Introducing Nerdish Delight!

Welcome to the first Nerdish Delight post ever!  What is Nerdish Delight?  It's a post where I share some of the nerdy things that I've found around the internet lately that I find delightful.  These things include, but are not limited to: webcomics, video games, technology/gadgets, and science.

I adore the game Coma on Kongregate, by Thomas Brush AKA wittyhobos.  It is a point-and-click game, which is my absolute favorite kind of game ever.  It is not a difficult game.  That isn't the point.  It's beautiful and artistic and slightly creepy.  I also really like that the game doesn't just tell you outright what it means, but lets you draw your own conclusions.  I feel like that's something all good art does.

The Hubble telescope found a galaxy that supposedly looks like a Space Invader.  I think it looks more like a skull with glowing eyes.  To me, it would look like a Space Invader it it had the antennas and longer arms.  Nice try, galaxy, nice try.

A man had 75 percent of his skull replaced with a 3D-printed piece!  This makes me ask so many questions, but the first one is, 'How?!'  75 percent is a lot of a person's skull.  And skulls have eyes and noses and lips and ears on them.  I just don't even know how they did it.  I have always thought that 3-D printing was really cool, but I never even thought about something like this as a possible application.  It's super cool, but I wish that the article was more elaborate.

Here is a cool gadget in the world of 3D printing.  It's the first ever 3D printing pen.  It is by far the most affordable way to print in 3D.  The Kickstarter campaign for it still has 13 days left and over 2 million dollars has already been pledged, which is well over the $30,000 goal.  This thing is just cool.  I can't wait to see what amazing creations people make with it.  It works in a similar way to a hot glue gun.  You put in plastic and the pen heats and extrudes it.  The plastic cools so fast that you can actually draw in the air!  It kind of reminds me of that episode of Spongebob Squarepants with the magic pencil, only the drawings don't magically come to life and attack people.

And last, but certainly not least, is Codecademy, which I discovered through one of the people I follow on Google+.  I've been meaning to learn CSS and refresh my HTML knowledge for quite a long time.  I had found a few different sites that offered free online courses, but none of them that I really loved.  Enter Codecademy.  First of all, you earn badges when you complete lessons, and I am instantly drawn into any site that lets me earn badges.  (See Kongregate.)  They have lessons in CSS, HTML, PHP, jQuery, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, and APIs.  I can't really comment on the other lessons because I haven't done them, but the HTML and CSS lessons are really good for beginners.  I completed the HTML lessons last week.  It was really interesting to learn about lots of basics that I was never taught and also some basics that I was taught incorrectly.  I have moved onto the CSS lessons, which are new to me entirely.  I have been picking up CSS really quickly and I wish I had learned it earlier.  Each Codecademy lesson is made up of a number of exercises based around a concept, such as tables.  The first exercises teaches you the absolute basics, including any new syntax, and tells you exactly what to type and where to type it.  The following exercises do the same thing, with more advanced steps and less guidance until you can do it by yourself.  If you can't remember how to do something, you can go back to the exercise that taught you how to do it, or you can look at the hint.  It's a really great free resource for coders and programmers.