Thursday, February 5, 2009
Brew Dog
Over on the Blog O'Beer we've got a multi-person review up where Darren, Ed, Tim and I all jointly review some of the bloody excellent ales that come from the independent Scotttish brewer Brew Dog (who were in the recent Scottish episode of the James May and Oz Clarke Drink to Britain series), who have not only been brewing some brilliant beers (like Rip Tide, Trashy Blonde and Paradox Smokehead) they do them in a style that is refreshingly hip, young and modern, getting away from the old, grey-bearded image of real ale (but sticking to the making damned good beer part of it).
Classic Doctor Who figures
William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton figures from the new classic Doctor Who range - I so want these, especially the Troughton one, I've always had a soft spot for the second Doctor going right back to when I was a kid and reading the old Target novelisations (the only way to get the older stories in pre video and DVD days)
Sunday, February 1, 2009
new moon over Royal Mile
new moon over Royal Mile
Originally uploaded by byronv2
New moon and Venus rising over the tall, old tenements of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh's Old Town on the way home from work a few days ago.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Yes we will
My friend Dan Goldman, artist on Shooting War (my favourite graphic novel of 2007), 08: a Graphic Diary of the Campaign Trail and the psychedelic online comic Kelly on webcomics collective Act-I-Vate, has delivered a special treat for the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States today (to be swiftly followed by the solving of all the world's problems within a month), a short comic with President Obama set in 2012, riffing on his theme of change and using some of Dan's very cool colouring effects that he lets rip with on Kelly, specially on Tor.com.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Happy birthday, Edgar Allan Poe
Happy birthday to a writer who has been one of my favourite authors since I was a boy - happy 200th birthday, Edgar Allan Poe, born January 19th 1809 and died October 7th 1849. Or perhaps he didn't die but was simply bricked up alive in a catacomb... Dead for a century and half and still influencing other writers, comics artists, movie makers, not to mention setting out the basic template for the modern detective several decades before Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created Holmes.
In fact it seems to be quite a year for anniversaries on the literary calendar - there's Poe, of course, its 200 years since Charles Darwin was born too, 150 years since On the Origin of Species was published and 150 years since Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born. Conan Doyle's delightful adventure yarn of explorers and dinosaurs, The Lost World, is the central plank of this year's One Book, One Edinburgh campaign in February (Doyle being a local lad - in fact he would have studied not far from where I work), following on from the last two years where Cam Kennedy and Alan Grant created graphic novel adaptations of Stevenson. There will be events, free books, school events and other happenings.
This time it will also extend to Glasgow and ties in with the Darwin 200 events across the UK, including a graphic nove biography of Darwin by Simon Gurr and Eugene Byrne, all of which I hope helps gets younger readers excited and reading and maybe the Lost World will give them an interest in dinosaurs then natural history (so they know to tell 'intelligent design' eejits to feck off when they encounter those brain-damaged idiots). It certainly did for me a kid, leading me to look for factual books on dinosaurs, then geology, evolution, which tied in with interests in astronomy and space exploration, being able to apply that learning to other bodies and... Well, that's kind of the point, once you start a chain of reading like that it sparks off more and more ideas and questions, leading to more reading and a continually growing link of reading and learning that goes with you through life. All from a good adventure yarn and some dinosaurs.
In fact it seems to be quite a year for anniversaries on the literary calendar - there's Poe, of course, its 200 years since Charles Darwin was born too, 150 years since On the Origin of Species was published and 150 years since Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born. Conan Doyle's delightful adventure yarn of explorers and dinosaurs, The Lost World, is the central plank of this year's One Book, One Edinburgh campaign in February (Doyle being a local lad - in fact he would have studied not far from where I work), following on from the last two years where Cam Kennedy and Alan Grant created graphic novel adaptations of Stevenson. There will be events, free books, school events and other happenings.
This time it will also extend to Glasgow and ties in with the Darwin 200 events across the UK, including a graphic nove biography of Darwin by Simon Gurr and Eugene Byrne, all of which I hope helps gets younger readers excited and reading and maybe the Lost World will give them an interest in dinosaurs then natural history (so they know to tell 'intelligent design' eejits to feck off when they encounter those brain-damaged idiots). It certainly did for me a kid, leading me to look for factual books on dinosaurs, then geology, evolution, which tied in with interests in astronomy and space exploration, being able to apply that learning to other bodies and... Well, that's kind of the point, once you start a chain of reading like that it sparks off more and more ideas and questions, leading to more reading and a continually growing link of reading and learning that goes with you through life. All from a good adventure yarn and some dinosaurs.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
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