First we were in gamma. We had a coming soon on the site saying "Belted by gamma rays. When will scientists learn? Bear with us." That was while people were trying to load the ComicMix URL, but we didn't have the site ready for visitors yet.
Then we were in beta. We ran a blog with several famous comic industry columnists and a well-produced podcast while Mike Gold worked with an equally famous team of writers and artists to create our first batch of titles.
Our online comic reader launch today probably puts us in alpha. We still have a lot of work to do, but the first comic installment is live and so is our new design.
Why are you still reading my blog? Go visit ComicMix!
Brian Alvey
-
Finally: ComicMix phase two launches
-
Britney's heroic custody battle
Like many of you I have been glued to TMZ, hitting reload and waiting for scraps of news in the saga of Britney Spears and her heroic struggle to retain custody of her beloved children. A week ago L.A. County Commissioner Scott Gordon had given Britney a list of things to do so she could maintain 50-50 custody of Sean Preston and Jayden James with her ex-husband, Kevin Federline.
Of course he didn't take into account her new album being released in November or her pre-existing social commitments. So she failed to complete any of his orders. TMZ elaborates:
And last Friday, Commissioner Gordon prohibited both Spears and K-Fed from driving the children unless they had a valid California driver's license. Gordon was pissed today when TMZ posted video of Spears cavalierly driving her kids around Malibu.
Well, I'm done defending Britney, ya'll. I hope Commissioner Gordon sends Chief O'Hara over to pick up her kids and impound her car.
-
Good luck shuck
Hasse Johannesson opened 30 oysters in 2 minutes and 41 seconds to win Saturday's world oyster-opening competition:
Damage to the oyster's flesh, failure to detach it from the shell, grit or traces of human blood mean penalties for the knife-wielding competitors who have come from 16 other countries.
I loved that "traces of human blood" part.
The Mets were actually leading the competition from the start and had a comfortable lead, but something went horribly wrong in the final seconds and the Swede passed them and won.
Which reminds me, happy birthday Gavin!
-
The three strikes rule
Before my new company Crowd Fusion adds too many employees I'm looking into an exciting new policy I first heard of from China. I read a Reuters story that said a woman was fired for talking back to her boss and I was intrigued:
Ni incurred a 30 yuan fine after taking umbrage with her factory supervisor for reprimanding her for not filling in a form.
"The factory head told me that, according to company rules, no matter whether management is right or wrong, employees are not allowed to contradict them and must obey," Xinhua quoted Ni as saying.
Ni was then threatened with a 100 yuan fine for refusing to pay the first fine, and was sacked after she threatened to report her supervisor to the company's human resource's department.
So far our corporate policies are:
- All Foo Fighters all the time.
- We're here to help.
- Employees are not allowed to contradict management whether management is right or wrong.
- Three strikes and you're out.
-
Happy Birthday, Google
Today, Google turned 9.
For reasons unknown to me, they celebrated by turning one of their letters into a picture of Mike Piazza. -
Celebs on Blogsmith
You all know that stars like Mark Cuban, Jason Calacanis, Peter Rojas and Harvey Levin use my old blogging platform, but are there any other famous people using Blogsmith?
Sure there are!
Niki had the food channel on yesterday and I asked her if we were watching Bobby Flay. She said it was Tyler Florence. Ah, I remember that name because I saw him in Blogsmith. He blogs at the clever domain AOLFoodBlog.com. I should have known it wasn't Bobby Flay because the guy didn't look stoned. I'm sure Bobby Flay is drug-free, but to me he always seems high. Maybe it's because he's a guy who's always cooking and I'm just reading into it.
-
Yes, I'm a natural blue.
There is a scene in Finding Nemo where Ellen's blue fish character Dory is talking in her sleep. Two of the things she mutters are "Sea monkey has my money" and "Yes, I'm a natural blue." That second one always makes me giggle and I wonder if Ellen ad-libbed it or if it was in the script.
Anyway, I was looking at a comp that Matt Heerema made for the Cinematical redesign and saw the craziest ad slice. The ad slice is that little 30 pixel tall strip at the top of each Weblogs, Inc. site where we promote important headlines from around the network. His comp had this headline: "DIY Life: Hollow out a light bulb to make a sea monkey condo" and I was sure that it was fake. How funny. Matt was definitely making fun of DIY Life -- until I searched DIY Life for sea monkeys and found the actual article. Unbelievable.
If it had been my comp, the ad slice would have most certainly been something like "Engadget live blogs Steve Jobs' pedicure!" or "Blogging Stocks gallery: Britney goes bottomless, how will it affect the Dow?"
But, since it was Matt, I should have known better. That kid doesn't work blue.
-
I am wizard, hear me roar
Every time I hear that Mike wants to take more time off from doing web design to do music, I figure it's just talk. But this morning I stumbled across his side project's site. Great work Mike, but don't quit your day job!
-
Cool hunting on Twitter
Tom Biro gives good links.
The first one I saw was The Onion's sports section's story about the hundreds of hours of videotape the NFL confiscated from the Patriots. Most of it was Tom Brady in the shower. Genius. I already knew that The Onion has the best fantasy football logo on the web.
The second was from our old buddies at Woot. They have the first Steve Jobs apology parody I've seen. It involves a price drop on the Zune and their CYA Officer explains how they have "the chance to 'ride the lightning' and 'shoot the curl' this holiday season." Nice work.
I also got to virtually tag along with Sarah J. Gim as she twittered her visit to the gynecologist. That's brave. I'm pretty sure that "twittering" is not the correct term to describe what she did, but this is a family blog so I'll leave it to your imagination.
-
What's in a name?
There is a site called DoubtAboutWill.org that aims to convince people that the man known as William Shakespeare was not the author of all of the plays and poetry which he is generally credited with writing.
There are other famous historical authors like Homer who have little biographical evidence outside of their attributed works, "but there is only one great writer about whom the more we learn, the less he appears to have been a writer."
Here are some of their facts:
GrimJack
EZ Street
Jon Sable, Freelance