http://lab.drwicked.com/writeordie.html

This is a tool that conditions you to write by subjecting you to nastiness (pop-ups, atonal buzz, your words disappearing) if you stop for too long.

I went to the NaNoWriMo site to see if my account on the forums was still active. I typed in the same username (jamtachi) and password I use whenever I have to join a forum. No luck. I tried a couple variations with no result, then figured the forums must have reset some time since I'd last been there--it's been six years, after all.

I was blocked when I tried to create a new account, "This email address already has a login associated with it. Click here to reset your password."

Confused, I reset, then checked my email.

The me of 2003 liked to go by 'dazzler', apparently.

Other ppl who might be doing this: what's your name? If you can bear to be friends with a My Little Pony, we can be writing buddies!

Is here, Thomas. Enjoy tiny animated Hillary Clinton.

Nobody on my friends list has posted anything in ages, so I'll break the silence.



Would you see this movie?

This is a chain started by a friend of Thomas's, which I am extending to anyone reading so I can get some little crafty doodad from him.

The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me.

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations, so please read carefully:

1. I make no guarantees that you will like what I make. What you get is what you get.

2. What I create will be just for you, with love, or at least with gusto.

3. It'll be done this year.

4. I will not give you any clue what it's going to be. It will be something made in the real world and not something internetty. It may be weird or beautiful. It might or might not be edible.

5. I reserve the right to do something strange or quirky, but I promise not to embarrass you in public. I also reserve the right to do something fairly predictable and boring, but with, you know, thought and love.

6. In return, all you need to do is post this text into a note of your own and make five things for the first five to respond to your note.

This offer is null and void if I do not see you post your own note to pay this forward.

Have fun, kids.

Hey Thomas, look at this.

This is your fault.

(Sev wrote this, by the way.)

If I hadn't done a web search and been curious enough to click on a random-looking link, I never would have heard about mechanical turk.

It's a way to connect unskilled labor with people who need it cheaply. The labor in question is stuff you can do from your computer, mostly with use of the internet.

For instance, one of the "HITS" (jobs) paying 3 or so cents was "Visit my blog. Leave a one-sentence comment."

Another HIT presented an array of tiny thumbnail pictures. "Select pictures that contain flowers of species x, y, or z."

A while back, someone requested drawings of a sheep facing left for two cents apiece. He received over ten thousand. He was an art student, and this became his project.

You can read more about it here: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2006/07/24/turks/index2.html

After watching the rest of Avatar season 2 with Cari--and episode 1 of season 3, Sev and I got talking in the car. He was certain Uncle Iroh's days were numbered. I thought the writers would be too cool to kill off Iroh just to spur Zuko's character development. We ended up putting money on it.

Arriving back home, we each made several more ( predictions about season 3. )

Now Ness without the "dreds."



I got his shirt wrong in one of these.

make sure he knows about this.

What the hell IS this? It (almost) must be a parody.

If you have the Garden State soundtrack, can I borrow it?

Thanks,
Cassandra

(I should probably use facebook for this stuff. Sorry.)

I feel about it like I felt about Tokyo. Didn't see enough. Need to go back. Need to take Severin.

The gameshow was fail, Marvel was fail, ten minutes at DC made up for it!!!

I stayed in a hostel for the first time. In the three days I was there, ten or so people rotated in and out of the seven other beds. I think I was the only one who'd been born in the US. There were two Swedish girls who lived up to the Swedish stereotype of being hot, and to the European stereotype of smoking lots. Like, smoking the cheapo stogies that come in a four pack and have plastic tips, just like my dad used to. There was a boy there who came from Tokyo, though (for some reason) I felt too shy to mention I'd been there.

The stereotype about New Yorkers being rude was soundly disproved by every New Yorker I met, from the scary subway man with broken-fence teeth and knit cap (who helped me find the train I needed to take to Columbia--unasked!) to the street vendor who opened his own wallet so he could give me a two-dollar bill as part of my change, to the lobby attendant at 1700 Broadway who did everything he could to help me get upstairs to see Mark Chiarello (including pep-talking me into calling the guy one...more...time.)

And the beggars in New York are so charismatic sometimes, it's hard to even think of them as beggars. A poet got on the train between one subway station and the next, and wove a rhythmic tale of his coke-addled mom and his absent dad. He handed copies to us listeners, sometimes trading them for dollars, before making a perfectly-timed exit.

Yesterday, I said words to Scott Kurtz and Dave Kellett. They are two men who have the job I would describe as my dream job--they support themselves drawing webcomics. They do a webcomics-themed podcast I listen to often, and after they gave their lecture, I had their guidebook ready to sign.

I despair of ever being friends with artists I admire. I'm too self-conscious to say anything but the most formal words. Blah.

Today, though, I made two phone calls. One to a Marvel editor, one to a DC editor. I didn't manage to make a firm appointment with either, but they both told me to call when I got to town. I'm scrambling to get coloring samples together.

At this point, I would be quite content if I actually managed to see both editors face to face.

Due to a strange chain of events, I'm going to New York for a few days later in October.

My grandpa is an avid watcher of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and has been wanting me to audition for a while now. I finally figured out how to get tickets to a taping(you audition afterward), and received a confirmation email. So I'm flying from Savannah to New York on October 22, on his generosity.

Considering what a long shot it is to be selected for a game show, I'm going to bomb Marvel and DC with colorist submissions while I'm in town.

Then again, competition is probably at least as fierce for a job with either of these publishers as it is for Millionaire. :P DC in particular is wary of unsolicited submissions.

But I'd kick myself later if I didn't give it a shot! The only downside is I'll be by myself.

When we were in sixth grade, my English class was broken into groups and asked to imagine a scenario.

It's known that very soon, the entire human population will be wiped out, except for twenty people of reproductive age and in good health, and five leaders. You may pick one person from each of five professions (artist, lawyer, systems analyst, etc) to act as a leader.

The 'leader' needn't necessarily be a leader (like a CEO, a politician) but merely someone who the survivors would find useful (like a doctor.) If we wanted, we could make all five different types of doctors, or different types of clergy, or birthday clowns or whatever.

I don't remember what types of people my group chose, but these are the five I'd choose today.

1. Doctor (probably a GP, knows how to set a broken bone, give an injection, diagnose common illnesses.)
2. Farmer (or "agriculturalist")
3. Engineer (the type who knows how to fix an engine, not necessarily the type that oversees factory efficiency, builds bridges, designs airplanes, etc)
4. Hunter/marksman
5. Musician

I'm not sure about 5. Talk me out of it? If I could replace 5 with "communicator" I would, but what kind of a profession is that? I guess what I need is a D & D style bard to round out the party. :P

4 is also iffy. You point the gun at the animal and shoot until it falls over, right? Then you cut it into pieces and cook them, right? Doesn't sound that hard.

I randomly was thinking of poor Jamie, and I made a thing. I didn't remember how it went, so the note is random scribbles.

I finished reading a book about the anthrax vaccine recently. It's good. Anyone want to borrow it?

So begins chapter 1 of my comic, Scrulouse. I'm afraid it won't be as funny as the crack comic right away: as a matter of fact, it starts with a funeral. That said, it will be entertaining, enlightening, and embedded with chocolate chips.

The yahoo article eventually stabilized into a much more coherent, objective thing--stripping away most of the outrageous innuendo and hearsay that characterized its earlier versions.

The changes were so blatant and so many, I wonder if the AP writers responsible for the story were even doing anything wrong by changing it. Maybe the internet just made it possible to read their evolving rough drafts.

Still, it's a strange experience to have the news change on you, though it's not a new phenomenon on the internet. Most often you hear about someone retracting a blog or forum post that sparked drama, because people who linked to the original are howling about finding a dead link or a rewritten opinion. You'd hope professional writers would be more, well, professional.

I've been following Ivins still, though there haven't been many new developments. No credible motive, still. No explanation on how he managed to produce and aerosolize so much anthrax without anyone noticing. No explanation for how he managed to fool his friends and coworkers for so long. Still, they supposedly have traced the anthrax samples from the 2001 letters back to batches that Ivins worked with. All other new developments have centered around Jean Duley, a counselor who has given the only testimony so far of Ivin's homicidal and obsessive tendencies. The counselor herself remains mostly mysterious. Salon.com has had some interesting stuff about the case the past few days.

But I'm weaning myself off all this for now, because the next three days are ironman time for me! Gonna draw lots of comics before this weekend.

The LA Times was the paper than broke the news of Ivin's suicide.

Here.