2006-11-18

War Story

I read 300 the other day. Like many comics I have mentioned lately expectations were very high. It is very good. Bottom line given the current real-world political situation I am having trouble generating a lot of enthusiasm over a war story, even a very good one.

2006-11-17

I Can't Believe I Missed It

Even if it was my birthday I can't believe I missed the news. Sun has open-sourced Java under the GPL! Sun Announcement, Groklaw story. That is excellent.

I assumed they would "open-source" it under yet another wannabe license that would not make Linux vendors happy and generally just be a pain-in-the-neck PR move, but this is actually quite promising.

I literally can't believe it.

2006-11-12

Comics Blog Migrated

I migrated my old comics blog here so I just made a bunch of posts, that are really info from days gone by that I didn't want to lose.

The A-List

I've read alot of comic books. I have an idea about what's good. The A-List is where the two meet. 

Under this category I intend to point out things that I like. It might be a title, a creator or an individual issue. 

The bottom line is that it's something I think is worth checking out. In this first entry we kick it off with arguably THE all-time great, Jack Kirby. A portion of the titles that Kirby co-created is a simple testament to his achievement:

Kamandi... 

That list is of course incomplete and it only hints at all the other characters and things he created/co-created along the way like Galactus and the Negative Zone. Not to mention all the subsequent greats like Steve Rude and Walt Simonson that he influenced.

 

Looking Good...

I mentioned this in a previous post:


It looks cool.

JR JR. and Gaiman on Eternals

JR JR. Interview Could be cool.

Super-Fuckin' Bullshit

Marvel and DC are seeking to establish that they own the word "Super-Hero" and using the fact to harass other comic book publishers. This pisses me off so bad I can't really comment on it further at the moment. Except to say:  

 

Black Spy FTW

Classic (Site may be NSFW) 

Big shout-out to the Chief and my bro who are both big Mad Magazine fans.

2006-11-10

The Ministry of Truth

The Ministry of Truth is hard at work. 

The level of discussion on Slashdot has really sunk (even on pure technology issues), but this stuff is important. That is: Media silently redacting digital documents (video, web, whatever) to suit ...? Who exactly? I don't know, but it would certainly seem to be their corporate owners. We need a standard for tracking revisions of digital media. This standard would contribute to the overall definition of what it means to "publish" using modern technologies. Established media has no room to be pointing fingers at bloggers and other new media sources when they are doing stuff like this and seem to have zero plan for how not to do it. I won't be surprised if newer information sources get a handle on this before the old school.

Amazing!

The trailer for the third Spider-Man movie is up. I am sure a lot of people if asked, "What is the best science fiction/fantasy adaptation of the last 10 years?" would say Lord of the Rings. That is perfectly understandable. The LotR movies are a miracle, but I would answer Spider-Man. The thing that makes these movies is that Sam Raimi (or somebody) "gets" Spider-Man. Consequently a 1000 little decisions that would be wrong on most movies are right in these movies. I walked out of the first movie with the intense feeling that I had just put down the comic. The trailer for the 3rd movie would normally have me worried. Sandman, Venom, Green Goblin, many a super-hero movie has been ruined by being turned into an ego-fest for actors. Each one eager to get a chance to play the devil, hog the spotlight and fuck up the movie. Confidence is extremely high though because of the previous two movies. Bottom-line I am still psyched about this upcoming movie.

Up In Smoke...

I got another one of my characters on-line. This guy's name is Smoke: 

I play this character only a few times a year but the game has been really fun. We are working our way through a large module called the City of the Spider Queen.

2006-11-05

The Last Great Electromechanical Gadget

Pinball is one of my favorite things. I was browsing something totally unrelated when I came across these resources:

Hopefully after the move I will get a chance to check these out more thoroughly and tell Edward about them (my big brother is the one who got me into pinball, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and video games weren't even a gleam in a she-devil's eye).

2006-11-01

Coolest Site Ever...

When you walk as much as I do the following link is literally invaluable: Geodistance Plain Awesome.