Chased by the Light

This project is a zen masterpiece. It is also a behavior-modifiying challenge for all digital photographers: Look instead of click.

In the 1990s veteran magazine photographer Jim Brandenbrug gave himself an impossible assignment: "For 90 days between the autumn equinox and winter solstice I would make only one photograph a day. There would be no second exposure, no second chance." A single exposure, a single click per day! He was using film, and he was photographing wildlife, including elusive animals in the north woods in upper Minnesota. Film is unforgiving. For amateur and professional alike getting even an acceptable photo in these conditions with one shot requires relying on the Force. Yet Brandenburg found, or made, one beauty after another. Most mortals would need a hundred shots to get one like these. The 90 images stand strong each on their own, but the complete symphony is one of the most impressive acts of mindfulness I’ve seen.

(The full set of images were also published in a smaller format in the November 1997 issue of National Geographic.)

Besides the book, there is now an iPad app.

-- KK

Chased by the Light
Jim Brandenburg
1998, 104 pages
$35

Available from Amazon

App $10

Sample Excerpts

I sensed there would be lessons learned. There were, but not always those I had imagined. Some were merely lessons remembered, recapturing things I had forgotten, such as remaining open to chance, and that, in nature, not all beauty is giant in scale. One such lesson occurred on October 15th, the twenty-third day. It was late and I despaired of capturing anything of value. The day was dark and gloomy; my mood reflected the weather. I wandered through the dripping forest all day long. Tired, hungry , and wet, I was near tears. I was mentally beating myself for having passed up several deer portraits and the chance to photograph a playful otter. None of those scenes spoke to me at the time.

*

But perhaps because I was patient, and perhaps because, as natives do on a vision quest, I had reached my physical limits, I became open to the possibility revealed by a single red maple leaf floating on a dark-water pond. My spirits rose the instant I saw it, and although the day was very late and what little light there had been was fleeing rapidly, I studied the scene from every angle. Finally, unsure of my choice, I made the shot anyway, thankful at least that the long day had ended. Once more I was surprised by the result. The image seems to have a lyrical quality, with a rhythm in the long grass.

To get the most bandwidth these days use cable.

For my home/home office we switched from the fastest internet we could get over the telephone lines to best internet broadband we could afford on a cable modem. This was a big switch for us because we did not have cable. So we had cable hooked up to our house just for the internet. We signed up for Comcast's "Extreme" level of broadband since there can be 5 - 9 people using the line at any one time. The improvement was dramatic.

We now get about 60 Mb/s download and 17 Mb/s upload. This gives me and my assistant in the office and my family of five, plus the relatives downstairs, plus the Netflix and X-Box live connections, plenty of bandwidth to share. We pay about $120 per month for the connection.

It's been running at this level for about a year and we've had very little problems. Someone in the family can be streaming a movie on Netflix while my son plays Battlefield live on the XBox, while I download a software update, while my daughter watches YouTube -- all at the same time with no noticeable delay.

Not having to wait for downloads and being able to zip around on even image-dense web pages is pure joy. Since I spend so much time online, the monthly fee is well-worth it to me, the family, and our little office.

To test the speed of your internet connect use this free website, Speedtest. Here is our snapshot today.

I was looking for a device that will enable to me receive telephone calls on my Google Voice number without having to forward it to another (fixed or cellular) voice line. I have found that the best solution for this is the Obi100 and Obi110 products from Obihai.

Obi110 is a VIP telephone adapter that supports dialing and receiving calls over a broadband Ethernet connection. This is a standalone voice bridge device that can be connected to a standard telephone and it does not require a PC. In addition to the broadband connection, Obi110 also supports connection to a regular phone line and it can route call types of your choice (e.g. 911 or local calls) to that line.

One of the best features of the Obi110 is that it can be configured to be used with Google Voice. You can both dial and receive calls on a telephone connected to the OBi device. It is very easy to setup and even easier to use. It does have many other interesting features and the ability to work with other VoIP services (including Obihai's own Obitalk network) but my guess is that most people in US and Canada will be using it with Google Voice.

Obi100 is the smaller version of the same product without landline support.

I have an online editing job, and like to travel by car when I can around North America. Over the last 12 years I've hit all but two or three of the continental U.S. states, and worked at least a bit (from my car) in most of them as I passed through. In 2000, Internet cafes were rare outside big cities; when I was on one of my drive-abouts and needed to get online, I'd rush to find a hotel with free local calls and dial-up my ISP. Things got easier with the advent of coffee shops adding WiFi as a perk. And even easier when I could buy cheap wireless online time at truckstop chains like Flying J. Now, in any major population center or along major highways, I can instead get 3G service via my MiFi at reasonable rates (faster than dialup, at least), but only when in the covered footprint. As any cellphone user knows, that footprint doesn't always match the published, disclaimer-laden maps, and isn't always consistent.

Enter the Wilson Sleek signal amplifier. I looked at many such extenders hoping they'd match my peripatetic lifestyle, but this model of Wilson (they make others, too, which I can't vouch for) is the first one that rang all the right bells. It's small, inexpensive, fairly unobtrusive, and sized for the devices I wanted it for (MiFi, smart phone). Importantly, it also comes with a 12v plug, rather than requiring a 120v outlet, as do some home-centric signal boosters. Note: this device is sized to amplify the signal to only one device at a time, but through creative rubber banding, I had no trouble attaching both of my MiFis, even though I was only using one at a time.

I have not done any formal signal-strength testing, but in the year I've had it, I've found the Wilson device works well. Just like the too-good-to-be-true testimonials I was skeptical of before buying it, I've seen one bar of reception go to four or five, and sometimes zero bars go to one or two. (Which is to say, a *true* lack of reception can't be fixed by a fancy antenna, and this won't fix problems that exist between the bigger Internet and the nearest cell tower, but if you're simply on the iffy fringes, this can put you back in business.) Though I bought the device for the purpose of working while stopped, I anticipate that I'll now use it as well with the Android tablet I recently bought, which uses Google Maps to navigate. Since those maps are online rather than off, this amplifier extends the tablet's usefulness as a big-screen, always updated GPS.

When I spent a few months in Puerto Rico earlier this year, the marginal reception I experienced from the Virgin (Sprint) network via MiFi was made considerably more tolerable by this device, once I found a working place for the sold-separately suction cup antenna mount.

There are a few caveats I'd point out, too. First,the amplifier, being powered, steals either a DC outlet in the car or, in my case, an outlet on my invertor. You need to plan ahead, especially if you find (as I do) that it's easy to grow a Rube Goldberg nest of electronics. Second, the tiny "feet" which hold in place the bottom edge of the device being held both broke for me in the first week of serious use. Yes, I dropped it -- twice! -- but from such a low height that I was actually amused that each fall broke a different foot. Wilson should make those feet from metal. No worries: a borrowed hairband, though ugly, works just as well.

In these days of the ubiquitous cellphone, it can be rare to use a "normal" phone, even if you spend most of your days desk bound. As much as I love my iPhone, when I'm sitting in my office I miss using my desk phone with its comfortable handset and easy to dial keypad. Additionally, as someone who likes to listen to music when I work, an incoming call on my iPhone means unplugging it from the cradle, a minor annoyance.

Native Union has solved my problem with a series of handsets that allow you to take calls using a traditional handset attached to your cellphone. I picked up the MM02, a fairly basic corded model featuring a cradle, that I have really come to appreciate (they make a cordless Bluetooth version, but it is significantly more expensive).

The handset connects to the iPhone via the 3.5mm socket on the top of the phone, leaving you free to rest the iPhone in the charging cradle, audio device etc. The handset is reassuringly solid, with a pleasant, matte plastic feel to it, and the well built cradle sits happily on a desk. There is an answering button in the centre of the handset that makes it easy to pick up calls, but one downside is that there is no keypad on the handset, so although you can dial out you need to use the keypad on your mobile handset itself, and that can be a bit fiddly. If you're flying a desk like me, you may find that you make your outgoing calls on your desk phone anyway.

I've had the MM02 handset for around 6-months now and find it a delight to use. At the time of purchase it seemed to be the only accessory of its type. Overall, a very handy piece of kit, especially if you're a desk-bound cellphone user.

The previously reviewed Smartwool socks are great when worn with a lightweight capilene or polypro liner, and they are my standard day-hiking sock. But when I go into the mountains for a couple of days wearing serious mountaineering boots, Smartwool socks don't cut it. My feet are always too warm and too moist as it is, and this combined with an insulated, solid boot tends to compress the wool socks, which makes the boot fit more loosely, which leads to all sorts of bad foot juju.

The solution: Techspun Environmental Sock Systems (yeah, right). They use a Coolmax liner and a wool/polypro outer sock. They will not collapse. Period. So no blisters. They also keep my feet drier than any other sock system I've tried.

They have two weights, choose the one you need based on temperature and load. Unless you're humping loads in military conditions or on Denail, you can probably get away with the "All Weather" version.

I'm using Dragon Dictate to write this on my Mac OS computer. In past years I've used speech recognition software and have had terrible results with it. But I heard so many good things about Dragon Dictate that I decided to give it a try. I'm a slow typist, and this really beats typing, at least for me. It is surprisingly accurate, and unlike earlier speech recognition applications that I used you don't have to wait for 30 seconds to see your text appear.

This is very quick. I use it to do email. I would be embarrassed to use it in an office environment where other people could hear me talking, but since I work at home where no one can hear me, it's excellent.

Once upon a time DragonDictate only worked on PCs, but I am using DragonDictate on my MacBook Pro and I seem to have no problems with it.

It's a serious issue in contemporary journalism: how do you record phone interviews while using a headset?

Radio Shack sells a nice, cheap device (the previously reviewed Mini-Phone Recorder) that interrupts the cord that goes from the handset to the phone, which works well when you're using the handset. But when I do interviews by phone, I like to type a rough transcript while I talk, and typing while clamping a handset to your ear with your shoulder can quickly get painful.

When I first confronted this problem earlier this year, I spent a lot of time on the internet looking for solutions. The ones I found were pretty unappetizing. The main technology on offer is a microphone that you stick in your ear, which seems both unpleasant and ineffective.

But then I encountered the good people at Sagebrush.com, who invented this elegant and inexpensive solution, which uses about $20 worth of stuff you can get from Radio Shack.

You need three items:

1. the Gold Series Y-Adapter, 3/32" Stereo Jacks & 3/32" Plug, which is item # 2264801 and costs $7;

2. a 1/8" Stereo Jack to 3/32" Stereo Plug Adapter, which is item # 2160379 and costs $6; and

3. a 12-Inch Shielded Stereo Audio Cable, which is item # 2265306 and costs $6.

The Y-Adapter splits the signal coming out of your phone's headset jack. One line goes to the headset; the other goes to the recorder.

Arguably, this is more of a hack than a Cool Tool. But it works (as long as your phone has a headset jack). And it's very portable: you can also use it on the road by plugging into a cell phone.

In a former life I directed and produced television commercials. I quit and then edited news for a while as I tried to figure out how to get the media monkey off my back. Now I teach guitar for a living and while I’m much happier, I still have the urge to produce consumable media once in a while. I also have a great fondness for open source software.

One of the things that helps me satisfy both itches is a program called TeleKast. It’s an open-source teleprompter software. For those of you not familiar with teleprompters, they’re devices used to make TV hosts, newscasters and politicians seem as though they’re looking right at you as they speak, when in reality they’re reading from scripts rolling up on screens, right underneath the camera’s lens.

TeleKast lets me do the same job at a fraction (as in 0%) of the cost of a professional teleprompter package. TeleKast provides a Script Editor window to type in my script. Another window called Segments allows me to organize my script into scenes. While I’m working on a script, I can see it in the upper-right hand Segment Preview window. I can also add cues for camera, audio, video, talent and one for other.

When I’m ready to roll, there’s a pop-up window that scrolls up my text to read while I record my on-camera or voice-over work. I can adjust the text size and scroll speed and the text background and cue colors. I can start and stop scrolling with the space bar. It’s simple, flexible, powerful.

It pretty much keeps me from sounding stupid when I have to do a read of some sort. While reading my lines on my monitor, I can look directly at my webcam and appear to not in fact be reading my lines, just as the transparent screen of a teleprompter allows speakers to look at an audience and appear as though they're not in fact reading from notes -- even though they are. It's very useful for webcasts. It looks like the software has been in an alpha state for a while, but I’ve been using it for more than a year and like it very much. Works with Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP/Vista and Linux.

I don't mean your personal Gmail account, or an iPhone app for Gmail.

I mean using Google Apps as an invisible email provider for your small business or even large business. For instance, when you send mail to me at kk@kk.org, that mail is processed by Google Apps Mail. Same for mail to anyone else here at kk.org, or Quantified Self, etc. Behind the scenes of my own domain names Google does the mail.

You can think of this as a custom Gmail account. It gives you several advantages.

* Google does a fantastic job of filtering spam. It gets 95%, with no false positives. (I then apply a second Baysian filter with SpamSieve, to give me almost zero spam and zero false spam. For me there is no spam problem. Gone!)

* While I normally read my mail on my "desktop" client, I can access my mail on the road from any computer in the world (with the usual precautions) by logging onto Google Apps (not the Gmail url).

* I have an indefinite backup of my mail on Google's servers, worry free. I've used this backup more than once.

* Yet I still retain my own domain named email without it being a generic Gmail account. You can run yourbigcompany.com through Google Mail Apps.

* I don't have to run a mail server or keep software and security updated.

* Once I set it up (five minutes) this setup applies to everyone in my office/organization who also gets his/her mail at these domains.

* It's free.

Before Google starting offering this free "custom Gmail app" as part of their App suite including Google Docs and Google Calendar (which are also fantastic cool tools), I gained some of these similar results by forwarding all my mail through my free ordinary Gmail account and then back to me at my own servers. That hack worked, but this new custom mail app is much easier to setup, maintain and use. I first became aware of it when my wife's work (Genentech) moved their entire 10,000 employees' mail to a custom Google Apps system. Now you can too. It is part of the migration onto the "cloud," especially for small businesses.

Google Apps Standard edition is free. Larger institutions and corporations switching their email over to Google Apps may want the paid Premium Edition ($50 per user per year) with more perks, features, storage and support.

Artful Sentences has increased my understanding as to how syntax creates and conveys meaning. Virginia Tufte guides the reader through more than a thousand sentences she’s culled from some of the best writing of the 20th and 21st centuries. Her commentaries highlight the (easily overlooked) contribution of syntax to the expressive success of a well-crafted sentence.

This book is unlike any other on writing I’ve seen. It is not about basic rules. It is not a standardized style guide to be used as a reference manual. Artful Sentences is divided up into 14 chapters; each chapter covers a different concept related to syntax. Tufte provides her analysis first and then follows with an example. Sometimes she quotes an entire paragraph to demonstrate the impact the chosen sentence has within its original context.

Don’t let dry chapter titles such as “Short Sentences,” “Noun Phrases,” “Prepositions,” etc., deter you; the content is highly academic and at times dense, but it's a pleasurable read in proper doses. I prefer to explore Artful Sentences in short spurts. The sample sentences often catch my attention first and then I dig in to see what Tufte says about them. (You can also use the index to choose a favorite author and then search out his/her quotes.) I process what I’ve read and return to the book at a later time -- opening it up to any one of its 14 chapters and starting again. Reading Tufte’s book gives me the immediate pleasure of saying, “Damn, that’s a good sentence!” often followed by, “Now how do I create one of my own?” The experience is similar to learning about visual art or playing music.

I signed up for Twitter a year ago. I haven't used it much. Here is the sad state of things:

I've made one post a year ago just to try it out, but now I have 888 followers. I have no idea who these are, because I've never made a second twitter. I am sure when I finally do post my second tweet, half will leave because they'll feel I am twittering too frequently.

The reason I don't twitter myself is I don't know what a good twitterer is. Before I started blogging I began reading the best blogs so I could then write what I would like to read. I don't read great twitters so I am ignorant of what I want to do.

All you active twitters out there can help me, and in turn help others who are on the fence about Twitter. I'd like recommendations for fabulous twitterees to follow. I'll follow them for a while and then I'll report back to Cool Tools on any (if any) that seem worthwhile.

There seem to be two kinds of twitterees. 1) People you already know, and are following as friends. The more intimate the better. 2) People not your friends you are following because you think they may be interesting to follow. (I guess that is where my 800 followers come in.)

I am looking for recommendations for the latter. I seek to follow interesting twitterpeople I don't know -- someone a complete stranger like me would find witty, insightful, informative, amazing, useful or entertaining. Someone a stranger like you might like to follow. After all this is how blogs began.

If you follow someone like that and think others would benefit from their stream, please post their twitter name here in the comments (or email me). I know about Twellow and Twitterpak, two web sites that categorize Twitterees by supposed subject of interest, but I didn't find them helpful at all. Few listed stuck to subjects and the better ones were not highlighted. It's like reading a phone book. If there are other sites or people who are "reviewing" remarkable twitterees, please let me know.

It may be that this medium is not transportable to perfect strangers. We'll see. If even one or two folks turn up who fit my criteria I will be amazed and grateful.

Again, who are the masters of Twitter? And is there a guide to them?

My Twitter handle is kevin2kelly in case I decide to make a second twitter.

I did a lot of research into hip cases when trying to find one for my Palm TX five years back. These handmade leather cases not only look good, but they're incredibly durable. Each one I've had has always outlasted each of my phones with very little sign of wear. Handmade from a single piece of leather, the cases are very supple. When empty they lie almost completely flat. When the case is new, the fit is a little snug. And although the case does relax over time, it's never enough to allow your phone to slip out. I've had cases with and without a top flap. Neither my Blackberry nor my Nokia ever fell out of the case despite there being no top flap (note: Blackberry cases also include the "magic magnet" that signals a Blackberry so it knows when it's in a case).

With my first case I went with a belt loop model because I thought it'd be more secure than the multi-way clip. Since there's no way to remove the case without removing your belt, I switched to the belt clip with my second case. Turns out the clip is rock solid and incredibly secure. Really keeps the case in much closer to the body so it doesn't get knocked about as much as other swivel-clip cases. Anything that's going to get my case off my belt is likely going to have to take a large part of the belt -- and possibly a bit of the hip -- with it.

A little pricey, but not compared to other high-end, leather cases. From time to time you can also find coupons that'll knock 10% off. Incredibly well made and worth every penny. I now budget the cost of the case whenever I consider a new cell phone and I even just fired an email to Nutshell asking when they'll have a G1 case in stock. I should add that I've been able to reuse some of the cases with devices of similar size.

Available in various colors, though I always go with black. Made in New Zealand, they typically take less than 10 days to get to me in the U.S.

This cell phone booster will increase your signal strength by one or two bars. If your home or office has dismal cell phone coverage, as mine does, this booster can make a difference. Often a spot outside your building, or on top of your building will have better coverage. This device picks up the signal from a small stick-like antenna and relays it via a cable to a book-size station where you want the signal. Using this in my studio I can now get two bars where before I had none. The zBoost is the least expensive signal repeater I could find.

A few important caveats. This is not a miracle machine; if you have no bars outside, there is no signal to amplify, so you will still have none inside. Also, the antenna and relay station need to be separated by a wall or ceiling or several rooms so that you do not simply create a feedback loop where the antenna is recirculating the stations emissions, creating a useless squelch. Lastly, the radius of boosted signal is small. It can serve a large room, or maybe a few small rooms. In my experience it will not fill a home, or office with a boosted signal. It is best to think of this as providing a boost to a room. To cover a large area you'll need more than one, but I don't have any experience in what happens with overlapping coverage.

I have the dual spectrum variety of EZBooster, which covers most carriers, in part as a service to visitors. I also found that finding the optimal location for the antenna is not obvisous or trivial. Placement makes a huge difference; it's worth trying all kinds of positions. Sometimes attics and corners of rooms will work, and sometimes near windows are NOT better. There's a 50-foot interconnecting white coaxil cable which should be long enough, but can be ugly.

For years I've tried to get my local cell phone companies to boost the signal in our neighborhood, but with no success. This modest gadget at least gives me coverage in my home office.

For the last seven years, I've used the Mini Recorder Control to document every 'phoner' I've done as a freelance writer. Like the Recorder Control from Radio Shack, it acts as the go-between for a land line headset and any recorder with a 1/8" mic jack. However, this one's about about half the price. Since it's light and compact, mine is always with me in a little pouch stuffed with a notebook, pens and a Griffin iTalk Pro that allows me to record direct to my iPod. Over time, I've upgraded from a desktop dictation machine to a handheld mini-cassette recorder to two different versions of the Griffin. The only item in my "bag of tricks" that hasn't become obsolete or pooped out is the Mini Recorder Control. Interestingly, I found many of my colleagues in journalism school had independently discovered this exact gadget.

Comic books, comics, graphic novels, or whatever you call them are not a genre, they're a medium. Wolk emphasizes this from the outset of this vivid examination of the form and many of the geniuses and misfits of the American mainstream and avante-garde. Always frank, always insightful, Wolk, a former comic book store clerk, covers a lot of ground: pregnant moments, metacomics, parallel Earths, disposable Sunday strips, and, of course, how the world of comics can be "annoyingly male." The first half of the book tackles history along with an overall assessment of what comics mean and how to read them. There are great bits about what makes a "superreader" and how the form blossomed despite the economics of limited shelf space. The second half is a series of precise essays on specific artists, including Chris Ware, Alison Bechdel, Art Spiegelman, Charles Burns and Steve Ditko. Critics often disparage contemporary artists or cite a myriad of ways their work could never compare with the classics of yesteryear. Wolk doesn't pull punches, so that makes his optimism all the more appealing: he believes the next generation of cartoonists, currently coming of age with Manga, animation and those 'classics,' will soon be doing amazing work. Until that happens, this is the book to catch you up and understand much of where they'll be coming from.

-- Steven Leckart

Reading Comics
Douglas Wolk
2007, 371 pages
$16
Available from Amazon

Sample excerpts:

No matter how far back you go, though, there's always going to be something comicslike - if a bit less so with every step. There's not much to be gained from that kind of ancestor seeking, other than a kind of validation that salves nothing but insecurity. Better, perhaps, to wave vaguely at the past and say that, yes, comics have been around for a good long time, and a lot of the formal conventions associated with the medium's current state were solidified (although probably not created) in the early twentieth century. No genius gave birth to the form; it just coalesced.
*

Nostalgia, especially nostalgia for childhood, is a heavy burden for a medium to bear, and comics have been carrying it since the culture around them began to coalesce. The comics collecting market was called the 'nostalgia market' at first; The Comics Journal was renamed from The Nostalgia JournalŠ As far as thinking about what makes comics interesting, though, nostalgia is poison - no just because it makes people overvalue the stories that fueled their childhood fantasies but because it makes them misunderstand the reasons why the good stuff or even the resonant crap affected them so strongly, and what exactly might have been messed up about it, or the way it made them feel the first time around.
*

Once you've seen Steven Ditko's hands, it's hard to forget them. Not the hands of the famously private cartoonist himself - not many people have seen those. The hands he draws on his characters, though, are unmistakable: expressively gesticulating, fingers pointing in all directions, casting spells or shooting webs or passing judgment. Ditko doesn't have as big a name outside comics' inner circles as his reputation among cartoonists would suggest - there'll never be an awards ceremony named after him - and his deliberately low profile has a lot to do with it. Insisting that his work speaks for itself, he's refused to be photographed or interviewed since the early '60s, and his prickly, loopy individualism has kept fame at bay. Still, he's the ghost haunting the last forty years of American comic books. Over time, his incandescent drawing style darkened, clotted, and shriveled into something much less easy to like, but more like a product of the art-comics world to which he's never suggested he feels any kinship. If his work has a single constant theme, it's I'm Not Like Everybody Else.
*

Until the late '60s, virtually all American comic books were published by a handful of large companies, because that was the only way they could claw their way onto the limited rack space at newsstands; no matter how expressive and creative a comic book was, it also had to be broadly commercially viable or there was no sense publishing it. The fact that unsold comics were returned to the publisher meant that a not-especially-successful issue could be a financial disaster. And a print run of five thousand or ten thousand copies of a comic was unthinkable - there would have been no where to sell it. That began to change in the '60s, as the counterculture created an informal network of head shops and record stores that were prime outlets for selling 'underground comix' - mostly black-and-white, artist-driven comics that mainly showed off their countercultural credentials by being as transgressive as possibleŠ In the mid-'70s, largely as a result of the efforts of a guy named Phil Seuling, comics 'direct market' came into being. Distributors made deals with comics publishers to sell comics to specialty stores earlier than newsstands got them and for a deeper discount than newsstands got, but on a nonreturnable basis. Newsstands and drugstores, the traditional venues for comics, had no use for old issues once the new ones came out, so they'd tear the covers off comics that didn't sell and return them to distributors for credit, as with any other magazine. Comics stores, which knew their market, could order exactly as many copies of each title as they figured they could use, and whatever didn't sell before the next issue appeared could always be sold later for a bit of a markup. The direct market transformed the comics industry, although it took a few years before cartoonists figured out how to use it to their advantage.
*
People talk about 'graphic novels' instead of comics when they're trying to be deferential or trying to imply that they're being serious. There's always a bit of a wince and stammer about the term; it plays into comics culture's slightly miserable striving for 'acknowledgment' and 'respect.' It's hard to imagine what kind of cultural capital the American comics industry (and its readership) is convinced that it's due and doesn't already have. Perhaps the comics world has spent so long hating itself that it can't imagine it's not still an underdog. But demanding (or wishing for) a place at the table of high culture is an admission that you don't have one; the way you get a place at the table of high culture is to pull up a chair and say something interesting.
*

There's a certain kind of rain that falls only in comics, a thick, persistent drizzle, much heavier than normal water, that bounces off whatever it hits, dripping from fedoras, running slowly down windowpanes and reflecting the doom in bad men's hearts. It's called an 'eisenshpritz,' and it's named after the late Will Eisner, one of the preeminent stylists of twentieth-century comics, who never drew a foreboding scene that couldn't be made a little more foreboding with a nice big downpour. Eisner deserves his veneration in the comics world. He was one of the most gifted, innovative storytellers American comics have produced, and his work has had a lasting impact on the aesthetics and the economics of the medium. The comics industry's annual awards are named after Eisner; until his death in 2005, its honorees had the thrill of being handed an Eisner Award by Eisner himself. (I was one of the award's judges in 2001 an have never been starstruck as badly as I was meeting him.)

Related items previously reviewed in Cool Tools:

Making Comics

The 911 Report: A Graphic Adaptation

Cartoon History of the Universe III

DailyLit sends you bite-sized chunks of public domain books (including many classics) daily, on weekdays, or three times a week via email or RSS -- for free. Each serving takes less than five minutes to read, and if you want, they'll send you the next installment right away if you click a link. So far, I've read "Bartleby, the Scrivner" -- 18 segments over the course of 3 weeks or so -- and I just signed up for Crime and Punishment - more than 240 segments! Yes, it may take 9 months to read, but I'm certainly more likely to finish it this way. I read them in my email reader (Thunderbird) and don't print them out. The whole idea is to read short segments for a few minutes in your spare time. I'd imagine it would work well on a PDA or Blackberry if you have one (I don't); if you have a long cab ride or something you can get the next segment immediately.

SCOLA is a non-profit that rebroadcasts television programming (mostly news) from around the world in original languages (everything from Albanian to Vietnamese). It's intended as a language learning aid -- and it's great for that -- but you don't necessarily need to speak the language in order to get something out of the broadcasts. You can understand a lot about what's being discussed -- and sometimes how it's being discussed is interesting in itself -- even if you don't understand a word of what's being said. It's a great way to get a sense of a country you don't know much about. My brother-in-law said his image of Nepal as a backwater was forever changed after he saw their nightly newscast, complete with sophisticated commercials.

When I was at university in the early nineties, they ran SCOLA on the closed circuit cable system in the dorms. I'd forgotten all about it until a few years ago when I visited my mother-in-law in Omaha, where it's on the cable system (SCOLA is based in neighboring Council Bluffs, IA). I wanted to keep watching SCOLA at home, but at that time, online streaming was only available to institutional subscribers. I went back to Omaha again recently, rediscovered SCOLA, and was excited to discover they now offer individual subscriptions (it's also available on free-to-air satellite and from some cable providers).

The individual subscription allows you to stream SCOLA live or download individual programs. Downloading is ideal; you don't even need to TiVo the broadcasts you want. I recently downloaded news from Cuba, Spain, Kurdistan, Burma, and Egypt. I don't even speak Kurdish or Burmese, but where else are you going to get a chance to watch this stuff, or even hear what those languages sound like? I got a "Level 1" subscription which means that for $10 I get 15 hours of SCOLA per month, either via streaming or download. This is cheaper than satellite radio, and besides, Sirius and XM aren't going to give you the news in Kazakh.

If you've ever wondered how to model something, or were looking for new ideas for segmenting and presenting complex concepts, this is an incredible online resource. A neat graphical explanation and example of each "element" (ex; a cycle diagram) appears as soon as your cursor scrolls over them. What I like most is that the categorisers have thoroughly sliced the categorising! For instance, they've color-coded their categories: data, metaphor, concept, strategy, information, and compound visualisation techniques. As if that were not enough to spark your brain, the creators also provide clues as to whether the model works best for convergent or divergent thinking, and whether it is more for an overview vs. detailed perspective. So far, I have used it mostly for inspiration, especially the metaphor models, but this resource has given me ideas and structure and the appropriate language for my work as a process designer and facilitator. I also passed this onto a 7th grade teacher friend of mine who is using it with his entire class!

When you need a problem-solving human on the phone, try these numbers and their short cuts. This is the best list I've seen of 800 numbers with humans at the other end. Even better are the voice mail short cuts for each number that take you to the warm brain the quickest. Searchable with cntrl-F.

Magnificent! A work of genius. The best how-to manual ever published. I could keep piling on the superlatives because this book is simply a masterpiece. At one level, it is a comic book about how to make comics, and for that it is supreme; the best. It will walk you through every step of making a comic, including how to make them on the web, digitally, or in pen and ink. I've been working on a near-completed graphic novel, and every page has told me something important and spot on. With brilliant graphics, Scott McCloud combines the most profound insights from his two previous books, Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics. But in this book he raises your understanding of graphic communication further by making every lesson utterly practical and useful for both novice and expert. I can't imagine anyone ever doing a comic manual better.

However, even if you are not planning on making a graphic novel, this book is a gold mine. McCloud's section on constructing facial expressions and emotions is astounding, and worth the price of the book alone. The clever way McCloud arrays human expressions in one chart reminds me of the first time I saw all the colors arranged in a color wheel; it's the same aha! The insights McCloud extracts from comics and presents so vividly here are useful to novelists, sociologists, film makers, artists, roboticists -- anyone interested in human expression. That's probably you.

Indeed, even if you have no interest in comics at all, this charming book will win a place in your life because ultimately it is about communication and stories -- and those are the foundations of all cultures. Making Comics teaches you the visual elements of stories. If I had to re-title it, I would call this book Making Visual Stories.

Finally, as an example of communication itself, this comic book has few peers. I read, review and use hundreds of how-to books every year. I can't think of any instructional manual in any subject that is clearer, more thorough, more honest, more user friendly than Making Comics.

As I said, it's a classic. You can expect to find marked-up copies on bookshelves (or on hard drives) a hundred years from now.

I have been sampling speech recognition tools for a long time (e.g., earlier Dragon versions, Microsoft Office add-ins) and they have always come up short. They required extensive training time, they were sensitive to background noise, they were only 80% accurate; for at least one reason (frequently several) they were not ready for prime time use. Nuance's Dragon 8 changes that. I was blown away by the speed and accuracy of the transcription. I am using a 1GHz laptop with 512MB of memory - not a screamer - and it can keep up with me just fine. (Hint: don't wait for it to catch up word by word, just keep talking; it analyzes context.)

The initial setup (including preliminary training) takes less than an hour - and that includes an analysis of your email and documents to better understand your writing style. I have been amazed at the things it picks up out of that analysis.

I had Dragon 8 installed for only a week when I used it to process large volumes of dictation (I was reading what others had hand written). One of the participants observed me dictating material and assumed I was using a $4,000 setup because of the speed and accuracy.

When you first use it, be sure to take the time to correct the early "misunderstandings" using Dragon itself (although you can use the mouse and keyboard concurrently with Dragon). Making corrections with Dragon adds to its learning -- and the speed with which it picks up nuance (no pun intended) is amazing. The command syntax is fairly good and can be customized. For example, saying the word "select" followed by a word or phrase will result in the selection of that word or phrase. "Cap That", "Bold That", "Cut That", are all valid commands at that point. It's fairly sophisticated and only sometimes confuses words for commands.

The preferred and professional versions come with software support for a number of digital recorders (so you can send your recorded dictations through to be transcribed) but since the training is voice specific it would likely require additional training for interviews with others to be successful.

The Preferred edition is the best choice for general use - it comes with a good headset/microphone and is available from Amazon for $120, with rebate.

Amazing!

It's a small joke, but it works. A graphic artist embedded herself at the legendary radio show This American Life and created a comic book (all pictures) on how to make great narrative radio (no pictures). Well, at least how to make radio like This American Life makes it, which in my opinion is the best radio being made. There's less on recording techniques and more on how radio narratives work (or don't). It's not about news radio, nor talk radio, but story radio. In this respect, this slim, 32-page comic book will help anyone telling stories, and also make you a better radio listener, too.

Recently I surveyed the emerging web filters which rely on consensus methods (see the CT review) as a way to quickly read what was happening in the world. I hypothesized that soon there would be a meta-site that would aggregate all the consensus filters into one. The next day Thomas Marban from Austria wrote me to say that he had already written one, called PopUrls. I've been using it daily for the past month and its great.

This single page now replaces my need to directly read Digg, Reddit, Delicious, Furl, Slashdot, BoingBoing, NewsVine, Metafilter and all the others that I subscribe too. This one page encapsulates up-to-the-minute headlines from 15 consensus filters, and top thumbnail images from the social sites Flickr, YouTube, and Google Video. The hive mind on one screen.

Here's how I use it. On one page I can scan the latest headlines of what the web collectively thinks is either popular or interesting. A simple mouse over the headline will cleverly reveal a small box of expanded text on the article. If I want even more, a click will open the original entry in the filter. In five minutes I can scan 18 social site sources thoroughly. I get an excellent feel for what is new and what is worth following up (a small amount of overlap between sources helps).

The design of PopUrls is brilliant. There's two flavors, black on white or white on black. Function drives form, buttons are minimal. It feels like a well-designed command post for a concise debriefing. Even on a large screen, like the 21-incher I use, there's a bit of scrolling. But I've come to realize that I MUCH prefer this single fixed sheet to endless RSS feeds in a reader. In fact, the page is essentially an improved interface for multiple RSS feeds, which keep PopUrls constantly updated. The dashboard doesn't move, while all the streams flowing into it keep it lively.

There's no better way to watch the hive mind.

I don't go out of my way to destroy phones, but my absent-mindedness makes it seem as if I do. Also, I want a phone to be primarily a practical device, not a fetish object loaded with gimmicks. Hence my enduring affection for the humble Motorola v.60.

Protected by a metal clamshell case, this phone has survived more abuse than any other that I've owned. I have dropped the v.60 on wood floors, kitchen tiles, and concrete parking lots (many times). Once, while I was in a distracted frame of mind, I dropped it, then trod on it (hard), and then kicked it inadvertently across the room. When it hit the wall its back panel flew off and its battery fell out, but after reassembly, everything still worked. The phone is now scuffed, scratched, and dented (see photos) but I think its battle-scarred look adds character.

Also I like its unfashionable retro functionality: It doesn't take photos and has only a small monochrome screen with limited backlighting (thus a long battery life). It lacks an extensible antenna yet performs better than my friends' phones in marginal reception areas in Northern Arizona. It does have speakerphone built in. Motorola doesn't make them anymore but you can still buy them on eBay--in fact they're so cheap, I bought a second one to keep as backup, pending the day when my inconsiderate treatment finally destroys the first one.

If 1960s cars can be fashionable in Hollywood, surely late-1990s phones must stage a comeback at some point. When people look with surprise at my "piece of junk," I tell them I'm just ahead of my time.

Thanks to several dozen Cool Tool readers, I received many suggestions for boosting the strength of my cell phone signal indoors. Basically, the suggestions broke down into four major categories:
1) Use call forward system to forward cell calls to my land line.
2) Use a VOIP solution that would ring to both my cell number and land line number.
3) Use a wireless indoor antenna booster. This requires mounting an antenna outside the house and running cable to a smaller antenna in the room. Typical cost of this solution starts over $400.
4) Use a wired indoor antenna booster. This requires having a cable connect from the phone to an indoor antenna. These solutions range from about $40 to $100, depending on the size of the antenna.

I ended up going with option 4, as a low cost "good enough" solution. I bought an ARC Freedom Antenna. The antenna comes with a three foot cable attached, with a female adaptor at the end. You then have to buy a cable specific for your phone. I have the Palm Treo 600 and got the cable from http://www.MaxMost.com for $12, plus shipping. (Note that Radio Shack apparently also sells this same antenna, but they have a unique cable terminator which requires you to choose only from their limited assortment of phone cables.) The antenna itself is encased in black plastic, about 4 inches wide by 7 inches high and very thin. It has a small detachable stand for table top use, or also comes with suction cups if you want to mount it to a window or wall. (This antenna can also be used in your car.)

In my case, I am in a windowless basement with poured concrete walls. Without the antenna I had 1 bar on my Treo with Verizon service, and with the antenna I now have 2 bars. For $52, I can at least now consistently dial out, receive calls and move around the office, although I am now tethered to the antenna. (Hey, maybe I'll rig up a way to connect this antenna to my belt!) Anyway, problem solved.

I've used this little gizmo from Radio Shack for 20 years now. It's the cheapest way I know to record a phone conversation. I use it for doing phone interviews. Some folks use it to record teleconferences, or some to archive their voice mail. (The laws about recording on the phone vary by state in the US.) You can buy expensive gadgets that do the same, but no better than this one. Radio Shack still makes it, and it is still cheap at around $26. You can plug it into a tape recorder, or digital recorder, or even your computer -- anything that will take a standard 1/8 inch input plug.

Cheap satellite phone service. $50/month for 120 minutes of satellite phone time throughout North and South America, Europe, Asia. It's a normal cell phone too, so you don't have to use your satellite minutes when you're in a city or near a cell tower. Oh, and it's also a 9.6kbit/sec modem, even in satellite mode.

The phone, a Qualcomm GSP-1600, lists at $650 new, but you can find them used for as little as $450. They are a favorite with back-country hikers.

Cheaper than cell phones; indispensable when outdoors. The most inexpensive mobile communications for short distances--up to two miles. If you are putting on a conference, an outdoor event, or traveling with a team, these rugged units are the things to have. They are inexpensive enough to ensure everyone on a team has one.

Peer-to-peer is a hot buzzword, but nonetheless, there is something there there. Peer-to-peer (P2P) technology means you can connect a lot of dumb things together -- without a center -- to make something smart. Most web pages are pretty dumb yet the web as a whole is ingenious. Napster and the other music sharing systems are good examples. Many observers believe peer-to-peer systems are destined to prevail throughout the net and beyond. Since these systems are very decentralized, very open, and very vague, no one knows how such networks will make money. Maybe they won't, maybe they will just become ubiquitous. This anthology from O'Reilly has gathered the first round of hard thinking on the subject. If beta versions don't interest you, you can skip this; it's nerdy and technical. If, otherwise, the hard-core edge of the things to come is a siren call, you won't get a better fix then here.

Little known fact: the USB peripheral ports on your computer (the cables going to printers, cameras, etc.) carry low-volt electrical power. This means you can use the big battery in your lap as a big recharger for a gadget. Globetrotting road-warriors have discovered they can carry one less adapter/recharger by packing this small cable. Plug one end into the USB port and the other into the cell phone. As long as you have power in your laptop, you can recharge your phone.