Happy Family Day!

Happy family day to my long lost family! I wish it was a bit warmer here in Toronto (-16 feels like -22 The Weather Network).

I spent most of my weekend keeping warm and ended up not doing much writing (none at all). It was a weekend with Sid Meier's Civilization V (one of my favourite strategy games of all time).

I will be working on ALP:WO this week as well as continuing the story of TBD2:TDB which both would thematically be good for today's holiday. Look forward to the Archive getting some attention soon as well.

To all my friends, family and allies out there and those in the world of art, creation, literature, media, music, expression and performance, have a great day!

Stay Safe And Be Well
Brian Joseph Johns

Happy Birthday to the Canadian Flag!

Well it was fifty years ago that the National Canadian flag day was born.

Thanks once again to Google, who often are the carriers of the best news of all, and always we're greeted by it in their art.

Thanks and Happy National Canadian Flag Day!

Brian Joseph Johns

A Post Long Overdue

Hello to you all, its good to be back though I hardly went anywhere.

I have been perusing the net in its many different forms and checking out some of the new and exciting content and brushing up on some of the old standard applications as well.

Online Broadcasting

Online broadcasting has become quite popular in many forms and there are a variety of content formats from basement budget broadcasters like Doughy Boy or Channel99 to broadcasters and content producers such Crackle (US, Canada and other locations), Hulu (US only) and Netflix (regional content).

Doughy Boy and Channel99 are both channels that play a scheduled line up of shows around the clock that periodically repeats, so you can catch whatever you missed. Most of the shows and movies are older classic content, or genre like in the case of Channel99 and their penchant for Anime and Manga. Both can be watched through VLC player, a free open source media player available for a variety of platforms. You just need to get it, then visit the host sites for the channels to be up and watching them in no time. Alternately you could just click Doughy Guy or Channel99 for their respective broadcasts.

BlackFlag tv is another broadcaster offering everything from cult cinema classics and independent productions to a variety of custom content targeting the gothic scene and underground culture. It mixes a bit of the horror genre with a graphic novel look to achieve a diverse appeal within dark subjects. Interestingly enough, they've managed to attract some amazing advertisers and this is a serious station. Be warned, its not for everyone. If you used to peruse the famous Toronto dance scene from early 1980s and into the 1990s with places such as the Bovine and the Sanctuary, this place is for you. Enjoy.

Crackle on the other hand is a full blown network with on demand content that you can watch any time from the friendliness of your web browser with little performance hit. Their content line up is astounding having both vintage and more recent television offerings as well as block buster movies.

One of the things that sets Crackle apart from other internet broadcasters is the fact that they produce their own high quality series. Comedic series like Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee and Woke Up Dead, high action shows like Chosen, Cleaners, The Throwaways and many more. All in all an excellent place to go for up to date content, where there's always something to watch and best of all, its all available on demand to meet your schedule.

Some of the recent movies I've watched:

• Man On The Moon, an incredible biopic about the life of comedian Andy Kaufman with an absolutely incredible performance by fellow Canadian Jim Carrey. An all star cast and cameos by many from the television series Taxi to the Saturday Night Live Alumni. An incredible movie about one of the most innovative performers of our time.

Two by the late Tony Scott a brilliant director who has worked with the likes of Quentin Tarantino. Few can crescendo an action film like Tony, as the story unfolds in both of these action oriented offerings it is easy to see the impending disaster. These movies are definitely not for younger viewers and contain graphic violence and adult situations.

• Domino, a true story about the Fashion model turned Bounty Hunter definitely not for younger viewers, Stars Keira Knightly, Micky O'Rourke and an all star cast including a pseudo cameo by some 90210 veterans. Mature content with graphic violence not recommended for younger viewers.
• True Romance, a story about a comic book store worker who falls for a call girl that his employer hired for his birthday. Great performances by an all star cast. Mature content with graphic violence not recommended for younger viewers.

Kodi Player

For those of you looking for different ways of watching and organizing your media, there's Kodi (formerly XBMC). Kodi is a windowed or fullscreen player with Media Center-like capababilities and integration (needs some work supporting iTunes libraries). It looks great and is skinnable and customizable to your heart's content plus it has many great streaming content addons as well. Visually it is like a complete multimedia frontend and I highly recommend it. Not a complete replacement for other media players, but a great addition to any collection. You can download it here.

Youtube Broadcasters

Once again, iJustine has been up to her usual do everything that you can imagine in one life time all in one day approach to doing things all from her vlog. There's you'll find everything from interviews with Imagine Dragons, to a day with Garth Brooks (song writing and performing wonder of country music), along with interviews from her experiences at the Sundance festival 2015.

Music News

SoKo's latest album My Dreams Dictate My Reality is on its way and to hold you over until its release, she's posted her latest video: Who Wears The Pants. Check out this highly innovative artist.

Bjork has reissued her entire collection of albums in vinyl for all of you album art aficionados. She's also released her Archives book, a journal or her musical journey all of which is available at her website: http://www.bjork.com.

Video Games

Star Trek Online has a new season, Delta Rising which reunites players with the crew of the Voyager from the series Voyager, with the voice talent of Tim Russ, Garrett Wang, Robert Picardo, Jeri Ryan, Ethan Phillips, Kim Rhodes all returning as their characters from the series. Interestingly enough, the expansion allows Vice Admirals to advance to the rank of Admiral, meaning you can really rise to the top.

The Secret World have added a new Tokyo storyline to their already massive world. The Black Signal allows players to continue the main storyline from Venice onto the streets of Tokyo. This already massive world never seems to run out of things for the player to investigate or ways to improve their character or their knowledge of the Secret World.

Elite Dangerous is out! I have been a big fan of Elite since the C-64 days. This is basically a space trading game and perhaps one of the first open worlds type games as it allowed you to explore a massive galaxy, where you could trade resources, upgrade your ship and collect bounties (for shooting down space bound ruffians). It has gone through many incarnations over the years, including Elite: Frontier and Elite: First Encounters to finally arrive as an online multiplayer experience. The new game demands some pretty decent hardware to run on, so the technology running the visual engine is astonishing. it includes support for occulus rift (a popular commercial virtual reality headset) as well.

Comics And Writing In The News

Petri Arts producer of custom stained glass, fan art and illustration has been keeping busy lately. You can catch up with him on face book to order his custom designed stained glass items and to say hi.

Heroes Of The North (no relation to Heroes Of Our Own) are a Canadian made independently produced series of superhero adventures out of Montreal Canada. They feature novels and videos, all produced independently and very effectively with professional performers and industry effects producers. I highly recommend checking out their web presence and their stories. You can periodically catch some of the videos on BlackFlag tv,

Robert Tozer has published a series of books around a zombie apocalypse themed entre called The Dead. You can read all about the books and the stories there and purchase them from http://www.thedead.us.

Marvel Entertainment

For those of you who've not heard, Sony Pictures entered into a deal with Marvel Entertainment to reunite the character Spiderman with the other characters of the Marvel Universe. You can catch all of the details over at the Marvel site and check out their news clips and trailers at the Marvel Entertainment youtube presence. By the way, in case you haven't been watching, they're recently redone Secret Wars! Secret Wars was initially the first time we see Spiderman in the ever famous black costume (much different from the cartoon and movie origins of the suit). It is the place in the Marvel multiverse where we see an all out battle being set up between the forces of good and evil on a specially chosen battle planet. It starts in May 2015 and continues until December 2015 if you're interested.

The news of the Sony and Marvel deal is the best news in a long time in regard to the recent line up of Marvel based hero action flicks coming out in the next little while and of course it opens the door for movies that have team ups like these:

Spidey back in 1990 with The Punisher...

A more recent team up between Spidey and The Moon Knight...

...and no, I don't work in a comic book store nor do I have a boss that hires call girls as birthday gifts.

Besides I don't think that my Butterfly Dragon would take to that too kindly and its all about A Lady's Prerogative and her...

Speaking of...

After a bit of an absence from any posts here, I am back to do some much needed updating. The truth is I've been busy with a host of other blogs, mostly the front end blogs for some of the fictional worlds and characters that I've been developing. A Lady's Prerogative has Tales Of The Sanctum. Heroes Of Our Own has now become The Butterfly Dragon and The Field, The Butterflies And The Dragon. The Archive has become Welcome To The Pleroma and Stories From The End has become Stories Before The End. There's also a new character and biography page for each of the characters from Heroes Of Our Own.

Look forward to the end of A Lady`s Prerogative: Wounded Aerth over the coming weekend, when I will finally have finished its first draft that will be available for your reading at that time. It has already progressed considerably since my last post here with many changes to the story and some drastic events for the characters.

I've been bouncing around between working on those stories, adding what I can to Shhhh! Digital and working on the next generation of software I plan on releasing within the next few months at which time I plan to go full tilt into business and publishing. Within that time span, I plan to relocate to a new living environment with less abuse and stress. So upon leaving, things will be looking much better. There'll probably be a whole new me (just the old me returning). Just have to tough it out until then. Ritual or scheduled abuse by neighbours is not a good things believe me.

Stay Safe And Be Well,

Brian Joseph Johns