May 2nd, 2007 at 2:15 pm
(Web Comics)
And again some comics are just plain silly. Bigger than Cheeses started off being done in MS Paint, and trust me it got a lot better from there. Well…it kind of had to. 
One thing has remained constant throughout its history, and that is the silly sense of humor that pervades it. Several of the other comics I read deal with some of the same themes and plot ideas: a couple of guy friends, hot chicks, and the strange world they live in. Bigger than Cheeses goes well beyond that, though. Sometimes there is a storyline, sometimes it is just one frame of complete silliness.
Unpredictable to the point of almost complete randomness Desmond Seah’s comic keeps a smile on my face every time it shows up. Of course after almost 700 installments that can be a bit intermittent. I really wish that real life would stop interfering with my web comics. Perhaps the government should start subsidizing them under the auspices that if anything reading web comics keeps people like me amused and distracted.
Oh yeah…Desmond has a working RSS feed, not that I like to harp on that or anything.
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May 2nd, 2007 at 1:33 pm
(Video Games)
A lot of people post a lot of things on the net about video games, and generally I try to stay away from it. Why? Because a lot of geeks out there have a lot of opinions about things they don’t really know anything about. Plus they get into holy wars over all manner of things, and honestly don’t have the open minds geeks were originally known for. In other words when I see a lot of movie, TV, and video game criticism I simply ignore it. Hell…I’ve seen criticism about movies hitting the forums long before the movie is even out by people who don’t seem to know anything about it, and thus haven’t even seen it. My criticism of Catcher in the Rye is based on my actually having read it so I think my views on it are substantiated at least that far, and honestly I expect at least that much from others.
But now I’m willing to talk a bit about it for two major reasons: 1) I haven’t seen a whole lot on the matter at hand, and 2) I’m trying to expand my posting beyond free thought and web comics.
Now then…City of Heroes issue 9. I’ve been playing CoH/CoV for about a year and a half now. I like how you can just pick up and play for a while, and then be done with said character for a while. Eve Online was a fantastic game, but it was becoming a second job, and honestly I didn’t need the stress in my life from my entertainment. Maybe I’ll go back to it at some point, but I’m not sure (I’d LOVE a single player type of game like that, but other space games are always lacking for me). Anywho, I’m very familiar with the game system and know a lot of its quirks. I could write a laundry list a yard long about little things that I’d change here or there to make it a better experience (at least in my opinion). Issue 9, though, did something that I hadn’t really considered at all through its invention system.
But this will require a little background…
Read the rest of this entry »
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May 1st, 2007 at 10:02 am
(Web Comics)
Some comics are masterworks of art. Some contain pertinent social criticism. Some, well…are like Punks and Nerds.
Punks and Nerds, much like many comics, is about the author and his friends…to some extent. They find themselves in all manner of strange circumstances doing all manner of strange things involving underwear clad superheroes and being replaced by robots. Mike and Brad have a sense of humor that is quite unique, and I have a great time reading their work. Plus, as is always important to me, they have both a standard RSS feed, and a LiveJournal syndication feed to make sure they cover all of the bases.
My favorite comic of theirs pertains to a retelling of something that happened in Questionable Content. It was so…so…wrong. I think I was laughing about it for a good twenty minutes or so. Consequentially I wouldn’t catch up on P&N until you’re done with QC (if you’re catching up on QC’s archives) just to get the maximum “umph” for your buck. If you’ve already caught up on QC the comic is here. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to snicker about that one for a while.
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May 1st, 2007 at 9:23 am
(Science)
I do my best to keep abreast of what’s happening in the world of Science. I guess it is part of that undying need somewhere within my psyche to understand everything that’s going on around me. Hence my studies in philosophy.
Thinking about things lately I’m finding that I still have a big hole in my understanding of modern physics: indeterminism. It isn’t that I don’t have any actual grasp on what it is all about. The easiest example given is that of radioactive decay, and honestly it makes a lot of sense. That out of any mass of decaying material about half of it will decay in a given period of time known as its half life is easy enough for me to understand. What I’m having issues with is thinking of one particular atom in an unstable state that is going to decay. I want to know of something in particular that actually causes the decay to happen. I know that it isn’t really there, but I still don’t quite grok how that is the case.
I know why people have a difficulty with it in general. We see ourselves as agents of determinism: we perform actions that are the causes to effects we see all of the time. If something happens that isn’t expected we understand that we simply have to come upon a better understanding of the cause and effect relationship involved. Even if we understand the probabilistic nature of things underneath the hood of the Universe, our regular interaction with the world is deterministic. We do things, we expect results. Cause and effect.
So all said I understand that it is a hole in my thinking, but it drives me crazy knowing that it is there and not being particularly able to do anything about it. I know there’s a solution there, but I haven’t found the trigger in my head to put it all together. Hopefully my good friend John, the physicist, stops by town before too long to lend me a hand with that one. His recommendation to me to read the book on Quantum Electrodynamics (or was that Thermodynamics?) really helped me in understanding the experimental evidence behind quantum mechanics. I’ll have to check my shelf when I get home to get a good link for the book for anyone interested in it.
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