Steampunk Watch Movement Cuff Links

Now I'm gainfully employed once more I can wear my Steampunk cuff links again. I bought these years ago when Steampunk to me was simply a description used on eBay when the seller was offering broken watch parts.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008 - 2009)

Synopsis
I'm sure everyone heard of the Terminator movies, where Skynet, a computer from the future, attempts to exterminate all human life. A human resistance lead by John Connor fights back. In the first movie Skynet sends a cyborg to the past to kill John Connor's mother Sarah, before he is conceived. The resistance sends Kyle Reese, a resistance soldier to protect her.

In the second movie Skynet sends another Terminator to the past to kill a young John Connor, while future John sends a reprogrammed Terminator identical to the one in the first movie to protect young him. This TV series tells what happened after the events of the second movie. John and Sarah Connor with the help of another reprogrammed Terminator, Cameron Phillips, try to stay under the radar, as they attempt to destroy Skynet before it is created.

They Live (1988)

Synopsis
A drifter finds a pair of sunglasses which allow him to see subliminal messages behind advertisements. What's more he sees some people are actually aliens in disguise, and they're behind these messages. The aliens also control big business and the media.

The Thing (1982) vs The Thing (2011)

Three movies were based on the short story Who Goes There? by American science fiction author John W. Campbell Jr. I reviewed the first one earlier, and since the other two are so similar narratively and visually I'll review them together.

Synopsis
1982 version - In the Antarctic a Norwegian helicopter chases and shoots at a sledge dog. They end up near an American science base. The Norwegians are killed before they can give an explanation, so the Americans take in the dog. The Americans go to investigate the Norwegian camp, and discover the Norwegians found something in a block of ice. A creature starts killing and taking on the form of the men at the American science base.

2011 version - The producers of this movie thought the '82 version directed by John Carpenter was perfect, so they decided to make a prequel instead of a remake. This movie tells the story of the Norwegians and how they came in contact with The Thing which assimilates and imitates it's victims.

The Thing from Another World (1951)

John W. Campbell Jr's short story Who Goes There? has been made into a movie three times. This is the first version. I'll review the other versions from 1982 and 2011 later.

Synopsis
An Air Force captain and a journalist are sent to the North Pole to investigate an explosion and a magnetic disturbance. They find a crashed flying saucer under the ice and a frozen being a few meters away from it. The block of ice containing the creature is cut and taken to a nearby science base, however the creature escapes and starts killing people...

Flash Forward

Synopsis
The whole world blacks out for exactly 2min 17sec, resulting in accidents and millions of deaths. During the blackout people have visions of their future. This global event is soon taken to be a terrorist attack, and the plot thickens when video footage is found showing a concious person talking on a mobile phone during the blackout.

The story centers around an FBI agent who's vision shows him to be central to the Flash Forward investigaion, and his family and friends.

Why I Dislike TV Series with Episodic Episodes

Lately I've been watching several TV series, and when I tweet about them or review them I often comment that the episodes feel or don't feel episodic. Here I'll attempt to explain what I mean by this. A series by definition is made up of episodes, but the episodes can cover a series story arc, or they can be stand alone episodes.

Mini Reviews

Lately I watched several TV series, and while I enjoyed them and wanted to share my thoughts about them, I didn't feel the need to give them full scale reviews. What I ended up doing was tweeting around 7 tweets about each. However tweets end up buried under newer ones, and lost in the vast twitter-verse.

Top 5 NLG Steampunk Articles 2011

Choosing my blog's Top 5 articles for 2011 wasn't easy. If I ranked them by pageview, recent articles would be at a disadvantage against those that have been published for some time.

In the end I decided to rank them by calculating the average monthly pageviews [(actual pageviews / days published) * 30 days]. As a last step I removed seasonal posts as with my formula they skewed the result. Seasonal posts are articles that might be very popular at the end of the year, but will probably be ignored during the rest of the year. The results in reverse order: