I’d love this. Via Sabrina Dent

What a wonderful use of her time.

What sparked this crusade off? The death of a 20 year-old in the UK from deep vein thrombosis, which his father says resulted from 12 hour gaming sessions. (The senator implies that the coroner linked the death directly to excessive Xbox use – I can’t seem to find the source for this.)

Death from playing videogames is so rare you end up on Wikipedia’s unusual deaths lists for doing so. If you’re worried about the number of people dieing from excessive video gaming you should also show concern for people killed by flying bears or Segways.

The problem here isn’t video games – it’s people doing stupid things. If the guy had died after getting off a twelve hour flight, would she be looking to ban intercontinental travel? If he died after a 12 hour sex session (like this guy) would she be looking to install a chip in people’s testicles to shut them down after two hours? The guy died from sitting still too much. A chip wouldn’t have solved that.

It’s just nonsense grandstanding to get a bit of attention, with no possibility of ever having to do any more about it, because it will NEVER HAPPEN. Can you see Sony and Nintendo going … “hang on, someone in Ireland wants us to put in a class of microchip… best get on that!” (The fact that she confuses consoles and games is a bit telling too).

Why pick on videogames when there’s much bigger problems out there? If you want to moderate people’s behaviour based on a dangerous addiction, why not say, propose a cap on gambling? 1% – 3% of the Irish population may suffer from compulsive gambling (source) which leads to suicide, destitution and broken families. Why not make a law that says people can only gamble €20 a week? Surely, being an Irish senator, that would be a lot easier to accomplish than having Japanese and American multinationals change their product line? If you’re going to start a crusade, why not make it a sensible one?

Moar Tiny Tower Bitizens! Costumes are a mix of the film and the comic, depending on which worked better.

Fifth in an increasing series of comic book characters as Tiny Tower bitizens. See also Tiny Tower Batman & Superman and Tiny Tower Judge Dredd and Tiny Tower Wonderwoman Bitizen

Have you been obsessed with NimbleBit’s latest iPhone game Tiny Tower as much as I am? And wouldn’t it be nice to have one of those cute little characters as an avatar for a forum or a social network? After reading Brandontreb’s inspiring Bitizen Tutorial [link] I thought it would be nice if everyone could simply customize his personal Bitizen with just a few clicks, which was the reason I decided to create this template.

Fourth in an increasing series of comic book characters as Tiny Tower bitizens. See also Tiny Tower Batman & Superman and Tiny Tower Judge Dredd

receipt racer from d_effekt on Vimeo.

Fun multi-device game via Dave Gorman on Twitter

Cars going nuts in Liberty City. Via @Glinner & @reddit

An epic movie made entirely with scenes from Grand Theft Auto IV.

Zombie Video Games

Left for Dead 2 (buy it!)

Awesome Zombie survival horror game. Really spooky gameplay and soundtrack. Brilliant fun in multiplayer co-op, especially when you see a special zombie. “BOOMER!!!”

See also: Plants Vs Zombies

Zombie Board Games

Zombies!!!! (buy it!)

Zombies!!!! is a fun board-game where you and your friends try and escape from a horde of zombies to a waiting chopper (or kill 25 zombies). The trick is that only one person can win, and on your turn you place some zombies. So there’s a real “will this guy fuck me over on his turn?” element to it, with lots of fragile alliances and back-stabbing. It really highlights (as reflected more seriously in the graphic novel below) how post-Z, it’s not just the undead you have to watch out for. The rules for Zombies!!! and some fun variants are available online if you want to check it out. It’s a fun game!

Zombie Graphic Novels

The Walking Dead (buy it!)

The Walking Dead is a series that chronicles a group of survivors on the run in a post zombie-holocaust world. It is seriously dark, and is more about the relationships and dangers that develop between people than about busting zombie heads. If you enjoyed The Road, this is perfect for you. If you have kids, it will scare the shit out of them. It’s being made into a six-part mini-series directed by Frank Darabont, in case you are a comic-book snob.

The making of The Walking Dead mini-series

The Walking Dead mini-series trailer

See also: Marvel Zombies

Zombie Meat Ups

There are regular charity zombie walks all over Ireland, here’s a link to the Dublin Zombie Walk. They look like awesome fun.

Zombie Lego

People make their own post-apocolyptic zombie scenarios in Lego. Awesome fun – have a search on Flickr or on The Brothers Brick for more.