What a great dog. Very sadly no longer with us. I made an 11×17 calendar of him in PDF format you can see at this link. If you are interested in getting your own printed copy, let me know (you can download and print yourself too, np – but note the file is 130mb, so pretty big due to the oversized images). Printing it like I did costs about $35 all told at Kinko’s – which is why I could only afford to do one for Dawniel – if you see her anytime soon, check it out in person – it came out really cool, actually.

B, RIP – you were one of a kind.

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Yay Savage Chickens! here’s to ten more years!

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Somewhere, Terry Tate is smiling….Was he a Star Wars fan?

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Iron Giant: Up close with Kuratas, the $1.4 million, 4-ton mech robot

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An oldie but a goodie…

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So Amazon is trying to get on the ‘online studio/streaming’ bandwagon with a number of new pilots – most of which I haven’t paid attention to, but The Man in the High Castle is of particular interest, given that it’s based on a PKD book, one for which he won the Hugo back in the 60’s.

This the story of an alternate history where the Axis won WWI and divided up the world (specifically the USA for the plot of the book) between them. The story flips between the East Coast (dominated by Nazis), West Coast (run by the Japanese) and a central ‘neutral zone’ (I think it was called the Colorado Free State in the booK).

After some stupid tech issues, I finally got the video to run – the first episode is free, although it does make you log in with your Amazon account. Not sure if they are doing a miniseries (like the initial return of BSG was before it became a full-on series) or trying to extend the original story beyond that of the novel, but it’s an interesting start, and well-made so far. I liked the several Seattle ‘architectural cameos’ in it – nice touch, Bezos – and I liked that the actors aren’t big names – for a series like this, I think that in many ways detracts from the story, especially with an ensemble cast.

Definitely interested to see more – although now I may need to take a spin back through the original book too, as it’s been so long since I read it. Hoping they do this justice like A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report or Blade Runner – and NOT like the recent adaptations of The Hobbit (for which JRR T must be doing backflips in his grave about now) but time will tell….here’s a clip:

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Rude and crude French cartoonists died for our freedom

I think David Horsey has the best take on this so far as concerns the types of ‘satire’ this French magazine put out. While naturally killing people you don’t agree with or those who make fun of you is beyond the pale, it’s not completely surprising they were pissed off from Horsey’s description.

But free speech isn’t about whether you like the speech that ends up freed…..Ask any Illinois Nazi….

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was on The Atlantic’s site today and saw a 1913 pic of the Wuppertal Schwebebahn – I got to ride that thing several years ago – way cool! Have to dig up the pics and writeup from then as the FOM site is no longer online, apparently….click here to see the Schwebebahn as it is today…apparently hauls 25M people a year? wild. Suck on THAT, ‘Sound’ Transit!

On This Day: The Wuppertaler Schwebebahn in 1913

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this is one of the most surreal things i’ve ever seen – and I love it! This is (obviously) done by Aardman Animations, the creators of Wallace and Gromit (CHEESE!) and Chicken Run – but this is way, way weirder and harder to follow than those. Which is yet again, why I love it. Apparently there are about 26 episodes, and the series is already 15+ years old? How did I miss this? Off to watch some more…:)

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