Posts from — March 2009

So Kevin emailed me the “IronMan In April” details. I’ve copied the email below. Check it out and sign up.

Despite my massive cold at the start of the month, I’ll be doing the IMIA as I did last year (my progress last year). I’d really encourage you all to try – and partner up if you prefer. Kev’s email—

“Swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles, run 26.2 miles, brag for the rest of your life.” John Collins – Founder of the Ironman triathlon I invite you to participate with me in Iron-April. As spring begins, the challenge is to cover the Ironman triathlon distance, in the three sports of triathlon, during the month of April. This is a challenging, yet attainable goal for most folks and a great way to break out of winter. What does it take? The total miles for a typical week might look like this:

.5 mile in a pool

28 miles on a bike

6.5 miles running or walking Sound like too much? There is a 2-person division (see below) If you work out 6 days a week, your week might look like this. . . Monday – walk 30 minutes (1.5 miles)
Tuesday – swim 20 minutes (.5 miles)
Wednesday – bike 1 hour (13 miles)
Thursday – REST
Friday – walk/run 30 minutes (2.5 miles)
Saturday – bike 1 hour (13 miles)
Sunday – walk/run 30 minutes (2.5 miles)

Of course, there are tons of different ways to get the miles. For some, it might only require working out 2-3 times a week. But, this gives you an idea of what it would take to gain the 140.6 miles of swimming, biking, and running during one month. Stationary bikes and treadmills are fine ways of covering the distance. During April, I

Eunice sent me this list of 50 of the world’s best food blogs. The Homesick Texan is on there at #32… not that it’s a ranked list. I’m quite fond of her blog. Becks & Posh is listed too…

A good list- add some of those to your RSS readers…

So last week, I tried to take my friend KP down to the Waffle Man but our schedules conflicted at the last minute and I got to go have lunch with Kev instead so everything was working out. Except that I hadn’t had a waffle.

Well, lo and behold, on the way back from a Turkey ABC sandwich at Sweet Jo’s, Kevin pointed to some freshly cooked waffles in the window of the Saigon Deli (over on Steuart). We just *had* to stop at that point and try one out. They’re green tea waffles (still in the Sweet family, but just barely out of the Savory family for those that care) and they’re good! I still like the Waffle Man downtown but when I can’t make it there I’m glad to know I can run across the street for a Green Tea Waffle.

So a few weeks ago I went to WonderCon here in SF. I meant to post some thoughts and notes about the event, but then I got sick and didn’t feel like writing anything. So here are some thoughts that aren’t timely any more.

For those of you that don’t know WonderCon is basically a comic book convention, but there are other themes/events there so it draws non-comic peeps as well. I was there primarily to hang out with an old friend who now is a comic book publisher. Because of that connection I was able to get a presenter’s pass and a guided tour behind the scenes. It was quite fascinating to see the business side of the convention. The last time I had even been to a con was in the 7th grade, and that was with this same friend, but back when we were living in SA and saving up our money for X-Men books and anything John Byrne was drawing at the time. Anyway, I got introduced to some really nice artists and writers. I even recognized some names, so I got to be a bit of a fanboi.

Random note: Most of the people I met were incredibly well read. And I’m not talking about comic books. These guys were trading notes on the latest literature and even business books. I thought I did a decent job keeping up with the occasional book on the bus– but no way, no comparison. These guys and gals devour books. Now, a few of them listen to audiobooks too because they commute in LA, but even with that they must be reading all night. (note: I found out later that the Kindle is really popular with this crowd because they really can speed up their reading)

I went and sat in on a panel talk. A lot of these panels at cons are were the real news comes out. The bulk of them though (if you’re at a publisher’s panel) are like the quarterly team meetings and updates in the tech world: a quick look at the last quarter or two and the roadmap for the remainder of the year.

At the Boom! Studios panel I went to there were some cool items on their roadmap. I’ll post some links en masse below but here’s what I thought was really interesting. Boom! has a deal with iVerse to publish some of their titles on the Android and iPhone. Their title “Hexed” (which is a really good book- I’m waiting for issue #4 and I’m hoping it keeps going) was the first comic on the Android platform.

10K copies were downloaded in the first 48 hours and more than 20K were downloaded immediately after the conclusion of the recent NY ComicCon. — Now as pridkett pointed out to me on irc, 30K downloads doesn’t mean 30K paying users, but still that’s great news and I hope Boom! (and iVerse) convert a lot of those users to paying customers.

What’s interesting is the free numbers/signups can convert to paid users not just in the software world, but if those readers go to a brick & mortar comic shop and pick up a title they wouldn’t otherwise, then the publisher wins too. (and that’s been happening for a lot of titles)

Random note 2: (random notes & thoughts I scribbled during the Boom! panel):
Paramount optioned “Foundation”;
Mr. Stuffins looks great;
Cthulu continues to be popular (I need to pick up Vol #3 The Gray Man)
There’s a bighuge market for TV & movie tie-in(?) titles (Farscape, Muppets, The Incredibles);
There’s a lot of buzz about some upcoming Mark Waid books

Two stories to leave you with- (I may have to take these down, they may be confidential)

1) I was talking about tech support land and translation problems dealing with India… but the comics guys all had stories about Brazil (and Korea too I think). Apparently they have artists all over the world working with them (it’s not really outsourcing, they just like good art no matter where they find it) and a lot of times the artists use their own translators or translation services, and with mixed results.

One story involved a script which described a bad guy in a panel as “rat-faced”. Well, that artist drew a rat-faced man. Another editor had a similar story where he couldn’t figure out why a lot of characters were being drawn suddenly as black people until he re-read the notes to the artists which used phrases like dark and brooding… apparently that translates to ‘mean black guy w/ a furrowed brow’.

And my favorite was about a series involving old Roman and Greek ships. There was a line in the script where after a battle the sailors ‘dropped oars to float away’ – the art came back as the sailors throwing a large crate marked ‘oars’ over the side of the boat and sinking while the boat floated off somehow….

2) There was a lot of talk about how great it is to work with really great people who were just getting into comics or switching careers and producing art. One such person was a young woman in Spain who wound up doing all the art for Hexed (Emma Rios) (flickr link). Apparently she had been working as an architect and drawing on the side. But after doing just a few issues of Hexed (and some other titles), she started getting noticed and picking up a lot of fans. She’s been picked up by other publishers and will be doing a lot of comic art for some major titles soon. I think the Boom! guys only met her online… I’m not sure about that. But that’s great for both of them.

Links:
Boom! Studios

iVerse Media

Top Cow

Radical Comics

Mark Waid’s blog

a good post from Filp Sablik of TopCow

I’ve been mixing up my bus commute as far as reading material goes- well, that is to say, I’ve been reading a bit less. One of the reasons that happened is because I put a few seasons of The Venture Bros. on my iphone. I can usually squeak in one episode per trip to the office from my stop.

I just have to pimp out this cartoon though- it’s freaking brilliant. I got to be “that creepy guy” at the back of the bus because there were many times that I “lol’d”. So, do yourself a favor, and check out the show. If you don’t want to buy it from Amazon, it’s on Netflix.

So I have another waffle vid for you from my infamous art project. I apologize in advance for any shakiness in the video. I checked the camera after Jim informed me that my last vid was like the opening of Cloverfield 2. Ouch- but he’s right. It looks fine on the camera, but there’s something wrong in the export. Anyway, I’ll try to get that fixed in the near future. But first- waffles:

So my buddy Ronak wanted to try the waffles for herself, and our Wednesdays have been booked solid at work. We had to schedule a quick 30 min meeting on our office calendars to even attempt to get waffles. When our selected Wednesday came, we *ran* out the door, got on Muni and ran up the escalator to get our waffles. We started eating them on the street and then realized even after one bite that we had to hurry back, so we started our way back down to the Muni train, running through the station. We shouldn’t have run for two reasons-

1) the waffles are meant to be enjoyed, not rushed

2)Ronak was getting powdered sugar all over herself (I’m not sure but I think she’d do this standing still too) As we were running through the gates, two female Muni cops yelled for us to stop. So we stopped and brandished our Muni passes. They said- “thanks, but we saw you had passes, we’re just stopping you because you aren’t supposed to have food down here ohhh, waffles! Aren’t those good? and (looking at me) Don’t gobble that waffle down, take your time and enjoy it. I said, “she hasn’t had the waffles before so we had to run out of work so she could try one. We scheduled a meeting and everything.” They looked at us, then at each other and said- “well, y’all go on through, but you’re not supposed to have food down here, so if another Muni officer gets mad, it’s on you.” So we ran down the remaining stairs and caught a train back to the office. Those 20 minutes were the only bright spot in a rough and busy week. Mmm waffles.