Due 2 September 2010

Brightest Day #9
Green Hornet #7
Red Hood Lost Days #4 (Of 6)
Shadowland #3 (Of 5)
Shadowland Elektra #1 (maybe)

Quiet this week, although I do have two previous weeks worth to collect, so lots of reading material.

Chuck

Well my summer is soon to be over. 'Project Number One' is almost at an end. This time next week hopefully and we'll be entering phase 2 - which is very exciting. Lots to be done before then of course.

Been watching Chuck when I've had the chance - first season was great fun. I'd been meaning to watch this for a while. Great mix of geeky humour with good TV action. Just got Season 2 so looking forward to that.

Got me thinking about all the series I've yet to watch.

I've never watched Lost or 24 - any of it.
Heroes Season 4
Battlestar G Seasons 4 & 5
Supernatural Season 3 onwards
Smallville Season 8 onwards
Damages - both seasons

Well that's a fair bit of telly to get through.

Due 26th August 2010

Avengers #4
Batman #702
Captain America #609 (maybe)
Detective Comics #868
Gotham City Sirens #15
Green Arrow #3 Brightest Day
Justice League Generation Lost #8 BD
Justice League Of America #48 Brightest Day
X-Men Curse Of Mutants Blade #1

Due 19th August 2010

Batman Streets Of Gotham #15
Brightest Day #8
DC Universe Legacies #4 (Of 10)
Deadpool Corps #5
Green Lantern Corps #51 Brightest Day
Image United #3 (Of 6)
Justice Society Of America #42 Brightest Day
Secret Avengers #4

A quiet-ish week. Daedpool Corp has been fun - really enjoying this. Image United - been so long since #2 I forget what's happening. The Brightest Day stuff is picking up again now we have some idea of what's happening.

Heroic Age

For those of you who are unaware, earlier this year Marvel rebooted some of their key franchises, under the banner ‘The Heroic Age.’ This is a new era for Marvel following the Dark Reign arc that saw key characters die and many go underground. From a marketing perspective, you can see why they did it. Now we are a good few issues into most runs - The Avengers, Secret Avengers, New Avengers...etc.The list goes on. I made the ‘sensible’ decision to be selective on what I bought. On the basis of the creative teams and characters involved, I opted to read The Avengers (flagship) and Secret Avengers.

Starting with The Avengers, I have to say this - and I know some hardcore comic fans will spit in my general direction - but I am not a massive John Romita Jr fan. I can see why people like it and it does work for this particular comic but there are other artists I enjoy much more. The writing by Bendis has been very good and it does really work as a comicbook. They definitely make a good team and I have enjoyed the first three issues (art aside). I suspect however that after the first arc I may stop collecting it - in an effort to keep my weekly comic shop down. Also, I feel there are only so many directions you can take a team of characters that usually have more important stories running elsewhere.

Now, I love the art in Secret Avengers - Mike Deodato Jr. When I think of Marvel, I guess I tend to imagine this kind of art - it is just nails! I loved Dark Avengers and I could look at Deodato’s art all day long. Brubaker’s writing is pretty good too and I really quite like this book. There are a number of people annoyed that Steve Rogers is no longer Cap America and is now running around looking a lot like a non-ultimate Nick Fury. I have to say, I think it works and gives a well known character new boundaries - that has to be a good thing. So far, this has been cool.

Lets see how the first arcs finish and take it from there. Did Marvel have to reboot the franchise? Im my opinion, probably not to the extent they did. But the Avengers are loved and Marvel know that with the upcoming movie, this could be an awesome bit of marketing As to the Ultimate universe, I’ll write a separate post as to my current thoughts on a number of their comics I have been reading over the summer.

JailbreakMe 2.0 - My thoughts

I loved my iPhone 3G. I just had to make that clear! Regularly I would make any non-believer get on their hands and knees and beg to be part of the ‘special’ people - those of us that had embraced a gadget that had got it so right. I have spent years buying gadget after gadget and ultimately, what I desired (but didn’t know it), was one gadget... that did it all. I loved my iPod, but it wasn’t as good as my Archos for playing movies, though it did do music a lot better. I thought that my HTC Touchscreen was the dogs danglies... but in retrospect... where was the App Store? Where was the ability to download music straight onto it?

Well, I am veering slightly off track here but the point is; the iPhone 3G got it very right when other companies were floundering and trying to guess the next technology move. Apple, in my opinion, did two things very very well with the iPhone - they integrated the iPod (simple but genius) and they made the App Store source code available to all and sundry.

As for things that were missing, these were well documented and Apple listened. The folder structure was something that would definitely make the home screen easier and multi-tasking was really needed by any modern day user. However, this was where the pain set in for me (for a short period). As a 3G user and tied into a contract with O2, I was keen (not desperate) to get the folder structure (well I am a long time Windows user - we need folders!) So I downloaded iOS4 (with some excitement) and can only describe my feelings as ‘disappointed’, ‘upset’ and ‘cheated’. Could my phone get any slower? Every app I installed loaded up with the efficiency of an English World Cup 2010 defence. How could this be? My amazing iPhone the one that I had told everyone was the best thing since the birth of beer and now, how disappointing - it could barely tell me the time, let alone direct me to the Britania Hotel, Lisbon or somewhere equally exotic. F*&k! Damn you Apple - you are making me want to buy an iPhone 4! I had about four weeks between release of the new phone and the end of my contract, so I had to survive technologically in that time, so I put the phone to the test. First, I tried to see who else was suffering from this awful ‘piss take’ from Apple. There were a lot of people out there on the Interweb who were suffering as I was. Slow app loading, crashing, some apps refusing to load and disgust that the greatest gadget was now a blubbering retard (can I use that word?)

There were comments suggesting a hard reboot or indeed doing it twice. Others were suggesting ‘upgrading’ to an Android mobile system. Which Multiverse am I in? It was clear that the 3G was not/is not capable of successfully running iOS4. Shame!

Well, thankfully I was able to upgrade to the new iPhone (I only had to use a slow 3G for 4 weeks) and now don’t have to worry about slow loading apps and no multi-tasking - all is well. I will post my thoughts on it at a later date, but the question was, what do I do with my old 3G? Keep it? Will I use it? Sell it? Will anyone want it? And then I thought - I can jailbreak it. Yes! I didn’t want to when it was my main phone, just in case something went wrong. But now it doesn’t matter. Just last week there was a ruling in the US that users could legally Jailbreak their phones (shame I’m in the bloody UK, but oh well). This opens up a whole new world, separate from the App Store. Jailebreakme 2.0 only runs on iOS4 so would this slow my phone down any more?

Firstly, I have to say how easy it was to download. As easy as sliding your finger to the right of the screen, from Safari, on the device (as shown in pic below). Easy! It adds an additional icon on the home screen (Cydia). Open it to further install the software and job done, your phone is jail broken. Now I am still playing around with it, but after a little research Winterboard is apparently a good shell to install (I love the constantly changing background on the home screen). It allows you to completely change the look of the home screen and all apps. Different icons, changing backgrounds, and a whole new store to buy and download apps. It is not quite as user friendly as the inherent Apple set-up but it is fairly intuitive and a good bit of fun for anyone who has techie curiosity. For now my jail broken 3G is lying around the house connected to wi-fi and serving as a fun new device. So now I have two new devices - I’ll never just have one gadget that does it all!

P.S.

For older content you can either follow the 'Older Posts' link at the bottom of the page, use the labels on the right or use the 'Blog Archive' at the bottom right. Plenty of options.

Summer Hiatus - over!

Well it’s been a while since I have posted anything of real interest. I have been spending the summer working on a new project, ‘Project Number One’ - original! I am hoping to have a separate blog wholly dedicated to that up and running in October/November of this year if possible.

Over the Summer there has been much to talk about. On the techie side, there is the new iPhone 4 (which is pretty sweet) , the new operating system iOS4, JailbreakMe 2.0 (I’ve now installed this on my old 3G), the rise of Android, my ever growing love for Google tools (not Wave) and the essential question of ‘Can I justify buying an iPad?’ to name but a few. These are some of the topics I will blog on.

On the comics side, there has been a lot of cool things coming out of the US over the Summer, mostly relating to SD Comic Con. There is much to say on Thor, Avengers, Captain America, Batman 3, Green Lantern and Tron Legacy. As for some of the current ongoing arcs, Daredevil: Shadowland is so far pretty awesome - I keep saying this but Daredevil is the closest character Marvel have to Batman. Grant Morrison seems to have been working overtime on the whole Batman RIP continuation and missing chapters - so far I’m not convinced on The Return of Bruce Wayne.

Well, that’s enough for now and the most I have blogged for about three months - hopefully I can get this back up and running again.

Due 12 August 2010

Batgirl #13
Birds Of Prey #4 (Brightest Day)
Daredevil #509 Shadowland
Green Lantern Emerald Warriors #1 (Brightest Day) (maybe)
Justice League Generation Lost #7 (Brightest Day)
Shadowland Blood On Street #1 (Of 4) (maybe)
Titans #26 (Brightest Day)
Ultimate Comics Avengers 3 #1 (Of 6)
X-Force Sex And Violence #2 (Of 3)
X-Men #2
Zatanna #4

Due 5 August 2010

Avengers Prime #2 (Of 5)
Batman Odyssey #2 (Of 6)
Brightest Day #7
Captain America #608 (maybe)
Red Hood Lost Days #3 (Of 6)
Red Robin #15
Shadowland #2 (Of 5)
Shadowland Bullseye #1 Sl
Supergod #4 (Of 5)
Ultimate Comics Avengers 2 #6 (Of 6)