Gardenia Comics

A new fantasy and scifi comic series!
http://www.furnation.com/akktri/Archive.html

Art and film

I just realized the drawback to submitting a script to a movie company. I can draw, and I want to have a say in the art direction. I also want to direct and produce. In summary, I wouldn't be happy with anything a producer made with my stuff because I want to have control over the product. When making my own novel, or comic or animation, I have that control.
My first attempt at directing was pretty bad because I was too democratic. I'm not sure I want to be a dictator, though. I thought about paying artists at art auctions for their services, but that's a crap shoot. I can't tell which one is a good artist, and some overinflate their prices. But it's important for me to recognize that I shouldn't try submitting scripts to places because of this. In fact, submitting a novel is a bad idea because the whole point is to get someone to film it.

The origin of rubber

The substance called India Rubber, or Caoutchouc, was not known in Europe until the beginning of the eighteenth century. It was originally brought as a great curiosity from South America. Europeans continued ignorant of its origin until a deputation of the French Academicians undertook a voyage to South America in 1735, for the purpose of obtaining the correct admeasurement of a degree of the meridian. These philosophers did not confine their attention to the one great object of their pursuit, but among other interesting discoveries made themselves acquainted with that peculiar substance--caoutchouc. These Academicians discovered at Emeralds, in Brazil, trees called by the natives heve, whence flowed a juice, which, when dried, proved to be what is called India Rubber. The heve was also found growing in Cayenne, and on the banks of the Amazon river. It has since been discovered that caoutchouc may be obtained from another species of tree growing in South America, called jatropha elastica. If these trees are punctured, a milky juice flows out, which, on exposure to the air, thickens into a substance of a pure white color, having neither taste nor smell. The hue of the caoutchouc of commerce is black in consequence of the method employed in drying it. The usual manner of performing this operation is to spread a thin coating of the milky juice upon the moulds made of clay, and fashioned into a variety of figures. These are then dried by exposure to the heat of a smoke-fire: another layer is then spread over the first, and dried by the same means; and thus layer after layer is put on, until the whole is of the required thickness. While yet soft it will receive and retain any impression that may be given to if on the outside. When perfectly dry the clay within is broken into small fragments by percussion, and the pieces are drawn out through the aperture which is always left fur the purpose. The common bottle of India Rubber, therefore, consists of numerous layers of pure caoutchouc, alternating with as many layers of soot.
The natives of those parts of South America to which these trees are indigenous, convert the juice to a variety of purposes. They collect it chiefly in the rainy season, because, though it will exude at all times, it flows then most abundantly. Boots are made of it by the Indians, through which water cannot penetrate; and the inhabitants of Quito prepare a kind of cloth with it, which they apply to the same purposes as those for which oil-cloth or tarpaulin, it used here. This, no doubt, is similar to the cloth now prepared with this substance in America, the use of which yields so many important advantages.--Youths' Gazette.
-Scientific American, Vol 2, No. 1

And they say that someday man will fly!

People tell me that some day we'll be able to take to the air in some sort of "aero-plane" or something. But read this carefully before you make that assumption again!
"The following letter has been on hand several weeks, but deferred on account of a constant press of matter by which the limited space in our former small sheet was crowded. Our respected correspondent has consented to excuse the delay.
Providence, ---- 1846.
Friend Porter: In January last, I addressed a few lines to you, asking information in regard to an article entitled Atmospheric Resistance, in the New York Mechanic, of December 11, 1841. In your answer, you say if the full surface is 30,000 square feet to each wing, (which makes 60,000 square feet,) only about half of one horse power would be required to sustain this weight, and I understand you, virtually to say, that they must be ten times as large, in order that the strength of one man be sufficient to work this and elevate himself together with the apparatus, if it were not too heavy. Now, this makes 600,000 square feet. This is rather more than 774 feet square: rather large sized wings. One would suppose that they might lift rather heavy, if they were very light, being 387 by 774 feet each. Now, to me this is entirely incomprehensible, and I should like an explanation, if this calculation is correct, how it is that an eagle which sometimes weighs nearly thirty pounds, can elevate himself, with so much ease, and even carry with him nearly his own weight, using a pair of wings, which if they were five feet long and two feet wide each, would make but twenty feet of surface. Thus, you will see, is no where in proportion to the weight even of the eagle alone, (which we will suppose to weigh twenty pounds,) that the wings bears to the 150 pounds, while on the other hand, it is near in proportion to the surface of the wings of a pidgeon and its weight. Nor can I comprehend why it would require so much power, the eagle though he exerts himself considerable in rising, no doubt, does not seem to use power any where in the proportion that you have thought would be required supposing the wings to be made in the same proportion to the 150 pounds that his wings are to his weight, his beats are not so quick but what they can be very easily counted.
By answering, you will much oblige,
your friend, YANKEE.
In answer to the foregoing, we would remind our correspondent, that in his former communication, he proposed a limited weight of apparatus, and in our answer, it was far from our intention to allow an additional weight on account of the requisite extent of surface. With regard to the philosophy of the flight of the eagle, it must be borne in mind that atmospheric resistance is as the square of the velocity downward and the only way in which the phenomenon of the flight of the eagle can be reconciled with the laws of mechanical science as established by experiment, is by supposing the velocity of the wing downward to be equal to 70 feet per second, whereby a resistance would be encountered equal to 12 pounds per square foot of surface to the wings. It is a fact, however, that kites, and hawks are often seen to continue suspended in the air several minutes without any apparent motion of the wings; but by what law or theory the feat is accomplished, natural philosophy has ventured no other conjecture than that the bird is endowed with the faculty of suspending occasionally its ordinary subjection to the laws of gravity. If any observing theorist will give any more rational conjecture on the subject, we should be glad to have him examine it."
-Scientific American, Vol 2, No 1.
See? A bird can suspend the laws of physics! How are we going to do that with a so-called "aero-plane"?
Updraft, you say? What madness you speak!

Agent Reader characters

Cupid.acs is the most despicable Agent Reader voice you can download. It sounds like a mosquito buzzing in your ear. It's completely intolerable.

Debbie.acs sounds like a fly. It's a pitch lower than Cupid, and just as obnoxious.

Eman.acs takes about an hour to read a sentence.

Gourdy.acs sounds sarcastic whenever it reads anything.

Pet peeves

I'm getting sick of the flaky behavior of Agentreader. The program is so terrible that if you wanted to make it read Moby Dick, it would ignore the "call me Ishmael" and skip to the finale where Ahab is spearing the killer whale. It used to read vertical brackets | but now whenever one is on the page, it just says nothing when you push play, or it reads from the bottom of the page. Some pages don't have it and it still does it. Not sure if it's due to me downloading new characters or what, but it makes me want to scream. Also, the public library has Explorer 10 or something awful like that and it keeps prompting me to save every file as an mht, which is garbage. I want html files. It makes downloading slow from their computers, because the .mht option is always highlighted and I have to manually switch it to another type. I discovered a little too late that you also have the option to download html only and html full. When you do html only, it only gives the document, and if you want to search for anything on the page, my old version of explorer chokes and gives me an error message. So have to slowly scroll down and see what I've highlighted.
Of course, considering the fact that Livejournal is basically a website full of people who think they're writing in a private journal when it's really online for everyone to see (if it wasn't, I wouldn't be able to see it!), it's probably a waste for me to read them anyway. Half the people just get offended and cuss me out because they think it's a real diary. Well, it might be your diary, but I can surf in through your friend's pages, so get a clue. But I need to get a clue as well and to not shout "the emperor has no clothes" when they're showing off their new duds.

I have just discovered that since I told Agent Reader to not pronounce the vertical bracket on a website, it will skip to the bottom of any page I select, which pisses me off to no end. The only solution is to edit the html code and erase all vertical brackets, or (horrors) have the thing say "vertical bracket end bracket" ad infinitum. Then I will dream about a robot saying "vertical bracket".

Mylifebits

Microsoft’s MyLifeBits project aims to capture in digital form every–thing that happens in an individual’s life. Besides automatically archiving and indexing things like e-mails and text documents, the project includes a wearable camera that snaps a picture at least once every 30 seconds, creating a visual index of every credit card number that you enter while doing your job at work. Customers will appreciate the new system as much as you appreciate your new stereo and nice clothes. Or should I say, "Customers will disappreciate"?