September 9th, 2010 | brainjuice

Note to self. must buy this from Khepri soon. Probably so should you.

(If you own any issue or collection of GLOBAL FREQUENCY, you own Brian Wood design work. And you will understand that you need this book.)

pd2-sdcc-big_large

John’s Phone

September 8th, 2010 | researchmaterial

This amuses me no end.

John’s Phone is the most simple mobile phone. Just call and hang up. John’s Phone is easy for anywhere, anytime. Finally a separate unit with no frills and conditions. A simlock free phone with large keys, an address book, a pen and over three weeks of standby time.

4957781965_e68a9426c3

johnsphone_snow_home

The phone equivalent of, say, the Muji bag. Or, perhaps, this:

gb_pil_album_500

Plus, you know, Lego.

Links for 2010-09-08

September 8th, 2010 | brainjuice

  • Scientists discover nanodiamonds in Greenland ice
    "University of Maine volcanologist Andrei Kurbatov and glaciologist Paul Mayewski, along with 21 other scientists, coauthored a scientific paper released late last month that details the discovery of a layer of nanodiamonds in the Greenland ice sheet, which has added to a controversy in the scientific community about a possible extraterrestrial impact event that could shed light on why some types of large mammals disappeared around 12,900 years ago."
    (tags:history geo NANODIAMONDS! )

DARK TOWER To Be Adapted Across Media

September 8th, 2010 | researchmaterial

This, on the face of it, is pleasingly crazy. Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman are to adapt Stephen King’s DARK TOWER sequence (which I’ve never read) for film and tv:

The plan is to start with the feature film, and then create a bridge to the second feature with a season of TV episodes. That means the feature cast – and the big star who’ll play Deschain – also has to appear in the TV series before returning to the second film. After that sequel is done, the TV series picks up again, this time focusing on Deschain as a young gunslinger. Those storylines will be informed by a prequel comic book series that King was heavily involved in plotting. The third film would pick up the mature Deshain as he completes his journey.

I’m betting there’ll also be an online element, for the full "transmedia" buzzword-fulfilling effect.

This is big old-media old-school popcultural stars stepping up out of their trenches with atomic bazookas, saying "this here might be the old stuff, and it might not be your magic digital smart dust, but we can still make a pretty big hole in shit with these things." In a way, I wonder if the question is not whether or not there’s been anything like this before, but whether there’ll ever again be anything like this afterwards.

September 8th, 2010 | music

§ – TIMES 3 feat.??† ? from § on Vimeo.

Bruce Sterling On The NEXT NATURE Project

September 8th, 2010 | researchmaterial

Chairman Bruce in full-on Future Machete Guru mode:

Next Nature is an investigative enterprise by a set of mostly Dutch researchers. Next Nature is haunted by Previous Nature, or rather, by the ghostly Gothic absences of a vanished Natural world. Next Nature also bears many premonitions about the seething, favela-like, feverish state of our planet tomorrow. Next Nature offers us few reassurances. It refuses to view Nature as a given, solid, static entity to be discovered, dissected and destroyed by human agency. Instead, Next Nature is a dynamic entity that is fated to change right along with us.

There is an ontological crisis involved in our ignorance of what the Earth was like before we humans altered it. It’s hard for us to establish a comfortable sense of our place in the world when the world itself is so outworn and bedraggled by so many previous human efforts. It’s degrading to work creatively on hand-me-downs: the writer whose page is a scraped-down palmpsest, the artist whose canvas is torn and worn, the architect engaged in endless renovations, the actress in thrift-shop clothes. That’s what it’s like for a civilization existing in a natural milieu that has been irretrievably damaged. And yes, that is our future.

September 8th, 2010 | microlog, music

If you’re in or around Brighton tonight, go to THE OUTER CHURCH, held upstairs at The Freebutt, for an indoctrination into the kosmiche, the hauntological, the confusing and the electronic as prepared by Joseph Stannard, writer for THE WIRE magazine and The Quietus. I would be there if I could, and, in fact, in the near future, I might be.

A Splash Of RED

September 8th, 2010 | Work

Good morning. If the embed works, this should be a little bit of RED.

Links for 2010-09-06

September 7th, 2010 | brainjuice

  • The brain speaks: Scientists decode words from brain signals
    In an early step toward letting severely paralyzed people speak with their thoughts, University of Utah researchers translated brain signals into words using two grids of 16 microelectrodes implanted beneath the skull but atop the brain.
    (tags:neuro blacklight )
  • Canadian authorities to try 3D image of child to slow drivers
    An optical illusion is about to be trialed in West Vancouver, Canada, starting September 7, to try to jolt reckless drivers into slowing down.
    (tags:tech crime psych )
  • Scientists examine possibility of a phonon laser, or ‘phaser’
    Scientists theorize that phonons, which are the smallest discrete unit of vibrational energy, can be amplified by a phonon laser to generate a highly coherent beam of sound (particularly, high-frequency ultrasound), similar to how an optical laser generates a highly coherent beam of light.
    (tags:sci tech war )
  • Who do our genes belong to?
    Investors in pharmaceutical, medical and biotechnological industries should not be able to patent genes that are identical to naturally occurring sequences, according to an Australian National University biotechnology patent expert.
    (tags:med crime )
  • Study examines association between urban living and psychotic disorders
    ""There is a substantial worldwide variation in incidence rates of schizophrenia," the authors write as background in the article. "The clearest geographic pattern within this distribution of rates is that urban areas have a higher incidence of schizophrenia than rural areas." Characteristics of neighborhoods that have been associated with an increased risk of developing psychosis include population and ethnic density, deprivation and social fragmentation or reduced social capital and cohesion…"
    (tags:psych )
  • Book Covers – Penguin Classics: (Red) Series

    (tags:design books )

  • AfroCyberPunk : Blog Archive : Tomorrow is Today
    "…the largest movie industry in Africa has joined in on the action with the July 2010 release of the sci-fi movie Kajola by Nigerian director Niyi Akinmolayan. "Kajola is the Yoruba word for commonwealth. In the year 2059, Nigeria becomes a totalitarian state. After a second civil war, the rich relocate to the Island areas of Lagos state and turn it into an ultra modern city. The war torn mainland of lagos state is disconnected and abandoned. A rebel leader, Allen learns of a plot codenamed Kajola to build cities on the mainland and eliminate the remaining survivors…""
    (tags:film )
  • BLDGBLOG: Hydromania
    "Set in a drought-stricken world "several decades into the future," run by "water corporations from China, Japan and the Ukraine," it follows the science fictionalized path of a "maverick water engineer"…"
    (tags:books )
  • Holding Tide: The Connectome and Data-Driven Biology
    "Sebastian Seung at MIT is one of the foremost researchers in the field of connectomics– the branch of neuroscience dedicated to reconstructing the complete circuit diagram of the human brain…"
    (tags:sci neuro med )
  • Hallucinogen can safely ease anxiety in advanced-stage cancer patients: study
    "In the first human study of its kind to be published in more than 35 years, researchers found psilocybin, an hallucinogen which occurs naturally in "magic mushrooms," can safely improve the moods of patients with advanced-stage cancer and anxiety, according to an article published online today in the Archives of General Psychiatry."
    (tags:drugs neuro med )

September 7th, 2010 | music

<a href="http://magdalenasolis.bandcamp.com/album/lady-of-the-wild-things">March Hare by Magdalena Solis</a>

Click through to buy a download of the whole thing for a miserly 5 euros.

Magazero

September 7th, 2010 | researchmaterial

Just read about this in an interview somewhere this afternoon. Magazero is an internet shop for independent magazines. Not quite in the same space as Stack.

I love Magazero because they told me something I didn’t know — there’s a new issue of the excellent "speculative architecture" magazine P.E.A.R. Magazero is slowly expanding its stock, according to the interview I read on the phone at the pub… ah, here it is.

I believe that it is the richness and variety of the magazines that I stock that will bring success. My aim is to find magazines that are not really known or widely available, and to stock them. Then I have to bring them to the attention of potential buyers – that’s marketing. I take the view that there is a huge untapped market for magazines, and that work I undertake to bring mags to the attention of new buyers will be repaid.

I have an initial target of stocking 300 mags, which I think I’ll hit by the end of next year. It’s a slow business, but at the moment I am in the very early stages of building a system, a brand, customers, the lot. It can’t be done overnight – largely as each magazine has to be sourced separately.

If you decide to spend some money there, this coupon gets you 25% off until the end of September.

I suspect they will have some of my money this week.

Future Islands

September 7th, 2010 | music

I don’t know how I’ve never heard this before, or how I’ve never heard of them. I mean, don’t look too closely, because the band looks like it escaped from a skin-testing lab and the lead guy dances worse than the Jozin z Bazin guy. But the lead guy has a brilliant shouty voice. The music seriously sounds like it was nicked from gorgeously bad postpunk who in turn nicked their act from 1970s electronic library music.

And yet I’ve listened to it five times in a row.

“Follow You,” Future Islands, 2007. Odd thing, it is.

September 7th, 2010 | microlog, people I know

Artist/writer Katelan Foisy says: "I’ll be on the H2O Network Friday Sept 17th at 6 p.m. talking about my book Blood and Pudding and self transformation. For more info on the H2O network and a call in number click here."

Received Goods 7sep10

September 7th, 2010 | received goods

As ever, near-instant service from Touch Music, delivering the new Philip Jeck record I mentioned Friday night. Looking forward to playing this when it gets dark.

Sent from my outboard brain

Posted via email from warrenellis’s posterous

September 7th, 2010 | kindle

Book

If Ana saw Zesi coming, she showed no signs of it. ‘This is the future,’ she said gravely. She held her own shovel over her head like a hunter’s spear. ‘The future.’

Note:Nice prehistoric presentiment of the tool enabled future.
Shared on September 6th, 2010 from Kindle

Links for 2010-07-30

September 6th, 2010 | brainjuice

  • Upside to global warming: ‘New North’ will thrive
    "As worldwide population increases by 40 percent over the next 40 years, sparsely populated Canada, Scandinavia, Russia and the northern United States will become formidable economic powers and migration magnets, Laurence C. Smith writes in "The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future" (Dutton Books), scheduled for publication Sept. 23." Possible tie-in here with InfraNet Lab's "Next North" project
    (tags:geo pol viridian )
  • B.A.S.A.A.P. ? Blog ? BERG
    "B.A.S.A.A.P. is short for Be As Smart As A Puppy, which is my short-hand for a bunch of things I?ve been thinking about? Ooh? Since 2002 or so I think, and a conversation in a california car-park with Matt Webb. It was my term for a bunch of things that encompass some 3rd rail issues for UI designers like proactive personalisation and interaction, examined in the work of Byron and Nass, exemplified by (and forever-after-vilified-as) Microsoft?s Bob and Clippy (RIP). A bunch of things about bots and daemons, conversational interface. And lately, a bunch of things about machine learning ? and for want of a better term, consumer-grade artificial intelligence."
    (tags:tech design future BERG )
  • Global Qi standard powers up wireless charging
    "The Wireless Power Consortium today launched the Qi 1.0 standard which enables consumer electronic brands and device manufacturers to bring interoperable wireless inductive charging devices to market. The Consortium also announced today the first products certified with Qi."
    (tags:tech )
  • The Associated Press: AP IMPACT: Before the CIA, there was the Pond
    "Created during World War II as a purely U.S. operation free of the perceived taint of European allies, the Pond existed for 13 years and was shrouded in secrecy for more than 50 years. It used sources that ranged from Nazi officials to Stalinists and, at one point, a French serial killer"
    (tags:pol war spy )

September 6th, 2010 | music

“Blind,” Blackbird Blackbird.

BLACKBIRD BLACKBIRD / BLIND from Alan Jensen on Vimeo.

Am Here

September 6th, 2010 | daybook

Yes. Am here. But mostly just on email, with half an eye on Twitter some of the time. Busy day. Need to feed Paul more FREAKANGELS pages, among many other things. I don’t even dare switch on Google Reader right now. Bad enough I checked my "public" email account (warrenellis@gmail.com) and found a bunch of new music by RxRy waiting for me.

Negat-ve Patterns by RxRy

I looked at Flickr earlier, just to get my eyes out of OpenOffice for a minute, and um well yes why don’t you see for yourself:

4962910580_2ab603ff96

Thank you Lenora Claire.

Things I am thinking about besides where the cartoon arserape ghost version of Lenora Claire is going to stick her fingernails in my forthcoming hellish nightmares: wondering if Katie and Jack are moving copies of NANOKA, and wondering if a one-man magazine counts as a magazine.

September 4th, 2010 | music

“Open/Avocado” by Kim Boekbinder, directed by BriAnna Olson. I previously made you listen to The Impossible Girl. You liked it. You want to go back and listen to it again. You want to give her money. Or, at the very least, spread the disease around. Well done.

(We’ll ignore the fact that I tried to have her cursed by a gypsy on Twitter earlier today, yes? Yes.)

September 4th, 2010 | music

A video preview for Dustin Wong’s album INFINITE LOVE.

Dustin Wong – Infinite Love preview from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.

NANOKA

September 4th, 2010 | people I know

Photographers Katie West and Jack Scoresby running loose in Japan with cameras for a week, resulting in an 88-page magazine called NANOKA. What is not to love? Nothing.

Preview?__v=c032

September 3rd, 2010 | microlog

The PAR AVION split CD by The Ithaca Trio and Machinefabriek is a rather lovely thing, too. Atmosphere, classical instruments, ambience, things heard from another room.

September 3rd, 2010 | microlog

And oh my god there’s a new Philip Jeck album out today and Secretly Canadian just sent me a new album from a new band Warren is happy this afternoon oh yes

Electronic Music In The Classroom

September 3rd, 2010 | music

This is a rather magnificent hauntological/retrotronic artifact by Jon Brooks, who records on the Ghost Box label as The Advisory Circle.

I’ve gone on at length in the past about the traditions of Confusing English Electronic Music. I realise it’s an acquired taste, and possibly only appeals to someone with certain life experiences, but nonetheless I love it. The tracks are short – if one experiment annoys you, click on to the next. And if you like it, click through and buy it for a very reasonable seven British quid.

It will be a good month for the Confusing English Electronic Music, as Ghost Box release the next two pieces in their Study Series on the 10th.

<a href="http://dddenham.bandcamp.com/album/electronic-music-in-the-classroom">In The Beginning by D. D. Denham</a>

FREAKANGELS 0107

September 3rd, 2010 | Work

And we’re back again.

A Witch House Mix I Just Found Via EyeCrossCross

September 2nd, 2010 | photography

Haven't listened to it yet myself, but I will later.  

Awesome Witch House mix!

fr4nk3nst31n:

my witch haus mix got blogged

Posted via email from warrenellis’s posterous

Fthursday

September 2nd, 2010 | daybook

Random catch-up on stuff and things, from this slowly dying Thinkpad X61 that buzzes more loudly and moves more slowly every day. Definitely need to order another Thinkpad next week, now, even though I’m dreading having to deal with a new OS and replace all my programs. I wish I could be zen about it, like Ben Hammersley, and live in Zumodrive and Google Docs. But I need OpenOffice and Final Draft. (And a dozen other things.) (And don’t talk to me about Celtx, I’ve never met a production company with Celtx in their workflow.)

Been an insane work week, in which I have so far produced 2000 words of a booklet, about 20 pages of comics, 3000 words of a novel, and a requested tv series pitch that I can’t even face doing a work count on. 800 words of a WIRED UK column. And I’m pretty sure I’ve forgotten something.

(Said booklet should be, with luck, an actual Thing In The World by the end of the month.)

Project Blacklight got confirmed today. Details will happen down the road, but it’s a very unusual one-shot comics project, working with an old friend, that is experimental in lots of ways. A small thing, that won’t be available in comics shops. I like experiments.

Terribly amused by Zo’s story of how she met her husband, and my complicity therein. I saw her a couple of days before she was due to meet him in Paris, and she was all "aah, nothing’s going to happen." While grinding her thighs together like a cricket. Heh.

Shit, this post’s been in the emblogeniser for two hours, waiting for me to finish and send it because I ended up doing five other things. I press Publish now.

September 2nd, 2010 | music

Found this in the unplumbed depths of my external drive last night. Had forgotten all about it. H Stewart, from her 2009 collection LOST. “Sunrise Revival.” Playing it for the end of summer here.

Monocle Mediterraneo Missteps

Jean Snow - 08 Sep 10

Monocle Mediterraneo

I finally received my issue of the Monocle Mediterraneo summer newspaper today, but it wasn’t easy. I ordered it in early August, and after a month going by with still no paper in my mailbox (they promise delivery in two weeks) I finally decided to get in touch on Monday. To their credit, they immediately got back to me, and said that they would send me another copy using registered mail, and it has arrived today (although I suspect it may just be the original issue that was mailed out, which would mean it took 5 weeks for delivery).

The reason I bring this up is because from the feedback I’ve gotten through Twitter after I started wondering “out loud” where my issue was, I got quite a few responses from others having similar problems, so my example is far from being an isolated case. What’s to blame? Is it the UK mail service? It is rather disappointing to receive a copy of something that celebrates summer in September, a frustration compounded by the fact that a few weeks ago I stopped by the Monocle Shop in Aoyama and saw it sold for 500 yen — ordering it online costs 7 pounds, which is almost double. Quite surprising considering that the Japan cover price for regular issues of Monocle is 2310 yen (almost $30), which itself is ridiculous.

But despite these complaints, it really is a beautiful thing. The paper’s smell may have turned into a joke, but its pages really do have a great, almost nostalgic odor. I love the format and the size, and would really like to see more publications/magazines use it — and it sounds like we can already expect Monocle to repeat the experiment during the winter holidays.

Test Patterns Are Everywhere (in the Industry)

Jean Snow - 08 Sep 10

TV Test Pattern

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post on the use of test patterns as a graphical element, many people reminded me on Twitter that it’s still very much in use in the industry (video and TV production) or film school, and so a lot of people still deal with these quite regularly, so it’s not that far fetched to still be in use as a graphical association with the medium. I guess we should treat it the same way a film reel is still often used to represent anything that relates to movies.

Remembering Ana Mendieta

Coilhouse - 08 Sep 10

Tonight, I can’t stop thinking about one of the more influential, yet relatively obscure artists at work during the post-Happenings decade. Ana Mendieta:


From Ana Mendieta’s “Body Tracks” series, 1970s.

It’s all too easy to scoff at raw, bloody, chthonic feminist performance art these days. Hell, it’s all too easy to scoff at just about anything that whiffs of pussy power. After all, this is 2010! No need for histrionics, right? We’ve been liberated, reborn. We’re fierce and comfortable, right? We’ve seen it all a hundred times before… rrrriiiiiight?

Then again, what Alice Miller said about scorn holds a lot of sway: ?Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one’s own despised and unwanted feelings.? In light of that assessment, whether one chooses to roll their eyes or not, Mendieta’s (earth-)body of work, and the circumstances under which she died, resonate as much right now as they did in the 1970s and early 80s. (Although, come to think of it, there were plenty of eye-rollers then, too.)

In any case, on the 15th anniversary of her mysterious death, I’m lighting candles for Ana Mendieta and wondering what comes next.

(Read more after the jump.)


Read the rest of Remembering Ana Mendieta


Post tags: Adornment, Art, Flora & Fauna, Gender, Grrrl, Memento Mori, Multiculti, Revolutionary, Sculpture, Sexuality

Cthulhu Cthursday: The H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival(s)

Ectoplasmosis - 08 Sep 10

That’s right. Los Angeles this weekend. Portland, Oregon next month. Can’t say I’ve been, unfortunately, but always hear about good stuff getting screened at the fest.

After you watch Mike Boas’ promo above, you can check out the official site for the festivals.

H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival
Promo by Mike Boas [Youtube]


© ECTOPLASMOSIS!, 2010. | Permalink | No comments yet | Add to del.icio.us | digg it | reddit it

NEXT 2010 talk

Open The Future - 08 Sep 10

I was in Denmark last week, speaking at NEXT 2010. The subject... geoengineering (dun dun DUN).

Here's the talk.

When I watched a part of it, the sound was off-sync with the video, so fair warning.

And fun game for any of my talks: count the "Jazz Hands"!

Maleonn?s Second-Hand Tang Poem

Coilhouse - 08 Sep 10

Second-hand Tang Poem, Maleonn’s series from 2007, is only a small sample of a portfolio overflowing with surrealistic delights, but it is among my favorites. These black and white dioramas tell the story of a mystical, far off land ? a tale both somber and silly. It’s a dichotomy seen throughout his work and he uses this balancing act to great effect. His work isn’t on exhibition in the US at the moment, but he does have a show at Blindspot Gallery in Hong Kong.


Read the rest of Maleonn’s Second-Hand Tang Poem


Post tags: Art, Fairy Tales, Photography, Surreal

LINKS: 8 SEPTEMBER 2010

John Robb - 08 Sep 10

Some items of interest:

  • OpenPCR.  An open source version of a high cost tool for biohacking, got double the funding it needed on Kickstarter.  More on the team behind it.
  • Inside/outside refrigeration/cooling system.  Begs the question:  what would be the savings of a refrigerator that leveraged outside air temp intelligently?
  • Shot spotter.  Being installed within lots of American cities.  Audio surveillance that can locate a gunshot within 35 ft.  See inset. Shotspotter
  • Gang maps of LA.  The alternative political landscape.
  • Quran burning in Florida.  Right Wing Extreme, an armed militia, will protect the "Dove World Outreach Center" during it's first annual 9/11 Quran burning.  RWE is currently running a poll on its site:  "Do you think it's time for a second American Revolution?"  Charles C points out that RWE has withdrawn from the effort (see comments below).
  • Haystack.  A project to foil national firewalls and state monitoring in Iran (China and Egypt next). Newsweek did an article on the leader of the project, Austin Heap and this turned up: When I first met Heap in January, he was regularly shuttling to Washington, D.C., for meetings at State and Treasury and with senior lawmakers.  
  • Global police crack down on the open source insurgency, the Scene. They (the police) just wanted to know who or whom had used two different IPs during a couple of dates in 2009. Since we did not have this information (no logging) there was no information and/or hardware for them to seize. The police did not enter the datacenter, only the office, so no servers or network have been touched by them.

JOURNAL: GG Entrepreneurs Displace Mexico's Control Over PEMEX

John Robb - 08 Sep 10

Global guerrilla entrepreneurs, super-empowered by direct connections to the dominant global marketplace (a market that is relatively indifferent to the provenance of the supplies it demands), are taking control of the Burgos basin, home to Mexico's biggest natural gas fields.  To accelerate this seizure, these enterprising guerrillas (likely a Zeta offshoot) are kidnapping oil workers working for PEMEX (as Zenpundit kindly notes, this is a playbook we have seen before -- India, Iraq, and Nigeria).  Here are some choice GG quotes from the LATimes article about it:

"How is it, that Pemex, supposedly the backbone of the nation, can be made to bow down like this?" -- relative of a kidnapped worker.  

"These are territories where the organized crime infrastructure, inside and outside of the police forces, has established power ? a parallel power, a parallel government. That territory is in the hands of a parallel power that has penetrated the government at all levels." Alejandro Gertz   NOTE: This is a nice description of a hollow state.

NOTE, we'll see variants of this in the US as the global economic depression worsens. 

Thor 614 Out (Tomorrow)

Kieron Gillen - 08 Sep 10

In the US today tomorrow and tomorrow tomorrowtomorrow in the UK, my Thor run reaches its conclusion…

(Unless you’re in Canada. When it reaches it comes out nottomorrow. As in, today.)

Here’s CBR’s review and and you can read the preview here. Which thankfully cuts off before something particularly spoilerific. And as much as I’d like to do a looking-back-on-my-run post, I’m resisting saying anything else, because I’d risk doing the Spoilerific thing myself. It’s not over until those 22 pages fall between your fingers, with our array of final confrontations and the reading of the fine print.

As a whole, the run’s worked better than I could have ever hoped for. None of the three stories were in an easy situation, and that they even worked at all pleases me. I’ve few regrets about what I did and only a handful of what I didn’t do (More with the Broxtonites, Blake, Sif). And all those regrets aren’t really regrets at all, because I don’t think I could have played it any other way. It helped that I was working with such a fantastic string of artists, all of whom were up against it as much as I was. Billy, Rich and Doug - I salute you. Niko for New Mutants too. And, as always, McKelvie gets his own special, less complimentary kind of salute.

Most of all, I’m pleased that, no matter how random its ever-extending nature seemed to be, it’s a body of work. Stick those 11 issues of Thor with the Loki and New Mutants issues in a trade paper-back, and you’ve got something with clear themes and defined character arcs. Also, lots of hitting. The genre will not be denied.

It’s been fun and thanks for reading to those who read.

*****

Another thing strikes me. This is the last comic I have out before November when Generation Hope debuts. When I’ve had as much on the shelves in the last year as I have, that seems like a spookily large gap. The odd thing being, I’m not writing any less comics now than I have been. This month is Generation Hope, my second Avatar book and something else. And it’s a fun something else which I suspect will cause the most communal eyebrow raises since… well, since I was put on Thor.

So, expect this blog to lean more towards interview posts in the near future. Expecting shouting.

What Do These Colors Mean to You?

Jean Snow - 07 Sep 10

Rolling Stone

Last night I was reading through the latest issue of Rolling Stone — really loved the cover feature on Mad Men, as well as the profile on SNL creator Lorne Michaels — and seeing how they branded the issue’s theme (“Fall Television”) made me wonder just how relevant that particular imagery really is these days. The branding in question is what you see pictured above — it appears with all of the TV-related articles in the issue — and is of course inspired by the TV test patterns of old (pictured below, and technically known as “SMPTE color bars,” as I learned through Wikipedia).

Television Test Pattern

As a retro effect, it works — I certainly remember them — but has anyone under the age of 20 ever seen one? As far as I know — and keep in mind that I’ve been living in Japan for 10+ years — they haven’t been used in at least a decade, and not just because they’re not necessary anymore (in this world of digital sets), but also because we live in a world with 24-hour broadcasts.

I’m just curious as to whether it’s still a good icon or image to use when referring to TV, although I’m the first to admit that I liked how it was used, and I can’t think of anything off-hand that would work better.