I didn’t use the thing much at all. The problem was even after having my FB using daughter Kristan “go over” my privacy settings I was still getting HAMMERED with “friend requests” (via email which of course I do use) from tons and tons of folks I don’t even know! And much of them didn’t look like “real people” anyway. The profile pics looked like lame soft porn pics or something (GirlsGoneWild?) Apparently since Facebook expanded beyond the College crowd it’s out of control and is now becoming the ugly mess that MySpace was. Looks to me like the managament isn’t even trying to repel spammers or maintain any sort of “good taste” control with these profiles I’m seeing.

As a social commentary aside I’d also like to mention that I actually had several “friend requests” from real people…..but from people that DON’T KNOW ME IN THE SLIGHTEST but have perhaps seen my face in the hallway at work but have NEVER spoken a WORD TO ME. Also (and I’m not trying to sound like a super-hero here) I have received more than a few friend requests from what can only be described as my “Arch Enemies”. People that I OPENLY DISLIKE and who PURPORT TO OPENLY HATE ME.

WHAT THE HELL??? Why are people so desperate to drive up their “Friend Count”???? Do you win prizes or Paypal cash if you reach a certain number???????????

Click the above image for a full-size widescreen wallpaper sized 1920×1200. This is scanned from a 1979 Marvel comics house ad for the series. The Marvel comic version of the Mattel toy line was short lived (20 issues) but was quite good with art by the legendary Herb Trimpe (also did the art here for the ad) and written by the great Doug Moench. It’s also one of the very first comics I remember collecting & reading as well as actually buying myself with my own money right off the rack. God I MISS those squeaky spinner-racks. (One of these days I’m gonna buy one off eBay or something if I can ever find a good deal on one.) I also love to point out that the Shogun Warriors were the “original” Giant Robots predating Gobots AND Transformers by at least 4.5 years.

Click the above image for a full-size widescreen wallpaper sized 1920×1200. I just scanned this from a 1988 Marvel comics house ad. Art is by John Buscema & Tom Palmer. This was the line-up for much of the late eighties: Captain Marvel (Monica Rambeau), She-Hulk (Jennifer Walters), Sub-Mariner (Namor), Marrina, Dr. Druid, Black Knight (Dane Whitman) & Thor (Donald Blake).

So I’m about to hit a mile-stone with my comic collection. A little over a year ago my X-Men collecting got side-tracked by Brian Michael Bendis. His work on the Avengers re-ignited my dormant love for Marvel’s Mightiest Heroes in a BIG WAY. Like a lot of collectors my favorite era of the Avengers was the one I was first exposed to as a little kid. That would be the late 70′s & early eighties. The issues must have been 170 or so up through the big double-sized 200. Wonderful art by George Perez and Terry Austin…fantastically detailed and tight. No one does it better than George Perez and no one inks as tight and clean as Terry Austin.

So when I got the Avengers fever I decided that I would at the very least obtain all of the issues from that time. I figured I could conceivably manage to get #150 “and up”. As I got to researching it become pretty clear that I didn’t need all of the “and up” part of the collection. I didn’t collect or read comics during the ’90s and most people tell me I didn’t miss much. What few ’90s books I have read pretty much confirm the idea that the 1990′s for the most part was the worst age of the Super-Hero comic. Like Disco nearly killed Rock-n-Roll in the ’70s the awful excess of the ’90s nearly destroyed the American Super-Hero comic. So I’ve decided to “give myself a break” and simply SKIP all the crappy ’90s issues of the titles I’m collecting. Instead I’m going to focus on the Good Stuff. I decided I would stop at Avengers #300. And now with the order I just placed with Atomic Avenue. I will have Avengers #150 through 300 solid.

And if all goes as planned I will finish reading the entire run sometime in the next couple of weeks if not before that. Right now I’m on #281 smack dab in the middle of the Roger Stern run that featured the always great art team of John Buscema and Tom Palmer. Good stuff.

So I suppose this Spring I can get back to those X-Men.

So the other day I went to the doctor. Of course I had to spend some time in the waiting room. For what I guess is the first time in “real life” I actually seen someone using a tiny Netbook casually in a public place. It looked absolutely RIDICULOUS. It was your typical 10 inch Netbook being used by an average looking college age guy. I’ve been looking at Netbooks online and in stores for over a year now. I came very close to buying one for myself and finally opted at the last minute to buy a cheap FULL-SIZE laptop instead. That choice was mainly due to my dislike of the Atom CPU that most of the minis use. That and the lack of resolution and all the other shortcomings that go along with making something so small (and so cheap). It just looked so comically SILLY seeing a normal sized dude using a tiny “toy” laptop. It was kind of like the way it looks when you see a large adult male riding a child’s dirt bike through the city (not talking professional BMX here). But mainly I kept hearing ONE baritone phrase in my head as I watched that guy cramped over his tiny Netbook:

“GRAPE APE…..GRAPE APE….GRAPE APE”

A Softer World – cool and quirky web-comic told in a three-panel photo arrangement. Really good stuff. Some of it seems pointless, some of it is sad & some of it is funny. It will ALL make you think. Good stuff.

The Runaways – official web-site for the pioneering all-girl hard-rock group that featured a VERY young Joan Jett and Lita Ford. This site also links to the official site for the upcoming movie which is here:

The Runaways Official Movie Site

Rich Johnston has the new Red Band Trailer for Kick-Ass linked up here:

Bleeding Cool -Kick-Ass Trailer

Heidi MacDonald’s comicbook news Blog “The Beat” has moved from it’s former home at Publisher’s Weekly to it’s own domain:

http://www.comicsbeat.com/

Click the thumbnail below to load the full size 1920×1200 widescreen image:

The cap image was scanned from a 1986 Marvel comics house ad for their subscription service. I’m fairly certain the art is by Buscema -probably Sal but possibly John. If you know for sure which is it is please let me know. The background flag image I found on Google Image Search and then heavily Photoshop filtered it.

Google said NO Tuesday to filtering searches on the Chinese version of the website. Their full statement here:

A new approach to China

The above image is a small version of a wallpaper I just made. The art is scanned from Uncanny X-Men #518 by Terry & Rachel Dodson. This panel shows Emma Frost as she appears in the mind of Scott Summers as he is battling slivers of the Void (evil alter-ego of the Sentry)for control of his psyche.

Click here for the full-size 1920×1200 version.

Or here for a 1680×1050 version.

I am considering making wallpaper posts a regular/semi-regular thing. I have several hundred I’ve made from my own scans & make new ones often. If it seems like there is enough interest I’ll start posting these. Most are sized 1920×1200. It’s pretty trivial to add a smaller 1680×1050 version if it seems needed. Please post/email me your thoughts on this. Let me know!

So I’m not at all happy with the stats I’ve been reading that seem to indicate far more new PC sales are NOT what I call PCs at all but are actually laptop sales. And yes I know laptops ARE PCs. They are just not what I think of as PCs. I think of them as “portables”. Way too many compromises must be made to fit everything into that sleek form-factor. A few short years ago the biggest compromise was PERFORMANCE and COST. These two items are becoming less and less of an issue as mobile CPUs become more powerful, efficient and ultimately cheaper. These days you can obtain a laptop with 3gigs of RAM, a core2 CPU, Windows 7 Home Premium AND a high resolution 15 inch screen for $600.00 or less. Of course this is a CONSUMER grade laptop -NOT a rugged “road-ready” pro grade model. The Pro stuff is still $1,000.00+. It has been argued that one can nearly pay for TWO “cheap” consumer grade laptops for the price of one pro unit….so some would rather get the cheapie and just replace it twice as often. Your call on that one.

We all know what’s great about laptops -compact, portable and cool looking -agreed. Now let me tell you why they mostly SUCK:

1) Expensive or impossible to upgrade. Did your laptop not come with a decent graphics chip? If it didn’t that’s too bad because you can’t do anything about that. If you had bought a desktop you could just hop on over to Newegg or your favorite Brick & Mortar store and choose from hundreds of inexpensive graphics cards that can easily be snapped into place.

2) god-awful screens. With nearly no exception laptops have really crappy LCD displays. Unless you pay extra (and generally special order) you will get a low-rez screen. And even when you pop for the extra pixels the viewing angles will suck harder than a hoover….the colors don’t tend to be too accurate either.

3) Batteries are EXPENSIVE. Yeah, nice 500 dollar laptop you got there…be sure to set aside $120+ for a battery replacement. You’ll probably need one in a year or so.

4) Power-cord/charger hell. Be VERY careful with that power cord & charger. A replacement will cost you $60.00-100+ -and that’s ONLY if it’s still available by the time you need one. For some reason the industry has never bothered to standardize the power connector plug shape even for chargers of the same wattage. All of these things are very model/brand specific. “Universal” chargers exist but they are VERY expensive as well.

5) The keyboards SUCK. The layouts vary in their suckitude from model to model (again no standards exist for laptops) but one lousy thing almost ALL of them share – NO NUMBERS pad. USB add on numbers pads exist but that kind of kills the whole compact/portable thing doesn’t it?

6) Underpowered USB ports. A lot of laptops (again no standards exist in the world of laptops) lack “full-power” USB ports. This means that shiny new USB powered external hard drive you just bought may or MAY NOT work when you plug it in. I’ve even seen some USB flash drives fail on laptop ports!

Do you REALLY need a laptop?

The ONLY people that should be buying laptops INSTEAD of Desktops are people that NEED their computer to be PORTABLE. If you don’t need to move your PC then don’t buy a laptop. This seems like a no-brainer but from my experience it’s NOT. A lot of folks claim they need a laptop because they don’t have much space for a computer. I just can’t see much validity to this one. In the era of LCD monitors and compact keyboards a desktop doesn’t require much space. The compact tower that is typical of the modern desktop PC can go UNDER the desk or table and is generally out of the way. I will however concede that a “real” PC DOES have a lot more cord clutter. Lastly even for this non laptop enthusiast I must admit there is an undeniable cool factor that comes with a slick new laptop. I feel it myself….up until I have to repair/upgrade one.