Thursday Linkdump of Doom!

Well, no real doom here, but I like to pretend...

No offense meant to Colbert, but I prefer the name Serenity.

The New York Times now has "Graphic Books" Best Seller Lists.

Five Reasons to Check Out Captain Britain and MI13. It's a good book, and I agree with everything in this article. Ok, except for the vampires on the moon. Sheesh.

I'm getting pretty sick of The Watchman promos and talk and everything, but this is just wrong. It's wrong in every single way possible. If you haven't read the original material (or, I suppose, seen the movie) then you probably won't get how wrong it is. At least it intended to be wrong, and isn't that way accidentally.

Wil Wheaton put his new book for sale in non-DRMed PDF format. It quickly made him a lot of money. "Sometime overnight, the total PDF sales exceeded the total print sales. I've still earned more via print sales, though PDF is rapidly catching up. Here's something cool about the gap between them: whenever it looks like PDF is going to overtake it, a bunch of people (presumably because they read the PDF) buy the print copy, and it leaps ahead. I wish I could do an animated visualization of the sales, like a little horse race, because it sure would look awesome."

I can read a lot on-line, but even free, Red Mars is too much. I'd want a paper copy if I were to reread that book.

A mermaid.

Let's wipe out toilet paper. One man's quest to reduce waste.

Speaking of waste, more proof that Diebold shouldn't be making voting machines. And any voting precinct that has bought voting machines from them should get a full refund plus damages. This is just fraud on the taxpayers and fraud on the voters. Diebold/Premier should be sued out of existence.

More reasons to be nervous about drug testing: false positives are really common. Experiments with the D-L test described at the end of the report found that "patchouli, spearmint, and eucalyptus tested positive for marijuana, while lavender, cypress, and oregano (which previous studies showed produced false positives with the D-L test) gave inconclusive results." In tests using just the NarcoPouch KN Reagent kit, 33 of 42 substances—including vanilla, anise, chicory, and peppermint—tested positive for cannabis.

Linkdump on Tuesday

Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #178: Animated X-Men Legends.

Change We Can Believe In!

Erecting the Space Needle, Part 2.

Wired looks at Doctor Who Comic Books.

Dalek Cake Wrecks.

The really good side of Halloween.

Cool Pumpkin Carving. I like the Red Ring of Death and Emoticon best.

Dalek Pumpkin (video).

The danger of Certainty.

Readers of Who Hates Whom might recall the conclusion, which reviewed various conflicts worldwide and found only one thing in common: certainty. Certainty that one god, culture, language, political or economic system, or miscellaneous dogma is right and best allows believers to see everyone else as other, and therefore lesser. And that seems to be a fairly necessary threshold for megaviolence to begin. In short, "you're either with us or against us" is one of the single most dangerous ideas a human can hold, in any culture, anywhere, any time.

Early voter has vote stolen by "voting" machine.

Ah, cute and touching!

Have a coke pug and a smile.

Another Linkdump

Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #169: Marvel, Death of Aquaman, Wild Wild West.

Polite Scott looks at Doctor's Head Mirrors.

Want.

How to make really simple garden lights for a single use (like a party) out of LEDs, coin batteries, and mason jars.

For stupid customers: the lollipop policy.

An idea for electric cars: stations quickly replace the batteries instead of recharging them.

Duh, not handholds. From the comments: "As a commercial pilot I can assure you that those instruments are clearly labeled. That one MAY have had the markings, Warning hot, and No Handhold, and No Step. Probably at least two of those markings, possibly all three." TSA inspectors should NOT be illiterate. And it's a good thing the airline re-inspected the planes, or that TSA flunkie could've murdered hundreds of people. In the name of "security". I think the TSA should be grounded and replaced with something useful and intelligent.

Diebold admits their voting machines are crap. PAPER AND PENS. Voting on a closed source voting machine is as good as throwing away your vote.

Computer junkie finds apparent proof that China lied about the age of some of its Olympic athletes.

Olympic Logos over the years.

Lovecraft fan harassed when paying respects at Lovecraft's grave.


It's Pug Attack! Beach pugs! Jailed pug! Stroller Pug! Tough pug! (been there, done that) Authoritative Pug! and Snuggle Puggle!

Wow... Evil Twin only needs $55 more to reach $500 in the MS 150! If you've got $5 to spare, you can donate, or just watch to see if she makes it.

How About A Linkdump?

Novels that would make good comics. I'd like to see a few of these.

A fairly interesting Marriage Proposal. I wonder if he can patent that?

A redesign of Mt Rushmore.

Why voting can never be truly fair, Arrow's Theorem.

E-Voting is expensive.

Bookslut talks about "Readers Block". I suffer from this every once in awhile, and usually break out of it thanks to comic books.

Net Neutrality in a Nutshell: "do you want an Internet that operates like the one we have today, or one that operates like cable TV, where Comcast decides which content to carry, and offers it to you only in bundles of its own devising?"

Baitcars work. "...auto theft ... has declined 50 percent."

I want Camera Glasses.

Check out the four-armed Beyonce on the Photoshop Disasters Blog.

Richard Dawkins to be on Doctor Who. His wife is Lalla Ward, who had a role on the classic Doctor Who.

Video, YouTube: El Caminito del Rey. I'm not interested in walking there. No way.

Stop and look at the ducks.

Here's a scary prediction.

LOLDalek: BBC Budget is slashed.

Some Links

Superman and social justice.

The Beloit Mindset List for the Class of 2011. Ouch. This one hit me hard: "What Berlin wall?"

Geeks supporting Obama.

Peter David live-blogs the Superbowl ads.

Cell Phones change the World.

Another reason to shop at Costco instead of that Wal-dude's place.

Clues from old photograph solve mystery of who the drowned man was.

E-voting sucks, so it does, and so we perceive it. We might as well go back to paper and make sure votes aren't lost by computer "bugs".

I love this stunt. Art for fun's sake.

The TSA has a blog, and people are using the comments to complain about the TSA's insanely stupid policies.

Go here to watch the 2008 Oscar-nominated Animated Shorts.

When Geek Relationships Cool Off.

BWAH-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!

Yes, this is for the in-laws.

Linkdump

Comics Fairplay on Playboy's Wonder Woman.

Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #137: Brave and the Bold, the Punisher, and Death's Head.

An Iraqi reviews The Pride of Baghdad, and finds it good.

An Interrupted Mind: Robin Balzer's Buffy Tale.

Star Wars Guide to the Presidential Candidates.

Merv Griffin's Grave.

Pacifist World of Warcraft player tries to make it to the top without killing anything or helping any players that kill.

Is it legal to blog about a failing marriage?

This can't be real, and if it's real, there must be some drawback I'm missing.

I was just reminded of my favorite HTML reference site: W3Schools. If you plan on doing any website design, this is a site you probably ought to have bookmarked.

The no-fly list is complete bull, and these kids will have troubles all their lives because of this bogus list that some idiot dreamed up that doesn't help keep us safe at all. The no-fly list ought to be abolished and the TSA turned over to monkeys... they'd do ten times a better job than the current morons.

Ars Technica explains why a recount in New Hampshire is necessary:

The fact that optical scanners leave a paper record is totally irrelevant if a random audit of the results is not mandatory by law after every election. And in New Hampshire, there are no mandatory audits. As I've said before, mandating a paper trail without also requiring post-election audits is like buying a security system for your house and then not turning it on.

If democracy is worth having, then it is worth checking to make sure the results are certain.

In Kenya, a Kiva.org borrower is spotted on the news at a refugee camp.

How literacy changes your way of thinking.

Self-Link: Aquaman Links, including the gaslight Aquaman and reaction to Teen Titans Year One. I'd like to proudly note that I got the in-line comments working on the Aquaman Blog too.

And finally, the Seahawks lost, no surprise. They were even spotted 14 points by the Packers at the beginning of the game. They were completely outplayed in the snow. Oh well... next year.

Wednesday Links

TwoMorrows announces Digital versions of their magazines. As I'm trying to reduce the amount of magazines I buy, having a digital copy may actually work better for me for some of their stuff. And the price isn't too bad, although it's still a tiny bit high for me.

Emerald City Comicon has announced three guests for next year's event.

The Doctor Who Website has a countdown to the next episode, delayed by the #!^%@$! Eurovision Song Contest. Oddly enough, such a countdown is apparently very appropriate for the next episode.

Wow. If this story aobut Quiznos is true, I don't think I ever want to eat there again.

Attack of the Killer Turtle!

Scott Adams admires the government of Taiwan. Because they fight. Like, real fistfights, during sessions. I think he has a point.

California is testing its voting machines, and vendors better hope they pass. Let's hope this is a serious test, and that they catch the crappy machines designed to steal elections.

The CBC reports that Nutrition Labels aren't accurate. I could've told you that. At least in my case, they've been accurate enough to keep me losing weight instead of gaining. It's a shame that some products are so far off, though, and it's a surprise to learn that Canada allows 20% variability. I wonder how much variability the US allows?

You can get wake up files read by Stephen Fry for free. Now I just need a good alarm clock program to put in my computer so I can use them as my wake up call.

I've been trying to use the GIMP for batch processing images, but it really sucks for any non-programmer types to try to figure out. I took a stab at the scripting, but failed completely. Doing more than the basic stuff with the GIMP can be a nightmare for someone who doesn't know scripting... but it's a fantastic program otherwise. If anyone wants to help with the script, I basically want to take every image in a directory and apply the levels tool to it, using preset input levels (of 25 and 225 respectively) then resave the images into the same directory with a prefix (so I have both versions of the image to use). The so-called tutorial really doesn't help much. If I was still using Paint Shop Pro, it would have taken me two minutes to whip up a macro, and 30 more seconds to run it. I wish the GIMP had the same macro recording and batch tools as PSP. And no, I'm not interested in running Photoshop. I can't afford it and I wouldn't use it enough to justify it.

Lunk... I'm just a Lunk. Or a Dimp

Ten of the Kind: This Comic Is No Longer Mint.

Mad Bun is updating on Thursdays. Update your weekly bookmarks.

Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed Addendum.

This is just cool. I really like Colleen Doran's artwork.

Top 25 Songs With a Secret.

Happy Birthday Doctor Who.

Ronald McDonald's Arrest.

If you have a comment troll that's annoying you, but you don't feel like deleting it's words, you can disemvowel them instead. Satisfying, and amusing.

Oooh, Blank Russian Nesting Dolls. So you can paint 'em yourself! I wanna make a Doctor Who set someday.

More on The Fine Art Thief.

We are all good at math. But Who Can Blame Them when people think they aren't?

Vault found in middle of street. A big black safe. In the middle of the street. Cool!

Wikipedia doing what it does best: Virginia Tech Massacre timeline and information.

Afghanistan Garden of Eden.

E-Voting continues to be fraud, and all elections decided with e-voting machines need to be redone. If you vote on one of these "voting" machines, you might as well not vote at all.

Another pug for the in-laws. This reminds me of when one of their pugs managed to fall into their fish pond. Heh.

Wednesday Lunkdimp-Thing

Bully visits Seattle and now has me craving Top Pot Doughnuts. Mmmmm Bavarian Cream...

Lots and lots of cool Owly sketches. I want an AquaOwly one of these days.

The Bad Astronomer links to a sky map. Cool.

Speaking of space, Airliner narrowly misses being hit by falling space junk. This is going to become more and more of a problem in the future. Should we start worrying now?

Colleen Doran on the search for Homer’s Ithaca.

Seattle Times on Song of the South.

I like tattoos, but I'm nart inclined to get one, 'cuz I'm a coward who changes her mind too much for a permanent change. But I'd be tempted by this tattoo.

How To Get Rid of Stuff.

Spinning shapes. Is it related to the hexagon on Saturn?

A call for Blogging Code of Conduct. Um, how about basic common courtesy and respect? And immediate criminal prosecution of people who make "anonymous" death threats?

Is the blog boom over? I'd say, just from the killing of dead blogs I've done on Blogshares over the last few months, that there was a boom in the summer of 2004 that resulted in a lot of dead blogs.

The face of the RIAA: Sony Music drops suit after sternly worded lawyer-letter. And Boing Boing wants you to remember that it's the LABELS that are suing their customers, and hiding behind the name of the RIAA to protect their reputations.

Hotlinking is BAD. It's theft. Nobody told John McCain apparently, as his campaign stole bandwidth from a webpage designer, who pranked McCain in response. In future, all politicians should hire an internet consultant who actually knows the internet.

I'd wondered why there wasn't a lawsuit... but I guess I didn't look far enough. Snohomish County and voting machine maker Sequoia are being sued for the inability to recount votes in a transparent way (as is required by state law), therefore effectively outsourcing elections to a private company. Among the data presented was the very close election between Rossi and Gregoire for Governor, which included a "statistical impossibility" that gave Rossi considerably more votes in Snohomish County.

You'd better hope you don't end up on the list.

Afraid of subpoenas, White House staff avoids using secure White House e-mail. Instead, they use non secured e-mail that puts sensitive data at risk. Yeah, really intelligent. They might as well just hand over all our state secrets to terrorists.

And to leave you with amusement... CLUNK!

Random Thoughts

Couldn't get through all the links I wanted to post, so I'll finish tomorrow if I have the time...

Self-Link #1: Grassroots promotion of Aquaman.

Self-Link #2: It is time once again to remind you of our eBay auctions. If it has "KBTC" in the description, all proceeds are going to the local PBS station. If it doesn't, all proceeds are going to pay our bills.

Colleen Doran Sees Wicked then flaunts her stuff at the DC offices.

Heidi Meeley applies "The Customer Is Always Right" to the comic book industry.

Ten in Green. Remember the Alamo.

Pictures from Wondercon.

I got my monster, thanks to Adventures in Applied Math. Apparently, Tegan eats townsfolk and abducts geeks. Hrm.

Speaking of monsters... mmmmmmm Chocolate Dalek. It looks REALLY messy. Yum.

With March came a tiny bit of spare money, some of which went to Conlan Press to buy The Last Unicorn DVD.

FilkerTom on naked actors and stupid commentators.

If you haven't checked out Strange Maps yet, you really ought to. All kinds of neat stuff there, from Oz to the DCU and back again.

I don't really care much about this news item, except I do hope the press gets to ask the perp one single question: WHY?

After several days of not moving, the Leif Erikson statue finally was successfully removed to be renovated and moved to a slightly different location.

Hmmm, I think I'd actually watch this.

I Park Like An Idiot dot com, where you can get bumper stickers to put on the cars of people who can't park in between the lines. I don't think I'd have the nerve to actually apply one of these, but I am amused by the thought.

Reading Scriptures leads to Violence.

Don't use the words winter, games, or gold in Vancouver BC for the next few years. More from Boing Boing.

Oz and Ends tells us what a "baramin" is.

Junk science from the RIAA.

Duct Tape comes in handy.

We still don't understand ball lightning.

9-year-old Canadian Terrorist detained by the US.

Diebold may dump e-voting unit because it's tarnished their reputation. Well, duh. Creating easily hackable voting machines with no paper trail would tarnish any company's reputation.

Garrett wants us to remember what a jury REALLY is. As a juror, you have the right to judge both the criminal AND the law. It's called Jury Nullification, and judges don't want you to know about it.

You must know your rights! Because, once selected for jury duty, nobody will inform you of your power to judge both law and fact. In fact, the judge's instructions to the jury may be to the contrary. Another quote from US vs Dougherty (cited earlier): "The fact that there is widespread existence of the jury's prerogative, and approval of its existence as a necessary counter to case-hardened judges and arbitrary prosecutors, does not establish as an imperative that the jury must be informed by the judge of that power".

For St Patrick's Day: Oh Danny Boy, as performed by three of the best evah Muppet singers. Don't get yer hopes up.

Infodump

Countdown. Hey, the pic includes Aquaman. And yes, I like the new guy quite a bit, thank you.

Jeff Parker speaks of the forbidden. Seriously, as one commenter said, if you want to know what sort of advantage a publisher can get by having free digital copies of their books available, TALK TO PHIL FOGLIO. I would love it if all my comics followed the Girl Genius model - months of daily/weekly pages followed by a collection. I'd buy nothing but collections and love it. But I digress from the topic... Jeff is wondering about pirated comics.

Lots of folks linking to Kevin's rant about buying comics that suck. It's a slow progression for me, but yeah, I've been moving my money from superheroes to more diverse books for years, and never regretting the books I leave behind. But you'll have to pry Aquaman from my cold dead fingers.

I love (postmodern barney)'s Blogging post. Go read it if you have any intention of blogging, or even if you already blog.

Brian Wood is exhausted but fine.

Yay. I've bought my tickets to Emerald City Comicon and only paid $7.12 extra for the privilege of making the purchase through #&%@$! Ticketmaster (and yes, the obnoxious fees are worth the lack of hassle... just barely... my main issue with them is Ticketmaster doesn't tell you about them up front, only after you've gone through multiple steps do you find out the full amount of fees).

I was once told by a computer science student that it was possible to predict with 100% certainty what a computer program would do. Having had several years of tech support under my belt by that time, I contradicted him, saying it was theorectically possible, but in reality not possible at all. He called me ignorant. I've been vindicated.

Oz and Ends reports on a clueless review of the Bridge to Terabithia movie.

Encourage the fans, grow the fanbase. Duh.

Paul Cornell has pictures from Gallifrey. MAN I wish we could go back to that convention. Someday, Paul.

Here's a link to a lovely review of the new AirPort Extreme Base Station. I used Netgear routers for a couple of years, then realized they were crapping out on me too quickly. We've had almost no problems since we switched to an AirPort. When our current AirPort craps out (if ever) I'll plan on buying the new one. Nice to know it's even better.

Look, Up In The Sky!

Check out Garrett Fitzgerald's Report on hearing Paul Rusesabagina speak.

You can help Julie, the tech-ignorant substitute teacher who has been threatened with 40 years in prison at the worst, and the loss of her ability to teach at the least, for other people's mistakes.

Evoting researchers buy used machines on the cheap. Yeah, REAL secure.

More on the robber from the Seattle Times.

Really cheap solar power.

Uh-Oh. They're Back!

Another Pug for the in-laws.

Tech Corner:

Ok, I've found one BIG problem with Google Reader. It does not appear to alert me when an entry has been updated. This could be a problem, as I've often been interested in the update more than the original entry (usually with Boing Boing). This, along with the lack of blogrolls, could be the killer for this app. Well, that and the fact that it's very very slow.

What Google Reader needs, in my opinion (only one full day using it): Blogroll capability, original AND last updated dates on entries, a way to indicate when an entry has been updated, more speed, a way to see how many users are subscribed to a feed, and a way to mark entries as read from the list view. Not a lot, but possibly more than they will deliver.

01101100 01101001 01101110 01101011 01110011

Gail and Kurt have gone insane.

Check this out. Particularly the Wonder Woman pitch. I would buy it, and I'm not a Wonder Woman fan.

Mike Sterlings Easter Eggs.

Aaron Williams points us to A Whole Bunch of Cats.

A pie-cosahedron.

The Wilhelm Scream.

More on Sasquatch.

More on Jerry Bails: DEWline, Silver Age Comics, The GCD.

The Bad Astronomer on the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) rejecting a gift of 50,000 DVDs of "An Inconvenient Truth" for its members.

Bad soldiers reported on Boing Boing, but Boing Boing also reports that they are being investigated for their cruelty.

Let's make this really clear: If trained election officials cannot get a voting machine to work properly, then the machine is broken. Doesn't matter if it's "human error", the frickin' machines DON'T WORK. If trained officials have problems, the general public won't be able to use the things either.