#3 ExtraLife Radio

It's been a long time since I put out a Podcast Review but I am obliged to cover Extralife Radio, not only because it is very awesome but I recently made a donation to the show. Making a donation means that your name gets read out at the top of the show, so I've posted a short clip from show #197 where the legendary Scott Johnson says my name- woah!

More after the jump...

I'll keep the review itself pretty short as it seems that the show is planning to end after episode 200 (technically one episode away, #199 was just released!). It's a big shame as it is a great show, one of the podcasts I really look forward to listening to.

But I've just realised I haven't mentioned what the show is about! OMG! At its essence, the show brings together three webcomics in a discussion over the week's "geek" news, whether that be recent film releases, video game previews, comic-related stuff etc. They include some personal stories as well, plus there's also a fair amount of banter thrown in too for good measure. The host is Scott Johnson of myextralife.com fame and he is the regular participant (as well as host, did I mention that?!), hence why he has lended the name to the radio show/podcast. The two other most regular appearances are from Brian from comicscoasttocoast.com and missiondeep.com and O(bsidian) from commissionedcomic.com. There are of course other guests on the shows, most notable Randy Jordan (aka Randy Deluxe) from the Instance (a WoW themed podcast which Scott also runs) who joins in to throw in his two cents usually about films as he's a massive film buff.

In short, it's a great show, more often than not released on a weekly basis, has a duration of just over a hour most times (although it can vary) which is great for my commutes. In addition to plugging the podcast, go check out their individual websites if you're into webcomics at all, it's very funny stuff. While initially I couldn't stand O at the start who always seems to cut across people and comes across as obnoxious; now I can fully appreciate what he brings to the table, plus more often than not he mixes it up to cause conflict and doesn't really mean a lot of it. That being said, I probably like O's comic the most. Scott's comic is what got me into the podcast and that was through his comic because of all the wow-themed comics he did many years ago when I was a World of Warcraft junkie (free at last!)

In conclusion, it's a fun, light-hearted show where three like-minded individuals come together to chat and joke about all stuff geeky which suits me down to the ground. I wholeheartedly recommend it!

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I need a hero...

So, thanks to a recommendation by my good friend Adam, I recently started watching the show Heroes the other day, and Wow! what a great show, I have got immediately hooked and watched like 6 episodes in less than three days.  I cba to explain the story here, just check it out, but basically it involves a number of individuals, subtly connected,  who slowly discover they have superhuman powers and the show follows their tales.

Anyways, it got me thinking, not unlike a child, how great it would be to have a superpower, perhaps 3.  The characters that I've met so far in the show involve someone who can fly, someone who can alter space/time, someone with incredible regeneration, someone who can paint the future, a mind reader, and possibly the coolest one, like Rogue from X-Men, someone who can seemly borrow other people's powers. Pretty sweet no?

 

So, let's discuss which are the coolest powers from the list above? Lol.  But seriously, I think my faves are the altering of space/time and the mind reader.  The guy who can alter space/time is effectively a Japanese nerd, and thankfully his story so far has provided some light relief from the other stories. 

So yeah, the altering space/time is pretty cool. You could effectively do anything, a lot of the fun options have already been explored by the show including teleporting into the ladies' room, and successfully cheating at gambling in casinos.

The mind reader one is also pretty darn cool.  I am also impressed with the show realising that it wouldn't actually be an ability that you can just turn on and off as required, but you would hear people's thoughts all the time.  I think first done in the original Star Trek series where Spock obviously had his mind-meld tricks, and I remember him saying how it takes years of training to be able to block out all the random thoughts of others.  Boy, wasn't the original series of Star Trek quite cool, in a very low budget, Kirk-also-makes-out-with-a-hot-alien, The crew in red always die kind of way yeah!

The mind reading is particularly cool as the guy uses the ability to "win" any conversation he has, not to mention freak people out with facts about them that they have not openly spoke about.  He has also won back favour with his wife, with whom he is currently having troubles with in their marriage, by setting up the perfect date - everything she has thought would be good.  For selfish reasons, mind-reading would make dating a much more efficient process as once they start thinking, "screw this guy, he's kinda lame", you could then just move on, rather than wait for them to tell you so, a couple of dates later.  The power is actually not unlike the film "What Women Want" which although kinda being a bit of a chick flick, is quite a smart film, only for the cool mind-reading abilities.

 

Here's looking for a local toxic dump from which to gain superpowers. Wish me luck!

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Blogging Promotion

Hey, new blog, and second of the day. I was reading one of the top blogs on Technorati, and it actually contained a blog mentioning how to improve the quality and readership of one's blog. One of the tips was to keeping blogs shorter and more focused, one thing I am guilty of not doing. So here we are, trying to put these ideas into practice, and here's the seperate blog to go with it lol.

Another idea was to link to other people's blogs, so I'm starting a call to the masses: If you want your blog to be linked from here, contact me, and that goes for both friends and strangers. To my friends, you know the correct channels of contact, and to strangers, don't hesitate to mail me - I'm not sure if I have put up contact details on here, but if I have, then power to you stranger, and if I like your blog, then I will happily link it, and probably become an avid fan and follower of it :D.

When I get round to uploading this later this eve no doubt, I should link the article. And here it is - quite a smart blog, it may ahve to be one for the future. Another pointer was to maintain very good, or more accuractely correct grammar in your blog. I think I mostly achieve this, although there is no doubt a few spelling mistakes from the frenetic pace of my touch typing, plus grammar is fine except if I type the shorthand "ppl" or drop into the kind of typing that I usually reserve for the chat channels for WoW - i.e. slightly broken english with just enough information in the sentence to illustrate the main point, or lots of terminology, which is always a good thing :D.

I don't think it's wise for this newly adopted blog etiquette that I start waffling about something else. Saying that, the monkey guy read my last post about geeks which was a tiny bit lengthy which reminds me I need to ask the guy how he stumbled onto my blog. Also he commented that I could be the first geek stud, which is my bad cos the Japanorama programme mentioning how thanks to the Otaku movement gaining momentum, some of the more outgoing ones have decided to enjoy the spoils of this newly found fame, so actually there exist a good number of geek studs out there.

"Hey, do you wanna IM later?"
"I'm IEEE standards complaint, if you know what I mean?!"

Take it Easy
J-Man.

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Don't forget to tip your geek... [Dated 24/04/07]

Hey, a short post this time as I have been shopping for a card for my Mum's upcoming birthday. Anyways enough of that...

For some reason I got thinking about how I introduce myself to other people, and how people define themselves. I like to think there are two quite, well almost distinct halves to me, them being Jonathan and Jonny, everyone's friend lol.


Not to dig up the Becca thing again, but I think she is actually the only girl I've met who has done a different reaction to me telling me that I do/did Computer Science. Generally girls I meet who ask what I was doing for a degree, and I reply Computer Science, and they would all go, "oh" and go colder to what was before a warming prospect of friendship etc. Becca actually replied "Oh, like what Rob does", when I told her after she asked many a year back, but I dunno, maybe girls hearing that draw the same conclusion that I must be a geek, and that is a bad thing. That saying I am a geek, but I don't like the way it is considered a negative thing.

Geeks are responsible for any piece of technology that we use today, and jock types/geek haters should actually realise that and be thankful for the time these "uncool" people dedicated to exploring what was possible. The internet, the vessel you use to send you horrible, gut-inducing chain mails, "send this to 8 people NOW, or you maye die! etc" to all your stupid friends, was created by University boffins trying to get two seperate computers to send messages to each other.

I remember back when I was an avid user of StumbleUpon, (great addon for FF if you use it, get it you will not be sorry), I found a few articles and the like where it was saying the benefits of dating a geek, and I quite excited about that, but that train of thought has not broke through into the mainstream just yet.
Thanks to watching the bizarre Japanorama, there is a buzzing sub-culture of Otakus,or geeks/nerds, that are finally being appreciated, and heck it sounds very tempting to be part of that movement. Also the word Moe (pronounced Mo-ay) is rather smart. The Japanese have given a word to a pleasure moan if you like - it was something I immediately wanted to force into my everyday vocabulary.


Speaking more broadly, I often get frustrated at how much imprortance is placed on money, and how effectively you need it to do anything basically. I am quite sick of the life I'm living right now, I'd love to uproot myself, move somewhere else, do something new and exciting, but that all takes money which I don't have to a degree.

Moving back to something lighter, I've started rewatching the entirity of the Shield in preparation for the new season, season 6. There's a few shows that have started new seasons, Scrubs, Lost, Prison Break, 24, and I'm a little behind so I need to sort out some kind of schedule so I can watch them all, rather than blitzing them seperately. Oh my I forgot, the Stargate shows as well, oh my, that's 7 seperate shows, and I might even wanna watch some more Drew carey Show, as watched season 1, and it's not too bad, although Drew is a weird frontman for a show.


Time to wrap up, day off tomorrow, so some overdue tidying in store, both physically in my room, and files on the PC, so that should be fun. As someone said at work yesterday, "days off aren't really days off, cos then I'm just busy at home". Once again reminding me how little I want to do the whole 9-5 thing, just to chase some money to buy a few things to make me happy, and then savior the few days off I get, which would then be spent sorting out personal life. Man I can't wait to join the Rat Race, seeya there!

Take it easy
J-Man.

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