This isn’t fair! Why do Threadless keep on making awesome tees that I have to own?! The Nightmare Before Christmas is one my favourite movies; I try to rewatch every year near Halloween. Threadless recently held a design challenge to create a tee based on the movie, and the chosen designs are so awesome.

My favourite is The Starry Nightmare one (although the t-shirt photo is nicer than the normal image. Sidenote: why is girl in the photo wearing polka dot leggings?? No. Wrong. Go back to start.). I’d love to have a print of this on my wall; can you imagine this one alongside a print Van Gogh’s Exploding TARDIS? Which tee is your favourite?

The Starry Nightmare

The Nightmare

Jack & Friends

PeekaBoogie

Oogie Boogie

And Sit Together, Now and Forever

Making Christmas

Jack Skellington’s Christmas Plan

Perpetual procrastinators, turn away now! Atari and Internet Explorer have worked together to create reimagined versions of old Atari games, all playable from within the browser. This sounds like fun…

Last Wednesday I got invited to the Atari Arcade event in Shoreditch, to come and experience the new reimagined games. They had set up 4 of the games (Breakout, Pong, Asteroids and Centipede) on tablets, touch screen TVs and a Surface table. In total they’ve got 8 games released so far on the Atari Arcade site: Pong, Breakout, Missile Command, Lunar Lander, Combat, Centipede, Asteroids and Yars’ Revenge.

It was great playing the games, but so much trickier than I remembered! Although that could also have to do with them being touch controlled; using a controller or joystick or anything with buttons is much more what I’m used to for these games. They had one proper arcade machine setup with Centipede, and later on in the evening had a short competition to win a tablet. I’m proud to say I became second (no prizes alas for 2nd place)!

Besides those Atari games though, IE also revealed they had worked together with the Contre Jour creators to bring that game to IE. I hadn’t actually heard of the game before, but the game looks gorgeous and is the type of game I could easily get addicted to! If you like Cut The Rope and those type of games, Contre Jour is a game for you!

What do you think of the Atari Arcade games? What’s your favourite game?

Yep, I’ve jumped on the Instagrom bandwagon. I never really “got” it before, but since getting an iPhone it just makes it so much easier to share and prettify your photos. Here are a couple of cool shots I took the past 2 weeks:

I’ve been struggling lately with my movie reviews. I haven’t written a proper long review since June. Which I think is mainly cause I’m watching more now, wanting to write up each and every movie and then failing to do so for all of them. So I’m going to do things a bit differently from now on: I’ll do short combined 2 or 3 movie reviews. They’ll be shorter, but hopefully at least I’ll now find the time to write about them. Later this week I’ll do one last big mini review post, with all the movies I’ve seen since June. Let’s see if this works…

This week’s movies are Looper and Ruby Sparks. They’re both still currently in cinemas, so catch them if you can!

Looper

I love a good time travel story. In Looper, time travel is invented in 2074, but only criminals use it to send people they want disappeared back into the past, where they get killed and disposed of by “loopers”. Loopers get payed a lot, but eventually have to “close the loop”: kill their future selves. When Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) recognizes his future self (Bruce Willis) as his victim, he hesitates and lets him escape.

Looper is one of those sci-fi movies that I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to watch over and over again. It’s got a great story, awesome cast and pretty cinematography visuals. I was expecting it to be a little bit more twisty, even though I’m already struggling with getting the timelines straight in my head. It makes sense… I think… more twistiness would have only complicated it more.

I loved the visual style of Looper. In the first half of the movie, they show a gritty, yet stylish picture of the future. I quite liked that a lot of the future felt grounded in reality; time travel aside, the world of Looper seems plausible. I also like how subtle the use of prosthetics was to make Joseph Gordon-Levitt look like Bruce Willis; it’s only when they were sitting opposite each other that I noticed it.

I’m very tempted to see Looper again in the cinema, especially cause the director (Rian Johnson) has released a theatrical commentary track that you can download on Soundcloud. Have you seen Looper yet? What did you think of it?

Ruby Sparks

Ruby Sparks is not your typical movie. It’s also not easy to pinpoint which genre it is. It’s part romantic comedy, part drama, with a pinch of fantasy. If I had to compare it to something, think Stranger Than Fiction meets 500 Days of Summer.

Calvin is a 20-something writer who wrote his first and only successful novel as a teen. For years people have wanted to see his second book, but Calvin has been struggling with writer’s block. Finally he breaks through it by creating a character he can’t stop writing about: Ruby Sparks. One week later Ruby appears in his house; breathing, walking, talking and claiming to be his girlfriend…

I loved Ruby Sparks. It’s a unique combination of romance and weirdness. Calvin creates this girl who should be perfect for him, but then notices all these little flaws and realizes he has the power to change her. Ruby is his creation. It takes the concept of being able to change something about the person you’re dating to a whole other level. What would you do if you had that type of power?

I also liked how it didn’t try to explain how and why everything was happening. I think it would have felt cheesy very quickly if they did, and it didn’t feel as if the movie needed it. I like how it all remained unexplainable and yet acceptable.

Both Looper and Ruby Sparks are currently in cinemas. Will you go see them? Have you seen them yet? Let me know below in the comments what you thought of them!

Nathan Fillion is such an adorable huge geek:

It’s weird how sometimes a book series grows on you. I initially only started the October Daye series cause I had read Feed (also Seanan McGuire but written as Mira Grant) and wasn’t that impressed by the first book. It was fun and okay, but nothing that screamed out at me “MUST READ NEXT BOOK”. I had already bought the 2nd and 3rd books second-hand though, so I thought why not go on with it and see what I think. By the end of the third one, I was at the “ooh, I wonder what happens next” stage. Now with the 6th one I’m totally at “AWESOME. MUST READ NEXT BOOK. WTF. I HAVE TO WAIT A YEAR?!?”.

So Ashes of Honor is the 6th book in the October Daye series. If you haven’t read any of them, it’s an urban fantasy series about the half fae, half human private detective October “Toby” Daye. Toby is an awesome, kick-ass heroine, who only gets more awesomer as the series progresses. If you like urban fantasy, I can highly recommend this series (and as usual you should start at the beginning of the series with Rosemary and Rue… you also shouldn’t read further cause I’ll spoil some stuff from previous books).

In this latest installment Toby has to find the changeling daughter of fellow knight Etienne, a daughter he didn’t even know existed before she went missing. To make things worse the missing changeling also has the power to rip apart the world of Faerie, if Toby can’t find her in time. On top of that, trouble is brewing in the Court of Cats and Tybalt may need Toby’s help…

I thoroughly enjoyed Ashes of Honor. It’s yet again a Daye book that has Toby track down a missing kid, which she does with the supernatural help of the Luidaeg, but it still feels fresh somehow. The usual Toby supporting characters are all there: Quentin, Tybalt, May, the Luidaeg, Walther, Raj, Sylvester and Luna, plus we get to revisit some of characters from Tamed Lightning. Despite so many characters though the book doesn’t feel overcrowded; everyone is there for a reason.

It’s been a year since Connor died and Toby is still recovering from it. I’m glad though that McGuire has skipped forward a year, giving Toby enough time to deal with her loss, but not making the readers have to go through every single bit of it. At the start of the book Toby is still very much grieving and pushing people away, but throughout the book she slowly opens up again and let people in.

I love Tybalt and in this book he really gets to shine. I’ve always preferred him over Connor (honestly I was quite glad to see him go in the previous book) and Toby and him are great together. I quite like how McGuire is handling their relationship and so want to read more about them.

Duchess Riordan has been hinted as a potential villain in previous books and I’m glad we finally get introduced to her. I’m hoping we’ll see more of her, even though I’m not sure how that can be arranged after her fate at the end of this book. Who am I kidding? It’s Faery. Of course that will be possible. Plus she’s not the only character who I think we’ll see again.

I can’t believe I’ll have to wait almost a full year till the next comes out. McGuire has said she DAW have purchased 10 October Daye books in total from her, so there will still be at least 4 more books. The next Chimes at Midnight will be out next September. In the mean time, we can look forward to her next Incryptid book, Midnight Blue-Light Special, which will be released in March 2013.

Ashes of Honor by Seanan McGuire is available on Amazon.co.uk for £4.95 and on Amazon.com for $7.99.

Ooh, these Star Wars inspired glasses are pretty cool! They’re designed by Aigan and retail for $500. Can you guess which character was the inspiration for each of them?

I’m sure you all guessed right (we’re all geeks around here), but just in case, here are the answers: 1) Darth Vader 2) R2-D2 3) Luke Skywalker 4) Boba Fett and 5) a Stormtrooper.

Via Geeky Hostess

I hadn’t mentioned it on the blog yet, but I finally got myself an iPhone! For the past few years I’ve been using the iPod Touch + Mifi + cheap ass phone combo, but with the release of the iPhone 5 I thought it was finally time to switch to a proper phone. And I’m so so happy with it! I’ve had it for 2 weeks now and I notice just how much more connected I am: I’m reading and responding to more tweets, taking and sharing more photos and just generally using it to organize my life. It also helps that Cristiano and I now have exactly the same phone; it’s so easy now to have shared calendars, lists and photos.

One of my first priorities was to find a handy and pretty iPhone case that suited me. I straightaway thought of Knomo, cause I’d already been using one of their Slim cases for my iPod Touch the past year. For the iPhone 5, Knomo has released 5 different cases, each designed to suit different preferences.

For the past 2 weeks I got to try out 2 of Knomo’s cases: the Leather Slim in Teaberry Pink and the Moulded Open Case in Burnt Ochre. I was mainly looking forward to trying out the bright pink Slim case, while Cristiano pretty quickly snapped up the other one.

Leather Slim in Teaberry Pink

The Leather Slim case is basically a mini sleeve for your iPhone; it’s lined with a soft, scratch-proof microfibre, allowing your iPhone to easily glide in and out of the cover. You can get it on the Knomo website for £25, and comes in 3 colors: Teaberry Pink, Burnt Ochre and Black.

The case fits quite snuggly around your iPhone. The first few times I struggled with sliding the iPhone out of the case, but after a while it loosens up a bit and becomes much more easier (but not so easy that your phone will slip and fall out. I can put it upside down and it still want slide out). You also still have easy access to the silent switch, or if you use it upside-down have access to the headphone jack (I rarely need access to both of them at the same time). I wasn’t too sure about the color of this sleeve: it’s so so pink! It’s grown on me the past few days though and I love how vibrant it is.

I had a similar case for my iPod Touch, so I was expecting this case to really suit me as well. Surprisingly I found it didn’t. With this case each time you want to use your gadget, you need to pull it out of the case, and hold the case, while using your gadget. Now with the iPod Touch I didn’t really mind that: with the iPhone though I find it becomes slightly more annoying. For instance, with the iPod I would only take it out when I wanted to look at it and when I had the time and free hands to look at it, while with the iPhone I need to respond quite quickly to phone calls, etc. That extra bit of time of pulling it out the case and having to use both hands to pull it out, becomes a bit of a pain with the iPhone, especially if you’re moving and only actually have 1 hand free. I also don’t feel as comfortable using the iPhone “naked” in my hands; I’m so scared I’ll drop it (which I didn’t have with the iPod).

It’s mainly me noticing how I use the iPod and iPhone differently and how I now expect something different from a case. It is a gorgeous case though and if you’re looking for a sleeve-like case that will protect your iPhone, it definitely does that job.

Moulded Open Case in Burnt Ochre

The Moulded Open Case is a plastic and leather case that snaps around your iPhone. The main casing is made of a shock-resistant Polycarbonate plastic, while the entire back is made of smooth genuine leather. The Moulded Open Case is available on the Knomo website for £35 and comes in two colours: Burnt Ochre/Black and Black/Green.

The plastic casing is flexible, yet sturdy, and really feels as if it’s protecting your iPhone. The leather on the back is super smooth, and feels so nice each time you hold it. It’s also the least bulky iPhone case I’ve seen so far: it adds about 2 (maybe 3) millimeters to each side of the iPhone. I hate it when you come across cases that are clearly shouting at you “ME CASE! ME PROTECT IPHONE!”. The Moulded Open case is slick enough for you to completely forget you’re using a case.

The Silent switch on the side and the headphone jack, speakers, Lightning port on the bottom remain reachable with gaps made in the casing to access them. The main on/off button on the top and the volume controls on the side are covered, with plastic moulded in the right shape. I initially didn’t notice they were covered (just look in the photo above at the volume controls) until I tried to press them. I struggled a lot with the volume control buttons; I really need to press hard for them to respond. The on/off button went slightly easier, but still took me a couple of days to get the hang of.

With this case the front of the iPhone is completely exposed. Which may or may not be a good thing depending on how you use your iPhone. I like how your entire screen is accessible: the main button isn’t covered or obstructed with annoying covers and it’s what makes this case so inconspicuous. For me though personally I really need something that protects the front of my iPhone as well. I’ll usually have it in my bag with a ton of other stuff, and I don’t want the screen accidentally bumping into other things.

I really liked this iPhone case. It’s looks super sleek, feels comfortable in my hand and protects my iPhone. Cristiano loves this case and it suits him perfectly (and he’ll be getting one, once I send these review copies back). The only reason why this isn’t the case for me is that I want the front to be protected as well. Knomo however have three more cases, two of which are moulded cases with flip covers… I might need to give those two a try to find my perfect iPhone case.

The Leather Slim iPhone 5 Case and the Moulded Open Case are both available on Knomo’s website. Knomo provided me with review copies for the purpose of this review.

Last night I finally managed to watch the midseason final of Doctor Who (after trying to avoid spoilers for more than 24 hours, quite tricky). If you haven’t seen it yet, why the hell not yet?!? Also: you’d better not scroll beyond the video… spoilers, sweetie!

The episode featured the Ponds for the very last time and they made a cool behind-the-scenes featurette about the final days of shooting:

So what did you guys all think of the Ponds final episode? I really enjoyed watching it and thought it was a nice, sweet and sad goodbye. Later on though after it sank in a bit better I realized I’m quite disappointed in how messy the plot feels. Why exactly couldn’t the Doctor go back and find them? I understand that he couldn’t find them and bring them back to their own time, but that didn’t stop him from visiting them, right? And River clearly was able to visit them, cause that’s how Amy got to write the final page. It just all feels a bit flimsy to me.

Also I’m pretty sure that for the past episodes we’ve been following the Pond’s timeline, not the Doctor’s (just pay attention to the clothes the Ponds are wearing in Pond Life and each episode). I kind of expected that to finally reveal itself this episode. Plus we’re no closer to finding out who exactly the new companion is and how she relates to Oswin Oswald. Or what the flickering lights mean. Or what the references to Christmas are.

What about you guys? Similar thoughts?