Month: November 2004

words and pictures

Following up on an earlier post on graphic novels, I have since read Persepolis, put the sequel to it on hold at my local library, and just finished Reinventing Comics. Persepolis is great, wonderful art and a compelling story.

Reinventing Comics will take another reading before I feel like I understand it all: the book comes in two parts, a review of the past and preview of the future. The past section is fine, lots of stuff to learn from and like. But the forward-looking part was published in 2000, and reliant as it is on the internet as a key component, it seems a little dated. I don’t think it can be helped: McCloud is quick to admit to the “under construction” aspects of this part of the book and promises updates at his website. A quick glance tells me he’s walking the walk: he sees digital delivery and micropayments as a Great Leveller for comics artists and creators, and right now you can get Part two of his novella The Right Number for a cool quarter (US$.25).

phishing under cover of eBay: beware

This came in via email this AM: looks pretty authentic, doesn’t it?

Ebay Phishing-1

Now, if this were straight up, you’d think I would be alerted while I was logged into my eBay page: I am and I wasn’t. So I’m guessing this is bogus.

Let’s see: what other clues are there?

  • My user name doesn’t appear, nor does my real name (ie, how they would have me recorded in their billing records)
  • Misspellings (departement?) are a tipoff: something like this would probably have been looked over by a lawyer or three, to say nothing of the accounting staff, and various others.
  • And the secure.ebay.com link goes to “http://site2.apollohosting.com/mmstech.net/httpdocs/” not eBay.

I spell a scam. Don’t you fall for it or anything similar.

scratch/mix/burn

The conversation about digitizing old vinyl was interesting. It lent some insight into the perceived state of the art, for one thing. For example, someone wished for a way to split album sides into tracks: that already exists, so I wonder how the perceived lack of that keeps people away from migrating their old LPs into more useful bits.

The back and forth about whether or not you could use a soundcard was puzzling as well: my experiments (once I figured out how to connect it all together) went just fine: I didn’t get any noise or internal crosstalk through the soundcard. It’s not like there’s a microphone in there.

Of course, the real upshot of this is a desire to get back into this myself: I still have lots of sides I need to convert. It’s just time-consuming and requires a bit more focus than ripping CDs: there’s the prep work of getting the media ready — cleaning and dust removal — then you need to listen to the process and make sure you don’t get any skips: clicks and pops can be cleaned up but skips can’t skips can’t skips can’t skips can’t skips can’t be helped.

On the 30,000 LP project, I’m not sure how it’s going to go: the guy who owns the vinyl isn’t the same guy who wants to digitize it and it’s not clear they’re on the same page. Watch this space for updates.

bitten by his own dog

Gates has millions … of spam messages every day:

If you don’t think anybody else could possibly get any more spam than you, think of Bill Gates.

The Microsoft Corp. chairman receives about 4 million pieces of e-mail per day, most of it junk, says Steve Ballmer, the company’s chief executive.

Well, I don’t know that I feel any great sympathy for him: it’s likely that a lot of the junk originates with exploited Windows systems, either for addresses or the sending.

And this part did nothing to make me feel any empathy:

Thanks to technology developed by Microsoft, Ballmer said, only about 10 junk e-mails make it through to his inbox each day.

I have to assume this whizzy new stuff runs on their servers, so it’s not something one could expect in a service pack for end-users, but what is stopping them from making it available for enterprises that run Exchange servers?

y kant jonny rede?

This needs to be read in full (Professor Holbo is the windiest of the CT crew: bear with it):

Crooked Timber: Enrich Your Word Power:

I guess I just can’t quite believe that it could be true that less than 50% of the population has read any literature in the last year. (The idea that you can’t assign a 200-page novel in a college class? Preposterous. Can’t be.)

A great post and discussion about college kids who can’t read a 200 page novel without getting lost and who have trouble with literary devices like changes of voice and perspective. I can remember discovering college freshmen who had never read a book. 18 years old, old enough to vote, old enough to be conscripted, but no recreational book learning. And that was 20 years ago, before the Internet, before the ubiquitous PC, before video games (other than arcade games).

fun with mashups

1077 The End:

Green Day/Oasis/ Travis/Aerosmith Mash Up!

You heard it first courtesy of Dick Rossetti, now hear it on-line: Win | Real.

I didn’t really understand what this mashup stuff was all about, until today when I heard this. Check it out: it’s fun even if you don’t know or care for the tunes that much. It’s clever how they work together, especially the big finish. Don’t miss that . . .

undermine the RIAA

Seen on FreeCycle/Seattle:

Hello, my friend has recently come into approximately 30,000 records(!) many of which are old enough as to be public domain, i.e. their copyrights are expired. He has offered to let me digitize them so that they may be distributed, to undermine the record companies and their patterns of re-releasing albums periodically in a “remastered” cd so that the copyrights never expire. I have the computer and software necessary to digitize these records (which include crazy rare ethnic and folk music, as well as odd “mood” atmospheric music), but need a record player with component outputs, ie a linelevel output, so that i can hook it up to my soundcard. I can afford a needle, I just need a decent record player. Help the world, give me the old record player in your garage. Recordings will be distributed on an ftp site and on peer to peer programs (people actually do use these for legitimate purposes!).

Reply directly (I’m not the guy doing this.)