Melinda & Cristiano

So I finally decided to get my own website instead of having my blog here on ibbydibby.com (no matter how cute that name may be). My new cool url is MissGeeky.com.

Obviously not much is going to change apart from the website location, but I’m hoping to blog more often and on more topics. Being the self-proclaimed Miss Geeky means I’ll be blogging over all things geeky and girly.

BTW, for those of you using RSS, the new feed is this.

Hope to see you all soon at the new site!

Some cool/interesting/weird stuff I stumbled upon this morning:

Cabbage Plastic Patch Kids: It’s already bad enough that the pictures of celebrities are airbrushed for magazine covers, but at least I can somewhere somehow see the point behind that. But to airbrush photo’s of your own children?!? They look like creepy weird plastic dolls! [Via dollymix]

The Truth Is Out There Again: According to David Duchovny an X-Files movie sequel is in the work and will start shooting in December. Do we really need more alien abduction and Big Foot stories? That is so 20th century. [Via TvSquad and my new plaid pants]

Come With Me If You Want To Live Be Confused: Another rumoured sequel is Terminator 4, which in my mind is completely unnecessary now that The Sarah Connor Chronicles will be aired. The storyline is already confusing enough as it is; do they really want to complicate the plot even more? Plus this quote from the producer about the new hero doesn’t give me much hope:

Ben-Hur was influenced by Jesus Christ, but it was his story. Much in that way, this character will be influenced by John Connor.

[Via First Showing]

Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty: As long as they don’t bring the Hoff back, this could be quite interesting. Yes, they’re talking about a remake of Knight Rider.
[Via Variety]

I just got back from the 16th London Girl Geek Dinner and as the previous times it was great fun. Now this is the 5th time I’ve been to a Girl Geek Dinner, but the first time I’m actually blogging about it. Why? Well, mainly because I’m too lazy or too tired when I get home from such an event. Then by the time I remember I should have blogged about it, we’re a couple of days further and the specifics are quickly fading from my memory. This time, however, I’m forcing myself to take a couple of seconds minutes to sit down and write about it.

At this evening’s event the sponsors and speakers were from Astraware and fancyapint.com. We were told beforehand to bring along any Windows Mobile or Palm OS devices to get lots of lovely free games. So, I dusted off my old Palm Zire 31 (including 6 brilliant scratched areas on the screen from playing too much TextTwist) and brought it merrily with me. Only to discover that (ofcourse) all the games they had were too “new”. In other words, the resolution of my poor old Palm was way too low. We did manage to beam one game over, so I at least got one freebie.

The speakers mostly talked about how many women were working within Astraware and how it was for a woman to work there. One of the female developers told us how she got the job and what she does within the company. They also gave away a cool VIP pass for their website (=lifetime free Astraware games) for the person with the most gadgets, which unfortunately I didn’t win, because I didn’t want to lug around a heavy bag today. FYI, the gadgets I had with me are: laptop, Palm, Nintendo DS and iPod Nano. The ones I didn’t have with me, but I usually do: 2 mobile phones (one with English Sim card, one with Dutch), external harddisk and camera.

Next to that, I met (and re-met) quite a couple of fellow girl geeks and had some great geeky discussions with them, covering social networks and programming languages to the more serious stuff as fanfiction, scifi/fantasy books, films and Doctor Who. One more thing to note: the food. There were 10 large platters of food, for “only” 40 people. Did they really think that all that food would be eaten? I’m not complaining, just observing that the amount was kind of overestimated.

As always it was great a evening and (as always) I’m looking forward to the next one. It’s planned for the 9th of October and will be sponsored by HP. If you’re interested, you can find all the details on Upcoming.

A couple of weeks ago I ordered some T-shirts for Cristiano and me from Threadless, when they had a “all-Tshirts-10-dollars” sale. I finally have got them, after having to go to a Delivery Office and pay 3 pounds extra import tax and 8 pounds handling fee. I find the handling fee a bit ridiculous, cause if they hadn’t checked it and just sent it straight to me, they wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of handling it. Instead they decide there’s an extra import tax on it, giving me extra trouble to have to pick it up and adding a handling fee on top of that! Now I haven’t been that long in the UK, but does this happen often? Do they always check everything? Or is it (like in Holland) that once in a while you can be unlucky and they check what it is?

Anyhow, I finally have my T-shirts and I just love them (see pictures)! I really like the whole idea behind Threadless; everything is basically user-generated. Anyone can submit a T-shirt design and people can score the design. Based on the number of scores, the average score and the comments people leave behind the Threadless team decide which designs will be printed. Next to that you can collect points by submitting photo’s of you wearing Threadless T-shirts, with which you get extra store credit and thus, more reason to buy more T-shirts. The T-shirts themselves are funny and pretty, in a very unique type of way. I have a lot of Emily Strange T-shirts, but these are just so much cooler.

So what are you waiting for? Get some T-shirts!

I just got back from a screening I was able to go to of the western 3:10 To Yuma with Christian Bale and Russell Crowe. To be honest, it didn’t really look that interesting to me and I don’t think I would have gone if it hadn’t been for the free tickets. What convinced me to even show up today was the fact that Christian Bale is in it. Since seeing him in Equilibrium (which is actually on TV now as I write this), I’ve found that any film with him in it, is actually worth watching.

Christian Bale plays Dan Evans, a rancher who is paid to help bring a captured outlaw, Ben Wade played by Russell Crowe, to a train leaving at 3:10 to Yuma, where he will be led to trial. Bale perfectly portrays Dan as a down-on-his-luck man who is desperate to do anything to sustain him and his family. He believes he has long failed and lost the respect of his wife and sons, which is why he decides to take on the offer of escorting Ben Wade to the train. Adding to that is Russell Crowe as the outlaw Ben Wade. This character could have been so one-sided and just plain mean and unlike-able, but Crowe manages to actually bring some more dimensionality into it. He isn’t really the completely bad-person that he wants you to think he is; just one with not too high morals. The acting of the two main characters was just superb; I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them got nominated for an Oscar next year.

So what did I think of it? It was… interesting. It’s not as if I didn’t like it, but I also didn’t really love it. The acting was good, the music was good, the setting was good; in fact there was a lot that was good, but nothing that was great. Maybe it’s because I’m not the western type or the “Oscar”-winning movie type. Haven’t you ever noticed that most Oscar nominated movies are quite intense and dramatic? Full of meaningful life lessons and bravery and complicated relationships?Well, this was kind of one of those films. I can appreciate 3:10 To Yuma as a good well-thought-out well-cast well-scripted well-directed and so on movie, but it won’t be one I’ll passionately adore and want to see over and over again.

If you like Oscar-type movies, you really should go here. If you don’t, wait till it comes out on dvd and watch it before the Oscars in February; it has all the requirements to be nominated and I have a weird feeling it will.