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August 21, 2008
[books] Novelist Neal Stephenson Once Again Proves He’s the King of the Worlds … update on what Neal Stephenson is up to …‘That’s right—brain surgery is one of the things Stephenson is tinkering with. He and his team are helping refine some mechanical aspects of a new tool, a helical needle for operating on brain tumors. It’s the kind of cool job one of his characters might have.’
August 20, 2008
[blogs] What Makes for a Good Blog? … some interesting points from Merlin Mann … ‘I’ve come to believe that creative life in the first-world comes down to those who try just a little bit harder. Then, there’s the other 98%. They’re still eating the free continental breakfast over at FriendFeed. A good blog is written by a blogger who thinks longer, works harder, and obsesses more. Ultimately, a good blogger tries. That’s why “good” is getting rare.’
August 18, 2008
[london] A Hierarchy Of Tubes … an interesting personal ranking of the reliability of the various tube lines on the London Underground … ‘As every Londoner knows, all tube lines were not created equal. There’s a definite ranking of the lines you’d like to have to use, and those you’d like to avoid. So here’s my own, totally unscientific (yet, I hope, reasonable) list of lines in order of usefulness.’
August 17, 2008
August 15, 2008
[funny] Best of Craigslist: Nemesis required. 6-month project with possibilty to extend … ‘Evil laugh preferred.’ [via iamcal.com]
August 14, 2008
[comics] Watchmen Movie Poster Comparison … compare the recent movie posters with Dave Gibbon’s original posters for the comic … ‘Who Watches the Watchmen?’
[ukblogs] Taking the shine off: Why blog publishing failed in the UK … a co-founder of Shiny Media looks at the state of blog publishing in the UK … ‘The obvious reason why UK new media companies haven’t achieved the same success as their US counterparts is down to economies of scale. US sites have at least five times more readers to aim at and that counts for an awful lot when most online advertising is still based around a CPM model (advertisers pay a between 50p-£20 depending on the campaign per thousand people who see their ad). What makes it even trickier is that most UK advertisers for obvious reasons only want their ads to be seen by UK readers…’
August 13, 2008
[comics] The Craft … another long interview with Alan Moore …
I remember Julie Schwarz telling me – who was a lovely man – he told me about Mort Weisinger’s funeral – and this was probably just an old Jewish joke that he’d adapted – for Mort Weisinger – but he said that apparently during Jewish funerals there’s a part where people can stand up and spontaneously will say a few words about the departed – personal tributes, things like that. So it’s Mort Weisinger’s funeral, and it gets to this bit in the funeral and there’s absolute dead silence, and the silence just goes on and on and on and nobody gets up and says anything and eventually this guy at the back of the synagogue gets up and says: “His brother was worse!” (laughter). August 12, 2008
[comics] Seth on the Quiet Art of Cartooning … ‘There is something very lovely about the stillness of a comic book page. That austere stacked grid of boxes. The little people trapped in time. Its frozen and silent nature acting almost as a counterpoint to the raucous vulgarity of the modern aesthetic. Of course, the drawings aren’t really frozen. When we look at them, we immediately invest them with life. That little ink world pops into life as our eyes move across the drawings.’ [via ¡Journalista!]
[stuff] Big Linkdump of stuff I’ve had in my “ToBlog” list for far too long…
August 11, 2008
[correspondence] The Billy Letters … find out what happens when a small child seeks written advice from Charles Manson, Richard Ramirez, Ted Kacyinski and other notable characters … Manson: ‘Find out why the L.A. Times hasn’t sent my newspaper —Charles Manson. P.S. O-yes HI BILLY Easy easy EASSY’ [via Metafilter]
August 8, 2008
[tech] Internet Protocol Address Exhaustion Counter … a web page counting down the number of days until we run out of internet addresses (on the current scheme) … ‘892 days’
August 7, 2008
[comics] Spotlight on Howard Chaykin … some interesting points from a panel with Chaykin at the San Diego Comic-con … [via Beaucoupkevin]
At one point in the panel, just to clarify (or maybe rationalize) his language, Chaykin said, ‘anybody under 18 who would actually be interested in sitting and listening to me is obviously on drugs.’
[twitter] Nigel’s BBC Schedule Twitterbots … ‘What’s On Now’ Twitter Pages for every BBC Channel / Network.
August 6, 2008
[gywo] Get Your War On - Animated … nicely done cartoon of the brilliant webcomic … ‘America loves a list…’ [via Fimoculous]
[bdj] Ask a call girl … Salon asks three American High-Class Call Girls: How Realistic is the Belle de Jour TV Series? (compare and contrast with the time the Guardian asked Cynthia Payne the same question) … ‘I guess as an ex-call girl, it’s fun watching the show and seeing what is real and what’s completely off. I think it glamorizes the business a bit. Being a high-class call girl is a cool life if you know what you’re doing, but a very hard life too, which I don’t think they depict well on the show — just how stressful it really is.’ [via Fimoculous]
August 5, 2008
[comics] Retronomatopeya … Cute Flickr set of sound and movement effects from Comics [via Metafilter]
 August 4, 2008
[friendfeed] Friend Feed of LinkMachineGo … if you are web stalking me you will find this integrated feed with LMG, Flickr, Delicious and other assorted links interesting. I’m finding Friendfeed useful and wish more bloggers I follow used it.
August 3, 2008
[comics] What can I learn from comic books? … interesting list of educational / information-rich comic books from Ask Metafilter … ‘Oh, and while I suppose this may go against AskMe ettiquette — you really shouldn’t answer your own question — I’d like to add that nearly everything I know about American history and politics from the late 1970s through the early 1990s I learned from Doonesbury.’
August 1, 2008
[comics] So Superman Went Ballastic … Batman describes a fight with Superman … ‘I’m the goddamn Batman.’ [via Sore Eyes] (more…)
July 31, 2008
[comics] Al Gore Places Infant Son In Rocket To Escape Dying Planet … ‘Al Gore—or, as he is known in his own language, Gore-Al—placed his son, Kal-Al, gently in the one-passenger rocket ship, his brow furrowed by the great weight he carried in preserving the sole survivor of humanity’s hubristic folly….’ [via Beaucoupkevin]
July 30, 2008
[comics] R. Stevens Steers Diesel Sweeties Back to Its Roots … Wired interviews R. Stevens on Why Diesel Sweeties is Going Web Only Again … ‘I did my taxes. I realized that I made less money than the last year that I wasn’t syndicated. It’s a hard business and it takes years and years to build up a client list and get paid. I just kinda thought to myself that I spent years and years learning how to make money off the internet. Why should I continue to injure myself, when I could just do what I’m good at? Get creative again, get excited again, change my business model and learn new things, rather than be constantly struggling with deadlines.’
[comics] The Voices of Marvel Comics 1965 … featuring Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Flo Steinberg, Sol Brodsky, Artie Simek, Sam Rosen, Chic Stone, Wally Wood, Dick Ayers, Don Heck and Stan G … ‘In 1965, Marvel released a special recording featuring the voices of the famous Marvel Bullpen (the staff at the comic book company), to the Marvel Comics fan club members, The Merry Marvel Marching Society.’ (more…)
July 29, 2008
[web] Using your Browser URL History to Estimate Gender … I’m not sure how accurate this is but it guessed right for me … ‘Likelihood of you being FEMALE is 12%. Likelihood of you being MALE is 88%’
[comics] Has The Comics Industry Really Done All That Well During Legitimate Recessions? … interesting analysis from Tom Spurgeon … ‘For Miller the key is how comics gets tied into factors of risk. “I’ve said before I think ‘economics is local’ where this is concerned — the prevailing structural conditions in the field often trump whatever is happening outside — or, better put, they either amplify or stifle the negative stuff coming in from outside. Conversely, if our model is fouled up, we don’t feel the positives from an uptick in the economy — just see the late 1990s!”‘
July 28, 2008
[funny] Infinite Motivational Poster … goes on forever… almost. ‘SINGULARITY - Approaching the Self-Referential Event Horizon - Not even Light can Escape.’ [via Waxy's Links]
[tv] Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes … Jon Ronson’s wonderful documentary about the 1000’s of archival boxes on Kubrick’s estate in Hertfordshire and what they say about the reclusive director.
[movies] WarGames: A Look Back at the Film That Turned Geeks and Phreaks Into Stars … Wired on War Games … ‘Leonard Goldberg, the producer, shows me some footage they’d shot — it was a scene with Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy going into his bedroom, early in the movie, and he shows her how he can change her grades on his computer. She freaks out and leaves. And I’m looking at this and thinking, “What’s wrong here?” Driving home that night, I realized what it was. I stopped the car, found a phone booth, and called Leonard. “I know what the problem is!” I said. “They’re not having any fun!” These kids were treating this as if they’re involved in some dark and evil terrorist conspiracy. If I could change somebody’s grades on the computer, I’d be peeing in my pants with excitement to show it to some girl. And the girl would be excited about it!’
July 27, 2008
[funny] Motivation Poster: Jenga … ‘Your Turn’
July 26, 2008
[movies] The Shining (with Robots) … ‘The famous tricycle scene re-created with a tribot and a couple femisapiens.’
July 25, 2008
[tv] Warren Ellis on Joe 90: ‘I didn’t particularly like this show even as a kid. There was something essentially Wrong about it. Stick a kid with fucked-up eyes in a huge spinning machine with pulsating lights while computers ooze magnetic tape like worms.’
[life] Random Acts of Reality: So Obvious … ‘If this were a ‘Casualty’ or ‘E.R.’ script I’d be laughing at the screen for the scriptwriter having such an obvious cliché while making it all too obvious.’
July 24, 2008
[comics] Dave Sim / Cerebus segment from a documentary about Comics … Sim is interviewed on Ken Viola’s 1987 documentary Masters of Comic Book Art … ‘It strikes me as a kind of interesting thing to document for 26 years… 26 years!’ (more…)
July 23, 2008
[london] Last year I Killed a Man … a tube driver describes a ‘one under’ on the London Underground …
A smart man inquired, “Do you know there’s a person under your train?” I looked at the blood on the windscreen momentarily before assuring him that, yes, I was aware.
[comics] Blood, sweat and ink … Phil Jupitus on his love of Comic Strips … ‘I asked Trudeau to sign my dog-eared copy of Doonesbury Dossier: The Reagan Years, and when he did I felt like a kid again. Here was a man who to me was more punk than the Pistols, funnier than Seinfeld and a better artist than Picasso. That’s what I like about being a real fan of something - the irrational love.’ [via Forbidden Planet's Blog]
July 22, 2008
[batman] Meanwhile, in London… Police Arrest Batman … [part of the Evening Standard Headline Crisis 2008]
[comics] Frank Miller’s ‘Dark Knight’ brought Batman back to life … a look back at Miller’s Dark Knight Returns … ‘For his part, Miller says, “There are 50 different ways to do Batman and they all work. In fact, I’ve probably done about ten of them. I was once asked if I felt like I’d been handed a Ming vase” when he first took on the character. “I said no, it’s more like an unbreakable diamond. I could smash it against the wall or ceiling without hurting it. It’s just a matter of finding a facet no one’s used before.”‘
July 21, 2008
[comics] Alan Moore Still Knows the Score! … Moore interview from Entertainment Weekly … ‘I was also quite heartened the other day when watching the news to see that there were demonstrations outside the Scientology headquarters over here, and that they suddenly flashed to a clip showing all these demonstrators wearing V for Vendetta [Guy Fawkes] masks. That pleased me. That gave me a warm little glow.’ [via Forbidden Planet's Blog]
July 18, 2008
[movies] Peter Bradshaw reviews Errol Morris’s documentary Standard Operating Procedure: ‘The Abu Ghraib scandal was a product of the digital age: ordinary roll-film cameras or Polaroids might have been too conspicuous, there would be no facilities for development, and any resulting prints might have been confiscated or lost. But digital images, immediately accessible and so easily transferable and reproducible, and with ineradicable date and time stamps, were the captors’ undoing. Watching this film is the grimmest experience imaginable…’
July 17, 2008
[comics] The 10 Mental Illnesses Batman Indisputably Has … #2 -Munchhausen-by-Proxy: ‘This disorder, which usually exhibits itself in terms of a parent causing the illness of a child in order to garner attention, sympathy, and means of support for themselves, is something close to what Batman does with his many “wards”. Namely, he puts them in constant danger so that, perhaps, he can save them as his parents failed to save him from the life he’s inherited. Also, so he can stand in front of a glass case displaying the Robin togs they died in, so he can feel bad about himself…’
[movies] The letters of Stanley Kubrick … Kubrick on Full Metal Jacket: ‘My intention was not to relish violence for its own sake but to emphasise the reality of both the training process undergone by the recruits and the war situation in which they found themselves. A crucial aspect of this process is the use of language to dehumanise the young men. This had to be presented in a totally truthful way otherwise I would have compromised the reality of the story. I make no apology for taking such an approach. Full Metal Jacket offers no easy moral or political answers. It is not intended to be either pro-war or anti-war. It is concerned with the way things are.’
July 16, 2008
[comics] Can cartoonists go too far? Yes. Should we go too far? Yes … Steve Bell on the New Yorker’s Barack Obama Cover …
So should we tread warily, lest we are misunderstood? Of course we should. Cartoonists are some of the most painstaking, careful, shy and sensitive people on earth, yet we do play with fire, toying with other people’s (and of course our own) most deeply held beliefs and most cherished illusions. Is it possible to go too far? Of course it is? Should we go too far? Of course we should. That’s what makes our job so interesting. There’s no better feeling than, having taken a risk in a drawing, seeing the thing in print and knowing it works. The converse is also true, which is why I work in a bunker on the south coast. July 15, 2008
[money] Ask Metafilter: How much credit card debt is too much? … ‘With the possible exception of emergencies, any credit card debt that you don’t pay off in full at the end of the month is too much credit card debt.’
July 14, 2008
[comics] Jack Chick’s Lisa Tract … the cold, dark, disturbing heart of Jack Chick’s evangelical comics (unsurprisingly unpublished on his website) … [via Metafilter]
[comics] Requiem for a Cheeky ‘Batman’ … Script-writer Lorenzo Semple Jr. on the Batman TV Series … [via Forbidden Planet's Blog]
From the very beginning, Bill Dozier and I had seen millionaire Bruce Wayne and his Bat regalia as classy comedy, hopefully appealing to kids as an absurdly jolly action piece and to grown-ups for its deadpan satire, entirely nonfraught with psychological issues. I mean, golly gee! How else can one view a character who enters a nightclub in full Batgarb and mask, accompanied by a gorgeous chick, and when greeted by the maitre d’ with an obsequious “Good evening, Batman! A table for two?” gravely replies, “Yes, thank you. But please, not too near the music — I wouldn’t want to appear conspicuous.”
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