Googling at 3 AM

The danger of having a net-connected computer in your bedroom: There’s little to keep you from getting out of bed at 3 AM to google for something you just thought of. In my case, I was thinking about drawing, and how incredibly useful it would be if I could carry a non-repro-blue pencil in my pocket, and didn’t have to sharpen it all the time, and I suddenly realized that what I really need is non-repro-blue leads for a mechanical pencil! It looks like such things do exist, though I can’t find them listed for certain in either Dick Blick’s or Cheap Joe’s.

Hrnm. Must have. Must have!

BFL, week 7, day 3: upper-body

(  Upper-body workout numbers  )

More about webcomics

Bruno’s back! I know I’d get flamed if I said so on his discussion board, but I didn’t like Little Dee (scroll down) at all. It wasn’t funny, and it wasn’t anywhere near as visually engaging as Bruno. I think Chris Baldwin would really be better off forgetting about the daily newspaper market and aiming for the weeklies, putting out something with a larger format and the more intricate art that he does so well. Speaking of which, he’s done the cover for the current issue (8.1) of Comixpedia.

I’m getting a bit frustrated with Modern Tales. It was great to have a big batch of new webcomics to browse through, and I really like some of them, but now I’m stuck in gradual update hell. Look at Streets of Northhampton, for example. I liked this a lot when I could read through big chunks of it, but in little dribs and drabs it just makes no sense, loses its narrative cohesion.

What I’ll probably do with Modern Tales and its sister sites is let my subscription lapse at the end of the month, then get another one-monther in, say, six months. That’ll keep the total expense in the $10-15/year range, and let me read the comics in big gulps.

My respect for Fred Gallager, of MegaTokyo has gone up a few notches. He’s done a great job of telling a long-term story while still keep each installment entertaining in its own right, even if it does mean that his thrice-weekly update schedule is only nominal.

Another approach is the one Faith Erin Hicks uses for Demonology 101. She updates every couple of weeks (for a fuzzy value of “couple”), but typically with four to eight pages of material at a shot, enough to give the sense of an ongoing story.

Life in the Pigeon Factory

The apartment we live in is the top two stories of a house (once two houses); my room and a couple of storage rooms are under the roof, with slanted ceilings. There’s a crawlspace running the width of the house, at the front, formed by the space at the edge of the roof that wasn’t deemed worth making part of an actual room. There’s a small door in my room that gives me access to the crawlspace; I’ve been meaning to store some stuff in it. Just as well I hadn’t, because today it turns out that (1) it leaks, and (2) the reconstruction of the house next door has caused one of the walls to open up, so pigeons have been roosting in it. There’s now a crate blocking pigeon access, but the droppings are still there.

Spent some more time at Ground, sketching.

( Sketches )