Alden Bates' Weblog

Back in the 80s, when Trace Hodgson was doing a weekly strip for The Listener, somehow it all went terribly strange and twisted, and we got "Shafts of Strife", a comic strip that felt more like a drug trip than anything. Like many things, it's now available to read on the Internets, courtesy Roger Langridge:

Read 'Shafts of Strife'.

Peter Jackson should adapt that into a movie.

Via Boing Boing: Maru the cat and his love for boxes:

Which makes me wonder how oddly-shaped a box would have to be before he failed to recognise it as a box.

PS: OK, you know? Screw fixed-width layouts.

At last, a site dedicated to rooting out the cybernetic organisms hiding in plain sight:
Transformer Sightings

They're everywhere, man!

I discovered these links after the webcomics in question advertised on the Transformers Wiki:

The Dreamland Chronicles - Not a gag-a-day comic, but one ongoing story, all rendered in movie-quality CGI. The Dreamland Chronicles tells the story of Alex, who suddenly finds himself dreaming of the same fantasy world he dreamed of as a young child and has to deal with encountering the same characters he knew long ago, only grown up.

Weesh - and at the other end of the spectrum, Weesh, which is a gag-a-day strip (or at least every few days) and with a clean, simple drawing style. Three kids have a strange animal named Weesh, who has the power to grant wishes, so long as he gets enough licorice.

Both comics are family-friendly.

I have found something awesome.

The 1911 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Already I have learned:

In New Zealand "The Public Health Department has exerted itself to improve the sanitation of native villages and combat the mischievous trickery of Maori wizards and "doctors"."

Of Maori: "That they were not indigenous, but had displaced an earlier Melanesian or Papuan race, the true aborigines, is certain."

London is: "the capital of England and of, the British Empire, and the greatest city in the world"

Obviously this is all true, because it was in an encyclopaedia.

I've been following with interest Shamus Young's project to create a Procedural City. He's posted a video to his blog, which you can watch below and read a bit about the creation of in his latest post.

I was surprised at how well the effect works!

I have two links!

Back in the Village - an ongoing comic based on cult series The Prisoner

and

The last couple of weeks of Player Versus Player - have been full of Doctor Who goodness.

From NewScientist: Our world may be a giant hologram

Scientists have found that space time may not, in fact, be continuous, but composed of pixels 10^-35 metres in size, some hundred billion billion times smaller than a proton.

It occurs that if we can determine the exact size of the universe, we can then calculate its resolution.

I likes me some mini-golf.

Miniclip Mini-Golf
Psychogoldfish Mini-Putt
Miniclip Tropi-golf
Gamblingfactory Mini-golf
Pitch'n Put Golf [French]
TBS Office Mini-golf

Where possible, I've attempted to link to the game on the originating site.

When Doctor Who author Craig Hinton sadly died in 2006, he was in the middle of writing a book. That book has been completed by Chris McKeon and will be published with proceeds going to the British Heart Foundation. You can read about Time's Champion here. From the sketch published on there, the Alister Pearson artwork on the cover looks like it's going to be really nice.

Via indefatigable42:

Dr Who Tardis on sale on eBay

"A TROWBRIDGE Christian who renounced the evil of Dr Who in favour of his religion is selling his collection on internet auction website eBay."

Portal is a 3D game created by Valve based on the same engine as Half Life but based towards logic puzzles rather than shooting enemies. Before I even knew that version of the game existed, I stumbled on a 2D flash version of Portal, as pictured. I don't know how it compares to Valve's 3D game, but it's a fun little game in its own right.

The idea is you have a portal gun with which you can create portals on flat surfaces, then move yourself or objects from one end of the portal to the other. You use this ability to solve logic puzzles in order to get from the entrance of a room to the exit. Most of the early levels are easy - they start to get fiendishly hard somewhere around level 30...

The nastier levels involve small gun turrets which shoot you with lasers if you stand in front of them too long. I think the worst was level 35, which has a wee warning that it "may cause frustration"...

Back in 1993, I did a cartoon for TSV titled What's Really inside a Dalek. Today, I happened upon the fact that someone's created an embroidered patch from it. That was unexpected and also totally brightened up my day! Thank you, Trifarina!

Via Boing Boing:
Steampunk Dalek, which also comes in CGI video flavour:

I'd been thinking of doing something like that but hadn't gotten around to it. I'm still thinking of having a go at designing an Art Deco Dalek to make up for the design we didn't get in Daleks in Manhattan. :)