this aint Narnia, kiddo…

A guy named Mike and a movie named Avatar

There are not many things I can preface this video that have either been said before or would have much point.  This post is not about things I have to say, its about things I want to you to watch;  it is accompanied only with some snotty diatribe where I tell you to watch it, possibly some context as well;

Where have you heard this guy before?    Not long ago, he made a 70 minute series of video clips so aptly titled; Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review.  I recommend it a gander, as it is definitely more entertaining than the movie of which it speaks.

Why the iPad is good for the Kindle, Nook and Sony Reader

As I do not have a data plan on my iPhone, I had to make sure to arrive at my school (and its Wifi network) by 10:00am on Wednesday morning. I listened to… most of the Newton II iPad announcement. I then had to walk through the court yard to the lecture hall and lost my connection, leaving me to catch updates yesterday.

There are two ways to look at this; an expensive net book with fewer features, or a relatively inexpensive e-book reader. As someone in a school that is starting to implement e-book readers, I first looked at it as such.

Much like was done with the iPod and mp3 players, iTunes and downloadable songs,the iPad is going to make e-books even more popular and mainstream than the Amazon Kindle ever did. It may not have the same Whispernet, but the iPad has iTunes, and eighty-three-bajillion users, and although not as automatic as Whispernet may be, it has all of those users to make the ePub format, and that is where my title starts to make sense;

It may not be as simple and syncable as the iPod is with iTunes, but if these ePub books remain DRM free, they will be readable by these other devices. As with the recent Haiti catasrophe, donating through iTunes has shown the power of iTunes – the general fact that, as was said in Wednesdays keynote, iTunes has millions of users’ credit card information. That gives the iBook application a definite head start above the competition.

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Where Neil Gaiman “is the most famous writer you’ve never heard of”

Neil Gaiman is one of my most beloved authors, I have read all of his novels (and loved just as many), a decent few of his young adult fiction novels and most of his Sandman series.  I am nothing less than a fan boy and I am nothing less than proud to admit myself as so.

That is why it prides me so much to see other publications admiring him as much as I do.  As with his prose, I find his interviews interesting – The Times in London said it best; “[he is] the most famous writer you’ve never heard of.”

I was always a fan of comic books, but fell out of the loop after a while.  One of the books that got me back into comic books was Gaiman’s fantastic “The Sandman” series; specifically “Preludes & Nocturnes“- I fell in love.  Even during my various bouts of financial irresponsibility, I have managed to collect these books.

It is that comic book that got me into his novels, such masterpieces like “Anansi Boys“, “American Gods“, “Neverwhere” and “Good Omens“.  I love his worlds and I love where he hides them, I love his characters (Mr. Wednesday, Anansi and his sons, Shadow and Fat Charlie especially) and how they, in the former three stories, sometimes amongst each other.

Comics, science fiction, and fantasy conventions are nowadays something of a hardship for Gaiman—“like being a maggoty log at a woodpecker convention,” he says. A few years ago, he was at a convention with Angelina Jolie, who played Grendel’s mother in the movie “Beowulf,” for which Gaiman co-wrote the screenplay. “When I try to explain that I attracted more attention than she did, people say, ‘Oh, ho, he’s being funny.’ I’m not.” At Worldcon, the international science-fiction convention, where he was the guest of honor in August, people walked around wearing pins that read “Neil Gaiman! Squeeeeeee!”—an expression of hysterical enthusiasm. One woman, when he asked to borrow her program for a moment so that he could see where he needed to be next, crowed, “He’s getting eye tracks all over my program!”

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Mass Effect 2 gets launch trailer, my pants get wet

BioWare had me sold on the sequel to the original Mass Effect the moment I saw the plot comparisons between itself and Ender’s Game.  When that game ended, it left me yearning for the upcoming sequel, not because the game left me in some cliffhanger ending, and not because I felt the story incomplete, but because I wanted to see what would happen next.

Come next week, I will find out;

Where “Avatar” even stole the leaf scene from “Fern Gully”…

Really?  The only thing more specific than the tumbling-down-some-leaves scene is the paralyzed military brother premise…