Entries Tagged 'Fun Stuff' ↓

If you live around or visit one my favorite places in the world, San Francisco, head across the Golden Gate Bridge to visit one of the best deals any geeky family can find: The…

U.S Army Corp. of Engineers Bay Model Visitor Center

…where you will find plenty of free parking, no admission (that I recall), and a physical 3-D structural model of the San Francisco bay and surrounding areas (with water in the model) covering 1.5 acres (yes, ACRES).

Actual research using the model stopped in 2000. But, it remains open as an educational tool. I took my daughter there in 2003. She had a great time wandering around the model before we headed to Sausalito for lunch.

If you were a little kid in 1969, something pretty incredible happened on the last panel of the last page of the comic book Avengers #69 (Oct. 1969 publication date which means it probably hit the newsstand around August or September): A team that looked a lot like DC’s Justice League of America appeared to face of against Marvel’s Avengers. Nighthawk (above) was Marvel’s copyright-free clone of DC’s Batman.

Dr. Spectrum was the Green Lantern clone, Hyperion was the Superman clone, and Whizzer was a Flash clone. This is as close to a true Avengers/JLA meetup that we would see for a long time. The actual JLA/Avengers - Avengers/JLA mini-series would have to wait for 2003-2004 publication dates.

The Squadron Sinister, as this bad-guy JLA clone team was called, hit the covers of the next issue (#70). They proved so popular that a good-guy alternate universe version of the team called the Squadron Supreme was later created and allowed for stories that were essentially a darker version of the then relatively bright DC universe stories.

Batman The Dark Knight opens this weekend. So, I dug up some old Batman comic books and have some Bat-themed blog posts over the next couple of days.

So, let’s start off with a little mystery. Back in February 1995 (in comic book publishing time anyway, this was more likely December 1994 in people time), three different comics had near identical covers: Detective Comics #682(where the first Batman story appeared way back in 1939 in issue #27), Robin #14, and Shadow of the Bat #35. I’ll skim through these issues over the next day or two to try to figure out why they did that. If you know the answer, let me know.

The Hershey’s Kiss with Macadamia appears to only be available in Hawaii. I bought a bag (photo below) from a Costco there. However, if you are in Hawaii, $9.95 for a 30 oz. bag is a pretty tasty deal.

My daughter and I dropped by a local community college hosting the Smithsonian sponsored tour…

Key Ingredients: America By Food

…that provides a history of food in the U.S. It takes about 30 to 60 minutes to go through the exhibits. There’s also a presentation each Sunday afternoon at the local exhibit. Check out the main web site linked above for information about an exhibit near your area.

There aren’t very many advantages to getting older. But, there are a few. One possible advantage for those of us who maintained our childhood collections of stuff in reasonably good shape is that we can enjoy that stuff decades later. Back in the old days, comics were 12 cents (and 10 cents before that!) This The Avengers #40 is from May 10, 1967 and is among the good cheap fun things I’ll be retro-reviewing here on an ongoing basis. A near-mint copy of this one goes for around $180 according to the Comics Price Guide. But, you can find it pretty good shape like this for quite a bit less I suspect. And, of course, if it is in your collection, well you already paid your 12 cents way back when

I found this ThisIsSand.com site mentioned on my friend John Pescador’s tumblog. Click anywhere on the screen and sand starts to fall. You can change the color of the sand by pressing C and choosing a color from the color palette. Simple, fun, and soothing.

Apple spotlighted Dark Horse Comics on their web startpage on July 11.

Dark Horse Comics: Secret Mac Superpowers

The article focuses on the Mac ColorSync color management system.

The New York Times reports that…

On Day Care, Google Makes a Rare Fumble

The NYT reports that child daycare costs will rise from $1,425/month (not exactly cheap to start with) to $2,500/month. This is definitely not a low-budget items for those Google techies.

I’m an old time comic book fan. So, I found it interesting that not one but two superhero comics articles from IO9 were Dugg hours apart on Digg.

Where The Marvel Universe And Real World Intersect

10 Batman Books You Must Read

I recommend adding Hush and Under the Hood Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 to this list.