Saturday, December 04, 2004

I got this sketch at San Diego 2000, right after getting Greg Bettam's sketch. Greg told me that every time somebody got a sketch from him then went and got a sketch from Mark, Mark would look at the sketch Greg had done and attempt to outdo him. That led to my incredible little sketch from Greg, as Greg wanted to daunt Mark for once. M'Oak original considered something complicated and difficult, but decided that, with Aquaman, it was just too much and conceded the battle to Greg. My M'Oak Aquaman is instead a very standard look from Oakley.

AQUAMAN
by Mark Oakley
20 July 2000
(permission to post given 31 October 2004 via e-mail)
iboxpublishing.com

As a reminder: Almost every sketch in my sketchbook was non-commissioned and done on the floor of a con. These are not the best works of the artists. These are only representative of what the artist can do under pressure in a loud, crowded, and often stressed-out environment. Most of them were done as quickly as possible, to prevent huge lines from forming. Don't judge any of these artists negatively by the artwork you see, instead be as impressed as I am by what they accomplished in far-from-ideal conditions.

To see all the sketches I have permission to post so far, check out my Sketchbook Page. If you have any contact information for any of the other artists I'm trying to contact, please e-mail me. Click for a random Aquaman sketch.

The Saturday Sketch ™ is brought to you by the letters "A", "Q" and the number "27", and also courtesy the fine artists who pour their lives into producing wonderful comic books, then come to conventions only to get asked by geeky fangirls for a sketch of Aquaman. Support an artist, buy a comic book.

by Tegan at 10:19 PM Seattle time - Permalink   

According to Ain't It Cool News: Joe Dante signs on to direct the feature adaptation of the DC comic AQUAMAN, describing it in a press release as "probably not redundant". What the heck is that supposed to mean? Probably not redundant? That's the best they could come up with? In any case, I don't want to see a live-action Aquaman movie. It would be awful no matter what they do to the character.

Remote Controlled Aerial Photographs. Some of these are absolutely stunning. I recommend opening the pages up in new windows or tabs and letting them load before going through them. Very neat picture of Oxford on the third page... via MetaFilter.

The Top 1000 Library Books. Via the Beat.

TangognaT directs our attention to anti-anti sites.

Make a Dodecahedron Calendar. Via Boing Boing.

Potter Potter Potter. Some people should not be allowed near Flash. Via FilkerTom.

Here's a new low... an ad for a church has been rejected by CBS because it doesn't endorse prejudice. Lovely.

Colin Fahey attempted to get the lowest possible score on the SAT. But he failed at being a complete failure. Read all about it here. Via Garrett.

Mark Evanier points us to singing reindeer. this year's, last year's, and two years ago.

by Tegan at 8:53 AM Seattle time - Permalink   

Friday, December 03, 2004

The days do seem to be getting better now. Maybe I'll be back to normal, whatever that is, in another week or so.

by Tegan at 5:01 PM Seattle time - Permalink   

Thursday, December 02, 2004

Via Franklin's Findings:

It's the teaser trailer for Doctor Who. Ok... NOW I believe it.

by Tegan at 11:18 AM Seattle time - Permalink   

File this one under Abso-freakin-lutely Cool. Plants that detect landmines.

It seems like a good idea at first... to fight spammers by hitting their site so much their bandwidth bill goes through the roof. But there are several reasons not to do it, including this. When does an effort to punish spammers become an attack on them? And why should we contribute to the traffic on the internet in such an irresponsible way? Just don't ever reply to spam.

Excuses for speeding, from The Register. Personally I don't think cameras should be used for speeders, since false positives are possible.

Postmodern Barney finds another cool image, a Superboy cover with a car and graffiti. Definitely the kind of cover that makes you want to read the story.

Polite Dissent is adventing the season with Christmas covers. The first featured Spider-Man, the second features Cardcaptor Sakura.

Trash Heap is looking for a Christmas song about "a donkey that helps out Santa at Christmas, or something like that." Anyone know this one?

Brill Building has... an unusual image from What If. I'm amused.

As for me... discussions are ongoing. As I expected, nothing has been decided. Anything done can be undone, apparently. We'll see if things turn out well, or if they continue to be frustrating, annoying, nasty, and obnoxious. It's my own fault.

by Tegan at 8:56 AM Seattle time - Permalink   

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

Today was much worse than yesterday.

by Tegan at 8:45 PM Seattle time - Permalink   

Tuesday, November 30, 2004

And nothing to report. I'm a bit tired, haven't really restarted my training schedule yet, and extremely cold. But I'm not going to get the heat on my van fixed this winter, I can tell.

I've been watching the Seattle basketball team lately, the Seattle SuperSonics. It certainly helps you enjoy a team of a sport you aren't particularly fond of when the team is doing really really well. I've had a slight aversion to basketball since high school, when I was tripped into timing the boys Junior Varsity games. I'm not sure if I've told that story on my blog yet.

Anyway, the Sonics have been playing well, but their success is based on three aspects of their game, one of which is a risky one. The first one is rebounding. They manage to get control of the ball after a shot better than the other team. The second is free throws. A team that doesn't consistently make their free throws just doesn't win games. The third is three-point shots. That's the tricky one. When you are on and your players are making those shots, every other aspect of shooting improves because the defenders on the other team have to guard you on the outside as well as on the inside, which makes it easier to get inside and make those other shots. But if you stop making the shots consistently, then you end up giving the ball to the other team more often than needed, and you will lose. I personally have always enjoyed it when teams are willing to take that risk, so I guess that has lent a bit to me enjoying this season of Sonics so far.

In any case, actively wanting to watch a basketball game is a new experience for me, and has surprisingly brought back some of my few good memories of high school, along with a set of ... amusing... memories related to timing basketball.

Tomorrow ought to be a better day. Until then, here's a shot from the local library. There's another bear inside the library that I'll get a picture of someday, looking out at this guy who must've drawn the short straw to always be out in the cold.

by Tegan at 6:34 PM Seattle time - Permalink   

Monday, November 29, 2004

Eric is going to kill me. I thought you'd all like to know now. I'm going to get a complete and total reaming out when he gets home and I admit what I just did, and I'm going to deserve every bit of it. After I discuss it with Eric, I'll admit to it here. Maybe.

Sometimes I'm just too freakin' impulsive.

by Tegan at 6:41 PM Seattle time - Permalink   

I forgot to weigh myself on Friday. No, really. It just slipped my mind in the rush to get out to Fry's by 6 am. In addition, I haven't been exercising much in an effort to get over this really nasty head cold that I've had for 3 weeks. But I've started to exercise a little again, and I thought I'd remind everyone that I'm walking for a cause:

I've lost a bit of good training time, but that won't stop me from continuing. I've also got very few pledges, but I've got some ideas on how to raise some more. I won't start panicking until April rolls around, in any case. I will note that contributions are tax deductable, so if you donate in the next month or so you get a break on the upcoming taxes, and then you can donate again next year and get another break...

Comic Book-wise, I'm still working on reviews of last week's books, sorry. I've also got a small pile of other books I'm reviewing. I'm just really slow right now. I'll blame it on the cold, it's pretty much stopped me dead this last week, as you might have noticed from the really light blogging.

I had a pretty good Thanksgiving with my parents and little sister. One of the smallest Thanksgivings I've ever had, at least. My sister made the angel biscuits, and I think I want some more. Overall, very pleasant. Eric's family had an early Thanksgiving because Eric's sister was visiting from the East Coast the week before.

And finally. We really need a new bed. Really. Seriously.

by Tegan at 6:03 PM Seattle time - Permalink   

Sunday, November 28, 2004

Worlds Withing Worlds has an interesting rumor report. Seems really unlikely to me, but very intriguing.

Bob Haney suffers a stroke. News here.

Fun old Anti-Commie Comic Book. I think I've seen it before, but it's a timely relink. I think the remixes are about right.

Postmodern Barney continues to amuse with a story about a gender-changing Krypto. Lovely, indeed.

Tom Spurgeon reports on sales of The Golden Plates. I'm still waiting for hubby-Eric to read it to do a more in-depth review of it (no pressure, dear).

I knew there was a movie being made of Dianna Wynne Jones's Howl's Moving Castle, which I have not read but heard good things about. I knew that there was a new Hayao Miyazaki movie coming out. But for some odd reason, I never connected the two. WOW. I wanna see this one, the only question is... do I go read the book now or wait until the movie makes it over the Pacific and I can see it first?

Dialect Survey Maps, fun for anyone who talks. And here's another map, of world sunlight.

$100 Linux-run gateway-to-the-internet computers. For areas where people can't afford the expensive stuff, and it's recyclable and runs on solar power. Sounds cool.

Boing Boing points us to Ramayana, an on-line graphic novel of an extraordinary Indian epic. Well worth browsing over to.

I've had to add Filker Tom Smith to my RSS blogroll, as he's just too good to stop reading. This is the same guy responsible for one of my favorite Lord of the Rings filks, The Return of the King, Uh-Huh as well as The Trans Poly U Fight Song

MetaFilter discusses Sleep Paralysis. I used to have this quite a lot, but I had a doctor very early on who described it to me when I mentioned nightmares, so I knew it was common. I haven't had it for some time, though there have been scattered incidents more recently. It's just not common anymore, for me.

I like Mike Sterling's List of Christmas Songs. I keep thinking I ought to hunt some of them up for myself. But then, my list has "What Do You Get A Wookie For Christmas (When He Already Has A Comb)?" so I'm not sure I need anything else.

Neat link to cool automatons, including videos of the little guys in action.

The CIA is watching IRC for illegal activities. OOOh. Big Brother is getting closer and closer.

Holy Flaming Cows. I agree with just about every word in this column about abortion. My only suggestion on how to address the issues Dave covers is what I've been saying for many, many years. I have always been anti-abortion, but considered "pro-choice", because attempting to stop abortion through legislation was tried AND IT FAILED. I firmly believe that if the money that was poured into the pro-life movement was instead poured into education and help for young mothers, it would be possible to make abortion a socially offensive last-resort instead of a common method of birth control. And never underestimate the power of peer pressure as a force for good. If abortion no longer seems like a good choice, people won't choose it. Excellent article, Dave. If you've ever considered submitting something to one of those "best blogs" collections, submit this one.

And lastly, could everyone who has read this far click on this link, which goes to my Aquaman page, and tell me if it a) loads, and b) loads really slow. I've had a couple of complaints, but trying all my browsers, I can't find anything wrong with it. It loads fine and it loads pretty fast, for me. Anyway, if you choose to help me out here, please leave a comment. Thanks.

by Tegan at 6:37 PM Seattle time - Permalink