The Week in Review – Trolls, Tragedy and Trivia

In this week’s edition, Ben Heck puts a very special hole in his shirt and a young man wins BlizzCon by out-nerding Blizzard.

Internet Troll Thrown in the Slammer

Colm Coss, a 36-year-old man from the UK, has won himself 18 weeks of jail time after posting hateful comments on websites dedication to Jade Goody, a British reality TV celebrity who died of cervical cancer last year, and John Paul Massey, a young boy who was mauled to death by a dog. At his sentence, the chairwoman of the bench said that he had preyed upon bereaved families for his own pleasure and had exhibited no remorse. (Link)

Woman Kills Baby, Blames FarmVille

22-year-old Alexandra V. Tobias has entered a plea of guilty to the charge of second degree murder after shaking her three-month-old baby to death in January because his crying had interrupted her while she was playing FarmVille. Tobias said that she shook her baby once, stopped to have a cigarette, and then shook him again. She added that he may have hit his head during one of the shaking bouts. (Link)

Come See the Winner of BlizzCon!

In most situations, knowing the really in-depth, nitty-gritty details about World of WarCraft is a little too specialist to ever be of much use. But at Blizzard’s annual convention, BlizzCon, it makes you king, especially when your knowledge outstrips that of the people that made the game. As you may have guessed, this is exactly what happened at this year’s BlizzCon, so hit the link for a video of the WoW mastermind doing his thing. (Link)

Dressing in Portals

There aren’t many garments that let you look behind your without having to turn your head, but super-talented console modder Ben Heck has made himself a special shirt that does exactly that. Inspired by the game Portal, Heck attached a camera to the back of the shirt and an LCD panel to the front and hooked the two together. The LCD displays whatever is behind the wearer, making it appear as if they have a portal in their chest. (Link)

Cataclysm: Twice the Size of Your Regular Expansion

While it you might not think it, rebuilding a world can be a pretty big job, a fact that Blizzard discovered while making the Cataclysm expansion for World of WarCraft. Speaking to our very own John Funk, Blizzard’s Rob Pardo said that Cataclysm actually had taken as much work as two regular expansions. Pardo also said that Blizzard had used the opportunity to get a handle on a lot of the game’s unnecessary complexity. (Link)