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.

I’m a big fan of Pat Smith’s short animated film “Handshake” and was pleased to see that he posted a high quality version of it on his site today. He also uploaded “Drink” which I hadn’t seen before but really enjoyed watching.

His goopy style of animation looks like a thick, melting marshmallow as his characters sluff around the screen. Check out his work at Blend Films.

If you’re interested in publishing video to the internet I strongly recommend visiting makeinternettv.org, the site is packed full of useful information for first time and more advanced users. It was a resource I referred to several times in my work on the Alaska Robotics site and still visit when thinking about how best to present our work.

The site walks you through equipment selection, shooting, editing, obtaining licenses, publishing, and promoting your work. There’s even a distilled version for people feeling a little overwhelmed.

The journey is even-handed, comprehensive, and sprinkled with objective commentary. The site is produced by the Participatory Culture Foundation, the same group behind Miro, and while they make a strong case for their own player and feed based video in general, it’s clear that they’ve gone out of their way to provide all the information you need to make an educated decision of your own.

I also recommend reading Nicholas Reville’s essay on the future of video.

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

Now is your chance to comment on the Alaska state quarter design.

It looks like they’ve narrowed the field to four potential candidates but they left out the most obvious and my favorite which would have been a dipper alone on the coin face. Simple, iconic, and beautiful, just like our flag.

At least none of the designs they’ve presented are awful.

AK-1
I like the midnight sun in this design but I think the polar bear is a little lumpy and over textured. This coin has a great choice of subjects which emphasize the uniqueness of Alaska as a state.

AK-2
This one is probably my favorite although the musher looks a bit rigid. I’ve always like the slogan “North to the Future” and I’m glad it ended up on this particular coin. They included the dipper which gives it bonus points. The sled dogs are totally appropriate. It might not be intentional but this could also be a nice tip of the hat to Susan Butcher.

AK-3
This one feels a little primal and the bear looks like his head is on backwards. I think it’s because of the positioning of the ears. The detail on the water looks amazing.

AK-4
My grandfather was a mining engineer and I know that the gold rush was a huge part of our history but I’m less and less inclined to think a white prospector playing with a big pair of nuggets is a good symbol for the state.

Ok, that’s it for my critique but I think they could get better feedback on the coins if they let the artists provide a brief statement on the choice of symbolism.

I can now say that I have. She won’t blog about it here, so I will do it for her. She just got 3 prototype copies printed for showing off for grad school and publishers and it really looks slick.

“Have You Ever Seen” is a children’s book based on collective nouns, and has one for a group of animals that start with each of the 26 letters, from Army of Ants to Zeal of Zebras, pausing at Smack of Jellyfish and Crash of Rhinos along the way. Sarah drew all of the artwork using the Wacom tablet on her computer and her great eye for style and design.

She had previously released some of the pages as prints, and card sets of them all (which are available on her Etsy site), but the goal has always been book form, and now it exists!

She’s done herself, and us, proud. And I can say I knew her way back when…

When I was down visiting my sister I decided to buy myself some art supplies. I went into one of those giant craft stores brimming with heaps of wicker and scented plant detritus. I navigated past the witches brooms and halloween decorations and managed to find the ink pens in the back buried under a bunch of old wreathes.

Dani uses ink in her sketchbook and I love the way it looks, especially when she washes it out with water to get grayscale shading. Here are some of the trial sketches I did when I got back to my sister’s place:

• Cube
• Robot — Of course.
• Gage & Aaron
• Stern Woman
• Happy Bunny
• Murderer

I used Speedball Super Black India Ink and a Cartooning Pen Set which cost me less than ten bucks. You have to dip to replenish the ink and I find that makes me a little more methodical with my lines. Using a little cup and some water you can create a nice grey which paints in like water color. It’s all pretty simple but I realllllly like the way it looks on paper.

This summer has been rain rain rain and after griping about it for three months the sun magically came out and stabbed me in the eye with one of those wispy yellow tendrils. Before I was permanently blinded by white hot light I was able to put together this comic strip. I also attempted to make a color version but I wasn’t very happy with how it turned out.. the searing pain was obviously starting to have an effect at that point.

Speaking of searing pain, I’m not so much a fan of most comics in the our newspaper so I’ve compiled a short list of web comics and graphic novels to check out instead.

Comics online:
xkcd, Penny Arcade, Natalie Dee, Dinosaur Comics, A Softer World, PVP

Comics in Print:
One Piece, Bone, Invincible, The Walking Dead, Sin City, Akira, 300, Calvin & Hobbes, Watchmen, V for Vendetta, The Dark Knight Returns

In Juneau a lot of these graphic novels are actually available through the library.

Update: How the hell did I forget Fables? I’m totally addicted to fables and I’m excited to hear that Jack is getting his own spin off book.