publicdomainthing:

First View of Earth from Moon

This photo was transmitted to Earth by the United States Lunar Orbiter I and received at the NASA tracking station at Robledo De Chavela near Madrid, Spain. This crescent of the Earth was photographed August 23, 1966 at 16:35 GMT when the spacecraft was on its 16th orbit and just about to pass behind the Moon. 

NASA

Our second podcast.

I’ve never been part of a podcast before, and its interesting to try to figure out how best to get our intended result out of the recording session. We did things a little different this time and will keep tweaking stuff until we get a format that works for us. But that’s (hopefully) all transparent to the listener, as Erik does the hard job of editing it all together no matter how he record it.

I also like shorter podcasts, which this is. Less than 18 minutes.

toyns:

Things Are Happening podcast

This week’s episode features Eddie Brawley, Ramsey Ess, Kevin Hines, and Will Hines.

We joke about Oscar Nominations, Newt Gingrich, the State of the Union, Mitt Romney and more. Subscribe via iTunes here.

Oh man, do I love this letter Stan Lee wrote about early Marvel Comics decisions. It’s like a director’s commentary for the start of Marvel Comics.

Stan Lee didn’t love the Dr. Strange initial story, but did it anyway because Ditko wanted to do it.

I love how he wants to make every character work. Adding Wasp to Ant Man to try to help that character. Sensing that Thor’s Asgard stories worked better then his standard super-hero fare.

I loved Stan sensing the fan’s tastes. The Thing was a favorite (over teenaged Human Torch it seemed). And Stan guessing that Spider-Man would be big (good guess).

And even though I’ve heard it before, I love every time I read about Stan wanting Kirby to do layouts for every book to point them in a strong direction. Kirby was the blood and soul of Marvel, while Stan certainly was the brain.

themarvelageofcomics:

A letter written by Stan Lee to super-fan Dr. Jerry Bails at the very beginning of 1963, discussing, among other things, the artwork on a recent Thor story, the impending debut of Dr. Strange, and the reasons for introducing The Wasp in the Ant-Man feature.

toyns:

Hey everyone, a good replacement for Wikipedia today is this new topical comedy podcast, Things Are Happening. Each week I assemble some of my favorite writers to make fun of things that are happening in the news.

The first episode features Eddie Brawley, Ramsey Ess, and Kevin Hines, and it’s not even a day old — if you had a bagel for breakfast this morning, the content is fresher than that bagel. If you didn’t eat a bagel, I’m sorry for wasting your time with this paragraph. I hope you still enjoyed your breakfast, whatever it was.

You can subscribe here in iTunes. Or to just listen to it online, click here.

It’s only 20 minutes.

fantagraphics:

Usagi Yojimbo sketched by Walt Simonson.

My younger brother’s cat Walter had to be put to sleep today.

Brian was the first Hines brother to adopt a cat (I was the last) and he got a pretty amazing guy. Walter (named after UCONN’s Ray Allen) was friendly, relaxed, and ridiculous.

I believe Brian was told about Walter by a friend of his. He was a neighborhood stray that people wanted to find a good home for. Brian decided to adopt him.

Walter purred louder then ANY cat I have ever met. You could hear him across the room letting everyone know how happy he was. He also didn’t meow. He would try once in a while, but it came out more like a quiet click.

When Walter was particularly happy his fur would puff way out. Most cat’s do this when they are scared, or trying to convince a threat they are too big to mess with. Not Walter, if he puffed up he was happy. Every hair from the top of his head to the end of his tail would stand on end.

The few times I stayed over at Brian’s place, Walter would sleep on top of me, and drool all over me, another sign he was happy. He was happy a lot.

Brian took incredibly good care of his cat. After noticing that Walter enjoyed drinking water coming out of his sink’s tap he bought Walter a water bowl that constantly poured water down in a stream into his bowl.

Walter didn’t wake Brian up in the morning. He was not a morning cat. When Brian got up to go to work, Walter stayed in bed choosing to sleep in.

As Brian recently said, 7 years ago he was eating garbage… and now he drinks out of a fountain.

I’ll miss Walter. He was a pretty special cat.

My younger brother’s cat Walter had to be put to sleep today.

Brian was the first Hines brother to adopt a cat (I was the last) and he got a pretty amazing guy. Walter (named after UCONN’s Ray Allen) was friendly, relaxed, and ridiculous.

I believe Brian was told about Walter by a friend of his. He was a neighborhood stray that people wanted to find a good home for. Brian decided to adopt him.

Walter purred louder then ANY cat I have ever met. You could hear him across the room letting everyone know how happy he was. He also didn’t meow. He would try once in a while, but it came out more like a quiet click.

When Walter was particularly happy his fur would puff way out. Most cat’s do this when they are scared, or trying to convince a threat they are too big to mess with. Not Walter, if he puffed up he was happy. Every hair from the top of his head to the end of his tail would stand on end.

The few times I stayed over at Brian’s place, Walter would sleep on top of me, and drool all over me, another sign he was happy. He was happy a lot.

Brian took incredibly good care of his cat. After noticing that Walter enjoyed drinking water coming out of his sink’s tap he bought Walter a water bowl that constantly poured water down in a stream into his bowl.

Walter didn’t wake Brian up in the morning. He was not a morning cat. When Brian got up to go to work, Walter stayed in bed choosing to sleep in.

As Brian recently said, 7 years ago he was eating garbage… and now he drinks out of a fountain.

I’ll miss Walter. He was a pretty special cat.

Time Travel Cloak

This video and this link is mostly for Sal Gentile.

I don’t understand any of it.

This cloak allows someone hide in time, rather then location. I read an entire article about it on Scientific American’s Blog and watched the above video and I still can’t come close to comprehending any of it. Manipulating time is super abstract to my mind. And I took some pretty tough science classes in college! (Chemical Engineering, rather then Theoretical Physics, but still I should be able to grasp this, right?)

Comedy fans, this video is pretty boring.

improvnonsense:

I get in trouble for saying that because I deliberately say it in a jerk manner. KNOW EVERYTHING. When someone says “I didn’t know the movie my partner was mentioning” I’ll sometimes say “Well, you don’t HAVE to know it but it would be easier if you knew it.”

And then people are like “Why do I have to like Star Wars?”

And I say “Who said anything about Star Wars?”

“All these improv nerd boys love Star Wars and can’t stop mentioning it. I hate that HAVE to know it.”

I know. It’s annoying.

Read More

If you really hate any references to pop culture you only true recourse is to only work with people who either don’t know that stuff or will never use that stuff. I think that is limiting. I hate the idea of limiting the types of players that I can work with.

And as Will says, you don’t need to see Star Wars* to be able to do a Star Wars scene. Just know the basic idea of those movies.

And if you are doing a scene with someone who doesn’t know Star Wars, and they say “I’ve got my laser sword” don’t make fun of them for not calling it a “lightsaber”. Either make it part of the scene or part of your world.

*remove Star Wars and insert whatever knowledge you don’t have and this is still true.

I think Josh reblogged this and mentioned Inception. I did 2 seperate shows that revolved (to different degrees) around Inception. But since it was a huge hit, and I had seen the trailer, no one knew I didn’t know anything about the movie.

I have now seen Inception, and have not done a scene about it since seeing it.

anthonyking:

For the last three years, I have tracked my consumption and opinions of movies, plays and books on this blog. Here are the 2011 totals!

In 2011: (2008, 2009, & 2010 numbers in parentheses)

I watched 5 movies in the theater. (20,20,9)

I watched 59 movies on DVD/DVR/Cable. (67,47,56)

I saw…

But Antony if you don’t blog about this then how will I know how much media you consume in 2012?

I tried the difference method, but it says you will see -32 plays, and that seems* wrong.

I tried just averaging but that implied you would see 13 movies in theaters this year. With a 1 year old that seems unlikely.

I tried simply eyeballing it, but I have very poor vision.

*seems wrong. I think you could see negative plays. Maybe you will get so busy you will forget plays you have already seen?

Here are some charts that you FORCED me to make by refusing to keep blogging snarky comments!

(Forgive the mislabled x-axis, it is almost 3am.)

I guess this final chart is all I can be sure of for next year!