Alpha Geek Interviews

Iolite interviews Mark Meer, the voice of Commander Shepard from the Mass Effect series of games.

From coverville.com: "Coverville is a podcast, produced three times a week, that focuses on cover songs – a new rendition of a previously recorded song. The show is produced and hosted by Brian Ibbott, in his home in Arvada, Colorado – about 10 miles West of Denver. The show features a combination of music and information about the music, delivered in a very relaxed, informal style. On average, each show runs about 35 minutes and features six selections. Information about the performing artist, and source album is provided, along with information about the artist being covered."

From lenperalta.com: "My name is Len Peralta and I am an Internet cartoonist. I believe in many things. Ghosts. Elves. Bigfoot. But most of all, I believe in making art affordable for everyone. I've been very fortunate to do some interesting illustrations. I've drawn princes throwing up. I've drawn Internet rock stars dressed up in skin-tight catsuits. I have illustrated a few books. I've drawn art for a card game about medical malpractice. Even the New Yorker has shown off my stuff. I've drawn hoboes and molemen and superheroes and video game characters. You know, all the stuff that would end up in the margins of your notebooks in grade school, high school and college. Somehow I've managed to eek a living out doing these things. No one is more amazed at this fact than I am. One of the things I love about what I do is that I can wake up every day and never know what my pencils and art pens will be drawing that day. It's almost as if they leave my drawing table at night on mad adventures to bring back incredibly geeky booty for me. I love them for that. Even though they are just inanimate objects."

Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He's written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.

Full time Xbox staff, part time PAX and w00tstock performer, I am at heart a geek of pure pedigree. Ever since joining the Microsoft Corporation in April of 1994 I've pretty much been known by my email name, which is [email protected]. I've worn a few hats for Microsoft: product support monkey, technical writer, trainer, and Communications Manager for security response at Microsoft from 2002 to 2006. For that role I worked alongside a team of great people triaging and investigating and solving reported vulnerabilities in Microsoft software. On August 13th, 2007, I took on a great new challenge by joining our Xbox team working on Xbox LIVE. I'm currently the Director of Policy and Enforcement for the Xbox LIVE service. Along the way I made some amazing friends, wrote a book, and wore a suit.

Marian Call delivers whimsical Alaskan folk funk for the Coffee Counter-Culture. She sounds a little like Joni Mitchell & Regina Spektor raising the child of Jason Mraz & Erin McKeown. Call's sound is always soulful, honest, and clever, loved by all types -- computer geeks, church ladies, teenage thugs, NPR listeners, and urban hipsters worldwide.

Comedy singer/songwriter Mike Phirman joins Other Todd for an episode of Alpha Geek Interviews. About Mike: "Mike Phirman is incredibly uncomfortable writing about himself in the third person, so he is going to write his bio in the second person. You attended UCLA where you received a degree in Philosophy. While at college, you met Chris Hardwick, a fellow comedy enthusiast with whom you began performing silly musical acts under the name Hard 'n Phirm. Together, you've made an album, driven through a lot of corn, and taped a Comedy Central Presents special that you feel went not-too-badly. You've also worked as a visual effects artist for movies and TV. (Don't tell anyone, but on one episode of C.S.I. in which the camera follows a spark that sets off a car bomb, if you play it frame-by-frame, the spark briefly spells out Hi Mom!) You love folding laundry and were born without a sense of smell. Last summer, you released your first solo album called "The Very Last Songs I Will Ever Record (Part 1)". You lost your mind when Weird Al Yankovic showed up to perform on one of the tracks. Most recently, you googled the words "comedian bio what to write" you found nothing helpful."

Other Todd interviews Scott Johnson, founder of Frogpants Studios.

Apologies for the sound quality on this one, it had to be recovered from a damaged file. Shout out to Ironhart for bringing the lost data back from the dead! Danielle Corsetto created her first comic strip when she was 8 years old, starting with a blatant rip-off of Garfield called Fat Cat. She started writing Hazelnuts in high school, the precursor to Girls With Slingshots (unbeknownst to her at the time), and ran a comic about super-slacker college kids called Ramblers in the student paper at Shepherd College (as well as popimage.com). In October of 2004, she began Girls With Slingshots, and a couple of years later she was doing the strip full-time. It's now updated 5 times a week at some god-awful hour. In addition to GWS, Danielle wrote and drew The New Adventures of Bat Boy for the Weekly World News, taking the reins from Bat Boy's kind & talented former creator Peter Bagge. Danielle lives in Shepherdstown, West Virginia in a 230-year-old house with her two cats, Smudge and Ellie (aka Fluffy and Sprinkles) and her 9-year-old goldfish Goldie. She loves sipping tea, going for hikes, and eating local foods, because she is a filthy filthy hippie.

Paul Cornell is a British writer who has written episodes for Doctor Who (Father's Day, Human Nature/Family of Blood) and other British television series (Primeval, Robin Hood), comics for Marvel (Wisdom, Captain Britain and MI-13) and D.C. (Action Comics, Knight and Squire, Batman & Robin), numerous Doctor Who novels (including creating the popular companion Bernice Summerfield, who has spun off into her own novel and audio adventures), and his own original fiction (British Summertime) including short fictoin in the recent superhero anthology Masked.