Everyone’s been making a big deal about Berkeley Breathed’s new Opus comic, but the comic is completely unavailable online. So despite their magic DRM ink, I was able to scan in Sunday’s strip.

Some comics fans are upset about the removal of several long-running strips from local papers to make room for Opus, including Mary Worth, Prince Valiant, Herman, Marvin, Ziggy, and other desperately unfunny strips.

January 2, 2004: The Opus comics are available in a new archive. Here’s a backup archive.

April 6, 2004: I got a cease and desist from the Washington Post, and was forced to remove the Opus archive. I posted the PDF in the Opus archive directory.

February 27, 2006: The Opus comic is now published in digital form.

A couple weeks ago, I ordered a Japanese magazine called Bloggers Volume 1 from Amazon.co.jp. I just received my copy in the mail, and it’s even neater than it looks. The interviews with Ben and Mena Trott, Anil Dash, Howard Rheingold and Joi Ito are in full color, and there are in-depth reviews of Typepad, Blosxom, RSS readers, and more. Of course, I can’t understand a single word, which makes it even more exotic.

I scanned in the cover and the first six pages, which is an interview with Ben, Mena, and Anil. Enjoy.

Continue reading “Bloggers Volume 1” →

Metafilter pointed me to the interesting Let Me Sing It For You speech synthesis toy, which converts a typed sentence into sound samples from popular songs. The sample list is far from complete, so I tested some of the most common words in the English language with it. All the words that I found are below. The list is very incomplete, so feel free to fill in any missing words you’ve found in the comments. (Preferably at least ten at a time.)

Continue reading “Let Me Sing It For You” →

Jesper interviewed me for his excellent Under the Iron interview series, along with two new interviews with Feedster’s Scott Johnson, Daring Fireball’s John Gruber, and the always great Jeffrey Zeldman. Not sure how I ended up in such great company, but it’s flattering.

In other self-publicity news, I mentioned in the sidebar that an article/interview about Upcoming.org was in the New York Times last week. Strangely, that was my fourth appearance in the NYT this year, all for completely different reasons. The others were January 18 (Mickey Mouse/Eldred), January 30 (Lost Friends), and May 19 (Star Wars Kid). Can you still be considered a media whore if they contact you?

Anton Maiden represented the ultimate in geek DIY culture. Using MIDI files of Iron Maiden songs cribbed off the Internet and a microphone plugged into his PC, 19-year-old Anton Gustafsson created energetic and excitable versions of his favorite band from his home in Sweden. His unusual recordings became a cult hit in the United States, mostly with college radio DJs and fans of “outsider music.”

Anton is dead at the age of 23, after being reported missing for over a week. His homepage remains unchanged, though this article has more information. If you can confirm these reports, e-mail or IM me. His death is confirmed (thanks Tomas), and it appears to be suicide.

High-quality MP3s of the Anton album (Allmusic.com review) are available, thanks to Dan H. Warning: negative comments about Anton’s music will be deleted.