Where was this gizmo when I went to college?

I would have totally used this product. Livescribe. It looks really neat. Is this the future of taking notes? It is a little spendy, but interesting to dream about.

San Diego Comic Con 2009

Comic Con was awesome! I saw a ton of cool stuff. Geeked out all week. Got a lot of free stuff, bought a lot of not free stuff, saw celebrities... and I am finally glad to be home. It was really fun, but I am really tired.

San Diego Comic Con

Only five days till San Diego Comic Con - Fanboy Mecca. I will be attending this year. My first time ever. I am waiting on pins and needles with geeky glee. I will post some sort of photo slideshow blog upon my return.

Not much writing has been happening these days - Too much house shopping, comic con drooling, and playing with family to get much done.

Maybe some writing tomorrow.

Shameless Plugs

Here are a bunch of things that I have been supporting recently. Check them out.

Wednesday Comics and Superman Back in the Papers: Today DC's new weekly comics offering came out. I didn't order it initially because it looked, oh I don't know, stupid. I decided to check it out anyway today and it is not that bad. The concept is to print weekly strips, like they used to be in the paper. Each issue of Wednesday Comics will have 15 different story lines at a page a piece. Over the next twelve weeks the story will be completed. It is printed on newsprint - so I am unsure how well these will keep. But the bigger news is that the Superman strip in Wednesday Comics is being syndicated in USA Today. Today they actually printed the Superman strip in the paper, but from here on out you will be able to access the strip only on their online comics page. Check it out here.

Google Chrome: Best web browser ever. I had been hearing good things about it from several friends and several places on the internet. I decided to download it last night and it is awesome. I really like the lack of menus and the ease of building new tabs. Great free product. Download it here.

Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood: The new Fullmetal anime is good too. I really enjoyed the first series and have been reading the manga series. This is just as good and is starting over fresh. If you are a fan of the first series you will love this series, because I mean come on its Fullmetal. If you have never seen Fullmetal I think the show is easy enough to start out on. There isn't much that it doesn't explain in the first few episodes. The only problem is it is still on the air in Japan and so the episodes we are getting in America are with subtitles. It will be a time before we actually get a dubbed DVD version. So put your reading glasses on for this one. You can stream them at HULU or check out the Fullmetal Alchemist website here.

Revision 3: This is an internet site that streams several TV shows over the web. They are all free and topics range from movies to comic books to computer tech stuff to video games. I watch several shows each week and really have been enjoying them. The shows I watch are The Totally Rad Show, IFanboy, CO-OP, ROFL, and The Digg Reel. All great stuff, check them out here.

So those are some of the cool stuff that I enjoy. I hope you check some of them out and enjoy them as well. Maybe some more writing stuff tomorrow, although life has been getting in the way of my writing. Dang that life.

Top 5 Comic Books, Deitch Haus, and 4th of July

I feel like I need to do more to promote comic books. I worry about the industry from time to time and today I felt like I needed to do more to help people get interested in comics. So I decided that every once in a while I would do a top five list - of the top five comic books I have been reading. These will be in no particular order, so the number one is not necessarily my favorite comic right now.

The Amazing Spider-Man: This is crazy. I never thought that ASM would ever be on the top of my reading list. Spider-Man has always been ok, and there has even been some story lines that I really enjoyed from time to time, but it hasn't been consistently good for years. Right now is a great time to be a Spider-Man fan. The book, which recently just went to being sold three times a month, is awesome. It started out a little slow once it made the switch to three times a month, but recently every issue has knocked it out of the park. The artwork is great, and stories are great. There are reveals, drama, and lots of Spider-Man getting beat down. Which is how I like my Peter Parker. I want him to have tons of problems. Plus with this series gearing up for its 600th issue it is only going to get better from here. Check it out.

X-Force: I recently became an X-Men fan again. I had been skipping X-Men issues because Chris Claremont was writing them. I can go into my Claremont hate, but that is probably a whole blog by itself. So X-Force has only been around in this iteration for fifteen issues. The book is great. The artwork suffers sometimes, but Kyle and Yost can write. The stories are wonderful. I love the characters that comprise this team, all have interesting back stories and inner conflict. And all of them are killers, which is the basic premise of the book - a team of black ops killer mutants that work under the radar. Good stuff.

Wolverine: The Old Man Logan storyline really has been good. It is almost finished - will wrap in another issue or two, but Mark Millar has been hitting this story out of the park. And this has been some of Steve McNiven's best artwork. I usually don't pick up Wolverine, and probably won't after this story concludes. But this is an exiting romp through an alternate future story. I like it.

Echo: I hadn't read Terry Moore's Strangers in Paradise, I don't think I would like it. But this has been awesome. Very sci fi and with lots of drama. The artwork is black and white, but the panels are super detailed. The story is interesting and while we don't know everything there is to know about this world and these characters yet, Moore has me hooked. I will be getting the rest of this series.

Northlanders: Brian Wood rocks at writing vikings. This comic is a series of short stories that involve vikings. Each story arc is different, but they have all been pretty good. I especially enjoyed the last issue I read, which was seventeen. Northlanders is worth a look.

So there are five comic book series that would be worth anyone's time and money. If you like good stories and good artwork pick any of these up.
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Over the 4th of July weekend I traveled with my family to Paonia Colorado. My grandfather has owned a home up there for years and so I have spent many a summer break, winter break, long weekend up in that city.

We went to attend Paonia's Cherry Days and it was delightful. Interesting and fun events - a bed race, parade, pancake breakfast, carnival...etc. So overall we had a good time.

One evening we traveled to the city of Delta and ate dinner at Deitch Haus, which is a Mennonite style Ole' Country Buffet. It was my first time and I enjoyed both the food and the experience. It is a buffet style eatery, with primarily what I would call "home cooking" food. Pot roast, prime rib, potatoes and gravy...etc. I ate the pot roast and then went back for seconds and got the pineapple ham. The pot roast was ok, not the best pot roast I have eaten, but the pineapple ham was wonderful.

So if you find yourself in Delta Colorado stop by Deitch Haus and get some good eats.

My new guilty pleasure

I usually don't listen to this kind of music. I'm more of a rock, heavy metal, prog rock kind of guy. You know the hard stuff. But this new cd from P!NK has got me. Ok so I'll admit it. I dig this song most off of this album. We all have guilty pleasures right?

What I have been working on

This past few days have been delightful. I am now officially on summer break - finished with the summer Jumpstart program. And I am really excited to be able to have some time to relax. I've been playing a lot of video games, watching some movies, and reading - both comic books and real books. But I have also been writing, quite a bit I might add. Mostly I have been plugging away on this piece of fantasy fiction that I have had for a while. And I figured that I have not ever posted anything from it up. So maybe just a little tid bit. It is set in a world I created (I know silly huh), which is called Da'an. Enjoy - comment if you like.

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Gabriel stared at his wrists. On each was a black mark – shaped like a waning moon, marring his flesh. Guilt swept up from his stomach and lodged itself in his throat. When am I going to tell Mother? The marks had appeared on his seventeenth birthday and even that day he had known what they were. He’d woken early to begin his chores in the inn, hoping to complete them before his mother came down. Gabriel figured she would let him and Riggs go exploring later if his chores were done early. But then he saw his wrists.
Link marks, he had thought, astonished at his misfortune. His Mother and the men who frequented The Sea Mistress had told him about Link users and the trouble they caused.
“Old Jeroth out on the North Quarter had twins a few years back. The damn kids created a flood when they were five, drowned themselves, destroyed the old man’s house and his crop,” Shaen, a house regular said in hushed tones.
Endel, Shaen’s companion nodded in agreement, “The world is hard enough without dealing with those god blasted Links. No one should have power like that. No one mortal at any rate.”
Both were drunk, but Gabriel could not help but listen in on their conversation as he wiped down the tables and chairs. The discussion continued and eventually he blurted the question that was rumbling in his fourteen year old head – dying to get out.
“How do you know if someone has the link?” The two looked at Seram’s runt of a son and laughed.
“And why, Master Gabriel, would you want to know that?” Shaen retorted with a sly almost mischievous twinkle.
“Best to stay away from them Linkers all together,” Endel slurred. “They’re a dangerous lot.” Gabriel stood straight, gathering his courage and attempted to look more mature. “I just thought that I should know, just in case one comes in here. Then I can chase ‘em out for my Ma.”
Shaen and Endel roared with laughter. Shaen slammed his hand down on the table repeatedly. “We gots a god blasted Link hunter on our hands Endel. You see that?” Endel agreed, shaking his head in drunken stupidity.
When they’d settled and saw that Gabriel had not returned to his work, they became more serious. Shaen motioned for Gabriel to come closer and he whispered. “You see boy, anyone thats got the Link is marked. Two crescent moons, almost like tattoos on them’s wrists. If an you ever see that on a person I would suggest one of two things,” he paused, Gabriel’s heart hanging on his words and the silence, “You either kill the creature or you run.” Endel shook his head up and down again.
“No good can come from a Linker Gabriel. They are the devil’s soldiers.”
Gabriel remembered that his mother had come in at that moment and he’d received quite a tongue lashing for bothering her customers.
He shook when he found his marks. His heart racing, skin sweating as he paced the room deciding whether to tell his mother, or to tell the Elders, or not to tell anyone. In the end he’d decided to hide his curse and from that day forward he had wrapped his wrists in strips of white cloth. It was a common enough clothing trend in his village. Farmers would wrap their wrists in cloth to wipe sweat from their brows as they plowed their fields.
But the funny thing was – Gabriel didn’t feel like a servant of Kakenroth. He desired to do good, which is what troubled him most.

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Gah, I hate that the blog takes out all of the formatting. But you get the idea. Enjoy and good night.