Going through our archives we realised that we had a significant lack of articles about Steampunk awesomeness. In a effort to make up for this travesty we would like to highlight the most excellent webcomic FreakAngels written by Warren Ellis and illustrated by Paul Duffield. Set in England in a post-apocalyptic future, the story follows twelve children (now mostly grown up) as the reasons for the apocalypse and their role in it are revealed.

Continue reading FreakAngels – A Free Online Steampunk Comic

By the title of this blog you may think I am talking about people who spend so much time on Facebook that they become like zombies, Pale skin, unable to communicate in person except by grunts, but despite this rather patronising geek stereotype I am talking about the instances of Zombie culture on the worlds favourite social networking site.

When I first joined I was invited to install the VAMPIRES application, where, Zombies Vampires and Werewolves attacked each other on a daily basis. A simple concept, everyone else seemed to have it, and who could resist attacking a Catholic Schoolgirl vampire?

Recently I have been playing two of the Mindjolt applications games. Zombie Hell, and my personal favourite, Zombie Kitten. Zombie Hell involves protecting your house and ten inhabitants from waves of zombies by collecting cash, buying weapons and attacking the zombies. It reminds me of the old game SYNDICATE, or as much as a flash game can. Zombie Kitten fits my previous rules for a good game and would look familiar to anyone who played the 80’s Dr Who vs Daleks game.

But there is more to Zombies on Facebook than the odd application alone. After all the Zombie talk on Dice of Doom and replays of Simpson Halloween episodes I decided to do search for Zombies on Facebook. A quick search will show more than 30 Applications, over 500 events, 40 pages and over 500 groups.

The groups particularly interested me, titles such as “Real friends kill friends who become zombies.”, “All You People Who Don’t Believe In Zombies… you’ll be dead first”, and “EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ZOMBIES”, certainly tweek the interest of anyone who watched too much Twilight Zone as a youth.

Living in the Hunter Valley though I looked straight away at Australian Zombie Outbreak Defence, Newcastle and Hunter Region. This band of 30 brothers is officially classed as a Volunteer organization by facebook and discusses such important matters as possible outbreaks and bases of defence. Personally I think Christchurch cathedral is the best place to be in Newcastle, or failing that, I will just drive to a mine site out of town, away from food sources and with lots of explosives at hand.

In short, if you are worried about the Zombie apocalypse, Facebook could be the place for you to prepare. And people say the internet is a waste of time.. PPfftt, First to be brain food come the undead rising.

There has been a sudden rush of Tower Defence games released for the iPhone recently, and for the most part, they OK to play. What there hasn’t been is any real innovation in the genre as it is played on the iPhone – and this is what makes Zombie Attack! absolutely brilliant…

First of all, the setting – you control a ’survivor’ who runs around a fenced off area protecting the shack. The shack has a health score, so it can get hit once or twice and it’ll be alright, but if it gets hit too much, you lose the shack (and the game). You also have as many ’survivors’ as you need (just in case they don’t live up to their name…). You control the survivor by tilting the device (you can change the calibration in the options…) and he can build/upgrade various defences around the paddock.

Zombies come charging in pretty quickly so you need to build swinging axes, mounted machine guns, flame throwers and canons as quickly as possible. You can also get the zombies to follow your little dude into traps as well, or distract them from attacking the shack (remember, the beer is in the shack, so you have to look after it…).

How the game is different, and true to its setting (something that can be surprisingly rare) is that you don’t really build mazes. You have to concentrate on setting up crossfire, funnelling the attackers and distracting (engaging in hand to hand combat at times…) the zombies. In this way it is not a typical Tower Defence game, and some people might be thrown by that at the beginning. But believe me, this is better.

There are little details as well that I love. Zombies that lose a limb, lose 25% of their combat efficiency with each one. Zombies without a head wander around aimlessly until they get to something they can attack. This gives an incredible feeling of actually being there and panicking trying to save the beer shack from the hordes and hordes of mindless shack hating zombies that come rolling in.

Overall its an incredible game from IUGO and the best part? Its only a dollar to buy…

• iTunes Link USD 0.99 / AUD 1.19)

We around here are big believers in being prepared. The Zombie Apocalypse is not a matter of ‘if’, but of ‘when’, and as such, we should all put some thought into being ready for the day (or more probably night…).

To help with your preparation, the guys over at Zombie Tools can help fit you out. These guys make customised ‘tools’ for taking out zombies quietly and effectively. In their words:

How much ammo do you have for your gun? Under a worst-case scenario, probably enough to last a few days. We’re thinking in terms of months and years. Furthermore, ammo is heavy and thus not terribly portable. While most people we’ve talked to imagine holing up somewhere and fighting a stationary, defensive battles against zombies, we’ve imagined scenarios where mobility would be your best chance of survival, and so would like to remain as manoeuvrable as possible. To that end, our basic survival package includes a solid mountain bike, a sidearm, and a Zombie Tools blade.

Each blade they make is custom done and is made from high quality steel and made to do the job and last. You can read about their development process in their FAQ.

The Zombie Tools site also has a really high quality Zombie Gallery that is well worth checking out as well.

With the launching of the Large Hadron Collider there is a lot of speculation about Mini Black Holes emitting Hawking radiation and destroying the entire planet and maybe even the entire universe (that’s right – take that God, we created you, we can destroy you… oh wait…). The scientific community however is in consensus that nothing will probably go wrong. And if something could go wrong, its like a 1 in 50 million chance that it will.

Anyway, if you want to look at a live webcam of them testing the setup you can watch here (look for the red lights flashing, it means they are sending protons around)…

Also check out xkcd’s take on it…