Tuesday 30 September 2008

A Touch Of Wonder

I'm a multi-tasking geek. I do have my interests in video games, and TV shows and technology as well as geeky girls, and one of my favourite shows begins very soon in the US (not in the UK yet, but as some people know, there are ways around that.)

For those of you who have been living under a rock and have somehow managed to miss this great show, here is a brief (well, it started off brief) synopsis.

Ned has the ability to bring dead people back to life, but if they are alive for longer than 60 seconds then something of equal 'life measure' must die. Bring a flower back to life and another flower if you do not 'redead' the flower by touching it again.
Ned is very closed off, and according to him, he does not like suprises. He makes pies for a living at a place aptly named "The Pie Hole".

He also works with Emerson Cod who is a private detective and they solve crimes in this way in order to bring in money. Emerson Cod is an avid knitter. He saw Ned's special skill occur when a criminal he was chasing fell down a large gap between buildings and the criminal grazed against Ned, and was temporarily revived. Emerson loves the money he gets from his job.

Ned hears of his childhood love, Charlotte "Chuck" Charles' death, and he brings her back to life, and allows another to die in her place. She and Ned are still smitten with one another, but they cannot touch as Chuck would die. Chuck is struggling to cope with her new life, and adapting to being someone who is supposed to be dead. She keeps bees and has a love of cheese.

The only official employee at The Pie Hole is Olive Snook. She harbours a love for Ned too, but Ned always seems to shun her and is more interested in Chuck. She initially distrusted Chuck, but now the two have formed a close friendship. She was previously a proffesional horse jockey and was very good at it. Other men have their eye on Olive, but she seems oblivious to their attempts. Olive does learn a secret about Chuck too...
...which she is keeping for now from Chuck's aunts, Lily & Vivian, who spend a lot of time indoors away from social interaction. They took the loss of Chuck quite hard, though one of them does not show it. They were formerly famous aquatic artistes and between them, they have a few secrets of their own.


Hopefully that's a good as synopsis as any. You can buy season one on Play. It is probably elsewhere too, but I recommend Play for any DVD purchases.

Season One was unfortunately cut short by the WGA Strike, like many shows, but the episodes that were made are still full of wonder, much like Bryan Fuller's other death related show, Dead Like Me.

Hopefully you tune in to watch on ABC October 1st at 8/7 Central, or on whichever channel airs it for your country. In the meantime, here are some sneak peeks for the premiere. Also if you are on Twitter, follow the official ABC Pushing Daisies twitter here.





Monday 22 September 2008

Blogs I enjoy

So, hopefully regular readers (Do I have any?) will have noticed the "blogs I enjoy" section to the right of this blog post. It might be a bit odd, and I know you're not likely to click any of them, without some kind of explanation, so that is this. I did feel a bit silly doing this at first, as it's blogging about blogs, but spudrph convinced me with a tweet.

Let's start with Mental Poo.


This is the one I think people would be most wary of clicking on, especially if there are children in the house or something. However, it is one of the most (if not the most) hilarious blog I have ever read. It's run by a Blogger blogger who goes by the name of Moog for short. He is a 40-year old American man, who has stories that make me laugh for days. He has kids, who being at the young ages they are, cause constant amusement to those who don't have to put up with what they're actually doing. Like the way you laugh at a mother who is losing control of her kids after walking by. Maybe that's just me. This blog is also updated almost daily, and I would recommend reading through the archives for an extra dose of laughter.

From one end of the spectrum to the other now. Let's talk about one of the world's greatest men. That is Mr. Stephen Fry.

As you might have noticed, Stephen Fry prefers to refer to his scribblings on the internet as "Blessays", for he does write enough on subjects for them to be essays. Stephen Fry is a very hard man to describe. Perhaps Wikipedia does a good job, but I will leave that to you to decide. As well as his brilliant blog posts, he also does a podcast, though he calls them podgrams. They are some of the best podcasts I have listened to and allow you to get a good look on one of the smartest men in the world's view on things, and then you realise he is suprisingly normal.

From that to a new blog (to me anyways) called Perception Roll.

First off, I had to print screen and steal that banner. Damn you having no image. This blog is run by many people, but I was linked to it by austenw on Twitter when I mentioned my own blog in a tweet. Austen seems like a techy geek, though he is swayed by Kingdom Hearts also apparently. It is a very geeky blog, much like this one. Maybe more so actually. I am enjoying reading it so far. Not quite as much to write about your blog, I'm afraid Austen, perhaps after more reading.

Now something very geeky on my part. Junichi Masuda's blog.

Actually, it's official title, as you can see is "HIDDEN POWER of Masuda". Masuda is in charge of all the music for the Pokémon games and as such some news about that appears on the English translation of his blog. Unless you're a Pokémon fan, you probably don't care about this blog, and if you are a fan, you probably already read it.

Okay, now a Fanpopper's blog, appropriately named after himself, or maybe it was the other way around. Anyways, it's Maybe a Starbucks.

Also another print screen pinch. This blog is run by fellow Fanpopper maybeastarbucks and is updated with video games opinions and news as well as his main obsession of The Simpsons. I have never known anyone more knowledgeable on The Simpsons than this man. He seems to favour the Nintendo Wii over other consoles when doing reviews and the like. Funny story about him. Many of us on Fanpopn wondered about his real identity before I discovered his blog. I assume that the URL provides us with his real name, though this may yet be another sneaky facade and lie.

Now the final blog, but that doesn't make it worse than the other blogs, oh no. This blog is run by a fellow Twitter-er, and is called Randomness.

It is another fairly new blog for me again. This blog is run by chunkyrican. This may sound strange, but I seem to have learned about her life through various tweets rather than conversations. Slowly these tweets build me a picture of the girl who does post what's on her mind. Moving on. Randomness often shows through chunkyrican's strong Christian beliefs, and though I am not "in" a religion or faith, their history and stories intrigue me. I guess like the above screen print banner says "You either love it, or you don't".

Well, hopefully that will convince you unadventurous people out there to check out the blogs that I like.

In the meantime, if you would like your blog featured in the "Blogs I Enjoy" section, send me the link in the comments and I shall have a look, and see if I enjoy it.

Also, there's now a funky gadget called a SiteMeter at the bottom of my site, so I can see how to increase traffic from all you lovely people.

Tuesday 9 September 2008

Web Impact

No, not that kind of web. The internet web (a little rant on that phrase later perhaps). Those of you that follow me on Twitter as well knew that a blog post was in the making. A few days ago I was thinking about the web as I say, and how what we influences what happens in the future.

I find myself these days, signed up to a ton of sites, which I do try and regularly visit and I have the same username everywhere since at least 2008, which is eight years. I guess it's a nice name to have and it allows for some synergy. I have had other users recognise from different websites which is always nice. I wondered whether searching for my own name via Google would bring up many results, so I started to type away in to Firefox's search engine bar as usual. p...k...m...n...t. Then something odd happened.
I am a search result suggestion! Admittedly the second one, but I feel I have contributed little to the web, definetly not enough for anyone to need to search my name out. It's not like searching for example, the user DarkAlex who does all that custom firmware for PSP's. There's about 23,000 hits by the way for me. I know this is due to me having joined and contributed in these many sites and my blog and such, but it's still geekily cool.

I thought more about if I had influenced the internet in some way, and I suppose we all do. Every time you make a blog post, make a comment, digg a story or read an article, or even listen to some music you alter the internet and create discussion amongst people, no matter how few.

Let's call this example person Jeremy James.

Jeremy is linked to your blog via a friend, via a social networking site on a messenger. Jeremy is now able to read your blog posts at his leisure and decide whether he wants to return.

Just as he's about to click off the site, he notices your Twitter badge, and visits your Twitter page, where you have just tweeted about Sum 41. Jeremy remembers them and thinks he and you may think the same things about music. From your Twitter page, Jeremy visits your last.fm page and indeed sees that you have "Super" taste.

In another tab, he is still reading your blog, and see what you think about Macs. He agrees with some of your points, but disagrees with most of them.

Later at work, he discusses Macs with his co-workers and gets their opinions on them. He also uses your points in his discussion (one such instance of your influence on Jeremy). Later when he's finished work, he walks on by an Apple store. Thinking about your blog post again he goes in and has a little play on a Mac.

A week or so and more thinking, blog and tweet reading, Jeremy buys a Mac with his next paycheque. This was an indirect result of what you have written about on the net.

So that example was a lot longer than I planned to have it, but hopefully you get my point. What you say on the internet can affect people in the real world. I would caution you and tell you to "Be careful what you say" but there's freedom on the internet.

So go fuck a potato and come back and read some more influential posts when you have time.