Old Man Logan (2015) #1
Convergence #8 (Of 8)
Convergence Crime Syndicate #2
Convergence Detective Comics #2
Convergence Justice Society Of America #2
Convergence Plastic Man Freedom Fighters #2
Sandman Overture #5 (Of 6)
Providence #1 (Of 12) (Maybe)
Monthly Archives: May 2015
Comics due 20 May
Convergence #7 (Of 8)
Convergence Batman & The Outsiders #2
Convergence Flash #2
Convergence Justice League America #2
Convergence New Teen Titans #2
Convergence Wonder Woman #2
Wytches #6
The Enfield Haunting and Ghosts …
The prospect of paranormal activity is a fascinating topic and one One that I have always been interested in. I must confess though, that I don’t really believe in these sightings. The Enfield Haunting was an incident that took place in Enfield, North London in 1977. A poltergeist was ‘poltergeisting’ a young girl and her family over the course of a year or more. Investigators were brought in and there were a number of incidents that couldn’t be explained – wardrobes smashed, marbles thrown in the air and the young girl (Janet) mimicking the voice of an old man (who turned out to be a previous resident of the house and deceased). All very creepy and all very unexplained.
Sky Living have made a 3 three part show based on the real life events and having watched all 3 three parts last night, I have to say I thought it was excellent. Firstly, the cast was excellent (especially Timothy Spall and Matthew MacFadyen) both of whom I’m a big fan of. Secondly the attention to detail in terms of the clothing and decor of the house being in the 70s was spot on. The scenes involving the poltergeist were excellent (scary) and there were a few moments where some additional underwear wouldn’t have gone a miss!
Of course, for the disbeliever, one feels that such events can always be explained away somehow. Maybe it was all a game? A young girl going through puberty? A missing father figure? Repressed emotions? Bullying at school? Or maybe poltergeist do exist? This show and the realise events don’t prove or disprove anything really. Either way, I do wonder, why don’t we hear about poltergeist in the UK more often? Where have they all gone? My final question is, even if it isn’t true, could a girl (and her family) really pull something off that couldn’t be explained by science or common sense? Food for thought.
Technology – It’s the Little Things
One aspect of the Mac operating system that I have really embraced is the multiple desktops function. If you have a number of windows or tabs open and are multitasking across apps, this is such a simple, yet effective way of managing your screen space (which can feel limited on a laptop).
It basically allows you to have each app in full screen mode and you simply swipe from side to side to get each full screen presented app. This way I can have five or six apps (or more) running and I can move seamlessly between them.
Simple, but very useful.
Current Reading
So I promised myself that I wouldn’t succumb to all the Convergence tie-ins and instead I would stick with the core Convergence title.
So this happened:
Note, they aren’t all DC. The bottom line is that the fear of missing a key event (concerning certain characters) means I can’t help myself.
I think it has gotten better with each issue and some of the tie-ins are pretty decent. Issue #5 of Convergence was pretty good and a nice touch at the end.
Marvel have also got into the act with Secret Wars and issue #1 was pretty good.I especially liked (although felt a bit sad) when they said officially that the main and Ultimate Marvel universes were dead.
Either way, as I’ve said recently, it’s a great time to be into comics.
Here are some pics of my current reading.
Comics due 13 May
Secret Wars 2015 #2 (Of 8)
Convergence #6 (Of 8)
Convergence Batman Shadow Of The Bat #2
Convergence Catwoman #2
Convergence Green Lantern Parallax #2
Chrononauts #3
DC versus Marvel …
The whole DC versus Marvel thing bugs me. I read material from both companies and they both have great characters and stories to offer. On the movie front, Man of Steel got ripped for the destruction it caused. In the Avengers movies there was huge destruction and not one person has complained. Surely, not fair.
My Twitter Travels
Over the last 5 to 6 weeks I’ve been experimenting with Twitter and WordPress. Firstly I decided to be more active on Twitter. In the past I’ve really only used it for brief spells and have tended to keep away from the official Twitter app. This wasn’t for any particular reason other than the fact that I got my Twitter feed via Flipboard.
So having decided to use the official app, I needed to start tweeting things of interest. This was actually the easy bit. The key was getting the right time of day. It seemed that late afternoon (UK) was the best time to get new followers or certainly retweets.
Topics were the usual technology, comics, film and NLP tweets. Having said that, I did start to follow a lot of blogging and writing types on Twitter. This resulted in quite a bit of interest.
I also started to use the app IFTTT and created a automatic Twitter list where a # search would happen automatically. As an example I used the word ‘awesome’ as a test. Basically anyone who posted a tweet that contained the word ‘awesome’ was automatically added to a list. Whilst it resulted in a number of new followers with similar interests, it also resulted in a few irate tweeters who requested that they be removed from the list.
It is fascinating that there are users who on the face of it aren’t well know and they have hundreds of thousands followers. Are all these followers real people (and active) or are some fake accounts?
Anyway. I started on 330 followers, which I was quite proud of since I didn’t really use Twitter in an active way. Having spent a couple of weeks being active and following people I am now over a thousand (at the time of writing).
Apple Watch
I managed to have a ‘play’ around with the watch finally and I left the store feeling a ‘little’ excited. I had hoped to feel ‘very’ excited.
Of course that is exactly how I felt after playing with the iPad for the first time and now you couldn’t seprate me from my iPad, even if my life depended on it.
My initial thought was that, it’s a nice looking watch. Nothing more. Just a ‘nice’ watch. The 42mm watch is about the right size. I am a fan of large faced watches so I think they could have gone bigger, but the 42mm is fine.
The screen really caught my eye. It reminded me of my iPhone 6. Clear, crisp, sharp. I definitely liked the screen.
I suppose the question is, what would you use it for?
Writing Workflow
I still don’t feel like I’ve resolved my writing workflow or a workflow in general.
I’ve become obsessed with automation. Not because I’m lazy but because I’ve realised that my life is built up of relatively similar tasks.
I post on this blog and usually I post a ‘comics due this week’ type post which is nothing other than a list of comics. I usually post an opinion piece (on a recent comic or film or particular tech issue that is bugging me) and so on. Whilst the content of these posts are different, the format is not. I should use a template.
The same goes for my day job. I’m a legal headhunter and I spend a large portion of my time contacting lawyers that I’ve never previously spoken to. I contact them through email, Linkedin and on the phone. Again, I should be making more use of templates and the like. Automation has to be the way forward.
Of course I want to take this a step further. I want Linkedin to automatically give me a list of candidates and automatically send the email to them. I want WordPress (or other service) to start making suggestions to me and compiling articles for me so that I have a ready made ‘ideas’ section.
Oh, the dreams. What automation services and apps do you use successfully?
Geeks and Gods 