Author: DOuG pRATt

Banner and Favicon

So, finally, I put up a banner, as I hope you can see above. It’s not the ambitious, evolving comic strip I envisioned, but maybe later. It’s a crop from a photo of my computer monitor. The TV tuner was playing CNN, and the “WHY” on the screen just happened to be there. For emphasis I sharpened the monitor and blurred the wall behind it.

wendall
© DOuG pRATt

A while ago I succumbed to my friend Tom’s interest in seeing a more interesting favicon (pronounced fav icon, like two distinct words). So I did neither dog nor rat, but my walrus character. It was done pixel-by-pixel in the Windows Paint program. The intent was to make it appear as though the walrus was moving out of frame, and to make him seem a bit menacing. Tough to do with 256 pixels, but I think I succeeded.

Star Trek New Voyages

New Voyages

If you don’t yet know about Star Trek New Voyages, click here. My buddy Bismo introduced us to New Voyages, which is but one of several amateur re-creations of the various Trek TV series. I think it’s by far the best.

For more background on the amazing phenomenon of fan-produced Trek TV, click here. While you’re reading that, you can listen to an NPR feature on New Voyages. Here’s the link.

New Voyages banner

Canon MP600

New scanner! New printer! It’s a scanner-printer. The Canon MP600. Won’t bore you with lots of technical details. My 6-year-old Lexmark printer was dead, and although my Epson scanner is still fine I wanted to free up some desk space. After much consideration, and wanting to keep the price below $200, I bought the MP600 for $160, and I used it for the last two posts.

Stan Lee’s Amazing Marvel Universe

Daredevil

MarvelButtonFor Christmas, my best buddy Dennis Rogers gave me a very nifty book. Well, nifty for an old comic book fanboy such as myself. It’s Stan Lee’s Amazing Marvel Universe, by Roy Thomas. Roy was Stan’s right-hand man at Marvel, starting in the mid-60’s.

The book is a history of Marvel Comics, mostly from the 60’s, with short audio commentaries by Stan. This simple sort of multimedia could be done easily on the Internet, but it’s nice to have it in book form. And this way Stan and Roy can make some money, right? The audio player works well, and unlike similar players in the past, this one takes standard AAA batteries.

The first Marvel super hero I followed was Daredevil. I’ve recorded Stan’s commentary about the creation of the character and put it on the player below. My son Eric and I really enjoy having this book. Thanks, Denro!

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/FEB07/StanLee.mp3]