The Man of Steel - Official Trailer

This weekend (like most people I know), with much anticipation, I sat in my local cinema to see the epic conclusion to Christopher Nolan's epic Batman trilogy. The Dark Knight Rises was exceptional! A great story, fantastic script and world class acting made what will be the film of 2012.

But enough of the Dark Knight, it's time to turn our attention to my favourite super hero....Superman. I've seen Superman, Superman 2 and Superman Returns (I got told to skip 3 & 4), but i's time the Man of Steel got some screen time and a remake for this generation, especially with Christopher Nolan behind it!

I'm expecting the story to take the leed from DC's The New 52 (which I have been reading religiously), but anyway, enough of me yabbering on. Watch the trailer for The Man of Steel.

What about you? Are you looking forward to this?
Drop your comments below!
Originalsteve

Joss Whedon and K-Pop

A couple of months ago I read an article about the global rise of Korean pop (or K-pop as it is known), with Facebook and Google+ creating special pages dedicated to the genre. So I decided to investigate. I was expecting some really bad Eurovision style pop, but instead I found something pretty good.

It’s not often that you find some good finally crafted pop music, with catchy choruses and music videos with very slick and precise dance moves. My best discovery was band called Girls Generation. A nine-person pop group from South Korea, who make Girls Aloud and The Saturdays look like those drunk girls you see stumbling down the streets of most towns on a Saturday night after too many Smirnoff Ices.

Here are a few of my favourite songs:




Each of their videos has seen millions of video views on YouTube and they have fans world wide! I enjoy them, even though they are are extremely manufactured. SM Entertianment who created the band make some of their artists train for 4 years before they can release a single, often learning new launguages. What I also find interesting is that their lyrics consist of both English and Korean lines. Making them easy for everyone around the globe to enjoy.

The cross pollination of music styles that have been around since the 30s and 40s. Pete was telling me about episodes of M*A*S*H, which was set in the Korean war of the 50s, where their tannoys would play Cole Porter songs in Korean, but the choruses would be in English.

Maybe Joss Whedon was right...

He is always right, well most of the time. He was with Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV Series) and The Avengers (Avengers Assemble). He did get a couple of things wrong...can I mention Alien 4 or even Dollhouse?

Anyway, he is good at predicting the future and showing the development of culture and language. I recently watched Firefly and Serenity with Pete. With the film and TV series set in the far future, in a universe of terraformed planets, Joss had a unique way of showcasing the development of language and culture.

In the series, he shows a multicultural universe where Occidental and Chinese culture has been meshed together. Language is made up of a mixture of of English and Chinese, with the characters swearing in Mandarin.

Did the creators of Girls Generation watch Firefly or are they taking influence from the past? Or was it their way of influencing the future. Who is to say...but you never thought I would get them both in a blog post right?

Any comments, thoughts or observations. Please leave a comment below!
Originalsteve

Memories

My Grandmother

It’s only when you start looking through an old box, you begin to realise the memories you have kept. The things that remind you of where you have been, the adventures you have had and the people you have loved and lost.

Last weekend, at my parents, I found a box. This box contained photos, articles and important papers relating to two generations of my family. Old photos of family members that I don’t even recognise and papers that I had never read before. I’m lucky that my mum is a bit of a hoarder and keeps all of the important family papers together like this. I feel very lucky to have a great sense of my family history and some of the amazing adventures they went on.

While going down this memory lane, I wish I had kept more bits and pieces about my life from the last couple of years. I have some old photos from my teenage years (many I would rather forget after some disastrous hair cuts) and a computer full of things from uni, but I don’t have anything physical, nothing that I can hold or anything that couldn’t be lost by a computer malfunction. I’ve tried for many years to keep a diary and take photos of important moments, but as usual with projects like this, they get forgotten about and left to fester. But after seeing the things in this box, I knew that I have to do something about this and make sure that I have some things to hand down.

The trouble is that in this day and age, we keep everything digitally. We live for the now and don’t plan for the future. We keep our Timeline on Facebook for everyone to see. We record our lives in blogs for people to read and comment on. We ‘check in’ to our favourite places and we adjust our photos to make them look beautiful so that we can share our lives on instagram. BUT, what if one day, the internet broke and we lost everything? Then a lifetime is lost as memories and stories fade away into the abyss.

In our heart of hearts I think we all want to be remembered for something. So my plan is now to keep a diary of my life so that someone in 40 - 100 years time can look back and think, “Wow, Great Uncle Steven did that, he was there when that happened.” I’m going to try and include some trinkets and some photos for people... because this is not about preserving memories for myself, but preserving my stories for future generations.

Jesus...hasn't two years gone fast?

One #FollowFriday, a few tweets and one innocent drink has led to an amazing 2 year relationship! Pete means a lot to me and I don't know where I would be now if he wasn't in it.

So cheers to two amazing years and to the great adventures we still have ahead!

My week of ponders - W/C 14th May 2012

• I really want to find out more about the art of tea drinking. We now live in a coffee dominated culture and I am fascinated by this ancient past time…anyone got any ideas?
• My pet hate of the week is seeing people walking down the street, still wearing their headphones and trying to talk to their friends…no you can't multi task…it is just rude!
• This would be awesome if it was in London - http://tnw.co/M1bgnT
• Google search - just got a little bit better:  http://on.mash.to/KT1epS
• This is going to become very useful if it actually comes out - http://bit.ly/J79Rcu
• Congratulations to Mark Zuckerberg on becoming a billionaire and getting married! http://on.mash.to/KqkwhC 
• Thats The Hunger Games finished - what a great book! Right, time to download the next
• What a quiet months for good films…fingers crossed for Prometheus!
• Yay for a new drunk kitchen!

These are just a few thoughts that have crossed my mind this week and are no way meant to offend. If you want to discuss these further or want to make your opinion heard, please drop a comment below. 


Thanks! 
Originalsteve

Predicting the future

 A well thumbed issue!

Hidden away in the back of this month’s Wired magazine is a great article on how Wired uses 7 rules to spots the next big trend, idea, product or service. I’ve always been really interested to know how people do this so I wanted to share this with you.

Here are the 7 rules you need to follow to spot the next big thing.

You need to:
1 - Look for cross pollinators > Ideas that can cross boundaries
2 - Surf the exponentials > Ideas that take advantage and spot things that are becoming faster, cheaper and smaller
3 - Demand Deep Design > Ideas and products that keep design at the heart of development
4 - Give points for audacity > Ideas that are bold and daring can often be very good
5 - Bank on openness > Ideas that are open and want to integrate (explain, integrate with what?)
6 - Favour the liberators > Ideas or products that are making changes to something that's usually closed off
7 - Spend time with the time-wasters > Ideas that come from people playing and not looking for a direct solution to the problem.

What do you think? Has this triggered some new thoughts or do you think you have the next big idea? For me, it made me look at the things that could be used to make your day a little bit easier. For example, why don’t tube announcements give you the weather report outside? Would it not be useful if you knew that you needed to get your brolly out of your bad before you step outside the station?

Go and grab of a copy of the new Wired to get the full article, it is totally worth it.

Also, this month’s issue (June 2012) features a great editorial piece on Troy Carter, who's best known as Lady Gaga’s manager. His knowledge and thoughts on social media made her the sensation that she is today. What surprised me was his big focus on data. He really wants to understand how and why people buy records and what they do with it. In this data rich age, this type of data is not available to record companies. They can’t build a complete picture or the fan who follows the tweets and downloads the records.

Anyway, go and enjoy it for yourself before I spoil the rest of it for you!

Got some thoughts? Share your comments with me! I’m always up for a good discussion.

Cheers,
Originalsteve

My week of ponders - W/C 7th May 2012

Thoughts and design should always be about the future, not just about the now

Why do women wear ballerina shoes in wet weather? Do they not get wet feet?

Brilliant! A new Superman Annual >>> http://bit.ly/J5S1t1 

I'm still in love with Jon Hamm -

Why don't tube stations give you more information? Like the weather outside?

Have I succumbed to a stereotype by having a Superman cover for my iPhone?

Some times you just have to say "fuck it" and agree to an adventure!

The people who touch your life the most are the ones you see occasionally but can chat for hours to.

Trying to predict the future is hard

What is better…paper to digital comics?

When the sun is out, the hotties come out of the wood work.

I am totally in love with Hanna Hart - she needs to do a drunk kitchen in my flat - Her YouTube Channel  >>> http://bit.ly/ISh1kJ

These are just a few thoughts that have crossed my mind this week and are no way meant to offend. If you want to discuss these further or want to make your opinion heard, please drop a comment below.

Thanks!

Originalsteve