Great Week to be a Geek

It's a great week to be a geek. I mean, most weeks are good weeks to be geeks, you know, unless it's sports week in high school, but this one is particularly great.

Reason #1: New Doctor Who! TODAY! Seriously, guys. It does not get much better than that. It could be a terrible week otherwise, and it would STILL be a great time. It's been a few months since we've had our last dose of the Doctor, and I couldn't be more excited to have it back! After everything that's been happening in the show, I need to know what's next! And the 50th anniversary is coming up and THAT is looking like it's gonna be pretty fantastic.

Reason #2: New Game of Thrones! Season 3 starts TOMORROW! I managed to get myself all caught up for the new season, so bring it on! Now I can feel out with the best of 'em as the episodes air. I'm very interested in seeing what's gonna happen next. The season finale was pretty crazy.

Reason #3: The season finale of The Walking Dead! Also tomorrow! This one I'm not actually caught up on though, so I'll just have to assume it's super exciting. At least now I can watch the whole of season 3 all at once and not have to wait a week for a new one. But still, I need to make sure I'm caught up on this one for next season.

Sundays have been a pretty great TV night... Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, Once Upon A Time. Plus Revenge, and while it lasted, 666 Park Avenue. Anyway...

Reason #4: Actually not TV-related, but this week was pretty awesome for comics too. Age of Ultron #3 was out this week, and I've been pretty unsure about that one so far, but the last page was somewhat shocking and has definitely got me hooked now. Uncanny Avengers has really brought up its game this week and I definitely recommend giving it a read, however it would help if you've read Remender's run on Uncanny X-Force prior to reading this. New characters and the beginnings of some really interesting plot points.

Astonishing X-Men brought the next chapter of the X-Termination crossover which I'll admit has me wanting to pick up the last few issues of X-Treme X-Men and Age of Apocalypse so I don't miss any of the story. Young Avengers is really kicking it up, and I'm enjoying it a lot. Uncanny X-Force seems interesting but also pretty jumbled. The different points really need to come together and make some sense or I might get bored. Wolverine and the X-Men is trying hard, but I'm struggling to stay interested. The current arc just isn't doing it for me. And Ultimate Comics: Wolverine is turning out to be a pretty interesting mini-series. I'm enjoying the story, and the artist is great. Even had a fun little cameo by some familiar scientists.

Anyway, those are the main points of geeky interest from my week. What made your week great and/or geeky? Have a great Saturday! And Happy Easter!

Early Morning Rambling

Okay, so, I'm getting really tired of this winter crap. It just keeps dragging on. I know, I know: it's PG. Winter lasts until May some years. But come on! Can't we have spring on time for once? There's green grass and flowers in Vancouver already!

Anyway, that's my rant for this morning. What brought that on is just the fact that I bought this new Jawbone UP and I've been trying to be active and eat better, but it's really not going all that well. I probably shouldn't blame the weather, but I just find it so hard to motivate myself to do something in the cold. I should really just accept that I'm lazy and deal with that problem.

The one sorta-benefit of being lazy is that I've finally been catching up on some of my nerdy pastimes. I've gotten myself all caught up on Game of Thrones for the new season. Can't wait for that! I've also made a tiny bit of progress on reading Mark of Athena. That book is taking me forever to read. And there's no reason for it. It's a good book!

I finished off Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance a couple weeks ago and started playing Harvest Moon: A New Beginning. It's a pretty fun game, but I'm really not far in it yet. I haven't gotten to build anything yet, and that's the part I'm really looking forward to. I spent a large portion of the day yesterday playing Mass Effect 2. It's not my usual kinda game. I'm not very good at aiming, so I usually prefer games that auto-lock on to your enemies. But it's pretty fun anyway. I like story driven games, and this seems to have an interesting story so far.

I've been keeping up on my comics, but I can't remember what came out recently. I forgot to take my usual "this week's comics" photo for Instagram. I know I enjoyed them. There was All-New X-Men, Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man, Cable and X-Force, and New Avengers. I can't remember what else. Hmmm. I'm a failure of a comic book fan.

Whenever I go to Great White, which is where I buy my comics, I always go look at the Lego. I desperately want to get a few of the sets they've got. All of the Hobbit Lego sets they've got. And the Marvel and DC Superheroes sets. At the Lego store in Vancouver they have even more awesome sets. If I was rich, I'd have a whole big room dedicated entirely to Lego. It would be epic and amazing. But sadly, all I've got are my few little mini-sets.

Anyway! That's my rambling for this week. I will try to come up with something more focused and cohesive for next week. Happy Saturday!

Going UP in the World

I really have no idea what I wanna blog about today, but I already missed a week so I'm gonna just have to go for it and see what happens. Hang on for the ride! ...Or just keep reading...

Last weekend when I was in Vancouver (yet again), I visited my good buddy Nicole at the Apple Store, and she introduced me to the Jawbone UP! Remember last year at Comic-Con when I got that Nike+ FuelBand and was all excited about it? Well this is kinda like that, but BETTER!

Much like the FuelBand, it's a band you wear on your wrist that measures your movements and tells you how many steps you've taken and works that out into calories burned and makes a pretty little graph in the app that goes with it. So far it sounds pretty familiar. Nothing too terribly exciting right? Might as well just have a step counter. But WAIT! There's MORE!

You also wear this thing to bed and switch it into sleep mode, and it somehow records your sleep! When you wake up in the morning and sync the band to your iPhone app, it pops up with a cool little graph showing you how long you slept, how much of your sleep was light versus deep, and it shows you how many times you woke up. I'm not sure how it works, but it's really cool.

The app also lets you input your other activities, like biking, cross training, weights, and a bunch of other things, and then tells you approximately how many calories you burned. You can also put in all of the food you've eaten throughout the day. This one is a really big thing for me. You put in the nutritional information of what you ate and it compares it to what you should be eating, and then I feel guilty for having way too much sodium and not enough fibre, or whatever. Did you know that EVERYTHING you eat has sodium? Even water.

One of the really interesting features of the band is the "smart alarm." I mentioned before that it somehow can tell when you are in a light sleep versus a deep sleep. Well, you can set an alarm on the band with a window to wake you up. You can set it to wake you at 7:30am, with a window of half an hour. The band will then find a point between 7am and 7:30am when you are in a light sleep stage and wake you up then so you'll be less groggy. The band vibrates on your wrist, which worried me at first, but it's not a bad way to be woken up. It's pretty interesting. It seems pretty effective, but me being me, I still set an alarm on my phone. And my alarm clock. But maybe I'll change that after I test it a little longer.

There are a lot of fun features in the UP app. You can add your friends to your "team" and see their activities and comment on them, cheer each other on. I've got a few friends on it, and I love that. It's nice to have friendly encouragement. You can also look at a timeline of everything you've done since you started using the UP band, and you can compare your sleep and activity on different graphs. And the app pops up with helpful tips and information based on your activities.

All in all, I'm really enjoying the Jawbone UP so far. It's pushing me to get more active again, and that's something I need. Plus it's fun AND pretty. And I think you should get one.