Comic-Con: Pictures

I put up a web album with pictures from my visit to San Diego and Comic-Con 2006. You can check them out here. Hopefully this will tide you over until I can get a few posts up on Monday detailing Heroes, Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny, Snakes on a Plane, and a generic post or two with everything else I encountered. I have some more pictures that I may put up later on from the trip, but they are of a more personal nature.

Pictures from San Diego and Comic-Con

Comic-Con: What I Would Have Seen

Plans for Saturday have been up in the air for a while, and just when it seemed I would be going it turns out that Comic-Con has closed both onsite and online registration for today. But if I had gone here’s what I would have seen:

1. Kevin Smith discussing Clerks 2. Although I’ve already seen him before and I plan to see Clerks 2 in a few days anyway. I’m a fan of the original Clerks and other Kevin Smith films, namely Chasing Amy and Dogma, and I will let you know what I think of it when I see it.
2. Marvel talking about upcoming movies based on their franchises, including Iron Man which I am eagerly anticipating. I would have found out from Jon Favreau that the villain in Iron Man will be Madarin, the man with the powerful rings. So be prepared for May 2, 2008. (Sources: 1, 2, 3) Each source says the same thing and I have no idea which one it came from first, or if it was another source entirely. I try my best folks.
3. The latest news on The 4400, including Jordan Collier return. And if I could have also gotten a press pass I would have been able to ask them questions for an hour before their public panel. I’ll print up some business cards and rectify that in the future.
4. Spider-Man 3 news and promos with special guests Tobey Maquire, and Kirsten Dunst. Venom was confirmed as the third villain in Spider-Man 3. Bruce Campbell was also confirmed as having a cameo with a new character (though that character’s name was not released). And check out the two press roundtables online: Tobey, Kirsten and Sam, Topher, Thomas and Bryce.(Source: FirstShowing.net)
5. Ghost Rider goodness with Nicholas Cage and Eva Mendes. This is something I am upset about missing and a movie I am waiting for. Wizard Universe has some good coverage of the Ghost Rider panel at Comic-Con so check it out here. SuperHeroHype also has this great post that details the two scenes shown to Comic-Con attendees. The movie opens February 16, 2007.
6. And lastly, but certainly not least, that the voice of Optimus Prime in the forthcoming live-action Transformers movie will indeed be that of the original Optimus Prime voice actor Peter Cullen. (Source)

I will be posting Sunday and Monday like I mentioned before, and I will put up a gallery with my pictures from Comic-Con. The things I do for my adoring public. I couldn’t make it to Comic-Con today but I hunted down the details so you don’t have to, but you can if you want. Peace out.

Comic-Con: Initial Experience

As my inaugural Comic-Con experience draws to a close I wanted to recap a bit of what I saw today. The exclusive 72-minute Heroes pilot was amazing. I saw a short clip/trailer for Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny and it was awesome. Attendees were blessed with an exclusive 10-minute clip from Snakes on a Plane that will not be seen anywhere else until the movie comes out. And Samuel L. Jackson is still one bad ass mother f-er.

A few full-er length posts will be coming within the next few days, along with plenty of pictures. Each point I made above will be expanded upon, along with a few other random details from The Con. Oh, and Ali Larter is as hot as ever.

Comic-Con Here I Come

It appears that I will be attending Comic-Con in a few days. I plan to take plenty of pictures and notes to write up some posts. The key areas I plan to cover are The 4400, KyleXY, Fallen, Spiderman 3, and finding any celebrities I can. If I am able to make it there on Friday I would also be covering the new show Heroes and possibly Snakes on a Plane with special guest Samuel L. Jackson. It should be very exciting and I hope to have some good stuff to report here.

Feel free to send me any questions to ask or information to find out.

Update (7/20): It looks like Friday is a definite and Saturday is a possibility. I will be attending as many events and booths as I can.

Kevin Smith Comes to TCNJ

I just got back from seeing Kevin Smith give a Q&A lecture at TCNJ. 3 and a half hours of pure, unadulterated fun. Smith told many great stories and answered some good (and not so good) questions. I won’t attempt to recreate the stories here, but I will mention a few of the topics.

I was excited to hear about Clerks 2, since I have been following the official website. Smith told a bit about it and some hilarious Jason Mewes anecdotes. I won’t be able to do the stories justice, so I won’t try to. But it was amazing. Even the hour long talk about Kevin’s anal fissure was interesting and personally relatable (the questions this campus asks are very diverse). And apparently Affleck wasn’t really the bomb in Phantoms, though I haven’t seen it.

Unfortunately we weren’t able to get a plug for the radio station. I think the girl from CUB thought we wanted an interview, when we only wanted Kevin saying something like “I’m Kevin Smith and you’re listening to WTSR.”

SIGCSE: Puffy White Clouds

So I just got back from Texas. I will have a recap of SIGCSE shortly, along with a recount of some interesting presentations and products I saw. I was going to put up something right away, but I will give myself more time to craft a magnificent retelling of the trip.

By the way, I made it to the Semi-Finals of the SIGCSE Undergratuate Research Presentations. No award for me, but they will reimburse some of the trip expenses. And I received plenty of free shirts from Sun, Microsoft, and Apple. In the end, don’t we only care about free swag and networking?

Digital Life: Pepper Pad

The Pepper Pad from Pepper Computer is a remarkable portable device designed for the broadband activities you want to do most: browse the web, e-mail, instant messaging, listen to music, watch videos, play games, view slideshows of your photos, and control your TV. It runs on Linux 2.6 and includes a browser that uses the Gecko rendering engine which Firefox is based on. The Pepper Pad has a 20GB hard drive and built-in Wi-Fi support for 802.11b, WEP, and WPA-Personal. It also has Bluetooth device support and Dual IR emitters and IR receiver. The screen is an 8.4″ 800×600 SVGA TFT LCD that is ideal for viewing most webpages, along with 16MB of video RAM and 256MB of SDRAM memory.

User input is done through a resistive touch screen with stylus, a full split QWERTY keypad, a direction-pad, and a scroll wheel. These features combine with a powerful system and an intuitive interface to create a very rewarding experience. The remote control features allow you to pick a room and then choose the device you want to operate. The Pepper Pad can quickly be turned into a digital picture frame and touching the screen brings it back to the regular mode. There is even integration with the Flickr photo sharing service to upload your photos easily to Flickr from the Pepper Photo Library.

This rugged, splash resistant device weighs in at only 2.3 lbs and has a 3.6mAh Lithium ION rechargeable battery. Pepper Computer has created a device that is not just the combination of a PDA and a Tablet PC. It is a carefully designed work of art. They thought of everything when they designed the Pepper Pad; its ease of use and comprehensive feature-list make it an attractive buy for all levels of computer users.

Buy the Pepper Pad Internet Media Player on Amazon.com

Digital Life: Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo

The Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo Edition comes in two flavors: a 600GB version and a 1TB version. Both feature RAID 0 right out of the box, with the option of setting up RAID 1. It’s designed for professionals and it has a sleek, industrial design. It supports FireWire 400, FireWire 800, USB 2.0 and USB 1.1 for fast data transfers. The drives are preformatted for Mac and can be easily formatted for Windows. You can even boot Mac OSX directly from the drive.

While the drive may look nice and it has a large capacity, the price-point seems a bit steep. At $899 for the 1TB version it should also do my taxes. But then again, I’m not the professional they are targeting. At least the drives are stackable.

Digital Life: Xbox 360 Wired Controller

The Xbox 360 controller is a well-designed and produced item. It’s very similar to the original Xbox controller, but it has a smaller and easier-to-handle design similar to the S-controller for the original Xbox. While visiting Digital Life I found out that the wired Xbox 360 controller has a standard USB connection that can connect to a PC. The photo here is of me holding the Xbox 360 controller before playing the King Kong movie game on a PC. I lost the game, but the experience of both the game and the controller was a win.

The Microsoft rep at Digital Life did not know if there will be a way to connect the wireless controller to a PC. If not then this leads me to wonder why people would want a wireless controller, when the wired controller can connect to a PC. It’s a trade-off between compatibility and freedom of movement. I might want the Xbox 360 controller even if I don’t get an Xbox 360.

Digital Life Tomorrow

Tomorrow I will be attending Digital Life, and hopefully I can get some good photos and news to report. I missed out on the first day, but tomorrow should prove to be much of the same. It would have been nice to be at the Xbox 360 keynote, but Nathan should have some reports soon. The Xbox 360 looks like it is shaping up to be a really big deal, as long as they can ship enough on the launch date. No other console developer has attempted to launch globally on the same day.