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Comics Review: Astonishing X-Men, X-Men, Schism, FF, Iron Age
Not Feelin’ It Astonishing X-Men # 36 – Monstrous, Part 1 The only story arc in Astonishing I haven’t read yet is Exogenic. I am really not liking this one. I know this is the first issue, but I’ve also read the third one due to when I got into Astonishing. I really, really hate…
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Review: Dracula
Dracula by Bram Stoker My rating: 4 of 5 stars this review originally appeared on Good Reads Dracula is, like Frankenstein, a book that has influenced so much of our pop culture that we don’t even question that we know the facts of the book without having even read it. Before having read Dracula, I’d…
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Portal 2 Review and Analysis
If I have to sum up Portal 2 in one word: brilliant! I really enjoyed the first Portal a lot. The sense of not knowing what’s going on and GLaDOS’ obvious demented nature made for a dark video game the likes of which I’d never experienced. It was an artform as much as any other…
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Using Boxee for the First Time
My wife enjoys watching TV a lot more than I do. I prefer interactive or creative pursuits like programming, photography, or video games. If, tomorrow, all the TV studios said we could no longer use the Internet to freely watch their programs (with ads, of course), I wouldn’t buy cable. Once I’d broken that shackle,…
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Doctorow Review: Eastern Standard Tribe & A Place So Foreign and Eight More
On my trip to the Grand Canyon I read Cory Doctorow’s second novel, Eastern Standard Tribe. The book begins in media res with the main character informing us that he’s in an insane asylum and that he is deciding whether to give himself a lobotomy with a pencil. We also quickly learn he believes himself…
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Grand Canyon Trip: 6 Oct 2010 Part 2
While on my trip to the Grand Canyon I kept a journal of my experience in order to create an after-the-fact travelogue. Presented over the next few days is an edited version + photo essay of my trip. (First entry here) — 6 Oct 2010 2022 Today was both overwhelming and underwhelming. Overwhelming because of…
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Another Look at KDE and Amarok Part 1
As I’ve mentioned before, I used to be really excited about KDE. It’s been a while since I last looked at KDE. Well, technically, I couldn’t really do much there. But there’s this time I was able to look at it. Let me just say that I no longer agree that it’s uglier than Gnome.…
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Review: Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Today I just finished Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. It’s the first epub book I’ve ever read and the first ebook I’ve read that I hadn’t previously read as a physical book. I’d been wanting to read the book for a long time, but the idea of sitting at my desk…
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Holy Video Game, Batman!
Sometimes jokes can be very misleading to outsiders. For a few months after hearing jokes about how gamey it was that Joker’s henchmen lost track of Batman as soon as he went up onto a gargoyle I didn’t have any inclination to play the game. It just seemed like it would be too jarring to…
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Another Crack at the Same Idea
Last weekend Danielle and I went to Borders so Danielle could check out the Buffy graphic novels and I could pick up Watchmen. While in the graphic novel section I started looking around to see what new books were out in this space and I came across Beyond Wonderland and Return to Wonderland, two comics…
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I Think I’ve Found My Second Passion
My first passion is photography. It’s something I’ve done all my life. (I think anything done continuously from about the age of five or six is all my life) I love coming up with an idea to shoot. Composing the frame is an artform. I love the emotional effect photography can produce in others. There’s…
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Peter and the Wolf at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Danielle and I recently went to see “Peter and the Wolf” at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Danielle and I both grew up watching the Disney animated adaption of “Peter and the Wolf” and we loved the idea of being able to listen to the music as performed by the BSO. I don’t care how amazing…
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Review: Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland
I’m a big Tim Burton fan and I also tend to like his casting of Johnny Depp. But I’m no fanboy: I found Tim Burton’s take on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to be worse than the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The first thing I have to get off my chest and…
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Halloween in The Village
Last year after Dina and Brian went to The Village for Halloween, I did some research on this tradition and decided we would go whenever things worked out. Well, this year was that year so we decided to spend Halloween night in Greenwich Village in NYC’s Manhattan. But, first, we rewind once again to last…
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Photography
Look into my eyes…. Canon Mount Lenses I’ve been into photography nearly all my life. It’s one of my main hobbies and the one I love the most. I wrote a my lulu.com book about my Top 40 flickr photos. Here is a modified version of the introduction to that book, explaining my background in…