The not so funny part is that this message first occurred when the download was almost finished.



So much for a bloody thirty evening of design.

Update:
The next day I tried to rent the film again and iTunes correctly realized it had already been rented but not downloaded, so it began the download. Since the movie had mostly downloaded before, it didn’t take long to finish. Thanks Steve!

Have signed up for a Flickr page, upgraded to the pro level and been busy uploading photos! Makes me want to take more photos…

Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god: pure cartoon geek goodness is on the way. Fantagraphics is releasing “Willie & Joe The WWII Years” in March 2008. Willie and Joe (previously mentioned) is one the greatest comics ever made, done by Mill Mauldin, it captured the war through the infantry’s eye, boring, nerve wracking and tiring, criss crossed with moments terror.

I can’t wait.

I’ve thought about enumerating the various things I can give thanks for and it’s a pretty big list, all things considered. But to write it out, to tally it out, to be some sort of spiritual accountant, carefully weighing that things are important and by implication what things are not feels out of place this year. It smells of overthinking. In the end, any day above ground is a good one, so lets leave it at thank.

Abstraction is a comic by Shintaro Kago that starts off normally and then slowly melts your brain, but in way you can love. Maybe.

Tom Hubberstone did a 24hour comic that describes in heartbreaking detail, what it’s like to live with Crohn’s disease. Lovely artwork and good storytelling. What really fascinates me though is rather than focusing on what the disease is, he tells of the effect it has had on life, a text book case of showing as opposed to telling.

Good post by Warren Ellis on the design of magazines, but really it applies to other things: Design your product to be wanted. It’s a basic tenet that I think designers consider briefly and then forget.

My aunt Denise had a big bed on the op floor of her 3 story house. It was an old style bed, with mahogany wood, set high off the floor with thick, firm mattresses. She covered the top with many pillows and high quality sheets, the blankets seemingly handmade, they were so soft and beautiful.

I walked into her bedroom today and the bed was gone. There were many other things in the room, artifacts of her, art work from the walls, tools for beading, a small refrigerator where her medicine was kept. All of these things are still there, pushed aside or hastily moved out of the way, but still there, only needing someone to put them back in their proper place. In the meantime, it looks as though the heart of the room has been torn out, leaving a gapping hole in midst of fine oak furniture, custom made jewelry and new hardwood floors. It is startling to notice this, to have this image of someone in your head, alive and smiling, right here in this very room and now her throne and herself is gone, unceremoniously, but carefully ripped out so as not to startle the edges of all the stuff in the room and leaving ashes of memories.

Watched NBC’s Bionic Woman (the site is slow as hell, so click at your risk), mainly to see how Katee Sackhoff of Battlestar Galatica fame would do. She was good of course, great actress, but the rest of the cast was pretty lightweight, especially Michaelle Ryan as the main star, Jamie Summers, who gets a robotic implants after a terrible car accident. This first episode was very plot driven, designed to lay out future directions, while giving us a brief hint of the characters. It’s whirlwind of mostly cliche plot lines and characters you don’t care about, except for Sackhoff’s character, who was an earlier version of the Bionic Woman, but now seems to have gone a bit crazy.

Watch it again? Sure, just to see Sackhoff, who can really anchor a scene, and in hopes the rest of characters and show will develop into something memorable.

No, seriously, check out the new Amazon MP3 downloads. It’s a bit cheaper than iTunes, .89 versus .99 and the albums are either 5.99 or 8.99, depending on the artist. A quick browse for some older stuff, like Placebo or 16 horsepower reveals that they got it. Best of all, the MP3s are DRM FREE, meaning there are not restrictions on where and how they’re played. Once you buy, you can put it on your computer, iPod, work computer, your friend’s computer, etc. I’ve only bought one mp3 from iTunes, just to see how it works, but this Amazon thing makes has me reaching for my wallet.