Spring's in the air, or it would be if only there weren't still a half-foot of snow sitting in my backyard. Baseballs are flying in Florida and somewhere in Easton, Pa. there undoubtedly a few brave daffodil shoots fighting their way to the surface.

The last two months have been hard on my geek fitness efforts; I got of to decent starts in January and February, only to have family colds, home improvement projects, and snow storms sidetrack my plans.

With March upon us, it's time to try and get back into a routine. My immediate goal is to pick up where I left off in February, and continue my morning workouts. These are exceedingly hard for me -- I'm just not a morning person -- but it's the one surefire way I have of making sure my exercise for the day gets done. As I've demonstrated time and again, it's all too easy to let exercise slide when a meeting runs late, I get caught up in a project, or a family emergency breaks out.

Here are my Follow Friday picks for 2/12/2010; inspired by Dark Horse Comic's Knights of the Old Republic giveaway (in which you had a chance to win a complete set of KOTOR books) I decided to do a round up of the major comic book companies on Twitter.

• @darkhorsecomics Because they publish Star Wars: Legacy, gave Star Wars: KOTOR a great run & are launching a new SW title #followfriday
• (also because @DarkHorseComics is giving away Volumes 1-8 of the KOTOR comic ... which is a fantastic read) http://bit.ly/9syXk3
• @marvel and @agent_m because they got the value of Twitter from the beginning and are amusing reads #followfriday
• @Dc_Nation Follow for a steady stream of DC Comics news, but don't expect the robot to talk back. #followfriday
• @Wildstorm The feed for the DC line that does Twitter better than its parent company. #followfriday

I want an iPad. It’s not because I’m a raving Apple fan boy or obsessed with the latest gadget – it’s because it fits the way I want to use technology, and addresses frustrations I’ve had with contemporary form factors. There are three specific products that I want to use with a tablet:

• Pen-and-paper role-playing game PDFs.
• Comic books and magazines
• Ebooks

They’re all print-based, and they share characteristics that don’t easily translate to a laptops, netbooks, or PDAs. I’ll preface all of this by saying these are my opinions; you may find reading an eBook on an iPod Touch to be liberating, love Marvel’s pan-and-scan tools for comic books on your Windows 7 desktop computer, and have no problem paging through PDFs on your netbook. If so, more power to you … but I find these options less than optimal.

The good folks at Miss(ed) Manners have done it again: they've recreated one of J.R.R. Tolkien's most epic scenes ... in candy. This time around, it's the conclusion to The Hobbit, featuring the Battle of the Five Armies and the assault on Lake Town by the dragon Smaug.

As with their previous creations -- The Battle of Helm’s Deep, The Battle of Pelennor Fields, The Mines of Moria, the diorama is truly a sight to behold. A red licorice Smaug rises from a frosted Lonely Mountain to ravage a gingerbread Lake Town. Gummi bear armies of goblins, orcs, humans, dwarves and elves battle for the treasure under the mountain, while overhead eagles and giant bats fight for ariel supremacy.

It's January. I'm tired, sore, and feeling like I need to pack 36 hours worth of work into every 24 hour day. Yeah, it's time to go back to the gym.

This may seem counter-intuitive -- why go to the gm when every cell in your body is screaming you don't have time? -- but in my experience, that's when it's most essential. The reason why is simple: perspective. Exercising for 30-60 minutes causes you to downshift and all but forces you to think about something else.

Moreover, exercise helps loosen you up (at least once you get past the initial soreness of "the return") and burns calories, all of which helps you sleep better. Which helps alleviate stress. Which makes it feel like you have 28 hours worth of work to do in 24.

Hey, I never said it would solve all your problems.

For my part, I'm going to be returning to my standard exercise routine of gym-pool-gym, which mixes things up nicely and gives me a chance to finish my master plan of re-watching Alias Seasons 1 and 2.

Now where did I leave my sneakers?

We all knew it was just a matter of time until the zombies rose up from their graves, the sickly-sweet smell of confectioners sugar still clinging to their rotting forms, and attacked the neighborhood gingerbread church. Or at least, we should have.

This gingerbread diorama features a gingerbread church surrounded by the newly risen undead, and a handful of survivors. It cheats a bit -- the zombies and survivors aren't made from candy (unlike, say, the spectacle of Helm's Deep) but I'll forgive them that indiscretion given that they included a classic Jeep CJ-5. It looks like they used confectioners sugar and icing for the snowscape, and I have no idea what the trees are made of. All in all, it looks great ... and makes me think I really need to ramp up my own gingerbread efforts next year... 

Of course, it wasn't enough to recreate the Battle of Helm's Deep in candy. The brilliant, creative minds behind that project had to go and make The Battle of Pelennor Fields ... in candy.

It's got it all -- the white icing walls of Minas Tirith, the black licorice corpse of the Witch King's mount. Gumdrop elephant war machines. A functional battering ram made entirely of licorice. A green marshmellow garden. And, of course, a heck of a lot of candy orcs. It's an amazing project, and I hope they follow it up with some other confection creation this year.

Every year at Christmas time I spend the better part of two weeks re-watching The Lord of the Rings trilogy in all of its extended glory. But I could be making far better use of my time, say rebuilding the Battle of Helm's Deep in candy. This post first made its round in 2007, but the glory of this sweet, sweet build is worth revisiting.

The walls of the great fortress are made from Jolly Ranchers and Smarties. The orc legions are comprised of Gummi Bears. Sour Patch Kids represent the corpses of the humans and elven defenders. There's licorice rope, Starburst stairs, Nerd gravel and much, much more. So much more that you really need to go and see it yourself.

The Innsmouth Horror expansion for Arkham Horror -- my Birthday/Christmas present from my family -- arrived today.

It's taken up its place of honor underneath the Greek Tree, where it will remain until Saturday, Dec. 26 when the Blackrazors convene to repel the Deep One invasion that threatens to rock New England.

Naturally, we intend to bring as much firepower to bear on the problem as possible, as witnessed by the arrival of the Imperial AT-AT and Slave 1 at the top of the photograph. 

Clearly I've only just begun to explore the frontiers of gingerbread construction, especially geeky gingerbread construction.

This gingerbread TARDIS (pictured at left) is just too darn cool; I love the attention to detail, especially the window panes AND K-9 the robodog. I'm also impressed that it stayed together long enough to take the picture (especially after last years less-than-successful icing glue experiment). Hats off to Anna Marie for a most excellent project.