Blog

I have no artistic talent, and no plans to start drawing or writing comics — even if I were to call them graphic novels. So, why did I just read Making Comics? This broad how-to about how to, yes, make comics caught my eye because the more I do in business, the more I realize that telling a story is an essential skill.

Scott McCloud has made a name for himself over the last decade. Less for his actual art, though, and more for his examination and popularization of comics as an art form in English. Word has spread to the usability community, perhaps because he’s been a digital artist for some time. I came across McCloud’s work a few years ago, but Making Comics is his first book I’ve bought and read.

It’s done as a comic book, and the visual pointers are critical. Lead by example, and all that. It’s a quick read, at least for me, since I didn’t pore over the images and try any of the exercises suggested at the end of each chapter. I simply wanted to think differently about how stories are told, and perhaps find ways to apply the ideas to my work.

I’m personally stuck with words as my outlet. But the more I do online, the greater appreciation I have for images which tell a story well. A picture is worth far more than 1000 words, since few people want to read that much!

I picked up The Fallen because it was sitting out at Cody’s Books (Stockton Street), on a table near the front. I wanted something I could dive into immediately on the bus ride home. Don’t ever let someone say that awards don’t matter, because the big “two-time winner of the Edgar award for best novel” definitely helped make up my mind. Or maybe it was, subliminally, the OpenDNS orange lettering on the cover (click cover for larger version). 😉

Anyway, T. Jefferson Parker delivered a great read. A homicide detective investigating a murder…pretty standard outline of a plot, but the story is about people, well painted. The detective has synesthesia and a marriage that’s not quite what he thinks. The murder victim had been recovering from the recent drowning death of his three-year-old daughter. (As a parent, even reading about this kind of tragedy hurts.) We actually get to “know” the victim quite well, thanks to the investigation. Mix in a range of characters scattered around San Diego’s political life, and you have a good story told very well.

I’ve made ginger beer three times now, with the most recent time being earlier this week. I’ve made two adjustments to my process, and the results are slightly improved.

First, I use nine cups of water instead of ten. The resulting brew is a tad bit sharper, which I like, and I don’t lose any trying to squeeze the end product into a too-small pitcher.

Second, I found the right pot for the process: an asparagus cooking pot. Tall and thin, with a strainer built to fit. Boil the water in the pot, then put the chopped ginger in the strainer, and slide the strainer right in. After the steeping, pull the strainer out. Easy clean-up, and easy pouring from the asparagus pot into the pitcher. Two separate problems solved at once, so now I’m likely to make this delicious concoction more often.

Aren’t you glad you know now?

Update: I was burned by the April Fool’s Joke. If you can’t pull it on April 1, I don’t know if it counts… but oh well.

The acquisition of F**ckedCompany.com by TechCrunch makes some sense. Still, Mike Arrington might want to reconsider this quote.

That does not bode well for the future – there just isn’t anything left to invent.

Whether we’re riding a boom, a bust, or something in between in the tech/Internet world, predicting the end of innovation feels foolish.

On Tuesday, when David announced 100 billion DNS queries for OpenDNS, the chart was enhanced with a dancing banana. Go ahead, click through and see.

Back yet?

Good. Now compare the dancing banana to Snappy, the dancing logo of the original Snap.com, shared here. (Thanks to David, Snappy loops continually now.)

This is before Snap became NBC Internet (NBCi), before the company went defunct, and before the Idealab folks bought the easy-to-remember domain name and relaunched a search site. We’re talking 1997-1998.

I am not nostalgic for all of the dot-boom era, but Snappy always made me smile. Here is a less animated, less yellow version of the original site logo:

And another year has passed. Kids happily re-gifted some of their presents to me, and cupcakes were enjoyed by all.

I started the day in darkness with a mile run on the Kezar track, as I’ve done occasionally in past years. 5:23 left me convinced that I haven’t slowed down too much, although I can’t find records of past years (which is why I’m blogging this). Staying under six minutes is the general point.

clock hits a milestone today, too. I started this blog four years ago. Three years ago, I was still blogging heavily. Two years ago, the posts were slowing down. One year ago, little had changed. This year has been pretty light, but this is still post number 1224.

The next month at work is going to be hectic, but fun because we will be sharing cool stuff that’s been under development for a while. Eight months in, and we hit 100 billion DNS requests today. Lots more to come!

I got to take credit for something today that I didn’t do, thanks to the wife. How much longer before the boy reads the blog and asks me what I’m referring to? 😉

(Yes, I owe you big time.)

Last week, the boy wanted to make Inca masks. I told him we might find something on the Internet, so he typed away. Didn’t get a great response from the Safari address bar, but I think he’s starting to get the idea. Note: I never did find useful instructions for such a craft project, even with some later searching. Pointers welcome!

I have not yet turned Growl back on, but Growl was not the problem. I took the iMac G5 into the Genius Bar last Saturday night (yes, I’m that much fun), for the second trip in three days.

Good news, though, was that I left the computer there that night, and had it back, free of charge, with a brand-new power supply on Monday night. All is well once again, and my computer wakes and sleeps easier than I do once more. The Genius Bar experience was quite good all the way through, especially with the availability of online appointment scheduling. I didn’t want to be there, but all three visits were quick, and I got competent helpful people, at no charge. That is ever more rare, so it is notable.

Norman Mailer‘s best-known book The Naked and the Dead filled my nights over the last few weeks. I didn’t plow straight through, but I became more interested the further I went on.

My grandfather served on a destroyer in the Pacific during World War II. The island warfare depicted in this book, following an army platoon, wasn’t his war, directly, but I wondered about how his Navy experience jibed with these descriptions.

The profiles of each individual sharpened the book wonderfully. The range of characters gives every reader of the book someone to identify with. Mailer’s characters were better than his story, but the story isn’t bad.

I knew Mailer’s name, and several of the titles of his books. But I had never read him until now. I was prompted to read his work after seeing him twice in recent months. Once was on film, in the documentary When We Were Kings.

The second time was at the City Arts & Lectures series early last month. I was happy to have a ticket, even though it was back row of the balcony. Very entertaining conversation, in a way that I wouldn’t necessarily assume is true of all authors.

Being able to engage on the page, in an extended, polished flow of words, is not the same skill as speaking and thinking in full sentences and connected thoughts. Mailer has both talents, polished over a lifetime. After all, Mailer ran for mayor of New York and generally enjoyed the celebrity (literary and otherwise) that the success of The Naked and the Dead brought him at the ripe old age of 25. Nearly 60 years later, he’s physically frail, but mentally acute. We can all only wish for so much.