The BBC SciFi Phenomenon (or "My Doctor Who Weekend")

So I've really been liking the BBC's SciFi shows the last few years and this weekend was a Doctor Who related weekend. I've never liked Doctor Who until the last few years (I'll lean more towards I disliked it).

Here's my Doctor Who related activities this weekend:

Doctor Who S4E5 The Poison Sky (part 2 to The Sontaran Stratagem) - I was excited that it was on this weekend, but I forgot that it was part two of a two-parter! And it's got Martha Jones in it. Great second part, can't say much without giving anything away, but another very (very) short appearance of Rose. I think we'll see a bit of her (and hear about the Bees until those episodes come up). I was surprised at the mention of Torchwood, but I think Capt. Jack's due for another appearance too (and maybe Sarah Jane).

Free Star Wars Book (MP3, PDF, Kindle or Sony eBook)

I saw this on SlickDeals.net, get a free Star Wars book "Legacy of the Force: Betrayal") PDF, MP3, Kindle or Sony eBook through Tuesday, May 13, 2008. (If that link doesn't work try this link).

It looks like it's part 1 of a "Legacy of the Force" series that they're trying to promote, book 9 comes out on the 13th. The series is supposed to cover a "new era in the Star Wars universe and features the beloved characters from the original trilogy, answering the questions of what happened to Han, Luke and Leia after the conclusion of Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi".

Technorati Tags: Legacy of the Force, Betrayal, Star Wars, Star Wars Legacy of the Force

Being Nice

So my philosophy in life is pretty much just to "be nice".

Maybe 'karma' and 'what comes around, goes around' and 'do unto others as you want to them to do unto you' want you to do the same thing ("be nice") but they try to make you fear what might happen if you don't. Really, they're just slightly nicer versions of 'an eye for an eye' (the way most people interpret it).

Douglas Adams pointed this out in in the beginning of two of his books,
"nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree
for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change"

I'm not pushing religion or any deep philosophies. I'm not even trying to figure out why we decorate and eat hard boiled chicken embryos or chocolate shaped in their image. I'm just trying to get people to think about being a little nicer, if for no reason other than they can.

A character of Neil Gaiman (another British author) one said something like 'It's not any harder to be nice than it is to be mean and it's not nearly as fun.'

Technorati Tags: be nice, Douglas Adams, Neil Gaiman

Wordpress For Dummies - Review

I waited so long for WordPress For Dummies, by Lisa Sabin-Wilson, and it was well worth the wait. I had been wanting to learn Wordpress and had been a fan of Lisa's blog so it was just what I needed as a motivator.

It's a "Dummies" book so it's got that easy to use format. And it's a reference book so most of it is not meant to be read linearly. If you've always wanted to set up a blog or switch to WordPress this is the way to go. It explains it from the basics up to the advanced. It's step by step and it'll get you running on your own host or at WordPress.com with ease.

It covers Migrating to WP, 10 Great Free Themes, Ten Great Plugins, Using WP as a Content Management System, Understanding Templates and Plug-ins. It covers pretty much everything you need to know but those are the chapters I've read the most and use for reference. If you don't know anything about PHP you'll painlessly learn the bits that you do need to know for modifying templates (this is optional) and you'll have picked up enough for when you want to use PHP for other "web stuff".

As I'm writing this post, I'm flipping through the book seeing if there is anything I've missed mentioning. There are so many areas of WP that I haven't explored yet, I've read about them in the book and I can't wait to try out some of the other features!

Just about everything I've needed to know was in there, the only thing that I couldn't find was detailed info on custom-fields which was (probably correctly) considered too advanced for a Dummies book.

There are 3 different flavors of WordPress (they host, you host, and multi-user) and they all share multiple features so just pay attention to which flavor she's talking about and you'll be fine.

It's an awesome book! If you want to set up your own blog, self-hosted or not, WordPress is easy to use and WordPress For Dummies is the book to use.

Technorati Tags: Lisa Sabine-Wilson, WordPress, WordPress for Dummies

Saving Charlie - A "Heroes" Novel

I just saw the Heroes novel Saving Charlie at the bookstore. It looked pretty neat, but then Time Travel usually is. It's the story of Hiro when he travels to the past to save Charlie ("Memory Retention Girl"), the waitress from the diner in Season One. It's looked really good, but the parts that dealt with him and his fathers issues seemed like they'd get old fast.

I think that the story creates some alternate timelines and undesirable futures as he alters things to save her. I'm thinking since it is a mainstream TV show adaption, it might not get too complicated which might make it an easy enjoyable read. I just couldn't convince myself to cough up $24 for it, even when I had a few gift cards I could have used....

Technorati Tags: Heroes, Hiro, Saving Charlie

Why I want to use WordPress...

So I've really been wanting to try WordPress for my blogging. It's been growing in use (at least the people I'm reading are using it) and more and more internet providers seem to be including it with packages. So it really seems to be a product to use, I've been a devoted MovableType user for just under 4 years and I'm willing to try something new...

A few reasons besides jumping on the bandwangon with everyone else (a lemming, I am not): I like the default templates more than MT's, I think it looks easier to use and set up for beginners (this would be for me helping other people, I like complicated) and they're not lacking any plugins (1,198 and counting). Also, it's time to learn something new and this like it's well worth learning...

My copy of WordPress For Dummies still hasn't shipped and I've bugged Lisa (the author) a few times about buying an autographed copy and now she's having a contest to give away a few autographed copies for her anniversary! So this is my post/entry to count as my entry for that...

Technorati Tags: WordPress, WordPress for Dummies

WordPress for Dummies

WordPress For Dummies is coming out on Monday (a few weeks early), and it looks like it covers most of the new features that are in WordPress. I've been reading Lisa Sabine-Wilson's blog (JustAGirlInTheWorld.com) for a few years, but generally the tech info doesn't help me since I'm not a WP user. Since I've been wanting to try WP for a while now (I've just played with it a little bit recently) this will help me on my way. So keep an eye out and pick up a copy (or order it on-line) when you get a chance...

I just ran up to Border's to make sure it wasn't on the shelves already and it wasn't out, so I'll leave my pre-order with Amazon (and save 5% since it's a pre-order and the price is guaranteed if it drops).

It's actually in to be shipped with Three Fallen Women by Amy Guth who happens to be another blogger (bigmouth indeed strikes again) that I read. Gotta order $25 or more to get free shipping so it seemed a good time to get it...

Technorati Tags: blogging, CMS, WordPress, WordPress for Dummies

Speaking of Neil Gaiman

Yesterday, I commented on how I haven't heard much about Neil Gaiman being tied to the Stardust Movie even though he wrote the book. And I think that's strange. Here's something stranger, but shows you his diversity in projects: This album, called "Where's Neil When You Need Him?", has 17 songs about his stories by a bunch of different artists (including Tori Amos). Here's the description on Amazon -

A unique collaboration between a collection of talented musicians and a best-selling author. Seventeen top international acts offer 17 exclusive songs inspired by the diverse work of Neil Gaiman. Includes a lavish 20 page booklet with extensive liner notes from Neil Gaiman about the project and each of the songs and an assortment of all new artwork from Dave McKean, as well as a foreword by Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance. The songs on this disc are inspired by Gaiman stories including Coraline, American Gods, The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish, Stardust, The Goldfish Pool, Sandman, The Wolves in the Walls, Mr. Punch, Mirror Mask and Neverwhere.

His stuff is kinda complicated and you've really got to pay attention, so don't be afraid to start with the kid books, they've got all the cool art by Dave McKean too!

Technorati Tags: Dave McKean, Neil Gaiman, Tori Amos

Stardust - The Movie

So I've been excited since I originally saw the preview for Stardust a few months ago and I got to see a preview of the movie a few weeks ago (the movie is out now). I really enjoyed the movie and the cast was great (Claire Danes, Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Charlie Cox). They didn't follow the book exactly and I have no problem with that, I'm re-reading the book and I'm finding that I really enjoy it after just seeing the movie.

I really like Neil Gaiman but I really haven't seen them promoting him much in relation to the book and the movie; the book came out about 10 years ago as both a regular book and as a graphic novel (illustrated by Charles Vess). And I've seen this book in so many variations of the cover not even including the movie editions or the graphic novels...

Claire Danes as the falling star was wonderful, technically she was a fallen star but that sounds like it has a negative connotations and she didn't have any. From the previews I wasn't sure how Claire would be in the part (I eel they edited the preview oddly) but I thought she was perfect. DeNiro played a different part than I expected from the previews; I guess it was a different role than I've ever seen him in before. Charlie Cox was great, I'm not sure where I've seen him before.

Technorati Tags: Charlie Cox, Claire Danes, Robert De Niro, Stardust

Free Comic Book Day

Today is Free Comic Book Day so head on up to your local participating store and get some free comics.

Free Comic Book Day is an annual promotional effort by the North American comic book industry to help bring new readers into independent comic book store.
From Wikipedia

It's all sorts of comics, don't just think Archie and Spiderman, scroll down the Green Brain page to see everything they have going on (and how to get more free comics) so stop by and get a few...

I'm on my way right now...

Technorati Tags: free, free comic book day, green brain

Kurt Vonnegut - RIP

Since it's Kurt Vonnegut who passed away yesterday we'll link to his Wikipedia entry since there should be some content about him. He was an interesting and bizzaro author, you should try a few of his books if you haven't. But what inspired this post is two things, both of them odd and very unrelated.

I hadn't realized he died yesterday until I got an ad from Border's Books today trying to sell books in his memory (there was more but it had this at the top of the e-mail ad). I'm not sure if it's in good taste or not and I remember them doing a few other things like this and while it might be good marketing I'm not sure about the taste part.

So I never (rarely) watch television previews for next week but last night I did watch them during Lost. As usual they jumped around a lot during the preview and I saw it something for an instant and something seemed off. So I rewound the TiVo, this took about 5 tries since it was only a few frames but I saw a cover of a book. The book was "Ardil-22" (which is Catch-22 in Portuguese) which was written by Kurt Vonnegut Joseph Heller. I'm not sure if this was a coincidence or someone had time to edit it in yesterday at ABC or what. But in hindsight it's a pretty odd coincidence that it was just a few frames of the preview. I can't recall if Lost has ever mentioned Kurt Vonnegut (or Joseph Heller) before...

LATER - SO I TOTALLY SCREWED THIS UP: Since it turns out Joseph Heller wrote Catch-22 and not Kurt Vonnegut (Sorry Kurt) but while I've read several of Kurt's books, I don't think I ever read Catch-22. Plus it turns out that "Catch-22" is the title of the next episode of Lost so that's the reasoning for that. So I've totally goofed up the second 1/2 of this message. There were no coincidences for me to see. And I thought I had tied this together all pretty good too :(

Technorati Tags: Ardil-22, Catch-22, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Lost

Stardust - the movie preview

They've finally got the preview for Stardust up. This is based on the Neil Gaiman book of the same name. I'm thinking they've taken some liberties but it's been a while since I read the book so maybe not.

This is what started me thinking about Neil Gaiman a few days ago, but the preview they had up at Yahoo didn't seem as universally playable as this one at the official site so here you go to the official site. But back to the preview and check out this cast: Robert De Niro, Michele Pfeiffer, Claire Danes, Sienna Miller, Peter O'Toole, Ian McKellen (Narrator) and Charlie Cox (the main character).

Technorati Tags: Neil Gaiman

Harry Potter Revealed

So the new cover is out and IMHO it's pretty generic. Not showing much at all, nothing to see here, just move along folks...

But if you take a look at how the whole wraparound looks. You can see quite a bit more, I don't really know what it's showing but it certainly shows more than just the plain old cover shows. I'm not the biggest HP fan, so maybe some HP geek knows what this is a drawing of but I don't have a clue...I've seen a few mentions of the cover but I hadn't seen much that showed the whole view of the cover so I wanted to mention it because it definitely shows a lot more...

My only guess is it (the Deathly Hallows) ties into the Death Eaters. But the definition of Hallows doesn't help much but it makes me think og "All Hallows Eve" (but doesn't that have an apostrophe?)

Looks like they are getting some different covers in Canada.

Technorati Tags: Harry Potter, preview

Win Odd Stuff...

So there's a raffle at the Open Rights Group and one of the items is the keyboard that Neil Gaiman used to write most of his Sandman stories. It's missing a key, but it's autographed and for some reason he doesn't think this would be a very cool prize. This would be so cool to have! There's lots of other prizes too (more from Neil too).

If you don't know who Neil Gaiman is, someone summed it up the other day (and I don't remember who I found it, so now I don't have to paraphrase it).

Most geeks swear by him (Neil Gaiman).
If Joss Whedon is their god, Gaiman is their Jesus.

- Peter Sciretta at SlashFilm.com

So back to the keyboard - However I wanted to display it I'd have to put a little tag on it that says something like, "This author writes stories that transcend reality as we know it, but still fits in with it. Don't ask any more because it's a really really long answer". He's one of the few people that I really enjoy that I haven't pushed on people. You really need to read more than a bit of it to get someone to really get it and before that point most people give up.

I've mentioned Neil Gaiman lots before but I've never really posted a lot. If I mention him on-line people either know him or they don't and I've generally left it at that. But I think I'm going to change that.

Back to talking about the books -- The Sandman is too complicated to explain to most people. No one believes me that he's got a story-line around a English kid, Timothy Hunter, with wizardly powers who is a better character and been around a lot longer than Harry Potter (The Books of Magic). Mirror Mask is kind of surreal/bizzaro to show to people. Anansi Boys and American Gods are great if you can get people to stick with it, but they're a little long for people who don't get it. I've got people to like some of the short stories and some of the Sandman one-shots but getting them past that is always hard. Honestly, the kids books are where I've gotten most people to read: The Day I swapped my Dad for Two Goldfish, Coraline, and The Wolves in the Walls. But Coraline is the story one (the chapter book) but people tend to shake they're head at some of the bizarreness of it.

He's got connections to Tori Amos too, but that's another story.

Technorati Tags: Neil Gaiman

The Victorian Internet - Review

So a long time ago Dave Goodman recommended The Victorian Internet to me (that's 3 links in this sentence). After a while I finally ordered it and then after a while I finally read it and then I finally remember to post about it.

A very interesting book on the how long distance communications took place centuries ago. Eventually the story focuses mostly on the 1800's and how the telegraph was build, used, subsidized and grew all over the world. It's a great book with all sorts of obvious parallels to the last 30 years and computer communications that just jump out at you. At least they jumped out at me, the last chapter kinda spoon fed the similarities to you in case you didn't get them but I think if you made it through the book you don't really need that wrap up.

I'm not going to say any more about the book itself, if it sounds even mildly interesting I really think you'll enjoy it.

I'm looking for some similar books for two reasons:
1) I like stuff like this.
2) I'm thinking they're going to ask me to teach the Tech Leadership 900 level course again at a local university. And I think an understanding of "stuff like this" is helpful for people working in technology. Plus it's a short book and less than $12 new so what college student isn't going to like that?!? Last summer we used The World is Flat (revised), which was cheap and interesting but it's long and gets repetitive and if it's not interesting to you it just more uninteresting as you read. It's a great book, don't get me wrong but if it's not your cup of tea it's really long, while if this book isn't at least it's over soon.

Living Abroad in Costa Rica

So in preparation for my trip I picked up Living Abroad in Costa Rica by Erin Van Rheenen. I've said many times I wouldn't mind living there someday so I thought this might be a good read.

I bought it a month ago and I planned to read it then or else I would have asked Santa for it. It looks like a good book and mentions some of the smaller towns like Jaco so I'm still looking forward to reading it (eventually).

A Brief History of Time

I've been reading that A Brief History of Time has been made available in the public domain. Here is someone who converted it to several formats (web page, Palm reader, Microsoft reader, Acrobat), not all formats have images.

Found here at Palm 24/7.

The Rough Guide to Blogging

So I picked up The Rough Guide to Blogging by Jonathan Yang at borders this weekend. This is from the folks who do the “The Rough Guide to _____” different places to travel. It seemed to be a decent book, pretty cheap $10-ish. It had the basic ides, rss, hosting, audio, video, podcasting, increasing traffic and making money and (very) short reviews of 250 of the “best” blogs.

It's a nice intro if you have someone who's been asking about it or if you're a beginner and want to learn some more. It's about 100 pages and then about 50 pages of types of blogs (politics, education, etc.) while mentioned some specific blogs and then a bunch of 1 line reviews. I haven't read it yet, but all the pages I've flipped to look pretty good so far.

Alex Rider Disappointed Me

So last week I wanted to go see the Stormbreaker movie. It's the first of the Alex Rider books being made into a movie (I've mentioned Alex Rider before). It was supposed to open July 21st but I couldn't find it anywhere. So then I looked around some more and found this:

July 21, 2006 (UK)
September 21, 2006 (AUS)
October 6, 2006 (USA) --from Wikipedia

Stowaway - by D. Ann Kelley and James G. Kelley - Review

I just finished reading Stowaway by D. Ann Kelley and James G. Kelley (and I happen to know the authors). Most of it takes place in Michigan, it's kinda part of a series but it's by far the best one yet so I'd definitely recommend this one first. It might reveal a few details from the first few books but it's the most polished and fast read of any of the stories. The endings still end kinda quick though.

Jill Traynor returns as the main character (after the first book they started adding “A Jill Traynor Mystery” as the subtitle. One of the new characters chooses the Edumund Fitgerald as the ship to sneak onto, I think we all know how that's likely to end. But the whole mystery revolves around the message they managed to get off the ship that reveals where the ________ is/are located. It's got a bit of historical fact weaved in (and they clarify the details in the afterward). If you're from Michigan or the Great Lakes area and like mysteries it's a must read.

As a reminder I've mentioned their books before, the first two books they wrote were Lighthouse Paradox and Legacy.

I did have one big complaint about this book, I don't know who/what did their typesetting but in more than a few spots there are definitely some problems (mostly related to carriage returns and spacing) that I've got to assume it was added goofed up in at the final stage of the publishing process...

Orbit by John J. Nance - Review

I read a great book yesterday. Please note I didn't say I finished it, I read the whole thing! Orbit, by John J. Nance, is a novel about a man who wins a day trip into space. An accident causes the vacation to end abruptly and the adventure begins. After determining the ship will not fly and he has no radio contact with Earth he figures eventually someone will find his body either in the near future or the far future so in-between sleeping and watching sunsets and sunrises he starts to write his life story. From his current (disastrous) marriage to his first love (and first time) he blogs writes about it.

What the heck, he'll be dead by the time someone sees it, right? And if he's rescued, he just has to delete it. Here's the catch: keystrokes are recorded and sent back (one way) to Earth. He's a hit, in essence it's the most popular thing (blog?) ever, everyone is reading it and he doesn't know it, everyone is talking about it (commenting) but he doesn't know it. Since it's keystrokes, they even see what he deletes. With nothing to lose he writes about everything: good, bad, regrets, just about everything.

It's much better than I make it sound. Partially since I'm not going to give the good stuff away and since I'm really tired (I was up late last night). If you've every wanted to go into space, write about your life or read about other lives, check out this book...

Ark Angel

My day actually just got better! Here's why...

So, I never finished the followup to my previous Alex Rider post, it was to lay the ground work for this post. There are spoilers here so if you've just recently started reading these novels you'll want to not read this. As you know from my last post, they killed the hero of the series and it totally blew my mind.

What shocked me a few weeks ago is that I saw there was a sequel coming out, which really can't happen since he's dead. I went and re-read the last few pages of Scorpia and he was dead as a character could be. So the name of the new book is Ark Angel so even with the title they acknowledge his deadness. This book isn't supposed to come out for a few more weeks. But I saw it on the shelf at Target tonight!!! I bought the hardcover (I never buy hardcovers), I know it's just a kids book but so is Harry Potter...

In addition to the new book they're releasing a new “gadgets” book called (appropriately) Alex Rider: The Gadgets, I forgot all about it since I got so excited about the other book...

So I'm also assuming this is a bit of marketing for the new Stormbreaker movie that is supposed to be out this summer. The movie stars Alex Pettyfer (as Alex), Ewan McGregor, Mickey Rourke and Alicia Silverstone. Stormbreaker was the first Alex Rider novel so I'm glad they started at the start.

In the books, he's the reluctant hero, I hope that's still the case, they don't portray him that way in the preview. Looks like a July 21 release date in the UK, not sure about here. Oh and since I know I mentioned a few times that he died (right?) I thought it was worth pointing out that the have all over the preview site “Stormbreaker” with the tag line “You're never too young to die”, that's just a weird thing to say, isn't it?

Alex Rider and Harry Potter

First we digress: This post was supposed to be a follow up to a post that I thought I did but can't find the message but I can't really do the follow up first now can I?

So I've always thought there were connections between Alex Rider and Harry Potter. Young English boys who are orphans and get to go on the adventure of a lifetime. Harry gets to be a wizard and Alex gets to be a secret agent. Both had father's in the business but didn't get to know them (or all the secrets). Plus they're always getting injured...

SPOILERS! If you haven't read book four, Scorpia, don't read on, I'm going to give the ending away.

Here's the thing, in the last book Scorpia as I'm reading along and recalling the similarities. They're wrapping up the story, no I'll correct myself they wrapped up the story, and as he's leaving the leaving the building the bad guys sent a new teenage trainee to assassinate him and as he gets closer and closer to pulling the trigger you wait for something to happen, but it doesn't. He pulls the trigger. Alex dies in a pool of blood and sees his parents in the light and the story ends (for good). There really isn't any room for interpretation, IMHO.

Here's the other Harry Potter connection/question: Is this series similar enough that they did this to see how much outrage the reading public might have if they kill another English boy who is the hero of a story?!?

By the way, until the last few pages it was another great Alex Rider novel...

Robert Heinlein says:

In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it. Robert Heinlein

Gift Certificates

So I know you're thinking the winter holidays when I say gift certificates but really that's not it. I'm thinking of my birthday which was ten weeks ago and that I finally just ended up spending the last of my gift certificates. And yes, I know that was ten weeks ago, but I didn't want to waste them.

Yesterday I spend the last few at Best Buy for memory for my computers. After moving some around between a few I ended up doubling the memory in the one and increasing the other by 50%. I thought it was going to work out a little better than that (I thought the one had more memory slots) but you can still tell the difference on both of them.

I think most of the gift cards were for Technology or Books or Target (plus I had a few duplicate items that needed to be exchanged). Things I bought with the gift cards were:

Shopgirl - Review

I had read the book a while back and enjoyed it, I remember it being odd, but I did enjoy it (it seems to me some of the sex stuff was a little odd, but I don't recall why).

So (and I bet you saw this coming) I saw the movie Shopgirl last night. It seems to be playing at a limited number of theaters. It's more of an “arts theater” movie than mainstream. I don't remember how much they used from the book but it was still enjoyable. So it's really got an array of odd characters.

Too many of... - QOTD

Look around your house, what is one thing that you have too many of? One thing?!? I've got too many things of several items:

I can't wait to see the The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe!!!

Don't let the number ordering on the books fool you, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is the first one in the Chronicles of Narnia series. They renumbered them a few years ago and made a book written later,The Magician's Nephew, be the first one because it chronologically took place first. I still think they need to be read in the original order. If you haven't read the series be sure to read it, I've mentioned Narnia many times before.

I think they should be read in the original order for the same reason I think Star Wars should be watched 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3 - Who cares about the decline of Anakin Skywalker if you don't know who he's going to grow up to be? The story of R2 and 3PO isn't important if you don't know what they will do someday if you haven't seen A New Hope (#4), they're just some silly robots. Episodes 1-3 are the sequel to the story they just take place chronlogically first. Who cares about the story of the lamp post in Narnia if you've never had time to wonder about it? Obviously the movie folks feel the same way since they choose to start with The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.

The movie for The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe looks incredible! The effects look great, I get chills every time I see the preview. I hope it lives up to my expectations...

Allison DuBois is a real person

I never realized that Patricia Arquette's character on Medium, Allison DuBois, was based on a real person.

She came out with a book called Don't Kiss Them Goodbye. It looks like she got a 3 book deal (at least Amazon lists two more).

I just saw two good Medium quotes at the IMDB so I thought I'd mention them.

Allison Dubois: It's 9 PM. How am I supposed to know you're OK? How do I know you're not lying dead somewhere?
Joe Dubois: If something had happened, somebody would've called. If I were dead, who are we kidding, you'd be the first to know.

[Joe + Ariel are both trying to talk to Allison at once]
Ariel (Daughter): This is completely unfair! I had her first, Dad.
Joe (Husband): No, point in fact, I had her first or else you wouldn't be here.

MirrorMask Preview

So I've seen the preview trailer for Neil Gaimen's Mirror Mask a few times now. It's very surreal and if you have any idea who Dave McKean is you'll look at the imagery and immediately think “Hey! That's what it would look like if Dave McKean did the effects for a Neil Gaimen movie!”

What Neil writes is generally a bit surreal and with Dave McKean doing the effects I'm sure it'll be amazing, I'm just not sure how it'll appeal to the general public. I don't think this is based on anything Neil Gaimen has previously written. He's done a variety of books and a short stories and graphic novel/comic books. I just finished his latest book, Anansi Boys yesterday, I'll talk about that sometime...

I thought it was supposed to open September 30th, but I haven't seen any sign of it, I guess I should check back at the MirrorMask Web Site. Okay, I'm back and it is out, very limited release and it's at the “arts” theatre in Royal Oak! And I just called and they're playing it through next week so I know I'm going sometime this weekend

A Wizard of Mars

I know I've mentioned Diane Duane several times before. But I just got her last two Wizardry books (7-The Wizard's Holiday and 8-Wizards at War, the latter which came out early!) for my birthday (I read the one, but it just recently came out in paperback and I hadn't gotten it yet since I had it on my Wishlist) the other is my only hard cover of it. She writes a wide gambi