DoomBook

Usually when you’re looking to upgrade your software and you can’t get the update patch it’s due to outdated hardware of some sort. We accept this and move on.

But today from a Wired article I found the first instance in recent memory of an upgrade being denied for a phone because it was too functional.

From the article, “However, the phone is being ruled out because it has five buttons rather than the three buttons mandated for all Windows Phone 7 Series devices.” And that’s direct from MS’s PR flac department.

Read more on why you don’t want to pick up a Windows Mobile phone right here.

Because I really hate posting files in the WP format I’m tossing Villa-Straylight back online for it’s original purpose of posting literature. It should work nicely alongside Doombook.

You can find the first few posts over at http://villa-straylight.net.

Really. I was mildly surprised.

While looking over the latest release low-end laptops I kept running across “Celeron 900″ laptops. Apparently the Celeron 900 is a model designation and not simply a 900mhz Celeron.

Which is a more confusing distinction than one might at first assume. The 900mhz Celerons are still loitering around the marketplace in spots.

So check to make sure that what you’re looking at is this Celeron 900 and not the 900mhz Celeron.

Wow, so I get an e-mail from Webster Bank (local bank up here in Connecticut). They’re a larger outfit as local banks go. And the e-mail contains the following header: “We’ve got the hotest new look of teh summer.”

First I thought to myself, “self, this is a fishing e-mail with the ph the kids are so fond of”. But no, it’s legit. The e-mail and URL addresses check out.

The only way that they can redeem this is if someone typed it out on a blackberry.. but I’m assuming even that’s got a sane spellcheck these days.

So yea, customer e-mail to the entire client list without so much as a read for spelling. I hope anyway. Either that or hottest is now less a t and “teh” has entered the lexicon.

Temple Shearith Israel hosted Harry Manx as part of the Acoustic Celebration in Ridgefield and we were fortunate enough to get over to Ridgefield and catch the show.

First off, Harry’s down from Canada doing a bit of touring stateside after coming back from playing shows in Australia. It really was a good catch by Jay to find him playing a small show over in western Connecticut tonight before heading back home for a spell.

Musically, his repertoire is a combination of Blues and Indian music, both in their own and blended together into an original strain of picked music. Quite a few of the songs are played on the Mohan veena which Jay accurately described as coming across like a combination of a sitar and a dobro.

In any case the venue was great for a small show with a 40 or so person audience and the technician did an excellent job tuning the audio setup in a tight enclosed environment. It was quite a show.

Brian Wood (DMZ, DEMO) writes about something he knows pretty intimately, NYC. Add in accurate to life art from Ryan Kelly to the witty writing style and you’ve got a good novel.

Although I’m not sure Minx will survive as an imprint. Hopefully it does well with it’s target, I’m guessing, young(ish) female audience. Or someone! It looks like there’s a few gems in there that could work up to classics like La Perdida or Love & Rockets.

In any case our store follows along our protagonist through the foibles of starting up college at NYU on an true to life New York City -scape (although they don’t mention Dumpling Man on St. Marks. For shame.) and making new friends.

It’s a fairly clever and entertaining slice of life story, hopefully to be followed by more. Check it out.

Looks like DC Comics has another non-spandex related imprint. It almost seems like a softer side of Vertigo, without the over-the-top-ness that line tends to engender. Focused more on drama and interesting social stories it’s line-up so far features quite a few top-rate authors.

Think Love & Rockets and you’ve got the right idea.

Needless to say, I approve. You can catch their current issues at your local bookstore and check out what they’ve got to offer at the website.

War sucks. That’s pretty much what Jimmy Burns finds out in the graphic novel Shooting War. Jimmy was a video blogger who got his 15 minutes after being in the right place at the right time and live streaming the destruction of his apartment building by a bomber.

Newly homeless, he’s conned into parlaying that brief experience into a wider role in the field of journalism, traveling to the Iraqi front of 2011. As it turns out broadcasting from the front lines of a war-zone has little in common with railing against the evils of corporate eminent domain.

Throw in a over zealous military commander and a terrorist strong man actively making Jimmy’s life a little more interesting than it needs to be and you’ve got an intriguing plot. “Ripped from the headlines” as TV media likes to tout.

Featuring an interesting artist’s perspective, coming as it does through the lens of a camera, Dan Goldman throws up a view of Jimmy largely from a lens eye. It’s a rolling look at the atrocities of war, and the web comic left me wanting a bit more.

If you’d like to see if it’s to your tastes, check out the first half of the story up on Shooting War’s website. The print version with it’s extra 110 pages of content is available pretty much everywhere.

What if vampire’s were real? Not just some kind of blood sucking fiends of the night, but really real, needing to get a day job to eek by in an apartment. Or trying to impress the cutie that stops by the convenience mart?

That’s the premise of Jessica Abel and Gabe Soria’s Life Sucks, drawn by the talented Warren Pleece (notably contributed to ongoing series Hellblazer and The Invisibles). Vampire’s are here, they drink blood, avoid the day, and are taking our low pay night jobs.. mostly because of their resilience. We’re also treated to a light romp of a romance along the way.

Art in the series is reminiscent of Richard Moore in spots, although Pleece tends more toward lines than Moore’s more rounded look. It might be the emotive expressions that bring Boneyard to mind. In any case it’s smooth and lends a nice fluidity to the story, well matched to it’s tone and tenor.

Good stuff, give it a look!

I don’t think people have much to fear from cheap auto-matching algorithms anytime soon.

For instance, Robert Frosts poem “Fire and Ice”, if the book cover it’s paired with is anything to judge by, is a story of a barbarian on a windswept plain surrounded by buxom scantly clad women. I don’t think I could actually come up with this funny a pairing.