You just can’t trust these people:

"Warren [Ellis, who wrote the project] was a decision to usher this into pg-13," dos Santos said. "There’s no cursing… there’s no blood. It’s ’Warren Ellis Light,’ his style is all over the project. It’s within reason, and in good taste. Not that his work isn’t always in good taste, but sometimes it isn’t in good taste."

Ellis even sent a message to SDCC fans through dos Santos. "He wanted you to all know that he’s in England, sitting in his living room, naked, collecting all of Hasbro’s money, and he wants to thank all of you for that."

Prints for sale:

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• 11:28 @sacredprofanity hell yeah. Congratulations on the job!! I think not working in a call center will reduce your Hate dramatically.
• 11:32 It's been raining all morning and everyone but me is unconscious. I think the baby is dumping sleep pheremones into the AC ducts.

This time round, I received at least 500 more photos than I could possibly use. You people have amazed me. I’ve still got more to go through — and, yes, I’m looking at every single one of you — but in order to get this stunt wrapped semi-successfully today, I’m having to skim and post a representative selection.

The mosaic-making software is pretty random in how it crops and arranges the shots. So the second tier of this one is entirely serendipitous:

(27)

I noticed the other day that the new update of Twitter desktop client Twhirl includes support for the microvideoblogging service Seesmic. Microvideoblogging is probably a fairly absurd compound word, but it really does attempt to be a Twitter for video, in that it’s designed at least in part to facilitate both video statements and conversational call-and-response video. I think the limit on video length is a couple of minutes (can’t remember for sure, am at pub and basically can’t be bothered to check right now).

Flickr, of course, now supports short videos — 90 seconds, I think? Something like that.

And this week, I noticed a new entrant. 12seconds.tv. Applying the intent of Twitter to video. Like it says on the can: Twitter gives you 140 characters of text, and 12seconds.tv gives you 12 seconds of video.

I played with it a bit yesterday — tried three videos, only one of which played. But it’s a lovely idea. As is tying Seesmic into Twhirl, which puts “social video” (if you like) on your desktop.

I know a lot of people who love email because they hate the phone. But I also know a lot of people who’d rather phone, or send a photo, than write an email. And it’s that that has always made me wonder why videomail, in these broadband days of ours, has never made a bigger dent. Why I don’t get videomail in my inbox along with email.

Seesmic itself, I can’t get into. I don’t know anyone on the service, and clicking at random seems to either put you in the middle of a conversation you never heard, or gives you someone talking with an unhealthy level of excitement about how they’re going to eat a chocolate cookie. But if I had friends there, I’d doubtless be pleased that their sends were being interpolated with the Twitter device that lives on the desktop and pulls things down without my having to think about it.

12seconds may even prove workable for a more general populace, with its Twittery limitation. Regardless of its eventual fate, it’s an interesting iteration of the whole microblogging thing. And it’s one of the services that may eventually make my inbox more interesting.

(written on the Eee at the pub)

It’s Friday, it’s past noon UK time, and we’re back on the air. FREAKANGELS 0021 is up.

• 13:50 wake up, take pills, drink coffee, eat lunch, take pills... sigh.
• 16:45 Book on drupal and new mole skin. 2 hours.

(26)

More new prints up at her Etsy store:

(25)

So, Dr Horrible, then. Unless you were offline during the month of July 2008, you heard about DR HORRIBLE’S SING-ALONG BLOG: a musical comedy film produced for the internet by Joss Whedon, a man who has yet to be properly punished for once calling me his "youngling." Written by Joss, his brothers Zack (who co-wrote a pleasing episode of DEADWOOD) and Jed and Maurissa Tancharoen. A musical comedy, in fact, about a small-time mad scientist supervillain, the superhero he hates, and the Tess Trueheart drawn between them.

I only watched the end of it, because, as much as I love Joss, I hate musicals. Musical comedy makes my balls itch, frankly. And no-one wants that. It’s one of the things Joss and I will never agree on (like, you know, my being his youngling. Which I am not. At all). I think Gilbert & Sullivan are a cultural curiosity at best and I like ALL THAT JAZZ because Roy Scheider dies at the end. Joss believes that Gilbert & Sullivan are culturally relevant (and presumably still washes his clothes in a stream and goes on ether frolics) and is friendly with Stephen Sondheim.

But it was a lovely little production. Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion are always watchable, and some of the non-musical gags were inspired. (I actually later went back to the earlier episodes for the Bad Horse stunts.) And, clearly, it was forty-five minutes that delighted a great many people.

(Not interested in the fanwank about the ending, nor in Dr Steel losing his shit, so don’t even think about bringing me any of that. You’ll go right into the spam filter.)

Most interesting to me, though, are the guts of the idea. Joss Whedon blowing his savings account on staging a 45-minute serial for the internet (that will doubtless prove to be i2dvd — internet to dvd — apologies once again to Bill Cunningham for perverting his "d2dvd" coinage).

I was crapping away here the other day about the ratio of linkblogs to people actually
producing original content. And then Joss blows a couple hundred grand on not only producing a bit of original content with unusually high production values, but also an Internet Event. It was free to view if you attended within a stated time window. It was in fact Appointment Internet. That is not something that many people have ever managed.

And while there are elements of the project that only someone of Joss’ position could pull off — the money, the cast, the values, etc etc etc — I think there are still lessons to be taken from it that apply broadly. Not least of which are, Be Short, Be Bold, and Get It Done.

I can’t tell you how many new hopeful comics writers I meet who have never finished anything in their lives because their intended first project is a hundred-episode epic that creates a whole new universe or three. And I tell them all the same thing: you’re screwed. No-one will want it. Not until you’ve written something short, capable
of being produced on a budget, and finished. Your epic may be worldchanging, but no-one will ever know because no publisher will gamble that kind of money on an unknown. And that’s before you get to the vagaries of the attention economy.

Production values are nice, but not necessary to producing compelling work. People gave Dr Horrible 15 mins because it’s Joss, but five minutes is a great length for net video. 500 words, 5 pages, whatever. Be short. Be great.

And if you can get an evil horse in there, that’d be good, too.

(24)

This is the stuff I’ve been waiting for from Xeni.

• Food that doesn't require cooking, and 35 Gal. of water
• Fur coats, furry boots, and brightly colored clothes that I'll never be able to use for anything else again.
• Bicycle(s) and parts.
• Camera gear.
• Goggles and dust masks. (Sunscreen, Lip gloss, garbage bags, etc.)
• Bright blinking flashing glowing things.

(23)

• 13:02 it's going to hurt going back to work after three days of late mornings and lazy days, just taking in the new baby. It's been nice though :)
• 13:56 uploading more baby pictures.
• 13:56 direct message me if I failed to send you the link to the first set
• 14:08 A few pictures from the last couple of days: snurl.com/33sro
• 16:18 downside of direct internet access to your constituents, when you stick your foot in your mouth, everyone sees it: snurl.com/33uva
• 16:57 @kevikev re: culberson, another great site for where he stands: tinyurl.com/5tah2l
• 19:14 @ericaogrady I've seen it suggested that ads during FailWhale moments would be a viable revenue stream for twitter :)
• 01:31 deathworm!! DEATHWORM!!! Go play this now. snurl.com/342wg

I took a minute to randomly cull out a handful of friends, comrades and fellow-travellers from the 500-odd photos I have left. Left to right, and top to bottom, they are:

Novelist Cherie Priest. Writer/Pulp Scholar Jess Nevins. Comics creator Corey Lewis.

Biologist Lenya Friesner. Writer Gareth Lyn Powell. Writer/photographer JR Blackwell.

Mad Scientist Sara Gries. Comics creator Ben Templesmith (that’s what he looks like sober.) Artist Melyssa Anishnabie.

Steampunk renaissance woman Libby Bulloff. Writer/photographer Trixie Bedlam. Artist/writer/model Zoetica Ebb.

Musician Billy Gray. Musician/writer Meredith Yayanos. Writer/actor Wil Wheaton – he shot this on the set of CRIMINAL MINDS, where he’s been working this past week.

Artist/model Katelan Foisy. Writer Tom Reynolds (what the fuck did you DO, Tom?!). Novelist/photographer Richard Kadrey.

(22)

I don’t have a prayer of getting through all these…

(21)

• San Diego seems to have come to me. Searing skies here in Southend. Have developed mild tan - skin is now white instead of usual pale blue. #
• Local atmosphere has turned to hot soup. Going out to country restaurant, where trained professionals will administer emergency beer to me. #

• 11:21 Bludgeoned by fate... blah blah blah.