Its like a bonus of items, I love getting packages like these, full of things that I have been looking forward and piling them up together in my mailbox to be shipped together. I preordered the BluRay edition of Star Wars from May or June and now that I have it I have no clue when I’m going to watch all 6 movies, but I want to do it one shot and require people to watch it with.

Books:

• Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker
• Man Machine – Max Barry

Picked up a couple of books that I am looking forward to reading and a couple of design books that I would enjoy going through. Then I picked up the Star Wars special edition Moleskines both the small and large notebooks and I love having them but don’t want to use it. I have other Moleskines that I can use, the normal ones, I like collecting these special edition Moleskines.

With the release of special edition Blu-Ray set of Star Wars Moleskine have come up with these journals. There is one thing that I can’t resist buying it is these journals, I seriously can not get enough of them, I already bought them and waiting for them to be delivered. I love that Moleskine keep coming up with these very interesting special edition notebooks. I honestly don’t write enough in them but I do try to sketch and write down notes as much as possible. The journals come in both Empire and Rebellion flavors, the biggest difference being the Empire variety is “ruled” while Rebel journal remains “unruled.” I got both the large and pocket size in the Empire and Rebellion designs, a must have for any Star Wars fan. Check out the fun video below at the end.

Link: Moleskine

A little while ago I posted about the Belgium Photographer who managed to get the confidence of the Yakuza. I didn’t find out except after a little roaming around that he put together a book of all the photographs and details, that book had a limited edition run and was sold out extremely quickly. This time around he is making another edition of the book which will be available in limited quantities by October 30th, I personally loved the photographs and jumped at the possibility of buying the book, so I bought two.

To buy the book click this link: AntonKusters Buy Book
To see more photographs click this link: Photographs

The larger then life stories of our time are all owned by someone, turns out they are owned by a few big companies. This is a very nicely done chart that shows which company is a subsidiary of another and what story line they own, Time Warner and Walt Disney Corporation seem to have a vast wealth of movie rights to these stories.

Click the picture for a larger image

Link: iO9

After being dumped by his longtime girlfriend, twenty-eight-year-old Justin Halpern found himself living at home with his seventy-three-year-old dad. Sam Halpern, who is “like Socrates, but angrier, and with worse hair,” has never minced words, and when Justin moved back home, he began to record all the ridiculous things his dad said to him:

“That woman was sexy. . . . Out of your league? Son, let women figure out why they won’t screw you. Don’t do it for them.”

“Do people your age know how to comb their hair? It looks like two squirrels crawled on their heads and started fucking.”

“The worst thing you can be is a liar. . . . Okay, fine, yes, the worst thing you can be is a Nazi, but then number two is liar. Nazi one, liar two.”

More than a million people now follow Mr. Halpern’s philosophical musings on Twitter, and in this book, his son weaves a brilliantly funny, touching coming-of-age memoir around the best of his quotes. An all-American story that unfolds on the Little League field, in Denny’s, during excruciating family road trips, and, most frequently, in the Halperns’ kitchen over bowls of Grape-Nuts, Sh*t My Dad Says is a chaotic, hilarious, true portrait of a father-son relationship from a major new comic voice.

I watched the show before reading the book and I can tell where they got their great inspiration. Sh*t My Dad Says is f’ing great! Very funny, very irreverent, very real. When I was reading the book I could hear William Shatner’s voice in my head saying all these things to his kid, and being as stubborn as usual. It’s refreshing at a time when we’re all choking to death on political correctness and can go for days without meeting a single person with common sense. The things he says is what you think about saying but never do, he loves his family in his own way. The book is a very easy with short stories and quotes all over the place, and hilarious read, if you haven’t read it then you are really missing out.

Link: Amazon
Rating:

‘I will seek Vengeance upon those who betrayed my family. I am Ezio Auditore da Firenze. I am an Assassin…’
Betrayed by the ruling families of Italy, a young man embarks upon an epic quest for vengeance. To eradicate corruption and restore his family’s honour, he will learn the art of the assassins.
Along the way, Ezio will call upon the wisdom of such great minds as Leonardo Da Vinci and Niccolo Machiavelli – knowing that survival is bound to the skills by which he must live.
To his allies, he will become a force for change – fighting for freedom and justice. To his enemies, he will become a threat dedicated to the destruction of the tyrants abusing the people of Italy.
So begins an epic story of power, revenge and conspiracy.
TRUTH WILL BE WRITTEN IN BLOOD

I have always been a fan of Assassin’s Creed, the depth of the story was great, so when I saw this novel it peaked my interest. Ezio Auditore leads a very easy life in Florence only to have everything turned upside down and losing his family while discovering secrets of his family as part of a secret society meant to stop evil. This book is a bit hard to grasp initially and keep in mind that I never played the games before, I always admired them but never had the time to play that type of game. When the story started picking up I was enjoying it more and more, you get a feeling for Italy in the 15th century and all that went on during that time. I loved how they brought Leonardo into the mix as the genius that he is and how he helped Ezio to put the Assassin’s weapons together. The story is fun and interesting to read if you like the game, but at certain points it just didn’t tie things very well together and would lose you. I liked it but wouldn’t recommend it too much except if you like the game.

Link: Amazon
Rating:

It no news that I am a huge fan of Moleskine products and almost every notebook they have come up with, I haven’t had enough material or things to write and draw in all the books I have from them but still I can’t help picking one up whenever I see it. At last Moleskine has decided to open an online store, after such a long time to find each and every Moleskine is now so easily available on their website and I didn’t realize there were so many different kinds of Moleskines, I was very much tempted to make a purchase while surfing the site but I will myself from clicking the purchase button.

Link: Moleskine

The Stig, Le Mans, the Fast Lane and Me.

The Stig gets his kit off and reveals how he came to be Top Gear’s iconic racing driver and so much more – including what it’s like to thrash an Aston Martin DBS, train for the Army and face the terror of Jeremy Clarkson’s underwear! When the Black Stig disappeared off the end of an aircraft carrier in 2003, we were introduced to The White Stig. Faster. Stranger. Harder to keep clean. And ever since, millions have wondered — who is The Man in the White Suit? They’re about to find out. Ben Collins caught the car the bug young, kicking his dad’s boss in the balls for not giving him a company Jag. This was the attitude that eventually led him to spend seven years sharing a cabin with Jeremy Clarkson’s underwear, James May’s PhD thesis and Richard Hammond’s hairspray. Because he is The Stig. Now he tells all about life inside the iconic white helmet. What it’s like to guide a blind ex-RAF officer around the Top Gear track; pit a drug dealer’s Mitsubishi Evo against a Trojan tank; set a Vauxhall Monara against Chloe the dancing Ninja; and race double-decker Routemasters against bendy buses. Not to mention all the inside stuff on how the show’s amazing driving sequences are made. He also reveals how he got to be there — setting a Dunsfold lap time faster than Michael Schumacher’s. Breaking records with the best of the best at Daytona and Le Mans. It’s an awesome story, told by an amazing man.

When I first heard that Ben Collins was the Stig I wasn’t sure what to think, and there was so much drama from so many people that he outed himself, and anger from people he worked with, I thought it would be an interesting book to read since BBC tried so hard to block the book but they failed. This book is defenitly for petrol heads and fans of Top Gear, I wasn’t sure what to expect from the book but I started enjoying it more and more as the story picked up. For once you get inside the head of The Stig and know what he is thinking about when he is driving balls out and out of his mind with celebrities right next to him in the most ridiculous of cars. Its fun to see and understand the workings of Top Gear from inside point of view, and you also get an understanding of a racer’s mindset. Half of the book is about Ben Collins development as racer and the other half as The Stig and what he had to do to keep The Stig hidden and sharp. If you can relate to this book then you will really enjoy it.

Link: Amazon
Rating:

I had somethings on hold for a while in my mailbox and my Amazon cart was full for a good two months, I was trying to hold off on making any purchases. Two weeks ago I decided to go ahead with the purchase, got to my mailbox and shipped it with all the items there. It was shipped two weeks back at this point, four days to deliver and the rest it got stuck in customs for while only to be delivered on the first day of Ramadan, a nice start to the day, I didn’t have a chance to open all the stuff up until later in the day but it felt like Christmas.

The items delivered:

• Two Green Lantern Models
• Game of Thrones – Goerge RR Martin Book Set
• Two Batman Begins Pieces
• Lord of the Rings Model
• Three Large Volume Transformers Comic Books
• Red Robin (Cool New Comic)
• 007 Carte Blanche (A preorder that I forgot about and its my third copy! lol! I love James Bond novels)
• Two Lens Caps to replace the missing ones
• LifeHacker Book Volume 3 updated

I have had a lot of books pile up over the last year, I keep buying more books then I read and some of them are pretty damn good. I wish I read faster or more, I always feel satisfied whenever I’m done with a book and these days I have some very good books such as the one below. Ben Collins is The Stig from Top Gear and you a get a glimpse into his life and how he became a racer then The Stig, you even get some insight into what The Stig was thinking when doing these crazy stunts which is pretty cool when you remember the episodes that go with it, if you are fan then you have to pick up this book. Shit My Dad Says is purely hilarious, seriously, this guy’s sarcasm is over the top and upfront, you will love it. Simon Pegg is a comic genius and you will love his a book which you gets you laughing form the start. Going to give a full write up once I’m done with these books.

• The Man In The White Suit – Ben Collins
• Shit My Dad Says – Justin Halpern
• Nerd Do Well: A Small Boy’s Journey to Becoming a Big Kid – Simon Pegg