As you may know, the day job is teaching for a software company. It’s a pretty good job, and some days it’s amazing. I told the story earlier today on Twitter, which I will now reproduce (with some formatting and links not possible in the original tweets:

Holy crap, you guys, holy CRAP.

Okay, so I’m talking in class about #TheMartian and one of my students mentions that his father worked for NASA in the 60s.

Recently, dad was sick so student was visiting in the hospital and another old guy was there. Got to talking, introduced himself.

“Nice to meet you, student. I’m Fred Haise”. Apollo 13 Fred Haise. Dad worked in friggin’ MCC during Gemini/Apollo.

Testified to Congress about Apollo 1. Sat the EECOM controller’s position. I asked, and apparently he could get me John Aaron’s autograph.

I am talking to the son of a goddamn American hero, holy crap. Day made.

I am floating 15 cm off the floor you guys. Holy crap. This encounter with history is maybe even better than meeting @tweetsoutloud.

So, should I mention the part about how an uncle of mine grew up speaking German in Huntsville, Alabama during the 1940s?

On account of all the neighbors spoke German. On account of how his father and the neighbors all moved to Alabama in 1945 with their boss.

(Wait for it)

Yup, uncle’s dad was part of Werner von Braun’s team. I’m a little more conflicted about that one.

Okay, I don’t ask for much around here (okay, yeah, I ask that people look at cool stuff and maybe kick in to a Kickstarter that I’m supporting because I want it to make goal so I can get my stuff), but I ask for very little that’s about me. For example, last Halloween, I asked for somebody to draw a zombie robot and Brandon Carr did and that was cool.¹

So this is what I’m asking: spend a little time today looking up a few of the many controller and directors that wore the headsets, slung the sliderules, stared at the screens, and made our first, tentative stabs at leaving behind the planet of our birth possible. I’ll start you with some names: John Aaron, Steve Bales, Sy Liebergot, Gerry Griffin, Chris Kraft, Gene Kranz, Glynn Lunney, and there are literally hundreds more, working harder and smarter than anybody’s ever worked before.

We’re losing that generation alongside the astronauts they supported (although a little slower, since the average flight controller was 26 years old² during Apollo, and the directors mostly in their 30s); though next following generations of MCC professionals keep us flying and reaching further, they would be the first to tell you they reach for comets and planets by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Spam of the day:

FDA Cleared Hair Loss Solution

Dude, have you seen me recently? In addition to aspiring to be as smart, capable, and cool as a NASA flight controller, I hope that someday my copious mane of crazy-guy hair will be white and I can do a convincing Einstein impression.

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¹ Then again, I also asked on Twitter for somebody to please draw Howard Tayler Swift and nothing so far. I mean, look at him! Now imagine him all mashed up with her and tell me that wouldn’t be hilarious. But I digress.

² Sometimes younger. Steve Bales was 26 when he made the call to Go on the landing of Apollo 11 in the face of program alarms; this was based on the advice of 24 year old Jack Garman, the resident guidance computer expert. Aaron was likewise 24 years old when he saved Apollo 12 from an abort with the legendary call Flight, try SCE to AUX.

• Randall Munroe is unleashing upon the world his latest Bigger and Better Webcomics Thing; in the past these have been webcomics that were physically huge, or of extreme duration, or sometimes both. Sometimes they were just deep holes where it’s not possible to stop digging.

  Today’s strip is pretty modest, though. At least until he releases the data set:

  The xkcd survey
  This is an anonymous survey. After it’s done, a database of everyone’s responses will be posted.

  There’s no specific reason for any of the questions. The goal is to create an interesting and unusual data set for people to play with. (This is obviously not going to be a real random sample of people, but in the interest of getting cooler data, if you’re sharing this with friends, try sending it to some people who wouldn’t normally see this kind of thing!)

  WARNING: This survey is anonymous, but your answers WILL BE MADE PUBLIC. Depending what you write, it’s possible that someone may be able to identify you by looking at your responses. None of these questions should ask about anything too private, but don’t write anything that you don’t want people to see. If you’re not comfortable answering a question, just skip it.

  I’m taking bets on what the over/under on the number of responses will be … given Munroe’s audience size (couple million), audience engagement levels (high), and the likelihood of his audience to promote the survey on his behalf (like hack webcomics pseduojournalists), I’ma start at 2.73 million responses. Which means for once in my time of doing mathematical calculations on this site, I don’t have to bitch about the sample size being too small¹; it may even be large enough to engage in higher moments of analysis like skew and kurtosis, hooray!

• Speaking of webcomics and statistics, a comic to teach the idea of data analysis (the result of a grant received by Dante Shepherd to use comics to teach STEM concepts) is up today at Surviving the World. Here’s hoping for more of the science comics to get shared, and for more on data crunching specifically. My favorite part is how I’m pretending that that narrator character is Shepherd as a Muppet. Now when I see him next month at TopatoCon, I’m going to insist that he flail his arms around like Mister The Frog.
• News from the Erf front today: Erfworld creator Rob Balder announced that artist David Hahn will be leaving after Friday’s update. Balder’s getting to be like Frank Zappa, a relentless creator trying to find collaborators that can execute the thoughts coming out of his brainmeats for the world to experience the way he intended them to. It’s a tough gig, given that he’s got one of the most relentlessly pedantic audiences around:
  

  Consider the page a little while ago where David missed the fill on Ansom’s decrypted dwagon, and nobody else on the team (there are four people who look at the art) caught the error. Instead of a red eyeball, the page posted with the dwagon having a white eyeball. This led to a discussion in Reactions about whether that was an art mistake or an important clue about the dwagon’s Signamancy.

  Not to mention lacking in certain senses of boundaries:

  I must admit I have greater frustration with your closemouthed management style than I do with the loss of an artist. You have a tendency to keep problems close to the chest and decline to tell your (by all accounts of this thread) very loyal fanbase any negative information until it has escalated to a point where a crisis is happening and you have literally no choice but to divulge information. And even when you do this, it is in the most circumspect fashion, using vague apparently details intended to conceal the breadth of the problems going on, perhaps from some heightened sense of privacy conservation?

  . . .

  These ‘creative differences’ between you and David have clearly been growing over time, to the point where something happened on Monday that was ‘the last straw’. At yet, it’s only now, once you have officially ended your creative relationship, that you inform us as to what is going on. And your plan before this mystery event was evidently to spring a new artist on us after you had found one, and David has moved on.

  . . .

  All of this gives a certain vibe that you mistrust your fanbase. When problems arise, you don’t let them know about it, until you no longer have the option to keep it concealed. Whether this is because you worry that they might leave reflexively if another problem starts showing up, or because you feel that the affairs of your creative activities and interactions with your artist are not our business, you need to open up a bit more if you want this project to succeed. Because it now is, quite literally, our collective business now. ($882 [community support donations] per update?) [emphasis added]

  Apropos of quite a lot, I met Neil Gaiman once. Had dinner with him (in the sense that we sat next to each other at an event, and he was charming). I read everything of his I can lay my hands on and pay good money to do so. And you know what? Neil Gaiman and I are not friends. I am not entitled to any more of him than he is willing to give. If I disapprove of his work or his business affairs or his personal life, my entire remedy — provided I don’t want to be a sociopath about it — is to choose to not read his stuff any longer. That’s it. He is, to paraphrase the man himself, not my bitch.

  And because Rob Balder was too polite to say it to the personquoted above, allow me: Entitled Commenter At Erfword, Rob Balder is not your bitch. Your reading of Erfworld, even your financial support (if in fact you do support it) does not entitle you to the details of Balder’s business relationships, much less obligate him to violate the privacy of others. Get over yourself.

Spam of the day:

Gtyrrell OrdernMedicaments

What a coincidence! I’m in the market for medicaments!

_______________
¹ Although the population of said sample will probably skew heavily towards representative of the sort of people that read xkcd.

If there’s a word to describe today, I’d go with generosity.

• For starters, although nearly everybody that backed the Kickstarter for Augie and the Green Knight (a book which I encourage author Zach Weinersmith to send copies of to the appropriate people for consideration of the Newbery Medal) has received their copy, and although the book is now generally available to non-backers, there’s still a group of people that might not get a copy that now have an opportunity to do so.

  Namely, readers that rely on libraries for their books:

  As promised, we have 600 books we can ship to libraries in North America! If you are interested, please contact your local library and have them fill out this request form

  https://docs.google.com/a/breadpig.com/forms/d/1ad1iMWD7rKqk0-IV-lCHM7HuFgNJQcsdfQlVZ6gXTNU/viewform

  Just to be 100% clear, the person filling out the form MUST be a librarian. No exceptions. If you are not a librarian, but think your local library could use a copy, please just ask them to fill out the form.

  Let’s put this in context: 600 copies times US$19.05 (Amazon’s list price for Augie) comes to nearly US$12,000 worth of books that Weinersmith and Breadpig are donating (plus shipping costs, at a approximately US$3.22 if they’re shipping Media Mail, or another US$1932), which is a significant act of generosity. It’s not possible to estimate the value of kids actually reading Augie and dreaming a big bigger.

• Continuing on, the ubiquitous Jim Zub continues his nonstop crusade to teach people all aspects of the comics business¹ with an outright gift. On the one-year anniversary of his most recent creator-owned series, Wayward, he’s released the full script for Wayward #1 on his site so that aspiring comics writers can read and learn. Even better, they can compare the original script to the outcome, meaning that they’ll learn what changes occur between written page and comics page, and hopefully gain some insights into the process of working with an artist.

  Even betterer, Zub did the same thing in the before times for Skullkickers #1², so you can track his own progress as a creator. Zub’s been a hell of a generous guy, sharing his numbers, his tips and tricks, his encouragement, on his own time, to the benefit of the community at large. Sometimes it gets him incredibly entitled whiny demands for more³; more often (I like to think), it gets him the admiration he so richly deserves. Know what else he deserves? A couple of bucks from you, so be sure to check out the first issue of Figment 2 at your local comic shop tomorrow.

• Finally, yay to the return of Jeffrey Rowland to comics, at least for a while:
  

  Shh don’t tell nobody but I put up the first 3 pages of the new MAiS story; will do big hollerings about it Monday. http://jjrowland.com/mais/index.php?comic=71

  That was on Saturday, and page five just went up, and apparently there will be sixteen pages in all. It’s a little sad to see what’s become of Topato and Sheriff Pony, here’s hoping they get their action-spring back.

Spam of the day:

Start earning the degree you need for your future career

Got plenty, you diploma mill hucksters.

_______________
¹ That is, to be his competitors.

² Recently finished, and much missed.

³ Here’s a hint, Anonymous asker: insisting that it’s not fair that somebody you purport to admire won’t give you something for free is not the way to inspire somebody to give a shit about you. The fact that Zub was kind enough to explain his rationale — and give you a mechanism to achieve what you’re asking for! — instead of just deleting your stupid question is a testament to his kindness and character.

And yes, as somebody who teaches professionally, I can assure you that there are such things as stupid questions.

Three things that I want to bring to your attention today. Honestly, no one of them is any less important than another, so let’s just dive in.

• The Cartoon Art Museum may be closing the doors of its present location in a couple of weeks, but they’re not closing for good. Furthermore, they’re going to engage in their mission of making the cartoon arts available to the widest possible audience until the very last minute. To that end, please note that they have named their cartoonist-in-residence for the (abbreviated) month, and it’s Ben Collison. He’ll be presenting on Thursday, 3 September, from 2:00pm to 5:30pm at CAM on his techniques for making comics with ink and coffee (attention: R Stevens). And now to 12 September, CAM is having a moving sale, with nearly everything in their store’s stock going for 20% – 40% off sticker price. Anybody in San Francisco should drop by 655 Mission Street and browse, or just give them your best regards.
• This page keeps a weather eye on the New York Times Best Seller List for graphic novels, and notes with approval that the latest iteration of same is still 50% occupied by Raina Telgemeier, but also notes a surprise in the #10 slot. Debuting on the NYTBSL is Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese, which readers of this page may remember was reviewed by Fleen when it debuted nine years ago. It’s unexpected, but that I got to thinking — just as MAUS and Persepolis make reappearances on the list about this time of year every year as school resumes and they become part of the curriculum, it appears that American Born Chinese is becoming part of the canon and being studied.

  Yang’s no stranger to the NYTBSL, but I imagine it’s a great feeling to see his first, most autobiographical work finally recognized. Also, there’s the whole bit where the Times didn’t have a Best Seller List for graphic novels when American Born Chinese was released, as it undoubtedly would have sat on the list for a good long while otherwise. In any event, congrats to Yang for what’s got to be a heartwarming return to the school year, and watch this space for the inevitable news that Secret Coders (due for release in four weeks) has been added to the NYTBSL.

• This page also keeps an eye on Kickstarter campaigns and the management thereof. I’m pleased to note that on Saturday, the very best writeup of how to plan the financial end of a campaign — the so-called Kickstarter Math — that I’ve ever seen was released to the world. And it’s not for a webcomic, or a comic-comic. Marian Call, singer, songwriter, adventurer, bon vivante, and life partner of the repeatedly-mentioned-on-this-blog Pat Race, has a Kickstart going on right now to release her next album, which is down to the last two days. She’s well over goal and into stretch territory, and a big part of that is the planning that she put into the crowdfunding effort. Go read her post right now if you’ve ever thought about Kickstarting anything, particular the bit about modeling multiple levels of success and running a full set of numbers for each.

  Or possible do that a little later, as it appears that her host is down at the moment, possibly due to the twin loads of people rushing to give her money (she runs a sponsorship program in addition to Kickstarts) and to absorb her wisdom. Oh, and listen to (and buy!) her music, because she’s got a hell of a voice, a great sense of what makes a good song, and can channel everybody from Bowie to the Brothers Chaps.

Spam of the day:

This Test Shows How You’re Going to Die

I already know how I’m going to die. TRUCK.

Case in point, today’s update of Order of the Stick, #1000 in a series of 1000 (so far), is four pages worth of comic. It’s hard to say how long I’ve been reading OotS (I came in somewhere around #197, the infamous evilgasm strip) since Rich Burlew numbers, but does not date, the strips in his archive. Eight years, maybe?

What with the interruptions due to health concerns, drawing-hand injuries, and fulfilling an unreasonably large Kickstarter, it still seems that Burlew manages about 100 strips on average a year (in fits and starts, but let’s play averages for now), or somewhere between 200 and 500 increasingly-complex¹ comics pages per year and that’s nothing to sneeze at.

Not to mention the fact that he’s managed to have an overriding narrative, an overriding metanarrative, and however many major plotlines (I lost count somewhere around 15) weaving in and around each other, with a literal cast of hundreds of supporting players (my favorites: the Katos, followed by The Oracle, and Bloodfeast the Extreme-inator) interacting on one level for those who are up on the various D&D rules editions while still being meaningful for those of us who are not.

So well done, Rich Burlew, thanks for the last 1000 strips, and if you perpetuate the cliffhanger you left us on by shifting strip #1001 to some other plot thread, you’re dead to me.

Spam of the day:

conquer the world with paranoidONSet

I’m a database administrator — paranoia is the least of the personality defects I cultivate to do my job effectively.

_______________
¹ Not to mention sophisticated. Yeah, it’s stick figures, but that design decision doesn’t invalidate the fact that Burlew does a lot with lighting, perspective, and especially environment.

Ready for some cool stuff? Let’s do this.

• I’ll confess, when TopatoCon announced that it was shifting venues from the hotel/conference center to Eastworks, I had some trepidation regarding one of the cooler things that was on tap. To quote TopatoCo/Make That Thing/TopatoCon honcho Holly Rowland:
  

  [T]here will be table service that will bring you beer and chicken fingers.

  But that was in the context of a hotel! Would there be such amenities at Eastworks? Then again, the event schedule involves at least two separate sessions on Saturday that involve booze (one of which, I will be speaking), and now today comes further news:

  Hey! You! Do you like beer? We’re going to be hosting local beer tastings all weekend at the TopatoCon bar! […] Free with admission!

  I don’t have the capability for emoji here on Fleen, but there were no fewer than six emoji of frosty beer mugs in that tweet. And maybe we’ll get table service after all.

• I’m not sure what’s going on in the November/December timeframe in Austin, Texas, but it appears that the traditional season of Webcomics Rampage is shifting to earlier in the year this year. Dragon’s Lair — comic shop extraordinaire and WR sponsor — has announced that this year’s Webcomics Rampage (the seventh such) will be 16 – 18 October, with 14 confirmed guests so far. I hear that Austin’s really nice in October, and hope that running just a week after New York Comic Con doesn’t keep them from adding another webcomics luminary or two.
• This page has mentioned in the past the efforts of Katie Lane to help get creative types paid, including classes she’s run on that very topic, on multiple occasions. Today, I’m pleased to see that Lane is expanding her efforts and making it even easier for you to learn the skills you need to not get screwed on your work:
  

  The Ace Freelancer’s Guide to Getting Paid goes on sale next week! http://www.acefreelancer.com

  Before you follow that link, check out the tweet and the gif embedded therein; Katie Lane wants you to get paid.

  Okay, now click through and sign up for the next class session on how to get paid. If you have a history (and be honest with yourself) of falling into the trap of thinking that you’re overcharging, and how it’s not good to be pushy, and if you’re just patient they’ll surely get around to cutting your check sometime this century — you know, the lies the people who employ freelancers are trying like hell to transform into conventional wisdom — you can sign up for the super-duper version of the class that includes a one-on-one consult.

  Your work has value. Even if you aren’t charging much, you damn well have the right to be paid the amount agreed upon, in the timeframe agreed upon. The sob story being pushed by the people who agreed how much/when to pay you does not change your basic needs (i.e.: food and shelter) and you can cut through the bullshit and get what you are due.

  Like everything else in your career, getting paid is a skill, and investing in developing that skill will reward you for the duration of your working life. Look over the syllabus. Look over your billing history. Look inside yourself. And then do what you gotta do to get paid.

Spam of the day:

Though this is not recommended, you could wish to look around to be able to lenders until you are capable of amass just how much you will need from multiple small loans

Somewhere, Spike is preparing to nail a copy of Poorcraft’s chapter on debt and borrowing to the forehead of the sumbitch that wrote this spam.

Sometimes the really good work/news just falls into your lap.

• First up, Boulet dropped a new comic on us. As he has done before, it is very tall, telling a story in the vertical, with visual metaphors of falling downwards ever downwards. As he has done before, there are bits of animation scattered throughout, but never enough to be a distraction; it enhances by catching the eye, but is slight enough to not distract¹.

  To my recollection, however, Boulet has not done these two things in the same comic, and combining them has produced a meditation on science, philosophy, and how the replacing of myth with knowledge need not take the mystery from life. Indeed, knowing what we know and how much more there is yet to know is its own poetry, and Boulet takes us along on a journey through our solar system, every planetary discovery a verse, every realization of how much is out there and how beautiful, a refrain.

  At his best, Boulet’s work leaves the reader breathless, rushing to see the outlines and boundaries of the ideas he’s exploring, then digging back in to see the details. Brassens in Space (for that is its name) is possibly his best-ever webcomics work, which is a distinction that only matters until the next time he has a big idea and does something even better. Also, The Police are along for the ride and a gleeful acceptance that the name of the planet Uranus will always be hilarious appeals to the 12 year old in all of us.

  Go read it from top to bottom, bottom to top and every other way that you can; scan over it, let your eye catch on the details, see where it matches your own personal map of the universe. It’s lovely.

• About as far as you can get from the infinities of the universe, Evan Dahm posted the latest illustration of his Moby-Dick illustrations, carrying us down to the existential struggle between one wounded man and one wounded whale, with a boatful of bystanders to a slow-motion duel. Specifically, and at long last, we see the titular white whale.

  Like Boulet’s universe, he’s too large to fit in a page. Unlike Boulet’s universe, he’s trapped in a space too small for him (there is no ocean large enough to avoid Ahab and the Peaquod, no infinity big enough to escape the confrontation that’s coming), and so we get a tantalizingly specific look at the great whale, wondering what monstrosity must exist if this is just a portion of his jaws. There are untold years of life and struggle in that maw, the tale of a creature obeying its nature and in increasing conflict with the world that is rapidly changing.

  Once, he would have continued on as apex predator, with nothing to threaten him but old age. Now, tiny upstarts that know nothing of the depths of the sea intrude into the merest skin of his world, and are become a credible threat. He is not helpless, not yet, and those teeth will be red in the hunt and in defense for some time to come. It’s an image of direst danger and at the same time profound sympathy, and not a single hatch or shadow is misplaced.

  Dahm produced a masterwork here, and more than a dozen others, and dozens yet to come in the story. Take a good long look and drink them in.

• Got a little bit heady there, so let’s finish on a more concrete note. The good folks of :01 Books will be starting a new series of nonfiction graphic novels to teach science, and the announcement fell to the science comics blogger² Maki Naro at Popular Science:
  

  First Second Books is releasing an all new series of narrow-focus, single-topic nonfiction graphic novels aimed at middle-grade readers. Autologically titled Science Comics, each book in the series will cover a topic in the wide world of biology, chemistry, physics, and more. The idea was to publish books on subjects that could be easily worked into lesson plans, no doubt to the delight of students and educators everywhere.

  The first of the series, Dinosaurs and Coral Reefs, are due to be released in May 2016, followed by and Volcanos in the fall. Each season, a new volume will be published, allowing readers to amass an encyclopedic collection. It’ll be like having a Time Life Science Library in comic books. Which is awesome!

  Even better — the books will be by by :01 vets like MK Reed & Joe Flood (previously seen on Americus, The Cute Girl Network, and Orcs) and Maris Wicks (Primates, Human Body Theater). Oh, and how fresh is Naro’s information? Volcanos doesn’t even appear on the publisher’s own website yet.

  Got a kid in your life that’ll be between, let’s say 4th and 8th grade come Spring? Get ready to make ’em smarter.

Spam of the day:

From hair oil to cricket, wherever Amitabh Bachchan has his name hooked up in just one way or perhaps the other he assures achievement.

You make him sound like Trump. That’s not very nice.

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¹ Put another way, there are no clumsy, ugly motion comics, no uncanny valley blinking eyes here.

² In the sense that he blogs in the form of science comics, not that he blogs about science comics. Except when he does.

For varying values of soon, that is.

• On the nearer end of the spectrum, we’ll be following up on our recent :01 Week with a deeper dive on two of the books we reviewed. Specifically, the two that shared a post, Ben Hatke’s Little Robot, and the Chris Duffy-edited anthology, Fable Comics.

  Gina Gagliano at :01 Books has arranged for us to do a Q&A with Hatke, and for us to run some nice high-res art from The Boy Who Cried Wolf by the incomparable Jaime Hernandez. Each will run as part of a blog tour in support of the two books, and we’ll point out where you can read other reviews/interviews/discussions when the time comes. Mark your calendars for 13 September for Little Robot, and 30 September for The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

A little further out (okay, not until Spring; this is how publishing works), we’ll be obtaining and reviewing the crap out of the long-awaited, full color, original graphic novel from Christopher Baldwin, Little Dee and the Penguin. Here’s the description:

When Little Dee meets a motley crew of animals deep in the forest, she knows she’s found the perfect set of new friends. Between the bossy vulture, the slightly dim dog, the nurturing bear, and the happy-go-lucky penguin, this mismatched group of big personalities doesn’t always get along—but they’re a family.

And they’re on the run. A pair of hungry polar bears are after the penguin, and the rest of the team are determined to protect her. They’re not interested in adopting a tiny human. But Dee loves them—especially Ted the bear—and she won’t let them go. Instead, she hops on their getaway plane and joins them on an around-the-world adventure.

Which sounds like a reboot — or maybe the movie adaptation — of the long-running (2004-2010, now approaching the end of reruns) webcomic. Vachel the vulture, Ted the bear, and Blake the dog were the family that adopted Dee, and there was no penguin at the time. Or was there? Anyway, condensing six years of strips into one story necessitates some changes¹, and I can’t wait to see how LDatP reads. It’s not out until 5 April 2016, so you’ve got time to read through the entire series and see what changes.

Spam of the day:

you’re actually a excellent webmaster. Also, The contents are masterwork.

Damn straight.

________________
¹ But if you’ve got 128 pages to include the breadth of the story, we better see Baldwin’s very best supporting characters, the Rogues of Wool.

It was late on Friday when I saw the tweet from Scott Kurtz, and later one from Katie Rice. Rice and Kurtz (and now me) are backers of a Kickstart for a customizable notebook, and it strikes me that this is exactly the sort of thing that comics creators will love, so I’m surprised to not have seen any others yet.

Let me back up a moment.

I’m a sucker for Moleskine-type notebooks¹, but will admit to being disappointed by the actual brand over the past couple of years. Yes, yes, covers with The Simpsons on them, wonderful, but the hard covers and indestructible bindings that first made me love Moleskines have been compromised. So when a London design shop decided to offer customizable notebooks, in sketchbook dimensions (A5, or 21 cm x 15 cm²), with your choice of paper (plain, ruled, or dot grid in ivory; sketch, or pure white) in heavy weights (90 to 140 gsm), your choice of elastic band and ribbon bookmark, and full color DIY covers, I was hooked.

And in case you don’t feel up to designing the cover yourself (instructions and templates are here [PDF]), Book Block are offering your choice of prefab designs:

We will be putting together a selection of limited edition notebooks for you to choose from. A number will be from our artist friends, and we’re hoping to draw some from the crowd. All artists will be paid for their work. [emphasis mine]

If I wasn’t in before reading that last line, I am now because project leader Stefan Johnson is paying his designers. I spent a couple hours on Saturday messing around in GIMP wrestling my design into the template and saving it at 600 dpi. Up top you can see what the template looks like, with design to the right on the front cover; the spine and back cover will be plain white. If you click the next link, you can see the image that I’ve chosen by itself and rotated for legibility.

This, my friends, is Figure 1 of Claude Shannon’s A Mathematical Theory of Communication [PDF]³, the basis of information theory, the wellspring from which all modern communications theory derives, and not coincidentally why the internet works. If you are me, it (and Shannon) holds the same importance that, say, the double helix (and Franklin, Watson, and Crick) would for a biologist. It is the closest thing in the world that I have to religion or spiritual belief; it is the only thing I’ve ever seriously considered getting tattooed on my body.

But I won’t necessarily get my notebook.

Here is where I should disclose that I backed the campaign at a level that requests blogging in exchange for early bird pricing; I assure you that I’d have been writing about this project regardless, though. See, since I backed Book Block on Saturday, only another thirteen people have pledged, and the project sits now at a mere 20% of goal. While Kicktraq has the project trending towards 140% of the £10,000 goal in the 40 days remaining, I am not willing to leave this up to chance. I want my personal philosophy encapsulating notebook, dammit.

I know that at least some of you want a sketchbook that is uniquely, unmistakably yours, in which case you should be checking out the campaign while it’s still running. With a promised delivery date of November, this could make an excellent holiday gift for the artistic type in your circle (or, given that it’s a Kickstarter, a belated holiday gift, depending on which holiday we’re talking about).

Spam of the day:

Dear PayPal User , you have been noticed that some limitation have been placed on your Account this is part of our security process and helps ensure that we continue to be more safer and secured . This means that from time to time we have to make changes To remove limitation from your account , we have posted recent updates on our website.

You bozos know I don’t have a PayPal account, right?

_______________
¹ Not to mention Moleskine-inspired comics.

² Call it 8.25 x 6 inches.

³ Originally a paper in the Bell System Technical Journal, July and October 1948. With slightly different contents, it was published the in book form the following year as The Mathematical Theory of Communication, with supplementary material for a general audience by Warren Weaver. Consider the former to be the Vulgate and the latter to the be King James Version.

A year ago I wrote this:

Out today! Raina Telgemeier has dominated the New York Times bestseller charts for graphic novels with Smile and Drama, and since the Smile sequel Sisters hits today, the only questions to be asked are How long will she stay at #1? and Will she manage the trifecta of Drama coming back to the list? (Smile hasn’t left in more than two years), and Will she pull off the trick of holding the first three positions simultaneously?

My predictions: At least a month, Probably, and I’d bet ten bucks on it.

Here we are, a year later, Sisters has been on the list for 52 out of 52 weeks, and the actual outcomes to the predictions are: I lost count but I think it was close to 20 weeks over the year, starting in week 2, She’s got five books on the list right now, so yes, and Yep, she did, and then she took the top four spots simultaneously and nobody will take my bets anymore.

And for those keeping track at home, as of today, Raina Telgemeier has a cumulative 343 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller List (two of which are Eisner winners), which is insane. Consider what it takes to manage that feat — these books are not only insanely popular, but they are sustaining demand over the long haul; she is creating new readers with each new book, not just selling to the same demographic cohort¹. I’m calling it now: Raina Telgemeier will sell 100 million books over the length of her career. She will be one of those authors whose total sales count is measured in reference to the Bible.

Happy Sistersversary, Raina. You’re amazing, and you just keep getting better.

Spam of the day:

Once you’re it a fact that the common gladness on the bestexperiences in a foreign country.

I think this is selling some kind of sex tourism?

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¹ The last person I can think of that expanded the reading pool like this was JK Rowling.