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There’s a Human Behind That Book!

June 14, 2010 in Art, Blogging, Books, Internet, Movies, Technology, Writing by faltarego | 1 comment

In the United Kingdom, over 200,000 books are published each year. In the United States, over 170,000 are published annually. In Canada, the number is around 20,000. These numbers come from UNESCO, which monitors both the number and types of books published each year. The numbers are out of date, which means that the actual numbers for 2009 are much higher than these.

There are ninety-one countries on the list I looked at, and every last one of them publishes some number of books, either large or small, every single year. The top four countries (U.K, U.S., China, and Russia) each publish more than 100,000 books each year. Forty-seven of the ninety-one countries publish more than a thousand books per year.

What I’m saying is: That’s a lot of books.

Hundreds of thousands of books. Millions of pages. Tens of millions of paragraphs. Hundreds of millions of sentences.

All written by people. Read the rest of this entry »

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Iron Man 2: What a Ride!

May 10, 2010 in Blogging, Comics, Movies, Superheroes by faltarego | No comments

Well, geeeeez. After all my bloggy buildup and countdown, you’d think I’d at least write a review of the goddamned thing.

It sucks when circumstances get in the way of plans. I mean, I suppose I could have written this thing yesterday, or the day before, but it’s amazing how little you feel like doing the normal things when your body is not cooperating with you.

I went to see Iron Man 2 late Saturday afternoon. I enjoyed the hell out of it. I planned to write a review as soon as I got home.

Didn’t happen.

First off, my exhaustion had not completely left me. Plus, for some unknown reason (seriously, I don’t know what brought it on), my lower back started giving me problems. It’s like a neck pinch, except worse and on the right-hand side of my lower back. I think it’s starting to work itself out now, but over the last two days, I have not felt like doing anything.

But today is a new day, and though the painful twinge has not yet left me, I’m up early and am ready to put this puppy to bed. So, yes, it’s time to complete my Cycle of Iron Man 2.

Let’s just say that I’m going to be seeing it again. Soon. Read the rest of this entry »

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It’s Iron Man Time!!

May 7, 2010 in Blogging, Comics, Movies, Superheroes by faltarego | No comments

There’s a certain road to a certain place that’s paved with these things called “good intentions”. Well, I’ve done my bit in resurfacing that road this week. I set out to do a simple little thing like blog for seven days straight about Iron Man, and I failed.

Due to an extreme bout of fatigue yesterday, I did not write a blog post. I’m naturally disappointed about that. I’m also disappointed that I’m actually not going to be seeing Iron Man 2 on opening night. Previous committments have prevented that from coming to pass.

So… some flag-waver I turned out to be. Read the rest of this entry »

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Iron Man Rocks!

May 5, 2010 in Comics, Movies, Music, Superheroes by faltarego | No comments

When I went to see the first Iron Man film in 2008, I was doing my usual “low expectations” thing. I often do that with films, because I figure if I expect it to be crap, I’ll probably be pleasantly surprised. This attitude has served me well. I don’t get my hopes up, and I end up enjoying the film, because it’s usually better than I thought it would be.

Exceptions to this rule have included the J.J. Abrams reimagined Star Trek, for which I did get my hopes up and which blew me away anyway, and Angels and Demons, which I expected to be bad, and was way worse than I could have imagined.

With Iron Man, I guess I was hoping it would be good, but I wasn’t expecting it to be good. I was definitely looking forward to seeing Robert Downey, Jr., who is one of my favorite actors, and whom I’d watch in anything (except maybe an episode of Sue Thomas: F.B.Eye, which is easily the worst television show ever made), but I don’t think I had my hopes up for the film as a whole. Read the rest of this entry »

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Gimme That Iron Man High-Tech Stuff

May 4, 2010 in Blogging, Comics, Internet, Movies, Software, Superheroes, Technology by faltarego | No comments

So… In three days, Iron Man 2 opens in theatres. I’m sooooo looking forward to this. Besides my general enthusiasm for the franchise, I am also in serious need of a high-tech fix, and I know that ole Tony Stark can provide.

You see, despite the fact that I’m running a blog and downloading and tweaking pictures and modifying snippets of PHP code in my blog theme, things are really very low tech in this here domicile.

As of two days ago, the setup was: A ten-year old HP Pavilion desktop system in the den where I work, a seven-year old Acer desktop system in the dining room where my wife works, a LexMark Scanner/printer connected to my machine, and an HP inkjet printer connected to the other machine.

The HP Pavilion was recently upgraded to a real, whole Gigabyte of RAM, and the Acer was grinding along with a painful 256 Megabytes of RAM. The Acer was becoming nearly unusable. Like I said, seriously low tech. We might just as well have using smoke signals and stone tablets. Read the rest of this entry »

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The Tortured Soul of Tony Stark

May 1, 2010 in Comics, Movies, Superheroes by faltarego | 2 comments

As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, Iron Man is one of my favorite Marvel heroes. Spider-Man is, of course, my favorite, but Iron Man is right up there in second place. If I had to pick a top three, Captain America would probably round it out.

As with most of their heroes, the creators at Marvel have given Tony Stark a human face. He’s a flawed individual. He has problems. Sure, he’s brilliant, rich, handsome, charming, and stylish, but he’s also a womanizer, an alcoholic, and a bit of a megalomaniac. Never mind the fact that he has a serious heart injury.

Dude’s messed up.

And that’s what makes him a great character. He’s got all this fantastic stuff going for him, but underneath it all, he’s just a human being. Read the rest of this entry »

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Countdown to Iron Man 2

April 30, 2010 in Blogging, Comics, Internet, Movies, Superheroes by faltarego | No comments

In a week’s time, Iron Man 2 opens in theatres.

That should be sufficient. I really shouldn’t have to say any more, but then it would more of a tweet than a blog post. Not even a full tweet, really. More of a semi-tweet. But that makes me think of chocolate, which is not what I’m going to be talking about here.

What I’m going to be talking about here is one of the most anticipated movies of the year: Iron Man 2.

Okay, I’ll just get this out of my system…

SQUEEE!

Ahem. Sorry about that. I’m fully composed now.

I’ve been following Iron Man director John Favreau on Twitter for some time now, and he gave some tantalizing glimpses into the production process of this most golden of sequels. He tweeted from the set while shooting, from the sound editing facilities, from the special effects facilities, et cetera, et cetera… Read the rest of this entry »

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