Author: J T. Ramsay

J T. Ramsay http://jtramsay.com

Hawkeye: My Life as a Weapon

The way MTV Geek’s Alex Zal­ben described Hawk­eye to Jesse Thorn on Bulls­eyemade it sound like Amer­i­can Splen­dor with a bow and arrow. He was­n’t wrong. I just fin­ished read­ing #10 and I’m ready for more. 

Beau­ti­ful­ly drawn and bril­liant­ly writ­ten, Hawkeye’s life out­side the Avengers is pos­i­tive­ly spell­bind­ing. The issue ded­i­cat­ed to Hur­ri­cane Sandy may be one of the most mov­ing trib­utes imag­ined. The artists com­pris­ing Team Hawkguy are doing some­thing tru­ly special.

Vikings — Season One

After a binge view­ing ses­sion while I was home sick dur­ing Watchathon (hon­est!), His­to­ry Chan­nel’s new show, Vikings, became one of my favorite shows on TV. The first sea­son just end­ed, but if you’re look­ing for Sons of Anar­chy set in the Dark Ages, then this is the show for you.

Why I’m Switching to Android

I wrote about renew­ing my iPhone vows about a month ago. I’m chang­ing my mind. Why? A com­bi­na­tion of curios­i­ty and convenience.

I’m not going to dis­count the num­ber of posts from influ­encers like Matthew Ingram, Guy Kawasa­ki and Robert Scoble, but the tip­ping point was real­ly friends who’ve adopt­ed Android with their lat­est phones. Whether they were entrenched Apple users or smart­phone new­bies, their move to Android was inspir­ing. It made it seem less intim­i­dat­ing to ditch the famil­iar for some­thing a lit­tle more chal­leng­ing. I mean, I haven’t thought seri­ous­ly about a smart­phone pur­chase since I first bought a smart­phone near­ly five years ago. I was­n’t going to make this deci­sion with­out help.

Why now? It’s eas­i­er. Android apps have grown up. Most of my most used apps are avail­able and those that aren’t can be replaced with com­pa­ra­ble apps. More impor­tant­ly, I’ve come to real­ize that my depen­dence on basics like Gmail and cal­en­dar are bet­ter solved with a native plat­form. I’m also unrea­son­ably excit­ed to try some of the UI tweaks, like Ubun­tu-style app launch­ers and the like. Being able to rein­vent the expe­ri­ence is some­thing that will keep me inter­est­ed as well.