Entertainment

It's a fairly well-known fact to anybody who's read this blog that I'm poorly read, and that fact has always been something I've been trying to change (not going to be much of a writer if you haven't read anything). So with the aim of developing a reading habit, I decided to start picking up books I'd always wanted to read but had never bought, waiting for that mythical
'someday' when I would be in a relaxed mental state to kick back and read a bit. 'Someday' turned out to be when I walked by the Fantasy section in Kinokuniya and spotted a paperback of China Miéville's Perdido Street Station recently, not horrendously overpriced as books in Dubai tend to be, and picked it up. Instead of relegating it to the bookshelf like several previous purchases, I cracked the thick tome open and started reading the second I got home.

Nearly two years ago now we let the subscription on our cable TV lapse, and haven’t bothered to renew it since. In this age of DVD season sets, 24-hour streaming internet news and just plain frustration with the rubbish value for money that local cable bouquets offer, it made no sense to continue. Nowadays when I go to a friend’s place and see the TV on -- inevitably tuned to some flavour of news -- it feels like some kind of alien world. The last time I was on vacation in India I tried to spend some time flipping channels, seeing if I could recapture those feelings of discovery and entertainment that TV provided for a long time in my life, but it ended with me bored and angry, two hours later having not stayed on a channel for more than five seconds.

Strange things have happened since then. I find that the large chunk of space in my brain that used to be reserved for TV is shrinking. I remember TV, but not as well as I used to, and in a few years time I may not remember much of it at all. Hence this post, which is an infodump; a big steaming brick about TV and the way it was when I used to watch it. Because, though I loathe the way it is now, a lot of me has been shaped by TV, by that first viewing of Star Trek when was an infant, by entertainments factual and imaginary, by the rush of information and colour and sound.

TV was the internet of its time. And this is how I saw it.

Over the next few days you will hear a lot about Google Chrome, the new web browser from the internet behemoth. I've tested it out and am happy to report that it's quite nice. Of course, I'm a long-time Mozilla Firefox user, so the transition has not been very stark. But if you're one of the poor people who still use Microsoft Internet Explorer (or worse, if until now you didn't even know what a web browser is and that there are mutliple available ones), then Chrome will be a revelation.

Even for me, the new browser is an intriguing new beast. It's very quick, intuitive to use and so far does things well. I can see myself using it for most tasks, at least those that don't require certain firefox plug-ins that I'm used to (but there will no doubt be equivalents for them in Google Chrome eventually), and I'm very happy that there is now a new robust, polished open-source browser. Competition and choice can only lead to better products in this regard.

But as impressive as the browser is, it is not the thing that I really wanted to blog about here. For you see, the most impressive thing about Google Chrome for me today is the fantastic comic that serves as an introduction to it.

The name Scott McCloud should be familiar to most comic book geeks such as myself. The author of seminal works like Understanding Comics has carved a name for himself as true master and expert of the comics medium. Who better to explain a new web browser; an application that's so simple to use it's invisible, but is so complex underneath that entire careers can be dedicated to it? Scott McCloud, of course.

I love how he manages to represent even the most arcane programming concepts in a fun and exciting way (helped, of course, by the words from Google Chrome's programming staff), how there's a single narrative thread but multiple voices from members of the team -- this is a feat you can't really achieve as well in video, for instance, but as a comic it works great. Alan Moore has always maintained that comics as a medium are rich beyond measure, that there are things you can do in it that you can't do in a movie or a book. I can think of several examples of Moore's own work to support this, but Scott McCloud's introduction to Google Chrome is a shining example too.

So even if you don't give Google Chrome a spin (I highly recommend you do), please do check out the comic that goes with it. It's simply superb.

Further adventures in processed food in this, the fourth and much delayed strip of the second Comic Konga! Click on the image to see the full strip.

The drawing is all over the place in this. I'm just a bit out of it this week, I suppose, running around doing real life stuff. One more left; have the script, should draw it asap.

V

Third day, third strip of the second Comic Konga!. Today's strip is a two-pager, so click on the thumbnail above to bring up the first page, and then click next at the bottom to see the second. Alternately, you can click here to directly see the second page.

I can't say I really hate mint chocolate -- the ice-cream version is something I enjoy quite a bit -- but most varieties of it are not very well made, and the experience is more negative than positive.

I have no idea what tomorrow's strip will be. Oh noes!

V