The April edition of my Cerebral Interviews newsletter is out. If you want to read that, then go subscribe and I’ll send it through to you.

I reproduce these here on the site, 1 month after they were originally sent, so here is the March edition.

#Cerebral Interviews Issue 03 - Vol 01 - Mar 2012 ##A Word In Your Ear Cerebral Interviews attempts to capture the pop culture zeitgeist throughout the month. Published at the end of every month. 12 newsletters in 2012. No more, no less.

I was hoping to get more done for this edition, however I’m in the process of relocating countries, so this one is a bit of a short one.

If you’ve got any comments or want to share, you can contact me via twitter or by replying directly to this email. You can also continue the discussion of any of the points below on the dedicated Facebook page. Finally, if you liked what you saw, why not forward this to others who might like it or send them to the signup page. Thanks for reading, Khaled Abou Alfa March 2012 www.brokenkode.com

###App of the Month Sparrow for iOS. Sparrow on the mac redefined how I interact with my email. Sparrow for iOS doesn’t do that for my iPhone, but it comes damn near close.

###Apple 25 Billion Downloads from the App Store. Here are the top 25 lists for both the iPhone and the iPad.

Apple announces the 3rd Generation iPad. Complete with LTE, Retina display and the same battery life as before.

Mike Daisey is a liar. Listen to the retraction on This American Life.

###Architecture Western Concourse Lounge at Kings Cross opens in London, and it’s stunning.

Enzo Ferrari Museum has finally opened in Modena, Italy. The original design was done by the late Czech architect and Future Systems founder Jan Kaplický.

On a personal note, this is the project that I am relocating to Qatar to work on the Qatar National Museum. Yes it’s insane, but the good kind.

###Book of the Month It’s hard to tell when this book was officially released, but I was only recently able to get a copy of Jim Henson’s Tale of Sand. The official page also has links to all the reviews but I’ve not found any that actually discuss what the book actually means or is trying to say (even in a round about way).

###Crowd Funding Albatros bookmark is an incredibly clever little idea. It’s already reached it’s required goal, but if you’ve ever wished a bookmark was clever enough to remember which page you’re on, this is it.

###Comics Dinosaurs vs Aliens usually I’d move straight on after hearing that title, but attach Grant Morrison’s name to it and you’ve got my interest.

One of the greatest artists Jean Giraud (aka Moebius) dies. Kim Thompson has written an amazing obituary. Robot 6 presents 6 essential books to get into the work created. Gavin has an amazing collection of images in tribute to the master, along with a series of videos. And finally the Forbidden Planet blog also has a collection of art to reflect on a master that has left us.

After over 10 years of legal battles, it appears that Neil Gaiman and Todd Mcfarlane have reached an agreement - maybe. The full history of this battle can be found here.

###Contemporary Art Takashi Murakami’s Ego exhibition in Doha has been open for a couple of months now. Here’s a series of photos from the exhibition.

###Football Lionel Messi scores his 234th goal for Barcelona, which is more insane, considering he’s still only 24 years old.

###Movies The Prometheus trailer was released, to every sci-fi fan’s delight.

Cerebral Interviews copyright © 2012 Khaled Abou Alfa

The March edition of my Cerebral Interviews newsletter is out. If you want to read that, then go subscribe and I’ll send it through to you.

I reproduce these here on the site, 1 month after they were originally sent, so here is the February edition.

#Cerebral Interviews Issue 02 - Vol 01 - Feb 2012 ##A Word In Your Ear Cerebral Interviews attempts to capture the pop culture zeitgeist throughout the month. Published at the end of every month. 12 newsletters in 2012. No more, no less. If you’ve got any comments or want to share, you can contact me via twitter or by replying directly to this email. You can also continue the discussion of any of the points below on the dedicated Facebook page. Finally, if you liked what you saw, why not forward this to others who might like it or send them to the signup page. Thanks for reading, Khaled Abou Alfa February 2012 www.brokenkode.com

Ferrari unveiled their latest challenger, and it is definitely one of the ugliest looking cars that the team has ever created.

Lotus F1 showed off their latest creation, the E20, with a nice video walkaround the factory with interviews.

Sauber released some photos online. Red Bull released some computer images - they really shouldn’t have even bothered.

The rest of the teams that have completed their cars (Williams F1, Mercedes, Toro Rosso, Force India ) chose to showcase their cars in the garage before the first test which was held in Valencia, Spain. ###Geek Culture For all you Lego and Back to the Future fans, these sets are nirvana. And while we’re on the subject of lego, these Star Wars sets are also pretty amazing.

Kevin Smith debuted his new show ‘Comic Book Men’ on AMC (from the people that give us Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead). Here’s a Q&A with Smith about the show. ###Gadgets Sometimes the simplest ideas are also the most intriguing. The Sonastand fits that bill in my mind perfectly. Part acoustic aid, part stand, this thing looks great.

While we’re on the subject of iPhone accessories, this review should help you make up your mind if you’re in the market for enhancing your iPhone photography with lens clips. ###Life Many things we do in life now don’t follow what was considered normal and acceptable several 100 years ago. Including your sleep of 8 hours at once. It wasn’t always like this you know. There was a first and second sleep…
###Movies As a precursor to that major award ceremony in the States, ‘The Artist’ cleared house and won 6 BAFTA awards.

At the Oscars, the major awards went to ‘The Artist’, which won in the categories for Music (Original Score), Costume Design, Best Picture, Actor in Leading Role and Directing. Hugo (which is a great movie that focuses on the beginnings of cinema in Paris) walked off with 5 oscars in the more technical categories. The surprise for me was Rango which won at both awards for Best Animated feature. Maybe because I was tired, maybe because it was late but I slept through this movie at the cinema.

Also, Angelina’s leg got a lot of column space and some spoofs. ###Music Another music icon, Whitney Houston has died, hours before the Grammy Awards.

This latest music video from OK Go brought back memories of actually being excited and enjoying music videos. ###Software Apple releases the developer preview to their next iteration of their computer operating system, OS X Mountain Lion - notice they’ve dropped the Mac from there. ###Technology Raspberry PI is an awesome initiative from the UK. Buy a rudimental computer for either $25 or $35. The bad news is that they sold out on their first day. The good news is that they’re ramping up production. ###Websites After over 2 years, I finally redesigned my site. You can read about it here, and you can see previous versions of the site here. As with most of these things, it’s still a work in progress that I get into in bursts of productivity, fix a bunch of bugs and clean things up a bit. ###Writing Fountain is a plain text markup language for screenwriting. If you’re a Markdown user (this newsletter was written in Markdown) and you happen to also write Screenplays or even comics, this has got your name all over it and I’m surprised it took this long to create.

Cerebral Interviews copyright © 2012 Khaled Abou Alfa