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.

Flaming Bear Powers?

This week was a really great week for comics. After a somewhat disappointing week last week, it was pretty exciting that I had seven new issues and I enjoyed nearly all of them. So just for fun, I'm gonna give you a quick recap of them all. First up we had...

Ultimate Comics: X-Men #23
This is one title I've been struggling with a bit lately. It's become more of a political book and less about the X-Men. I understand that they've gone a new direction with the Ultimate Marvel line, but it's just been somewhat boring for a while now. This issue was a little different. It was sort of a background story with a bit of recap. Nothing terribly exciting happened, but it seemed like it might be setting something else up. I'm hoping this title gets some action going on soon, or I might have to drop it. Next up, we have...

Astonishing X-Men #59
This is another title I'm starting to struggle with a bit. On the one hand, I love the characters. Wolverine, Northstar, Gambit, Karma, Iceman, and Cecelia Reyes are all very good characters. But for some reason I'm just not caring very much. I think part of my problem that the relationship of Northstar and his new husband Kyle is so much the focus that it seems like all we're ever hearing about is their whiny problems. I'm all for relationships in comics, and the fact that it's a gay couple should be cool considering I'm gay myself, but enough is enough. I want some astonishing x-heroics, not astonishingly boring x-drama. Either Kyle is okay with being married to a super hero, or he's not and they can break up. Get it over with. Anyway... Now on to...

Uncanny Avengers #4
Now things start to get better. This was the first new Marvel NOW! title to come out after AvX, but it's also been the slowest one. And by that I mean release-wise, not pace-wise. It seems to keep getting delayed. But it's really good so far! The first story arc just wrapped up, and we've seen the Red Skull become an even bigger threat than he ever was before. A new team of Avengers made up of classics as well as X-Men has formed, and they've set things up to make this a pretty exciting book. The writing is good, the art is good, and the final page was a very big WTF moment that I can't wait to see play out. From there, we move on to...

Young Avengers #2
The end of the first issue was a bit of a shocker, and seeing things play out from there has been really fun. This book worried me a bit at first 'cause it's just a little bit hipster, but this issue really turned that around. The art is great, and I can't wait to see where this story is going. And they way artist and writer are working together on this is creating a really fantastic book. This is a shining example of a gay couple in a super hero book, as well. Wiccan and Hulkling make things effortless. It's not a big deal that they are a couple, it's just how it is. The story doesn't have to keep referencing it to remind people like a certain other comic I mentioned earlier. It's only two issues in and I really look forward to this one continuing on. Speaking of continuing on...

Avengers Arena #5
I really love this book. I think I've brought it up a couple times in this blog already. It's Avengers Academy meets the Hunger Games. And it's just so good! Every issue is full of those WTF moments that keep you reading on, and the characters are so interesting. Every issue picks a character to focus on, and it fluctuates between the present events in Arcade's new Murder World, and flashbacks of their lives prior to being captured. Much like Lost. And no one died this issue! That's my only problem with this is that the characters are all very cool, but they're probably going to die before the story is done. Not cool. So then...

Uncanny X-Force #2
I love Betsy Braddock. I'm not sure why. Something about a sexy purple haired psychic ninja just does it for me. And this is really her book. Storm, Puck, Fantomex and Cluster, Spiral and the new mutant girl, Ginny. And the reintroduction of Bishop with crazy flaming bear powers. I'm really not sure what's going on with this book yet, but it's fun to read so far, and I can't wait for the next issue. Finally...

Uncanny X-Men #2
I saved the best for last. I'm loving this book. From the amazing art by Chris Bachalo, to the great writing by Brian Michael Bendis, this book is a lot of fun. We've got Cyclops, Emma Frost, Magik, and Magneto, all dealing with broken mutant powers and being on the wrong side of the law. They've recruited some of the new mutants resulting from the end of AvX, and they're trying to start the mutant revolution. If you haven't already picked this one up, I recommend it.

So that was my comic book haul for this week. I may not have a future in comic book reviewing, but it was pretty fun talking about them anyway.

It's funny, anything comic-book or sci fi related reminds me of Comic-Con lately, and how extremely excited I am for that this year. Andrea has to put up with random text messages from me being all "I'M SO EXCITED!" But luckily she is as well so it's not so weird. Anyway! Happy Saturday! May all your weekend plans be merry!

This Went a Very Different Direction Than Intended...

So, this week I was gonna blog about the new comics I picked up on Wednesday, but when I tried to do that, I realized I barely remember reading them. That either means they weren't all that exciting, or I was too tired to really take it in when I read them in bed that night.

So, what else can I blog about? I have been watching Game of Thrones finally. I started a few weeks ago. I finally signed up for HBO and I've been recording the second season as it aires, and I managed to find the first season online. I'm only two episodes in to season two right now, but it's very good.

What I've learned so far: the Starks are fairly naive which gets them in trouble, the Lannisters are pretty awful, and someone really needs to kill Joffrey, and there's a lot of cool mythology that needs to be explored. White walkers? Dragons? The weird stuff going on with Bran? I'm pretty excited to continue on with it and see what happens.

While on the subject of good TV, I have also signed up for AMC, which means I can finally watch new episodes of the Walking Dead! Sadly, though, I had set up the first eight episodes of season three to record when they had the marathon the other day leading up to the ninth episode, but my PVR decided to die that weekend while I was in Vancouver, so none of it recorded. Which means finding it online. Which isn't difficult, just annoying when I could be watching it in HD on my TV.

In other news, last weekend when Comic-Con badges went on sale, I had way better luck than I thought possible! I was standing there at work waiting for the link to go live on the badge sales website at 9am, which also happens to be when the bank opens. Convenient right? Luckily, it wasn't busy, so when the link went live, I clicked it both on my work computer and on my phone. And then sat there and waited. It was about 5 minutes of loading before I got a weird error message. So I refreshed, which you're not supposed to do. No luck still. So I clicked on the address bar and hit enter, and it started loading again. All wasn't lost! And finally when I got into the waiting room, I was number 147 in line! Apparently I was lucky, 'cause at the same time my phone popped up with me sitting 6489th or so in line.

Two minutes later, the waiting room let me through and I was on my way! I managed to secure 4-Day with Preview Night badges for myself AND Andrea! So we are on our way to Comic-Con and getting the full experience once again! I really can't wait to start planning our trip! Andrea and I were talking about last year and our odd theme of accidentally stalking Chris Hardwick the whole trip, and how we're curious what this year's theme will be. Hopefully something fun and exciting again!

The other thing this has made me think about is that I really need to eat my ass in gear saving money! I still owe money from last year's trip, plus my oddly expensive summer, so it's time to really start sticking to a strict budget so I can afford flights and whatnot. I already have US cash saved for spending money, but the other expenses need to be prepared for.

I am really excited right now! And it's still five months away! That's not all that far away though... Oh boy. Anyway! Time to go to work! Have a great weekend!

A Very un-Craig-like Feat

So, yesterday was a pretty amazing day for me. Why, you ask? Well, I'll tell you. I finished a video game. But wait! That's not all. I finished... wait for it... TWO video games! Wow, right?!

I rarely finish a video game. It's pretty rare. Most games I get to a certain point and just... stop. Quite often it's at that point right before you head into the final level/boss/whatever and it's your last chance to do all of the sidequests and collect all of the collectibles (you know me and collectibles).

Yesterday I managed to get through the last chapter of Jurassic Park: The Game. There is replayability in this one 'cause there are still a bunch of achievements to unlock, but this game frustrated me so much that I probably won't make any attempts at that anytime soon. Seriously, I am so terrible at reflexive button presses, and that's the whole base of the gameplay, so I relied more on repeatedly dying and memorizing the button prompts. My roommate probably got a little tired of my swearing constantly while I played this game, so it's being retired.

The other game I finally beat was Paper Mario: Sticker Star for the Nintendo 3DS. I started this game a while ago and, as usual, quit playing it right at the final boss fight. Although not for the usual reasons. I had actually managed to collect all of the stickers and find all the HP hearts and hidden Luigis and all that stuff. I just got wiped out in the final boss fight and got all discouraged. I knew I needed to prepare better, but I didn't wanna go to all of the trouble finding better stickers and whatnot, so I just quit for a while. I picked it up a while ago and did all the prep work, but didn't wanna try the battle again. But last night I was already on a roll with JP, so I gave it a shot, and sure enough, I managed to beat Bowser!

I loved Paper Mario: Sticker Star. I was so afraid that I'd hate it with the big changes they made to the gameplay mechanics, but it's my favourite game for the 3DS so far. It's cute and fun, lots to do and collect, and challenging to figure out the right strategy for each battle. It's overall a very charming game that I'd recommend to any 3DS owner.

So now that I've beaten those two, it's time to refocus my video gaming efforts! I'm thinking I'll push to finish off Lego Batman ('cause I STILL haven't finished that one), and I'll try to get into Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance. I tried playing KH:3D when it came out, but for some reason I had a lot of trouble really getting into it. It's odd 'cause it's one of my favourite video game franchises.

Anyway! That's all I've got for this week. Time for work! Oh! AND Comic-Con badges go on sale today! Wish me luck in getting mine! (And good luck to you if you're trying today too!)

Do-you-think-he-saurus Rex

So, I'm not sure what's going on, but I seem to have a bit of a dinosaur obsession right now. Specifically with Jurassic Park. I've always really liked dinosaurs. Not enough to study them or know the difference between a brontosaurus and a brachiosaurus. But enough that I love the Jurassic Park movies, and I was devastated by the cancellation of Terra Nova.

For years now I've had the habit of occasionally doing a google search for Jurassic Park 4. And for years there have been little bits of news here and there that its coming, but never anything concrete. Just that there's a producer attached, and a writer is working on it, and then a new writer has taken over, and various bits of useless information.

But the wait is over! Sorta. There is finally a release date, and things are happening! June 13, 2014 is the date to remember. It's a ways off yet, and there's no director yet, but it's gonna happen! I'm seriously excited for this! I want to know what direction they'll take with it, which characters they'll bring back (if any), what dinosaurs will show up, where it'll take place, all that stuff!

I've also gotten somewhat obsessed with the Jurassic Park Builder app on the iPhone/iPad. It's one of those freemium games, where the app is free, and you don't HAVE to pay any money to use it, but to speed up building times and all that, you need to use you cash, which you can earn in game or buy for real money. Anyway! I've gotten obsessed with it. I keep expanding my park, and getting new dinosaurs, evolving them, levelling them up, and completing quests set forth by the characters from the movies. It's a very simple game, but it's a little bit addictive. I now split my time pretty evenly between that and DragonVale, my other favourite iOS app.

My other new obsession is Jurassic Park: The Game for Xbox 360. My friend Sylvie bought it for me the other day as my birthday present, and I've already played through most of it, but you know me! I'll have to play through again to try to unlock all of the achievements. It's a relatively simple game. You mostly just follow along the story, but it gives you options for dialogue and let's you search for what you have to do. And when action sequences come up you've got to hit various times commands to make it through the scene. Quite often these are dinosaur encounters, and I've already lost count on how many times I've missed commands and ended up dead. I'm starting to feel guilty at how many times I've had to listen to the characters cry over each other's deaths.

The game is pretty fun, and it gives a lot more backstory on the island, plus it follows up on the lost barbasol can with the dinosaur embryos hidden in it. None of the movie characters really appear, but there are plenty of references to the movie, and early on you come across a lot of familiar locations where the movie characters have clearly JUST vacated the scene.

So that's it, the past, present, and future of Jurassic Park (not necessarily in that order). I'm thinking after work today is going to involve some more escaping from dinosaurs. Oh! Last I played I had just gotten to a part with a giant underwater dinosaur! Gotta see what happens with that! Until then... work...