ThinkGeek has an awesome new line of tees with geek heroines! The first one was launched a couple of months ago, but since then they’ve added two more designs. Right now there are 3 in total, and I’m hoping they’ll add more in the future.

My favourite so far is the Marie Curie one; I love the simple drawing and the raspberry colour.

Marie Curie – Pioneer of Nuclear Physics

Ada Lovelace – The First Computer Programmer

Mary Shelley – Writer of Frankenstein

Depending on the size and the design, the tees range from $13.99-$18.99; they’re available in 5 different sizes (S, M, L, XL, XXL).

I got to try out this bag before Christmas, but because of being so sick around that time, I completely forgot to write up this review. And I forgot to take photos of the bag (and me). Anyway here’s finally my review.

The Silvi is a cross body bag with a quilted design, available in black, brown, gold and black pebbled. I thought it would be perfect as a secondary bag for most of my medium gadgets, like my iPad and DSLR. It’s a bit smaller though than I imagined. I tried to put my sleeved iPad in and it just fits. Just. It’s not a bag I’d comfortably use though as “my iPad bag” (maybe it works better with other sleeves, but with my one it was a too tight fit. I do have quite a bulky sleeve though). For my DSLR though it was great! It fit nicely in the Silvi with some spare room for a second lens and whatever other gadgets you have with you.

On the outside the Silvi has two pockets (front and back) which are handy for things you easily need to reach (like your Oyster card and phone). It closes with a small magnet, so you also don’t feel as if it’s completely open and available for everyone to reach into (yes, I am a bit paranoid of pickpockets). Besides that there is a small zipped front pocket, slightly larger than a credit card (it’s a great spot to store your business cards). Inside is one main compartment with a zipped pocket on one side and a mobile phone sized pocket on the other.

The Silvi is a cute little bag and it would work great as a secondary gadget bag. It’s perfect for a DSLR and similar sized gadgets.

The Silvi is available on the Knomo website for £65.

As regular readers here will know, I’m a huge Disney fan. I love the “golden era” Disney movies; I’m not sure whether I should admit this, but I can sing along to a scary amount of Disney songs. I’ve been so excited since Disney returned to doing musicals. For me, it hasn’t really mattered whether it’s CGI vs hand-drawn (or even live action, to be honest), or fairytale vs non-fairytale; what I want are sing-alongable songs and pretty scores.

While I loved Enchanted, I wasn’t that impressed with The Princess and The Frog, mainly because I didn’t like the music. So I had been curious to see how that would turn out with Tangled; which way would it go?

Tangled takes the tale of Rapunzel, but adds a whole new extra back story, new characters and magical hair. As a child Rapunzel (Mandy Moore) is kidnapped by an old woman (Donna Murphy) who needs Rapunzel’s magical healing hair to keep her young and immortal. Her “mother” keeps her locked away in a tower, telling her it’s for her own good and that the world is too scary and dangerous a place for someone like her. But when a dashing bandit, Flynn Rider (Zachary Levi), discovers Rapunzel and her tower, she demands to be shown the outside world.

I got to see Tangled two months ago, and ever since seeing it I can’t stop listening to the soundtrack! You’ve got all the usual suspects: the cheerful opening song (When Will My Life Begin), the evil villain song (Mother Knows Best), the side character song (I’ve Got A Dream) and the love song (I See The Light). I was initially a bit underwhelmed by When Will My Life Begin and Mother Knows Best, but after listening to them more, I actually really like them. The other two (I’ve Got A Dream and I See The Light) I loved the moment I heard/saw them in the cinema. Although the scene for I See The Light with its lanterns makes it difficult not to love that song; it’s just so fitting and romantic.

And that brings us to the CGI and the 3D. The lantern scene is gorgeous, and the prettiest use of 3D I’ve seen so far. I was expecting to miss the hand drawn animation, but the CGI in Tangled is great. It somehow was very reminiscent of hand drawn animation, with the characters having the same vibe as hand drawn ones (read Bleeding Cool’s interview with Glen Keane, he’s had a lot to do with that).

I also love the relationship between the two main characters. In most Disney movies you’ll find a strong lead character and a weaker less-prominent love interest. With Tangled, both Rapunzel and Flynn get time to grow and they’re both equally strong characters. Rapunzel is sweet, yet one of the feistiest Disney princesses. I think she’s my second favourite princess so far (with bookworm Belle being still #1). Flynn is great as the swashbuckling rogue, although I can’t really say much more about this character without spoiling the story.

Mother Gothel isn’t the scariest villain, but definitely the most manipulative one (although Jafar comes close behind). Pretending to be Rapunzel’s mother and basically guilt-tripping her into staying in a locked tower, Gothel is a twisted portayal of the over-protective mother. Finally I’ve got to mention the horse Maximus. Maximus has some of the funniest moments in the movie, even though he acts more like a dog than a horse.

Tangled was everything I was hoping it would be. It’s got a sweet story, two strong main characters, adorable and funny sidekicks, catchy songs and gorgeous visuals. I really want Disney to do more musicals, cause they’re just so much fun!

Last Tuesday I got to go to my first Qype event. Now I’ve been a member of Qype for some time now, but have mainly used it to see other people’s reviews. I never took the time to write anything up myself, so this will finally be my first Qype review!

The event was at the Bayswater branch of All Star Lanes, a 50s style diner and bowling alley. I had passed this place so many times when I used to still live in Notting Hill (it was on the route of my 24 hour bus), but from the outside it just seems like any other bowling alley. It was such a nice surprise to discover it was so much more! Inside everything has a 50s theme; the waiters and bar staff have 50s inspired outfits, the diner has nice low comfy booths and a black and white checkered tile floor, and the whole place is decorated with paintings of pinups.

We started out with drinks in the main bar area, where there were several round red booths (each fitting about 8-10 people). Once everyone had arrived, the 20 or so of us settled down in the diner where All Star lanes had provided us with our own menu:

There were a couple of yummy sounding starters to choose from, but I couldn’t resist the Spiced BBQ Wings, Celery and Blue Cheese Dip:

This turned out to be so messy, but so very tasty. The wings could have been a bit spicier for my taste (but then I’m a sucker for extremely spicy food). The celery and the blue cheese dip were a nice addition to the wings. I could have easily survived the night on only this; it’s a larger starter than I was expecting.

For my main I chose the “2009 UK Chilli Championship winning Chili Con Carne”:

It was a good chili, nice and spicy with bits of mushrooms and peppers. I wasn’t much a fan of having the chili and rice served in two sperate bowls though.

After the lovely dinner, we all headed to the private function room for bowling and karaoke. It’s a nice room for parties; on one end you’ve got two bowling lanes, on the other a nicely lit bar area with your own private cocktail bar and karaoke machine. I liked the idea of combining bowling and karaoke; instead of just waiting for your turn to bowl, you can enjoy singing along to the usual karaoke. I attempted a couple of songs; singing Build Me Up Buttercup with LJ, and trying to Lady Gaga’s Poker Face with Dan.

During the bowling and karaoke, we got served some delightful treats. First everyone got a Mint Julep cocktail. The we got deserts in the form of canapes! I had already aten so much, but the canapes were just way too cute not to try. My favourites were the chocolate mousse with a layer of caramel on top, and the mini waffle with something on top of it (don’t remember what though). Next to that we got a chocolate fudge brownie bite, and this (but again I’m not sure what is was… cheesecake, I think?):

It was a great evening, and All Star Lanes is definitely a place I’ll visit in the future. The food on it’s own wasn’t amazing, but as part of an easily arranged night out, it’s perfect. Dinner, cocktails, bowling, what more do you need? The private function can hold 40-50 people (according to the web site it can hold 80, but I’d say comfortably it would be around 40-50), and I’m thinking I could organize one of the Geeks of London meetups there. Also I really need to come back to try out the Bailey’s milkshake…

Thanks to Qype and All Star Lanes for organizing such a lovely evening!

All Star Lanes Bayswater: official website, Qype page

Interesting links of this week:

• A Mobile History of The World in 100 Objects: Cristiano’s awesome hack from last weekend at History Hack Day.
• An Initiation Into Museum Design (1996): great article about designing for the Science museum (specifically the Secret Life of the Home gallery).
• The Mathematics of Beauty: not really about the mathematics of beauty, more like the mathematics about the reactions of men in regards to relative attractiveness of woman.
• Designer Capsule Hotel: cool review about one of the capsule hotels in Japan.
• So You Found Something Cool On The Internet…: Awesome flowchart.
• An Email To Our Parents: not exactly what I would write, but there are a couple of things in there that are spot on.

Last weekend I started a little side project visualizing the UK box office. I was at Culture Hack Day and the UK Film Council had provided some cool data to play around. It contained info on movie screenings over the UK, not only “real” cinemas, but also screenings held in universities, galleries, etc. And it would have screening times, ticket prices, geolocation and more cool stuff. Only… that data wasn’t actually completely available yet. So instead I started looking at the box office data from the UK Film Council site, and whether or not I could do something with that. Eventually I want to use that advanced data though and merge that into what I’ve created now.

I started off with a ‘simple’ overview of 2010 (see here for the actual version):

It shows the weekend gross per weekend for the 50 highest grossing movies of 2010. It’s interesting to see how well some movies perform in comparison to others. I also made a larger version with 100 movies where you see in a bit more detail how the movies are doing.

I then had a look at the highest grossing movies of 2010 (see the full version here):

Not much surprise there, although it’s a bit depressing to see how much money bad movies can make (Twilight, Clash of the Titans, Valentine’s Day…).

The next step was making a similar graph as the first one, but only for the last couple of weeks (see here for the full version):

The current week is still missing (waiting for the UKFC to update their website), but it’s great to see the jump The King’s Speech made last week.

Finally I made charts for every week I had, showing the percentage of the box office each movie took (see the full version here):

I really like these and the different patterns you discover. Like Valentine’s Day was the highest grossing movie in the week of Valentine’s Day, but only by 2% (with Avatar beating it the next week).

This is only the first step in this project; I really want to do more with the data I have. The next things I’m focusing on are making the graphs embeddable, adding notes and interesting dates to each graph (like when bank holidays were, or important events that might influence movie-goers etc), grabbing more data about the movies (like director, actors, writer, etc) and being able to show that data when you click on a movie.

I’d love to hear though what you all think of the graphs, and what type of stuff you’d like to see. It’s been fun working on this and I’m hoping I can do more with it!

I loved the first part of this fantasy series! It was a great mix of romance and fantasy, and some awesome world building with its own unique mythology and gods. I’ve been waiting for the second book for some time, and now I can’t believe I manage to miss its release back in November!

Here’s the description from Amazon:

In the city of Shadow, beneath the World Tree, alleyways shimmer with magic and godlings live hidden among mortalkind. Oree Shoth, a blind artist, takes in a homeless man who glows like a living sun to her strange sight. However, this act of kindness is to engulf Oree in a nightmarish conspiracy. Someone, somehow, is murdering godlings, leaving their desecrated bodies all over the city. Oree’s peculiar guest is at the heart of it, his presence putting her in mortal danger – but is it him the killers want, or Oree? And is the earthly power of the Arameri king their ultimate goal, or have they set their sights on the Lord of Night himself?

Suffice to say, you should start with the first in the series (The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms).

The Broken Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin is available on Amazon.co.uk for £5.27 and on Amazon.com for $11.19.

I haven’t done a proper New Year’s resolutions blog post this year, but one of the things I want to try to do is workout more. I’ve been trying to do more pilates and Wii sport (yeah, I know that’s not “proper” working out, but it’s COLD outside), but I really need to get out of the house more and start running again.

So when Nike contacted me whether I wanted to order a pair of shoes through their online store for free, I thought that was a great way to get running again! About 3 years ago, I ordered a gorgeous pair of Nike shoes which I completely customized (see above). You could choose your own colours, put special text on them and even choose different size shoes per foot. Now for most people that last option is completely useless, but for me with my two different sized feet (which is so very very annoying) it’s perfect. I wish more companies offered the option of doing that!

After looking around on the Nike website though, I realized that I’m still perfectly happy with the Nike pair I still have. They are 3 years old, but still perfectly fine. So instead I surprised Cristiano with a gift voucher! He customized a cool pair of running shoes, so that we can start jogging together again.

The Nike store customization site isn’t much different than it was 3 years ago. There’s quite a huge range of models to pick from, and with each model you can choose from a range of colours (and in some cases also materials). Then with some designs you can choose different sizes per foot, and the type of width (narrow, regular or wide). Finally, with almost all the shoes you can specify your “iD”, special text that can be anything you want, although it depends per model where that text is placed and how many characters you have (with some it’s on the heel, others on the side, and with others on the front).

The easiest way to customize a pair is to start off with a blank pair. You can then see exactly which pieces of the shoes you can choose the colour for and keep track of which ones you’ve already selected. Btw, if you’ve got the Nike+ iPod set (or plan to get one in the future), make sure you pick a model with a + in the name; those designs have special compartments in the soles to place the iPod transmitter.

Here’s the design Cristiano ended up with:

It might be a bit of a cheesy tip, but for me having a pair of pretty jogging shoes, ones that I actually put some of my own time into designing, is a great way to motivate myself to run again. Just looking at the pair above makes me wanna go outside and run again!

If you want to design your own pair of Nike shoes, check out the Nike store. Fill in the code FREEDEL at checkout to receive free delivery.

I’ve been really slack the past couple of months with writing up reviews of all the movies I’ve seen. One of my New Years resolutions is to blog more regularly about the movies I have seen, but I thought I should catch up with writing up some of the stuff from last year. I was shocked to realize my last proper review was back in August (seriously?!? How did that happen?), that’s too many movies I’ve seen that I didn’t end up writing about!

There are at least 20 movies I hadn’t written about yet, so I’ve split it up into two posts. Ten reviews today, and 10 more in a couple of days.

Tron: Legacy

As I’ve said in previous blog posts, I enjoyed Tron Legacy. There’s a lot about the movie that’s not good (especially the plot), but it’s still a lot of fun. Seeing it at the IMAX was really worth it; the visual effects and the 3D are gorgeous. And the score by Daft Punk? AWESOME. The story though was very disappointing and I wish they’d have come up with something better. There are just too many plot holes and inconsistencies for me to really love this film.

Inception

I know, I know, it’s really bad of me that I haven’t even written about Inception here! I love Christopher Nolan’s movies, so I was really expecting a lot from Inception. I know so many people who adore this movie, but I didn’t like it as much as I was hoping to. It is a good movie, but I was hoping for something a bit… smarter. Yes, Inception is a confusing and complex movie, but I wish it was less straightforward, and made use of the dream element much much more. Nolan introduces rules to the world of dreaming, while in reality anything is possible in dreams…

The Social Network

I wanted to like The Social Network and I sort of did. It’s one of those movies of which I wonder if I’m maybe to close to the “real” world (like how CSI would be for actual crime scene analysts). Some stuff in The Social Network just feels over the top (the hiring-interns scene… yeah, it’s exactly like that in real life… “take a shot for every 10 lines of code you write”). Maybe I should rewatch it again, but first time around I didn’t find it amazing.

Megamind

I wasn’t expecting much of this movie, but it turned out to be quite funny. It “stars” Will Ferrell as Megamind, an evil villain who tries everything to bring down his arch enemy Metroman (Brad Pitt). Once he does though, he realizes that without his arch enemy his life is empty. The story is a bit predictable, but it’s still sweet to see the transformation Megamind goes through.

RED

This movie was a lot of fun. Take a bunch of old actors, throw in some action and a touch of romance, and you’ve got yourself a cheesy yet romantic over-the-top action flick.

Scott Pilgrim

Again another movie I liked, but didn’t find as fantastic/awesome/phenomenal as most people seemed to think it was. Yeah, it did look sort of cool, but I just didn’t like most of the characters. Neither Scott or Ramona were particularly likable (although Knives was awesome!). I did like the video game references, but the movie came nowhere near my favourites list of this year.

The Next 3 Days

This movie starred Russell Crowe as a teacher whose wife (Elizabeth Banks) gets convicted for a crime she says she didn’t commit. Crowe becomes obsessed with figuring out how to help her escape from prison. It was an okay movie, nothing spectacular, but great for a quiet night in. Crowe is great as the husband afraid of losing his wife forever, and will do anything to get her back.

Easy A

I loved this movie! It stars Emma Stone as Olive, a teenager who lies about losing her virginity. Before she can admit it’s a lie, it spreads through the rumour mill at her high school and Olive is branded a slut. Instead of denying it though, Olive decides to embrace her new identity and tries to take advantage of it. The dialogue in this movie was awesome with some of the snappiest oneliners of the year. Plus even though it’s about sex and losing your virginity, the movie is really sweet.

Salt

Angelina Jolie as a spy? That should be awesome, right? It sort of was. On one hand I really liked that they attempted to make a smart movie: barely anything was explained with unnecessary over-expository dialogue, allowing the viewers to make their conclusions. On the other side… it was predictable.

Despicable Me

“It’s so FLUFFY!” Not sure I can add more than that. The movie is okay, but that one line is just brilliant.

We’ve finally gotten around to organizing the next Geeks of London event! 2011 is going to be an interesting year for us, cause we’re going to try to organize at least 12 events in 12 months. It’s going to be great though, and we’ve got some interesting meetup ideas in mind, including laser tag (squee!) and an Oscar related Movie Geek meetup next month.

This first 2011 meetup will be next Thursday the 27th and will be all about gadgets. The idea is to bring along and show off cool new gadgets you got at Christmas, or weird old stuff you still have lying around. Plus we’ll have some drinks and food sponsored by Nokia!

The awesome thing though and something I’m still quite nervous about: I’ll be one of the speakers! I’ll be holding a short 10 minute presentation about gadgets during the event. Eek! On one side I’m really looking forward to speaking there, on the other side… I used to get really flustered and terribly nervous during presentations and it’s something I know I still have to work on. What better way than to jump right in though, right?

You can find more details (including how to sign up) on the Geeks of London site. You can also follow us on the Geeks of London Twitter account.