Walking on the Moon

A couple weeks ago my venerable 1990 Miata announced it wanted to be traded by flinging a spark plug out of the engine block, stripping the threads as it went. Now there are things one can do to repair such a thing, but it sort of makes you ask what’s next on the 18 year old car. I figured rather than waiting to see, it seemed like a good time to try a new car.

I picked the Scion xB and was able to pick up a used one for a reasonable price. It’s pretty much the anti-Miata. It’s got the boxy appearance of a mini-UPS van, though it actually gets better gas mileage than the Miata. I’ve been happy with it so far and look forward to a few more years of service.

WordPress cropped the thumbnails somewhat oddly.

This grap update has been in the pipe for a while.  It fixes some lurking bugs, including some pic incompatibilities, so it’s worth upgrading.  The CHANGES file has the details.

The FreeBSD port is moving through the approval process.  Source is at http://www.lunabase.org/~faber/Vault/software/grap/grap-1.42.tar.gz .

Shortly after announcing I was playing with Empathy, I began poking at Pidgin (the former Gaim).  I like Pidgin’s multi-account handling better than Empathy’s and there’s some documentation, so I’ve switched over.  Still, if you’re expecting to see me on IM and don’t, drop me an e-mail.

I’ve been playing with a new instant messaging client, Empathy. If you’ve been having trouble getting my attention, that may be why.  Mail me if you see problems.

I finished Wind, Sand and Stars in Bell, Book, and Candle.

Will Eisner’s The Spirit #20, Aragones, Evanier, Smith, Wong.  As critical as I’ve been of these guys, I have to admit this issue was enjoyable.  It’s a nice, quirky mystery featuring the Spirit cast in all their likable glory.  Not a world changing story, but a fun way to pass some time.  Nicely done.

Gravel #3 & #4, Ellis, Wolfer, Jimenez.  I thought I’d talked about issue 3, but I don’t see the comments.  This probably isn’t for me.  I’m just not drawn into the world and so the limitations seem more apparent.  There’s a lot of gore and violence that are for their own sake, and the art’s not dynamic enough to make it visceral for me.  I did like the spooky tone in issue 3, but issue 4 is just a fight scene.  I’ll see how the first arc turns out.

Captain America #41, Brubaker, Epting, Magyar, D’Armata.  Continued high quality.  Hard to believe that Brubaker killed the title character 15 issues ago, and that there’s so much excitement in the book that one hardly notices he’s missing.  Well, that’s not quite true; I would like to see Cap back, but this book is continually solid.

Doktor Sleepless #8, Ellis & Rodriguez.  As the first book ends, there are revelations galore, not all of which can be taken at face value.  Still, there’s plenty going on; some mysteries explained (though perhaps not resolved) and some new angles revealed.  Lots of words this issue, but perhaps a telling image or two.  I think that Rodriguez’s clean art could be used to greater effect.  The images seem drawn to spec rather than being a result of collaboration, but that may be my poor vision.

Lots of interesting ideas here about what’s sane and what’s real.  Fun stuff.

Secret Six #1, Simone, Scott, Hazlewood.  Whee-ha this was fun: it’s everything Gravel isn’t.  A cast of dysfunctional but strangely likable villains stumbling toward some kind of team/family bond, an eerie opponent, and an impossible jailbreak on the horizon.  These are genuinely broken people, but you can’t help but root for them as they feel their way through life (and perhaps toward each other).  It helps that the dialog is whip-smart and that the images reveal the minds behind the words. The words and pictures make these people sympathetic and real, even though they’re not admirable. I’ll be back to see how they do.

Reviews of Halting State, The Red Badge of Courage, and How To Lie With Statistics are up on Bell, Book, and Candle.

My capsule review of Nancy Isenberg’s Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr is posted on Bell, Book, and Candle.

I updated the X.509 certificates on lunabase today.  If you have a jabber account, you may see a new one, replacing the one that expired 2 years ago(!).  The local certificate authority is now reasonably well organized (thanks Phil), so future changes should be less painful.

Will Eisner’s The Spirit #19, Aragones, Evanier, Armstrong, Amancio, Austin, Rivoche. I should probably drop this. Three short stories with different artists in which I didn’t like any of the visuals and found some of the writing both uninspired and unbelievable.

Captain America #40, Brubaker, Epting, D’Armata. Not much really happens this issue for the amount that goes on. It’s a fast-paced issue with two sets of foils going at one another concurrently. It’s nice to see Brubaker making jump cuts between the two conflicts using dialog overlaps and other bits of writing. Overall this would be a hard place to jump on, but a fun issue for those of us who’ve been playing along.

Glamourpuss #2, Dave Sim. After Cerebus ended, I didn’t think I’d be reading anything else Sim wrote; as I’ve mentioned before, he can be kind of crazy. But man alive can he draw and write about comics. A student of the medium could learn a fair bit just paging through and looking at the layouts. There are some ramblings on various other topics that are of varying quality, but Glamourpuss is worth it for the art and the discussions of art styles of middle 1900’s comic strips alone. And to be fair, the non-comics stuff has its solid moments as well. The book is remarkably original and remarkably good.

Black Summer #7, Ellis & Ryp. This ended up well enough. The series was an exploration of the envelope of vigilanteism with exercises. Unfortunately, the exercises – that is to say the mayhem – and the ideas didn’t mesh as well as they could have. I think this may be because Ryp’s faces and postures aren’t well suited for conveying subtle nuances of character. His layouts are extremely dynamic and convey the adrenalin rush of combat, but don’t convey soul-searching with any conviction. That’s a shame, because the series should have its share of both. Consequently Ellis’s writing carries the weight of the ideas in this issue. There are a lot of words, and one can see spots where I’d rather have been shown a point than told about it. Overall, the words are worth reading and considering, but the visuals aren’t holding up their end.

Madame Xanadu #2, Wagner and Hadley. These two are in synch. I don’t know if Wagner’s experience drawing is helping with the collaboration or if Hadley’s just remarkably good at doing a lot with her art. Here each page is laid out with a unified theme, usually bled to make use of every millimeter of the paper.  Each page draws out both what’s mechanically happening and what it means to the characters (and the world), and is part of the unified whole of the issue and arc. I’m slighting Wagner’s excellent writing here, but his pacing, plot, and characterization are all right where they need to be to bring out his themes. This is remarkably strong work.