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I have two little ad-banner buttons on this page now above you. Rest assured I’m getting no money whatsoever if you click either of them, I just figured they’re worthy geek causes.

The first is the Bleem! Estate Sale. Bleem! as you may know is a dead software company that made a series of PlayStation emulation products until Sony sued them into oblivion. Over a year later, one of the last two or three employees of Bleem! is still trying to get out of debt. Since Bleem! made no money for a long time (i.e., what they did make was spent on lawyers), this individual recieved no paycheck from Bleem!, but when the company went bust he was given a good chunk of the tons of things Bleem consisted of at that point – mostly T-shirts, imported games, controllers and such. Since he needs the money he’s auctioning off this stuff. Right now wave two is up, whose highlights include the elusive BleemPods, the propretary prototype devices which allow you to use real analog Dual Shock PSX controllers with your Bleemcast games on the Dreamcast. During wave one I bought one of the last Bleem! T-shirts, and they threw in a crapload of Bleem! stickers as well. Too bad I’m too old now to be putting stickers on things, but it makes my Dreamcast look nicer.

The second link is to the Original Trilogy petition site. For a long time I thought I was the only one who cared about this but it looks like I’m not alone. Basically, George Lucas has indicated that the orignal Star Wars trilogy will be released on DVD in 2006 or so, after Episode III hits DVD, and that the cuts of the movies on the DVD’s will be the “Special Edition” cuts. This is all fine and dandy were it not for two things. For starters, the further rumors are that he’s going to add more items to these movies (like actrors and maybe even Jar-Jar from the prequel trilogy), and that the original cuts of the movies will not be available. This petition is an attempt to show support for and persuade Lucas to make the original cuts available as well as the Special Edition cuts, either through some seamless branching trick, or on separate discs, perhaps available exclusively online or something (so as not to clog up retail chains with something only a handful of geeks may want).

In particular, the little button I chose (since it was little) illustrates something that’s been irking geeks for years now – in the original movie during a scene between Han Solo and Greedo, Han shoots and kills Greedo before Greedo can get a shot off, but in the Special Edition, Greedo shoots first, changing the scene from “Han Solo is a Badass” to “Han Solo in Self Defense”. Me personally I could care less who shoots first, but I would like to see the same old 1970’s sci-fi version I remember as a kid.