Results for the 14th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition are out, with Violet, Nightfall and Everybody Dies grabbing top honors this year. All competition entries (and their respective interpreters) are available to download separately, or as a single 65 MB zip file from the IF Comp site. (source: Grand Text Auto)
Results of the 14th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (IF Comp)


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pa href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/13736953@N00/3041763549/" title="The New Citysearch by Rafat Ali, on Flickr"img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3024/3041763549_424495e59a.jpg" width="261" height="500" border="0" align="right" alt="The New Citysearch" //aa href="http://www.Citysearch.com" title="Citysearch"Citysearch/a, the online local online guide which is part of IAC (a href="http://finance.paidcontent.org/paidcontent?Page=QUOTETicker=IACI" class="ticker" title="IACI"NSDQ: IACI/a), is undergoing its first major relaunch in about a decade; for now it is in a href="http://beta.citysearch.com/" title="beta, here"bbeta, here/b/a. Cognizant of tough competition from the likes of a href="http://www.Yelp.com" title="Yelp"Yelp/a (see Yelp's new a href="http://localonliner.com/2008/11/19/yelp-traffic-stats-suggest-broad-local-usage/" title="usage numbers here"usage numbers here/a) and other strong local sites, it has redone the entire site—adding all kinds of social features and granular local neighborhood level for search (from 140 local city guides to over 75,000 cities and neighborhoods), among other new functionalities. It is also launching a new mobile version, optimized for new handsets like iPhone and others, at m.citysearch.com. /p p The Facebook Connect platform is integrated through the site now, which means that users can log in using their Facebook ID and add reviews, so their activity would also show up in the social site's newsfeed, and hence be shareable with friends. /p p I spoke to bCitysearch CEO Jay Herratti/b about the relaunch, which he explained entailed redoing both the backend (CMS, ad serving, analytics etc) as well as the front-end user interface. Herratti joined Citysearch as president a year ago, and even though it did a a href="http://www.forbes.com/2007/05/01/iac-diller-local-tech-cx_rr_0502iac.html" title="redesign then"redesign then/a, Herratti said it became too cluttered. This relaunch reflects the lessons learned since then about what things worked and what didn't. The site has also tried to strike a balance between buser-gen reviews, its own editorial reviews, and owner descriptions/b, something that Herratti thinks will help cut down the noise factor prevalent with other sites, and give equal voices to everyone in the process. /p p The company has also integrated local service provider reviews from InsiderPages, a business it a href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-citysearch-to-acquire-local-search-review-site-insiderpages" title="bought early last year"bought early last year/a, into the nevamped Citysearch, even though IP will continue to remain a separate site as well. Citysearch handles all of IP's sales, and Herratti told me the site has now become profitable with the lean operation. IAC sibling Evite, too, is in for a major relaunch sometime soon, so expect some more integration with that as well. On integration with other IAC brands like Ask and Match, he said they will be careful about trying to cram in everything in the site just because they can—something that IAC CEO Barry Diller has also soured on over the years. /p p As for the economy currently, with local small business and merchants probably pulling back on advertising, Herratti said that surprisingly October held up strong, but likely that November and December will be affected. Diller also echoed this in the company's a href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-earnings-iac-after-the-split" title="Q3 earnings call"Q3 earnings call/a earlier this month, when he said that Citysearch and Match businesses haven't yet seen any discernible impact. IAC doesn't break down Citysearch's revenues separately but Diller mentioned in the Q208 earnings call that bit will do over $100 million revenue next year/b. Despite that (and this admirable effort with the relaunch), competition will surely keep Citysearch on its toes. /p piCheck out the best business jobs in digital media. a href="http://jobs.paidcontent.org/"Go here/a for paidContent.org Job Board./i/p pa href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?a=S7ntYU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?i=S7ntYU" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=CyAVN"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=CyAVN" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=qyZaN"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=qyZaN" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=DU59n"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=DU59n" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=XhIZN"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=XhIZN" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=GqdNN"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=GqdNN" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/pcorg/~4/457988857" height="1" width="1"/

So I got my macbook about a year or so ago, and its starting to show its age. It has fallen from my desk a few times, but surprisingly still functions as strong as day 1. So no issues with its performance, I'd just like to get it looking new again.

Here are some issues with it:

-White plastic surrounding the screen (the part that houses the webcam, has the word "MacBook" on it) has a small crack in it towards the side.

-Keyboard is looking pretty dirty.. tried cleaning it, still has a tint to it. I always wash my hands, I don't know how this happened lol.

-White plastic where my hands rest is a mess.. chipped up, dark spots from where my hands rest.

-Touchpad is faded.

-Outer shell is scuffed up, the battery doesn't quite align right and has a crapload of scratches.


I got the mac protection plan, will this replace cosmetic stuff like this? I try to take good care of it, but after a year and a half of carrying it to class and back every day it's showing its age.

Would I be better off buying some new parts separately? What kind of cost are we looking at? What parts would make sense to replace and what parts am I pretty much stuck with?

Any recommendations on where to buy would be great.
Thanks!

Are you a tech-guy? Are you tough? Nevermind, do you want to look tough? Then get one of these eHolster things. Each eHolster comes with a 100% guarantee that you will receive one of those cool “extra special” searches they hand out at the airport. Act now and well throw in “laughing and pointing” at no extra cost! iPhone sold separately, not available where prohibited by law or places where an ounce of dignity still exists.



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Category: Finance
Released: Nov 17, 2008
Price: Free

Description:
Quickly calculate your tip after a great meal with this new free version of qTip! Round your bill up or down to the nearest dollar and even split it up between twenty people! Tax is calculated separately in order to provide you with an accurate tip. This free version of qTip is ad-supported, for a tipping calculator with no ads, check out our other software at http://www.swiftfoxsoftware.com

Website: http://swiftfoxsoftware.com
Support Website: http://swiftfoxsoftware.com

Note: The description above is the official one supplied by the application developer and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of this site or its staff.


Get it on iTunes: qTip Lite

Category: Entertainment
Released: Nov 17, 2008
Price: $0.99

Description:
Get in the Christmas mood with Christmas Experience, a Christmas-themed entertainment environment with multiple games that you can take with you anywhere! - Upbeat holiday background music to put you in the Christmas mood. - Create your own "virtual Snowman" by moving 30 unique pieces onto the Snowman. Tap a piece and then use pinch and rotate gestures to change the size and orientation of a piece. Shake to erase and shake again to unerase. You might see Santa fly across your screen as it snows! - You can choose which Snowman pieces appear from the "Choose Snowman Pieces" screen. Optionally select "Auto Hide Buttons" to have the Snowman screen's buttons and countdown to Christmas fade out of the way in a few seconds. Bring them back with a tap where they used to be. - Play a Christmas-themed game of hangman with over 100 holiday words displayed at random. Guess the correct word before all the Christmas light bulbs break! Reset the word list back to the beginning at any time. - Have fun moving Christmas presents with a winter puzzle game of the Tower of Hanoi with 10 levels including the display of the number of moves and the time elapsed. - Tilt your device in one of eight directions to produce a different Holiday sound depending on the angle of your device. - See the number of days count down until your favorite holiday - Christmas. - Customize your settings by separately turning on/off various sounds and functionality. - This program supports both English and Spanish language settings. We welcome your comments and suggestions. Please check out our Web site at www.EnergizeSoftware.com to see a demo video of Christmas Experience in action.

Website: http://www.energizesoftware.com
Support Website: http://www.energizesoftware.com

Note: The description above is the official one supplied by the application developer and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of this site or its staff.


Get it on iTunes: Christmas Experience

Freeworld Coatings, in its first financial year as a company separately listed from Barloworld, has reported a 15 percent increase in headline earnings.

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/47026?ns=guardianpageName=Business%3A+Stelios+refuses+to+approve+easyJet+accountsch=Businessc3=guardian.co.ukc4=Business%2CEasyjet+%28Business%29%2CAirline+industry+%28business%29%2CCredit+crunch+%28Business%29%2CUK+newsc5=Credit+Crunch%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CBusiness+Marketsc6=Dan+Milmoc7=2008_11_18c8=1119623c9=articlec10=GUc11=Businessc12=Easyjetc13=c14=h2=GU%2FBusiness%2FEasyjet" width="1" height="1" //divpa href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/easyjet"The dispute between the easyJet board and the airline's largest shareholder/a escalated this morning after Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou refused to approve annual accounts which showed a 46% fall in pre-tax profits./ppHaji-Ioannou, who has fallen out with board members over the budget carrier's strategy, said he was "unable" to back today's figures due to a number of objections related to easyJet's acquisition of GB Airways. The easyJet founder also ruled out becoming chairman of the airline but has proposed two lieutenants from his easyGroup business as non-executive directors. /ppIn a letter to the board published at the end of easyJet's annual results, Haji-Ioannou again criticised the airline's ambitious expansion plans./pp"I would like to place on record that I believe that with careful cash management and in particular more prudent capital expenditure, easyJet and its shareholders will be the winners in European short-haul aviation. We must focus on cash flows forecasts and not on carrying more passengers," he said./ppSir Stelios, who remains the airline's largest shareholder with a 27% stake, has demanded that the carrier begin paying dividends for the first time. The accounts were signed off by the airline's auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers./ppEasyJet reflected its founder's concerns in a change in short-term strategy announced today. Europe's second-largest low-cost carrier said it had reduced winter growth plans from a 12% increase in capacity to zero and added that it had deferred four aircraft deliveries scheduled to arrive in 2010. /ppIt added that, according to a multi-billion pound order with Airbus, it can defer up to half its 109 future aircraft deliveries for up to two years. However, easyJet refused to state whether it is considering pushing back those orders./pp"EasyJet delivered a good trading performance in the financial year ending September 2008 ... We recognise that economic conditions will be very difficult and easyJet is planning accordingly," said Andy Harrison, easyJet chief executive./ppBoosted by an expansion that added 28 aircraft to its fleet over the year, easyJet said revenues grew by 32% to nearly £2.4bn as passenger numbers rose 17% to 43.7 million. The passenger load factor, which states the amount of seats sold per flight and is an important indicator of the financial health of a low-cost carrier, was flat at 84%. Profits were hit by higher fuel costs./ppHarrison said in a conference call with reporters this morning that the concerns raised by Haji-Ioannou were "not new news" and had already been considered by management, the audit committee and auditors. He said they were non-cash items and had "no impact on the value or commercial strength of the company"./ppHaji-Ioannou said in his statement that easyJet should monitor the profitability of GB Airways more closely by accounting the performance of each of its routes separately. He said the valuation of GB's Gatwick airport slots was too optimistic given the current economic climate, that the aircraft owned by GB should be written down in the easyJet accounts and that the impairment value of the GB assets should be tested separately on an annual basis. /pp"I am left without any other options but to abstain from voting on the accounts as a director of easyJet plc. I am doing so reluctantly, but I believe it is in the interest of all shareholders to be more prudent at the present time," said Haji-Ioannou. /ppThe easyJet founder said the airline should pay a dividend from 2011 onwards, which would represent an about-turn in a company strategy that is predicated on growing the business much faster than all rivals except Ryanair./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/easyjet"Easyjet/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/theairlineindustry"Airline industry/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/creditcrunch"Credit crunch/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a

br / bAuthor:/b a href='http://forum.newsbin.com/profile.php?mode=viewprofileu=36061'RayMark/abr /br / bPosted:/b Tue Nov 18, 2008 4:10 ambr /br / br /br / I am using some folders with groups inside, and loading not a single group but the whole folder.br / br / This approach works fine with 5.48, but with 5.5 it does not.br / br / I started testing 5.5 from beta 8 only. So it happens with beta 8.br / br / I have a folder with 18 tv-related groups, I do everything on the folder level, download headers, open groups, etc.br / br / So I load that folder, the last few days, set the filter to quot;720pquot; and download some posts from it.br / Virtually all the posts with quot;720pquot; in my folder happen to be from a.b.tv and a.b.multimedia, a very few in a.b.tv only.br / br / The posts are marked as downloaded (correctly) as they are being downloaded. After downloading them, they are marked as downloaded, everything is ok.br / br / But after reloading the folder, part (perhaps even most) of the posts that were just downloaded are no longer marked as downloaded.br / It happenes when closing and opening the folder again, sometimes it seems to happen when moving the range and going back again.br / br / Most of just downloaded posts are no longer marked as downloaded,br / and quite a few posts that were downloaded earlier, hours or days earlier also are not marked, but some are marked.br / br / Posts that were available only in one group, in a.b.tv are marked correctly, though. So the problem is with the posts that are in at least two groups simultaneously.br / Some of the posts that were available in both a.b.multimedia and a.b.tv have problems - but not all such posts, some still are marked correctly as downloaded.br / br / If I load separately a.b.tv or a.b.multimedia, I get all the posts marked correctly, however, some are marked in one group, others - in the other.br / It seems, posts that were downloaded from a.b.tv are not marked when a.b.multimedia is opened, and posts that were downloaded from a.b.multimedia are not marked when a.b.tv is opened.br / br / The thing is, I have no control from which group to download, because I downloaded selecting from the folder with both the groups.br / br / So now, when the whole folder is loaded, some already downloaded posts are not marked as downloaded, but if I open a.b.tv and a.b.multimedia separately, they are marked as downloaded in one of them, but not in both.br / br / Again, the posts in the folder that are already downloaded but not marked as downloaded for some reason, they are marked as downloaded correctly either in a.b.multimedia or in a.b.tvbr / br / The problem is that for some reason they are not marked in the joined representation, when the folder is loaded.br / However, not all the downloaded posts, some of them are correctly marked as downloaded in the folder as well.br / br / br / Furthemore,br / there is no clear rule which posts are correctly marked:br / Some posts that are marked in a.b.tv are not marked in the joint folder,br / so perhaps, all the posts that happen to be downloaded not from a.b.multimedia, but from a.b.tv are not marked in the folder?br / No, some posts that are marked in a.b.tv and not marked in a.b.multimedia are marked correctly in the folder.br / br / It seems as if somehow accidentally posts are downloaded from a.b.tv or from a.b.multimedia, but also somehow accidentally they are marked in the joint folder, using info from a.b.tv for some, for others- from a.b.multimedia, but not necessarily from the same group they were downloaded from.br / br / br / One thing that I still do not have the answer to:br / When I open the folder, do I get the same posts marked and the same wrongly not marked each time, or after opening again, marked/not marked change?br / It seems that they are always the same, but I cannot say that for sure at this time.br / br / br / Anyway, the good thing about this bug is that the information needed to mark those posts as downloaded clearly is available, not lost, so, as soon as this bug is fixed, hopefully in beta 9 or so, they will be marked as downloaded correctly - unless there is some information about downloaded posts that is saved for the whole folder in some db3 file, in that case the situation is really bad and the bug fix should have a very high priority. But I don't see such per-folder based files, so probably it is not the case.br / br / UPDATE:br / br / an additional complication:br / I tried to run a local search on the folder for some posts that were NOT marked as downloaded in the folder, I expected that they will not be marked in the search results as well, but no - they were correctly marked as downloaded in the local search results, even stranger, I would say.

Yes, usually I review things in these posts in the order I get them. I’ve been sitting on several longer form graphic novel type thingies, though, so I decided to simply review them alphabetically. When it comes to alphabetizing, I’m the king!

Our first fine selection is Aetheric Mechanics by Warren Ellis, Gianluca Pagliarani, and Chris Dreier. This is the latest comic from Ellis’s Apparat line, and it’s published by Avatar and costs 699 cents. It’s a slim volume, but that’s still good value for your hard-earned coin.

This book from Avatar gets back to what I was ranting about in my post about November’s Previews. If you have something against Avatar because they began as a porn publisher, okay. If you have something against them because they let Ellis and Garth Ennis write stories in which people do horrible things to each other that they couldn’t do at Marvel, fine. But when Avatar publishes something good, should you hold it against them because of the other stuff they publish that you hate? The Apparat line allows Ellis to do one of the things that he does really well, which is re-imagine a world that is very much like our own but with significant changes that fall in line with old-school pulp fiction. Ellis has always been a “hard” science fiction guy, for the most part (I’m not getting into whether his science actually works, because that’s usually beyond me, but he’s still fascinated with cutting-edge science and tech), and when he writes in that genre, he often produces some very good stuff (even something like Planetary has a lot of elements of that). But he’s also excellent at pulp fiction, so when he combines those two, the result is usually worthwhile. The final thing he seems to be interested in the most is puzzles (which ties back into the science and technology, if only obliquely), so Fell becomes a fascinating exercise in detection (when, you know, it shows up). What he tries to do at Marvel, and why he often fails, is shoehorn this kind of stuff into their existing characters, which works on something like Iron Man but doesn’t work as well with some other characters. Plus, because he’s working within a set framework, even when he can write this kind of stuff at Marvel, it feels like he’s bored. But at Avatar, he can indulge his weird fascination with carving up bodies, but he can also write something like this, which is a marvelous piece of short fiction. Yes, this is a roundabout way of me saying that Aetheric Mechanics is a damned fine comic book. Aren’t you glad I’m so long-winded?

We begin the story in March 1907 in London, where Dr. Robert Watcham has just come back from the war. Those history people among you might recall that England wasn’t exactly engaged in a war in 1907, but that’s okay, as this isn’t our world. Watcham has been fighting Ruritania (which is pretty much Germany) and we see on the first few pages technology that was far beyond what humanity had achieved in our 1907. So we’re in a standard steampunk world, where we get a Victorian (or, in this case, Edwardian) setting and outlandish technology. Lots of writers have made this work, and it’s always fun, so we’ll let Ellis take us along. If, while we’re reading the first few pages, we notice something familiar about Dr. Watcham, that’s not surprising, as he soon returns to his rooms on “Dilke Street” and reunites with his old friend, the world’s greatest amateur detective, Sax Raker. Raker looks and talks a lot like Sherlock Holmes. Ellis is writing a Sherlock Holmes pastiche set in a steampunk world. Not a bad way to go, if you ask me.

Raker and Watcham immediately get involved in a case, one Raker calls “The Case of the Man Who Wasn’t There.” Apparently a murderer was seen by witnesses to “have flickered in and out of view” while killing his victims. Both victims were involved in the study of, you guessed it, aetheric mechanics, which is how the world manages to have space travel in 1907. According to Raker, “apergy engines and cavorite rotors bend space, and the space impels the craft.” That’s helpful! As Raker has nothing to go on with regard to the murderer, he must concentrate on the reason engineers who specialize in this area of expertise are being killed. So he does.

The case follows a fairly standard Holmesian line, as we meet Raker’s ally on the police force, Inspector Jarratt, and the mysterious woman in his life, Inanna Meyer - Watcham even mentions that Raker refers to her only as “that woman,” which is how Holmes referred to Irene Adler - and Holmes solves the case seemingly out of nowhere. It’s a fine pastiche of the Holmes stories, for what that’s worth. If you think it’s simply a “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” book, though, Ellis is smart enough to give us a truly grand ending, one that not only explains the case but also helps illuminate both the world Raker lives in and what is important to him. It’s a breathtaking ending, and comes full circle to something that occurs earlier, when Dr. Watcham is flying back to his rooms. The naval pilot with whom he hitches a ride talks about flying in space thusly: “The vibrations from the spin of the drive arms, sir, and the motion of heat through the casements to space, which is very cold. The whole ship sings quietly, like a gently struck tuning fork.” This is a very nice Ellisian sentiment, and it gives us a glimpse into this world and helps explain what happens at the end, beyond the obvious (and I’m not giving it away, which is why this is difficult to discuss). In many ways, this is a typical Ellis comic. But when Ellis is fully engaged, his typical stuff is dazzling, and this is a good example of it.

Pagliarani has that incredibly detailed art that is kind of an Avatar house style, but I’ve always enjoyed the Avatar house style, and for this book, it’s almost necessary. This is a world of intricate and artistic engineering, and so the comic must look not only like something from early in the twentieth century, but also hyper-modern. The page with the giant robot attacking the town is astounding, for instance. The book looks like it leaped from the pages of a pulp magazine, and it’s wonderful to look at.

If you’re a fan of Warren Ellis, you should give up buying all those Marvel books he writes and give this a try. Even if you’re not a fan of Warren Ellis because you’ve only read his tired Marvel books, this will show you why so many people like him. Aetheric Mechanics is a marvelous comic. I just wish we got more like it from Mr. Ellis.

Next we have Almighty by Edward Laroche (it’s lettered by Jaymes Reed). It’s self-published and costs 10 dollars. It’s the first in what appears to be a series of graphic novels, so let’s keep that in mind.

The back cover of Almighty reads “A girl has been abducted/And a killer hired to find her/And bring her home.” This intriguing premise is actually better than the actual book, which does indeed feature an abducted girl and a killer hired to bring her home. Laroche begins an ambitious tale in this volume, but it’s perhaps too ambitious, as we lose that simple idea and get involved in something much bigger and a little less interesting. Almighty isn’t a failure, especially as it’s the first part of a bigger story, but its loss of focus hurts it.

We begin in AD 2098, which is the first problem. Almost immediately we recognize that we’re in some post-Apocalyptic world. Now, I have no problem with post-Apocalyptic worlds per se (Wasteland is one of the best comics out there right now), but it’s a mileau that can too easily fall into cliché, and Laroche struggles to keep it from doing so. The girl - Del - escapes from an isolated compound but is quickly tracked by her captors. As they’re about to get her, gunshots explode from the wilderness and blow them away. Del’s rescuer, a bald woman named Fale, tells her they need to make tracks.

It’s a gripping beginning, full of tension and sudden violence, and it sets the mood nicely. Laroche doesn’t have a problem writing or drawing tense action scenes. As we move along, we discover how Del was captured, and eventually the rest of the gang chases after her and Fale. We also find out a bit about the world, which has been shattered into anarchic zones through which our heroines must navigate to reach Del’s home. Del learns a little, but not much, about Fale, and there’s a confrontation with an evil creature living in one of the zones that turns people into pseudo-zombies. It ends ambiguously, but that’s to be expected, as it’s volume 1.

The problem with the book is that it doesn’t offer anything new. It quickly turns into a chase with weird creatures thrown in, and although Laroche does a nice job with the action, the actual plot is nothing special. A way around this, of course (as most plots are recycled), is to make the characters compelling, but Del and Fale aren’t - at least they aren’t yet. Del isn’t kidnapped for any reason, just that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. We know almost nothing about her, nor who her parents are (or whoever hired Fale). We know almost nothing about Fale either, so the two of them don’t really build a relationship over the course of the book. Fale obviously knows what she’s doing, and she is very protective of Del, but we don’t know if it’s just a job or if there’s something else that motivates her. Presumably we’ll find out in subsequent volumes, but it’s frustrating not getting anything like that here, especially with the expanded format Laroche chooses to work in. The blurb on the back promises a creepy psychological thriller (who is the girl? why was she kidnapped? who is the killer and why hire a killer?) but none of those questions are answered. Fale is a killer, true, but the implication is that she was a soldier - and although soldiers do kill, I doubt if many of us would call a soldier a “killer.”

Laroche does a good job with the art, evoking a crumbling world nicely. The inks are heavy and brooding, and the panels often tight and oppressive, making this a comic that feels like it’s closing in on you, which given the gang chasing Del and Fale and the monster at the end of the book (no, it’s not Grover) is probably appropriate. Laroche has some problems with faces, as Del looks a bit too cartoony to be in this book, but overall, the art, while rough, fits well with the tone of the comic and helps with the building of tension.

I’m not sure if this is Laroche’s first comics work or not, but it’s definitely rough. It has some potential, but falls too easily into predictability and cliché to work well. It is only 10 dollars, which is a plus, because it’s a nice thick volume, but it also doesn’t really make you want to find out more about the characters, which is a shame. I don’t know how many volumes Laroche has planned, but it would be nice to find out more about Del and Fale, which would probably make the book a lot more interesting. As a frenetic chase through a blasted landscape, it’s not bad. But it could be a lot better.

Moving on, we come to Dad! by Scott King, which is labeled as a “documentary graphic novel” (and yes, the exclamation point belongs in the title, confound it!). It’s published by Th3rd World Studios, and as I got an advance copy, mine doesn’t have a price on it. But hey! I checked the web site, and it’s 20 bucks and should have been available on 8 November. So there you go.

Dad! is an interesting comic. King appears on the first page in a photograph, and he tells us that he is indeed a “living stereotype” - he’s 24, is unemployed, lives at home, and reads comic books. But there’s a good reason he lives at home - his father has severe health problems, and he’s taking care of him until he leaves for graduate school. The comic is a “documentary” of the final two weeks of his life at home. In the back of the book, he explains he took over 8300 photographs and recorded 16 hours of audio to make the book. The first few pages are photographs arranged as panels with word balloons (it’s an odd effect) and then most of the rest of the book features the art, which, as King explains, are the photos run through four different filters in Photoshop, then sent to Illustrator, where they were “traced” and then sent back to Photoshop for more tweaking. I’ll get back to the art.

This is a fascinating comic, and its greatest strength is also, conversely, is biggest weakness. It’s almost painfully naturalistic, as much as a carefully manipulated version of the events of the two weeks can be. Much of the book takes place in the Kings’ small house and even more in his father’s - Kevin - bedroom. There are a few asides in the book - King shows us how to pick a hard shell crab and how to make an omelet, both of which are relevant to the narrative, plus we get three separate sections going over Kevin’s life and medical history, which is important - but it’s usually just King and his stepmother (with some cameos by other people) dealing with Kevin. This gives it an immediacy and emotional closeness that makes this a powerful examination of a man falling apart and how his family has to deal with him. This also makes it a bit more claustrophobic than might be comfortable. But what King does is eschew narrative almost completely, so there’s very little arc to the book. We keep waiting for a epiphanic moment, but, like real life, those are often lacking. When it ends, it ends, and we get a brief epilogue in the form of a letter that Kevin wrote earlier this year (the book takes place in 2006) which again offers little in terms of resolution. Does this matter? It depends. It’s a compelling book mostly because of what has happened to Kevin and how King and Kevin’s wife struggle with his orneriness (and he can be ornery), so the lack of a story is mitigated somewhat. But you shouldn’t expect any deep insights into what it means to care for an ailing parent, beyond the fact that it’s really difficult. We could, I suppose, glean some deep meaning from it, as Kevin’s condition spiralled out of control from a seemingly innocuous initial problem and perhaps speaks to a lack of health insurance or the callousness of the medical community, but it does not feel like King is trying for that. He simply turned on a “camera,” left it running for two weeks, and then turned it off. It’s an odd sensation.

The art, similarly, adds to this claustrophobic feeling. As it’s not drawn but photographed and then filtered, it has a very “realistic” feel to it, not in the way artists like Greg Land are “realistic” but in a far grittier way, as King doesn’t smooth out any rough edges and, in fact, makes the finished art rougher than the photos from which they’re taken. It’s not perfect art because occasionally it’s bit too washed out, and the grittiness is often over-rendered, making it difficult to see some of the smudgier corners of panels. Like the naturalism of the story, the naturalism of the art is both a strength and a weakness. It provides no distance from the story, but occasionally the closeness overwhelms us.

Ultimately, this is a character study of a man who is confined to bed and isn’t happy about it. Kevin is not really all that pleasant a person, because he refuses to accept the limitations that his health has placed on him. King himself remains somewhat of an enigma, as he stays off-camera for the most part and narrates the story somewhat dispassionately. This is perhaps why his departure is awkward, because suddenly he’s a character in the story interacting with the focus of the book. It doesn’t add the emotional resonance that would wind up the book well, and it takes away from the detachment that King has used throughout. Like the rest of the book, King’s brief appearances (he shows up occasionally before the end) feel strange, as if they don’t quite fit.

Again, all of these criticisms about the book don’t necessarily make it a bad comic. They might, for you, enhance the reading experience. King does a fine job with this, actually, given that Kevin’s condition could make the book overly sentimental or even mawkish. That King stays away from that is a credit to him. Nobody ever feels sorry for themselves, even though everyone is sad at one point or another, and that helps invest us further in the story. We get to know Kevin very well, and it’s fascinating that King, in delving so deep into his father’s life, pulls a nice trick where we feel sympathetic for Kevin without liking him all that much. That’s a bold move, because it is his father, after all. That we can feel all the emotions for Kevin that we often feel about our own parents is the book’s true triumph.

Dad! is far from perfect, but it’s a powerful comic nevertheless. I’d like to thank Th3rd World Studios for sending it to me and point out that on the inside cover it reads that some of the material might not be included in the final version. As I’m not getting into too many specific details, I think I’m safe. King has attempted something rather rare in comics, and has produced an interesting book. It’s worth a look.

Next in the alphabetical queue is Fishtown by Kevin Colden. IDW published this sucker and slapped a $19.99 price tag on it. You can find this on-line, however, if that’s your thing. Despite the fact that I have to spend money for something like this, I really do prefer reading solid books. I’m just a Luddite that way!

The name of the book comes from the neighborhood in Philadelphia where the events take place (here’s a map). In May 2003, four teenagers killed another teen and dumped his body in the Delaware River. Colden takes that event and spins a horrifying tale about the murderers, the victim, and the motives behind the crime. It’s not a terribly pleasant comic to read, but it is gripping, even though it might be a bit too nihilistic for its own good.

Colden sets the story after the teens have been arrested and are being interviewed separately by (presumably) a psychiatrist. He does a nice job introducing the principals - Angelica, Justin, Keith, Adrian, and Jesse - through these interviews and almost washed-out panels conveying information about who’s who. We get deeper into Angelica’s home life than any of the others, but we all learn quickly that these kids are seriously disturbed. Angelica has problems at school and her mother is tired of her using drugs and generally wasting her life, while Keith and Adrian (who are brothers) live with their uncle, who beats Adrian and wants him out of the house when he turns 18. They simply move through life, doing drugs, getting drunk, and, in Angelica’s case, screwing more than one of them. There’s nothing likeable or even all that sympathetic about them - except for the brief moment of sympathy we have for Angelica, who cuts herself and obviously has serious mental problems. Other than that, they’re complete sociopaths, so when they decide to kill their friend for $500, it comes as less of a shock than it might otherwise (well, the fact that the book is based on a real-life case and that we know someone is going to die also lessens the shock, but even so, we’re not surprised that these kids are willing to do this to another human being).

Colden tells the story with a chilling lack of emotional involvement, as he simply presents the kids telling their story. This makes it a much more powerful comic, because he’s not preaching about anything - the facts in the case are these, the book says, and it’s up to us to glean meaning from it. Colden doesn’t even imply anything in the writing (he does in the art, and it’s wonderfully subtle, but I’ll get to it) about why these kids did this. The advertising text on the back reads, “[T]his story explores what led these teens to commit such a heinous crime, and the lasting consequences of their actions,” but what’s horrifying about the book is that Colden does not do this - the kids want $500, sure, but their true motives remain hidden, which makes the comic all the more troubling. What we can infer from the comic is that these kids were simply abandoned by anyone who could have made a difference in their lives, and they saw so much horror in their everyday lives that they simply shut down, turning into automatons for whom a murder is nothing. This certainly doesn’t excuse them, but it’s fascinating to look at the way their lives have worked and what Colden does to implicate others. He does this mostly with the art.

Colden’s art, which is colored like it is on the cover, all yellow tones except for the salmon-colored blood, is wonderful. The yellow gives it a flatness (which I don’t mean as an insult) that adds to the effect of ennui and makes it believable that these kids could do something so terrible, and when Colden does get to the murder, the art becomes horrifyingly intimate and chills us to the bone. What Colden does with the kids’ faces is stunning, as they barely betray any emotion, and when they do, it’s fleeting. It’s as if there’s so much that is horrible for these kids that only the worst things can get through.(...)

pFiled under: a href="http://www.tuaw.com/category/odds-and-ends/" rel="tag"Odds and ends/a, a href="http://www.tuaw.com/category/flickr-find/" rel="tag"Flickr Find/a/pdiv align="center"img vspace="0" hspace="0" border="0" alt="" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.tuaw.com/media/2008/11/2960017561_f50af909f6.jpg" /br //div pAt the Austin a href="http://makerfaire.com/pub/e/1608"Maker Faire/a last month, careful observers noted a small addition to a miniature main street created by the Texas LEGO User Group: An Apple retail store, complete with products inside./p pTexLUG created a town and space-themed layout that included working trains and motors. Other photos of their impressive handiwork a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/savatheaggie/sets/72157608230695927/"are available on Flickr/a. You might also enjoy a href="http://schomer.vox.com/library/post/coles-lego-apple-store.html"this attempt at a Lego Apple Store/a, accessories sold separately.br //pp style="padding:5px;clear:both;"a href="http://www.tuaw.com"TUAW/aa href="http://www.tuaw.com/2008/11/17/flickr-find-an-apple-store-in-lego-land/"Flickr Find: An Apple Store in Lego land/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.tuaw.com"The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)/a on Mon, 17 Nov 2008 14:07:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a.br style="clear:both;"/ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href=http://www.flickr.com/photos/savatheaggie/2960017561/Read/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.tuaw.com/2008/11/17/flickr-find-an-apple-store-in-lego-land/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.tuaw.com/forward/1374341/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.tuaw.com/2008/11/17/flickr-find-an-apple-store-in-lego-land/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/-K5_6tQjv42rL8EVyJe2guzAsRE/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/-K5_6tQjv42rL8EVyJe2guzAsRE/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/tuaw?a=i3IF1ZXL"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/tuaw?i=i3IF1ZXL" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/tuaw?a=kWZKY7Th"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/tuaw?i=kWZKY7Th" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/tuaw/~4/h8KwlrhhkO8" height="1" width="1"/

News via apple.com :

Interviewing guitarist Dave Keuning prior to the release of The Killers’ new album, Ben Rogerson (musicradar.com) learned that ” the band’s hotly-anticipated third album Day & Age was demoed in Apple’s Logic.” In fact, each member of the band ”recorded demos separately in Logic, which allowed us to email our ideas to each other and to Stuart Price, the producer.”

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pimg class="float_right" src="/~~/f?id=47e004ce14b9b9b00066d4damaxX=225maxY=187" border="0" alt="hulu-iphone.jpg" title="hulu-iphone.jpg" width="225" height="187" /What's up with Adobe's (ADBE) long-running campaign to get its Flash video/animation software on Apple's (AAPL) iPhone? It emcould/em still happen, someday... maybe./p p"We are working on Flash on the iPhone, but it is really up to Apple," Adobe product manager Michele Turner a href="http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2008/11/16/adobe-to-demo-flash-on-mobile-but-only-windows-still-working-on-the-iphone/"told/a TechCrunch. Which sounds lot like the last two times we heard about Flash on the iPhone:/p p style="padding-left: 30px;"a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/9/flash-coming-to-apple-s-iphone-maybe-someday-in-some-form"Sept. 30/a: "My team is working on Flash on the iPhone, but it's a closed platform," said Adobe senior director of engineering Paul Betlem./p p style="padding-left: 30px;"a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/6/adobe_flash_apple_iphone_maybe_someday"June 17/a: "We have a version that's working on the emulation. This is still on the computer and you know, we have to continue to move it from a test environment onto the device and continue to make it work," said Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen./p pWhat's the problem? Presumably, Adobe should be able to figure out the technical challenges required to get Flash videos and animations playing smoothly on the iPhone. It won't be easy -- Flash video isn't even that great on a brand new Mac. But it shouldn't be impossible. After all, Apple's built-in Quicktime software does a fine job playing video on the phone./p pThe bigger challenge: For Flash to work on the iPhone, Adobe needs emdiplomatic/em help from Apple. Especially if Adobe plans to make Flash work the same way it does on a computer -- as a plugin for Apple's Safari browser./p pApple hasn't opened its browser up to anyone yet. It makes some sense that it'd allow Adobe in -- if Flash ran well enough -- because many Web sites still rely on Flash for content and navigation. But there's no guarantee it will./p pAnd if Adobe simply made a less-useful Flash "player" app -- that could somehow play Flash video and animations separately from the browser -- it still probably needs a special exception from Apple. To our understanding, Apple prohibits iPhone apps that let you run other apps within them -- for security and competitive reasons. And that's basically what Flash does./p pSo we're where we were at in June: Even if Adobe does an excellent job porting Flash to the iPhone, it still needs buy-in from Apple, which has little incentive to make an exception for Adobe./p pWhy does Adobe need the iPhone? While Flash has excellent market share on computers, it hasn't gotten much traction on mobile phones outside Japan. The iPhone is the best selling phone in the U.S. and is one of two or three platforms -- along with Google's (GOOG) Android and RIM's (RIMM) BlackBerry -- where coders are trying to push the limits of running software on mobile phones./p pIf people get going far enough without Flash -- both on the mobile Web and in smartphone software apps -- it'll be irrelevant on those platforms. Which would kill a big growth opportunity for Adobe./p pstrongSee Also:/strongbr /a href="../../2008/9/flash-coming-to-apple-s-iphone-maybe-someday-in-some-form"Flash Coming To Apple's iPhone... Maybe, Someday, In Some Form/abr / a href="../../2008/7/adobe-flash-running-on-an-apple-iphone-sort-of-aapl-adbe-"Adobe Flash Running On An Apple iPhone -- Sort Of/abr /a href="../../2008/6/adobe_flash_apple_iphone_maybe_someday"Adobe Flash Coming To Apple's iPhone -- Maybe, Someday/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/G7h8aMKYJQRRIarp5ejof_e3uZ0/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/G7h8aMKYJQRRIarp5ejof_e3uZ0/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=uLUzzQki"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=uLUzzQki" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=F334azaC"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=d0EGx4UC"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=80" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=8En3DVi9"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=8En3DVi9" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=69W7JUwr"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=131" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=pIt98ODV"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=336" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=vdRrTAVC"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=bPlkoAqt"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=50" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~4/7iI9uqyl9Yo" height="1" width="1"/

33 short video art features that can be viewed separately or in continuity. A young poet, whose violent father's shadow looms over him, recalls traumatic episodes from his life.

Auteur : VIDEOFORMES
Tags : videoformes titre majewski
Envoyé : 17 novembre 2008
Note :0.0
Votes :0