2 June 2008
[bbc] The BBC’s “Green Book” … amusing historic BBC Production Guidelines from the 1940’s and 50’s … ‘Jokes like ‘enough to make a Maltese Cross’ are of doubtful value.’ [thanks Phil]
3 June 2008
[life] Interconnected: let me speak seriously … ‘I know a fellow who met a fellow whose mother makes garden gnomes, and when his father died, his mother made a gnome out of the ashes and she keeps it in the front garden of the family home.’
4 June 2008
[drink] The Price of a Pint … ‘The price of beer in 202 countries. Pint Price is a database of World Beer Prices. Use this site to find the best watering nation.’
[google] Simply Google: ‘…is a roundup of every Google search and service out there on one convenient page.’ [via Grayblog]
5 June 2008
[religion] Heaven Is An Amusement Park That Never Closes … Strange Maps finds a map of heaven …‘Catholics are welcome to Heaven, but are confined to a small section next to the entrance’ [via Qwghlm]
[comics] Comics USA: Alan Moore Visits New York in 1984 … scans of an article written by Moore after a visit to America in 1984 …
’24th August, Thursday – My Taxi to Heathrow arrives driven by comics’s answer to Robert de Niro, Jamie Delano, who combines scripting ‘Nightraven’ and ‘Captain Britain’ with taxi work. Phyllis and the children Amber and Leah make a brave attempt at concealing the turbulent emotions aroused in them by my departure, but I can tell they are secretly heartbroken. My flight is a seven hour sneak preview of purgatory. I read Alexei Sayle’s ‘Train to Hell’ from cover to cover. I’m sitting in the central aisle and I can’t see out of the window. What’s the point of flying if you can’t see how many thousands of feet you’ve got to fall shrieking to your death?’
7 June 2008
[funny] When Humans Punch Aliens: The Video Remix … amusing set of science fiction fights set to “Mama Said Knock You Out” by LL Cool J. [via Metafilter]
8 June 2008
[comics] Neil Gaiman to write an episode of Dr Who? … Rich Johnson: ‘The rumour running around my BBC sources that Neil Gaiman being approached to write a [Dr Who] episode for 2010. That would be this Neil Gaiman, comic author, fantasy novelist, screenwriter, poet and writer of the Duran Duran Biography 1985.’
9 June 2008
[comics] Peter Gillis remembers his friend Bob Dienenthal who died recently … Dienenthal worked on one of the first fully computer generated comics in the late 1980’s and sounds like a real Mac fanantic … ‘Thunderscan was one of those kludges that are truly inspiring: you took an Apple ImageWriter dot matrix printer, pulled out the printer head and replaced it with the module. Then instead of sending data to the printer to print, it reversed the flow and, as the head moved back and forth and the platen moved, it would send scan information back to the computer and assemble a graphic. This was before scanners were even available retail…’ [via The Comics Reporter]
10 June 2008
[comics] Grant Morrison on Final Crisis #1 … ‘The thing is, we wanted to open with a nasty, execution-style death of a superhero as a way of demonstrating how far behind us the Silver Age is. We’re conditioned to expect the hero to fall after a noble struggle or to give his life saving the universe but this had to be different. The scene was very much about calling time on expectations and letting our readers know up front that the rules have changed.’
11 June 2008
[comics] What should I do with comic books after I read them? … important question of the day from Ask Metafilter …‘Bag and board them, then store them forever in longboxes. this is the only right answer.’
12 June 2008
[space] How long could you survive in the vacuum of space? … ‘In the first 30 seconds any fluid on the surface of your body would begin to boil due to lack of ambient pressure, this includes the saliva on your tongue and the moisture in your eyes. Your eardrums would most likely burst due to the pressure in your body trying to equalize with the vacuum outside. Unlike what some science fiction films have suggested, your body would not explode…’ [via Metafilter]
13 June 2008
[twitter] Richard Dawkins has a Twitter … ‘Hello all, and thank you joining me here. I hope this will open a new avenue of communication for atheists and non-believers on the web.’
15 June 2008
[movies] ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’ props, from The Shining … these pages from Jack’s “novel” are taken from The Kubrick Archive … ‘The annotation noted how there is still some conjecture as to whether Kubrick had every individual page typed, or they were photocopied. Some of these pages looked typed. Others didn’t.’ [via Daring Fireball]
16 June 2008
[comics] We’re off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Northampton – Pádraig Ó Méalóid talks to Alan Moore … first part of a long interview … ‘I think that apparently the hardback collections are about the only thing where you’ve got signs of an increase in sales. The pamphlets are falling by the wayside and you’ve got to suspect that this is probably the future.’ [via Pete Ashton]
17 June 2008
[twitter] It turns out it was Fake Richard Dawkins on Twitter … That said, Fake Richard Dawkins doesn’t seem all bad:
‘While I still have 1700 of you paying attention, I just wanted to say: Whatever you believe, respect others beliefs. It’s not wrong to be kind to people who don’t believe the same as you. You don’t have to be militant atheists. People who claim to be Christians can be hypocrites, but they’re just people, and all people make mistakes. Try to be good to one another. That is my message of peace to all of you. Love one another. It’s ok. Consider that being hostile towards others has never won any followers. Richard Dawkins is just an old man trying to leave behind a legacy. Just like I, a Chrisitan do not follow Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson, don’t be mislead by someone just because they share your belief system. It’s easy to be against people who are different than you, but try not to be like that. Take the high road, unlike RD. Thanks for listening and following along. Have a nice day.’
[comics] Top 10 Warren Ellis ‘Tweets’ … … ‘Some days I want to be written by Frank Miller. So I can yell WHORES at random and get looks of concern rather than the usual pity. WHORES’
18 June 2008
[movies] The Video Nasty Project … this blog will watch all 73 original video nasties so you don’t have to … ‘The plot is basic Frankenstein stuff. A mad surgeon replaces his terminally ill son’s heart with that of a gorilla, which transforms him into a half-man, half ape creature – or at least a man in cracked, slathered on makeup who makes silly growling noises.’ [via Metafilter]
19 June 2008
[blogs] Sorry I Missed Your Party … random pictures of people at parties from Flickr. [via iamcal]
[windows] How to Make Windows Vista Less Annoying … many useful tips from Lifehacker. ‘How many times have you been right in the middle of something when Windows prompted you to reboot for updates? Or worse… you were right in the middle of something, stepped away for a bit, and come back to find your computer has restarted itself because Windows Update decided to…’
20 June 2008
[comics] You want Moore? You got it! … second part of a Alan Moore interview … On his new novel, Jerusalem: ‘It’s mostly all new stuff, well not new stuff, because most of it’s historic, but I’m just finding out new material all the time. I found out the other day that Hitler’s invasion plan for England ended with Northampton, and there was also the eighth century monk who was directed by angels to place a stone cross here because it was the centre of the land. So the way I see it, that if people want to argue with me about the importance of Northampton, then they’re not only arguing with me, they’re arguing with God, and they’re arguing with Hitler. And that, I think me, God, and Hitler, that’s the dream team!’
21 June 2008
[life] Trapped in a Lift … slightly disturbing time lapse video of a man stuck in a lift for 41 hours.
23 June 2008
[politics] Would you support David Icke to stand in the upcoming UK Parliamentary By-Election? … ‘If I stood, it would not be against Davis as such because I have no wish to be elected to Parliament and get stuck in that irrelevant web of deceit and corruption. I couldn’t take my seat anyway because I would never go through the pathetic ritual of pledging my ‘allegiance’ to the Queen. I would be supporting the stand of Davis against the Orwellian State and I would want him to win the seat and let him be a voice against the Big Brother society in Parliament.’ [thanks Phil]
24 June 2008
[blogs] Tumblr – The Documentary … ‘Reblog This Nerds!’ (more…)
25 June 2008
[comics] Final Crisis Annotations … more comics notes from Douglas Wolk who also annotated 52 … ‘Perhaps a less frustrating way to deal with the contradictions is not to try to explain them but to accept them as a pesky but integral part of the story, a sort of continuity koan. Continuity is at least sort of mutable–rarely more explicitly so than in Morrison’s superhero comics. The prolegomenon to FINAL CRISIS is SEVEN SOLDIERS: MISTER MIRACLE, in which Shilo Norman’s many alternate lives both do and don’t happen. “Hypertime” is one way of putting it; another is to say that all stories are more or less true, but better stories, more satisfying stories, are more true in the long term.’
27 June 2008
[polictics] David Davis has 25 by-election rivals … including: ‘David Icke – No party listed’
[funny] Ninja’s on Ice … another funny motivational poster.
28 June 2008
[comics] The Comics Reporter: So Why Were The X-Men Popular? … Tom Spurgeon on why Len Wein, Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum and John Byrne’s run on the Marvel title was so successful … ‘X-Men was solid comic book entertainment that distinguished itself against the comic books of the time in several savvy ways that caught the attention of longtime, hardcore fans, the same kind of fans that were almost certain to look past lot of the title’s more obvious failings (its nonsensical plots, its over-flowery language, its creepy undertones) and a group of people that would likely foster the next generation of creators. It hit in the right way at the right time with the right people, and soon launched itself into the sales stratosphere and took a lot of books with it.’
30 June 2008
[water] Why I like Cryptosporidium … Mo Morgan reports in from Northampton on dealing with a contaminated water supply … ‘It has reminded me of the value of tap-water. Not only is it there in abundance when I need it, but also that somewhere or other is a team of people in lab-coats ensuring that it’s clean and safe. This is the first time in my life I’ve ever had to put even the slightest thought into whether or not the water’s clean. The truth is, the vast majority of the time, it’s exceptionally clean and safe thanks to an army of boffins and engineers I’ll never meet, and whom I’ve never really thought about before. It’s the oldest of clichés, but I am starting to appreciate drinking-water now that I don’t have it.’
[kubrick] Stanley Kubrick – 79 – Male – Hertfordshire, St. Albans … wonderful profile of Kubrick on MySpace of all places … ‘By Barry Lyndon (1975) a pattern in Kubrick’s later work emerges: his leading men are either blank slates or over-the-top psychotics.’ [via Kottke]