Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Call me cynical but where I come from
this would be called a con, not art. Still, fair fucks if there are enough people willing to pay up their hard-earned.
Play Frogger online. Always loved Frogger, so I did.
Shaving Cream is a racket - this guy
tried it out and says it's true, so I try it out and I have to concur. First time in my life I managed to shave without cutting myself.
Venezuelan politicians are, understandably, a
little put out about an upcoming game that allows players to take the role of soldiers sent to overthrow 'a power-hungry tyrant [who] messes with Venezuela's oil supply, sparking an invasion that turns the country into a war zone'.
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
For some reason, who knows why, my meandering mind brought me to thinking about
Creative Commons licenses. We've never actually taken one out for our
funny cartoons, yet in an informal sense we pretty much abide by one. Essentially all our cartoons are offered under the same terms as a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License - which is to say we encourage people to steal our cartoons for their site as long as they show them as provided and give a link back to us. Outside of that, of course, we also offer the feeds for anyone who wants to run the cartoons on a regular basis. My only qualm about the license is I'm not sure how I'd feel about people performing our cartoons.
On a somewhat related side note, I think I've mentioned before about our willingness to - for the time being at least - to turn a blind eye to hotlinking. Well, yes, ok, it's fine. Folks hotlinking our cartoons is flattering and it's not caused us any real problems but the people who are hotlinking the
blog cartoon shown here really are taking the piss. It's not ours. We had the decency to take it and upload it to our servers, so why can't you? You're running a blog, so you must be some way computer literate. Once I work out how to start fucking with you, I will and it won't be nice.
Monday, May 29, 2006
The Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards nomination rounds have begun and the teething problems they were having with the voting system seem to have been sorted. So I decide to go over and do up my nominations, only to realise that I actually read very few webcomics any more. And the ones I do read all seem to fit in the same categories. I'll have to try remember all those webcoimcs I liked but never followed up on. Of course, they now have an Outstanding Single Panel Cartoon category, so I had a sneaky look to see if we'd been nominated - which we weren't.
The web is oft fond of turning itself into some sort of intellectual pitched battleground - arguments arise and people twist them around like so many old crisp packets in the wind. As with so many (quasi)intellectual debates, it is so often a case of trying to push trees out of the way so you can get a better view of the woods.
Tom Raftery, a friend of ours but not one I'd always agree with, has been caught up in just one such warzone and, Tom being Tom, he's standing his ground in spite of the fact he's just become a father for the second time and could well do without the hassle. The argument arose over
IT@Cork's upcoming Web2.0 half-day conference. Our
cartoon from two weeks back will give you an idea of what I think of web2.0 but that's beside the point. What's happened here is that people representing Tim O'Reilly, the man who originally coined the phrase, are claiming a trademark infringement. Now you can get all
caught up in the legalese of it and you can
glaze over it with so much sycophantic saliva but, at it's heart it's a very simple issue. Is
Web2.0 the name of a product or service? The phrase was first coined,
Tim O'Reilly tells us, at a brainstorming session with Medialive to come up with a name for a conference they were arranging at the time. The term was meant to describe a phenomenon that was taking hold across the web. By his own admission, the phrase took hold and became common parlance across the internet community. At no point during this did anyone assert any claim over the term. After all, how could they? Web2.0 isn't a product or a service, it's a descriptive term. Now they want the trademark but only with regards it's use for conferences, which is all a bit Kate and Edith if you ask me. If they wanted an exclusive claim on the term, they should have fought this battle a long time ago. But, no, it served them well for everyone to adopt it. However they now seem unwilling to accept that by doing so, they essentially gave the term away. Whoever coined the phrase
The Celtic Tiger can hardly turn around now and claim it as a trademark. Has anyone thought of trademarking the word property as used in relation with expos(someone most have been the first to do it) - could be pretty lucrative. There's a story about
John Gilligan that I think Tom should have taking note of - when faced with a tax demand from the revenue commisioner, Gilligan took a pen, scrawled a big Fuck Off across it and sent it back. It's about as reasonable a response as this thing deserves. Failing that,
Twenty Major could be onto something.
Friday, May 26, 2006
Ok, anyone who knows me knows I would never be facetious about an issue of such seriousness to so many people but,
if they look like this, I'm not sure I'd find Israel's occupation altogether that objectionable.
Which brings me to the point -
Desmond Dekker performing Israelites.
And again.
And again.
Desmond Dekker has
died suddenly from a heart attack. The Jamaican Ska legend, whose hits included The Israelites, 007 (Shanty Town and King Of The Ska, was 64.
Last night was the first time in over 10 years that I went to bed before midnight without actually being sick. Now, it was a close run thing but it was before midnight. A mixture of a bad back pain the night before and running out of coffee meant I was knackered out all day. I only mention it to explain why I'm really
just as clueless as Frank as to what the title of this weeks
funny cartoon means.
Drawn has an interview with
Mo Willems, creator of
Sheep In The Big City amongst other things.
Toothpaste For Dinner has it's own football team. Now I want one. Think how you could strike fear in the hearts of your opposition by lining out in a
Death & Penguins t-shirt or even a
Family Butcherer one.
Gogags sell comics/comic strips to people who want to view them on their mobile(cell) phone. You download them to your computer and then put them on to your phone. Fair enough. Not sure I see the point if it's not actually being delivered directly to the phone but that's just me. Anyway, on their site I noticed a comic strip about Robert Scoble (or Scobie as I call him) -
who you can see here with one of our Death & Penguins t-shirts. Small world, eh.
Follow the
story of Philip Sandifer - accused of a crime that, well,
was never actually commited. The police defense seems to be
something akin to 'uhhh, no we didn't' - whether they ran off waving their arms like a bunch of eight year schoolgirls has yet to be confirmed.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Stumbling around from blog to blog yesterday, just clicking randomly on links, I fell across this, sadly, sparsely populated blog -
Sketch Hunter. It contains the work of Andrew Bosley, a recent graduate of the BFA Illustration program at San Jose State University(as if I know what the fuck that is). With any luck he'll start posting more often because this
stuff is
really top of the range.
After
I posted about the
Willow Coffins the other day, I got into a bit of a discussion with
Allen about how we want our corpses disposed of - so to speak. I figured it'd be kind of funny to have mine dismembered and left lying around in odd locations around the world. Though a
burial at sea might be funny too.
Just in case we were running out of bizarre and pointless exercises -
The Sheep Market.
Ok but if there are any girls there, I want to do them.
We're still
looking for guest artists. This has been delayed due to other work pressures but it should be happening soonish. So if you want to get in on it, let us know soon(ish).
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Football Heroes is a picture album dedicated to the World Cup. It feature 60 World Cup teams, including all qualifiers for upcoming finals in Germany, illustrated by 50 illustrators from around the World. There's a wealth of talent, both illustrative and footballing, on show. Some is very
clean and
cartoony,
some are a
little weird and some are just outright
residing on a
different planet. All in all, a very nice looking book.
Spotted that on
Drawn, which has loads of great links up today - including the
blog of Dreamworks animator/storyartist/designer Gabriele Pennacchioli.
And
congrats to Tom and Pilar on the birth of their second son, Enrique. I can only hope with a name like that he takes after his mother, complexion wise I mean. No offense Tom.
Monday, May 22, 2006
A
post I just saw at
Irish Blogs remeinded me of Saturday night in the pub. I'd gone in to watch Cork City playing Derry and had to watch it through continued heckles from people, grown men and football fans, who wanted to see the fucking
Eurovision. Eventually, the barman put on the second telly and we city fans were left in peace. Then, after the match, when the votes were being tallied in the Eurovision, the pub started to fill up. By the end of the night it was packed with people cheering, not Ireland's entry, but
Lordi. It was a very strange experience.
I like these -
environmentally friendly willow coffins.
As
Jason Kottke has pointed out, Playboy has listed it's
25 sexiest novels of all time. Rather dissappointingly I've only read one,
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, and I actually never finished it. It was one of those birthday presents Frank gives me every year even though I've never bought him a present in my life. I might go back and read it now though.
Football jersey fonts.
Friday, May 12, 2006
Today's funny cartoon is going to be late. Frank won't get back in time and I've been too busy(lazy) to sort out a replacement. Anyway, it'll go up some time tonight, I guess - which means you'll all have a chance to see it before I do.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Zach at
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal has quit his day job to concentrate on it full-time. Not sure how he's planning on earning but he mentions something about a manager in his newly launched podcast. SMBC is a daily single-panel cartoon and, apparently, if you read it your pee won't sting. He's actually developed quite a unique style that,
when it works, it
works really well. Check it out for yourself. If you like it, you like it. If you don't, you don't. No skin off my nose either way.
And
here, here - Jim Broadbent from
Jimmy McGovern's The Street.
