So much fun, I could hardly contain myself

The scene: Yesterday, on the way home from work. Took my usual freeway off-ramp, and as I was just starting to brake, saw an object in the road ahead of me that appeared to be some sort of box. Had to make a pretty much instantaneous decision: swerve around it or drive over it. Drove over it. Big mistake.

WHAM! BANG! Felt and heard what seemed to be strong two impacts on the undercarriage.

Pulled into a parking lot as quickly as possible and did an eyeball examination. Nothing appeared damaged; not seeing any leaks. Phew. Continued on and for several seconds of driving all seemed fine, but then I could feel something obviously wrong with the right rear tire. Pull over, walk around to it. Yep, that's what we call a flat.

I recalled there was a Discount Tire store nearby, so after putting on the spare, drove directly to it and purchased the remedy.

I almost started to type that the result of this is a lesson that in future unless something I come upon sitting in the road is obviously harmless I will drive around it. But that's clearly stupid; there's too many variables to say that flatly. One has to take into consideration how much space would be available for going around something in the road, other traffic, weather considerations, and so on and so forth.

At any rate, the car had no problems at all today, so I'll just conclude by saying I was fortunate the only trouble that resulted was one flat tire.

Group day

I visited Balboa Park earlier today to walk around and look for photo opportunities, and found myself noticing several distinct groups.

There were two separate groups of what I assumed were art students.

• One, at the foot of the park's lily pond, that was comprised of younger people, all doing sketches:

• ...and one, on one side of the lily pond, that was comprised of older people, all doing oil paintings:

And there were two separate groups of people with dogs.

• One that was training service dogs:

• ...and one of greyhound owners:

Quotation marks oddness

Bad punctuation tends to bother me, including bizarre uses of quotation marks.

A prime example of that here in San Diego is:



This is a neon sign that has been hanging in a window of a local sandwich shop for years. I have viewed it with much bewilderment every time I stop at the barber shop that is next door to this sandwich shop. I finally remembered today to get a photo of it.

While preparing to write this post, I was pleased to discover a blog that is devoted to just this subject. (I've sent this photo as a submission for the site to the person who runs it. If it is used I'll add a link here. And here is that link.)

Webcomic amazingness

As a follower of several webcomics, I am truly amazed by this.

Ryan Estrada, a webcomic artist and world traveler, not only convinced the creators of almost 50 webcomics to let him do guest strips for them, but he somehow also convinced all of them to show his guest strips on the same day: September 17, 2007.

For whatever reasons, he is not showing on his own site a single list of all the webcomics he did guest strips for, but is instead putting up the actual strips, one at a time, at 5-hour intervals.

But other sites have been attempting to gather the list of all the guest strips he did. The best of these (still incomplete) I've seen so far is here.

This must have taken Estrada a long time to prepare for. Consider it: not only doing that much art and trying to stay in the spirit of each of the comics, but also coordinating with that many sites to ensure they all put his guest strips up on the same day. Truly amazing.

Found Lily

Here's a photo of my own that I'm particularly pleased with:















The story on this - Last week while out for a walk a splash of color on the ground caught my eye as I passed. I stopped and looked at it; there was this (at the time) mostly still fresh lily laying among lots of dead leaves. The contrast between the colors of the flower, the dead leaves, and the concrete really struck me.

I had my camera with me, so I took several pictures, and this is the one I thought came out best.

I am planning to get it commercially printed and mounted on a display board in order to enter it in next year's photo contest at the San Diego County Fair, aka Del Mar Fair. (The original exposure out of the camera is twice the size of what you see in the linked page. I set the camera to give me it's maximum exposure for the lily pictures, as it did occur to me at the time I might want to get a real good print made.)

License Plate Watch 29

Seen today on a Ford F250: "BOLTS 56". The obvious assumption is the reference is to the San Diego Chargers' current #56, Shawne Merriman. (I tried searching for previous holders of #56 for the Chargers, but am not coming up with proper word combinations to get that result.)

Comic-Con 2007

For job-related reasons I was only able to attend the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con on the weekend sessions (July 28 and 29). After last year's nasty experience with the Saturday session, I knew I didn't want to do that again any time soon. So, I made an on-line registration for July 29.

Related to that, I was pleased to see in the final information booklet the Comic-Con organization mailed out for this year's convention that as a direct result of the many complaints they had received about conditions during Saturday sessions they had created a new registration choice: A three-day registration option for the Thursday, Friday, and Sunday sessions. This new option includes eligibility for entry to the Wednesday preview night in the exhibits hall, which previously was only available to those who registered for all four days.

Assuming I do have the time available next year, I will definitely use the three-day registration option.

Now, getting to what occurred July 29. The one panel I definitely wanted to go to was one in the morning that was going to discuss the life and work of the late comics artist Jack Kirby. I was especially attracted to this panel because it was going to include Neil Gaiman, who has become one of my favorite writers, both of graphic novels and prose novels and stories. I have recently read his graphic novel Eternals, which is based on ideas and art by Jack Kirby.

I must admit to not having experienced (to my knowledge) Kirby's art, but the Gaiman tie-in was enough of an attraction to make me interested in this panel.

The panel was composed of writer Mark Evanier (who moderated), Gaiman, artist Erik Larsen , writer and artist Darwyn Cooke, and the attorney for Kirby's estate, Paul Levine. Gaiman has a reputation for normally dressing entirely in black, and that held true here. Here is a photo I took of Evanier, Gaiman, and Larsen:


(Apologies about the bad photo - turned out I had my camera incorrectly set for the lighting in the room.)

Before starting the panel discussion Evanier went into the audience to introduce a few people who knew Kirby in person, including his daughter Lisa, who is executer of his estate.

The discussion was very interesting for the fondness and enthusiasm the participants very clearly have for Kirby and his work. Gaiman talked about his working from concepts and characters Kirby had created to write the script for Eternals.

I was interested to note before and after this panel that the area that most of the rooms that panel discussions are held in had been set-up with an eye to improving the flow of foot traffic - this was new for 2007. This area has four corridors that run it's length; they were set-up to alternate as entry and exit corridors, and convention center and security personnel were enforcing their being used as such. I saw there was still a tendency (which I had seen in previous years) for groups to stop and congregate in the corridors for discussions, which can be somewhat disruptive to foot traffic, but I think the basic idea of alternating entry and exit corridors was working.

After completion of the panel about Jack Kirby I went to the Convention Center's Sails Pavilion to sit down at the large number of tables and chairs that are always set up in one area for Comic-Con and ate the lunch I had brought with me.

My plan was to then venture down to the exhibit hall floor and browse the large booths a couple book stores set up each year. One of those booths, for Mile High Comics (which has the same prime location in the exhibit hall every year, right inside some of the main entrance doors) was full with a solid wall of people. The other one, for Comic Relief, was much less jammed so I entered it to look for titles I was interested in, and found nothing. I had thought it likely that was going to be the case, what with all the previous days people would have had to go through the stock these stores had brought, but had thought I might as well try. After that I decided to do some wandering of the hall to see what might catch my eye for photo taking.


The crowds seemed to be just about as heavy as I've experienced in the exhibit hall in previous years.


Full-size statue of Jabba the Hutt, with a model posing as captive Princess Leia.


It's Batman. Made entirely of Legos.


I guess some people just had to touch it to prove to themselves those were Legos!


A Legos Transformer.

One resolution I made after this visit to the exhibit hall is that if I do indeed use the three-day registration next year, I'll probably get the bulk of my shopping and looking around the hall done during the preview night!

After that the only other plan I had was to go to the playing of a video record of the convention's annual masquerade, which occurs Saturday night each year. The manager of the masquerade and some people who work for him took a few questions and complaints (and responded to them) from people who had participated in it the night before, then ran the recording. This was fun, but during it I developed a really nasty headache for some reason, and decided to leave before it ended.

That wraps up this report!