_Serenity: Those Left Behind_ by Joss Whedon

Art from Amazon and used to link there.

This graphic novel fills the gap between the end of the Firefly TV series and the Serenity movie. It wasn't that interesting. It felt like a rehash of a Firefly episode. I'm a huge Firefly fan and I give this a big "meh."

_How Loathesome_ by Ted Naifeh

Art from the Amazon page for the book, and used to link there.

This graphic novel was okay, but I think I would be a revelation if you're highly interested in gay/lesbian/transgender issues.

It focused on the clubbing scene more than I care about, but several of the stories are quite good. I liked how the art worked with it. If I had a little more interest in the subject matter, I think I'd love it. But the gender confusion stuff didn't fascinate me. We all feel like an outsider sometimes, but the main character's perpetual outsider pose didn't grab me as much as it should have.

I'll keep an eye out for other stuff by the same author and artist, though.

_Stormwatch: Post-Human Division_ by Christos Gage et al

Image taken from the Amazon page for the book, and used to link there

I got a copy of this trade at a Half Price Books recently. I'd been down on Stormwatch in general, but I found I enjoyed this story arc a lot. It focuses on attempts to create a superhuman response team staffed by ordinary Joes.

However, those Joes aren't so ordinary, of course. I was particularly interested in a woman who displayed face reading of _Lie to Me_ quality, and used it in interesting ways: in one scene she walks into a room with a combat team, flirts with one of the team members, and then explains how the relationships amongst the team were such that he was the one guy she needed to flirt with to destroy the whole unit's solidarity. Fun stuff.

The Strange Case of Mr. Salad Monday...is strange

I enjoyed this steampunk short story from the Tor.com website. They've been doing a steampunk month thing.

However, although I enjoyed the story, I'm having trouble putting my finger on why it feels like enough of a story. Very little seems to be resolved by it. Does it work? If so, why does it work?

Fun detail: part of the action of the story turns around a replication of the internet in print: newspapers which print essays and then print comments to go with them, as fast as possible. That's true steampunk, that: taking a modern idea and moving it back to an earlier technology. It's almost plausible, too.

Try to critique an ad, and you just get ads of that type on your page

Image from men's superhero costumes video ad from CostumeStore

Ok, so I felt pretty good about the sendup of 'sexy women's costumes' that I posted about a few days ago.

Then today I see that that posting about that just causes an ad for sexy women's costumes to appear on my blog. Setting up Google Ads is like selling out, automatically.

(Except for the part where I haven't actually seen any money yet from the ads. I haven't hit them minimum hit rate required to get me any money. I basically put the ads in place just in case I hit one of those overnight-fame-internet-memes.)

You can go ahead and click on these links. The 'sexy costumes' are nothing that's unsafe at all, and the video ad is pretty boring, although I'll concede that if you're thinking about buying the costume, the ad will show you the costume. It's like a video catalog, more than an advertisement.

I guess I should stop mentioning sexy women's costumes, huh? If I keep putting the words 'sexy women's costumes' on my blog, that can't be good for my hit rate, huh?

Okay, I could talk about men's costumes instead, right? The sexy women's costumes ad thing led me to a related video ad about men's superhero costumes. They are terrible. Horrible. The men's costumes have fake muscles and just look ridiculous. Bulky, ill fitting things.

I've come to terms with the fact that actual spandex costumes look bad on actual real people, or at least on me; that you'd better have a superhero physique if you want to wear a superhero costume. But adding fake padding for muscles is such a bad idea that I can't believe it got through the design process, and the fact that someone spent money to make a video in which people stand around looking uncomfortable in terrible costumes is mind boggling. If the company can't find anyone who looks good in the costumes, then what are the odds that a customer is going to look good in them?

Libraries and bar codes

The Wells Branch Community Library near me, which serves the Wells Branch municipal utility district, has a simple system for book checkout. They have PCs set up with self-service signs on them and a bar code gun hung nearby.

The Austin Public Library has a similar system, but instead of a gun you line up your book on a surface; I like the gun better.

The Wells Branch system has you scan your library card to start, then scan books, then scan a "done" code when you're done; the done code is on a little card. It's just brain-dead simple. The only interface you use is the gun.

The Austin Public Libary system is a fancy machine with a touch screen. It's slower and harder to use.

The Wells Branch library makes cards by printing bar code stickers, putting them on a business card, and laminating them. The whole library feels like some smart college students put it together on the cheap, and it works well anyway. I like it.

New webcomic, Bad Machinery

Hey, this one is really good. British kids starting up at school. Neat simple art. Great writing. From the guy who wrote Scary Go Round.

The episodes have an odd and subtle style to them. The characters are great.

Pluggable sensors for Arduino

MakerShed is now offering a product that allows you to plug various sensors and a display into an Arduino, without soldering. This is a great idea, making the Arduino more like a cheap open-source Lego NXT.

The $50 price for the set isn't bad, either.

I've still got a nice Arduino-based game kit lying around. Haven't spent time on the hacking lately.

Video but no sound from DVDs on Windows Media Player

I got a shiny new laptop at work, but when I popped a DVD into it, it gave me video, but no sound. Coincidentally, I was having some problems with my DVD player on another laptop. The coincidence made me think the problem was hardware.

But when I got around to googling for 'no sound windows media dvd', I found a couple of forum topics indicating that Windows Media player isn't fully DVD-capable out of the box. My last machine had a more extensive AV software package bundled with it, too, and that led me to believe that full DVD capability was something that ought to work right off.

I found a free video player VLC here, and that took care of the problem right away. The player was only 20 Mb in size and installed without a fuss.