ArtLung Blog

TED TALK: Tom Shannon

2010-02-07T16:44:04Z

Leah, I think you will like this one.

“That’s trouble of some kind George.”

2010-02-02T19:13:12Z

“That’s trouble of some kind George.”

Challenger Explosion amateur video footage.

Still breaks my heart.

30 Rock Appreciation

2010-02-02T14:28:20Z

I have now looked at everything on the (not-safe-for-work named) blank yeah liz lemon. I was laughing maniacally at this site. Why? I don't know, it's not like I've not seen the images and heard the lines spoken, still, I laughed.

Two selections, they may not make you laugh if you don't watch the show, sorry about that. If you have Netflix, you can watch the first 3 seasons on demand. You can watch more recent episodes, with commercials, online if you want:

Liz Lemon: You take a hot dog.
Stuff it with some Jack cheese
Fold it in a pizza
(with air guitar) You got Cheesy Blasters!
Liz Lemon: And all the kids say, "Thanks Meat Cat!" And Meat Cat flies away on his, um, skateboard.

Dr. Leo Spaceman (pronounced "spah-cheh-men"): If you want a shot you’re gonna have to dance for it.
(Liz dances)
Dr. Leo Spaceman: Very nice.

creativity is… (according to google)

2010-02-01T23:13:03Z

This is a reply to @leahpeah's tweet: Could you please fill in the last part of the sentence? Creativity is.....?:

Here's what other people are thinking as of today, says google:

Snowed yesterday

2010-02-01T02:46:40Z

A lot.

It caused the event I was going to go to: NC jQuery Camp, to get postponed till later in February. I'm still looking forward to a North Carolina adventure in coding.

So we were snowed in Saturday, except for some preliminary snow shoveling I did. Today, Sunday started at 5am and I went to pick up my dad from the airport. His flight was canceled for Saturday night, so he and his ski club took a van from Atlanta, and so I trekked over mostly cleared-ish roads in 5°ree;F weather. It was thankfully uneventful. The rest of today was shoveling snow, with a bit of email and lots of podcasts. I actually have a whole other post where I talk about shoveling snow in draft mode. So forgive me if the next post also features snow shoveling. It's a workout.

And thus endeth this post.

I finished Red Remover

2010-01-30T21:54:44Z

Altogether, Red Remover was pretty hard. If I finish a silly Flash game I don't necessarily take a screenshot, but this one was pretty darn hard.

Apple to retcon the PADD

2010-01-27T17:14:14Z

PADD = "PADD" is an acronym for Personal Access Display Device, a hand-held computer interface, used as early as the 22nd century and well into the 24th century.

Supposedly Apple Computer of Cupertino, California will be retconning the PADD in about an hour. I will defer to Jason Kottke on what the best sources of live information about this new PADD might be.

Why can’t American airport security be run more like Israeli?

2010-01-25T17:22:53Z

While North America's airports groan under the weight of another sea-change in security protocols, one word keeps popping out of the mouths of experts: Israelification.

That is, how can we make our airports more like Israel's, which deal with far greater terror threats with far less inconvenience.

"It is mind boggling for us Israelis to look at what happens in North America, because we went through this 50 years ago," said Rafi Sela, the president of AR Challenges, a global transportation security consultancy. He has worked with the RCMP, the U.S. Navy Seals and airports around the world.

"Israelis, unlike Canadians and Americans, don't take s--- from anybody. When the security agency in Israel (the ISA) started to tighten security and we had to wait in line for – not for hours – but 30 or 40 minutes, all hell broke loose here. We said, `We're not going to do this. You're going to find a way that will take care of security without touching the efficiency of the airport.'"

Despite facing dozens of potential threats each day, the security set-up at Israel's largest hub, Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport, has not been breached since 2002, when a passenger mistakenly carried a handgun onto a flight. How do they manage that?

Read the whole thing: What Israel can teach us about security: At Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, screening is done in 30 minutes. The key? Look passengers in the eye

The Comics Journal: Online & Off

2010-01-24T21:28:46Z

For some cultural things I much prefer the journalism about a thing more than the thing itself. Sports is one area, for example, I really enjoy the reporting of Bob Costas and HBO's Real Sports show. Another area where the reportage gets more attention than the thing itself is in comics.

You may or may not know that in November I sold all my comics, cheap. Leah and I sold most everything, really. It was a relief to get rid of 200 pounds of paper I seldom ever read. As I regarded those comics one thing I noticed pained me slightly more was the comics journalism: particularly The Comics Journal. I had read TCJ for decades. It's an erudite magazine pointed at an often juvenile artform.

Recently, TCJ has increased their online presence. In particular I have enjoyed articles like: Brighter in Hindsight: Black Humor by Charles R. Johnson. It covers a comics artist, gag cartoonist really, who worked for black adult men's magazines in the 1970s. I had never heard of him or his work, but it sounds thoughtful, uncomfortable, and funny. Twilight is Manga made me chuckle at the fact that there was an antecedent for the "boyfriend falls in love with the offspring of would-be-girlfriend" aspect of the final Twilight book.

Over the years I've enjoyed detailed analyses and criticisms and highlights of great comics work. It pointed me to things I would not have purchased otherwise. I don't always agree with it, but it's a magazine that always made me think. I never subscribed, but I always enjoyed dropping into a comic book shop and seeing there were some interesting back issues, whether a month old or 2 years old, with interviews with artists and writers, creators and editors.

Online, it's worth checking out: http://www.tcj.com/.

Back in October Publishers Weekly's The Beat Blog wrote about TCJ's changes in format. That article is great because it highlights a very interesting change in strategy for TCJ. It will beef up the quality, size and format of the print issues, that is, more value for the dollar, but make fewer of them. Meanwhile, it's beefing up its online presence with more multimedia and articles online. It's remarkable because it seems so obvious -- play to the strengths of the medium you're working in. If you're in both, change it up and serve both, and better. I with other print publications were so smart.

Prop 8 Trial Coverage

2010-01-25T04:18:14Z

If you were interested in Proposition 8 court coverage from those working against Prop 8, you might check out: http://firedoglake.com/prop8trial/ and http://prop8trialtracker.com/.