Olympus Has Fallen

Die Hard in the White House. This looks awesome. I think it will be a bit over the top and ridiculous, but it looks like so much fun. It stars Gerard Butler as the ex secret service member who’s the only one not captured when the White House comes under attack. Aaron Echkart plays the President, while Morgan Freeman plays the Speaker of the House.

Release Date: 22 March (US), 19 April (UK)

Red 2

I loved Red. It was a great combination of action, humour and great casting, and this sequel looks like more of the same! This time around Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren and Mary-Louise Parker are joined by Catherine Zeta-Jones, Byung-hun Lee and Anthony Hopkins.

Release Date: 2 August (UK, US)

Emperor

As the Japanese surrender at the end of WWII, General Douglas MacArthur (Tommy Lee Jones) finds himself the de facto ruler of Japan. He turns to General Bonner Fellers (Matthew Fox), an expert in Japanese culture, to investigate whether the Japanese emperor Hirohito should be hanged for war crimes.

Release Date: 8 March (US)

At Any Price

A farming family’s business is threatened by an unexpected crisis, further testing the relationship between a father (Dennis Quaid) and his rebellious son (Zac Efron).

Release Date: 2013

I had heard a lot of good things about Brent Weeks’ Night Angel trilogy, so I was quite happy to discover the boxset was one my Christmas presents this year! I just started the first book The Way of Shadows and so far it’s been good. I’m only 100 pages in, but I’m liking it so far even though the world is a bit harsh.

Here’s the description of the first book (The Way of Shadows) on Amazon:

The perfect killer has no friends. Only targets.

For Durzo Blint, assassination is an art. And he is the city’s most accomplished artist, his talents required from alleyway to courtly boudoir.

For Azoth, survival is precarious. Something you never take for granted. As a guild rat, he’s grown up in the slums, and learned the hard way to judge people quickly – and to take risks. Risks like apprenticing himself to Durzo Blint.

But to be accepted, Azoth must turn his back on his old life and embrace a new identity and name. As Kylar Stern, he must learn to navigate the assassins’ world of dangerous politics and strange magics – and cultivate a flair for death.

The Night Angel trilogy consists (obviously) of three parts:

• The Way of Shadows (£5.93 on Amazon.co.uk, $7.99 on Amazon.com)
• Shadow’s Edge (£7.19 on Amazon.co.uk, $7.99 on Amazon.com)
• Beyond The Shadows (£5.99 on Amazon.co.uk, $7.99 on Amazon.com)

Last Sunday I had a great day with friends attempting to sledge with cardboard boxes in the park near Alexandra Palace. We weren’t that successful, cause it turns out: cardboard boxes make very bad sledges. Despite our utter failure to go fast, it was a lot of fun!

My favourite photo is of me pretending to go fast:

Here are a couple of other photos of that day:

Doctor Who meets Pulp Fiction. Awesome. It’s only available for the next five hours though on TeeFury, so get it while you can!

After yesterday’s serious post about being a geeky girl (read it here) with the promise to write about that type of stuff more, I wasn’t quite sure what post would follow next. This blog has always been a place where I’ll share the fun stuff I come across online, be they geeky or girly, and I don’t ever want to loose that angel. Yet I also didn’t want to succeed that serious post with something completely unrelated. And then I came across this video about Bronies…

These are snippets from the upcoming documentary BronyDoc about the adult fans of My Little Pony and it’s sung by John de Lancie and Tara Strong. Bear with me, and watch the video till the end and you’ll get why it is related:

I’ve never watched an episode on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic before, but I kind of think I should…

I’ve always been a geek. I’ve always been a girl. Neither of those two things will ever change.

I’m not really sure why, but I’ve stayed away from blogging about being a girl in the tech/game-blogging/movie-blogging industry, leaving it to those that can write more eloquently than me. But I shouldn’t. I still experience weird situations that leave me puzzled as to why they happen, and I should be blogging about those.

Throughout my entire life I’ve had to prove that I am a geek, encountering men and boys that didn’t believe a woman could know about or would be interested in geeky stuff.

I remember being seven years old, having just discovered a new TV show: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. At school, I overheard a couple of boys discussing the theme song. They couldn’t remember the lines, though, so I jumped in and sang the entire song for them. They were so baffled that a girl would watch that show that they didn’t believe those were the real lyrics.

I remember in high school being told that math and physics were too difficult for girls. That I should choose something more appropriate like biology or history.

I remember being at university, studying Computer Science and finishing a tricky assignment which the student assistant had just approved. I was quite proud of myself until I overheard that same student assistant say to another student “If SHE can do it, you definitely can.”

I hate that those things happened. I regret that I didn’t have more guts at the time to turn around and say “You. Are. Wrong.” But those experiences made me who I am today. My response to all those things was to be the best I could be — and to prove to everyone that I was smart enough to do anything a guy could do.

All of the above events happened more than ten years ago, so I can forgive most of those remarks and hope those people know better now. But these type of things STILL happen. I still experience prejudice just because I’m a woman.

A couple of times now at Forbidden Planet, a massive comic and sci/fantasy book store in London, I’ll be browsing and guys will approach and hit on me. The hitting on random girls at bookstores is a separate issue, but why do almost all of them start with “Are you buying a present for someone?” Seriously. You don’t think that just maybe I’m there because I’m interested in it myself?

At tech events, I’ve noticed that what I wear really makes a difference. If I’m wearing a geeky T-shirt and jeans/shorts, everything will be fine. When I’m wearing a pretty dress and nice makeup though, then the comments start. I’ll be at a hackday and someone will ask “Are you doing the marketing for this team?”. Or I’ll be at an event for bloggers and someone will assume I’m one of “the PR girls”.

A few months ago I was at a PR party and I met a girl who was wearing the standard geek uniform of jeans and a t-shirt. She remarked to me that she wished she had put on a dress — but she had to go to a Facebook developer event earlier that evening, so needed to wear jeans and t-shirt or else not be taken seriously. Do we truly still work in an industry where it matters what we wear? Are jeans and T-shirt our industry’s suit and tie, and are we really ignoring those that don’t conform to the industry’s uniform? Whatever happened to geeks allowing you to be whoever you wanted to be?

From what I’ve experienced so far, the games industry is a whole lot worse. No, let me get that right: the game blogging industry. At almost every game blogging/press event I’ve gone to, I’ve had male attendees (bloggers/PRs/game developers) stare wide-eyed at me and exclaim: “OMG. You’re a girl. Girls don’t like games.” They’ll either try to dissect how this strange creature got into gaming or disregard everything I’m saying. I can’t get over the fact that some people still don’t realize that, yes, girls play games too. And, yes, we like the same games guys like too. Girls are part of your readership/consumer base/target audience. Don’t ignore them.

All these incidents happend to me within the past year. I tend not to react, to “ignore” them, but actually? They annoy the hell out of me. And I’m not the only one that they happen to.

So I’m going to write about them more. And I want to hear from you all what you’ve been through.

I am “Miss Geeky”. I am a geek. And I am a girl. I’ll have moments of extreme geekiness, but I’ll also have moments of extreme girliness. I like makeup and pretty dresses and jewellery, and me liking those does not make me any less of a geek. I will not change what I like or what I wear purely to fit in and conform to people’s idea of the “geeky girl”. I will write more about this stuff, because everything I’ve talked about here shouldn’t be happening. Geeky girls have always been around. Just because you didn’t notice us doesn’t mean we weren’t there.

And it doesn’t mean you can ignore us now.

This is an awesome short movie. And quite amazing considering it’s written, directed and animated by 1 guy:

You can’t judge a book by its cover, but you can certainly be charmed by a book’s cover! I love the cover from Geist; it’s so pretty and has got me at once interested in the book. You can straightaway see it’s about mages and ghosts, and reading the summary seems to confirm that. I’m intrigued by the lion though… nothing I’ve read so far seems to mention anything about him.

Here’s the summary from Amazon:

Between the living and the dead is the Order of the Deacons, protectors of the Empire, guardians against possession, sentinels enlisted to ward off malevolent hauntings by the geists. Sorcha, among the most powerful of the Order, is called to a small settlement, But more is occuring than just geist activity. It’s a conspiracy of evil that reaches back to her own Abbey. Even if she survives, what hell would she be returning to?

Do you like the look of Geist? I’ll need to wait at least a year before picking it up (because of my self imposed book buying ban), but I’m curious to see if this is any good!

Geist by Philippa Ballantine is £5.24 on Amazon.co.uk and $7.99 on Amazon.com.

I always had this idea that when I was grownup and rich, I’d have this huge mansion with different special rooms: a bean bag room for watching movies and hacking, a huge high-ceiling library with a balcony that you can only reach through a hidden door, a retro gaming room filled with old consoles and arcade machines. I think this Floppytable would fit perfectly in that latter one!

I love all the little details of the table; it does look exactly like a floppy. It was designed by Neulent van Exel and if you like you can order one from his website.

I love my mobile phone. It's one of those things that I'll always make sure I have on me, never leaving the house without it. At home it's never more than a few meter away from me, keeping me in constant contact with my friends, Twitter and other social networks. When I go out and on the go though, it's stuck in my bag, banished to the deep dark pockets of oblivion. I ALWAYS miss phone calls and text messages, and forget to check Twitter/etc. So I quite like the idea of having a watch that will connect to your mobile phone to keep you aware of these things.

The I’m Watch is a bluetooth smart watch with touchscreen that connects to smartphones to deliver calls, text messages, e-mails, and other apps directly to your wrist. It runs Android itself and should work with most iPhone and Android mobile phones. There are 3 versions: the Colour i'm Watch with a lightweight aluminium body and 7 different colours ($389), the Tech i'm Watch with a titanium body ($1049) and the Jewel i'm Watch with gold or silver body ($16990). I got sent an i'm Watch to try out myself and it looks interesting. I'm not sure this is the right fit for me, cause with my tiny wrists it looks a bit too big (see picture below). If you're going for a more geeky look though (and if you have normal wrists), I think it could look great.

I'm very curious to see how this smart watch works. Sadly though at the moment I won't be able to use it with my current iPhone 5, cause Apple don't allow tethering on Giffgaff (seriously Apple, sort this out!). If you have an older iPhone or an iPhone 5 that does allow tethering/personal hotspots, you should be able to use the watch. I'll be trying it out with another phone next week, so stick around for my review!

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post. I'm provided me with a black Colour I’m Watch for review purposes. All opinions are my own.