Long time no see.
Nothing really exciting has happened since last time, I think.
The last days I’ve been enjoying a mini show on youtube called Baman Piderman. It’s awesome when you’re overly tired!
Ouch. My back hurts.
Tag Archives: Comics
The Walking Dead
Last night I finished the currently last number (#79) of The Walking Dead.
No, I’m not talking about the new TV series, I’m talking about what that TV series is based on – the comic.
The Walking Dead is created by writer Robert Kirkman and drawn by Charlie Adlard (Tony Moore did issues 1-6). It is in black and white, which I first thought was a let-down, but only after an issue didn’t really think about. While the art is very good, the storytelling is brilliant.
The story centers around Rick Grimes, a police officer who wakes up from a coma after a gunshot, only to find out that the world has been overrun by zombies. While this might not sound very original, I find it if not the, then at least among the very best zombie fictions I’ve ever seen, any medium. It has a lot of heart (and other intestines as well for that matter), and isn’t afraid to make dramatic turns, offing main characters and having plot twists that would make M. Night Shyamalan go “Whaaat?!”. This is a good thing. Unlike other ongoing comics that keeps the same ensemble of characters for 20 years except for the supervillain of the week (who often returns at least 20 or 30 times anyway), you actually meet new, original people all the time here. And then they die. 😉
Differences from the TV series.
While the TV series is based on the comic, it seems to take a very different storyline after the first few issues. Without giving away the story, the happenings in the last episodes in season 1 didn’t occur at all in the comic – at least not so far. Most of the main characters stay basically the same, but where they are and what happens to them is different. For me it’s a good thing since I get a new story while watching the series (which I by the way also think is rather good), but the ones only watching the TV series is missing so much!
Try it for free!
Image Comics who publishes The Walking Dead offers the first issue online for free here, which I think is a great strategy for bringing new readers. So go ahead, see if you like it. If you do, visit your local comic book dealer.
Speaking of Obama
Adam pointed me to this neat comic explaining just how Obama managed to get the Nobel Prize. It’s the only explanation.
Speaking of Obama and peace, I just read that he has ordered another 34’000 troops into Afghanistan and is about to test the “Massive Ordnance Penetrator”, the largest non-nuclear bomb ever, weighing in a bit over 13 tons.
Still, it’s probably way better than what John McCain & Sara Palin would have done (not including what is stated in the comic above).
Obama, seriously?
Barack Obama won the Nobel peace prize even though he hasn’t taken any real action yet. I like Obama, but this paints him out even more as the next Jesus.
Normally the Nobel Prize is awarded 10-40 years after a person has accomplished something worthwhile, but when this year’s nomination deadline ended Obama had only been president for two weeks. I find that a little odd.
Little Gamers is once again on top of things.
Well, let’s just hope that he will one day actually do something worthy of the prize. And at least he is not keeping the money.
Glenn Miller Café
Yesterday my old friend Dossen came to visit. After strolling through town, visiting comic book shops and having lunch, we later went to Glen Miller Café together with Marianne.
The food was great (as always), the music (Sara Hedman Kvartett) was classy and temperature was high. We all had a good time, and later went back to my place and was joined by Fredde.
The photos below are from both mine and Dossens cameras (his is way better), and I just had to do a photoshop version of something I have wanted to to for years: put a lightsaber in the hand Karl XIV Johan’s statue at Slussen, Stockholm.
New Japanese Watchmen Trailer
Trailer Addict just added a new Japanese Watchmen trailer that looks awesome! Lots of new footage, and most of the scenes gives you that hey-I-recognice-that-from-the-graphical-novel feeling. At least if you have read the graphical novel written by Alan Moore. 😉 If you haven’t, do it!
Trailer: Watchmen (Japanese trailer)
See also my previous post regarding the Watchmen movie (including the two previous trailers)
Trailer for X-Men Origins: Wolverine
The first official trailer to the upcoming (May 2009) Wolverine movie has just been released.
I was especially glad to see some scenes from Wolverine’s childhood in the 17th century that was superbly described in the 6 issue limited series “Origin” (2001-2002). I just hope that they also have enough character development of Rose, which had a great influence on his early years. On the other hand, there are so many good Wolverine stories that all made a big impact on him before meeting X-Men (remember Mariko?), and it would be hard to fit them all in and still do them justice.
I think they are focusing too much on modern day characters in the trailer (Sabretooth, Gambit, Storm, etc.), and I would prefer if most of the movie would revolve around his beginning as a child, and the time up until (and of course including) Weapon X – In Canada this time, not the United States! Cramming as many mutants as possible into this one will not make it better, quite the opposite! A focus on the actual story of James Howlett (or Logan, as you might think his name is) would instead be more engaging.
Even so, I still have a good feeling about this one.
Trailer: X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Six weeks with the Asus Eee 1000H
It is now six weeks since I first got my Asus Eee 1000H.
At the same time as i collected it I bought 2GB RAM, which is twice the amount of the original RAM.
Since then I have also bought a nice skin from laptopskins.net, making it look a little more original (can be seen briefly in the Einstein Tattoo gallery, next to a Mac Air).
So what do I think?
I think it’s lovely. The screen is great, the keyboard is good for a netbook (although the keys can be a little hard to read in a completely dark room), the performance is better than expected and the battery is absolutely fantastic, especially if you use the built-in under-/overclock button to lower the processor speed to 1.2Ghz (Normal mode is 1.6Ghz and Super Performance mode is 1.9Ghz).
Watching DivX/XviD movies while traveling, the battery lasts over six hours on a single charge. That’s at least three full movies. And the 160GB HDD is big enough to store 100+ movies if you want (I currently have around 70 movies on it and a few seasons of my favorite TV shows).
Playing older games like Sam & Max, the WarCraft series and Knights of the Old republic I & II, it handles very well. Photoshop CS4 starts in about 6 seconds. Sleep and Wake-up is pretty much instant.
What I probably have used it mostly for is reading comic books and ebooks. I just hold the Eee like an open book, with the screen to the left, and navigate with the arrow keys.
For comics (.cbr and .cbz), I use CDisplay Comic Reader (also called CDisplay Sequential Image Viewer).
You can set it to always rotate the screen in a certain direction when a comic is opened, and to also fill the screen to fit an entire page. The size of the screen is just perfect for this. Even if the resolution is the same as on the Eee 900, the screen size is bigger. Personally I find that the 900’s screen is a little bit to small for comics. Readable, but not without an effort (not that I didn’t manage to read the whole limited series of Watchmen on it). Not so for the 1000H.
For ebooks, Adobe Reader works just fine. I have set the icon panel to always show the Rotate and Fill icons, and there is also a setting that lets you remember where you last ended your reading without the need to manually bookmark. I am currently in the last quarter of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, most of it being read while in bed.
For reading in this matter, I actually find it easier on the eyes reading on the screen than on a printed paper book. The text is very sharp, and the background brightness is usually set to the second lowest setting, giving an even light all over the screen.
So what’s bad about it?
Pretty much nothing. Compared to the Eee 900, if feels a little bulky and heavy, but compared to a regular laptop it is extremely light and portable.
Again compared to the Eee 900, the 1000H actually produces some noise. The fan is inactive 90% of the time or so, but in a silent room you can hear the drive spinning. When the prizes of SSDs gets lower, I will likely buy one to replace the mechanical one. But right now I don’t feel it’s worth spending more than 3000 SEK for a 128GB drive.
Summary:
I do not regret buying the Eee 1000H. Not in the slightest.
[Written on an Asus Eee 1000H]
New Watchmen trailer
Nice, a new Watchmen trailer has been released!
For those of you who didn’t know, Watchmen is a 12-issue comic book by Alan Moore, who among other things also wrote V for Vendetta, From Hell, Batman: The Killing Joke and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
Visually they got just about everything right – The Comedian’s wry smile, Rorschach’s mask, the power in Dr. Manhattan’s origin etc..
However, the first trailer gave me much more of a wow-feeling. But that might just be because the characters I had previously read about in the Watchmen comics (which I highly recommend, by the way) for the first time came to life.
Read the original Watchmen comic book limited series, see the trailers below and you too will long for March 6th.
Trailer: Watchmen (Trailer 2)
And in case you missed the first one, here it is as well.
Trailer: Watchmen (Trailer 1)
Update: A new Japanese trailer has also been added in a separate post.
An open letter to the American people
Thank you.
Really, from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for not being complete idiots for the third time in a row when voting on who will lead you. Maybe now you can change tactics and not be a big bully to everyone around you anymore, but actually behave like in the propaganda you sell to yourself.
Or, as Little Gamers puts it (to be more noble):
