Is it good, bad or ugly?

You tell us.

You might notice a few changes as the site settles into its new look, but it won’t be anything drastic. (Not as drastic as this, anyway.)

Why, listening to geek talk when you’re not online (or when you are, who are we to judge).

That’s right 8 Days A Geek will be producing our own bi-weekly podcast starting with our first episode on June 16th.  We will be posting each episode in the blog itself so that you can go to the same site for your geek stories and geek podcasts.  As soon as we begin posting episodes we will start adding them to the most common podcast directories (ie. iTunes and Zune Marketplace).  If enough of our readers become listeners we are prepared to start a live stream of the podcast so you can listen uncut and chat with us in the process.

Keep reading and hopefully start listening.

Leave us some comments here or in the forums about what you think of the mobile site. Thanks for reading.

Jo Frost is the Supernanny. Basically, she takes unruly kids and the parents they walk all over and turns them into rule-abiding, behaved families. This woman does not sugar coat the truth, she tells the parent exactly what she sees and advises them on how to fix it.

The first episode of her new show Jo Frost: Extreme Parental Guidance, centered around an issue that has plagued poor parents for about 30 years now… violent video games and their effect on children.

She, along with a doctor, conducted an experiment. 40 boys were asked to play a game for 20 minutes. Half of them played a football game, the other half played a FPS war game, then they had to watch some violent news footage and get their heart rate monitored.

The boys who played the FPS shooter didn’t react as much to the news footage as the boys who played the (probably) Madden football game. According to Jo, only 20 minutes of a violent game was enough to desensitize the boys to violence in real life and perhaps make it easier for them to commit violent acts of their own.

Later on in the program, the boys were being questioned by the doctor. He knocked over a cup of pencils (accidently) during their conversation about the games to gauge how empathetic each child would be to the plight of the perilous pencils now rolling around on the floor. Forty percent of the boys who played the FPS shooter picked up the pencils, thus showing that not only were they desensitized to violence, they were desensitized to being helpful… and less empathetic, I suppose. Eighty percent of the other group cleaned up the mess.

If I were to apply the results of this study to my own life, I would be a war monger. I have played hours and hours of Gears of War Horde with two of my favorite guys, and delight in the dismemberment of my enemies. I have Fairytale Fights, self described as Ultra Violent but cute!, sitting next  to my 360 calling over to me. I  giggled when I threw bodies around in Bioshock to stun/kill enemy splicers. Hey, guess what. I hate killing spiders and most insects, unless they’re out to get me. I hate hurting people, unless they’re hurting me, and I cherish the life of myself and those around me, and would never, ever willingly take one.

Like the source article says, correlation is not validation. These kids were placed in a clinical environment and then questioned. This would make anyone uncomfortable, so the results, in my opinion, are skewed. We knew nothing of the children’s family and social life, which is a large impact on anyone and shapes the person and his or her behavior.

It’s really easy to blame problems on something else. Until parents, guardians and people in society that blindly agree with the “video games are evil!!” sentiment really look into the issue for themselves, this opinion will  float around and people like me will keep on writing about it, and railing against it.

In 20 years a real study might come out that validates the video games = evil people idea. If that happens, I will eat my words. And then probably go play a FPS shooter, or something.

[source]

We started to play and I got off to a rough start. For the first few minutes as each character I was trying to get my bearing and figure out what button did what. The Predator, Alien and Marine each have a different control set up. The Predators and Marines are somewhat similar, but the Alien is almost completely different. Fast forward to my third match, I’m now used to the level, the controls and the limitations of each character.

I hate to admit to this, but I’m going to put it out there: I used more profanity in a half hour then I have in all of 2010 playing that game. I was frustrated at my lack of skill and the fact that everyone in the match, save for Mike, was killing me from behind.

Written in my Livejournal:
I hate Xbox Live players. Mike told me to get the AVP demo so we could play the multiplayer/death match option, so I did, and it only reinforced my disdain for the players who either a) kill you from behind and b) squat in one corner and wait for everyone to walk by.

My preferred style is to face characters head on, but I will go back and forth between Sneaky and Gladiator depending on the style of the game. The innate nature of the Aliens and Predators are to be sneaky. One can be invisible; the other can crawl around on ceilings. I should have expected to get stabbed in the back or grabbed from behind, it’s what they do.

And I did, just a little bit, but after a while it got excessive. What really got to me was this: I was obviously the inexperienced player, I was obviously the dumb one in the group… and in a kill all death match, I was the easiest target. How is that any fun for the experienced player? Do people like a challenge these days? I get the feeling that they don’t.

I can admit I’m not very good at games like AVP. I still have fun playing them, in the campaigns, but I won’t be joining anyone on Live. It just means there will be one less extremely inexperienced player for the others to swarm. I will watch people play, though. I will be the backseat player that sometimes tells you what you need to do because you’re missing something. (And I’ll try to be as nice as possible about it, because that can get annoying quick.)  I will watch Mike and others play on Live, since they are actually good at it, and I’ll cheer them on and point out the stuff they missed when running down a hallway.

Maybe one day I’ll get over myself and join the millions of people on Live and suck and just not care. For now, I have things in life that overshadow the need to get my butt kicked by everyone in the AVP death matches.

First up is my trusty computer I named him General Jack Cosmo. Like Aunt May says  “all great men are messy”

Next up is my desk, this is where ol’ fashioned book and paper research is done.

What books do you use? You may ask, no, well…. I uh, These are a portion of my books!

Nxt up is just a shot of my dresser, yes my dresser is away from my bedroom, that’s where my fiance’s clothes are.

The entry way into my own little fortress of solitude

just a sweet shot of my Power Ranger cut out, and of part of my comic book collection.

Yes that’s an Ernie puppet, your jealous now huh?

some of my favorite comics and figures get to go right above my computer to help along.

My magic talky box and entertainment center, awesome, all the from the top of the Unicorn pinata down to PS2 Guitars.

Even though I’m slowly going into Blu-Ray and even though half my DVD’s are on my entertainment center, you gotta respect the collection.

8 Days a Geek is welcoming contributions from writers (and those who like to write). If it’s geeky, we want it. There’s a lot to geek culture and the three of us can’t cover it all.

–And that leads me into this: We are also looking for writers. If you see something that you think we’re missing, and want to write it yourself, chances are we might want you.

Send us any questions or inquiries you might have at beawriter@8daysageek.com.

These details and more at the contribution page.

Not my best photo, but one of my favorite carved pumpkins. This was a collaboration between my boyfriend and I, and my old roommates exacto knives.

Happy Halloween!