Saturday, November 20, 2004

This is one of the first sketches I ever got. It was the last sketch of that con, and as it turned out one of my all-time favorites. I still like this one, as it shows the way Aquaman can show off an artist's style and yet still be Aquaman. Definitely still one of my favorites.

AQUAMAN
by Rich Werner
19 Sep 1999
(permission to post given 31 Oct 2004 via e-mail)
www.richwerner.com

by Tegan at 9:04 PM Seattle time - Permalink   

Durbul.

Simgol sneed retfakin dunriop. Durbul neefrum snigglewop.

Snigglewop?

Snigglewop.

Profhime soobed quidfy venderhoople schnord. Durbul neefrum sneed snigglewop. Swelertingal chiamtijup querd velofrostnewbucket. Bullenfixen swart retfakin snigglewop. Coltundeed wasfy burrin. Jirussangle dunriop soob vitallun neefrummull. Kared vulolm stugbin dafery schnord.

Snigglewop.

by Tegan at 11:34 AM Seattle time - Permalink   

Friday, November 19, 2004

• Weight = X-2
  
• Change From Last Week = +1
  
• Met Exercise Goal? Yes
  Goal was twenty minutes a day (walk/bike/swim) at least four days.
  
• Current Exercise Goal = twenty minutes a day (walk/bike/swim) at least four days.
  
• Kept food diary? No.

It's the food diary. I'm sure of it. I would lose weight if I just did the food diary. I mean, I've been walking seriously for a couple of weeks now, and that pretty much means I'm getting the exercise I need. So why aren't I losing weight? I must not be watching what I eat well enough. That needs to change.

It is now 35 weeks until the walk starts. Doing some quick math... I need to get about $120 in donations a week in order to reach my goal for The Walk. I think I need to work on some sort of fund-raising scheme. After all, this is for Breast Cancer research, and not just for me. I've got a few ideas, but I need to make some of them concrete here, soon.

An update on the donation inspiration. I got another donation from Maggie, who does not have a website to the best of my knowledge. Other honor roll pledges are from Elayne and Erin. My little sister Lisa has pledged 3% of the sales from her Usborne Book Store to the cause, so if you need to snag a good book for a Christmas present, go visit.

And lastly, for the record, here are my Training Walk Reports from Gjoblaag (the boring blog). I'm trying to include a picture I take somewhere along my walk in each Training Walk Report. I also decided to list these "blog style", with the most recent first. I'm working on a 3-Day Page with summaries of where I'm at and what I'm doing, but I suspect I won't update it often. Reading Gjoblaag is the best idea if you want to stay current with my training.

• Training Walk Report #8
  
• Training Walk Report #7
  
• Training Walk Report #6
  
• Training Walk Report #5/Orientation
  
• Training Walk Report #4 - Bothell
  
• Training Walk Report #3 - Walking Thoughts
  
• Training Walk Report #2 - Update
  
• Training Walk Report #1 - Training Schedule Thoughts
  

by Tegan at 1:46 PM Seattle time - Permalink   

Thursday, November 18, 2004

Studios Sue Pixar, Demand Bad Movie... "Stop making the rest of us look bad," demand Hollywood executives. Via Monitor Duty.

100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes. I liked the list of nominees.

National Toy Hall of Fame at Stong Museum.

Read this great article from a working musician about the benefits of filesharing for smaller artists. Via Creative Commons.

Say you want to take really high-res pictures... why not get a 2.5 Gigapixel Camera? This is just amazing... you can read the license plates on a car in a landscape picture. Wow.

The on-going quest for Atlantis.

What's really on the back of the Declaration of Independence... look and see.

Be careful what you write... Internet Archive pages are admissable into evidence.

Have some bramble.

by Tegan at 11:06 PM Seattle time - Permalink   

JLA #108: Set entirely in a different universe, and wonderful. I loved it. Not much to say about it, really, except I wish there was a CSA version of Aquaman.

H-E-R-O #22: And it goes out with a bang. Good-bye H-E-R-O. I enjoyed the book more when the dial was moving from person to person, group to group, but it was good anyway. I think I'll miss this book.

Birds of Prey #76: Nasty little story about a girl who has developed some unexpected abilities. This is the new Birds, and I'm still not sure I like it. Especially since there is something odd still happening with Oracle. Well, I'm not dumping it yet. This story wasn't bad.

JSA: Strange Adventures #4: Ok, this issue is at least linear. It doesn't all seem to be in Johnny's mind. And I have to admit the cliff-hanger is fairly good. It's still not my idea of a great story, but it's passable.

Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures Volume 2: Three tales, like the first volume. One I'd read before in the Free Comic Book Day edition, but it's a good story so I'm not complaining. The first one features Anakin, but also Luke... The cover feature is the last story, featuring everybody's favorite Mace Windu. Overall, a nice package, well worth snagging to have the stories.

by Tegan at 8:38 PM Seattle time - Permalink   

It was good to see you yesterday! See you soon.

by Tegan at 1:53 PM Seattle time - Permalink   

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

Captain America #1: Nicely unexpected ending. At least for me. I don't know enough about Captain America in general to know whether the ending is as significant as I would think it is. Nice art, but and otherwise fairly basic story. It's a set-up issue, and it does the job.

Fantastic Four #520: Hey, a letters page! Very cool. Ahem. A nice little story, with plenty of explanation for anyone who is coming in late. This is actually fairly fun. Certainly worth a look if you like the four.

Teen Titans #18: WHAT???? (spoilers)"...but you know what happened to Tempest." "Tempest was a Traitor."(end spoilers) AHHHHH! This is a horrible universe, horrible! Lorena is nasty! Batman is nasty. All the future Titans are nasty. This is a great story. Looking forward to the final part.

Conan #10: Man, I really like this book. It's enough to make me want to hunt down the original stories and read them, and if you'd told me I would say that before this series started, I would have laughed in your face. This is a great series. The artwork is fantastic, the layouts perfect, and the writing is snappy and tells the story well. This one is recommended, particularly because of the secondary characters, including one who seems very intelligent... a nice change from Conan himself.

Still to review: Clone Wars Adventures, Birds of Prey, H-E-R-O, JLA, and JSA Strange Adventures.

by Tegan at 6:20 PM Seattle time - Permalink   

Disney owns Abadazad now.

Comic book reviewer: Chaotic Pellucidity.

Maybe there's hope for Oklahoma, after all. Via Mark Evanier.

Must ravens live at the Tower?

The Library of Congress wants to digitize newspapers, and started with WWI Stars and Stripes.

Yes, hail can be dangerous.

Fish Empathy Project. Please, no Aquaman jokes on this one.

I absolutely refuse to link to Mike Sterling today. I mean, I give him too many Random Thoughts links as it is. If you do visit, though, check out his bit about Lois Lane #106.

And here's the last picture of a statue that I took at the Winchester Mystery House. Why? Because I like you. Well, most of you.

by Tegan at 5:05 PM Seattle time - Permalink   

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

by Tegan at 4:05 PM Seattle time - Permalink   

Smallville [4-08]: Spell: I didn't like this one when I saw it in the previews, and although I enjoyed it much more when I actually saw it, I didn't think it was a particularly strong episode. There's this on-going thing about Kryptonian tech, and it seems a little odd that Clark thought that he was faced with magic when it was pretty clear that Krypton was involved somehow. The episode with Mxy was more indicative of the danger of magic than this one. Ah well. Not horrible.

Justice League Unlimited [3-09]: Ultimatum: Thank you bittorrent... The opening of this episode is an Aquaman fangirl's "wet" dream. Ahem. Fire Trolls, Aquaman... what more do you want? And the fun continued for some time, as Aquaman stuck around for the whole episode. I love the way this episode is a tribute to the Super Friends from the identities of the Ultimen right down to the villains they face. Don't miss the Ultimen's headquarters, too. This one is a keeper. Don't miss it when it airs in the US on Dec 4th (or you can cheat and look for it on bt like I did).

Shipping tomorrow: Clone Wars Adventures, Conan, Birds of Prey, H-E-R-O, JLA, JSA Strange Adventures, Teen Titans, Captain America, and Fantastic Four.

by Tegan at 3:33 PM Seattle time - Permalink   

Monday, November 15, 2004

So, it looks like DC Comics solicits for February have been posted in various places. As a DC blogger, I guess I'm supposed to comment.

So here's my first comment:

Why bring back Ocean Master? And worse, in a frigging body switch story? Please! This is just pathetic. What happened to originality?

As for the rest... well, this is the least interesting looking batch of comics coming from DC in a long time. We'll find out if they are better than they look in February, but this really looks like a sad group. I can usually point to one book and say, "I'm looking forward to reading that." but there aren't any this month that fit that criteria. Oh, yes, once I read them I'll like them... but I really wish DC could provide some anticipation.

And one last thing, if you want to keep some surprises with Identity Crisis, don't read the solicits. They give something away.

by Tegan at 2:20 PM Seattle time - Permalink   

The Ballad of Sleeping Beauty #5: Our anti-hero trio heads toward the location of the Sleeping Beauty. But Cole is suspicious of the facts of the story told by Red. And there is some unfinished business between Cole and the man chasing the group. I'm really enjoying this title despite it being a western. The artwork is strong, and the characters keep me coming back. My only complaint is that the book seems to go by much too fast, not a valid complaint with a full 28 pages of story in this issue.

Colonia #11: NO!!!! Not a cliff-hanger! The story is pretty much reset for us at the end of this issue. We get an insane pirate barricading the town, we get Jack paying off his debt, and then we get a cliff-hanger. Still, I enjoyed it. This has been an interesting ride, and I look forward to seeing more of it.

Comic Book Digest #2: For $2, it's still a bargain. Unfortunately, I'm not all that interested in the stories and interviews. If I were more of a fan of Dreamwave and the other publishers, I would have liked this one enough to keep getting it. But I'm afraid I'm not that interested in them, so I'm reluctantly dropping this one. There's a lot of good stuff in here, but not enough for me.

Shipping this Wednesday: Clone Wars Adventures, Conan, Birds of Prey, H-E-R-O, JLA, JSA Strange Adventures, Teen Titans, Captain America, and Fantastic Four.

by Tegan at 1:05 PM Seattle time - Permalink   

Sunday, November 14, 2004

Here's a headline we see at least once every year, usually more often: New claim on location of Atlantis. Yes, yet another person seriously thinks they may have found the island that was the inspiration for Atlantis. Whatever.

Smell of Steve Comics, featuring "Black Aquaman".

Speaking of Aquaman, Will Pfeifer explains why Aquaman #23 wasn't written by him (down in the comments).

Comics Continuum reports that DC Comics books for February will be posted tomorrow. I think I need to turn in my November/January order.

Photoshop contest: World Run By Pirates. Arrrr!

And, speaking of pirates... Shipwrecks of Vancouver Island. Avast! Arrrr! Me Hearties!

Slashdot has stuff on the Hitchhiker's Guide Movie.

Idle odd thought: I was used to using IE as my browser, and seeing the "alt" tag from images show up as a mouse-over. I was surprised when Firefox didn't show it. Even a little annoyed. Until I found out that there is an HTML requirement that, if you want a text-over on an image you put in a "title" tag in the image. The "alt" tag is only for when images don't show up. I got used to a bug... but now I'm putting "title" tags in my images when I want something to show up. That was the Microsoft way... present people with a bug and claim it's a feature.

by Tegan at 8:45 PM Seattle time - Permalink   

I'm tying to recover from this cold, so I'm going to try to go easy on myself and not stress about blogging today. I have some reviews coming up, and if you want to read about my Walk, there's more over on Gjoblaag, but for the moment, nothing of any importance here. Go read someone else's blog.

Oh heck, here's a picture from the Winchester Mystery House:

by Tegan at 6:10 PM Seattle time - Permalink