I love this doormat from BigBolt.com:

Keyboard keys! As a doormat. Where people enter your house. Brilliant, right? I know, I know, it’s a bit on the dorky side, but still pretty cool. There’s also a “home” version:

Both doormats are available for $30 on Kikkerland (Enter Doormat and Home Doormat).

Via SwissMiss

Interesting links for April 13th through April 15th:

• Kyle XY writer/co-producer Julie Plec answers questions about the ‘Kyle XY’ finale – Interview with one of the writers behind Kyle XY. She explains what would have happened on the show, if it hadn't been cancelled.
• The Pursuit of Laziness – Post from the genius behind XKCD about reading in bed with a Kindle and how to create the most optimal solution of holding your "book" aloft.
• If We Ran Battlestar Galactica – Huge list of repsonse/review from sci-fi authors/bloggers about the finale of Battlestar Galactica. I still haven't read all of them, but it's great to read the different views of everybody. Pretty obvious, but: SPOILERS for the finale.
• The Top Ten Evil Queens of Fantasy – Evil Queens, yay! The post only sticks to movie queens though; there are so much more brilliant evil queens from fantasy novels that would put all this villainesses to shame.

Episode 105: “When the night has come and the land is dark”

Playing For Change is a multimedia movement created to inspire, connect and bring peace to the world through music. This cover of Ben E King’s classic features 37 musicians from 5 different continents:

[Watch the video on MissGeeky.com]

Via Back In Skinny Jeans

I try to go with an open mind into any movie I see; how can you really judge a movie without watching it first? Despite that though I do catch myself disregarding movies, because of the first impressions of the plot or the actor. I had that here with 17 Again: a starring vehicle for the new Disney poster child Zac Efron, with a Freaky Friday twist? Nah, not for me. And yet surprisingly it was.

In 1989, Mike O’Donnell (Zac Efron) is the star of his high school basketball team, with a bright future and a college scholarship almost in his grasp. He throws it all away though when he finds out his girlfriend Scarlet is pregnant and asks her to marry him. 20 years later Mike’s (now Matthew Perry) life is falling apart: his marriage to Scarlet is on the brink of a divorce, he’s got no real relationship with his teenage kids and he’s living with his high school nerd-turned-billionaire best friend Ned. But Mike gets a second chance when he is magically transformed to 17 again.

The age transformation gimmick has been rehashed so many times in Hollywood: kids wanting to be older, adults wanting to be young again, we’ve seen it all before. Freaky Friday. Big. And now 17 Again. Add to that plot lines borrowed from other ‘teen’ movies, like the Back To The Future “must not attract the family member” and you’ve got a movie that reeks of unoriginality. Regardless of that though, 17 Again is a funny and entertaining teen movie.

As much as I hate to admit it, that mainly comes because of the likability of Zac Efron. In all previous movies I’ve seen with him, he comes off as a little too charming, a little too smug; I never got why so many teenage girls were so hysterical about him. But with 17 Again his charisma carries the entire movie. Zac Efron just charms the socks off of you and you can’t help but like him.

The rest of the supporting cast are great too. While Matthew Perry doesn’t get that much screen time, it’s his performance at the start of the movie that makes you begin to care for the character of Mike. Most scenes with Mike’s best friend Ned are hilarious: he has the best pop culture one-liners, his entire house is full of geeky memorabilia, his wardrobe is outrageous and his antics to woo the high school headmistress are awkwardly funny. There’s a brilliant scene at the start of the movie where Ned and Mike have fight with Ned’s Lord of the Rings and Star Wars props. Leslie Mann is great as Scarlet, although she doesn’t get as much comedy time as we’ve seen from her in previous movies.

The only drawback I had with 17 Again is it’s wrap-up. After the predictable reveal, the movie ends pretty quickly, giving almost no screentime to the stories of the other characters.

17 Again is a light funny movie, which deserves a wider audience than just hysterical Zac Efron devotees. Yes, teenage girls are going to love it, but there’s more in this movie that will attract others too. I was expecting a movie I’d hate, but instead I discovered I actually did enjoy it. 17 Again never reaches the heights of teen classics, like Mean Girls or Clueless, but it’s an entertaining 102 minutes and well worth paying a cinema ticket for.

Episode 104: “meh”

I love the theory of the uncanny valley, and it surprises me how many people have never heard about it. I usually suck when trying to explain it to people, but next time I just should use this funny little video:

[Watch the video on MissGeeky.com]

For some book series I won’t be reviewing the individual books; at least not when I’ve read 3 books of the same series after each other. Then I can just as well review them in batch. 

This review is about Gena Showalter’s Lords of The Underworld series. I’ve read the first three books: The Darkest Night, The Darkest Kiss and The Darkest Pleasure. It’s set in our modern day world, but with a mythological twist. Do you know the myth about Pandora’s Box? The story’s real, but we humans don’t know the entire truth. Pandora was a warrior charged by the gods with protecting the box. Insulted because the gods chose Pandora as the box’s protector instead of any of them, a team of immortal warriors deceived Pandora and conspired to open the box. By doing so though they released powerful demons, whose only cage was now destroyed. The gods punished the warriors by using them as the demons’ new cages; each warrior was cursed with a demon. 

Each book in the Lord of The Underworld series is about one of these warriors and their heroine. The first book, The Darkest Night, features Maddox, the Keeper of Violence. Because of the demon locked inside of him, he’s prone to vicious, violent outbursts, lashing out at anyone who’s near him regardless whether they are friend or foe. But all that changes when Ashlyn Darrow enters his life, a psychic tormented by voices of the past.

I won’t reveal who the couples are in the following two books, cause that just spoils part of the story. Each heroine though is a perfect match for her hero, without being weak and helpless. Showalter knows how to write strong women, and each book delivers something different.

So far I’m loving this series just as much as Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark Hunter series and JR Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood. Like those books this series has a strong mythology, adapting “common” myths into a paranormal fantasy world. I love how not everything is revealed at the start and that you slowly start to discover there’s more to this world than initially seems.

From the three books, the third has the weakest main story, but it makes up for that with glimpses of what may come in the next couple of books. Hints of potential future heroines and plot lines are shining through that story and I’m really curious to see how the next book will unfold.

The Darkest Night: on Amazon.com for $6.99, on Amazon.co.uk for £6.29
The Darkest Kiss: on Amazon.com for $6.99, not yet available on Amazon.co.uk
The Darkest Pleasure: on Amazon.com for $6.99, not yet available on Amazon.co.uk

Wow. Just: wow. This BarCamp was completely different than all the previous ones I’ve attended. Why? Because instead of being a regular attendee, I offered to volunteer during (and one day before) the event. Instead of that diminishing my BarCamp adventure (which I think most people would expect), it has only intensified it and heightened the overall experience; this BarCamp felt so much more greater and satisfying just because I was finally able to give something back to the wonderful Barcamp community.

Uber kudos have to go to the amazing BarCampLondon6 team! Emma, Kevin, Dan, Caz, Leeky, Tom, Cristiano, Dirk, David, Eva-Lotte, David, Mary, Paul and Jan have all been working for the past 4 months on creating such a great event. My two-day contribution is minor compared to the time and effort they’ve put into this and without them this BarCamp would never have happened.

For me, this BarCamp started on Friday evening, when I headed with Cristiano to the Guardian offices to help with setting things up. Together with some others I was appointed the tasks of arranging the swag bags: filling them with goodies, hanging name tags on them, adding the personalized Spreadshirt T-shirts and alphabetizing it all (not an easy and quick task for 150 bags and more than 1500 “goodies”).

Part of this work carried on to the Saturday morning; it’s a bit blurry to remember exactly which of this stuff happened on the Friday and which on the Saturday. After that I was set on the registration desk for 3 hours, checking in people and keeping track of the overall number of attendees. There was a fantastic turnup; I’m guessing things like the personalized Spreadshirt T-Shirt, the donations and the ‘confirm you ticket’ email, all helped to combat the no-showiness of people. 

The rest of the two days I could easily attend sessions, interspersed with bouts of helping out during food deliveries, clean up and stuff like that. Here are a couple of the sessions I went to:

Carcassonne
The first session I went to was Cristiano’s and mine joint session about how to play Carcassonne. We had a great turn out and were lucky that Sheila showed up with her box too. We split into two groups to explain the rules and managed to get both games finished within the time.

Social Games
I went to this session thinking it would be about Werewolf and those type of social games. It wasn’t, but it turned out to be an interesting discussion about games that allow you to portray and play with relationships, like Facade or The Sims.

Miracle Berries
Reinier had brought special miracle berry tablets with him that alters your taste; after sucking on them until they dissolve, everything you eat tastes sweeter. Lemons aren’t sour anymore, off-season strawberries taste delicious and no-sugar yoghurt tastes sugary. At least in theory: it seemed to work for everyone but me. The lemons were suckable, but everything else for me was pretty much the same.
 
Acupressure
While I’m still pretty skeptical about “treatments” like this, I have to admit my body felt better after this session. I’m almost convinced that it’s because of this session that my legs didn’t hurt at all during the entire two days. 

Ancient Techonology
Jane described this session to me as an experiment with a potato and a pencil. How can you not go to a session like that?! It was all about how to create your own spindle: stick a pencil through a potato, wind some string in a certain way around it and start spinning! Jane had actually brought wool with her too, so everyone was spinning and spindling as crazy.

The Saturday evening was of course spent playing Werewolf and other games. Tom and Dom held another of their Geek Quizzes, this time it was tricker than the one my team won in Liverpool. We also managed to convince more people into playing Carcassonne and it seemed like everybody enjoyed it. I only got to play two rounds of Werewolf this time, and of course the one round where I was a werewolf I got lynched because of my past reputation.

The entire weekend was great fun and I’m sure I haven’t even covered a quarter of what happened in those two days. Next week (this Saturday) we’ll be heading down to BarCampBournemouth, which is sure to be great too. I’m already psyched though for the next London; hopefully I can help a bit more this time. Anyone else interested?

I came across this little saying on For Me, For You and it’s just so so true:

Wonderful way to always keep positive 😀

Episode 103: “The Hours”

Cute little stop motion, made for the 4th Estate Publishers’ 25th Anniversary:

This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.

Via Larissa Meek