Link love for August 6th, part 1

Posted on August 6, 2009 by Jeffrey Melton

Track and Field: Drawing from the Arena (above), by Cassandra Jones.

5 Reasons your marketing plan will fail.

New editions of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series let you create your own cover art.

An investigation by The Smoking Gun unmasks the leader of Pranknet and the miscreants behind a year-long wave of phone call criminality.

Nathan Shredoff has released a series of free syllabi and teaching materials to help instructors teach students key topics for the future.

Learn logo design from top brands.

Taking Steps toward zero waste.

Olympus announces LS-11, a compact digital audio recorder.

Link love for May 22nd

Posted on May 22, 2009 by Jeffrey Melton

The Roomba Art Pool on Flickr (above).

Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party (video).

Why do we often care more about imaginary characters than real people? A new book suggests that fiction is crucial to our survival as a species.

Everything Tracy Jordan Said in Season 3 of 30 Rock.

Danger Mouse to release blank CD after record label EMI reportedly cancelled his new album.

The coming wave of cellphone novels, Twitter fiction, sudden fiction, and flash fiction.

How using gestures can make you smarter.

The duplicability of recordings has had another unexpected effect. The pressure is on to develop content that isn’t easily copyable—so now everything other than the recorded music is becoming the valuable part of what artists sell.

Yudo announces 8Bitone Retro 8-bit Synthesizer + Sequencer for iPhone/iPod Touch.

Book bytes

Posted on January 8, 2009 by Jeffrey Melton

I had some time over the holidays to do a lot of reading, mostly short stories and graphic novels. Here’s a list of recommendations:

Pretty Monsters: Stories – terrific contemporary fantasy and modern fairy tales, by Kelly Link
The Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet – collected shorts from the underground contemporary fantasy zine, edited by Kelly Link
Ice Haven – each character is fixated on someone else, by Daniel Clowes
Dream Country (The Sandman, Vol. 3), Season of Mists (The Sandman, Vol. 4) – more about the King of Dreams, by Neil Gaiman
Shortcomings – longing and confusion, by Adrian Tomine
Queen & Country: The Definitive Edition, Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3 – great action and espionage series, by Greg Rucka
I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets! – vintage cosmic weirdness, by Fletcher Hanks
The Best American Comics 2007 – another great collection, this one edited by Chris Ware
Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth – the seminal work, by Chris Ware

Beep

Posted on November 24, 2008 by Jeffrey Melton

Recent consumption:

Listening: Monolake in the morning, Biosphere in the afternoon
Watching: My Neighbor Totoro, Dark City (Director’s Cut), Thieves Like Us, Quiet City
Reading: The Sandman Vol. 2: The Doll’s House, Coraline, Stardust by Neil Gaiman
Drinking: Starbucks Serena Blend Organic Coffee, Xingu Black Beer, Red Stripe Lager
Playing: Circle Synth, AAS Modeling Collection, iZotope Ozone 3

Posted on April 28, 2008 by Jeffrey Melton

I finished The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials, Book 2) last week but am taking a break before starting the final book. It’s interesting, and reading that it’s a retelling of Milton’s Paradise Lost makes me want to dive into that epic poem (some day). For now, I’m reading some early pulp detective stories in Raymond Chandler: Stories and Early Novels (Library of America), which I found at a neighborhood used book store, Every Other Book. Hardboiled.