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August 31, 2008
[comics] Q&A: Seth … part one of an interview with the Canadian cartoonist. Seth on memory: ‘I recall the sense of being somewhere—the visceral feeling of being in a childhood room, for example. The images themselves in such memories are Frankenstein constructions of what might have been in the room. You almost have to reassemble the room piece by piece when thinking of it. Feelers go out and supply the details. The mental images are somewhat akin to high contrast photographs—much of the detail is gone but the graphic moment is captured in the bold shapes…’
August 29, 2008
[comics] Lord Taco-Puss, The World’s Worst Cat … from Diesel Sweeties … ‘You’ll note that Clango doesn’t remember L.T.P. in this one. His memory was wiped back in this storyline, which began with Wii sports, suspicions of cheating and ended in a laser attack, a giant magnet and rediscovery of ex-girlfriend and kitten.’
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 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.’
When asked about illustrating the Star Wars comic adaptation: ‘If I’d known the movie was going to be so successful, I would have done a better job.’
Chaykin said he is at work on a ten-issue prequel to ‘Black Kiss’ for Dynamite Entertainment. ‘Each issue will be a decade of the 20th Century, with the filth appropriate to that decade.’
[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…)
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