I’m liveblogging this from SocialMediaCamp. We’re halfway through the day and so far it’s been a great event. Lots of interesting talks and a great atmosphere.

One of the sponsors of SocialMediaCamp is Bview and they’re holding a competition to win 99% off anything you want (up to £500)! You have to write a blogpost about it before midnight tonight and email them at competition@bview.com.

So: What Would I Do With 99% Off Anything I Want?

Ooh, tricky question. There’s still so many gadgets and things I’d like to have. A PlayStation 3. A video camera (maybe something simple like a Flip). A Nintendo DSi. A voice recorder (people who follow my tweets will know why). Another camera lens. More shoes (how can you not want more shoes?!). More clothes (again: how could you not want more clothes?!). 

I finally figured it out though: something that’s lately taken up a lot of my time. If I could get 99% off anything I want, I’d get:

The Ultimate Geeky Boardgame Collection!

I’d try to get as many of the best boardgames as possible, filling my house with boardgame madness. I love the site boardgamegeek.com and they’ve got a top 100 list of the highest rated boardgames. I don’t own any of the top 25 and I would love to get as many from this list as possible!

I kind of failed my previous set photo challenge 52 Themes; I just couldn’t get around to keeping track of when I had to make what type of photo. Plus I hadn’t uploaded a photo to Flickr for almost a month. So I set myself a new challenge: uploading at least 1 photo for each day for the next 100 days. So it’s not a real project 365, I’m not taking a photo every single day. Shouldn’t be too difficult, right? As long as I have an internet connection 🙂

Day 1: This photo is from one of the buildings here near us. It just looks so dreamy, and it has a great view over the Thames.

Day 2: I love puppets. The Muppet Show. Avenue Q. The Storyteller (especially this!). I’ve always loved the shows that feature these type of puppets.

Day 3: This photo from my little sister (Cassie) is from more than a year ago (I think, it’s Christmas 2007); she’s way more photogenic than I am. I really like how it came out, cause it was shot with my old Casio Powershot.

Day 4: I passed this Christmas stall last December on the Southbank. It’s only later at home when I discovered it’s full of elephant items!

Day 5: This turned out slightly blurrier than I hoped for, but still like the result.

Day 6: I like modern architecture styles; this one is mathematically pleasing to the eye 🙂

Day 7: This was taken during the training of the world championship for Labyrinth, a cool social game. It involves drawing a “maze” (it’s not really a maze, it’s just one path) on the floor with chalk. Then one person is blindfolded in the middle and has to find his way out of the maze as quick as possible. The other people have to be the walls of the maze and are only allowed to humm to give tips on which way the blindfolded person has to go.

Day 8: I got to go to The Gadget Show Live last Saturday, a cool gadget exhibition in Birmingham. These are Sony Ericsson’s new Bluetooth watches that can act as a remote to your mobile phone. Pretty cool!

Day 9: I love the oldish feel of this photo, wish I could figure out how to pull this off with more of my photos.

Day 10: Gravity. According some people that’s how your supposed to pronounce “graffiti” (I’ve always believed it’s grah-vee-tee). Which has always annoyed the hell out of me.

Episode 108: “Even our banking is going virtual”

Interesting animation explaining the events and technologies which eventually led to the “creation” of the Internet:

[Watch the video on MissGeeky.com]

Via Geeks Are Sexy

I’ve only recently begun wearing knee-high and thigh-high socks, but I’ve gotten completely addicted to getting these socks in all different colours and patterns. Now this recent etsy find though has got to be the cutest I’ve come across!

Tattoo socks! How cute are these? There are a couple of different designs available (check out the esty store for the others), I featured my favourites here.

(Yay! You found the hidden treasure! Leave a comment behind with “your hidden gem of London”)

The socks are available in 4 different body colour shades (ultra pale, light mocha, deep mocha, cafe latte) and white. The design is printed in black on one sock; you get one printed sock and a blank sock to create an asymmetrical look.

There are two sizes/lengths for sale: knee-high socks for $13 and thigh-high socks for $18. Shipping is only $2.80 per order.

Via Why Me?

I haven’t done a Trailerrific post in a quite some time now, so I thought I’d start that up again. This time around though I wanted to change the format. Instead of featuring a list of all the trailers that came out, I’ll devote an entire blog post to just one trailer.

I came across a review of Moon some time ago and it just looks intriguing. Here’s the description from Apple.com:

It is the near future. Astronaut Sam Bell is living on the far side of the moon, completing a three-year contract with Lunar Industries to mine Earth’s primary source of energy, Helium-3. It is a lonely job, made harder by a broken satellite that allows no live communications home. Taped messages are all Sam can send and receive. Thankfully, his time on the moon is nearly over, and Sam will be reunited with his wife, Tess, and their three-year-old daughter, Eve, in only a few short weeks. Finally, he will leave the isolation of “Sarang,” the moon base that has been his home for so long, and he will finally have someone to talk to beyond “Gerty,” the base’s well-intentioned, but rather uncomplicated computer.

And here’s the trailer:

The more times I see the trailer the more closer I feel I get to figuring this movie out. My tip: if you want to be surprised, don’t watch the trailer too often (or not at all 😉 ).

Moon – Release Date: 12 June (USA limited), 3 September (Australia), not yet announced for Europe or other countries

I discovered a great little bookshop called Bookends in Charing Cross Road (London, of course) that sells “unwanted” books at a discount. One of the books I found there was Warprize by Elizabeth Vaughan (for £2.50!). This book had been on my radar for some time, but I couldn’t figure out whether or not it would be my type of book. Finding it for £2.50 though? I couldn’t resist trying it out.

Warprize is about Xylara, Daughter of the Xy, who has chosen to serve her people as a healer, until she is needed to make a marriage of alliance. Her half-brother, Xymund, is on the throne, but his reign is unstable and he is not popular in the eyes of his people. The kingdom of Xy is under attack by the barbarian Firelanders, and casualties are high on both sides. Disobeying Xymund’s orders, Xylara tends to the wounded captured Firelanders, but this soon brings her to the attention of the Firelander Warlord. When Xy is forced to surrender, the Warlord demands but one thing: to claim Xylara as his Warprize. 

I couldn’t put this book down! It’s been ages since I finished a book this fast: in two evenings, reading it before going to bed, and then a little bit during the afternoon, nothing more. The book is only 300 pages, so it was a pretty quick read anyway. Still: it’s definitely a book you’ll at least attempt to read in one setting.

Genre-wise it’s a romantic fantasy. Regular fantasy readers might be put off by the romance bit, thinking it’s too much of a romance novel. It isn’t. It does have a romantic relationship as a key plot line, but it nudges much more to the fantasy side. Lots of descriptions of the world and the differences in traditions between the Xyians and the Firelanders. Romance readers will love this book too though; Xylara and Keir are a great couple, although their relationship does unfold slower than in your usual romance fare. Their story is continued in Warsworn and Warlord, so don’t expect a HEA (Happily Ever After) at the end of this book.

The whole story is told from Xylara’s point of view, and at times that can be quite restricting. I would have loved to see the perspectives of some of the other characters, especially Keir. Despite that though, Xylara is a great character to follow: she takes her vows as a healer serious, and is willing to risk anything, if it means saving lives. Because of the first person view point, you really get to see how her mind works and why she acts like she does.

Warprize is a surprising great read and definitely worth getting. Especially if you find it for only £2.50 🙂 Warprize by Elizabeth Vaughan is £5.59 on Amazon.co.uk and $6.99 on Amazon.com.

Episode 107: “The Electric Friendship Generator”

I have a love-hate relationship with Facebook. On the one hand I find it really useful and occasionally “fun” to use, on the other hand it sometimes just annoys me to no end. Anyhow, I found this little video pretty funny on how to “behave” on Facebook:

[Watch the video on MissGeeky.com]

Via raxraxrax

Last Saturday I was invited by the team of 3mobilebuzz to The Gadget Show Live in Birmingham. I must confess I had no idea what The Gadget Show was, but it sounded like fun so I agreed to coming along. I’m glad I did, cause it turned out to be a great day.

So for those of you like me who don’t know what The Gadget Show is (and why there is a Gadget Show Live), here’s a little explanation. The Gadget Show is a British TV series on Five, featuring reviews and previews of the latest gadgets and other technology news. Apparently it’s really popular, so this year they arranged The Gadget Show Live: part live show and part gadget exhibition.

The exhibition floor had a lot more stands than I expected, ranging from computing to gaming to DIY to biking. Unlike most exhibitions, where I always feel as if I’ve seen everything after wandering around for 2 hours, I still don’t feel as if I saw everything at The Gadget Show Live. I spent more than 6 hours going from stall to stall and talking to people, and I still feel as if I missed some stuff. I’ll write about the cool gadgets I came across later this week, cause they all deserve their own posts. 

The live show was fun too. We had tickets for the 17:00 viewing and it was packed! The show consisted of silly contests (whoever could hold up a laptop the longest with one hand won it) and some weird, yet interesting performances. The coolest were the digital jugglers Feeding The Fish, a juggling act with lasers and LED batons, creating a visually stunning spectacle. 

If you want to see more of The Gadget Show Live, check out Marianne Taylor’s blog. I’ve also got some photos up on my Flickr event account, but they didn’t came out as I wanted them to (I really have to sit down and learn how to use my camera properly).

I Love You, Man stars Paul Rudd as Peter Klaven, a real-estate agent who has just asked his girlfriend Zooey (Rashida Jones from The Office) to marry him. After overhearing an awkward conversation of Zooey and all her girlfriends about him, Peter realizes he doesn’t have any guy friends to be his Best Man for his wedding. To rectify that situation, he asks the help of his gay brother Robbie (Andy Samberg from Saturday Night Live) who helps him arrange man-dates to find that new best friend. They all fail miserably though and Peter is about to give up, when he meets Sydney (Jason Segel from Forgetting Sarah Marshall and How I Met Your Mother) at an open house.

Even though Judd Apatow had nothing to do with I Love You, Man, I’m guessing people will compare it to Apatow’s previous movies, like Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Knocked Up. It does fit in that range of comedies though and it’s not that hard to see why people place those movies in the same group: they star the same set of familiar faces (Rudd and Segal) and feature a refreshingly new premise. In this case, that premise of the film is the “bromance” between Peter and Sydney and how difficult it can be as an adult to find new friends. It has all the trappings of a regular romantic comedy (they meet, they go on a first date, there’s a montage of all the fun things they do together, they have a fight and break-up, then get together again) without the actual romance part. And it works. 

Paul Rudd and Jason Segel both turn in a great performance and their bromantic chemistry on screen is believable. Rudd’s character is charming as the perfect boyfriend, who always put more time into his girlfriends than into his friends. He knows what to do and how to act around woman. But now that he has to find a best friend, you realize how awkward and hopeless he is around men; he has no idea how to connect on a guy-to-guy level. Sydney, on the other hand, is the complete opposite: he’s macho, self-confident and has always had guy friends. Together, these two characters form a great on-screen duo, supplying us with some hilarious situations.

Besides the two main characters, there is a great supporting cast. Rashida Jones is adorable as Zooey; her character stays calm and collected through out most of the movie, and it gives us a nice break from some of the whiny “wife”/”girlfriend” characters there are out there. Andy Samberg is brilliant as Peter’s gay brother, although I wished they had given him more screen time. I loved the characters of Jon Favreau (Barry, the always grumpy husband of Zooey’s best friend) and Thomas Lennon (Doug, the gay man-date that Peter goes on); they both added some great scenes.

My only peeve with this movie were with some of the jokes/scenes. Now I get that this is a comedy and not every joke will be to everyone’s liking, but I didn’t laugh as much as I expected (let’s put it this way: I laughed more at the screening of 17 Again with Zac Efron). Early in the movie there’s a projectile vomiting scene (no, I’m not kidding here), which was just way too gross, and went on too long (the scene, not the vomiting). There were more scenes where you “got” what the joke was, but nobody in the cinema was laughing. Maybe it’s just not my type of humour, but I was disappointed that it wasn’t as funny as it could have been.

Stars Paul Rudd, Jason Segel, Rashida Jones, Jaime Pressly, Jon Favreau, Andy Samberg, JK Simmons, Thomas Lennon, Andy Samberg, Jean Villepique, Rob Huebel
Written by John Hamburg & Larry Levin
Certification UK 15 | US R
Runtime 105 minutes
Directed by John Hamburg

This review was cross-posted on Screenjabber.com.

Episode 106: “oh snap, epic Pwnage”

Funny College Humor vid (although not everyone might find it funny):

Can someone tell me though where this music is from? It seems so familiar…

[Watch the video on MissGeeky.com]