Month: June 2014

This weekend’s comic book reading

This weekend, I’ve been reading random stuff on Comixology. Mostly stuff I got for free some time ago, and never got around to reading.

A bunch of the stuff I read would fall into the “chaff” category, but a few things might qualify as “wheat,” or were at least interesting enough for me to look into maybe reading more.

I enjoyed Multiple Warheads: Alphabet to Infinity #1, by Brandon Graham. It was a weird story, with very imaginative art. It reminded me a bit of some of Paul Pope’s work. There’s a good review of it on CBR.

I also enjoyed Elephantmen #1. I may buy more of that series on Comixology, since it’s currently on sale. When this series (and the related “Hip Flask”) first came out, I avoided them, thinking that they were probably just a gimmick, and not really something that would have any substance. This issue, though, was actually quite engaging. It introduces the (somewhat monstrous) main character and his world and history via the trope of having him engage in a conversation with an innocent little girl. (I’m calling this a trope, since I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it used before, but I can’t remember specifically where.) It’s done effectively, with nice art and good storytelling.

I also read a number of the free Marvel #1s that they gave away as part of a promotion some time ago. Today, I read through a bunch of Ultimate Universe stuff. Some of it was pretty good, and some of it I’d read before, in TPB format. Nothing in particular stood out enough for me to want to buy any back issues or new TPBs though. The last thing I read was the first issue of Ultimatum. I was curious about it, as it was a really big event, basically doing a “reset” on the Ultimate Universe, if I understand correctly. The first issue was interesting, with some really nice art from David Finch, but when I sought out reviews of the series, I decided that I definitely didn’t want to buy the rest of it. The reviews were almost universally bad, with Comics Alliance putting it in the “Worst of the Worst” category, and a couple of bloggers (here and here) writing interesting but not exactly positive reviews. So, in a nutshell, it really doesn’t sound like the kind of thing I’d enjoy.

In general, lately, when I dip my toes into any recent Marvel or DC stuff, I’m usually not finding it to be terribly interesting. I’ve stumbled on some good independent stuff though, like the Brandon Graham and Elephantmen stuff.

[Edit: When I was trying to remember an example of the “monster and innocent little girl” trope, clearly I was thinking about Frankenstein. Or maybe Young Frankenstein. Though in this case, the girl doesn’t get thrown in a pond. Or launched through a window.]

Thomas Piketty’s Capital

I keep stumbling across references to Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century. It’s been mentioned recently in The Economist, been the subject of a relatively long review by Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing, and it’s also been reviewed, in some depth, on Philip Greenspun’s Weblog.

The idea of actually reading the book is somewhat daunting. I don’t tend to get too far into books like this before giving up and going back to Star Trek novels or X-Men comics. And I have a stack of programming books I want to read too. I think maybe I should stick with the programming books for now. Meanwhile, for a lazy summer Sunday afternoon, I think I’m going to dive into some comics and forget all about this serious stuff!

CFL and LED bulbs

Like most people in the US, I’ve transitioned nearly all of the lighting in my apartment from incandescent to CFL over the last few years. I’ve never been really happy with the CFL bulbs though. The ceiling fixtures in my living room, dining room, and bedroom are all on dimmer switches, and of course the CFLs don’t dim. And, while I haven’t really tracked this, I’m pretty sure I’m not getting as much life out of these bulbs as they advertise. Here’s an article that seems to back up that observation. And here’s one from IEEE with some interesting data.

Last week, the fixture in my bedroom started buzzing. (There’s always a little buzzing with CFLs, but this was noticeable and distracting.) So last night, I messed around with it a bit, trying different bulbs, checking to see if everything was screwed in right, and there weren’t any loose wires or anything. No luck. I couldn’t get rid of the buzzing. I thought about calling the landlord on Monday, and having them look at the fixture and/or switch, but I haven’t really had much luck with the landlord fixing stuff that isn’t completely broken. They tend to just make things worse. (I could probably write a few funny blog posts about my landlord’s maintenance guys, but I’ll resist the temptation for now.)

So instead, I decided to go out to Home Depot today and buy a couple of LED bulbs. I picked up two Cree bulbs for $10 each. That’s pretty expensive for a light bulb, but if they really last for ten years, then I don’t mind the price. There’s a good bit of stuff on Treehugger about LED bulbs. I haven’t read it all, but in general, it sounds like the current generation of LEDs should be at least a little better than CFLs, and the next generation of LED bulbs could be a lot better.

The ones I bought did indeed solve the buzzing problem. They work fine, and don’t buzz at all when on full. And they do work with the dimmer, unlike the CFLs, though they buzz a little when dimmed.

I’m writing this post partly as a marker, so if the LED bulbs in my bedroom die, then I can refer back to this post to see when I bought them. If the marketing claims on the box hold up, then I shouldn’t have to change them until 2024. By which time, hopefully, I won’t still be in this apartment!

A little more on Drupal vs WordPress

Here’s a link to an interesting question on Quora about WordPress vs Drupal that got a thoughtful answer from Dries Buytaert, the guy who created Drupal. A number of the other answers are pretty interesting too. It’s actually an older question, but it rose to the top of my Quora feed today, for some reason. Quora is sometimes very good at surfacing useful answers to questions, and avoiding the flame wars and trolling that would normally clutter up any “X vs Y” discussion on the internet.

And, hey, here’s an article on migrating from Drupal to WordPress. I’m curious as to why anyone would want to do that though. If you already had a site up & running in Drupal, what would you get by migrating to WordPress? I could see cases where you’d want to go in the other direction, since Drupal has some functionality that doesn’t exist in (base) WordPress. I guess I could think of a few cases where you’d want to go from Drupal to WordPress, if you were dealing with a simple site and didn’t need all the overhead of Drupal, and/or wanted the WP admin interface, which (for some things) is nicer looking & friendlier than Drupal’s.

Fifty pounds

As of last night, I’m officially down fifty pounds since I started my diet. The attached image is from the app LoseIt, which I’ve been using to track my weight loss. For me, counting calories with an app was really the key to making any sustained progress.

I need to figure out now if I want to set a new goal, and stay on the diet, or maybe take a break, and just eat at a “maintenance” level for awhile.

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Sebastian O

One more comics-related post for today, this time on Sebastian O, another Grant Morrison mini-series. I’ve posted a short review on Goodreads. This one goes back to 1993, so it was probably one of his earliest works for Vertigo.

It’s also got me wondering about Morrison and Yeowell’s earlier collaboration, Zenith, which is apparently going to be reprinted later this year.

Vimanarama

One more comic book post for today. (Probably the last, but maybe not.) I just finished reading Vimanarama, by Grant Morrison and Philip Bond. This is one of two Morrison mini-series that I picked up at a con a few years back. I posted a short review on Goodreads. There’s one more thing I wanted to post though: I just found Philip Bond’s Flickr page. Wow. Lots of cool stuff!

random comic book reading

I’m trying to heal up after getting a bit too much sun last weekend, so, even though it’s very nice out, I’m spending the weekend indoors. So I’m catching up on some comic book reading! I’ve also been experimenting with posting reviews over on Goodreads. It’s fairly easy to re-post the reviews here, but rather than do that, I’ll just link to them. I posted short reviews of Criminal, Superman: Kryptonite and Flash: The Wild Wests this weekend. I’m gradually working my way through the last of my slush pile of regular-format comics. I stopped buying them in 2008, so they’re all over five years old now. Eventually, I will reach the bottom of this pile. 🙂

Project Euler is (almost) back

I posted about Project Euler being down a few days ago. It’s back up, but only as a static site. So you can read the problems, but there’s no access to the functionality for checking solutions, or getting into the solution forums, or anything like that. There’s a thread on reddit about this, apparently created by one of the Euler admins. It does sound like they are going to get full functionality back up and running at some point, though they don’t seem at all sure about when that will be.

I’m actually not working on any Euler problems right now, but I had intended on getting back into it at some point. Project Euler is such a great resource, I really hope they can get it back up and running soon!