Merry Christmas, everyone! I hope you all are enjoying a great Christmas holiday. I had plans to do a couple of posts each day here, but failed completely. Instead I’ve pretty much had a full week away from my laptop, staying blissfully offline. I had an awesome Christmas: hanging out with family, eating amazing food and getting great presents.

It is still officially Christmas though, so I still have time to do some Christmas giveaways. Yay! One of my favourite books this year was Redshirts by John Scalzi; it’s Must Read for every Star Trek fan. I’m so excited to give a copy away to one lucky reader!

To enter the giveaway, leave a comment behind with your favourite Christmas present. You’ll also get a second entry if you’re following me on Twitter and tweet about this giveaway with the hashtag #missgeeky. The competition is open to everyone and will end on January 4th after which I’ll randomly draw a winner.

I haven’t been sleeping that great the past few weeks, and that’s been mainly cause I’m being woken up at five in the morning by two cute yet annoying hungry creatures. Because of that though I’ve been struggling with waking up in the morning, preferring to hit snooze just once more.

Thanks to John Lewis though, I’ve got to try out a Lumie Bodyclock Go the past week. It’s an alarm clock that wakes you up by creating a gradual sunrise. It also has a sunset setting, to allow you to fall asleep to slowly dimming light. I was a bit sceptical at first, but I think it actually sort of works for me.

I’ve been using the Bodyclock the past few day with a 30 minute sunrise and the optional alarm clock sound. Now it still hasn’t managed to wake me up completely through light only; it’s only when the alarm clock sound goes, that I wake up and get out of bed. That’s the thing that surprised me though. The moment the alarm clock sound goes, I’m wide awake and ready to start my day. Somehow my body has been woken up by the half hour sunrise and I don’t feel the urge to hit the snooze button anymore. Brilliant.

The one annoying thing though is that alarm clock sound. You can choose from 5 different sounds (or no sound at all), but you can’t actually set the volume of that sound. Meaning it’s stuck on this quite loud level, which feels too harsh in the morning. I had expected there to be some form of volume control, or even better a gradually increasing alarm sound to match the gradually increasing light.

The Lumie Bodyclock has three buttons: the main button in the middle, and – and + buttons on the left and the right. Pressing the middle button turns the alarm clock on, holding it down gives you access to the settings. You can set the alarm clock time, the actual time, the length of the sunrise and sunset (15, 30 or 45 minutes) and the optional alarm sound (5 different sounds). Using the clock isn’t exactly straightforward: you can’t use it out of the box just like that, you need to read the manual a bit to understand the different settings. Once you do though, it’s quite easy to use.

I quite like the Lumie Bodyclock Go and it does seem as if the light is helping me get up in the morning. It could do with some better sound settings though for those of us that don’t wake up through the light only. The way I’m going to use it now is without the alarm clock sound and use my iPhone next to it as a backup alarm clock system.

Disclaimer: John Lewis provided the Lumie Bodyclock Go for review purposes. All opinions are my own.

I’ve had my eye on Darkborn for a while; it sounds like such an interesting concept. Two races living in the same city, but one dies from the sun and the other dies from darkness? Cool idea.

Here’s the summary:

In the city of Minhorne, Darkborn and Lightborn live side by side, never meeting, divided by a powerful mages’ curse that makes daylight lethal to the Darkborn and darkness lethal to the Lightborn. They are divided, too, by their acceptance of magic and technology, their politics, their religion, and their views of the proper conduct of men and women.

An act of necessary succor brings Darkborn physician Balthasar Hearne to the deadly attention of agents of a new and unrecognized enemy of both Darkborn and Lightborn. His aristocratic wife, Telmaine, is forced to use magical abilities she has all her life concealed, to protect her husband and her children. And Ishmael di Studier, mage and outcast, who has spent his life defending his borders home from the marauding Shadowborn, now finds himself engaged against an even more dangerous enemy.

Darkborn by Alison Sinclair is available on Amazon.co.uk for £5.39 and on Amazon.com for $6.99.

Only 8 more days till Christmas! I can’t wait to see my family open up their presents, hopefully they’ll enjoy the things I’ve got for them. And of course I’m looking forward to see what I’m getting too. I didn’t want to leave you guys out though, so I’ll be hosting a couple of giveaways on MissGeeky!

This first giveaway is awesome. Thanks to Universal Pictures one lucky Miss Geeky reader will win a Les Misérables gift pack! It includes:

• $25 Visa Gift Card for a night out at the movies
• The Les Misérables Movie Soundtrack
• A Les Misérables T-Shirt
• A Les Misérables Journal

To enter the giveaway, leave a comment behind with your favourite movie musical scene. You’ll also get a second entry if you’re following me on Twitter and tweet about this giveaway with the hashtag #missgeeky. The competition ends on December 28th after which I’ll randomly draw a winner and is open to everyone.

I am so looking forward to Les Misérables, so I’m super happy that I get to giveaway this cool gift pack! The movie looks great: awesome songs, great actors (Hugh Jackman *swoon*) and gorgeous visuals. I get goosebumps every time I hear Anne Hathaway singing in the teaser trailer:

I can’t wait to see this! It’s being released in theatres in the US on December 25th and in the UK on January 11th (if you’re based in another country check out the IMDb release dates page).

It’s been a week full of interesting trailers! I somehow missed blogging about these two, so I thought I’d catch up with that tonight.

The first is Pacific Rim, directed by Guillermo del Toro. Giant Robots versus Giant Monsters!

The second is directed by M. Night Shyamalan and stars Will and Jaden Smith as a father and son who crash-land on an abandoned Earth.

Bacon! This one is for all you bacon lovers out there. After coming across a couple of bacon related products, I just knew I had to do an entire post around those. And there are some weird bacon things out there… I like bacon, but I’m not sure I like it quite this much. If you’re interested in my other Christmas Gift Guides, check out the gift guides for The Fantasy Reader and The Gamer Girl.

Bacon Poster

Show your loyalty to the Bacon Nation with this propaganda poster from etsy store Justonescarf.

Bacon Pillow

I love the description for this product: “There’s conclusive, scientific proof that bacon is an intellectual food. It’s right there in the periodic table! Barium, cobalt and nitrogen. BA CO N. Read it and weep, bacon haters. This pillow makes it very clear that you’re not one to be trifled with when it comes to the ultimate food. Show your brainpower and bacon-lust in one easy decoration!” It’s $35 at YellowBugBoutique.

The Bacon Cookbook

Ooh, more than 150 recipes with bacon? At first glance this looks like quite a gimmicky book, but the recipes actually look pretty decent. It’s £15.59 on Amazon.

Bacon Candle

“I love the smell of bacon in the morning”. Never go without it with this candle from bubbleandgeek ($9.25).

Bacon Knee Highs

Which girl wouldn’t want to wear knee high socks like these? They’re $10 on SockDreams.

Bacon Necklace

A necklace with a strip of bacon AND a fork! It’s £6.37 at Fwirl.

Bacon Scented Gummy Bear Shaped Soaps

Aw, these are so adorable. I wish they were actual gummy bears though, not just soap in the shape of them. There available for only $4 at FrostedCrossbones (awesome shop name).

50 Shades of Bacon

And even bacon jumps on the 50 Shades of Bad Jokes bandwagon.

Bacon Jelly Beans

Try these at your own peril; the Amazon reviews about it are horrendous.

Bacon iPhone Case

Clothe your iPhone in style! For $39.95 this bacon case can be yours!

Bacon Lube

Seriously? This actually exists?!? You can get it on BaconLube.com (obviously) for $11.99.

Bacon Of The Month Club

The ultimate bacon gift: the Bacon of The Month Club. Each month two pounds (= 0.907185 kg) of different kinds of bacon will be delivered at your doorstep. Awesome. They do a lot of flavours, like Cajun, Apple Cinnamon, Jalapeno, Honey BBQ, Maple, Brown Sugar, Vanilla Bourbon, Sun Dried Tomato, Pepper, and Hickory Smoked.

So bacon lovers would any of you be actually happy getting any of these bacon gifts for Christmas? Or is it just too much bacon?

In 2027, everyone is implanted with a chip – the Memorize-chip. It records everything you see, a new system to fight crime. One unit controls the system. The SSU – Special Surveillance Unit:

Memorize – Short Film from Jimmy Eriksson on Vimeo.

I love it when you come across a book with a gorgeous cover and then also hear a ton of good reviews about it. Blood Rights is one of those books. Don’t you just love the cover?

Here’s the summary from Amazon:

Born into a life of secrets and service, Chrysabelle’s body bears the telltale marks of a comarre – a special race of humans bred to feed vampire nobility and control their hungers. When her patron is murdered, she becomes the prime suspect, which sends her running into the darkness of the mortal world . . . and into the arms of Malkolm, an outcast vampire cursed to kill every being from whom he drinks.

Chrysabelle’s secrets, though, are about to put her life – and those around her – in even greater jeopardy. She possesses a powerful ring, the key to unlocking an ancient prophecy destined to merge the mortal and supernatural worlds. A chaos unlike anything anyone has ever seen threatens to reign unless she and Malkolm can stop the noble vampire behind the merciless plot.

What that description doesn’t mention though, is that it takes place in 2067. I’ve read the prologue and first chapter, and it look like a very interesting world. Plus it’s the type of book that you start reading and just can’t put down; I really need to get my hands on this!

Blood Rights is available on Amazon.co.uk for £6.11 and on Amazon.com for $7.99.

Time for the second of my Christmas Gift Guides! Today we look at gifts for the Gamer Girl. Some of these gifts would of course also work for guys, but at least half of these are definitely more aimed at female gamers. If you want to check out my first gift guide, it’s for the Fantasy Reader.

The main things to keep in mind when buying gifts for a gamer is the following:

1. What console does she play on? An obvious one, but worth repeating for completion’s sake.
2. What games does she already have? Check out her bookcase/box/benno/floorspace-around-her-console to find out what games she already owns. Or if you don’t have access to that, friend her on whatever console she owns network, and take a look at the games she’s played (not going in specifics here, cause it does depend on whether she uses Xbox Live or PSN). If she uses raptr.com, you’re in luck; if she’s set it up right, you can easily see which games she has, what achivements she’s gotten and how many hours she’s played (here’s my raptr profile).
3. What games are her favourite? If you don’t know, try looking at the amount of achievements/trophies she’s gotten in the games. It’s not always a good indicator of which game is her favourite, but it will tell you a bit about how many hours she might have put into them. Again if she’s uses raptr, take a good look at what games she’s played the most.

Games

Let’s start with the obvious one. Gamer girls of course will want more games to dedicate their lives to. If you have no idea what game she wants, keep the three things from above in mind: what console, what games does she already have and which ones are her favourites. Try to pick a game from the same genre of games she already has; does she like first-person shooters, role-playing games (RPGs), racing games? Are they all fantasy based, or sci-fi based, or set in the modern day world? Don’t just pick a game in a shop cause the cover looks pretty or cause it looks similar to another game; google it and check out the reviews to see if it’s any good (Wikipedia tends to do nice overviews of how a game was received).

Also take the price of the game into account. There are certain games that I would never get for myself when they were full price, but that I wouldn’t mind trying out when they got cheaper. Besides that take a look at older games; I prefer playing a good game from 5 years ago, then playing a crappy game made this year.

Here are a couple of games that I enjoyed playing this year, but of course as I’ve said above it all depends on what your gamer girl likes. If you’re really stuck, feel free to email me or tweet me and I’ll see if I can help.

Official Merchandise

The next step would be looking at the official stores of your gamer girl’s favourite games. There are a lot of game studios that do great tie-in merchandise, like t-shirts, hoodies and accessories: the Valve store (Portal, Half-Life, Team Fortress, Left 3 Dead), the Bioware store (Mass Effect, Dragon Age), the Ubisoft store (Assassin’s Creed, Splinter Cell), the Halo store, they all have some great products.

I love for instance this N7 Hoody from the Bioware Store and this plush Companion Cube from the Valve store (anything Portal related will make me happy though).

Jewelry

I love showing which games I love by wearing cute necklaces and earrings! There are a ton of awesome designs out there, covering most of the current popular games. You’ll of course need to know what the favourite games are of your gamer girl, but if you do, jewelry will make a great present.

My favourite etsy store for necklaces is Land of Rapture. They do a lof of different cameo necklaces, with designs from Assassin’s Creed (I’ve got the one below), Portal, Mass Effect, Bioshock, Half Life and Dragon Age. They also do custom designs, so if you have an idea message them and they should be able to make it!

Another etsy store I like is The 17th Bit. I’ve got my eye on the Companion Cube necklace from Portal pictured below, but they also do various cute rings.

Also take a look at the ThinkGeek Jewelry section. My current favourite there is the charm bracelet (you can buy each charm separately though). I love the little bling mushroom and the cute companion cube:

Heels

These awesome custom painted heels are from etsy store magicbeanbuyer. The left pair is $115, the right pair is $75, but this doesn’t include the cost of the actual shoe (you need to send a pair for them to paint).

T-shirts

Besides the official merchandise stores, there are a couple of t-shirt companies out there that do great game designs too. Check out the following stores, they all have a great selection: J!nx, Insert Coin, Split Reason, Nerdy Shirts, ThinkGeek and Threadless.

Custom Controller

Who doesn’t want a controller in their favourite colours? If you’re confident enough in cracking gadgets open and messing around with them, just head on over to ebay to find all the parts in the right colours. I first heard about changing the buttons of your controller on explodedsoda’s blog (check out her blog posts about her custom PS3 controller and her custom Xbox controller) and have been dying to try it out for myself.

If you’re not that handy with gadgets or just don’t want to be bothered doing it yourself, there are a couple of companies out there that will do it for you. Evil Controllers has their own controller creator where you can specify the colours for each part, with a wide range of different colours and materials, and they also have a section with already fully themed and modded controllers. ControllerModz is a UK based company that provides a wide range of custom modded controllers and also allows you to send your own controller for modding to them.

Makeup

When I came across GeekChicCosmetics I just knew I had to include it here. They do various ranges of eyeshadows and lipsticks, all inspired by games, movies and TV shows. There’s a Portal range with eyeshadows like Portal blue, Portal orange and Companion Cube pink. Or the Mass Effect one with Element Zero blue, Archangel sage (I would have chosen a dark blue to represent Archangel though) and N7 red. My favourite is the Babylon 5 one; all those colours look so shiny!

Bras

This one is sadly not an option for Christmas, cause it takes too long to be shipped. I still wanted to include it here though: hand painted bras! There are a couple of Etsy shops that I could find that do them: SceeneShoes (the bra on the bottom left), RainbowKidShop (the bra on the bottom right) and HeartMyGeek

So what else can you think of for a gamer girl?

Ooh, this looks good.