October 2007
8 posts
3 tags
Thanksgiving and Christmas Shopping
People tend to act like each year’s Christmas shopping season is the Worst One Yet, with America eternally in danger of dropping off a cliff into Total Commercialism. It’s an easy news story to write I guess. Pretend that this year it’s really bad and ignore that you wrote the same thing last year, but in fact it’s always been the case that Thanksgiving signaled the start...
3 tags
Twin Peaks and My So-Called Life
There’s a new boxed set of Twin Peaks out on DVD. I already have both seasons, but this is the one to get if you don’t.
The Washington Post has a review of the set. It includes the original pilot for the first time in American release, which is important as the European version contains spoilers in the form of extra footage incorporated from later episodes in a bizarre attempt to...
5 tags
Mac Tip: Scroll Arrows at Both Ends of Scroll Bars
Open up Terminal (in Applications/Utilties) and type this in:
defaults write "Apple Global Domain" AppleScrollBarVariant DoubleBoth
It’ll place a pair of up/down buttons at both ends of your scroll bars, instead of just at one end.
2 tags
Leopard vs. DivX
I encountered a small hiccup while upgrading to Mac OS 10.5: when I first started up after the upgrade, the Finder wouldn’t launch. Other programs would run, but I couldn’t get to my desktop or navigate to any files. Turns out that DivX was to blame. If you’re upgrading, delete your DivX player first and the file in /Library/Application Support. If you’ve already upgraded...
6 tags
Missing Page in 52 Week 18
I’ve been re-reading 52 over the past few weeks. Highlight so far:
My wife, “who’s that chimp in the detective hat on the cover?”
Me: “Oh, that’s Detective Chimp.”
God bless them for bringing back that ridiculous character in Day of Vengeance.
Anyway, there’s a page missing from Week 18, which came out in a recent interview with Greg Rucka...
4 tags
Don't Provide Your Email Password to Another...
There’s a feature on some websites you might have seen recently. They offer to import your address book from a webmail service like Gmail and check to see which of your friends are already using their service. (Some will even spam your friends who aren’t without asking you, but that’s the subject for a whole different article on best practices.) This feature—asking for your...
6 tags
A Brief History of Captain America's Costume
Upon yesterday’s unveiling of the new Captain America’s costume, I
remarked that most of the great iconic superhero costumes belong to DC. While
Marvel has lots of great characters, few of them display the same design flair
found in DC characters like Superman, Batman, Hawkman, The Flash, or Green
Lantern. Primary colors, chest symbols. These are the staples of superhero
costume...
4 tags
Flex Mentallo
In 1996, Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely published a four-issue spin-off of the acclaimed Doom Patrol called Flex Mentallo. The issues have never been reprinted and haven’t been collected in a trade paperback. You can find them for sale on eBay and on 4 Color Heroes, but it’ll cost you $50-$100 for the whole series. As such, I’ve never read it, but everything I’ve heard...