I love the Simon’s Cat videos. They’re such a spot-on portrayal of cats, and I think every cat owner sees something of their own cat in Simon’s cat.

Yesterday I responded to a tweet from Simon’s Cat’s twitter account and managed to snag some last minute tickets to their latest book and video launch. It was great actually seeing Simon in real life and getting to hear about his experiences with the comic/videos and his cats (who sound so adorable and even more ridiculous than my own cats). And all attendees got an awesome goody bag with a signed version of the new book and lots of other Simon’s Cat goodies!

Here’s the new video “Double Trouble” featuring a new cute character:

“Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.

You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.

And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

This is AWESOME:

Wow, that’s one hell of an ad. So much detail! How many game characters did you recognize? I could list them here for you, but somebody else already did a much better job at that here. I love that they used some of the actual voice actors too.

These dice from etsy store MecahnicalOddities look awesome:

Too bad they are a bit too pricy: $11.50 for a single die…

As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog post, I’m so happy that I finally finished my master’s! And I’ll be returning to blogging much more regularly now. So to celebrate all that, I thought I’d do a little giveaway!

I’ve got a copy of The Hunger Games for one lucky reader. I picked up this book when I heard it was being turned into a movie, and I devoured it in one go. It really was one of those books I just couldn’t put down. It’s set in a sort of post-apocalyptic world, where each year the Hunger Games are held: a broadcasted fight-to-the-death between 20 kids from 10 districts. Think Battle Royale meets Big Brother.

To enter this competition, all you need to do is leave a comment behind answering “which posts would you like to see more of on MissGeeky?” I’d love to hear what posts you like best and you’d like me to focus on in the upcoming weeks. Feel free to also suggest stuff I might not have written about before, as long as it’s geeky!

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 October 5th 15:00 after which I’ll randomly draw a winner.

It’s been a long time coming, but I’ve finally done it. I’m finally done with my master’s. Yay!

I moved to London 4.5 years ago for a one year exchange at Imperial with the idea to finish my master’s within that year. Things didn’t exactly go according to plan… with me getting distracted by this blog, organizing events and a ton of other stuff. Part of me regrets not having finished sooner, yet on the other hand if I had finished sooner, I don’t think I would have gotten the opportunities to some of the cool things I’ve managed to do these past four years. This year though I realized I needed to finish what I started and put everything else on hold: no more blogging, no more event organizing, no more distractions. And it worked.

So for the past couple of months I’ve been focusing on my research: facial expression recognition for posed versus spontaneous smiles, creating parts of a system that can recognize between a “fake” and a “real” smile. The psychology research about facial expressions is so interesting, and it’s amazing how much our brains are capable of.

Last Thursday I had my final presentation and defence. I wasn’t that nervous for the presentation; I’ve been to enough BarCamps by now, that I don’t get too stressed anymore presenting in front of strangers. But the defence… eek! It was a one-on-one with my graduation committee where they drilled me on all aspects of my research. Some questions were easy-ish, others were tough. Super tough.

In the end though I passed. I got a 7 for the final project (not completely sure what the UK equivalent would be, a B, I think?) and I’m happy with it. The perfectionist in me wishes I got higher, but I’m mainly glad I’ve finally finished. I can’t call myself a Master of Science yet (or as my sister said: Master of Computers), not until I’ve actually had my graduation ceremony.

So: YAY! Soon I’ll be a Master of Science! 🙂

On a less positive note: I left a glass of water next to my MacBook on Friday night, and woke up to discover one of the cats had accidentally knocked it over… all over my laptop. I brought it into the Apple store yesterday, and the logic board needs to be replaced. Damage: £300. Ouch. Guess I should start looking for a job…

I love some of the tees from J!NX and they’ve now released some new Portal 2 items… including these knee-high socks:

I am so, so tempted! They’re only £9.99 (although only $9.99 in the US, not exactly a fair conversion). I also love their Portal Earrings (£12.99):

Then there’s their cute Keep Calm and Continue Testing tee:

What do you think? Should I get these?

Q: Which side of this movie appealed to you more: the cowboy side or the alien side?

OW: I would say the western, because it’s something I never thought I’d have the chance to be a part of, because I felt maybe the genre has died for the most part. I certainly didn’t think there’d be a female role in a western that was this interesting, this tough that I would have the chance to do. So I would say the western is what got me.

Q: Could you give us some more detail about the craziness of doing the stunt when the aliens lasso you? How did you persuaded mr Favreau to let you do it and exactly what was involved?

OW: That stunt was supposed to be done by my great stunt double and we started off with me on a mechanical horse, which was the horse that they used in Sea Biscuit, but it looked way too slow for our movie. So I ended up getting on the real horse and Jon let me do it. I didn’t convince him, our stunt coordinator convinced him. He said he was confidant that I could pull it off, which made me very proud. And I felt safe cause Daniel was riding next to me. I galloped through two 80 foot cranes, and then at one point a bungee cord attached to a harness from my waist yanked me back forty feet into the air.

The danger was that I would get stuck in the stirrups, so the trick was to not get my feet stuck and get ripped in half. And that was the challenge. And it was a lot of fun, it was amazing to be floating above the set and to have this unusual perspective and there was our crew looking like little ants and these incredible deserts and mountains and canyons around us and it just made me realize how ambitious it was to lug these giant machines and cameras out into the middle of nowhere to tell a story. It was just really beautiful.

Q: I’m told you are a Trekkie, and indeed that you have a deep desire to play Captain Kirk.

OW: Well, I grew up watching Star Trek with my family often and my sister was a Trekkie as well. There have been great female characters in Trek over the years and still are. But I think playing captain… well, there was Captain Janeway, she did it well, she’s got that voice that I could never compete with. But I would love to play more powerful women in science fiction. I think what Sigourney did for women in science fiction is just incredible and I think she sort of set the standard. And I love the genre and I would love to do more of it.

Roberto Orci: Do you mind if we paint you green?

OW: That’s fine. I’d do anything.

Q: In the western for every thousand saloon girls and school mums, there is a Belle Star or an Annie Oakley. Your character clearly is in the minority. And I wondered about the research first of all into the very few women who toted guns in the West, instead of doing the other stuff.

OW: I loved doing research for this role, because I got to learn about women of the old west, which was really fascinating. There’s a great museum in Los Angeles called the Autry which I spent a lot of time at and they had a very helpful exhibit at the time called Women Of The Old West which was nice. I loved reading about how tough these women would have to be, I mean everyone had to be tough in order to be these pioneers, to settle in these border towns was not easy. I don’t know how long I would have lasted. But I did have some ancestors who did just that, and it was really interesting for me to do this research.

In terms of looking at characters in films I didn’t specifically look for female characters, I looked probably at a lot of the same guys we all were. I thought that Ella had a great kind of Clint thing to her as well. I was so excited when I realized I was literally going to step out of the shadows in the saloon to approach Daniel. I was kind of like “oh cool, I get to be the woman in the shadow and come out” and it was just one of those moments where you really fell “ooh, this feels westerny right now”. So I think I inspired by all those guys. I mean when I grew up watching westerns I wanted to be Steve McQueen, I didn’t want to be the girl, so I had fun being inspired by them as well.

Q: How you established the fact that convinced you knew what you were doing with the handgun, the practice and all that sort of thing you had to go through?

Daniel told me how to shoot my gun. Which was cool, cause now I can say James Bond taught me how to shoot a gun. But it was cool, because the guns were really beautiful and I’m not a big gun person, I’m a pacifist, I don’t really love guns in general, but I loved these antique guns, they were so interesting. And not easy to shoot. We did have a gun expert teaching me how to spin the gun, but then I never got to spin the gun on camera. I think sometimes in the wide shots we’d all be spinning the guns, hoping that we could do it and Jon would say “Guys, not all of you can spin your gun. Stop doing it”. But I did learn how, and now I have that skill. But I did then learn how to shoot it and now I can do that. I have tremendous respect for all of our props, I thought they were very cool and just another thing that made the whole experience so fun.

And another month has almost gone by without me having blogged… I’m now in the final weeks of my thesis, only 3 more weeks until I hand my report in and 5 more weeks until my final thesis presentation. Scary. Suffice to say, I haven’t been really enjoying the summer that much (not that there’s much “summer” to enjoy), and have mainly been working and working and working. I have put some time aside though for interesting blog related events that might crop up, like last week’s one…

Last week I got to attend a press conference for Cowboys & Aliens, with Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, Jon Favreau and Roberto Orci all in attendance. So much of what was said during the press conference was interesting (well, it was at least interesting to me) and I’ve been trying to figure out how to blog about it all; should I just do one massive post, or one post with only the cool bits? Instead I’ve split it up into four parts: this first one features all the questions for Daniel Craig and his answers. I’ll try to post the rest later this afternoon. Enjoy!

Q: I wonder if I could regress you to the summer of 1977 and ask what your 9 year old self might have thought of sharing the screen with Mr Ford?

DC: The truth of it is I don’t really know when Bladerunner came out, but I went to the cinema and sat in the cinema on my own, because not many people went to the cinema where I went to. I had no idea what was playing and Bladerunner came on. I thought then I want to work with that man. And I did.

Q: When a stranger arrives in a western town, you immediately think of Clint Eastwood. Do you go with that or do you try and fight it?

DC: No, god, you go with it. I mean, no, I wouldn’t try and fight that. I don’t really know what the question is, but if you’re asking me whether or not I watched Clint Eastwood for this movie, yes of course I did. But I watched everything else as well. You know, I watched a lot of John Wayne, Butch and Sundance, I’m just reeling off westerns now, it’s easier than answering the question. But yes, I kind of stole everything I could, but nothing specific.

Q: Have you got a favourite cowboy film of all time and/or a favourite alien film of all time?

DC: Little Big Men, I think, is most probably my favourite western. And Alien.

Q: This is quite a physically demanding role, Daniel, was it more so than the role of Bond? Did you pick up more bruises and grazes from playing this than you did from playing 007?

DC: It was just different. I mean, I don’t get to ride many horses in Bond, so that was really kind of the main distinction. No more than usual. There’s a lot more that I couldn’t do in this, because horse riding, although I’m getting better at it, I’m no expert. So a lot of what you see’s my brilliant double and brilliant stunt men. Funny enough, I picked up more bruises at the studio when we got back to LA than I did out when we were filming. I think everything’s sort of made out of fibreglass and that seems to scrape and bruise you worse than the real thing.

Q: How much of the classic Steve McQueen technique of going through the script and ripping out your lines did you do? Just so that you could say something with a look rather than with a line of dialogue?

DC: It’s kind of a natural process how it ended up being like that. As far as I’m concerned, the less I have to say the better. The more the character sort of talked about how he felt about things, the less real it seemed. He’s a man of action opposed to a man of words.

Isn’t there a Clint Eastwood legend that he only has 11 lines per movie? The character just wasn’t more verbose; it was literally saying “I don’t think he’s going to talk about his feelings before he goes in and starts shooting”. He’s going to start shooting and maybe talk about it afterwards, it’s simple as that. I make a joke out of it, but it was something that happened completely naturally as opposed of it being a conscious decision. It just seemed when gong through the script that sometimes I just went “I don’t need to say that. It’s already been told. That story’s already been told with the actions that I’m doing”.

Can’t. Wait.