DoomBook

Found at SweetCioccolata.com and in mortar at 28 North Colony Road in Wallingford CT, Sweet Cioccolata offers up a bevy of chocolates at the usual confectioners prices.

The truffles (of the batch we tried at work) were flavored well, with one of the thicker fillings I’ve had in a truffle. What we were really after, the chocolate covered strawberries, weren’t available. Probably due to the season.

Service was good and the small shop has about the most chocolate confections I’ve seen per square foot.

So if you’re looking for some specialty chocolates next time you’re in downtown wallingford (it’s on the North Avenue side of the town center area at the bottom of the hill, coming down from the post office and muni buildings) give them a shot.

We’ll see how the caramels are the next time I’m by there .

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.

Having liked R.A. Salvatore’s last entry in this almost-series, namely The Highwayman, I thought I would pick up it’s chronological follow up, The Ancient.

Most of the story takes place in the northern reaches with the Church of Blessed Abelle, an institution founded on good intentions that it frequently only pays lip-service and the “Old God” worshiping cult of the Samhaists again playing a prominent role.

Coming on the heels of the events chronicled in Highwayman Bransen has set out to find out more about his mystic training and the book left for him by his father. Unsure on weather the training offered by the mystics responsible for his martial arts prowess and ability to harness power from Abellican stones he begins by diverting from his intended path, where our story begins to pick up.

While it’s not as gripping as the previous novel, Ancient does have some merits that make it worth a read. The characters and their surroundings are interesting and well thought out. The intrigue and interactions between church factions both within and without the politically gaining Abellican order remain a strong focal point for the story and the orders rise creates a interesting center-point for this chapter of Corona’s history.

If you like Salvatore’s other work or you’re looking for a solid swashbuckling read give The Ancient a look. Anyone unfamiliar with his work might want to check out The Highwayman first, as it gives this story a bit of context and otherwise lacking understanding of Bransen’s character.

Never log onto your space from a HOPE convention and think “I really need to change the password on this right now at roughly 3 o’clock in the morning after a bit of drinking. You won’t remember it. I finally recovered the password, but it took long enough (as evidenced by the paucity of posts).

In any case, Ben Templesmith has been up to some hijinks, having come out with a now decent length series of graphic novels (and one would assume comic format releases) by the title of WormWood. A necrotic worm living in used corpses hedging a resistence against the Earth being destroyed.

Interesting stuff.

You’ll remember Mr Templesmith from the largely non-publishing series “Fell” (“Where did Warren Ellis’s Fell Go?“). This time he’s in full color, mostly single color washed out panels with his rough, smudgy-yet-detailed art style that seems to bring some life out of the object, especially objects as grotesque as this.

And the subject matter is fairly grotesque. Quite a bit of raunch to go around with a zombie inducing worm that drinks and hangs out at a strip club above a trans-dimensional gate. That’s run by immortal gate-keeping strippers. Frankly, if you think that’s funny the comic might be for you. You can check out some snippits of his art over at templesmith.com if you’ve yet to sample the work.

So, world saving zombies, drag queen leprechauns, and a sidekick made out of beer cans with no. Err. Nuts. What’s not to like?

Just finished up the Last HOPE conference, which I ended up working at again. Everyone was great and I had a blast, but I’m now a bit too tired to commit some of the goings-on to writing. I’ll post more at some future date.

There’s going to be another HOPE, which I’ll probably sign up to man the Info Desk at again. Look forward to seeing you all there!

Showing us exactly what you can do with no budget and a good animator is Drawn by Pain. It’s a live action with drawn overlays series that arrived in my in-box courtesy of the fine folks at zero punctuation (they ran a trailer advert for it) and it’s turned out to be a good watch.

Drawn by Pain follows it’s sometimes heroine Emily as she confronts her inner demons while terrorizing NYC lowlifes (or possibly Connecticut’s south coast, there’s a 106.9 WCCC sticker in there). She appears to be slowly driven mad by her youth, hounded by forms given life through her odd artistic powers.

What really lies inside Emily’s abilities to injure and kill to defend herself with drawings and how she’ll tackle the problems they cause is the focus of the series.

Artistically the shorts are tight Drawing is sketchbook style and pops out of the screen from the city and ‘burb backdrop. Camera work is competent shot with (if I had to guess) a couple of Canons GLs or similar cameras and some good recording gear. Acting improves as the series gets its chops broken in.

If you want either an action/drama that’s fun to watch or a study in making a good mixed media film on a shoe-string budget this one’s for you. (Drawn by Pain drawnbypain.com)

You may have discerned by now that I enjoy making things. Pretty much anything.

So after searching around a bit for “what to do with extra bottles of oil” and coming back with “making soap” I’ve successfully whipped up a couple batches of the cleanly stuff that look promising. But here’s the catch: you want to figure out when it’s done reacting with the lye and, well, becoming soap.

Now, I could just buy some litmus strips. That’s probably a pretty good solution, but it A) involves buying something and B) involves finding the something to buy. Which wastes both time and money, and mostly defeats the using-up-leftovers nature of my initial soap making initiative.

One thing I *do* have is quick access to grocery stores and what-have-you on my ride home from work (very built out sections of Connecticut). After a bit of research, I found (and then remembered) that middle school science classes generally include an experiment whereby you test the PH acid/base level of various substances and objects using a reactive mixture made from a vegetable.

Our answer here, dear reader, is cabbage. Specifically the red variety.

Using nothing but some simple instructions, found here, you too can make an off-the-cuff PH judgment based on a simple PH chart of the water coloration. Or if you want to get fancy (or use the stuff for a bit longer of a period) you can reduce it in alcohol instead.

It’s not useful outside getting a rough reading, but fortunately for my soap making (and possibly ground soil testing) I really want to know if it’s near the center of the range, not get an overly accurate reading out of it.

Seems that this is a humor weekend in general. “How to Drink Wine” by Craig Martin over at The Travelers Notebook includes some hilarious tips on drinking Wine and a short on drinking hard liquor as well (do not snort, exhale first). All sage advise.. what are you waiting for, it’s only 3 minutes long!