Blog

As a follow-up to my post earlier today, I spent some time today looking through my e-mail receipts for Comixology and Dark Horse Digital purchases, and made lists in Evernote for stuff I've read and stuff I haven't read yet. First, let me say that I was surprised to see how much stuff I've bought, in both apps, but haven't actually read yet. But now that I have decent lists to start from, I should be able to keep track of it all, going forward.

Labels: Apple, comics

OK, this is going to be my obligatory post on Amazon's purchase of Comixology, and possibly some related topics, depending on whether or not I run out of steam before I get to all the stuff that's in my head right now. :-)

First, let me say that I have hundreds of books in my Comixology library. I can't tell you how many, because Comixology's web interface for browsing your library really doesn't tell you much. (OK, picking up my iPad and looking at the app, I can see that it's apparently 635. But there's no way to see that on the web, as far as I can tell.) This is the main beef I have with Comixology, both with their web interface and their apps. Since their books are DRM'd, I can only store them and read them in the Comixology apps (and site), and they really haven't put much work into making any of their interfaces really useful for people with more than a handful of books. Even something as simple as keeping track of read vs unread status across devices would be nice. They have said that they're "working on it" and "we need to do this", but they really haven't done it. The iPad app will mark as "new" stuff that you've just downloaded and haven't read yet. But that's only tracked in the app itself. The "cloud" view doesn't track when or if you've read something. And since they just replaced their apps with new versions, all that info from the old app is effectively gone now.

I've recently started using Goodreads to keep track of my reading for dead-tree and Kindle books, and I'm thinking that maybe I should use it for Comixology too. Though single-issue comics don't fit well into Goodread's model, really. Maybe I should just track them in Evernote? The thing that really clutters up Comixology is all the free comics. Not that I'm complaining about all the free comics I've downloaded from Comixology, but it can make it hard to find the stuff I've actually paid for. Even just having a simple user-contolled tagging system or folder system would solve this problem. How hard would that be to implement? 

Moving on to the subject of Amazon's purchase of Comixology, this could be good or bad. Removing the in-app purchasing option wasn't a big surprise. You can't do in-app purchase in the Kindle iPad app either. I want to say that Amazon's purchase might let them spend more money on both the web and app interfaces, and maybe implement some of the stuff I'd like to see there, but then I remember what the interface looks like in the Kindle app, and on the Kindle itself, and I laugh at the idea that Amazon might implement nested folders or useful tagging in the Comixology app. (Not that I'm bitter or anything..)

Meanwhile, I just recently bought Comic Zeal for my iPad, so I can have a nice interface for managing and reading my DRM-free comics. Previously, I'd used Goodreader to read some comics I had in PDF format. Goodreader is a pretty great piece of software, and it works OK for comics, but it's not perfect for them. So I looked around at comics readers, and Comic Zeal seemed to have the best reviews. I've loaded a bunch of stuff into it, including comics I've bought from Matt Howarth and some stuff from Drive-Thru Comics. I really like the ability to organize stuff. It's quite easy to put stuff in folders by series, to tag books, and to reorder the list of books. The software does keep track of your reading progress in individual books, but I haven't found any option to, for instance, show only unread books. But really, since I'm only using it for DRM-free books, I can just delete stuff that I've already read, and just keep that stuff on my PC. In terms of the actual reading experience, I've found it to be a bit slow on page-turning for some PDF comics. I really haven't used it enough to have formed much of an overall opinion yet though.

I'm thinking about picking up the Image Comics bundle that Humble has on sale right now, so that would give me a bunch of new stuff to load into Comic Zeal and enjoy. If I do that, and actually get around to reading some of it, then I'll probably post a follow-up with more thoughts on how well Comic Zeal works in practice.

Labels: Apple, comics

OK, I haven't written a blog post in a while, so this one is going to be a bit of a grab bag.

First, on the weight loss front, I'm down 15 pounds so far, over about eight weeks, so I'm losing almost two pounds a week. My plan was to shoot for one lb per week, so I'm doing fine on that. I'm also getting in maybe five or six hours of walking a week, which is pretty reasonable. I still haven't figured out what I'm going to do when it gets too cold to walk outside though.

On the tech front, I picked up a new iPhone 5s a couple of weeks ago. My previous phone was an iPhone 4, so there's a good bit of new stuff for me in the 5s, including Siri.

• I'm finding that I'm not using Siri much, though it's kind of fun and does seem to work well.
• The fingerprint sensor works quite well, and I'm using that to unlock the phone most of the time now.
• Overall, I've found that the speed of the phone is greatly improved over the iPhone 4, especially for certain things, like using the camera.
• The battery life is pretty bad. I'm usually at 50% by the end of the day, and I really don't think I do anything that crazy with it.
• The iPhone 4, on Verizon was 3G. The 5s is LTE. I haven't seen much of a difference in speed, in everyday use. But I haven't really done much that would stress the network connection. In general, anything that relies on the internet connection over LTE has worked well.

I went to NYCC this year. I didn't go to San Diego this year, nor did I go to any other conventions, so this was my one and only convention for the year. The con was very well managed, and very crowded. Getting in could take a while, but once you were in, it wasn't that much of a hassle to move around. The exhibit hall was quite crowded, but navigable. There were a few interesting panels, but nothing quite like you get in San Diego. I bought only a handful of books, mostly discounted hardcovers and trade paperbacks. (I realized at one point that I still have stuff I bought at NYCC 2011 that I haven't read yet.) I'm not sure if I'll bother going next year. Maybe I'll just go in for one day. It's fun, but there's not really enough interesting stuff to keep me occupied for all four days. (In fact, I wound up skipping Sunday and going to the Met and MoMA instead. The Magritte exhibit at MoMA is pretty good, by the way.)

Labels: Apple, comics, health

So I didn't get to SDCC this year, nor have I really been following the news out of the con. I've caught a few things via Twitter, but haven't really seen anything that's caught my attention. Usually, there would be a handful of interesting tidbits coming out of the con that I could link to in a post like this, but there's really nothing that seemed all that interesting to me. I'm sure there's some really cool stuff going on, but either it's not my kind of cool stuff, or I just haven't stumbled across it. There's been a good bit of coverage of the con on The Beat. (That link should show all posts tagged SDCC 2013.)

Still, I really wish I had gone to the con. This past week, the weather in NJ/NY has been brutal, while San Diego has been quite nice, apparently. Even just for that, I would have rather been in San Diego for the past week! If I don't get a ticket next year, I may just go anyway, and enjoy the weather and some of the related events that don't require a ticket.

Meanwhile, at home, I've been catching up on Fables. I've read volumes 6 to 9 of the trade paperback collections over the last few days, and I'm reading "1001 Nights of Snowfall" right now. Fables continues to be a really good series, and I'm glad to see that it's still being published. I still have a ways to go before I'm all caught up on the collections, and after that, I could probably read Jack of Fables, and some of the other spin-off series. So, I can look forward to enjoying this series for some time.

Labels: comics, SDCC

After going for a few months without reading any comics, I decided to spend a bit of time, over the last couple of weekends, trying to put a dent into the big pile of unread books sitting on the floor of my bedroom. In particular, I decided to finally read a few "orphan" books that have been sitting in the pile for, oh, five years or so. I read the first (and only) issue of Daredevil/Bullseye: The Target last week. And I read the three comics that Grant Morrison wrote for the Worldstorm relaunch of the Wildstorm universe today.

I thought that Kevin Smith's "The Target" got off to a good start, so I'm disappointed that it never got past that first issue. I don't really have too much to say about it past that; I think it would have been a fun story.

The Morrison Worldstorm stuff was quite interesting, though I'm not sure if it would have really gone anywhere, long-term, or if it would have wound up being a disappointing mess. It would have been fun to see where it went, regardless, but maybe its collapse was inevitable. One interesting aspect of it is that, for an "event" that only resulted in one issue of Wildcats, and two of The Authority, there's a good bit of writing about it available on the web. I found three pretty interesting articles, one at seqart.org, another one here, and one more here. And all three are from 2011. (The comics came out in 2006.) So there seems to be something about it that has engaged people, even five years after the books were published. I guess that's the nature of pretty much any "grand plan" stuff cooked up by Grant Morrison.

Speaking of Grant Morrison, I've got a couple of other random mini-series written by him in my reading pile: Sebastian O and Vimanarama. I picked them both up at the same time, out of someone's dollar box at a convention a while ago. And both series actually ran to completion, so it'll be a nice change of pace to read stories that actually come to an end!

Labels: comics

I just stumbled across this article by John Jackson Miller, talking about the end of Comics Buyer's Guide. I had a subscription to TBG (as it was called at the time) back when I was in high school. I didn't save those issues, as it came out every week, and was mostly ads, so there didn't seem much point. But there was some good content in there, from people like Don & Maggie Thompson and Cat Yronwode. And some nice covers by folks like Terry Beatty.

I let my subscription lapse at some point, but I picked it up again and read CBG faithfully for quite a few years, before letting the subscription lapse again a few years back. Even though I hadn't been reading it lately, it's sad to see it go. I actually think I learned a lot about a number of subjects unrelated to comics from CBG, mostly from Don and Maggie's writing. CBG was always very well-edited and well-written.

I see that Maggie is now writing for the Comic-Con blog. And other former contributors have also been blogging at various sites -- John Jackson Miller has The ComiChron, Mark Evanier has News From Me, Tony Isabella has his Bloggy Thing. So I still get to read stuff from some of the best writers who appeared in CBG over the years. But I'll miss the good old hard-copy version.

Labels: comics

I'd been meaning to pick up Umbrella Academy for a while, so now I have two trades of that to read. And a couple of Incal books I found for $5 each, and a discounted Bryan Talbot Alice in Sunderland hardback, which now has a nice big rip on the back cover, thanks (likely) to the TSA. (I got the TSA note card in my luggage on both the trip in to San Diego and the trip back home. Not sure what they found interesting enough about my luggage that they needed to rifle through it both times.)

Labels: comics, SDCC

I've posted a blog entry for every other day of the con, so I might as well post one more, for Sunday. My friend Bill came to the con, but only for Thursday and Sunday, so I had a chance to hang out with him again a bit today. That was cool, since I'm usually on my own for these things. I went to the DC "Young Justice" panel with him, which was not actually about the Young Justice cartoon, rather it was about several DC books featuring young heroes. I'm not reading any DC books right now, but it was interesting to learn a bit about what they're doing. Plus, I got a free copy of Justice League #1, which means that I now own exactly one "New 52" book.

I spent most of the day in panels, going to the "Cartoon Voices II" panel, and a couple of others. I managed to avoid buying anything at all, other than coffee, at the con on Sunday.

The trip home was fairly uneventful. I managed to get a seat with extra legroom on the flight, so that was nice. And the flight was only a little late getting in. And the drive home went smoothly.

Overall, it was a nice enough con, and a nice vacation from NJ and work. I came home with some new books, but few enough that they fit in my luggage. (I still have a huge backlog of stuff to read, much of it purchased at past cons. But, as I keep reminding myself, that's a good problem to have.)

Back at home, NJ is still way too hot, and the A/C in my apartment is still not quite working as well as it should be. So, here I am, back in reality. I've got tomorrow off, to get laundry done and try to get back on east coast time. Then, back to work on Wednesday.

Labels: comics, SDCC

Last night's Nerdist thing was fun. Also, much shorter than W00tstock, thankfully.

Today, I got into the con right at 9:30, and, surprisingly, walked right in the door, no waiting. The floor was actually not that crowded. I wandered around a bit, but didn't buy anything. I went upstairs, and sat through three panels, all in the same room. First, a Marvel animation panel which included a screening of a very funny Spider-Man episode, where Loki turns Spider-Man into Spider-Ham. Silly, but funny. Then, the Quick Draw panel, which is always fun, and the Cartoon Voices panel which is also aways fun.

After that, I wandered for a bit, then went back upstairs for a couple more panels. First, a Roddenberry panel, where they talked about the movies and comics they've got going on, then Scott Shaw's Oddball Comics presentation, which was hilarious, as usual.

Then, I wandered around the Gaslamp for a bit, then hopped on a very crowded trolley back to Mission Valley. It's now just about 8pm. I'd like to got back to the con now, but I'm really tired, and there isn't much going on tonight that I'm all that interested in. I think I'll just stay in for the night, and maybe watch a movie here in my room.

Labels: comics, SDCC

So, after getting in from W00tstock after midnight last night, I had a bit of trouble getting started this morning, but a nice breakfast and a couple of cups of coffee helped. I got to the convention center a bit after 10am again, and walked right in. Wandered the floor again, for about an hour, and bought a few more random books. I've been trying not to buy too much, but I think I'm going to wind up having to check a separate bag full of comics on the way back home, as usual.

I went to a Mike Mignola panel, which was pretty cool. I'm way behind on my reading, so I didn't even know that Hellboy was dead. I think I'm about two or three years behind on Hellboy/BPRD stuff. I actualy would like to catch up (as opposed to some other books, where I'm OK with having missed a lot, and don't really intend to pick them up again). I have maybe a year's worth of actual comics waiting to be read, then maybe another year's worth of stuff on my iPad. Once I catch up with the stuff I already own, I'm not sure if I'll just keep buying digital, or switch to buying trades.

After the Mignola panel, there wasn't really much else I was too excited about, and likely to be able to get into. So I set off to wander the streets a bit. There's a lot of stuff going on outside the convention center this year. I dropped by Trickster first. That was basically just a room full of indie books. Some cool stuff, but I didn't buy anything. Then, I found the spot at the far side of the new pedestrian bridge where they had a few random food trucks and other stuff set up, including a Norton truck. (Not sure I'm enthusiastic about computer software companies encroaching my Comic-Con. I don't really want to think about that stuff while I'm on vacation, thanks!)

The con shuttle bus that goes back to my hotel leaves from that spot too, so I decided to give up for the day, and head back to the hotel, even though it was only around 2pm. So I'm back in the hotel typing away now. I need to get back downtown later for the Nerdist thing at 7pm. Until then, I think I'm going to rest up and get dinner. I was originally thinking I'd just hang out at the con all day, but I think I'm getting too old for that!

Labels: comics, SDCC

Thursday was the first full day of the con. I took the trolley in, no problem, did a little roaming around downtown to get a few things, then headed over to the convention center a little after 10. Walked right in. Wandered the floor a bit, picking up some random books, then saying hi to Rick Geary and Randy Reynaldo. Both cool, friendly people.
After that, I went upstairs and sat through a few panels. One with Geof Darrow, then a Tarzan panel, and then the Sergio and Mark panel. All good.
Then, I wandered a bit more, then just hopped the trolley back to the hotel. Grabbed a burrito for dinner, then the trolley back in, for W00tstock.
W00tstock was pretty nifty, but very long (7pm to 11:30pm). I probably should have taken off when they broke for an intermission around 9:30. Some very funny stuff, but also some stuff that wasn't really my cup of tea. Overall, I feel like I ended the day with a case of nerd fatigue.

Labels: comics, SDCC

So I'm here in San Diego for the con. The trip in was mostly uneventful. No problems, except for spilling my coffee in my lap on the airplane. My hotel is about 5 miles from downtown, right off the freeway. Not very exciting. I'd much rather be downtown, but that's pretty much impossible these days.

I did decide to leave my laptop home, so I'm typing this on my Bluetooth keyboard, connected to my iPad. It's working better than the on-screen keyboard, but I'd rather have a real keyboard, rather than this cheap one. Maybe I should get a decent Bluetooth keyboard to use when I'm traveling.

I'm missing preview night this year, but I'm seeing a lot of footage from it on the local news tonight, from here in my hotel room. Comic-Con is getting a lot more TV news coverage than it used to, but that's not surprising. It's getting a lot of attention, in general.

I'm pretty tired, since I got up at 5am this morning. I'm going to try to stay up until 8pm, at least, so I can start trying to get on Pacfic time. I want to stay out until at least 10pm tomorrow and Friday.

Labels: comics, SDCC

So the plan is to get up at 5am tomorrow, take a shower and grab a quick breakfast, then head out for the airport at 6am. If all goes well, I'll be in San Diego just past noon Pacific time.

I got my laundry all done, and I'm all packed and ready to go. I haven't been on an airplane since 2008, so I'm a little anxious about things. I shouldn't really have any trouble tomorrow, but I'm worried that something might go wrong or I might forget something.
I'm trying to relax now, and catch up on a bit of SDCC-related news. Unfortunately, the big news item right now is the death of a Twilight fan who was camped out waiting for Thursday's Twilight panel. She tried crossing Harbor Drive (against the light apparently) and was hit by a car. As sad as that is, I'm still very excited about getting out of NJ and enjoying a few days in San Diego, surrounded by like-minded nerds. The local paper has a good landing page for con news up now.

And I actually managed to leave work today at 6pm, with a fairly clean plate. I cleaned up my email inbox, so I'm done to just 9 messages in there, none of which require any immediate action. Pretty much all my projects are in a "waiting on somebody else" state.  I'm almost afraid to say it, since I don't want to jinx it, but I may not have to worry (much) about work while I'm away!

Labels: comics, SDCC

I'm killing some time this morning reading con-related stuff on the internet. Just stumbled across an article in the local San Diego paper titled "Has Comic-Con reached 'peak geek?'". Interesting question. The article talks about how TV is taking a bigger role at the con, as opposed to movies. I'm not much concerned about that either way. I'm honestly not seeing too much this year on either side that I'm interested enough in to actually wait in line for Hall H or Ballroom 20 or wherever else they might be having the ginormous panels. I'd maybe go to the Fringe panel if I could get in without too much hassle. I'm mostly interested in stuff that's a bit more fringe (with a lower-case f). Like maybe the Gilbert Shelton panel!

Labels: comics, SDCC

Yesterday was my 45th birthday. It was a pretty low-key birthday. I strayed from my diet and had a couple of slices of pizza for dinner, and I allowed myself a buttered roll in the morning, but I didn't go overboard with anything. I had the idea today to look back on what I might have been doing on and around my birthday, since I started this blog. So here's a pretty random list of stuff, assembled by looking back at my Blogger archives.

2003

• I went to Comic-Con that year. (I was making reservations in March. I'm going again this year, after skipping it for a few years.)
• I was reading Sinfest, which I haven't been following lately, but is apparently still around (and still funny).

2004

• I was reading "His Dark Materials", and listening to Rum Diary.
• I had just gotten the 90,000 mile service done on my 97 Civic. (I got my 2008 Accord inspected yesterday. It's got about 45k miles on it.)

2005

• Windows XP was giving me grief.
• I was listening to Warren Ellis' "Superburst Mixtape" podcast. (That's long gone. He has a new one named SPEKTRMODULE now, which I've been listening to recently, and is quite good.)

2006

• I was watching Samurai Champloo on Cartoon Network. (I have it on Blu-Ray now, but I haven't gotten around to re-watching it.)

2007

• I bought "The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases" at WonderCon. (I still haven't finished reading it. It is really funny though.)

2008

• I got my first Kindle. I've since traded that in for a new one, but I still haven't read some of the books I loaded onto that first one (and later transferred to the second).

And that's about where I feel like I should end this. I'm feeling weirder than usual about my birthday this year, for various reasons. But I can't complain. I've been able to spend time with several really good friends over the last couple of weeks, and I think I'll likely enjoy this coming weekend too, so that's all I can really ask for.

Labels: anime, books, comics, Kindle, music, SDCC

I just spend $38 on $76 worth of digital comics from Dark Horse.  I had a 50% off coupon, good even on stuff that was already on sale. I now have nearly all the Hellboy and BPRD comics that came out since i stopped buying them regularly in 2009. Plus the first 16 issues of The Goon, which I've wanted to read, but never got around to buying. A little over 50 comics total.  Digital comics never seem worthwhile to me when they're priced at close to the regular print cover price, but for less than $1 each, they're not a bad deal.

Labels: Apple, comics

I've bought a few digital comics via the Comixology iPad app over the last year, but I hadn't bought any through the Dark Horse app until today. I just bought the new Groo mini-series (which apparently came out in print in 2009), and a Classic Usagi Yojimbo mini-series, which may be a digital-only release. The bundle pricing on these books is pretty reasonable, but you can only buy the bundles through the web site, not the app.
I've found myself reading comics on the iPad a lot recently, mostly while I'm on the train. I should really be working my way through the Programming iOS 4 ebook that I started a while ago, but I've been finding that my brain isn't really up for that sometimes.
One interesting comic I've been reading via Comixology recently is Vision Machine. The whole three-issue series is completely free. It originally came out just about one year ago, and there was a panel about it at last year's NYCC, moderated by Andy Ihnatko.

Labels: Apple, comics

I'm heading out to NYCC tomorrow. I'm pretty sure that the last con I went to was NYCC 2009, which was back in February 2009, before they moved the con to the fall. I had plans to go to NYAF in 2009 also, which would have been in September, but my Dad was in the hospital at that time, so I skipped it. So I haven't been to a con in a while.

I was also thinking that I haven't really taken a vacation (other than a long weekend) in a while either. I guess that NYCC in Feb 2009 was the last time, though I think I only took Friday off for that, so that would also have just been a long weekend. This time, I'm taking Thursday, Friday, and Monday off, but I've got class at NYU on Thursday night, and a doctor's appointment back in NJ on Monday, so I don't know if this really counts as more than a long weekend.

The last San Diego show I went to was 2008. For SDCC, I would have flown out on Wednesday, come back on Monday, and I probably took Tuesday off to do laundry and relax, so that's a solid seven days away from work. So July 2008 was likely the last serious vacation I had, which involved leaving the NY/NJ area, and staying away for more than a few days. And I can't remember the last time I took a whole work week, Monday to Friday, off and had a good full nine days away from work. Technically, I wasn't working at all during April 2010, in between leaving NMS/Spar and starting at Electric Vine, but there was enough going on then that it sure didn't feel like a vacation.

So this long blog post that was going to be about NYCC 2011 has turned into a rumination on my lack of time off over the last few years. I'm going to have to come up with a plan to remedy that, though I'm really not that enthusiastic about any particular vacation idea right now. I'd like to get back to SDCC and/or WonderCon next year, so maybe I should look at that as my goal.

Labels: comics, NYC

I finally read the last issue of Planetary today. It came out in 2009, and the previous issue came out in 2006, so it's been about 5 years since I read an issue. I managed to find all the issues back to #16 in my mostly undifferentiated pile(s) of old comics, so I got a chance to re-read a bunch of issues leading up to it. Planetary had been one of my favorite series, despite the long gaps between issues. That last issue was a nice one, and a fitting end to the series. It does leave open some possibilities, and it would be nice to see Ellis and Cassaday come back to it, but I guess that's unlikely. I found a couple of good online references to the series, here and here. It's a very dense series, so it helps to read someone else's perspective on it, just to see things you've missed, or that might have alternate interpretations.

Labels: comics

This is now the third year in a row that I've skipped Comic-Con. The last time I went was 2008. I'm hoping I can find some way to get a full four-day pass and hotel reservation for next year. It's been too long since I've been out there.
Meanwhile, as usual, I've been poking around the web for interesting articles about the con. Here are a few from SignOnSanDiego.com:
Comic-Con makes itself at home
Comic-Con and Hollywood
Comic-Con 2011 Preview

Labels: comics, SDCC

Style: Normal Basic