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January 31, 2006
everything new is old again.
How comic artists 'do it' - a step-by-step process by Copper's creator, Kazu Kibuishi. As Copper is a web-comic, the process starts on the drawing board but transitions to digital after inking. Fascinating!
Flight is a great way to keep up-to-date on comics news.
"Sleepless in Seattle" - the trailer, if it was a horror film.
Posted by Hamish at 09:23 AM | Comments (0)
January 30, 2006
A Comics Panel - with
A Comics Panel - with Seth, Chris Ware and moderated by Ivan Brunetti. Three cartoonists get together... and mayhem ensues. Well, mayhem is a relative term... No, actually they talk about how they work. Which is fascinating.
7 Myths about the Challenger shuttle disaster. Everything we know is wrong. Did it really need to take 25 years for the truth to be published widely?
Posted by Hamish at 03:08 PM | Comments (0)
January 27, 2006
What's your price for flight?
An account of 8 friends, including 2 girls and one fellow who had eaten previously, who, while drunk, went to a fast food restaurant known for its $1 per patty hamburgers and ordered $100 worth - then proceeded to eat them over a two-hour period. Heroes all.
Canadian Music Label Nettwerk, who represent Canadian recording artist Avril Lavigne, among many others, are covering the litigation costs of a 15-year-old girl who was sued by the RIAA for file sharing Avril's song "Sk8r Boi". Awesome.
"Litigation is not 'artist development.' Litigation is a deterrent to creativity and passion and it is hurting the business I love," insists McBride. "The current actions of the RIAA are not in my artists' best interests."
Apple Matters has a great article on the history of Pixar.
Posted by Hamish at 09:48 AM | Comments (0)
January 26, 2006
Duck Hunt Like It's 1945
A slideshow (with commentary) of Robert Polidori's photographs of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. Great stuff. Polidori's one of my favourite photographers.
A website collecting links to photography competitions worldwide. Very useful!
Money Tracking web-game informs mathematical model of epidemics(boingboing)
A web-game that encourages people to track the serial numbers of dollar bills as they move around the country has produced the best model to date for explaining some of the ways that infections diseases spread. Where's George? players mark their bills with WHERESGEORGE.COM; visitors to the site are encouraged to enter the serial number of the bill they've found and where they got it. In this way, the passage of a dollar-bill (or some other piece of infection) can be tracked around the country.Researchers at the Max Planck Institute used the data-set from Where's George? to compile a highly accurate model of human travel, which, in turn, has been key to understanding the way that diseases spread: The physicists were intrigued: Like viruses, money is transported by people from place to place. They found that the human movements follow what are known as universal scaling laws (from local to regional to long-distance scales). Using the game data, they developed a powerful mathematical theory that describes the observed movements of travelers amazingly well over distances from just a few kilometers to a few thousand. The study represents a major breakthrough for the mathematical modeling of the spread of epidemics. (science blog)
Posted by Hamish at 11:21 AM | Comments (0)
January 24, 2006
Tilting
I have posted a page of links relating to tilt-shift photography, in an effort to concentrate the many and disparate pages around the 'net and therefore make them easier to find!
Chris Jordan's apres-disaster photography is amazing. His most recent work on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is a must-see.
Posted by Hamish at 03:15 PM | Comments (0)
January 23, 2006
One Show Ends, Another Begins!
Yesterday was the last day of the Toronto Photography Meetup Group show at the Art Square Gallery. I had three prints in the show, and one of them sold! It was the fire escape shot I took last August - I've received a lot of good words on my work in the show and the show in general, but that photo in particular has been singled out for praise, described as "disturbing" and "intricate" and "best in show" more than once, and not all by the same person! :-) It was a good experience.
I'm not one to lose momentum so I've got another show starting tomorrow - four prints in my tilt/shift series are going up at the Starbucks store located at 2133 St. Clair Ave. West (west of Keele) - here's the poster:
Go check it out!
Posted by Hamish at 09:49 AM | Comments (0)
January 19, 2006
fittyfittyfittysevanteefaaahhhvv
This is great - mp3 files of the World Livestock Auctioneer Championship's Past Champions. Heeeeeebebebebdededededewunhundreddollaaahhhhhsfiftyfiftyfifty... Here's a guy who's built large format digital cameras using parts from a flatbed scanner. His results are amazing Worth1000's contest to photoshop "Bad Ads"Posted by Hamish at 12:43 PM
January 18, 2006
The Omarosa Experiment
Facts about action film star Chuck Norris.
Over on his terrific blog, Accordion Guy Joey Devilla has a link to two PDFs of cuff-checklists used by astronauts in the Apollo space program. Not only are they technically interesting they also contain some rather 'blue' humour that probably wouldn't be allowed today.
A collection of images of things being smashed with a sledgehammer - really cool.
Today on Daily Dose of Imagery, Sam discovered Lepos in Toronto. Where, or better yet, who or what, is Lepos? Go here to find out!
I love the Wooster Collective. Who else would turn a bunch of parking meters in to lollipops? I ask you!
Diddly.com's Random Personal Picture Finder - uses Google's image search to find images with default filenames used by digicams... Very interesting results.
A good article at The Morning News about how "Reality Television" shows select contestants.
Posted by Hamish at 09:52 AM | Comments (0)
January 17, 2006
Today's Linkaroonie-Toonies
The mega-vessels of the 15th Century, China's "Treasure Junks" - no doubt used to plunder the world's resources and, among other tasks, discover America before anyone else.
Emilio Morenatti has a terrific photo essay on Afghanistan here. Incredible images.
This is Bembo's Zoo. Awesome! Click on the letters and watch what happens.
Posted by Hamish at 11:17 AM | Comments (0)
January 13, 2006
STOP SAM BULTE IN PARKDALE-HIGH PARK!
Luckily for me, Sarmite Bulte's purvey doesn't extend to my street - but her riding is right next door. The twice-elected Liberal for Parkdale-High Park has come under scrutiny recently for her ties to the Copyright conspiracy, taking donations from Copyright criminals like SOCAN, CTV and Rogers in exchange for pushing pro-conspiracy legislation, while she continues to explain that she is listening to all sides of the issue, she in fact doesn't and is basically kowtowing to whoever will give her the cash to pry open her mouth in favour of them. Link to pdf anti-Bulte protest poster. Link to Bulte's opponent NDP candidate Peggy Nash's campaign. Link to Online Rights Canada's backgrounder and action centre on Bulte.
Mark Holthusen is an awesome photographer.
Here's a useful Beginner's FAQ on digital photography from Photonotes.org.
The Prejudice Map. Awesome.
McSweeney's, always the best in online humour fiction, posted their "Journal of a New COBRA Recruit" - for those not in the know, COBRA is the criminal organization who are the antagonists of G.I. Joe - basically, they're cartoon terrorists. They yell "COBRA!!!" a lot and get their asses handed to them by Joe et al on a regular basis. It's a great read.
Posted by Hamish at 09:54 AM | Comments (0)
January 12, 2006
Hang on Little Tomato
I gave a copy of the Complete New Yorker to my father for Christmas... It's a terrific collection of every issue of the New Yorker magazine since its inception, neatly archived on 9 DVDs... however it is crippled a bit by restrictions against copying it to your hard drive for easier searching and general use, among other things... This fellow has posted instructions on how to circumvent those restrictions. - and in fact it makes the user experience faster and better.
Here's a handy website that lists music that you can buy that is independent and free of RIAA-leanings... Very handy indeed! Pink Martini rules!
For the health-concious, a cautionary tale: The Ground Meat Cookbook, a 50's era tome with '204 intriguing ground meat recipes' - scannned in all its goodness.
Posted by Hamish at 09:46 AM | Comments (0)
January 10, 2006
Everything old is new again
Speaking as one who grew up with Garfield the Cat as one of my favourite cartoon characters, only to watch Jim Davis, the strip's creator, sit back and let robots take over the production of the strip while simultaneously releasing Garfield's image in myriad lucrative ways, I am pleased to see the Eagle_Fire Garfield Randomizer - click 'go' and you get three random panels from actual Garfield strips - strangely, it doesn't seem to matter what order they're in or what plot is in play in each of the panels, it ends up making sense. At least, as much as any of the run-of-the-mill newspaper strips do these days.
Posted by Hamish at 12:59 PM | Comments (0)
January 04, 2006
I received word this morning
I received word this morning that one or some or all of my prints that are in the Toronto Photography Meetup Group show have sold...! This is a good thing, of course. Yet I also heard that the pictures have been taken down- possibly taken immediately by the purchasers... I am following up to see if I can get replacements [edition: 2/10!] in there ASAP to capitalize on the demand... More on this later.
18 Tricks to Teach Your Body - possibly the first useful information I've found on MSNBC's website in the past year.
Posted by Hamish at 10:01 AM | Comments (0)
January 03, 2006
Do Don't Try This At
Do Don't Try This At Home - How to make a Jacob's Ladder using household materials and an old computer monitor. Warning: This is cool, but this could kill you.
Also in the Stupid Human Curiosity Department: How to throw a fireworks party inside your apartment. Live from Amsterdam. They do New Year's RIGHT ... actually, NYE in Amsterdam is an all-out crazyfest and deaths frequently occur - so many people partying around the canals in the inner city that emergency vehicles can't get through...
Worth1000's Photoshop contest: Modify a natural landscape to have sculptural shapes mixed in.
Posted by Hamish at 09:31 AM | Comments (0)