Linkdump!

Folks in the Puget Sound area should watch KBTC tonight starting at 6 p.m. to watch my husband and the Emerald City Androgums answer phones during Doctor Who.

Everybody is posting this one, because it's so awesome: This isn't the petition response you're looking for.

My husband is already pretty excited about the new Oz movie, but he's also a huge Danny Elfman fan so this news has him practically squeeing in delight.

Oscar Nominees. I have seen none of the movies. The Razzies Nominees. I have seen none of the movies. Oh well.

How Voltaire got rich enough to be Voltaire.

The lie of Nazi gun control. Not that anyone who is indoctrinated by the NRA will read and believe this, but hey, I like spreading the truth when I can.

Why Adobe (and other vendors) should give away older software. I admit it, I snagged InDesign, but haven't installed it yet. More at Slashdot.

Most of these 25 foods you'll never eat again actually gross me out, but I did like the crispy M&Ms.

Future gadgets that might be worth buying from CES this year. The only one that made me wish I could afford it was the solar battery back up.

The Onion does it again. I like the Toyota Highlander comment.

Oh man, I wish I could afford to get this Aquaman #15 Blank Cover variant with art by Fred Hembeck! I did buy a blank variant for myself, but haven't figured out what to do with it yet.

One of these years I will make it to GeekGirlCon. I hope it's soon.

More on lab-grown meat. Again, I have no problem trying lab-grown foods myself. I'd rather have a cleanly grown hamburger than some of the stuff that gets into hamburger nowadays.

Speaking of food, for the twelve-week-challenge I'm using myfitnesspal to log food intake and exercise. I would have used Calorie King like I did in the past, but it doesn't have an app for Android and the PC app hasn't been updated in years.

An update on my post from the other day. Yes, the student who died was the athlete. That makes it so much more painful for some reason.

Also, when I got in on Thursday there was a note on my desk from the editor pointing out that my Wednesday afternoon's work was pretty bad compared to my usual and asking me to do more proofing before turning stuff in. When I went to talk to the editor about it I quoted a techie, "Sometimes it pays to stay in bed on Monday, rather than spending the rest of the week debuging Monday's code." At least he understood.

Anti-Virus Software and Mail Order Comics

Chances are we will not have Comcast when we move. And thus I will not get the free anti-virus software that comes with Comcast service. I know there are a handful of open source (ie free) anti-virus programs out there, do any of my readers use them, and does anyone have any suggestions of what to get or what to avoid? I've tried both McAfee and Norton in the past, and I dislike both of them. If they really are the best, I'll get 'em, but I wouldn't mind trying something else.

On the same note, does anyone know of any good mail order comic book services? I've heard of DCBS, and at the moment it's the front-runner. Anyone know of anything better?

Saturday Night Links

Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #143: Wonder Man, Flex Mentallo, and The Human Fly.

The Marvel Assistant Editors' Month.

Ok, maybe I need one of these. I bet my sister could make one.

Obama, Japan has a preference for the US President.

Scoble takes a ride in a Tesla Roadster. I don't want a sportscar, but I'd love a commuter car that fit some of those specs.

Saved by a dvd.

Häagen-Dazs to battle Colony Collapse Disorder with $250,000 in research grants.

Another NorthWest meteorite.

New ways to study baseball statistics reveal that Jeter does suck.

Boycott Hot Topic T-shirts.

Boing Boing reports on the effort to put Carl Sagan on a stamp.

This news probably shouldn't make me so happy. But I hated those ads with an overwhelming passion.

Happy Villain dyes her hair. That's a way to fight depression.

Images from a fire should never look so beautiful.

A solar grand plan: how to end US dependence on foreign oil by 2050. Along the same lines, the 14 Grand Engineering Challenges of the 21st Century.

Open Source software, Vendor-Free software, can help companies keep running critical components. Because they don't have to worry about the vendor going out of business.

This website seems to be a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Speaking of lawsuits, this article makes me want to never go to Home Depot again. Especially since I usually bring tools/parts with me to the hardware store to compare to what I'm purchasing.

Ah, for Doctor Who fans.

Pugs.

Comic Book Creator 2.0

I was offered a chance to preview this software and jumped at it. I'm not an artist and I'm only a mediocre writer, so I gave up on presenting you with a clever finished project along with this review. I will say that I do plan on using this for a couple of ideas I have in mind in the future. Nothing super, but stuff I hope will be pretty cool. So, let's start the review by installing the software...

Anyone who knows me knows I'm picky about what I install on my computer, and I hate programs that don't allow me to customize the installation. This program didn't have much to customize on the install, but at least allowed me the choice of whether or not I wanted quick start and desktop icons. That's a plus.

The documentation is a bit dry and technical. There was no simple guide linked from the readme file. Activation seems to require an online connection, which won't be a problem for most people, but the help is also online and in forum format, which makes it almost useless unless you have a lot of time on your hands. The most useful help is in a series of tutorials also available online. While I was able to figure out much of the basics myself, I eventually turned to the tutorials for more specific help (specifically the placing of speech balloons). I would have preferred to have that help available offline in a standard help file.

The set of basic backgrounds and clip art that comes with the program is fairly weak, but the program can use any image on your harddrive, so you are only limited by how well you can scan/import images to your computer. There are also extra sets of images available on the download page for the program, so you can beef up your graphics choices fairly easily.

Using the program will be intuitive for anyone familiar with comic books. You put in your background, add characters, text boxes, speech ballons. All very simple. You get a choice of layouts, which can help you focus. You can change the size and dimensions of your images in the program, and even call up your standard image editor from within the program, while working on a page.

Here's a sample strip, the result of using only the packaged clip art available on the website and very little thought:

I did note some odd quirks with the program. I got frustrated when the program apparently lost my set of backgrounds... until I figured out how to quickly reset it and realized I'd reset it wrongly myself. The display could use some serious customization, as it doesn't allow me to set it up to show an entire page on my display (1280X800). There are a lot of scrollbars that could be eliminated with a slightly slicker design or just some user options. The comic strip size templates still saved as a full page jpg, leading to lots of pointless white space. Most of the problems were very minor annoyances, but there were enough that it starts to add up.

I didn't even try to get into the options for sound and animation, as I like my comics nice and static and silent. But those options exist for people with those interests.

The upshot is that this is a great program that will help you tie together the elements of a comic book into a series of pages that look pretty darn good. But it won't turn you into an artist or creative genius, it just helps the process along. I think this is a great toy, but could also be a potentially useful tool. If you think you might like it, give it a try, then let me know what you think.