SamJay mentioned that he liked the cartoons of mine that I’d posted in the past. So here’s another one I did, from a failed comic strip submission.
This particular strip I remember being one of many exercises in teaching myself how to draw everyday objects, like the chair and lamp. It would take 1-2 hours to draw something like this in pencil, then ink it. Getting ideas was much tougher than drawing, which gets easier the more you do it. In terms of drawing ability I really admire the work of Chuck Ayers.
Robin Snyder’s Kickstarter project, reprinting the Ditko Public Service Package #2, is out and it’s here. Besides myself, financial contributors to the project include Mark Evanier, Neil Gaiman, and Jonathan Ross, whose name comes after Dennis F. Rogers.
This is my first Kickstarter project, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the other two I’ve joined come out.
It was so hot today that when I got in my car this evening after work I found the rear view mirror on the floor. The glue holding it to the windshield had melted. And now I can see why. The glass place that replaced the windshield years ago applied glue to only half of the mounting plate.
On my Kindle Keyboard I’m in the middle of reading Larry Tye’s excellent book about the ultimate illegal alien, Superman: The High-Flying History of America’s Most Enduring Hero. The Boston Globe has a piece by Tye about Superman’s moral compass. The article is at this link, and it requires a login. If you have trouble logging on, click here.
The Superman radio show of the 1940’s with Bud Collyer led to the Superman movie serials with Kirk Alyn, which in turn led to the 1950’s TV series with George Reeves. On occasion the radio series took Superman back to his original comic book roots as a social crusader, and in Tye’s op-ed he points out a 16-part 1946 story called Clan of the Fiery Cross. It can be heard at this page on Archive dot org.
Without Aereo’s DVR feature I probably wouldn’t have tried the service, but I am so impressed with it that I think I’m going to be a paying subscriber, despite the fact I don’t have compelling need for it. A key aspect of Aereo’s technology is its amazingly effective tiny TV antenna. Each customer gets one assigned to them within a huge array of tiny antennas. That way, Aereo can say they aren’t rebroadcasting TV stations for public use. It may sound clunky, but it isn’t at all. Assuming you have good Internet throughput, it’s all quite seamless and elegant. (Aereo’s opponents claim the antennas act in unison. Read this for more.)
How Aereo works – note: base price is $8/month for 20 hours of recorded video
When I started this blog in 2006 I had Comcast analog cable SDTV hooked into an ATI TV Wonder Elite DVR on my desktop computer. I lost the use of that cable tuner when I switched to FiOS digital HDTV. Since then I’ve seen the start of the Netflix streaming video service on Web browsers, then later it became available on the Roku player, and now there’s Aereo to put live TV back on my computer with dual monitors. Technology marches on!
Boston is the second city to get Aereo, the new “DVR in the cloud” service that puts local broadcast TV over the Internet. I’m giving it a try, and there is nothing rough or difficult about it at all. It’s slick, smooth, and clean. It works great on the Roku, but that’s not where I see Aereo being the most compelling. Where I’m really impressed is on the Acer netbook I’m using right now, with its 11.6″ 1366×768 screen. I’ll leave it to you to look up all of the details of the Aereo service, and the lawsuit by broadcasters.
