So the real question everyone* is asking is “Do you know Wil Wheaton?”

If not, I’m afraid there is no excuse. We all know Wil, we all enjoyed Star Trek : The Next Generation so he was part of our childhoods. Some of the best times in the evenings were watching a group fail at Knightmare, then switching over to BBC 2 at 6pm to watch Star Trek : TNG. If I was very lucky “The Crystal Maze” would be on a little later (but I’m not sure they happened on the same days.. so I might be making that up).

Either way Wil is about to publish a book called Memories of the Future : Volume One. He has started at the beginning of Star Trek : TNG and takes a look at episode, what it was about, how it fitted in the series, and just his general observation about what was going on and off set at the time.

To go along with this he is doing a series of shot pod casts talking about the book, reading excepts, and just generally being funny. The second episode has just come out, and Wil’s thoughts and observations are excellent. I especially like how he is not precious about the work he did, the show has it flaws, but on the whole its great and he just had fun.

Check out this episode, then the first one (or in order if you are crazy like that) and bask in the glory of Wil.

*When I say everyone.. I might mean the geeks among us.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

I want to talk to you if I may about something very serious. Something that has always annoyed me and continues to annoy me now. Teenage Mutant NINJA Turtles. The “Ninja” part is very important. This is the story of a little boy and his eyes being opened to the larger world. When he realised you can have great meaning and significance in something that on the surface appears to be only very small.

21 years ago I was introduced to Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael. Four characters that still mean a lot to me now. The year was 1989 and I was just a small boy. Transformers had come and gone. But even now the voice of Peter Cullen and Optimus Prime bring back fond memories, and always puts a smile on my face (I am fortunate I can share this with my son, and my daughter when she is a little bigger). But that was 1985, I needed something new, something fresh.
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I finished reading Bret Hitman Hart’s autobiography today.  As expected of The Excellence of Execution, it was excellent.  This book is full of so many great little stories that seem crazy but somehow all too believable. I’m probably too biased in favour of Bret to know if it’s him hyping himself when he talks of other wrestlers congratulating him on his work as a wrestler but from what I saw in my youth and in his DVD boxset, I can’t see why they wouldn’t.  I really recommend it to anyone interested in what life at the bottom and at the top of Wrestling used to be like.  His tours of all over the world make for excellent reading in a similar way to Chris Jericho’s book which may be more entertaining than this but lacked the amazing drama that went on during Bret’s career (no offense Chris, you are still my favourite wrestler of this generation and wrote a great book).  Anyway, you should know that this book is Highly recommended for anyone that grew up watching wrestling in the 80s or 90s.

As a child of the 80s, it was an amazing read for me as Bret was always one of my favourites. (more…)

I throughly recommend you read this book

As I have already mentioned I am not one for reading books (although I wish I was), there are so many books I would like to read but just can’t do it. But I do enjoy listening to audio books, so as long as I can find the book I want read aloud I can “read” it and thoroughly enjoy it. So I got a wonderful surprise this week when I was browsing one of my favourite sites (BoingBoing) and I came across this. A fan reading of “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom”.

Written by Cory Doctorow in 2003 under a Creative Commons license. So anyone is free to make a recording of the book, and even give it away as Cory does on his own site. Cory himself is a member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) as well as contributor to BoingBoing, and a prolific writer on many subjects. (more…)

Cover of the original dracula novel

One book I have always wanted to read is ‘Dracula’. Beside the fact it is the birth place of vampires (a fascinating subject). It is a classic piece of literature that everyone should at least attempt to read. So I was faced with a problem. I want to read the book, find out where the ideas all began, understand the original story. But what if is rubbish? Beside the fact I will never get through it no matter how much I want to, I will be very disappoint that a book that I have held in high regard as not only an original idea, but a great piece of horror history turned out to be no where near as good as I had hoped. (more…)