Webcrawler

Originally Appears in Issue 5

In each issue Declan Aylward dives head first into the weird and wonderful world of the web, and reports back with his findings.

Geek Food
http://geekfood.frogpants.com

A show about cooking for geeks? But that’s just frozen pizzas and Meanies right? Not according to Scott and Kim Johnson, presenters of the revamped Geek Food podcast. The geek in question is definitely Scott, who asks the dumb questions we are all thinking while Kim does the actual cooking. There’s a bit of an American focus, with lots of stuff coming from Costco, but Tesco probably works as a substitute on this side of the pond.

Now presented in glorious video, as opposed to its humble beginnings as a painfully hard to follow audio podcast, Geek Food has joined the proud ranks of the FrogPants network, bringing it to a whole new audience of vitamin starved geeks. So check out their site on FrogPants or subscribe via iTunes and you’ll never be stuck for munchies during a Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon again.

The MMOrgue
http://mmorgue.com

Everybody and their grandmother has a World of Warcraft account at this stage and massively multiplayer online games are starting to edge away from the neckbeard and glasses market towards a more mainstream demographic. That’s why it’s so great to find a site like the MMOrgue, to remind us all that no matter how many beer swilling Halo jocks create a Death Knight named TeabAgGer_09 and bunny hop their way through Azeroth, there are always a group of hardcore nerds prepared to wax lyrical on the in-depth minutiae of the game and the industry.

The MMOrgue’s writers are actual gamers, which makes it a great source of unbiased news about the MMO scene; since most of the news about any particular game comes directly from the developing company and its lackeys, making it about as trustworthy as a shifty eyed fox in a dirty mackintosh. Articles are well written, without any of the flame and fearmongering of gamer message boards, and show a pretty impressive level of knowledge about the inner workings of the gaming industry, so the MMOrgue can fast become your way to sound more knowledgeable about a topic not that many people care about.

PATV
http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv

If you have ever played a video game and don’t know who Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins are, then you have officially failed at the Internet. Never fear though citizen, One More Robot knows and is here to drag you kicking and screaming into the light. The two genius creators of the Penny Arcade webcomic and founders of PAX, one of the biggest gaming conventions in the United States, have become something of an institution in the gaming world, a fact that has become even more noticeable with the launch of their internet ‘television station’, PATV. The flagship show, Penny Arcade: The Series is that rare beast: a reality television show that doesn’t suck. In truth it’s more of a fly-on-the-wall documentary about the people at Penny Arcade and manages to be funny and sweet without making anybody want to vomit. Blamimation is the only other show currently running. It’s a series of animated shorts that will make any game fan laugh out loud. Scott Kurtz and Kris Straub won a Richter Award for the series but it hasn’t gone to their heads and the humour is self defacing and cheerily caustic.