I’ve been reading the Juneau Empire less and less since the new website redesign at the end of last month. It’s so ridiculously slow loading and painful to navigate that it must be part of some grand and imperceptible strategy. Perhaps they hope to boost their print circulation by intentionally creating the least accessible website ever?

I don’t know, it remains a mystery.

I thought I would try to figure out some way to fix the site but I didn’t get very far. I tried writing a greasemonkey script to just remove all the offending items but I got frustrated with the slow load times. Greasemonkey does a good job of cleaning things up once they load but, weighing in at over 1.2 Megabytes, the Empire site loads like honey through a straw.

What I’d rather build, and what I know how to build, is a scraper. Something to harvest the data and spit it out in a nice clean format complete with RSS feeds. The problem there is a question of legality since I’d basically be republishing copyrighted works.

I might be missing something obvious but it seems like the best route here has to be a client side solution like a custom Firefox extension or a combination of existing extensions.

I wonder how they navigate their own site? Maybe they use AdBlock and Greasemonkey filters? Do they put up with it because they’re being paid by the hour? What a pain in the ass.

Here’s a preview of my latest work, “Catching the Crosstown Night Whale.” It was inspired by Kazu Kibuishi’s illustrations for the Flight comics anthologies.

The crosstown night-whale is like a bus driver. He’s not necessarily grumpy but there’s a bit of monotony to his job. He’s glad the war is over but secretly wishes he were still serving on the flying whale brigade instead of spending his autumn years working for public transportation.

Long live the queen.

If you’re in Juneau this Friday, stop by the Ruby Room for Gallery Walk and say hello!

I’ve been using the Miro player to track YouTube RSS feeds and currently have a channel setup to capture any videos with “Juneau” in the keywords. Mostly I get crappy home video footage of people visiting the glacier or video performances by a band named Juneau. Today I finally hit the jackpot.

Weird Al came to Juneau in 1995 and put on a kick ass concert at Centennial Hall. It was pretty much the pinnacle of live music experiences during the first 20 years of my life. I remember waiting in a big line after the show so that I could meet him. The guy in front of me asked to touch Weird Al’s hair. It was.. weird.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has released it’s annual report on the most corrupt members of Congress and Alaska leads the pack.  Of the four senators on their list, good old Sen. Ted Stevens and Sen. Lisa Murkowski are both present.  Picking up any slack is the perennial Rep. Don Young, who is named in CREW’s list of corrupt Members of House.  I’m proud that Alaska is able to shine so brightly as our Northern Star, leading the way, and leading by example.

Beyond DeLay: The 22 Most Corrupt Members of Congress (and two to watch)

Sarah Asper-Smith and the Molly Whoopie made the front page of the Empire yesterday! The article mentions many of her creative projects and shines a well deserved spolight on all the work she’s been pouring herself into.

• Juneau Empire - Artist’s work spans the alphabet

It’s time for our annual Juneau fire. This time it’s the green apartments on Gastineau Ave.

Salami Slicing is when you steal something in very small increments.

In Superman III, Richard Pryor’s character hacked a banking system so that it would round down on fractions of a cent and send the remainder to his personal account.

In Johnny Cash’s song, “One Piece at a Time,” an automotive worker builds a car from the stolen parts he smuggles off the assembly line each year.

It also happens to be the same method I use to feed myself most days of the week.

Comic - Food Skimmer

We would like to hear your comments, rants, and raves for this last JUMP Film Festival. Dates were February 1-3. Here are the movies:

• 18 Random Things by Alex Nelson, Vince Wagner & Devin Baxter
• Fruitcake of Joy by Alaska Robotics
• Food Fight by Jeff Brown
• Come Una Pietra Scalciata by Jonas Lamb & Caleb Wylie
• Be Nice by Dawson Walker
• Gold Medal Pride by Greg Chaney & Annie Foruria
• In the Offices of JUMP by Clint Farr
• Adventure Club Video Scavenger Hunt by Bad Larry Productions
• Oops by Patty Kalbrener
• Zombie Movie by Kevin Fremlin & Aaron suring
• Yozhik by Arlo Midgett
• Freakin’ Fungus Trailer by Paul F. Disdier
• Intermission by Lou Logan
• Kneading a Metric Ton of Dough by Roald Simonson
• Quest Contest by Greg Chaney
• A Puppet Movie by Caro LeVeque, Lauren Alweis & Eve Southworth
• The Green Room by Alaska Robotics
• Face by Mukhya Khalsa
• White or Wheat by Bad Larry Productions
• bubba by Kenn Magowan
• Catching Bears by Riley Woodford & Kent Crabtree
• Frank Murkowski: A Tribute by Pat Race