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April 30, 2004

kevin.'s thoughts: Hey, that's really good, I like it. Congrats on being a hardcore c0m1x3R... or something.... >>

No Superheroes Here

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As you may recall, last Saturday I drew a comic book. It consumed twenty-four hours, a buncha pens, and one of those super-fat "Magnum" markers. I consumed five Cokes and three bagels.

Here's the result: Ornithology (1.7MB PDF, 23 pages)

You'll probably enjoy it most if you print it out, but it reads pretty well on screen, too.

Check out the last page to see the seeds of the story: sentences and scenarios from friends, revealed at the stroke of midnight. I didn't quite manage to use them all... I think the one I most regret leaving out is "warm weather = girls in backless shirts." Maybe if it was "warm weather = dots with lines around them" I would have had time to work it in.

I'm tempted to make a bunch of disclaimers here, but nah. Perhaps a reminder that the entire comic was produced in 24 continuous hours of feverish and progressively less-coherent rendering will set your expectations at the right level.

Read on!

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Posted April 30, 2004 at 12:46 | Comments (1) | Permasnark
File under: Gleeful Miscellany

April 28, 2004

Welcome Aboard, Viscountess

Robin says,

Whoah, check out the ridiculously comprehensive list of honorifics available to British Airways passengers. (Click on the Title drop-down menu.)

"Tengku"! I love it!

(Link via Boing Boing.)

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 10:36 AM

What Stomps In the Shadows

The small South Asian nation of Bangladesh has plenty of problems: poverty, disease, overpopulation, illiteracy, corruption, flooding, cyclones... and now, apparently, wild elephant attacks.

I don't know about this, though:

Wild elephants frequently raid human habitation during harvesting season. At nightfall they enter the fields and damage crops, trees and homes. The entire herd then melts into the forest at daybreak.

What are these, ghost ninja elephants??

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Posted April 28, 2004 at 10:19 | Comments (0) | Permasnark
File under: Gleeful Miscellany

April 26, 2004

I Eye My Coke Warily

Robin says,

Gah! Ten percent of Americans' calories come from corn syrup!

Let me just repeat: Gah!!!

(Link via Boing Boing.)

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 3:17 PM
Tim's thoughts: Re: my paragraphs -- You gotta remember, Rob, I don't live in the blogosphere: when I kick into f... >>

I'd Like Some Personal Audio Entertainment Services, Please

So, this is pretty interesting: Clive Thompson has a new column up about the online music service called Rhapsody.

For iTunes, as you may know, you pay $0.99 and get a music file that you can play or burn onto a CD. Rhapsody's different: According to Clive, $10 a month gets you access to the service's entire library of music -- but you don't get any of the files. You just get the music, streamed to your speakers.

This reminds me of the excellent book "Natural Capitalism" which argued that we ought to get more goods as services instead of products. Example: Light bulbs. Does anybody want a light bulb? Does the product itself deliver any satisfation? No -- clearly, it's household illumination services that we're after. But to get them we must purchase fungly light bulbs.

So wouldn't it be interesting, the book suggests, if instead of peddling bulbs, General Electric sold lighting services for some small annual fee. It'd cost the same as a year's supply of bulbs, and we'd get the same ultimate product: Light. But now, absent the need to maximize bulb sales, it'd be in G.E.'s interest to aggressively innovate super-efficient light technology -- 'cause then it would cost them less to provide the service, and they could take the difference as profit. (Thus, "Natural Capitalism," in which good business is aligned with good environmental values.)

Interface, a commercial carpet company, is in fact moving towards selling interior comfort services, not carpet. They have lots of info at their sustainability site. And apparently it hasn't totally ruined the company or anything.

It's interesting to extend this model to music. What is it we really want? Well, if it's merely personal audio entertainment services, then Rhapsody is a great idea. Rhapsody is in the business of providing music, not selling tracks, so it can behave differently, right? It can spend its research dollars on faster, smoother, cooler music-playing technology instead of elaborate copy-protection schemes. Excellent.

But, not every commercial activity fits the "Natural Capitalism" service model. Think of automobiles: Yeah, we want transportation services; but many of us also want a car. The product-ness of it -- having it in the driveway, having your junk in the back seat -- is important.

So is music more like carpet or more like a car? For me, it's probably carpet. I think I could groove on Rhapsody, as I a) am musically clueless, and b) score no points with anyone for having cool music.

In general, though, I suspect it's more like a car: People want sounds to listen to, yeah, but they also want to own music -- music as cultural signifier, music as collection. Music in the driveway. (Although, as Clive points out, with iTunes and its ilk you "own" your music in a somewhat more limited sense than you did with CDs and tapes.)

Anyway, how about you? Car or carpet?

... Read more ....
Robin-sig.gif
Posted April 26, 2004 at 1:48 | Comments (11) | Permasnark
File under: Technosnark

April 25, 2004

Truly Gleeful Miscellany

Some things you don't explain. This would be one of them. Play around with it for a bit, but I'll point you to some of my favorites.

This is all from the cruel mind of Don Hertzfeld, an animator who's worked with the likes of Mike Judge and Bill Plympton to bring us The Animation Show.

And speaking of illustration, congrats to Robin, who completed his 24-hour comic, in case you didn't see it.

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Posted April 25, 2004 at 10:43 | Comments (0) | Permasnark
File under: Gleeful Miscellany

April 23, 2004

Robin's thoughts: Hey Shawn! Glad you found the blog. I can't wait for the Pop Comics compilation; I'd like to give... >>

The Thirteenth Labor

Yeah, sure, he had to clean some pretty nasty stables. And there was that thing with the three-headed dog.

But did Hercules ever write and draw a 24-page comic book in 24 hours?

I thought not.

That's because a challenge like this ain't for chumps. Luckily, I'm an old comics pro.

I'm sure you recall the adventures of the Baker Bobcat in The Torpey Talk-About, Baker Middle School's paper of record.

Perhaps you were a fan of my, er, avant-garde editorial cartoons in The State News.

Or maybe you saw the Poynter.org centerpiece. Disclaimer: Not my finest hour.

Well, that was all just preparation.

Pop Comics in Sarasota. Midnight tonight to midnight on Saturday. 24 hours. 24 pages.

... Read more ....
Robin-sig.gif
Posted April 23, 2004 at 11:55 | Comments (8) | Permasnark
File under: Gleeful Miscellany

April 20, 2004

The Man in Black

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Sometimes dorkdom conquers reason.

If I were a rational movie-goer, I wouldn't waste eight bucks on "Star Wars: Episode III" in May 2005, because Episodes I and II were boring and lame.

(Well, actually, if I were a rational movie-goer, I wouldn't be talking about movies that aren't coming out until 2005 at all. But, yeah.)

Clearly, some sort of Lucasian culture module was implanted in my brain early in life, because when I see a story about the first glimpses of Darth Vader, the disappointment of the first two movies evaporates and I am filled only with geeky anticipation.

Darth Vader. Of all the mythology-lite characters in Star Wars, he is the most archetypal. He's our Cronus, the deposer and the deposed. And, come on! "Darth Vader"! Dark Father! He might as well be named Primordial Ancestor of Power. Jeez.

(Thanks to Julie for the tip!)

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Posted April 20, 2004 at 2:19 | Comments (0) | Permasnark
File under: Movies

April 19, 2004

'The Secret Sauce'

The debate over funding for renewable energy research (see below) hinges in some ways on a simple question: Can we count on private companies to invest adequately in new inventions?

Across industries, the answer to this question seems to be "no." Although the potential rewards are great, so are the costs, as well as the chances of coming up with a big fat zilch. Companies, like people, are risk-averse; losing a million on a dud of a research project feels a lot worse than making a million on a winner. And what if you invent something that has nothing to do with your business? Most companies don't even bother.

So, I was interested to see that Nathan Myhrvold, erstwhile founder of Microsoft Research, is starting a private company devoted entirely to invention. Evan Schwartz writes in Technology Review:

The new venture, Myhrvold says, has no mission other than to invent what the inventors believe should be