Survey rubbish doing the rounds, I’m bored, you do the maths…

Everyone else etc etc

Those of you who’re disposed to shop at Waterstones may want to read Charlie Stross’ comments on how Waterstones in Edinburgh have fired an excellent employee simply for keeping a blog in his own time.  I’m certainly thinking I won’t be shopping there any more.

(link via tinyjo)

This will probably mean nothing to most of the people on my friends list. I find that thought almost as depressing as the news itself.

Eisner’s got such a body of work behind him that I’ve never got around to reading it all, but of what I have read, I’ve liked most of. He’s the author of one of only two or three decent texts on the craft and mechanics of comics, and he produced “A Contract With God”, generally reckoned to be the first original graphic novel (a bookshelf comic that had not previously published in serialised form) in 1978. He’s been a huge infulence over the medium, specifically toward a more grown-up market, and were there any justice, he’d be the household name while Stan Lee languished in obscurity.

If you have no idea who he is, you really should check out his work.

So, as I hope most of you are aware, I’ve started a photoblog over at electricana.  I started it in an idle moment, figuring that if I put up a couple of images a month, I’d be doing pretty well.  Instead, I have suprised myself by managing to put photos up at the rate of more or less one a day.  More surprising still, is how rewarding I’ve found doing it.

So I’m going to keep doing it, in the hope that I’ll get better at it.  I’m setting myself a target of putting five new photos a week on there every week for the next year.

Why am I telling you this?

Because I’m an attention-seeking tart, obviously.  It’s looking like this is going to be my major creative project for the next year, and at the moment, it’s got an audience of about 20 people.  I’d like to build that up a bit.  So, firstly, this is just a reminder that the journal exists for you to friend if you’d like.  It won’t break your friends page, and it won’t be loads of big images.  Unless something goes wrong, I won’t be posting more than one picture a day, two at the most, and none of them will be huge.  Go on, validate me.

But secondly, and more importantly: Tell your friends.  If you see an image you like on there, feel free to repost it in your own journal, providing you credit me, and post a link back to electricana.  Do this as often as you like.  Encourage others to friend the journal, or link to it in whatever way they’d like, if they’re not on LJ.  You will not need to know me in order to (I hope) enjoy the photos.  This is not going to be a photo diary, and it won’t contain loads of tedious photos of people they don’t know, unless the shots are interesting in and of themselves.

So.  electricana.  Tell Your Friends.

2004 has shat the last of it’s rancid guts out.  It’s over.  Expired.

Re-fucking-sult.

2005: I’m watching you carefully.  You have been warned.

There’s a toast I like at this time of year:

“May those that love us, love us.  And those that don’t love us, let God turn their hearts.  And if he cannot turn their hearts, let him turn their ankles, so we’ll know them by their limp.”

Happy New Year, everyone.

(And apologies to all at alexdecampi and davebushe‘s place.  I left in a small pile of pain, and getting home and wearing something, you know, comfortable became a bit of a priority.  And now I’m home, well, I’m discovering that I’m quite tired.  So I’ll see you all in the week.)

For one reason or another, I have found myself attempting to articulate the collection of ropey ideas that passes for my beliefs to various people lately. And every damn time I have, I’ve gotten up the following day, and realised I’ve done another dismal job of it, left half of it out or phrased something badly, and that it’s probably left them thinking I’m either strange, credulous, half-mad or half-baked. Or some combination thereof.

So, as the afternoon sun slips away behind the clouds, and 2004 coughs blood and dies in the gutter like the dog it was, I thought I’d attempt to write them up here, so’s I’d have something I can point people at.

Something to remember, before I begin: belief is an analogue state. Some days, most of this is complete rubbish. Other days it’s gospel truth. Most days, it’s somewhere in between – some bits feel more right than others. This is cobbled together from thoughts and ideas from a variety of sources – from my own experiences, from other’s accounts of their experiences, and from observing commonalities between various faiths, schools of though and rantings of mad bastards.

Lastly, and most importantly: these are just my beliefs. Doesn’t make ‘em true, or anything. I’d never suggest that I’ve got a better handle on the way the universe works than anyone else does. This is just what gets me through the week, you know? I reserve the right to change any or all of this based on later experience.  Holding beliefs you’re not willing to change is a bit stupid, really.
Half Mad and Half Baked

Thanks to zoo_music_girl I have discovered that there is a Tansads album I do not own.  I have checked all the usual second hand CD sites and the like, and I will be attempting to get it via the one possible route I can find (a mail order address on a website that may be years out of date).  But if anyone can help me get hold of a copy faster (either a CD, or just the MP3s) then you will earn my undying gratitude, and many beers.

So, anyone out there got a copy of the Tansads album “Reason To Be”?

I am, I concede, easily pleased.  It doesn’t take much to make me happy.  For instance: today, I have been shopping, and then for a drink with budgie_uk.  I have picked up a few DVDs, and yet another bottle of whisky.  I hadn’t meant to, but it looked so pretty, and it wasn’t expensive.  I also popped into a specialist coffee retailers, and picked up some whole beans.  I’d gotten out of the habit of doing that, ever since I cut back heavily on coffee.  I try not to drink more than a mug or two a day, these days.  Which means that making whole cafetiere loads the way I used to is out, really.  So I stopped buying beans, because I always wound up with more coffee that I could use/was willing to drink, however nice it was.

I got given one of those tiny re-fillable one cup devices for Christmas – you know, the bit of plastic with a filter at the bottom that sits over the cup, like a mini-drip filter.  I’ve been buying M&S one-use versions that come prefilled with coffee for a months now.  Telling myself they made a perfectly good cup.  And they do, I suppose.  I mean, they’re not actually poisonous, unlike Nescafe, or similar filth.

But they’re not a patch on the real thing.  I’d forgotten how nice it was.

I have spent today putting up shleves and re-arranging my bedroom.  Festive fun for everyone.  I am more-or-less done, and right now,I just don’t want to do any more tidying.

In the process, though, I did turn up a comic I’d forgotten I’d bought, and as a result, I direct you to Daniel Merlin Goodbrey‘s excellent webcomic The Mr. Nile Experiment.  Those paying attention will remember him as the artist on RUST.  His own writing is far better, and far clever than mine, particularly in the specific field of webcomics, where he remains one of the few talents who seem seriously interested in innovating with the form.  Go and look.

I’m in the process of a re-vamp for Black Ink.  It’s about a day or so from being finished.  It’s still in very stark greys, and I want to warm it up a bit, as well as adding a few bits and pieces back in, and make it a bit clearer what’s what on the page with some header graphics, but despite all that it’s gone live anyway.  Why?  Because while I was attempting to make the fucking thing work with the new design, Nucleus (my old blogging tool) up and shat itself, and destroyed my old archive, taking with it several years worth of my on-line wittering.  I’d been planning on taking it away anyhow, but I’d quite have liked a chance to take a copy first.