Stop Frame

The iPad is amazing, I can't wait for my Windows 8 tablet. Contradictory? Allow me to explain. I am not an Apple user, or even a fan. I'm still bitter about what Steve Jobs did to the Apple II. But Jobs has shuffled off this mortal coil and times marches on. I bought a Kindle Fire for Christmas and founding was an awesome tease about what tablet computing could be like. Here was a single device that could carry my entire (growing) ebook library, a selection of music, and be used for mundane tasks like note taking. But as a tablet, the Fire has serious limitations, not the least of which is that for more serious work, it's just too small. That meant looking at the tablet market at large, and the more I looked the more it became clear that right now, there is no tablet market, there's an iPad market. All of the Android tablets looked nice, but all seemed half baked. There's even a sense of baked in obsolescence with several of them. With great reluctance, I turned to...

What a stupid title. Yes, that's the name of the main character, but it's not as if it just jumps out and drags you in. John Carter of Mars would have at least identified the series to fans, and the actual first book in the Edgar Rice Burroughs series is "A Princess of Mars." Either title would have been immediately recognizable to the fan base, if to no one else. But just John Carter ? Give me a break. That said, I enjoyed the actual film. Lots of silly fun with at least one seriously poignant moment. Nothing that will bring home an Oscar, but a solid action-adventure frolic once it gets through its opening setup(s). John Carter tells the story of, er, John Carter, former member of the Army of Northern Virginia fighting for the Confederate States in the Civil War. Carter (Taylor Kitsch) has journeyed to the southwest in search of fortune, never mind the fame. In a cave he encounters a strange being. A brief scuffle ensues, said being is killed, and Carter finds him...

Once you get over the idea that Prometheus is a prequel to Alien , the film improves immeasuarably. As long as you remain stuck on the notion that you're going to see the setup for how the 1979 film began, you are doomed to disappointment. Cast out your demons of longing, take Prometheus on its own terms, you'll enjoy the experience much, much better. Prometheus tells the tale of a group of researches out looking for God. Well, they call Him "the Engineers" but the quest for God is explicit. It seems that Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and her main squeeze Charlie Holoway (Logan Marshall-Green, future victim of ickiness) believe they've found proof of Erich Von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods and convince a gazillionaire to fund a trillion dollar expedition to find where they came from, both humans and our creators. They go, they find, horror ensues. Prometheus has all of the visual splendor you expect from a Ridley Scott film. It's a feast for the eyes...

Available at long last... http://www.amazon.com/Revered-Memory-ebook/dp/B008AYMD5S/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1339541274&sr=1-1 Book description: Show Less For Homicide Inspector Cynthia Gayle, it should have been an open and shut case. A police sergeant witnessed the murder and shot the suspect dead. Simple. But all that’s left of the suspect is a skeleton. Matters become more complicated when it appears that the victim may not have been human, and go from complicated to impossible when both the skeleton and the victim’s body vanish the next day from the morgue, apparently escaping on their own. Revered Memory  is a fast-paced thriller of obsession, of people unable to ignore the demons of their pasts and are driven to do whatever is necessary to achieve their goals, regardless of who may be in the way. Now I've got to get back to re-typing Derelict . If I had followed Wilma's advice of, oh, 20 years ago this would already have been don...

An Apple product has invaded my life for the first time. I haven't done much of anything with an Apple product since the Apple II+. And now I have an iPad. Culture shock. This post is a test of using the iPad and this little bit of software called Blogsy. Typing is...interesting.