I promised photos of our trip to Dorset, so here are a couple of our first day there. We had tickets to the Melplash show, an agricultural exhibition, featuring farm animals, country food and the like. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it was great fun! Highlight had to be the goats; they were just so cute.

Goat with a teddy bear:

Pretty flowers:

A “thrilling” swordfight:

Llama:

Eagle (? correct me, if I’m wrong, my bird watching skills aren’t that good):

Big bull:

Kudos go to Cristiano for all the beautiful photos; see more of them on his Flickr page.

Since a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been hearing more and more about Shomi books (Book Binge has had a Spotlight series on Shomi the past month). I had been meaning to blog about them for a while and then this contest came along, giving me the perfect opportunity to do so. All I have to do, is pimp the contest on my blog (check, done that) and show which Shomi books I’d like to read in the future. 

So what exactly are Shomi books? They’re a new line of speculative romance books from Dorchester, all not bound to the rules of our reality. Some of them are futuristic, some time-travel, some paranormal. It’s a great mix of a different kind of romance novel. So far there are 9 books out and two coming out in the next two months.

While they’re not all my cup of tea, some of the stories look great… and completely different to any previous romance books I’ve read. Here are a couple that grabbed my attention:

Countdown (Michelle Maddox)

A romance novel with a plot most similar to Cube and Saw? Interesting (sometimes I wish I could embed voices into this text. That ‘Interesting’ definitely had a mad Transylvanian scientist accent to it.) Set on a post-plague Earth, Kira Jordan is a thief with a wicked sense of humour. The book starts with her waking up, handcuffed to a wall in the dark. And she’s not alone. Chained to the opposite wall, is the convicted mass murderer, Rogan Ellis. With only 60 seconds to escape, Kira is forced to work with him, if she ever wants to make it out of there alive.

Moongazer (Marianne Mancusi)

I’m not completely sure what the setting of this book is. It seems to be a paranormal/other dimension type of story. Skye Brown is a normal girl in New York, with everything she wants: a cool job, a boyfriend, a great apartment. But at night she has weird dreams. Of a post-apocalyptic world with a bleak futuristic wasteland. In them, she’s not Skye, but Mariah Quinn, a Moongazer. It sounds kind of fun, right? Is it another world? Are they messages from the future? I can’t wait to get my hands on this.

Phenomenal Girl 5 (A.J. Menden)

If it wasn’t for the Book Binge’s spotlight, I most probably would have ignored this book completely. Lainey is Phenomenal Girl 5, a superhero with great strength and the ability to fly. She’s just been made a member of the Elite Hands of Justice, but before she can go on active duty, she’ll have to complete her training with one of the toughest superheroes around: the Reincarnist. It sounds a bit cheesy, but after reading an excerpt Book Binge posted, I just knew I had to put this on my To Read list.

Check out the Shomi website to see all the books (and excerpts). If you want to read reviews about some of the books, the Book Binge blog has got some interesting ones.

As I’ve said many times before, I consider myself a real geek. It’s not something I’ve grown into the last couple of years or have taken on because it’s nowadays “hip”. I can seriously say that at all stages in my life I’ve been a geek in one form or another.

A while ago (10 months to be exact) I wrote a post about the definition of geekiness, where I tried to explain what I think a geek is. At the time I came up with the following:

a person with a passionate devotion to and an extensive knowledge of a particular interest

The main difference from the original “definition” that I wanted to bring across, was the fact that geeks aren’t just fans liking a specific topic, but that they truly are obsessed/passionate/devoted to it. Plus the fact that they aren’t necessarily socially inept. Yes, there are non-social geeks… but that doesn’t mean we all are.

Photo by alistair_uk on Flickr

Now I’ve noticed most people tend to agree with my definition (in as far as I can claim it as “my” definition). Except for one point. They always assume the particular interest is tech-related. Geeks mean gadget-loving, computer-wielding tech-lovers. Is this true? I don’t think so. In my eyes, you could be a geek in any topic: from math to snowboarding to mobiles.

And that brings me to the title of this post: six degrees of geekiness. I am six types of geeks all rolled into one*:

1. The TV Show Geek

2. The Sci-Fi Geek

3. The Movie Geek

4. The Book Geek

5. The Game Geek

6. The Computer Geek

I was going to write about how I got into each of these geekhoods, only to discover there’s way more backstory to each of them (hey, I’m a blogger, I like to talk about myself, get used to it). For instance, my descent into Sci-Fi started with my attempt to enter a harmless drawing competition at our local mall. And how could I not tell the tale of how I became a computer geek without mentioning my beloved graphic calculator?

Photo by illustir on Flickr

So instead I thought I’d do a collection of blog posts: each one about another of my geek sides. You can expect the first some time later this week. In the mean time, why don’t you share a bit of your geek background stories. How many degrees of geekiness do you possess? 

* I am now omitting my minor prior geekhoods of Math Geek, Egypt Geek, Conspiracy Theory Geek, Paranormal/Ancient Weird Stuff Geek. I’m not as obsessed about those topics now as I once used to be. But, seriously, you’d be surprised at how many weird random facts are just floating through my brain. 

Sorry, it’s been a bit quiet here lately! I went on a 5-day trip down to Dorset with a couple of friends, but as we were all geeks (we even called our trip Geeks in The Country), I took my laptop with me and thought I’d have time to blog a bit. Instead I’ve spent a great couple of days sightseeing, enjoying the countryside and eating wonderful loads of food. And I was completely tech free: no blogging, no emails, no Twitter. It felt like a real holiday; I haven’t been on holiday now for 2 years and it was great just to get away from all the busyness. 

I’ll be uploading more photos later this week and write a blog post or two about the wonderful things I’ve seen. For now: what do you think of my new wellies?

Episode 81: *look at me! I’m so cute!*

This may officially be the cutest animal ever:

I’ve never been the type of girl that spent hours daydreaming about and planning her wedding (I much rather daydreamed about… ooh, wait a minute, that’s a good idea for a blog post, you’ll just have to wait and see). I am though a sucker for pretty dresses and some of these of Disney Fairy Tale Wedding Dresses are just gorgeous (and some are just plain hideous).

There are six character lines to choose from: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Jasmine, Ariel and Belle. The idea is that each line of dresses ‘captures the unique spirit and beauty of each Disney princess’. Each Spring/Fall line has 3 different styles (so far in total there are about 9 different dresses per character). Here are a couple of the dresses:

Cinderella is ‘classic glamour’.

Sleeping Beauty is ‘regal radiance’.

Snow White is ‘sweet elegance’.

Jasmine is ‘bohemian chic’.

Ariel is ‘sexy and sultry’.

Belle is ‘stylish sophistication’.

Check out all the dresses at the Disney Fairy Tale Weddings website.

(Photos courtesy and copyright of Disney)

My mother was in town again, visiting with a friend, so last week we went to see We Will Rock You with them. And WOW! As much as Joseph disappointed me, this just amazed me. It’s really a unique experience.

A while ago I discovered that TFL offers special deals for Oyster card holders, like discounts for museums, restaurants and theaters. One of those deals were 2for1 tickets for We Will Rock You, so I was able to get 4 tickets for only £110. And the seats we got were pretty great: we were about halfwayish (row 11 from the 27) in the stalls, on the right hand side, but exactly next to one of the aisles. By the way, I only got the tickets the day before the show, so even if you’re a bit last minute, chances are there are still good seats available.

I didn’t know anything about the musical before going there and to be honest I didn’t have any expectations at all. Not in the sense “ooh, it’s not going to be good”, more of a “oh, a musical with Queen songs in it” and just stopping there with the line of thought. I mean, I never realized that like with the MammaMia! musical they would interweave all the songs into a story (I know, silly me). So that story really came as a surprise to me.

And what a story! Set 300 years in the future, Earth is now called ‘Planet Mall’ and everything is controlled by the Globalsoft Corporation. Everybody wears the same clothes, watches the same movies and listens to the same (cheesy pop) music. Musical instruments are forbidden and rock music is only known as a myth of the past. Teenager Galileo Figaro is a bit of an outcast; he has weird dreams and hears strange words in his head, most of which are lyrics of songs (which he doesn’t know though). 

It seems like a silly plot, but it’s a great setting for all the featured Queen songs. Almost all the main hits appear in some form or another in here (for instance, Don’t Stop Me Now is cut short after a few lines). I never was much of a Queen fan (don’t know why, just never took the time to listen to their songs properly), but this musical has turned me around; I love the songs!

Another thing I didn’t expect was the humour in We Will Rock You. The jokes are mainly clever and silly one-liners, referencing pop culture, but some of them hit the mark perfectly. I can’t recall any exact examples, but at times the audience was completely in stitches.

We Will Rock You is a great, fun musical with songs a lot of people can sing along to (although it was a shame no one actually sang along until the last couple of songs). If you haven’t had the chance to see it yet, I highly recommend it.

Sidenote: a week before the musical I went to Mobile Geeks of London and the pub it was held at shared the same back alley as the back entrance of the Dominion Theatre. I saw most of the cast (without knowing at the time though who was who), but even cooler: Brian May! Anthony and Annie Mole both got some cool blurry photos.

Interesting links for August 12th through August 16th:

• Series Creator Kevin Falls Reveals The Secrets Of JOURNEYMAN!! – AICN interview with the creator and main writer of Journeyman. I’m still annoyed that this series was cancelled. I think if it wasn’t for the writer’s strike, they may have actually gone on with it. Such a shame, cause it could have been great.
• Styrofoam dome homes – Don’t these houses look adorable?
• A Collection of Olympic Torches – Gallery of all the different designs the Olympic Torch has taken on throughout the years. My favourite is the Sydney 2000 one, although I might be a bit biased.
• The Blogadilla Swedish Furniture Name Generator – I’m MELLYNTA, a Coffee Table. Who are you?
• Springfield Punx – Unique little blog from a guy who creates Simpsons versions of pop culture characters. Take a look at his archive, he’s done quite a lot already. Spiderman, Batman, The Matrix, Back To The Future, they all get the yellow Simpsons makeover.
• Jason de Caires Taylor, Underwater Sculptures – This underwater art is just creepy and beautiful at the same time.
• Page F30: Why Norwegian is the easiest language for English speakers to learn – I’m now bilingual in Dutch and English, but I only learned Dutch properly when I was 8. It wasn’t too difficult, but then I had already been “exposed” to the language and was still young. This blog post not only explains why Norwegian is “easy” for English speakers (not sure if I completely agree though), but also compares it to other languages like Dutch and Afrikaans.
• Selling Women’s Clothes To Women: Athleta Vs. Victoria’s Secret [Today In Catalogs] – Interesting comparison of two catalogues and how they present their clothes.
• The Beauty of Steampunk Fashion – I love a couple of these outfits. I don’t have the guts or the eccentricity to pull something like that off in real life, but they still look amazing.

Episode 80: “Grrr…”

Octopuses in love. Need I say more?

After seeing a couple of other people post their results on Flickr, I thought I’d give a go of FaceYourManga. It’s an manga-avatar creation website, where you can choose from a whole range of different features to build your own manga face. Here’s what I came up with:

So… does this look like me? In my opinion, kind of. I wished you could specify your own colours (I mean , how hard can that be?). My hair and eye colour aren’t right at all; they’re a much warmer brown, while this is just bland. Anyhow, it’s a nice little app to play with.

Check out some other people’s Manga Faces: Cristiano, Alper, Dan, Eelke and Jo.