I’m complimented on my math so seldom that whenever it happens, I link to the place. In fact it’s happened only once. This is it.

Johanna Draper Carlson of Comics Worth Reading had her doubts about Kickstarter as a way to fund projects outside the traditional models of publication, and she expressed those doubts here; conversation ensued; and somehow my math skills came into play.

Normally that means that I count out the wrong change while a lot of people are standing in line behind me. This time, it was different.

Technorati Tags: kickstarter, project, fundraising, funding, comics

From the amazing Link Bait Generator:

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ELECTROLUMINESCENT FLASHING BATTERY OPERATED FLAMINGO

I spend most of my days inside my own head. I admit it. I’m not ashamed. But usually I make the time to pop my metaphorical head above the waters, notice interesting things, and jot them down in here.

Lately I’ve been keeping that head down a bit more than usual because what I’ve been immersed in is not a metaphor: it’s just a great big project that I hope to finish soon. Ish. So today, here are a couple of things I’ve meant to share… but haven’t. After which – head down, full speed ahead, silent running.

Greg Brotherton’s New Museum Show

I’ve written before about Greg Brotherton’s sculptures, which are remarkable pieces that combine found objects with new metals, wood, and other materials.

His newest work is now on display in a show called Discoveries in Dystopia at the Oceanside Museum of Art, near San Diego in California. The new work concentrates on dystopian views of workers in fascinating but forbidding settings: cubicles, desks and machines that enfold their laborers in Sysiphean toil.

Like Brotherton’s other works the textures and their contrasts are lovely to the eye and there are occasional grace notes (like the "Back Space" typewriter key shown here) that reward the careful observer. Wonderful stuff!

The museum’s show runs through March 19, and there’s a "Meet the Artist" event on February 6.

ATOMIC ROCKETS Web Site

If you’ve seen my own work, you may have guessed that of all the things I may be about, scientific accuracy is, well, absent. If I can fool you into thinking that a thing might work, well, job done, right? Because things like open cockpit roadster "rockets" aren’t the most practical or likely sort of vehicles in the first place.

On the other hand, I appreciate scientific accuracy in science fiction (which is not exactly what I do, anyway). Authors can get away with fooling me, too, but they have to work at it a bit if what they’re doing is cast in a realistic mode.

So I was delighted on a couple of levels when I discovered the Atomic Rockets web site. It doesn’t hurt for me to get a little better at fooling you, after all, and the material’s pretty interesting in its own right.

Because Atomic Rockets is a large and growing compilation of information about how spaceships and related technologies actually need to work, and why. The examples are a mix of real aerospace experience and research with science fiction examples – good, bad, and ugly – from decades worth of fiction and movies.

And there are plenty of equations to help you to calculate whether your own space ship is going to be able to make that trip to Neptune. If not, you can research some of the other types of propulsion!

So I’ve made plenty of discoveries there already and look forward to more. The site is the ongoing project of Winchell D. Chung Jr. – have a look!

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…from Winsor McCay, via Golden Age Comic Book Stories.

Here’s hoping all our futures will be better ones.

Winter’s finally decided it’s really here at the Secret Laboratory and it’s doing its best to make me glad I’m in here, finishing up the last of the remaining characters for Part One of The Toaster With TWO BRAINS, my first installment at Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual.

This is the mysterious Doctor Rognvald. The big interior set I’ll still need to build is his laboratory – and to do that, I’ll have to sequester myself with Just Imagine and an old Boris Karloff film because they have such great mad scientist glassware. The sacrifices I make, I just can’t tell you.

That’s what I’ll be up to till that freelance job attains "check on the desk" status, anyhow. Then I’ll have to drop everything – carefully! there’s all that glassware to think of – for a bit.

Technorati Tags: winsor mccay, new year, thrilling tales of the downright unusual, the toaster with two brains, interactive fiction