Beyond My Geeky Life

Through a special Lego on-line program called Lego Cuusoo ( http://lego.cuusoo.com/ ) we have gotten a Back to the Future Lego set and will be getting Ghostbuster Legos in the very near future. The way Cuusoo works is that people propose ideas for possible Lego set and if the idea gets 10,000 supporters, it is up for consideration by the Lego company. If the project is doable, then it can move on to being an actually produced Lego set. Very often the reason for a project to get rejected is due to licensing rights. Well up until recently the idea of Legos doing any Doctor Who themed set was an impossibility due to the company Character Options owning the right to Doctor Who toys and producing a Lego like line of Doctor Who building toys. Lego has just made an anoouncemnt that something has changed. http://www.doctorwhotv.co.uk/lego-doctor-who-one-step-closer-61298.htm No actual information as to why they are now allowed to consider Doctor Who themes, as it seems that Character Opt

We have now gone to both years of The Denver Comic Con and have our tickets purchased for this year's DCC with our tax refund. Up until this point I had not been overly excited about any of the guest. Yes, Bruce Campbell is cool and I will try to meet him if the line for him is reasonable. But for whatever reason him being there did not overly excite me. For a little while now they have been hinting at there being a big time Doctor Who guest and my family has been patiently waiting to learn who it will be. Today they announced that we will be getting Peter Davison, the Fifth Doctor. As it turns out my oldest boy is working on a Fifth Doctor's costume, so that is great timing. I just told him about the announcement and he was very excited. Last year we got to meet Colin Baker, the Sixth Doctor. It seems that DCC is going to keep things going strong for us. Now there is still time for them to announce more guests, as we have a few months before the convention so there is

About a year ago I started up this little video blog on youtube I called Opening the Package. I did it for a little while with my boys, but then I got sidetracked and left it alone for a while.  Jump to a few weeks ago when I felt like doing a few new episodes for it and now I have started it up again. Over the course of the episodes I have talked about a wide verity of action figures and toys. I express my views on toy collecting, the good and the bad. I give reviews on various pieces I have picked up. And I open and play with the toys. If you have an interest in toy collecting and wish to see my ideas on it, go check it out http://www.youtube.com/user/OpeningThePackage?feature=watch Some of them are a little long. I try real hard to keep them shorter, but I have a bad habit of loosing track of time when talking about something I am that passionate about. I'll keep doing these every so often as long as I am having fun doing them.

A little over a year ago the long running comic book The Amazing Spider-man reached issue 700. Marvel comics decided to make it a huge milestone by having Peter Parker die, trapped in Dr. Octopus's failing body. Otto Octavious had taken control of Peter Parker's body. In the end Octavious declared himself The Superior Spider-man, which was the title of the replacement series.  Basically you have Peter Parker's body being controlled by Dr. Octopus, except part of Peter is still in there trying to keep Octavious in check. I felt from the get go that this was a bad idea. I've read the first issue of The Superior Spider-man and was unimpressed with it. It just was not Spider-man and was not going to work. Now Marvel has come out and announced that Superior Spider-man is coming to an end and they will be starting The Amazing Spider-man up again. http://herocomplex.latimes.com/comics/peter-parker-to-return-in-new-amazing-spider-man-no-1-by-dan-slott For me there is no

This morning the first trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy was released. For those of you unfamiliar with who these Guardians are, they are group of heroes from Marvel comics who travel around the galaxy. The original Guardians of the Galaxy were from a thousand years in the future, but this movie is based on the newer incarnation of the team that is based in the present. Check out the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7yOuhI1dzU&feature=youtu.be This is an interesting addition to the Marvel film universe, as it does not right away seem to fit in with the basic Avengers theme. It slightly crosses over with the Thor movies (I know that The Collector was in both Thor: Dark World and will be in GotG) and may end up with some connections to the end of the first Avengers movie. I don't see anything in this movie fitting in with Avenger: Age of Ultron, which is the move all the other  movies are building up to. My present theory is that they are putting all the pie

Originally we had not planned on getting out and seeing The Lego Movie, but some friends from the Denver Area Science Fiction Association were talking about it last night and I knew my boys really wanted to see it.  So we got out this morning and saw it. Now yes, it is basically an hour and forty minutes of a toy commercial. Of course now days in truth most animated movies are the same thing, just not as honest about it. Merchandising a movie, especially a kid's movie is no big deal any more and should not be used as a reason to avoid a movie. The Lego Movie is a wonderfully silly film. Not surprisingly there are a lot of hidden visual jokes throughout, a great deal of which I am sure I did not catch. It was the style of movie that you know  has more hidden elements in it than you can catch in just one watching. At least it is enjoyable enough to watch multiple times. As a collector of the Lego mini-figures I did enjoy seeing the various characters from the history of the Mi

Right now I am looking forwards to getting the vintage style Alien figures from ReAction. They used  the actual prototypes that were made thirty years ago after the movie came out to make the action figures. There were some mild changes made, but for the most part there are the figures that would have been made thirty years ago. They look awesome and they will make awesome additions to my action figure collection. Then I found out that ReAction had gotten the rights to do Terminator, Predator, Back to the Future, Firefly, Goonies, A Nightmare on Elm Street and more. Yes, Firefly figures. How beyond awesome is that? So today they put this out http://www.actionfigureinsider.com/exclusive-first-look-at-new-reaction-figures/ and I was left with mixed feelings. I am not impressed with most of the figures and am hugely let down with the Firefly figures. The heads just do not look good at all. But I love the packaging. There are some great vintage style package designs with these figur

So here are some interesting Star Wars posters from around the world http://io9.com/incredibly-weird-star-wars-posters-you-probably-havent-1521987518 Yes, somehow someone watched the movies and they came up with these posters to promote those movies. Makes you wonder what they might have taken before hand, as there does seem to be a hint at possible substance abuse in these interpretations. I do wonder just what the people who went to see the films after seeing these posters thought they were seeing, as there is little shown in the posters that have anything to do with the films.

Today the family got out and finally saw Catching Fire. I am the only one in the family that has read the book, so it was all new for the rest of them. I highly recommend reading this series,as it is so well written. The character of Katniss is just one of the greatest characters I have ever seen. Unlike so many other characters, she does not just blow off the traumatic events and move on. Her deep scars over killing and going through so much really gives such a depth to her that you rarely see. First off, just like The Hunger Games, they did an incredible adaptation of Catching Fire. It caught all the most important aspects of the novel and did a great job in bringing it to life. While I could think of a few a aspects of the book that I would have like to see that got cut, I understood why they were not present and felt they told what was needed to get the story across. Aspect like President Snow's breath smelling of blood are understandably unable to be transferred from the b

We rented the animated movie The Croods tonight. Not one I had any desire to see in the theater. In no time at all I very much got the impression that there was a political message to it. The Croods are a family of cavemen who live by the philosophy that all things new and different are going to kill you. The father pushes fear and ignorance in order to keep his family in line with his beliefs, even to the point of locking them up for days at a time 'for their own good'. They live in darkness, not even having discovered fire, most likely due to having no desire to progress beyond what they have always known. As far as I am concerned that really sums up your conservative fundamentalists perfectly. Once they are introduced to reality, by being forced out of their cave due to earthquakes, they are exposed to the beauty and wonder of the world. They now have to deal with the dangers that are all around them, but their lives suddenly start to have meaning. There is a whole s

A Dance With Dragons is the fifth of the seven planned novels of George R. R. Martin's fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire. I recently finished it and can say it was as intense as the other novels in the series. This book takes place for the most aprt in the same time frame as the fourth book, mostly focusing on places and characters that were not part of the fourth book. It ends having caught up with the fourth book, and getting us back with the events that were going on there. As with all the books in this series you can not guess as to where the story is going. There are surprises waiting for you in just about all the chapters, and yes a lot of characters do not make it. It ends with the fate of many noticeable characters in question. One of the biggest surprises for me was a couple of characters I thought had died in previous books were alive, although not necessarily well. As a writer I am trying to look forwards and figure out just where the story is going for the f

I will admit that I started watching reality programing when it was brand new.  I watched the first few seasons of The Real World on MTV (This was back when they still actually played music videos), I caught the first season of Survivors, The Osbornes and many others. My wife got into the VH1 Celebreality fad for a bit, so I caught more of those shows than I would have wished. And there was a lot of really, really bad stuff that came out of that. More and more though I am finding those shows just don't draw me in. I am proud to say I never once have seen an episode of Jersey Shore. I am familiar with what is out there for Reality TV. The only reality show I actually have the desire to catch every episode of is Face Off. If you are unfamiliar with the show, it is a competition show where talented make-up artists have to come up with original character designs every week following all manner of themes. The main reason I love this show is because it focuses on what to me is abou

I don't watch the game itself and thanks to the internet I can now wait until the next day to get all the commercials with out wasting my time with that sport stuff. One that stuck out for me was the Radio Shack 'The 80s Called' ad http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUwwZHdx6SU Looks to be the beginnings of an amusing ad campaign by them (Check out Jason and the 3-D printer). Should be interesting to see where they take this. I've watched it a few times now and love all the 80s references that are there. That was the decade I grew up in and am really familiar with. There were a few I caught that I was surprised to see, like Slim Goodbody. And there were a few I didn't get at all. Of course I am wondering what I have missed and plan to watch the ad a few more times and see what I can catch. Of course that is part of what makes this a good ad, since you want to watch it multiple times to see if you can find all that is in it.

Right now if you donate $10 to the Make a Wish Foundation you can get entered for a chance to travel to Skywalker Ranch and meet George Lucas and Mark Hamill. A worthy cause and an awesome prize. Well worth trying for. http://www.nerdist.com/2014/01/donate-to-win-a-trip-to-meet-lucas-and-skywalker/ On the donation page there is the option to make the entries as a gift for another person. Now I am more than willing to let the readers of this blog show me how much they appreciate my hard work here by donating to this worthy cause and putting the entries in as gifts for me. No matter what it is a worthy cause and a great contest for Star Wars fans.