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The Cartoonist
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Tuesday, December 31, 2002 |
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 More about Freddie Frinton (and the amazing fact is that I couldn't find any english websites) here, here, and there. The Dinner recipes are here; or there. Or wherever. And whatnot. Happy New Year. I'm off now.
3:32:34 PM  Cult | |
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Dinner for one. Good old Freddie... Dinner for One: "Below we have the dialogue for Dinner for One, one of my favorite little pieces - a short television comedy shown every New Year's Eve in Germany.
James :
Good evening, Miss Sophie, good evening.
Miss Sophie :
Good evening, James.
James :
You are looking very well this evening, Miss Sophie.
Miss Sophie :
Well, I am feeling very much better, thank you, James.
James :
Good, good... "
...
3:16:28 PM Cult | |
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 I'm actually starting to like this guy. femail.co.uk "Prince Charles has abandoned an official visit to the United States because the White House has signalled he is not welcome.
The snub by President Bush - which is causing a behind-the-scenes diplomatic furore both in London and Washington - has been prompted by the Prince's deeply held reservations about Bush's determination to wage war with Iraq." Via Armin.
2:47:37 PM London | |
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"tong"Create your own. Understanding Weblogs : In this article, I'll show you how to build a simple weblog using Radio UserLand, then I'll spend some time explaining the fundamentals behind weblogging. (O'Reilly Network via MyAppleMenu)
9:54:01 AM Blogs | |
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 A Happy New Year from the RatSwine - and from yours always amazed, The Cartoonist! Have fun, all of you. There might not be enough time left for having fun...
1:50:59 AM The RatSwine | |
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Monday, December 30, 2002 |
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 Yeah, but they probably have more visitors than I have. So what's the problem? (Could it be the navigation of those sites? The content?) Mhmmm... Official websites leave public cold. Politics: The government's £1bn plan to put all public services on the internet is in danger of creating 'online millennium domes with just as few visitors', a new report has warned. [Guardian Unlimited]
7:21:29 PM London | |
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"head2"You see?! Walking the dog can be dangerous! Get a cat instead a dog. Should I stay or should I go? BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Music | Funeral for punk hero Strummer: "The funeral of Clash star Joe Strummer, who died of heart failure last week aged 50, has taken place in west London.
The singer died on 23 December at his home after taking his dog for a walk."
7:16:00 PM London | |
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 This is very old news indeed, and I have mentioned it before, but then - why not again: Google Mac Exclusive!
Looking for an easier way to find Mac information on Google? Well, look no further. All you need to do is visit Mac Google and search away!
For example, while searching for "Microsoft Office" on Google's main search site, the first return will be about the Windows version of Office. Searching for the same term on Mac Google will bring you directly to the Mac version of Office. This is a simplistic example, but one that illustrates the convenience of this service nicely. Google even has a Mac-oriented logo for the service. Via MacObserver. (Guys, you're late...)
7:09:59 PM Blogs, Cult | |
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 Gold! Rum! Adventure! All about Treasure Island here: Treasure Island - Home "Fifteen men on the dead man's chest-
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"
3:29:42 PM Literature | |
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 This is brilliant. Tarot cards with Peanuts characters. Fantastic. The artist "Valerian" pleads online, "Don't sue me," and offers this explanation of the offbeat project:
"An absurd, heretical, really cool view of an ancient ritual of divination: This is a joke. Six-year-old suburban kids enacting adult emotions and situations, breaking them down and magnifying them into hilarious crumbs of childhood experience - tragedy, pain, and measured triumph. With children as protagonists and innocent humor as the disarming tool, the emotions are simplified and magnified (as are the physical features of each cartoon drawing) and the exchanges between the children become both an ironic parody of adult emotions, and an impossibly close and meditative study of them." Via BoingBoing.
9:09:08 AM Cult | |
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 Jeffrey Zeldman is right. Awkward and non-existing things in OS X: View By Date Modified Considered Harmful : If there is a way to change the sort order from the useless default, we haven't discovered it yet. (Jeffrey Zeldman via MyAppleMenu)
8:54:52 AM | |
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Sunday, December 29, 2002 |
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So. Comments are back after 6 hours. Great.
8:49:30 PM | |
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 Alright. Fed up with this. I've disabled the comments now - the Radio Comments server is down again. This is getting ridiculous. Could perhaps anyone point me to a working comments server?
5:36:26 PM Blogs | |
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 German website about the history of computing. The site is HUGE, over 400MB in size and covers almost everything. Another interesting link in this regard is The Dot Eaters, covering the history of videogames. My favourite was always 'Defender'. I never got past the third or fourth level though and I always ran out of smart bombs, even though I could later practice the game on my Dragon 32...
12:56:21 PM Cult | |
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 Analog Word Processing. A really nice website about fountain pens: Makers, History, Construction, Filling, Inks, Troubleshooting...and some old ads in 'Special exhibits'! Unfortunately there's nothing about the Esterbrook 356, which was used by Carl Barks.
10:03:25 AM | |
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Ok then. Let's give it a try: Heimatsicherheitshauptamt.
The Odd Case of Heimatsicherheitshauptamt. As seen at the link:
What is going on here? Google censorship? On my Journal page for Saturday, 16 November, I posted a response to a message from a reader. That response included a word I'd just made up, "Heimatsicherheitshauptamt", or "Homeland Security Main Office". Also on 16 November, Jerry Pournelle posted a message from me that included the word Heimatsicherheitshauptamt.
The following Monday, I wondered if I'd actually made up that word, or if someone else had used it first. So I did a Google search for "Heimatsicherheitshauptamt". That search returned only two hits, one my Journal page for 11 November, and the other Jerry's Mail page. I didn't think much more about it until a couple of weeks ago, when I decided to run the search again to see if anyone had picked up on it. This time, Google returned zero hits. Nada. Nothing. Zip.
Which it still does. So the obvious thing is to get as many people as possible to post the word Heimatsicherheitshauptamt on their webpages, and see what happens. [linkfilter.net]
9:36:53 AM | |
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Saturday, December 28, 2002 |
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 Fast Space Cruiser Orion VII. Last picture for 2002!
4:33:48 PM Orion Pics | |
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Beer! A website listing London pubs, together with the history of pubs. PUBS.COM Pub Guide "Welcome to pubs.com, your independent guide to London's best traditional and historic pubs."
12:02:08 PM London | |
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"head2"Magic tricks. A magic linkpage. WannaLearn.com: Just for Fun : Magic Tricks: "...free magic trick instructions for new magicians, including the self-tying handkerchief, coin through elbow, Houdini rubber band escape and more..." "link"
10:23:11 AM Cult | |
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How to configure the firewall in OS X. O'Reilly Network: Configuring Jaguar's Firewall [Dec. 27, 2002] " Many of you already know that Jaguar, Mac OS X 10.2, comes with a built-in firewall. In an effort to keep things simple, Apple provides the basic ability to configure this firewall via the GUI interface in System Preferences, but otherwise is silent on its extensive benefits and usefulness." "industrial"Well, I'm using BrickHouse - another fantastic Shareware utility.
9:50:26 AM | |
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Friday, December 27, 2002 |
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Thursday, December 26, 2002 |
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 Really good stuff never dies. And the truly bizarre Magic Roundabout was good. At Welcome to the Magic Roundabout you can see them again: Dougal, Zebedee, Ermintrude... and apparently there's now a movie being planned. So then: Tournicotti-Tournicotton!
9:59:52 AM Cult | |
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Wednesday, December 25, 2002 |
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[Just noticed that it's around $90. For some email software? They must be crazy.]
10:44:48 AM | |
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 A Christmas present from my son. The book starts off with Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood opening a certain shop on 430 King's Road... Well done, Michael!
10:42:04 AM Literature, London | |
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Tuesday, December 24, 2002 |
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"head3"Proper Branding? Cult Brands: Lessons Learned At Apple, ESPN, And PepsiCo : What gives some brands an extra lift? An avid cult following, that's what. At a session of the HBS Marketing Conference, experts debated the pros and cons of managing a brand that customers truly adore. (HBS Working Knowledge via MyAppleMenu)
1:54:42 PM | |
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"head2"I want one of those. Wired News: Forget a Maid, This Robot Vacuums " Billed as the first autonomous vacuum cleaner in the United States, the $200 Roomba is a round, battery-powered vacuum that looks like a flat-bottomed wok on wheels. The Roomba is more-or-less autonomous, capable of navigating rooms unattended, sweeping up as it goes."
See also http://www.roombavac.com/
1:20:24 PM Cult | |
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 This will be shown on worldwide telly during the holidays anyway, so I see no reason at all why I shouldn't mention it here: A Christmas Carol by a certain Mr Dickens. Those who don't want to read the text online will find a description of the plot together with the old illustrations on a page titled not unsurpringly A Christmas Carol. And even more about Christmas and Dickens is on the Dickens Christmas Page. Happy Christmas then!
10:59:28 AM Literature, London | |
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Monday, December 23, 2002 |
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"bird"Are there any other 'comments' servers around? The Radio UserLand comments server seems to be down most of the time and I'm really pissed off now. Any suggestions? Oh - please send me an email, because the comments server is down. There's a yellow envelope icon somewhere on this site, you just have to click on that. It's because the comments server is down again. Thanks. You know, the comments server is down...
5:44:24 PM Blogs | |
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 Pictures of the Dead. Very spooky site. MEMENTO MORI: DEATH AND PHOTOGRAPHY IN NINETEENTH CENTURY AMERICA
"A memento mori is a form of image that urged a European person of the late Middle Ages to "remember thy death." To do this, a memento mori might represent death as a human skeleton--perhaps as the Grim Reaper gathering his harvest--or it might depict human bodies in an advanced state of decay. Its purpose is to remind the viewer that death is an unavoidable part of life, something to be prepared for at all times. Memento mori images are graphic demonstrations of the fact that death was not only a more frequent, but a far more familiar occurrence in medieval Europe than it is today." Via Kosmonautentraum.
12:46:34 PM Literature | |
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Sad. No more White Riot. "23 DECEMBER 2002:
Joe Strummer died yesterday. Our condolences to Luce and the kids, family and friends." From http://www.strummersite.com
10:20:29 AM London | |
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 Because it's Christmas. André Franquin's Idées Noires are here. In French.
9:56:58 AM Literature | |
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Rip-off Britain, Part 1238. The The Unsuspecting Tourist had an encounter with Santa: "Today however, this icicle laden world came crashing down on me. I saw a sign that demanded 3 pounds (sorry, can't make the pound sign on this American computer) which is about $4.50 to meet santa." That's in Euros: 4.66!
9:32:18 AM London | |
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 Lucky Luke. Good old Morris - I'm a fan of his stories. Sadly, he passed away last year. Here are a few Lucky Luke links: Svein Are Tjeldnes maintains a website with a list of the main characters, the authors and the stories; Giesbert Damaschke's pages haven't been updated for a long time but are still worth a look; and this page is about the albums and has a link to Suske en Wiske.
9:24:30 AM Literature | |
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Sunday, December 22, 2002 |
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Saturday, December 21, 2002 |
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 And here is a website about the 'Germanic Goddess': Nico. The picture on the left seems to have been photographed on a cemetery. Now that fits perfectly.
1:58:20 PM Cult | |
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Friday, December 20, 2002 |
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 Yes, but is it art?Of course it's not art, just something out of my sketchbooks! Oh, me poor torn soul... :-)
6:31:17 PM | |
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 Found this wonderful, amazing, fantastic, brilliant, great, unbelievable, incredible, beautiful site about Jules Verne: Andreas Fehrmann's Collection Jules Verne. The books. The movies. Themes. Links. Only drawback is, the site is entirely in German - but offers translation help via altavista World. Sigh...Quite a few of the old wood engraved illustrations can be found at Science Fiction Studies, XXV:2 (July1998):241-70. And what a weird name for a website is that?!
3:58:56 PM Cult, Literature | |
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 Borgward. The homepage of lloyd-motors - lots of links, pictures and of course old ads and brochures. Choice of English, French and German.
12:34:22 PM Cult | |
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 Step out in front. Here is the Isetta source: Everywhere you want to go with this goofy little car. Again, lots of old advertising materials.
12:16:42 PM Cult | |
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 Small cars. At The Heinkel Club Germany you'll find everything about the 'Kabinenroller' as well as their old motor bikes along with technical datasheets and advertising materials.
"The purpose of this club is the maintenance, reconstruction and care of the Heinkel Vehicles."
12:06:59 PM Cult | |
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Booooh! Great website about Haunted Places in the UK: "Find out about the places the ghosts haunt and why they haunt them. Read their tales of sadness, passion and hate."
11:53:52 AM London | |
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Thursday, December 19, 2002 |
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 More Science Fiction. Thunderbirds are go! This is a very, very, very extensive website dedicated to Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds. F.A.B.!
5:23:47 PM Cult | |
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 Kugelraumer. Michael Fey has developed a 3D modelling/rendering technique to show us the intestines of spaceships of the famous German Perry Rhodan series. One can only wonder why they haven't been published within the series yet - so far I have seen nothing that comes even close to these amazing '3D-Blueprints'.
Also on his site: A 'new' Orion and, of course, screenshots of the 'Eighth Episode', titled 'The Seeds of Evil'. Fantastic work. I'm jealous.
5:15:16 PM Cult, Orion Pics | |
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Here in London quite a lot of companies are already switching to InDesign. See you later, Quark. OS 9: Alive Or Dead? : The bottom line is that it will cost Quark in the long run. (MacOPINION via MyAppleMenu)
9:09:46 AM London | |
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"head2"An interesting email from Robert with an interesting link: GermanEnglish Words. "Welcome to GermanEnglishWords.com. This is a dictionary of some German words used in the English language (Germanisms), each with a literal or German meaning, English definition and sometimes actual sample sentence(s) from literature and the Internet." Found at Bananajoe's.
8:33:33 AM Literature | |
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Wednesday, December 18, 2002 |
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Yeah, but that's the way they work. Ken Hirsch: "I really dislike the fact that all blogs are in reverse chronological order." [Scripting News]
2:27:51 PM Blogs | |
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 'The World's Largest Website on Carl Barks' says this website about itself. I'm not sure about that, but there's certainly a wealth of material. Available in Danish and English.
2:25:56 PM Cult, Literature | |
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Tuesday, December 17, 2002 |
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 And this is a website about industrial design from the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany as we say here in England. Fantastic website.
Not quite Rams, but some of the products look very Gyro Gearloose inspired, like the hairdryer on the left.
8:14:52 PM Cult | |
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 Rams. The Braun Industrial Design Collection lists quite a few of Dieter Rams' original Designs - click on the links at the left to view the pictures in pop-up windows. An interview with Dieter Rams can be found on this website, with video clips and some more pictures. "I can´t stand any ´isms´- nationalism, functionalism. There is no functionalism, just functions." - Dieter Rams I wish some web designers and programmers would memorise that and act accordingly...
7:47:39 PM Cult | |
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Talking about David Bailey - here's a loooong interview with the man himself, a gallery with really great photography and video clips: David Bailey : http://www.pdn-pix.com/legends/bailey/intro.shtml "Bailey, almost as well-known for who he's slept with as for who he's photographed, has lived a life most of us only read about in the tabloids. He cohabited with British '60s model sensation Jean Shrimpton, married sultry French actress Catherine Deneuve, and became best friends with Rolling Stone's Mick Jagger."
9:40:49 AM London | |
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"head2"Wow - it's the famous Box by David Bailey with portraits of Michael Caine, Mick Jagger, Twiggy, The Kray twins ... I wish I had one of those. Bailey photos auctioned [This is London: London News] "A box of photographs by fashion photographer David Bailey has been put up for sale."
8:51:33 AM London | |
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Monday, December 16, 2002 |
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 One for tonight: Nice feature about Jackson Pollock, drinker and abstract expressionist painter.
9:15:32 PM | |
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 It's about time, isn't it? I've been waiting for that to come out for ages! BBC NEWS | Wales | Dictionary complete after 81 years: "What's got more than seven million words, 3000 pages and has taken 81 years to complete - it's quite a question and the answer is the definitive Welsh dictionary."
7:56:04 PM Literature | |
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 I've been messing about with a little utility called BootCD over the weekend. It's fantastic. After about half an hour I had a fully bootable OS X CD, all together with some disk utilities - in case something goes wrong with my Mac. And it's free.
"BootCD is a Cocoa app that creates a disk image that can be used to burn a Mac OS X boot CD with a working Finder and Dock on it. This utility is unfinished and still has some flaws, but works. The current version works much better than previous versions, and includes the ability to run Drive10 and other utilities, although Norton does not yet work from the CD."
1:41:51 PM | |
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 More victorian. More robots. This is a website about robots of the victorian era - featuring Boilerplate, The Electric Man and others.
10:42:06 AM Cult | |
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 Robots! Have a look at robotnut's website. In his galleries are hundreds of old toy robots in all their glory. There's even a link to an Englishman who builds full size Dalek replicas, even if Daleks aren't robots. But that would be nitpicking...
9:55:52 AM Cult | |
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Sunday, December 15, 2002 |
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"tong"My weblog has been reviewed at the weblogreview and received a rating of 3.5. No idea if this is good or what. Probably just average.
5:05:52 PM Blogs | |
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 Check out the City of Shadows - A Gothic Tour of Victorian London. Lots of pictures, text-excerpts and links.
"To artists the fog is London's best friend. Not the black fog, but the other. For there are two distinct London fogs-the fog that chokes and blinds, and the fog that shrouds. The fog that enters into every corner of the house and coats all the metal work with a dark slime, and sets us coughing and rubbing our eyes-for that there is nothing to say. It brings with it too much dirt, too much unhealthiness, for any kind of welcome to be possible. "Hell is a city much like London," I quoted to myself in one of the worst of such fogs, as I groped by the railings of the Park in the Bayswater Road."
1:10:58 PM Literature, London | |
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 Wow. 80's Flashback: JC Penny's 1980 Catalog (featuring George W. Bush?).
I know this site's already been blogged elsewhere, but I saw it for the first time this week and it blew my mind. Kim at excitementmachine.org scanned the entire freaking 1980 JC Penney's catalog, and posted the images online here. One of them (left) features a male model who bears an uncanny resemblance to the current President of the United States.
Via [Boing Boing Blog]
11:22:09 AM Cult | |
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Saturday, December 14, 2002 |
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 More things Victorian. The Internet Library of Early Journals has old magazines like The Builder (1843-1852) or Gentleman's Magazine (1731-1750) online, each page scanned as a gif file. Just wonderful, tasty, gorgeous and delicious. A few of those links don't seem to work though...
3:47:06 PM Literature, London | |
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 I know someone who will like this story, right, dPhilc?
ThisisLondon: "Detectives are attempting to unravel the mystery of reports of a car crash that led them to discover the skeleton of a man killed at the same spot five months ago.
12:19:13 PM London | |
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 What the Victorians did for us. A website with amusing victorian experiments.
"My Dear Faraday,
I would like to expound to you a phenomenon of singular curiosity, apparent during investigations into expanding the electrical spark. It affords me little joy as my discovery took the sight from Hodges right eye and I have had to dismiss him. As my last correspondence indicated, I have surmised that the experiments are deleterious to poor Hodges, his health having sharply deteriorated due, I think, to the quicksilver effluvia he breathed during leyden phial silvering. "link"
9:53:20 AM London | |
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Friday, December 13, 2002 |
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 Currencies. Worldwide. Still remember that paper money? Banknotes? Before Credit Cards came up? This is a wonderful gallery of currencies, even Antarctica is listed. Go and have a look.
9:35:34 PM | |
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 What? The old fart is still alive? Surely not. Must be a revamp then. I used to work on the Captain Birdseye account when I was at Lintas... (English readers, don't worry: it's all about fish fingers.) Der Kontakter - Der Nachrichtendienst der Kommunikationsbranche: "Käpt'n Iglo kommt ins Fernsehen -
2003 startet Langnese-Iglo eine Kampagne, die die Marke Käpt'n Iglo zur Dachmarke für Kinder ausbauen soll. Neben den allseits beliebten Fischstäbchen wird das Unternehmen im Fernsehen auch andere Kindergerichte bewerben, die "nicht aus dem Fischbereich stammen", sagt eine Sprecherin in Hamburg." Amazing. They tried all of the above more than ten years ago and it didn't work. And they tried a relaunch with a younger Captain Birdseye, which didn't work either. So why do they think it's supposed to work now? And if the art director thinks, he can have a few weeks off shooting in the Carribean: forget it. They'll film it somewhere around Norderney, where it's cheaper.
I think Palmolive should relaunch Madge... (good ol' Tilly in German...)
9:07:31 PM | |
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 At last! Another RatSwine cartoon, done in-between meetings and presentation work! Now how is that?
4:29:42 PM The RatSwine | |
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 At present they only have George W. - but I am definitely looking forward to Richard Nixon! Talking Presidential Action Figures. Belongs into every household worldwide. I hope they'll extend the product range to German chancellors...
12:11:09 PM | |
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 Now this is the real thing. The one and only Batmobile that matters, presented on a very extensive webpage. Blueprints, photos, stories, links - whatever you want to know about Batman's most potent secret weapon, it's there.
12:03:54 AM Cult | |
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Thursday, December 12, 2002 |
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"head2"Found an english website about Arno Schmidt with lots of links. Arno Schmidt at the Complete Review: "Arno Schmidt is one of the greatest German writers of the 20th century -- and certainly the least well known of the top-tier authors. World War II delayed his debut, but he published furiously and extensively for some twenty-five years. Some of his early prose is still relatively straightforward -- printed like normal text, read like any other work of fiction -- but he is perhaps best known for the oversize typoscripts of his later years, including the notorious Überroman, Zettels Traum"
2:39:21 PM Literature | |
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 Another Orion picture, showing one of those psychotic robots.
1:45:22 PM Orion Pics | |
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 I am still very busy with that presentation I'm working on. I really can't promise any new RatSwine cartoons for the next days...
1:20:01 PM | |
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 Fantastic! Historic Cities: Maps & Documents: "This site contains maps, literature, documents, books and other relevant material concerning the past, present and future of historic cities and facilitates the location of similar content on the web."
12:23:30 AM Literature, London | |
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So when's the shit going to hit the fan then? Tomorrow? After Christmas? First week of January? World Tribune.com: Turkey deploys thousands of troops to Iraqi border"Turkish sources said thousands of military and paramilitary forces were deployed around the Iraqi border over the weekend. They said the forces were comprised of mostly infantry as well as support units."
12:13:02 AM | |
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Wednesday, December 11, 2002 |
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I'm just back from a party in a posh bar off Carnaby Street held by a London recruitment agency. It was kind of bizarre (but also a great party!): 70% of the guests there were unemployed art directors and writers, desperately trying to get at least some freelance work ("A permanent job? Fully employed?? Are you kidding?"). Like, you're sipping your free champagne and ask the person next to you: "What are you doing?" - "Oh, I'm just another unemployed Art Director". And the place was full with people like that - your cartoonist included, of course - really good designers, copywriters - all out of work. The ad industry is going downhill. Did some 'networking' though and met lots of nice folks.
11:54:43 PM London | |
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Laurie Anderson's amazing "here" website from 1997 is still online: Here This web project was designed with Hsin-Chien Huang in 1997 and remains on line. It was created under the auspices of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Holland. Shockwave alert. Bigtime. But worth it. More or less "schock", who posted the link to Laurie's homepage. BTW, is she still Lou Reed's girlfriend?
10:28:42 AM Literature | |
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 A website about Don Martin with quite a few samples of his cartoons and posters. Also of interest is The Don Martin Web - both websites are horribly designed though.
9:25:13 AM Literature | |
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Tuesday, December 10, 2002 |
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I keep saying so... Bloody arrogant behaviour. Quark Taking A Dive. Already on the ropes, Quark continues to give us reasons to root for InDesign. The MacEdition’s Naked Mole Rat reports... [Typographica]
9:13:03 PM | |
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Quite right! The Guardian | Prisoners of the past It is absolutely pathetic that, more than half a century after the end of the second world war, this country is so lazy about its attitude to Germany. Even if it was ever true that all Germans were Nazis (which it was not), it certainly is not true today. Yet we remain like Basil Fawlty, unable to think about Germans without mentioning the war, and blind to the fact that this inability says far more about us, the British, than it says about them, the Germans. Thanks, Reimund!
4:39:36 PM London | |
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 Small, but very nice website about Arno Schmidt and Tellingstedt. Tellingstedt: "Obwohl bedeutende Germanisten sich bücherweise Gedanken darüber gemacht haben, weshalb Arno Schmidt den Handlungsort seiner Novelle "Schule der Atheisten" ausgerechnet nach Tellingstedt an der Eider gelegt verlegte, ist man bis heute noch auf Vermutungen angewiesen."
4:13:56 PM Literature | |
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 How to cook insects the proper way. Yuk. And be warned, the site is written entirely in engrish. "link"
3:52:22 PM | |
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Greek! Get your lorem ipsum there: Lorem Ipsum - All the facts - Lipsum generator: "Lorem Ipsum, or Lipsum for short, is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book."
3:40:50 PM | |
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A nice article by The Unsuspecting Tourist about today's pop stars et al:
"Pop Madness - If you do not live in a part of the world where Pop Idols are treated like gods, consider yourself fortunate (and where do you live?? I want to move there)."
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Monday, December 9, 2002 |
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Wow. I'm impressed. system.verbs.builtins.radio.cloud.registerWithServer changed on Mon, 09 Dec 2002 22:41:24 GMT: If the server sends back a commentsPageUrl when connecting an existing user, store it in weblogData.prefs.commentsPageUrl. [Radio.root Updates]
11:48:42 PM | |
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 The Carl Barks Base comes with a new layout and is now available in German and English flavours: http://www.barksbase.de/ Introducktion: Carl Barks (1901-2000) was, without doubt, one of the most important comic artists ever. This site aims at gathering information on his work and making it available online.
And the picture on the left is, without doubt, one of the best Barks portraits I've seen so far.
9:07:13 PM Literature | |
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 Harry, go and get the car... I'm kind of busy working on a pitch for the next three days, so I can't promise any new cartoons. Instead a link to an especially peculiar item of German TV-history: Der Kommissar. ("I said so, didn't I?" - "Yes, you said so." - "That's what she said, Herr Kommissar") Fabulous: "Während Robert, Walter und Harry (später Erwin) ihre Schreibtische in einer Linie am Fenster haben, muß Fräulein Rehbein in der Ecke zwischen den Türen ihre Arbeit verrichten; der Kommissar hat einen wohnlichen Raum ganz für sich allein." Der Schockwellenreiter is right (as usual) about Rolf Kauka - he screwed up bigtime with his Asterix translations. But he also published Spirou and Fantasio, and Raumpatrouille, of course. Conservative and right-wing, yes, but he wasn't that bad after all. His 'Liebe Freunde' column is legendary...
11:22:16 AM Literature | |
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Strange Christmas presents. I like the inflatable church... Ship of Fools: the Magazine of Christian Unrest"Looking for the perfect seasonal gift to impress your pastor or priest? Well sing hallelujah, for your search is over! Welcome to the Ship of Fools 2002 12 Days of Kitschmas, with a choice selection of Gadgets for God.""link"
9:31:58 AM | |
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Sunday, December 8, 2002 |
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Thank God Pipex doesn't charge for bandwidth yet! Bandwidth Bill
9:17:34 PM | |
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Grrr! Radio-Comments server down since this morning. Website meter down since this morning. What is going on in the states?
7:43:17 PM | |
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 Talking about old German comics - here's the definitely best website about Lurchi, the Salamander! I really couldn't find a better one...
1:40:58 PM | |
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Saturday, December 7, 2002 |
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"head2"And I thought only British Rail is never on time... Endeavour finally lands. The space shuttle Endeavour landed Saturday afternoon at the Kennedy Space Center after three days... [spacetoday.net]
9:39:16 PM | |
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More weblog! Got that one straight out of my referers, (in German) and a nice title too: Kosmonautentraum
9:35:44 PM Blogs | |
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 Copyright. Well done, Bundesgerichtshof! Winnetou bleibt frei. (in German) "Auch der Karl-May-Verlag kann die Rechte am Namen des Indianerhäuptlings nicht für sich monopolisieren. Der Bundesgerichtshof (BGH) hat in einem am Freitag veröffentlichten Urteil eine Beschwerde abgewiesen, mit der sich eine mit dem Bamberger Verlag verbundene GmbH den exklusiven Markenschutz an der Bezeichnung Winnetou sichern wollte". Via netbib weblog.Apparently they tried something like the company that in fact got the copyright to 'Father Christmas' on the web...unbelievable. This is via Armin, btw.
4:34:26 PM | |
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Well, folks, I'll see if can get another RatSwine cartoon done over the weekend - but I won't promise anything, since there's a pile of bills on my desk that needs to be dealt with urgently. And it's weekend, which means I'm lazy. In the meantime, have a look at the Davos weblog, it's written by an American living in London - and he writes speeches for Tony too!
12:37:26 PM Blogs, London | |
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 That's something I like: Vintage consumer test reports, like this portable electric hair dryer from 1961. This model is typical of dryers that constrain the user with a short, close-coupled hood. We judge this type least convenient.
9:22:22 AM | |
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This is like a bad dream. Recursive
8:28:05 AM | |
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Friday, December 6, 2002 |
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Another really interesting (but also slightly weird) website is this one: newseum: "155 front pages from 24 countries presented alphabetically."
8:13:34 PM | |
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 This, by the way, is the place I was born: Dortmund. Despite the picture I think the pollution here in London is much worse. And Dortmund still ranges on position #3 of my favourite towns after London and Hamburg.
3:08:18 PM | |
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 Good old Santa! Bishop Nicholas of Myra: Legends and sources. Lots of people think that St. Nicholas is just another name for Santa Claus. After all, Santa is also called Father Christmas, and Kris Kringle, and other names. Actually, Santa Claus is itself a mispronunciation of the Dutch SinterKlass which was their way of saying St. Nicholas. "link"
11:42:47 AM | |
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Thursday, December 5, 2002 |
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 Here is the 'webified' version of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. "This HTML version and other electronic versions of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake and Ulysses are made available via the World Wide Web, FTP and Gopher through the courtesy of Trent University. Both texts are available in HTML and WP 5.1, with most of the graphic and typographic effects included, and in ASCII text without these features."Watch out though: Joyce's texts are still under copyright in most countries.
6:24:52 PM Literature | |
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 Japanese Engrish is a wonderful website about...well, about Japanese Engrish. Very funny.Q. What is Engrish?
A. Engrish can be simply defined as the humorous English mistakes that appear in Japanese advertising and product design.
2:04:12 PM | |
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More about London Underground: Ghosts and other weirdos on the tube The London subterraneans are real troglodytes, born and bred down below and seldom if ever coming to the surface. They are an evolved or perhaps devolved species: foul, secretive, stunted, ruinous. They've probably forgotten how to speak English; it's even likely that they've developed their own gutteral and ghastly language by now...
1:43:53 PM London | |
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Nice pages about typography. In German, English and Bavarian. Huh? TYPOlis Welcome to the WWW-Sites about typography and design.
11:13:37 AM | |
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Wednesday, December 4, 2002 |
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 A website dedicated to gothic typefaces (Fraktur): History, literature, downloads etc. All in German - well, that's obvious, isn't it? Via koewi.log - Robert, this is great. And now I'll have a look for some Jan Tschichold stuff...
10:09:07 PM | |
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There you go. I think I'll start learning a proper job now. adrants.: "Ad Execs Ranked as Ethically Low as Car Salesmen"
9:55:07 PM | |
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 Ladies and Gentlemen, here's Jim Clark! Open the champagne. Quick.
2:56:59 PM Cult | |
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 Grey day. Just another page of my so called sketchbook then.
1:51:40 PM | |
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Good! "A nationwide class action lawsuit was filed on November 25, 2002, in the Superior Court of Spokane County against Bonzi Software, Inc. Bonzi is among the world's most prolific issuers of internet advertising banners. Bonzi's website has been ranked as one of the most frequently visited websites in the world.
" http://www.lukins.com/bonzi/'
12:19:20 PM | |
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What a weird website. Go and have a look. "link"
10:23:49 AM | |
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Good old Tim: An Interview With Tim O'Reilly : We set the tape rolling--yes, we still use tape--and from iPod to Web services to O'Reilly's upcoming Emerging Technology Conference, here's what Tim's thinking about as of late. (O'Reilly Network via MyAppleMenu)
10:08:15 AM | |
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Tuesday, December 3, 2002 |
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 "Great sex is all about angles." Now this is ... hrm... well, ... interesting: http://www.liberatorshapes.com/. [Thanks, Yves! (When is FCB going to book me again?! Grrr...!)]
6:38:13 PM | |
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 Orion - start from underwater base 104. Right out of the whirlpool. And yes - I've retouched the picture a tiny little bit. Probably not good enough. Who cares...!
6:23:53 PM Orion Pics | |
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Jennifer Lopez wants sex 4 times a week. So it says in their marriage-contract. Phew...poor Ben Affleck. RP-ONLINE - JOURNAL Sorry - couldn't find an english version of the article. [Reimund, via email]
9:34:30 AM | |
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Found in my referers: An Irish blog. That again reminds me of a few cancelled Ireland trips. Next year. Summer. Definitely. Whykay's happenings
8:54:39 AM | |
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Quite a nice font. Comic Sans’ cousin?. Meet the Fabula font. Designed by Vincent Connare for the EU’s Fabula software, a bilingual multimedia authoring system for children.... [Typographica]
8:34:55 AM | |
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Monday, December 2, 2002 |
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 Going underground. More of that anorak stuff - but good though: First, there's a website about disused London Tube Stations with lots of pictures. Then, there is The Underground City, more about London's tunnels from a historical point of view. Both websites are quite fascinating.
2:49:00 PM London | |
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I don't even have a laptop: This report was written in Barneys in St Albans. It's a pub/wine bar/restaurant, and all I had to do was walk in, sit down, and open up my laptop. Instantly, I had free Internet. Who pays? The Register
11:30:52 AM | |
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 How to build a Fly-Plane. Amazing. "link"
10:20:04 AM | |
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What about exclamation marks then? Apple Warns Users About iPhoto Filenames : Apple is advising anyone ordering photo prints from its iPhoto printing service that it is unable to print iPhoto files that include a question mark in the filename. (MacNN via MyAppleMenu)
9:09:12 AM | |
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Sunday, December 1, 2002 |
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Here you will find the explanation for words like
GAKKK (A cry of pain):
Ka-BOOM! A Dictionary of Comicbook Words on Historical Principles: "
Based on the Latest Conclusions of the Most Dubious Wordologists & Comprising Many Hundreds of New Words which Modern Literature, Science & Philosophy have Neglected to Acknowledge as True, Proper & Useful Terms & Which Have Never Before Been Published in Any Lexicon"
9:10:41 PM Literature | |
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 Can't be bothered to draw any new stuff today. Here's some old stuff from my sketchbooks. After all it's Sunday. Yawn.
2:52:50 PM | |
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 Even more retro thingies. At VintageLooks you'll find clothing, furniture, electronics and more from 1950 up to 1970. Unfortunately you actually have to buy the stuff. But hey - they even have a vintage dentist's chair! "link"
9:25:38 AM | |
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Fantastic Belgian website about 
Tip Top! This website lists all the title pages of 
Everybody seems to be talking about Samuel Pepys these days (
Edgar Pierre Jacobs was, just like his friend Hergé, a master of La ligne claire. 
This website is incredible. It's a 
Happy Christmas, everyone!
The works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft are online at the 
And because 
I think I've mentioned this already, but just to make sure: 
The 
Rolf Kauka's Fix und Foxi. All about the '
I'm in a Santa Claus mood, so here's more about the old fellow's origins: 
How to deal with sex toys...
Superman's first appearance in 
Here we go again...