The Golden Age of...
Soviet Sci-Fi Illustration!
Dark Roasted Blend: Soviet Futuristic Illustration: Oodles of Optimism
Soviet Sci-Fi Illustration!
Dark Roasted Blend: Soviet Futuristic Illustration: Oodles of Optimism
Never thought I'd link to The Daily Mail here, but just goes to show that you can't predict everything. So, this is a little story called "Starmageddon" or as I like to think of it "Who is Killing the Great Starfish of Europe?"
Spotted on Fark.com.
One of my favorite online malcontents jettisons his dependence on Blogspot and launches his own domain at the mighty ken-lowery.com! Go visit and leave obnoxious comments like I just did.
Chrysler Air Raid Siren, powered by a 180 horsepower V-8, capable of generating 138 decibels of sound. That's louder than... well, a lot of stuff, including The Who, circa 1980, who had the loudest rock concert on record at the time, registering 120 decibels near the stage.
Back to lurking.
Tom from Freaky Trigger (and also I Love Comics) writes about the idea of Thrill Power in pop culture. Give it a read.
Though I'll note that I've got examples which don't jibe with his, and that a lot of Thrill Power can be chalked up to newness and shinyness of a particular piece of cultural output (also known as "Their early albums were better.") Give it a look and let him know what you think.
Courtesy Jog:
SOVIET UNTERZOEGERSDORF / the adventure game
It's baffling, but I think I like it. Think of it like SimApparatchitknik or something. I'm quite sure I didn't spell that right...
Tomorrow is Vince Coletta's birthday. You know him. He's the guy who rubbed out Kirby's backgrounds so he could get pages done faster. And yet he could render textures a lot better than many of Kirby's other inkers, so it's a tradeoff.
That, of course, means it's my birthday too. I really should take the day off, but I'll probably be writing, both for "Lone", which is the follow-on story to "Murder Moon" in Strangeways, and for something that I promised to the guys at Dark, But Shining awhile back.
At least I won't be doing lettering...
A Joshua Tree In Every Pot: What I Like October 2005
My longtime friend Chris writes up some stuff he likes this month, including, but not limited to: flying manta rays, PROJECT UFO, and shortwave music (featuring a nod to arcane musicologists The Roswell Incident.) Check it out.
of things I will never be drinking: Steven Seagal's LIGHTNING BOLT. I can't think of a damn one of these energy drinks that's worth consuming. It's sugar and caffeine, people! You get a bigger charge out of Coke (though you should do as Mr. Parker says and try to track down Mexican Coke as it's made with cane sugar and not corn syrup).
But then, I didn't believe in Smart Drinks, either (one of the more embarassing then-contemporary fads that resurfaces in the pages of The Invisibles upon rereading.)
And just...Steven Segal, man! Steven Segal! The Glimmer Man, stooping to putting his face on a can of energy drink. He signs every can! Every can!
But if you're in need of entertainment, head on over and click randomly on any link there. It's bound to be funny.
I really should be sleeping, but instead I'm up and blogging about only marginally useful stuff like this: The British Library puts up a collection of some intriguing historical texts up for browsing online.
Really, I'm just blogging this so I don't have to add another bookmark to my already-bursting bookmark file...
I need some nice design elements to dress up the text page layouts in Strangeways #1. Find some that look great.
At nine points. Anything bigger than that and they look like they were traced by a drunken nine year old. So I get to trace the elements myself, losing more time.
Scan a few more out of my lovely Dover type specimen books. They look okay, but not exactly what I want. Go to print a test page. Boom. InDesign starts pulling the same junk on me that it did two months ago. What worked to fix it two months ago isn't working now. I've been told the easiest solution is to buy a new printer because mine is ONLY THREE YEARS OLD.
I'm so angry I could chew up rocks and spit out gravel.
Can't ping bl.ogs with this thing. I suck.
Lend a fella a helping hand, someone?
Here's a lovely little collection. Too bad the images are on the small side, but you can get a good taste of state of the art everyday design from more than a century back. NH Historical Society - Image Collection
Well, until I get some more information on how to deal with .css files, I'm just going to stick with the default style here. I don't really have the time to tinker with color hex codes and keep hitting 'reload' to see if the changes took. Or if they don't look hideous.
Really need to finish some of the extra material for the first issue of Strangeways as well. Aesthetic changes to the blog will have to wait a bit.
Moved things to a /blog directory (with a little help from the sysadmins...)
This is only a test.
Temp logo removed. Don't worry, the real one will show up shortly.