Back to our nerdly nuts and bolts

We are up to issue 4 of The New 52's and Justice League is a book that has really been on my list as one that I just can't decide on.  Let's go back four months, the first issue hit, we are in a universe where the heroes don't really know each other, Green Lantern had no idea that Batman was just a man in a costume...Superman seems to not like authority, and The Flash, well he's just the flash, fast, cocky, and a smart ass, gotta love it!  Jim Lee can really suck you in with his artwork, Geoff John's story work can usually keep you on the edge of your seat, but this title just runs slow.  I am still trying to piece together the current state of the DC Universe, as I really only follow Superman, Batman, The Flash, and Green Lantern.  Its tough, I mean we really don't know what has happened, what from the last 50 years still happened in the new universe, Bane vs Batman, Jason Todd's Death, Superman's death, Barbara Gordon is not wheelchair bound anymore..etc, these are the things I really wish I knew the answers to.  With This month Justice League #4 hit the shelves, and well remember Aquaman from the Superfriends?  Well, friends he isn't hear, we have an Atlantian bad ass, who doesn't mind getting his trident dirty and I'm loving it, if you ever made Aquaman the but of a joke, well brother, let me tell ya, he ain't that guy.

Lastly, my biggest gripe, is DC touted out that they were drawing the line at $2.99 earlier in the year in response to Marvels inability to decide on price point.  But two of the flagship titles, Action Comics and Justice League are $3.99, and Justice League is 22 pages of story/art and the rest ads and filler, its just a bit much, and then for them to charge the same day and date for digital really chaps this authors ass a bit.  It really makes the thought of going digital only hard to swallow, and I have thought about it, but there is just something about holding a real book in your hands, going to the nerds den, the geektopia, the comic book store and browsing the shelves for something new, finding something that Mitch Breitweiser (a fellow Arkie) has started working on, finding that hard to find trade paperback, that Frank Miller Batman Statue, hell even just picking out a new 20 sided die...You don't get that on your nook, iPad, playbook, blackbook, blackberry, chuck berry, or whatever your using digitally!

So, I don't think you can find back issues on JL right now, but I know once this arc is done it will be in trade paperback (they've already announced a Batman trade, so its coming), when that happens, pick it up, you'll love the visually stunning art by Jim Lee, an incredibly woven team building story by Geoff Johns, and of course a glowing review from me.

4.5 out of 5 Tankards of Terror!

An Unexpected Journey

So The Hobbit trailer is up today, and all I can say is wow!  It's already blown my mind twice, and I know like the other trailers I will watch it religiously until the movie hits next December.  I remember when I saw Fellowship of the Ring, I was so moved by how everything I had seen in the book/animated movie had been brought to life, and now I cannot wait to see these first two chapters.  If you haven't seen it yet, here it is in all its HD glory...

If you haven't turned on "Find My iPhone", you probably should

So, the parental unit (heretofore known as Mom) works in a wireless call center, and with my past experience and what she tells me, people just get dumber the smarter their phones become.  First, if you have an iPhone, iPod Touch (with location capabilities), or an iPad 1 or 2, you need to know about something called Find My iPhone.  Well first its an app, and yes its free, you need to download and install it ASAP.  This is not a way for you to get some type of Batman/Daredevil vigilante justice, but a high tech lowjack for your phone/pad/pod.  The most important thing, you have to have it set up first before it will work...so you can't lose your phone and then decide to turn it on.  Second, if you have iOS 5, and your using the cloud, its really easy, make sure to toggle the switch in your settings to turn on find my iPhone.  Once this is complete you can login to your iCloud account and then select find my iPhone and it will find all your iOS devices assigned to your cloud login.

Once your here, you can send a message/sound to the device, lock it remotely, or wipe it out entirely.  What is cool is you will get a map showing you pretty close to where the device is.  This is handy if you can't find your device in the house, or someone has stolen it.  The key to a stolen device is let law enforcement know you have a stolen device, and that you have tracked its whereabouts and provide this to them, they may or may not go get it, but at least you've gotten them closer than they used to be when things were stolen.

So thats find my iPhone, please use it, it will save you countless hours of problems and issues, also use your cloud space, back up your contacts, and for god sacks, sync your damn devices regularly.

Geeky Dad Out!

So, what do you want for Christmas?

As, we are now officially 24 days to Christmas, I guess its time to start talking about it.  So I have been working for a couple of weeks to trim  up my holiday list, and well, I had a hard time thinking of anything I really "needed", and not much that I "wanted".  I had already gotten all the big tier 1 games for the Xbox, not a lot on the DVD front, but a couple.  Surprisingly I couldn't find anything techie that I could not live without.  I still hark back two christmases to probably my best and most used tech gift, the Monster Power Outlets to Go 4 outlet strip, this thing has come in so handy, I got it for work travel, but it has proven more useful on trips to the in-laws or my moms.  Four extra outlets come in really handy!  This year, its hard, maybe its the whole taking stock in your life, or the fact that I lost everything else and moved away, that made me less materialistic.  Whatever it is, I really don't know what I want for christmas, but I do know I want one of those SodaStream machines, it reminds me of when I was a kid, my grandfather bought a Charlie-O system, He had a tank of some type of gas, the plastic bottles had caps with what looked like tire stems, you'd hook up the hose and bam, carbonated water, then you'd pour it over ice and add they syrup, he actually got real Coke syrup and man it was the best thing you'd ever drank.  I hope the soda stream brings back that kind of feelings.

There is a small part of me that wants a Sumo Sac Gamer, but I really don't know how a fat ass can get in and out of a bean bag chair without looking like a beached whale!

So, what's on your tech list this holiday season?  What have you been longing for all year and can't live without?  Post in the comments...

Suck it Verizon and Sprint

Bash all you want, I have never experienced any of the problems people always complain about with AT&T, I also worked in wireless, so I guess I also know to expect that cellular phones do not work everywhere, and occasionally they will drop a call during a tower handoff (or a 3G to edge handoff for that matter), remember folks its just a phone, and think back 25 years or so, the thought of having a phone in your pocket was crazy-talk.  That being said, I stumbled upon this interesting piece about a recent study by a company called Metrico Wireless, never heard of them, but these firms pop up all the time.  The data is quite interesting, like most studies, they measured the basics...Metrico measured five performance factors shortly after the iPhone 4S was launched on all three carriers in October: whether calls could be connected and held; voice quality; data performance; Web browsing by page load speeds and video performance.


"Metrico did not pronounce any carrier a winner or loser in the study, noting that each had strengths. In an analysis of a summary of the findings, however, AT&T came out on top in more areas than the others, with Verizon second and Sprint third."


This was what I found interesting, "AT&T was twice as fast as Verizon in Web browsing with the iPhone 4S, recording average page load times of 1.29 seconds, compared with Verizon's 2.60 seconds. Sprint's version of the phone took an average of 6.44 seconds for Web browsing page loads, according to Amit Malhotra, vice president of marketing at Metrico, in an interview."


Check it out, tell me what you think, do you have an iPhone, if so who are you with?


Oh yeah, geeky graph incoming!

And with that, I'm done, it's my daughters 2nd birthday today, so I'm off to wake the girls up and go get her favorite breakfast, hash browns from McDonalds.  See you tomorrow!


Geeky Dad Out..

New Software is Available for Your Computer

I was greeted with a software update this morning, nothing overly exciting, it was iTunes 5.1.  So whats new in 5.1?  


Well, With iTunes Match, even songs you’ve imported from CDs can be stored in iCloud. And you can play them on any iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, or PC — whenever you want and wherever you are, without syncing. iTunes Match is just $24.99 a year.

Here’s how it works: iTunes determines which songs in your collection are available in the iTunes Store. Any music with a match is automatically added to iCloud for you to listen to anytime, on any device. Since there are more than 20 million songs in the iTunes Store, chances are, your music is already in iCloud. And for the few songs that aren’t, iTunes has to upload only what it can’t match. Which is much faster than starting from scratch. Once your music is in iCloud, you can stream and store it to any of your devices. Even better, all the music iTunes matches plays back from iCloud at 256-Kbps AAC DRM-free quality — even if your original copy was of lower quality.

So, if you decide to use this, I'm guessing your going to need more space in your cloud, and look, Apple has a plan for that!  Enjoy!

So...does this open up the door for a cloud based iPhone/iPod/iPad?  Only time will tell, and of course the adoption rate will be a factor on whether this will happen.  But then again, we won't know anything as always until Apple tells us.

Have a day, It's Friday, and no one can take that away from you!

An open letter to CenturyLink

To Whom it may concern;  I have been very patient, when you sold me internet you told me I could get 8 mb down, when I installed your service I got less than 1mb down and was told it was a fiber cut.  When it continued to the next day, I am told I can't have 8 mb, only 6, which I'm fine with, but since the start of this service my modem will just drop connection, all the lights still show its connected, but no devices will connect to then internet.  Modem replaced on last tech call, still having same issue, I think its time to get someone a little higher up the chain to tell me why this is happening and why I haven't gotten my 6 mb down in over a week.  Your killing my productivity, which includes job hunting, and do you know how bad it sucks to be half-way through an online application (45 minutes worth) to have the internet go down and have to start all over!  So please someone find out why I am having all these problems, give me a straight answer, and lets work together to get it right the first time.

I wish I could say that I was able to post this in one try, but no, modem just had to be reset...again (4th time today).

Sincerely
The Geeky Mac Daddy (not the pimp, the Macintosh)