Wonderous

Here are my top 5 shows of 2014. With honourable mentions for good measure.

1. Game of Thrones Season 4

An amazing season of Game of Thrones yet again. Would recommend this show to people who have and haven’t read the books all the same. Don’t want to spoil too much but I’m hotly anticipating season 5 in March next year.

2. House of Cards (2013) Season 2

Did this show have me hooked this year? Yes it did. After catching up on season 1 in binge watcher fashion I was soon up to date on Kevin Spacey’s Frank Underwood and his rise to power.

3. The League Season 6

I binge watched seasons 1 through 5 of The League on Netflix this year after realising how good it really was. And of course season 6 was a week to week thing but I loved it all the same.

4. BoJack Horseman Season 1

A Netflix exclusive, BoJack Horseman won my heart over the course of its first season with a Hollywood insider feeling animated comedy of brilliant proportions. Will Arnett as BoJack was just great. And I really enjoyed all the clever references and well animated animals. This one is a real treat.

5. Trailer Park Boys S8

This was another show in which I caught up by binge watching the entirety of the show on Netflix (Seasons 1 through 7 plus all the movies) until the eighth season premiered exclusively on Netflix in August. For anyone not familiar with the Trailer Park Boys I recommend watching from the start and seeing if you latch on to its brilliance or can’t stand it at all. I latched on to its brilliance and season 8 was a fan service treat for me.

Honourable Mentions:

The Goldbergs (2013) S1 & S2

80s throwback that has won me over.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver S1

The longform segments are brilliant. Catch them on YouTube.

Louie S4

Love Louis C.K. And season 4 was another excellent season. Really enjoyed the multi part episodes.

Orange is the New Black S2

Netflix prison dramedy onto another winning season.

Silicon Valley S1

Silicon Valley: I want more episodes next season.

Girls S3

I watch cause it’s interesting.

Louis Theroux’s LA Stories S1

Another three episodes on topics that Louis effortlessly makes interesting.

Black Mirror White Christmas

Charlie Brooker never ceases to amaze me. This Christmas special of the series that delved into the future world and the sometimes disastrous impacts of tech on humans stars Jon Hamm and it’s something special you won’t soon forget.

My tastes are very comedy oriented with occasional forays into quality drama. This year was a lot more comedy based than usual. I just love good comedy. Stand up comedy too. The movies I’ve watched this year involve some comedy & some drama but my TV watching is primarily comedy.

This is a list of websites that I have been using to satisfy my fiendish entertainment needs. I haven't posted on this blog for over a year but obviously there has been a lot of interest with regard to spammers thinking my site was worthy of spam. So with that all cleaned up I am back and better than ever. Here is a list of websites that I enjoy and use frequently enough to warrant a blog posting:

TechCrunch

I don't care what people say about the reputation of this tech publication. For entertaining tech news I repeatedly keep going back to TechCrunch. From the biased Apple coverage of MG Siegler to the batshit insanity of Steve Gilmorr it's where I go consistently.

Honorable tech blog mention: GigaOM

/Film

I don't always go here but when I do I get my film news fill. The Slash Film Cast is also worth a listen to for movie and television viewing ideas and the like.

Ain't It Cool News

It's all about the Harry Knowles when going here. I sometimes go for the movie news with a nerdified perspective but most of the time it's for Harry's take and reviews.

iTunes Movie Trailers

The latest movie trailers with the option to watch it in glorious Quicktime HD. You can't explain that.

The Joy of Tech

The joy of reading Joy of Tech alone has me going back time and time again for a lol take on the tech world.

IMDb

Obligatory movie database frequenting to rate movies I've seen and keep up with movies to come as well as cast and movie search queries. I like checking out the MovieMeter and StarMeter as well to check out which celebrities and movies are on everybody's radar.

Honorable mention: I Check Movies

Twitter

Everyone knows Twitter by now but I don't really use it in the stream sort of way. All I like to do is search for certain topics to see the Top Tweets and see what people are saying about stuff of interest to me. For example I wanna search for "Chris Hemsworth" to see how the world is perceiving him after Thor and voila you have uncurated people's opinions to use and perceive how you see fit.

Torrent Freak

I like to use this to keep a pulse on what's going on with the entertainment industries and their relentless pursuit of the little man.

Urban Cinefile: Box Office

I like to keep an eye out on how many bums are filling seats each week at the Australian Box Office.

reddit

First rule of reddit is not to talk about reddit. So this is as far as I take you.

YouTube

I don't even really go to YouTube but rather get linked there via embed or otherwise all the time. So it wins a place in the list.

pogdesign.co.uk TV Calendar

Keep up with the world of American television as well as British too.

Whirlpool Forums

Australian forum for keeping my finger of the pulse on TV, Movie, Peer to Peer, Apple, iPhone, iPad and ISP news.

It's easy to fall into a pattern of not wanting to do anything at all while at the same time keeping yourself occupied. With so many entertainment options and avenues to keep yourself busy while subsequently not doing a whole lot at all it's easy to fall into a rut.

I like to write but at the same time need to will myself to do it. I am utterly inspired by the amount of content that is created every day on the internet fit for consumption by all types of people. And the ways in which to consume this content is also fittingly wonderful.

You can sit in front of your computer in a comfy chair and keep yourself occupied through social media, social networking, video or just your run of the mill vanilla news. That's not even counting the huge amount of gaming that can be done on the web if you so choose to. Personally I've lost interest in gaming and am consumed much more by news, social media/networking and video.

When you are on the go you can use 3G networks to access a mobified version of everything you do on your full style computer. Whatever you use, iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile there is a raft of mobile applications or just plain mobile websites HTML5 or otherwise just waiting for your attention. Just a few years ago there was nothing like the mobile versions of websites there are today. And I'm very thankful there are. You just feel a website is getting left behind when you are forced to use their full website over a mobile alternative. And it's not even just bandwidth constraints anymore. It's just a whole lot more user friendly to use a minified version than a full website when you have the chance. And although with most news websites you can just zoom and fiddle until you have made the story readable, it's so much better when there is a smaller alternative with bugger, readable text.

And than there is the fresh and newly early adopted tablet platform. The amount of people who have tablets compared to those with computers or phones is quite small really. But it is this crowd who is ahead of the game and most certainly an indicator of things to come. Although some argue tablets could just be a fad and stepping stone onto something different altogether or even a cycle back to laptops and who knows the almost dead netbook. The beauty of tablets is their portability or not so portability in some cases where you can be lying in bed or on a comfy couch consuming the content you see fit. And it can be a wonderful experience to do so with the raft of apps that beautify news consumption, video watching etc. Of course there is always access to the fullness of the web on tablet devices but once you have experienced some of the apps that reinvent the purpose of the web into a user friendly and visually appealing medium it's hard to go back. But you can so there is still freedom there.

So those are the tech ways to consume content. I haven't included the paper trees medium although I'm sure it still is a wonderful way to get your information. But just for the sake of it there is no room for it here. And of course there is always television, radio and film. But this is just an exploration of reading on various digital platforms. I still think that television, film and radio will all have purposes in the future landscape but they will have to adapt to the new ways of doing things.

This website is genuinely a treasure. If your like me and you watch a scatter-brained variety of television shows all at irregular intervals, than this is for you. And put it this way it's probably for you even if you don't fit my above description.

followmy.tv tracks what TV show episodes you are up to. And in doing so is quite a useful utility provided by the internet.