Beyond My Geeky Life

So this one is going to start with 'In my day' and make me feel like an old man, just talking even if no one is listening. Here we go... In my day they had prizes in every kid cereal.  Most everyone I knew picked their cereal based on the prizes. I know I did. Prizes were the number one aspect in the choice, then you worried about if you actually liked the cereal or not. I still have all manner of cereal prizes from when I was kid. Yes, I am horrible when it comes to getting rid of things. Of course that means I have a really cool collection of such prizes covering all level of toys. Over the last few decades the idea of prizes in cereal boxes have faded to the occasional promotion for some reason. It makes picking your cereal far less exciting. So when they do a prize promotion, it is noticeable. Movie promotions and such are the common way to go and can have a better level of prize than there used to be. A recent one they just did was for Star Wars Character pens.

We let our boys choose the movie today.  It was between Catching Fire and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. It was a hard choice, but the boys picked The Hobbit. The movie itself was enjoyable, although the forced love story slowed things down and got really boring, feeling 100% out of place. It doesn't help that it was one of the many added scenes/stroylines that are not in the book. One of the most obvious isseus with the Hobbit movies is this is Peter Jackson's ego gone wild. With the success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, it seems like Jackson really believes himself to be above it all.  We are getting a trilogy from him that should never have been a trilogy. I understood going for two films, and that might have worked just fine. The story from the book could have been told in one film and expanded nicely for two. But here we are getting three.  With the end of the second, we are close to the end of the book.  So what are they going to do to flush out another th

Warning, I am not going to try to be spoiler free in this post.  So if you have not seen The Time of The Doctor and are worried about spoilers, stop reading now. Not sure where to start with this year's Doctor Who Christmas special, The Time of The Doctor.  For eight years now we have had a Doctor Who Christmas special, and now that we here in America get to see them on Christmas, it makes for an enjoyable end to the holiday. The Time of The Doctor was Matt Smith's final as the active Doctor.  Yet for some reason it lacked the emotional impact of the last two departures, which includes Christopher Eccleston, who we only got one season to get to know. We have had so many emotional moments of actors leaving the series, so we know what it should be like.  There is something missing from The Time of The Doctor denying us the full emotional ride that should have been there. We had a lot of throw away scenes that did nothing for the story, such as the Doctor needing to be naked

This year Christmas in our house has been strongly Doctor Who themed. I got two Doctor Who t-shirts, a classic Doctor adventure on DVD, a Doctor Who character encyclopedia and a random titans vinyl figure that ended up being the 8th Doctor. My boys got a TARDIS that makes all the noises from the show, a TARDIS nightlight, a TARDIS pillowcase, a build your own sonic screwdriver set, they each got a random titans vinyl figure (One got the 11th Doctor and the other got a Silence). There were plenty of other Geeky gifts, but Doctor Who undeniably dominated the gifts this year.

Twenty-Seven hours until the beginning of the end of the 11th Doctor. Since BBC America started airing Doctor Who we have been getting the new episodes the same night as they air on BBC One back in the UK, instead of waiting months for them.  That means that we get the Christmas Specials on Christmas Day, making it so Christmas Day ends with a nice little gift. This year's the episode is 'The Time of The Doctor' and will be the end for the 11th Doctor. Supposedly we will also get answers to just about all the big questions still out there from the last few years. We'll see how that goes. We will also be introduced to the 12th Doctor, although most likely this will not give us much of an idea of the character.  We'll have to wait till fall next year for the new season to start up to see just what the new Doctor is like. It is going to be a long wait.

Looking through the displays of models at Wal-Mart I picked up the general Lee from The Dukes of Hazzard.  The pictures of the model were very clearly missing some, as were the obviously photo-shopped promotional pic from the TV show. They have removed the Confederate flag from the roof of the car.  Not really sure how I feel about that. I understand the reasoning behind removing it, yet it feels odd for it to not be there. As a child when the show was on I never understood what the flag was. It meant nothing to me, just a design. I don't remember the show beign racist, at least not directly as I do not remember there being any black characters in the show ever.  Of course the show aired when I was too young to understand racism, so if it was there or now I would not have noticed at that point. I doubt they ever dealt with racism one way or the other, as that was just not a theme you dealt with back then. It seemed that Americans for the most part back then didn't think

Just found out about http://www.pleygo.com .  It is basically Netflix, but for LEGO building blocks.  I'm really not sure what I think about this service. Not fully sure what the point of renting LEGO sets is.  It seems a little counter to the greater idea of what LEGOs are all about. The service works just like Netflix.  You make a list of the LEGO sets you want and you get them one at a time after you send the last set back.  They claim to sterilize the blocks in-between shipping them out, although I picture that would fade the painted on aspects or ruin the stickers that some of the pieces have. Part of the fun of LEGOs is to collect the sets and reuse the pieces to build new things. Unless you plan it out ahead of time, no hope of doing that with pleygo.  When I do mess with LEGOs, it is unplanned for the most part. I also like having a great deal of various pieces available when I want to mess around with them. I also like to collect the mini figures and find that to be

Today I finished rereading The Stars My Destination.  As it turns out today would been Alfred Bester's 100 birthday, the author of the book.  Interesting coincidence there. For those of you not aware, The Star My Destination is considered by many to be the greatest Sci-Fi novel of all time.  There is a good reason for this.  It is an incredible novel. The first time I read it about fifteen years ago or so, I enjoyed it then.  I remember how intense it was and enjoyed the fact that you didn't know where the story was going next. It was a wild trip. A good read. Rereading was an even better experience. I saw it in a different light this time, as my sensibilities have changed. I saw the commentary that was clearly there, especially once you get to the end and the mortality question is straight our presented unedited. So much of what was said in the conclusion of the story very much applies to what we are seeing today with the privileged and their priorities. It is timeless i

A collection of my writings, My delusions of Godhood can be found in the following formats- Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/My-Delusions-Godhood-Collection-Fictions/dp/1460996410/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1332009490&sr=8-3 Kindle: ( http://www.amazon.com/My-Delusions-of-Godhood-ebook/dp/B004WOVZ3Q/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1303161244&sr=8-1 ) My story 'Enforcers: All in a Day's Work' can be found in in Tales of the Talisman  ( http://www.talesofthetalisman.com/ ) Vol. 7 Issue 3 ( http://www.amazon.com/Tales-Talisman-7-3-Carol-Hightshoe/dp/1885093616/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_4 ) My story 'A Night at the Club' will be Volume 9 Issue 4 coming out spring of 2014. My story "Naked Diplomacy" can be found in Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 9 ( http://sdpbookstore.com/anthologies.htm ) My story "Brew of the Gods" can be found in Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 6 ( http://sdpbookstore.com/anthologies.htm ) My story 'All  Things Being Equal&#

I recently finished Ray Bradbury's Sci-Fi novel The Martian Chronicles. While it might not be the worst book I have ever read, it is beyond a doubt in the bottom ten and is not even close to being worthy of the modifier 'classic' that seems to be attached to it. Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles is pure crap.  The few interesting concepts, and there not enough to make it worth suffering through the garbage that is the rest of the novel, are not well presented or explored as much as they deserve. I am not making these criticisms on the basics of the science in the novel. I very much understand the style of story telling fits in just fine with the age in which this was written.  I can appreciate classic sci-fi written in that era and not be bothered by ideas of a Mars perfectly inhabitable by humans or the simplistic ideas of interplanetary travel. When you get a good writer like Heinlein, none of that matters as the rest of the aspects are enjoyable and work toge

As if the Subway and Cover Girls promotions for Hunger Games: Catching Fire from my earlier blog on the subject did not seem out of place and way off the ball enough, I saw these today at a grocery store http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4272038453339362685#editor/target=post;postID=3453757492217523926 . So they made 12 candy bars, each themed to a specific district with truly unique flavors (beef jerky + smoked mesquite + 41% cacao milk chocolate for district 10). The idea of the candy bars in and of itself is not what gets to me, it is the price. The ones I saw at the store were $5 a piece and this complete set of 12 is $65. A little pricy just for candy bars. At such a price point, it puts the candy bars into the realm of being an indulgence for the upper tier. It is an impressive looking gift set, but it really gets me that such merchandising so goes against the concepts promoted in the books.

I have a new reason to win the lottery now.  I really would love to add this piece to my collection: http://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/harrison-ford-han-solo-dl-44-blaster-from-star-379-c-44e307f3bc Yes, the screen used DL-44 Blaster belonging to Han Solo, as seen in The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi.  No bids yet and the starting bid is only $200,000. Now that would be one awesome conversation piece to have in your house.

There is one area of Star Wars Episode 7 that is clearly headed in the right direction. They have built a full sized Millennium Falcon. http://geektyrant.com/news/full-scale-millennium-falcon-completed-for-star-wars-episode-vii It is clear that falcon is needed.  It is a truly iconic ship. Lucas screwed up in the prequels by not creating a new ship that stood out.  Now it would be next to impossible to create a ship as cool as the Millennium Falcon, which as just too perfect and filled with personalty.  But ti felt as if Lucas didn't even try. The Millennium Falcon itself is a strong character, stronger than many characters in the prequels.    The fact that the ship is a character and the usefulness of ships as characters is something I hope is something that Adrams understands. It is a good sign that this was a priority for Abrams.

On Monday evening the family was part of the huge crowd of Whovians who got out to the theaters and saw The Day of the Doctor in 3-D on the big screen.  I have to say it was an awesome experience. The program itself was truly something special for Doctor Who fans. The story, the cast, all the little extras throughout and so much more came together for a great television experience. To see it in 3-D in a theater with a crowd took it to a new level. We got treated to a couple special extras before hand. The pre-show was trivia from Doctor Who over the years, which I actually knew all of. There was the standard theater announcement about cell phone, noise and recording devices given to us by Strax in his unique style.  It was very memorable and should be used as a regular opening for movies. Then we had Matt Smith and David Tennant get us started off with our 3-D experience which included a warning about 'The chin' and a test using your 3-D glasses to see if someone next

So if you have seen 'The Day of the Doctor', which is something no one should miss, then you know just how awesome it was to see so many connections to the past Doctors. With that final out of story scene with all 12 Doctors standing together even if only three of them actually were the real thing... I talked about this a few posts back, but Peter Davidson, the fifth Doctor, put together a special little film titled 'The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot'. It is well worth watching and fits in with the 50th anniversary celebration. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01m3kfy While the story focuses on Peter Davidson, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy, there were just so many cameos of people connected with Doctor Who.  In some ways it was a perfect way to wrap up the 50th anniversary. We get to see John Barrowman hanging with the classic era Doctors and a shocking revelation about him that may change the way you view the man. Davidson's daughter (Tennant's wife), Ge

I am not going to spoil it for those few poor souls who have not had the opportunity to enjoy 'The Day of The Doctor'. It is full of a lot of surprises. It starts off by telling the story from three different points of views, which I thought was great.  Then the three storylines merge and it just gets better from there. A lot of play on various plot lines from past episodes.  We get so many classic references, making it clear that all that has come before is still relevant. We get Moffet's timey-wimey  play on a story big time here, but it works better than ever this time around. We also get a great, simple explanation as to why the Doctor does not remember the meetings with his other selves and why the actions of the episode would not rewrite the Doctor's timeline.  It was a highly needed throw away line that was well past time to add. I'll wait a day or so before I write a more solid review of the special.  Might wait until after I get to see it in the

The day is finally here and we are down to the last few hours of waiting. This is about as big of a Sci-Fi event as ti gets.  The special will be simultaneously broadcast around the world to what I remember being over 60 countries originally, but I saw an article that said over 80 now. Google is all about Dr. Who.  Go to their site and check it out. I've yet to play the interactive game, but the graphics are fun. My boys are wide awake and getting in costume, even though it is just going to be us watching the special here at home. Doctor Who is bigger than ever all around the world.  It is a good time to be a Whovian.

Yes, I am about to write a post that is not at all about Doctor Who. Just finished watching the end of Book 2 of The Legend of Korra.  Great series.  They did a remarkable job of with the last few episodes of showing connections and even some parallels to events that Aang was involved in his adventures.  It made for a conclusion that changed that world in many ways. I have enjoyed seeing the progress of the world between the two series and then to have these new changes that really switch things up even more. It is a powerful thing to have a world that can evolve with the story. There are still two more 'books' to go with Korra.  I am looking forwards to seeing where they take this world. It has just been a highly enjoyable ride so for. With tomorrow being the big 50th special and right now The Adventure in Space and Time on BBCAmerica, there will be more posts on Doctor Who coming.

One thought that helped me feel good with work today was that we are down to the last day before the big wait is over. There is a lot to live up to for this one special. Tons of stuff out there right now. Here is Peter Jackson talking about his favorite episode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Wb3yzCJ9Xg There are a greta deal of such clips out there now of various celebrities wishing Doctor Who happy birthday. Let's hope 'The Day of the Doctor' lives up to the hype.

There really is no end at all to the news about all the Doctor Who 50th anniversary surprises. So here is yet another piece of Doctor Who news. http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2013-11-21/doctor-who-50th-peter-davison-set-to-bring-back-classic-doctors-with-comedy-mini-episode So it looks like all the classic Doctor will be involved in the celebrations.  My big problems that the special is to air in the UK, with no mention of a US air time. I may have to wait a little while until it ends up on youtube.com to see it. Just more to look forwards to.

There is no doubt this is the week of Doctor Who. There are preview clips being released all over the place.  Most of them are real short, so we only have a few minute of actual footage and little clue as to the bigger story. These clips are from various UK talk shows that have been promoting the special. Here is one. http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/doctor-who-video-david-tennant-2804379 Then there is the new mini episode 'The Last Day'.  My prediction of it forma  few days ago was wrong. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x17f1y0_50th-mini-epsode-the-last-day_shortfilms It is however a very interesting little piece that might give away some of what 'The Day of the Doctor' might revolve around.  We get to see the Time Lord city Arcadia, which we know the Doctor was there when it fell. Should be interesting to see how that plays into the bigger storyline. Just 3 days to go.

Possible spoilers for the Dr, Who 50th anniversary special ahead. Proceed with caution. So if you are still reading, then be ready for a huge announcement that appears to not be authorized by the BBC. In a recent interview Tom Baker straight out said he was going to be in 'The Day of the Doctor'. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-sagers/exclusive-tom-baker-to-ap_b_4295773.html That really leaves the it open for the possibility of any of the other past Doctors to be in it. I am sure there are sill many surprises yet to come. Just four more days to go.

Everyday this week BBC America is running a Dr Who marathon as we get ready for the big 50th anniversary events. That means that I should be able to find something worth watching all week long. There just seems so much going on for the celebration. Every time we turn around there is another announcement being made. Little by little we should be getting sneak peeks from http://www.doctorwhosavetheday.com/#/home as people use the #savetheday to build the TARDIS. Check out the website for that to make any sense. There is another mini-episode that is known to exist titled 'Last Day'. It will be on the DVD release of 'The Day of the Doctor', if we don't get it released before hand.  Nothing is known as to what it will be about.  My personal guess is that it will be the end of the Time War and we'll get to see our missing regeneration, giving Eccleston his 50th anniversary guest appearance that he has denied doing. It would so fit with everything else we have s

In this house we do not really have much in the way of 'common' boardgames. We have literally hundreds of boardgames though. Wish I had the time to play them more often, but we get them out when we can. It would take way too long to list them all, but we have a wide verity of them that cover all manner of themes and styles. They range from real simple pure luck games that got picked up more for other reasons than game design all the way to heavy strategy games that can take up a full afternoon. As for the more common boardgames, even there they are not common version. Monopoly, Risk, Life, Stratego, we have, but they are Star Wars editions of the games. Instead of Clue we have Mystery at Hogwarts, a Harry Potter version of the game. Our Uno game is also Harry Potter themed. A few weeks ago we picked up an Indiana Jones themed Life game at a thrift store for $4. Finally got a chance to play it tonight. It was not much at all like any other versions of Life I have played. It

The Science channel is doing their regular Firefly marathon that they seem to do fairly often. Undeniably one of the top ten greatest sci-fi programs ever. You do not get tired of seeing the episodes over and over again.  They are just that perfectly done. I won't go into a rant here about the show's unjustified cancellation.  Although I will give you this, at Myths and Legends Con someone sang 'What does the fox say' and local author Quincy J. Allen replied 'We're canceling Firefly'. So the episode we started on today was Jaynestown, so now I have the song in my head. Most likely it'll be in my head for the day.

Yes I am still on a Doctor Who ride and most likely will be for the next week or so as we get to the 50th anniversary. So today there was a big events all over the USA called Geeks Who Drink, Don't Blink: A Doctor Who Quiz. Well, a big event for Doctor Who fans.  I was recruited into a team here in the Denver area.  My youngest son joined the team as well and I can proudly say he did help us a couple of times. There were 49 teams total at our location.  For the first two scoring breaks when they announced the ranking, we finished in the top half of the teams. They didn't give specific placing at that time outside of the top three. The just read the teams off in order from last to first, so it was a little hard to hear just where we were at. In the final scoring we ranked 9th place. While we won no prizes, it still felt good to rank that high.  To get in the top ten out of so many teams was a cool achievement. So I am feeling good tonight.

In the build up to the big 50th anniversary special, we get a second day of Doctor Who teasing. Today the BBC put out there a clip from 'The Day of the Doctor' that is going to be shown as part of the Children in Need event for this year. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WLENWYVpYg In ends with David Tennant's Doctor in a fez. Should be something to see what else the BBC puts out there over this next week as we get ready for the big day.

I have now watched 'The Night of The Doctor' several times today. Might have watched it more if I hadn't had to waste my time with a job. There is just a lot to it that really gets one thinking. First off it looks like Steven Moffat may be setting us up for some future stories with reintroducing the Sisterhood of Karn, who would have knowledge as to how to extend a Time Lord's regenerations, which fits with some of what Moffat has hinted at. Moffat has shown he likes to set things up well ahead of time, so this all fits his normal patterns. Now Paul McGann has said repeatedly he was not asked to be in the 50th anniversary special, but was willing to be included. Well he now has been included, in a manner of speaking. So that got me thinking about all the other past Doctors who have said they are not going to be in the 50th anniversary special.  It does not mean they will not be involved in it in a similar manner. Maybe we'll get the missing regeneration of Hurt

I have started the day in about the most awesome manner possible.  I just watched 'The Night of the Doctor'. If you can't tell by the title of this post, I thought it was fairly good. 'The Night of the Doctor' is a Doctor Who short prequels to the 50th anniversary special that is to air on the 23rd. Well we get to see Paul McGann as The Doctor during the Time War... And that is something we've been waiting for. We also get to see how the John Hurt Doctor comes to be. You can see it at the link bellow. A must for any Doctor Who fan. http://www.cultbox.co.uk/news/headlines/8436-doctor-who-50th-john-hurts-character-name-confirmed The site gives a spoiler warning, but I felt that was a little much as the short really does not spoil anything.  It adds to the over all story and creates excitement.  It is a great build up to the 50th anniversary special.

I loved The Hunger Games. The books are just incredible on so many levels, so very well written.  The movie was great and I am looking forwards to seeing Catching Fire. Now I understand that the big blockbuster movies often get various promotional campaigns going, but what I have seen so far with the Catching Fire cross promotions is really bad. After how poorly the cross promotion connecting Dr. Seuss' The Lorax to SUVs went over, you would think these Hollywood people might stop to think before they make some of these deals. The first one is the big Subway Sandwich promotions. I very much see the oddness of a fastfood restaurant promoting a movie that focuses on the harshness of people living on the edge of starvation. I will admit this is not too crazy, just feels inappropriate somehow.  At some point a fastfood franchise was going to pick up the rights to do something with The Hunger Games sooner or later.  That is just the way of things. If that were it, then I would not hav

I figured I would start my new geek based blog off with my advice to J.J.Abrams and everyone else involved in creating the new Star Wars trilogy. Now if they really want to do it right, one of the most important things will be to repair the damage done by the prequels.  Lucas really screwed the Star Wars universe over with a lot of junk that took away from all the was great about the original trilogy. Episode 7 should start off giving the fans what they really want more than anything else. Open the movie on the ambassadorial ship from Naboo being attacked and destroyed. It needs to be made clear that the ambassador on the hip is none other than Jar-Jar Binks and we get to clearly see him caught in the explosion as the ship goes down. Make sure there is no doubt at all that the great mistake that was Jar-Jar has been corrected and there is no possibility of that character making any appearances in any future Star Wars storylines. Regretfully we cannot erase Jar-Jar, but at least we