Wednesday, September 30, 2009

The Virgin Comics "Dan Dare Omnibus", plus other Dan Dare books

Way back in January of this year I posted an entry in this blog about an at-the-time forthcoming omnibus edition of the 2008 Virgin Comics "Dan Dare" series by Garth Ennis and Gary Erskine that would contain every episode of the story.

Well, I only just now managed to get hold of a copy of the book (Dan Dare Omnibus, hardcover, published by Dynamite Entertainment, ISBN 1606900277) because I had great trouble tracking it down, but I have to say it was well worth the effort in the end. The book is beautiful, consisting of very high quality paper and colour printing, and the story is really very good when read as a complete graphic novel, which it becomes by virtue of it being "all in one place" in the book.

I thoroughly recommend you to get a copy of it for yourself if you're a Dan Dare, sci-fi or comic-book fan. Buy it from Amazon.com here

Also for sale in Amazon.com is the ongoing Titan Books series that reprints Frank Hampson's classic original 1950s "Dan Dare" stories - find them here

And while I'm on the subject of Dan Dare reading material, why not visit this site to subscribe to a fantastic periodical Dan Dare magazine: Spaceship Away

Find out more about Dan Dare online by visiting these great free sites: DanDare.org.uk, Dan-Dare.org and Dan-Dare.net.

Monday, September 28, 2009

Tom and Jerry online fun and games

I was just now reminded of one of my all-time favourite cartoons, Tom and Jerry, when I switched on the TV and flicked through the multitude of Sky channels. Two separate channels were running Tom and Jerry cartoons - one channel was showing the 1940s and 50s MGM originals, while the other was showing some more modern ones - which was very nice to see. I've loved Tom and Jerry since I was a little boy, so I can honestly say I've been a fan for at least 35 years now! :-)

Click on this link to view my Tom and Jerry tribute page, which includes a complete list of every T & J cartoon ever made, together with a selection of related multimedia (including MP3s of all the different versions of the Tom and Jerry theme tune, plus lots of cartoon clips) and a desktop wallpaper background picture.

For some more Tom and Jerry fun, here are some great free T & J online games for you to play:

  Tom and Jerry: Refiger-Raiders

  Tom and Jerry: Tom's Trap-o-Matic

  Tom and Jerry: What's the Catch?

  Tom and Jerry: Run, Jerry, Run!

  Tom and Jerry: Bowling

  Tom and Jerry: Mouse About the House

  Tom and Jerry: Midnight Snack

You can find all these Tom and Jerry games, plus hundreds more classic cartoon related fun and games, here: Cartoon, Movie and TV Online Games

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Joke of the year

If you like Gordon Brown you perhaps won't like this joke about him, so if that's you then please don't read any further (though hopefully you do possess a sense of humour and will actually find the joke to be funny).....

Gordon Brown was visiting a Scottish primary school and while there he visited one of the classes. They were in the middle of a discussion related to words and their meanings. The teacher asked Mr. Brown if he would like to lead the discussion on the word 'tragedy'.

So the illustrious leader asked the class for an example of a tragedy.

A little boy stood up and offered: "If ma best freen, wha lives on a fairm, is playin' in the field an' a tractor rins ower him and kills him, that wid be a tragedy".

"No", said Gordon, "that would be an accident".

A little girl raised her hand: "If a bus kerryin' fufty children drove ower a cliff, killing a'b'dy inside, that wid be a tragedy".

"I'm afraid not", explained Gordon, "that's what we would call a 'great
loss'".

The room went silent. No other children volunteered. Gordon searched the room.

"Isn't there someone here who can give me an example of a tragedy?"

Finally, at the back of the room, wee Johnny raised his hand. In a quiet voice he said:

"If a plane kerryin' you and Mr. Darlin' wis struck by a 'freendly fire'
missile an' blawn tae smithereens, that wid be a tragedy".

"Fantastic!", exclaimed Gordon. "That's right. And can you tell me why that would be a tragedy?"

"Weel", says wee Johnny, "it has tae be a tragedy, because it certainly
widnae be a great loss..... and it probably widnae be an accident either!!"

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Am back in England now

Although I haven't been back here for 2 years, not much has changed!

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Going back to England tomorrow

I have been in Thailand for 2 years now without seeing my parents and friends back in England, so tomorrow I'm going back there to put that right!

I'm travelling with Gulf Air with a flight transfer in Bahrain, which means that although the journey involves two flights and is longer than flying direct, it is also about 50% cheaper. It's costing me 28,000 Thai Baht, or around 520 GB Pounds, for the Bangkok to London return trip with a 1 month stay in England. Seems like pretty good value to me.

Tuesday, September 08, 2009

i-mobile TV 630 mobile phone - don't buy one!

This is my review of the i-mobile TV 630 mobile phone:

My wife Su recently bought a brand new i-mobile TV 630 mobile phone because it looked very good in the adverts, and when she tried it out in the shop it seemed to be excellent. Its very impressive specification includes dual SIM cards (so it's two phones in one), an 8 megapixel camera with full flash and video recording, micro SD memory card up to 8 GB, MP3 and MP4 player, TV tuner and FM radio. The price was 5,800 Thai Baht, or about 110 GB Pounds.

However, after using it for around a week, it has turned out to be nowhere near as good as it first appeared to be. In fact it is completely rubbish, and here's why:

Even though it can use an 8 GB micro SD memory card, you can't do much useful stuff with all that memory, like for example the MP3 music player in the phone cannot cope with a music library of more than around 400 MP3s (as opposed to the around 1200 that can fit on an 8GB memory card) - the phone hangs then crashes with more than around 400 songs. AWFUL!!

Also, the phone is supposed to be able to play MP4 files, but it has never worked for any of around 20 different MP4s that we tried. RUBBISH!!

Also, the phone does not display file names properly, with its operating system seemingly being based on something like ancient DOS with very basic short file names being displayed, including such useful characters as ~1 in place of extended file names. OH DEAR!!

And the few long file names that the phone does manage to display that are too long for the width of the display screen get scrolled across the screen at such a slow speed it takes ages to read them. DOH!!

Also, when using the web browser and waiting for a page to load, there is nothing displayed to show any kind of progress with the page loading, so you have no idea whether it is loading or has hung up. And it likes to hang up most of the time without notifying you that it has done so. STUPID!!

Also, the plastic flip cover over the phone's memory card slot snapped off after only about 8 uses, due to its ridiculously thin plastic attachment. And the main i-mobile shop in Bangkok doesn't have a replacement part for it, and even if they did they said would want paying to fix it, even though the phone is less than 2 weeks old! PATHETIC!!

And worst of all, the phone likes to randomly switch itself off for no obvious reason at all, sometimes when navigating around between menus, and sometimes even when in the middle of a call! TERRIBLE!!

The list of faults and problems actually goes on and on, but I can more easily sum it all up like this: DO NOT BUY AN I-MOBILE TV 630 PHONE, AND DO NOT EVEN ACCEPT ONE AS A FREE GIFT!! IT IS THE WORST PHONE I HAVE EVER SEEN AND EVER WILL SEE!!

We're going to get rid of this travesty of a phone and treat ourselves to a Nokia N97 instead - a lot more money, sure, but a lot less hassle too!