because I didn’t have anything else going on, to kind of combat it.  So I definitely don’t want my experience to be like a poster child for dysfunctional gamers. I just think that anything that I would have filled my time with would have probably taken over my life – just because I didn’t have a lot of fulfilling things going on at the time.

It’s hard to get a job [ in acting ] and it’s hard to face rejection everyday. That’s just kind of your job, and you have to face it. If you get an acting job it’s more like a reward, but it’s not the thing you are there to do. You’re there to audition, so it’s hard to get your mind around that as an actor cause you’re always emotionally available.

So I wrote The Guild because I wanted to write something to show a character, you know that optimal side of me, and that is how Codex came up. I love playing this sort of neurotic introverted character, which is something you don’t see on TV as a lead especially. So building those characters around Codex was the key to making it engaging and successful. To this day it’s still hard to write Codex because she is kind of a passive character and plays the role of a healer-in-life behind-the-scenes, so making her a little more outgoing is always a challenge.

The other characters were not based per se on people I knew. I had drawn some ideas, like people with screaming babies in the background, or like people who were being way too serious about the game. I wouldn’t say people directly inspired them, but they are sort of an amalgam of my experiences. The characters of Zaboo and Vork were based on those actors I tailor-made for them… because we do improv together. So in those cases it was tailored to the actors and the rest were impressions of people I played with online.

Much More After the Jump

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I love going to the movies. I know there are folks out there who would rather wait for the film to be released on blu-ray and watch it at home, but I like going to the movies to watch whatever has caught my eye. This past Wednesday afternoon I caught a matinee showing of “Michael Jackson’s This Is It.”  Going into this particular film, I expected a few things. Applause, cheering, maybe even people singing.  Which I’m okay with because it’s the audience responding to the film.

However, thirty minutes into the film two women came into the theater and went on to distract the audience, myself included, from the remaining 80 minutes of the film. They were the rudest people I have ever had the displeasure of sitting in a dark room with.  The worst part about this was that they sat directly in front of me. While everyone else was listening to “Billie Jean“, I was hearing a conversation about a doctor’s appointment. I was none too happy about that. Even after repeated attempts to get them to be quiet, they kept on going.

It is because of those two clowns I decided to make a short list of what ruins a movie theater experience for me. This list is solely about the audience and ways to help make the experience better for your fellow man.  Hit the jump and we’ll get started.

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Boyd Performing in Beecake, Live Photography by C&J Photos

The other day, I was fortunate enough to talk on the phone with Scottish actor Billy Boyd, best known for his role as the troublesome Pippin Took in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy, as well as ill-fated Barett Barden in Peter Weir’s Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World

Boyd’s band, Beecake, is on their first American tour, and will be visiting Philadelphia next Wednesday, October 7th. They’ll be performing at the Tin Angel, a small, cozy music venue located right outside of Old City. Rest assured, the Geekadelphia crew will be there, psyched to welcome Boyd and his band. After all, it’s their first time coming to Philadelphia, and we’re gonna have to show them around.

Boyd (Right) as Pippin in Lord of the Rings

In a phone conversation that lasted nearly 40 minutes, Boyd talked about his upcoming show at Radio City Music Hall with composer Howard Shore, his musical influences, his favorite video games and graphic novels, what it’s like partying with Russell Crowe, and the origin of his band’s name. He even mentioned his favorite kind of cupcake, the sort that our friends at Open Source Cupcakes will probably be supplying.

So read on! Boyd’s a great guy, and I can’t wait to his band next Wednesday.

So, Beecake is coming to Philly! Is this your first time visiting Philadelphia? Are you excited about seeing anything here in particular?

Yeah! Well, what we’re doing at the moment is trying to get together some suggestions from American friends who have been to the city. People we know are putting together a list of things we can’t afford to miss while we’re here. Gonna wait and see. Definitely going to have to walk around Old City. Looking forward to it.

Tell our readers about your band. Who are some of your influences?

Me and the guitarist BJ [Billy Johnson] went to school together, played music together all our lives. John, the drummer, we had our first band together when we like… 15 years old. So I played with him a lot. And Rick the bassist, he played in bands, and we knew him as a great musician. When we got this together, it was just friends getting back together again. And as I started writing, it became a lot more serious. It took off from there. We didn’t want it to be a serious thing, but the music is serious, but the more we got into it, the more serious it became. Spent a lot of energy trying to get the music right.

Influences? Everything from the Beatles to the Who kind of influence us. And Radiohead. Huge strain of influences. On our Myspace page, we have it written down. There’s like one hundred on there [laughs]. We tried to narrow it down to about 30.

And Beecake? What can you tell us about the name?

That came from Dom [Dominic Monaghan], a great friend of mine. He played Merry in Lord of the Rings. He was on holiday from Lost and took three months off, decided to go Spain. While he was in Spain he was sending me the photographs of everywhere he was. One day on a beach, one day in a pub with people he met, etc… and one day he sent me a picture of a cake cooovered in bees. He went into a bakery and one of the cakes was just covered in bees. All the way. There were bees flying around, but they absolutely loved this cake. He sent me the picture, calling it a “the beecake” and I just thought it was a great sounding word. That’s how we came up with Beecake.

Boyd talks about this favorite comics, video games, being an actor-in-a-band, Howard Shore, and more, after the jump!

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