Thor update

Courtesy of Garth Franklin on Dark Horizons:

With the troubled "Spider-Man 4" set to depart its original release date of May 5th 2011 for sometime later that season, the film schedule is already shuffling to compensate.

Box-Office Mojo reports that Marvel Studios' "Thor" has moved from its May 20th 2011 date to May 5th to fill the hole left by Spidey.

Shortly after, Disney pushed its "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" sequel up and will now take over the old "Thor" pre-Memorial Day weekend slot on May 20th.


I have to say I am getting kinda excited at the prospect of Thor. It will be interesting to see what part Thor will play in Marvels up-coming Siege storyline and whether that encourages the public to get more excited about the film.

Apple Tablet

Will you get one? It is apparently being announced the end of this month. CNET.COM had this to say:

There are two schools of thought on this: either the Apple tablet (or iSlate, or whatever it ends up being called) will be a 10-or-so-inch tablet PC with a full Mac OS X operating system; or it will merely be a larger-screen version of the current iPod Touch, which has a closed, limited phone-like OS.

The former would mean it could very likely run any software you'd run on a MacBook, from Firefox to Photoshop, and maybe even install Windows 7 via Boot Camp or Parallels. The later points to a hermetically sealed ecosystem, where apps would have to be approved and sold through an official app store (as in iTunes).

Initially, at least, the scant evidence hinted at the Apple tablet being akin to a touch-screen, keyboardless version of the company's current laptops. After all, convertible tablet laptops are, if not common, than at least easy to find. While mostly intended for medical, education, or other specialized markets, there are a handful of consumer-oriented ones, such as HP's TouchSmart series.

This made me laugh

I want a computer like this!

Item 1 - Etymotic hf2 headset and earphones

For me, earphones are an essential item. The packaged iPhone earphones are seriously lacking. The sound quality they produce is rubbish and they don't sit in your ear very comfortably. But, they do have 'controls' on the cable so you can pause, play music etc or take calls when on the move. So while researching replacement earphones, I was only looking for ones that had similar or better controls. Surprisingly there are not that many options, well, good options. I found Etymotic and a selection of their earphones. The hf2's have similar controls to the bog standard iPhone ones but much much better quality and noise reducing. At £90 they are not cheap, but I have to say, pretty darn good sound quality. For an extra £100, they will custom make the 'bud' based on the shape of your ear. Now I have them, they are always packed in the bag.


Includes:

* hf2 headset + earphones with 4 ft. cable
* Assorted eartips
* Filter tool with 2 replacement filters
* Storage pouch

Essential 'Man-Bag' items

The 'Man-Bag' has become an essential item for most males of the modern age. Most dudes I know either have one bag or a selection of them. I recently got myself a new bag for work and did a fair bit or research to find one that matched my needs. I needed a bag that could keep documents and comics (lol) flat for reading on the train and ideally a bag that wouldn't keel over every time I laid it on the floor. Now some people would say, a bag is a bag. Well, as I spend around 3 hours a day traveling, I need books, comics, newspapers, gadgets etc to accompany me and I need a decent bag to hold them.

So I found Crumpler http://www.crumpler.co.uk. They have a shop just off Holborn. They are a boutique bag shop and pretty funky with it. I opted for the Gentleman Farmer range. It has a metal frame in it that keeps it upright (Sweet!) It has a hard casing to protect a laptop or equivalent and loads of pockets and zips for the smaller items.

So it got me thinking, what are the essential items for a Man-Bag? My thoughts to follow.

P.S. Happy New Year.

Buy Pile - upto and including 17th December

Adventure Comics #5 Blackest Night
Rebels #11 Blackest Night
Justice League Of America #40 Blackest Night
Outsiders #25 Blackest Night
Superman Batman #67 Blackest Night
Azrael #3
Batman #694
Batman 80 Page Giant #1 (maybe)
Batman Streets Of Gotham #7
Daredevil #503
Dark Avengers #12
Green Lantern Corps #43 Blackest Night
Captain America Reborn #5 (Of 6)