Tag: General Nonsense

Google Chrome & the Power of Comics


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.

Comic Konga 2 #5: Megalomania

-I wish I was fabulously intelligent. -You aren't?
-Then I'd program a kickass brew of linux and rule the world!! -I see.
-Geeks would love me. Children would respect me. Women would really love me! -Women love men who program operating systems?
-You're no fun anymore.

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Finally, the fifth and final strip of the second Comic Konga!. Dunno why I dawdled do long on this. It didn’t take me long to do. I guess that’s because I had a bunch of other strips planned and never got around to doing them (sorry Dolly!). I’ll have to get around to those soon, or when we do the next comic knoga in a month or two. Come to think of it, I didn’t end up doing any of the strips I thought I would do this time. Most of the ideas were very long, multiple page ideas, and would have required a lot more drawing. Still, I’ve enjoyed all the strips I’ve done (not to mention the rest of the strips).

V

Don’t Call it a Piña Colada


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

Comic Konga 2: A Short Intermission

comic konga intermission monks
Due to unforseen developments, I’m going to have to put my contributions to this second Comic Konga! on hold for a couple of days. I won’t have computer access for the next two days, and instead of rushing and putting up some crap or the other, I request my readers to be patient with me for a little while.

The remaining two comics will be posted on Saturday and Sunday (12 & 13 July).

Meanwhile you can look at these monks. Ah, don’t they look serene? You would be too if you were dreaming of comics.

V

Comic Konga 2 #3: Mint Chocolate Marvels


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

Comic Konga 2 #2: A Dilemma


Here’s the second strip of the second Comic Konga!. Click on the image to see the full strip.

This was actually the first strip drawn but I wanted to post it after the single panel from yesterday. Tomorrow’s strip has been penciled; I only have to ink and scan it, perhaps shade it in like this one. Like I said yesterday I think I’m not going to do full colour versions (Today’s strip is done in shades of desaturated blue). For no other reason than, like most Indians, I have a bit of a lenient hand with colour and it always ends up gaudier than I would like (strangely this is only a problem with my illustration work; my colour sense works fine when I’m doing design).

V

Comic Konga 2 #1: Jewels


So begins the second Comic Konga! I think I’m starting to like doing the first one as a single panel gag; it’s a format I never otherwise use, and it’s a challenge to distill something down to one panel and one line only. Like most writers I have a tendency to ramble, and something like this could easily have been a three or six panel piece.

The anatomy and line-work is all over the place, and I did try to colour it but decided just to keep it to black and white (perhaps that can be a theme for this time’s CK). Hope your own comic endeavours are fruitful. Can’t wait to see what you lot have come up with.

V

Get Ready for Comic Konga 2!


It’s been far too long since I’ve posted here, and even longer since our first Comic Konga! Half a year has gone by in the blink of an eye, and so I thought it would be best to get back into blogging by jumping in at the deep end with another CK.

CK2 will begin July 7th (that’s Monday after next) and run until the 11th (that Friday). The rules are the same as last time: five days, five comics (in whatever way you define a ‘comic’) posted to your blog or online space of choice. A free-form festival of graphic delights, hosted by your truly.

You have about twelve days so that should be plenty of time to come up with ideas, doodle, and even prepare your finished comics. If you’re participating do drop me an emial or a comment here (don’t forget a link to where you’ll be putting the work up!).

See you then!

Earth Vs The Legion of Lightbulbs

Yesterday was Earth Hour in several places around the world, including here in Dubai. Not much happened, though a few buildings did turn their external lights off. One lovely radio jockey suggested that the best way to spend the hour was to turn off all the lights, fire up some candles, snuggle up with your significant other on the sofa… and watch a romantic movie on DVD (preferably on your big screen HDTV).

Take that, energy conservation!

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Elsewhere people in India were complaining that cities like Mumbai were not on the bandwagon, and shame on them for not participating in this noble effort. Um, yeah, except that cities in India go through almost daily scheduled power cuts, most of which last for longer than an hour. There is a prevailing view from what I can gather, that by shutting off our light bulbs for an hour every year, we will all be directly saving the earth.

This, as far as I know, is not strictly true. Most power stations around the world run on fossil fuels; in them power is generated and thrown out onto the grid. If we aren’t using it, they do not actually store any unused energy in large batteries somewhere. If the power companies got together and said, “okay, in order to save the earth we’re going to shut down our power supply for a few hours,” everybody would be up in arms. But that’s really the only way the current electricity supply model is going to help.

Then there’s all the energy that went into publicising the Earth Hour event itself; multi-storey billboards, the energy to light them for days leading up to yesterday, t-shirts and caps, concerts and karaoke and whatnot. The Earth Hour site itself declares it a ‘carbon-neutral’ event in its faq (and also addresses the power issue with what amounts to an “Um, yeah, we know.”) but doesn’t say much else about it. Are they policing every floodlit billboard around the world?

I applaud the idea as a PR exercise, certainly, but I do feel that the execution is little more than a token gesture, and everyone around the world has just jumped on because it’s a lazy, easy way to think we’re making a difference. It’s like every Indian I’ve met who expects the government to solve all their problems personally, in the same way a 5 star hotel might, because, “they voted. (harrumph!)”

Conservation and reduction of our energy usage is a vital thing, but we can’t pat ourselves on the back and get back to our wasteful lives just because we shut off the garden light for an hour.

V

Dance Dance Meri Jaan!


[This started out as a comment on this post on Aishwarya’s blog which references this ‘blessay’ by the inimitable Stephen Fry, but it ran a bit too long so I figure I should post it here]

Apparently when I was younger I had a good sense of timing (in the back row of a filmi group dance performance), but this comment came from my mother, so I can’t believe it entirely despite her generally pragmatic view on things.

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These comments, my own hyperactive nature and my shyness led to many an afternoon spent bouncing around our cavernous Muscat house to an imaginary soundtrack and my own improvised moves. Is it any wonder that Fame is one of my favourite movies?

Then I turned 12 and dancing became that thing you did with girls you had the hots for. But this being the early 90s the jeans were tight and the sleeves pouffy, so we looked like two penguins saying goodnight (Also, Glen FRIGGIN Medeiros: argh!).

Since then Hip Hop happened (we still called it rap and R&B back in my day, younguns) and the term booty entered our vocabulary. It seemed like far too much exercise, and besides, this is the kind of stuff we in the civilised East had rightly left behind a decade ago. I was back from my short preteen sojourn into ‘normal’ society so I thankfully missed all of this. I do not think I would stand before you today as the crazed lunatic I am if I spent my sixteenth year bopping to Jeniffer (pre-J.Lo) Lopez’s Waiting For Tonight.

Still, Hip Hop isn’t all bad, really*.

*(okay, so my definition of hiphop is not very traditional)

I don’t dance anymore. I haven’t had the opportunity, and ten years of being generally inactive means I wouldn’t want to attempt it without getting into better shape, or I’ll risk major (or at least irritatingly long-lasting) injuries. The urge is still there, and I suppose if I were to reclaim my body-as-temple and pursue a sport, it would be some kind of mad and wonderful mix between parkour and, um, this.

I would be so legend.

V

Anybody have €2.3 million?


Now this just isn’t fair. Somewhere in Italy is a fantastic looking monastery up for sale. It’s got eleven bedrooms, twenty-six hectares of land, a stable converted into a restaurant with a professional kitchen, and it was recently fully restored.

It costs about three-and-a-half million dollars, and you might think that’s a lot of money, but really, it’s a steal*. You know what I could get for that much in Dubai? A decent four bedroom villa in a cubbyhole ‘planned’ community. In India I may manage to get a three bedroom apartment in South Bombay. God only know what kind of matchbox that money would buy in London or New York.

*(Not that I have the money, and any attempts to amass such an amount would require actual stealing, hehe).

Beyond that, the property is clearly begging to be turned into a quiet out-of-the-way hotel. If I tried to open something of a similar size in Dubai I would need about five times as much money, and about ten times for Bombay. And none of them would have the kind of view this place has.

Of course, if it seems too good to be true then it probably is, otherwise why would such a tempting looking thing be unsold, and that too found on the freaking interwub?

Ghost Infestation. Has to be.

….Still, very, very tempted.

V

Spring Cleaning in Winter

Image Courtesy New York Public LibraryThe cousins are coming! The Cousins are coming! For the first time since, um, 1992, there are to be guests in the house whom I actually like. Now, ordinarily we’d just leave the house in the mess (read: disaster zone) that it is, but since we haven’t cleaned any of our homes thoroughly since about 1992 (we’ve just shifted piles of junk into boxes, then from house to house and even country to country) we figured it was about time.

So, over the past week or two, Intrepid Elder Sibling Samir and I have been trying to look through the hundreds of boxes and piles of things that litter the house in order to reduce them somewhat.

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We’ve found a whole lot of books, hundreds of which have been bought over the past five years on various trips to India, and almost none of which have been read yet. If I just took one a day, photographed the cover and wrote fifty words about what I think the book is about, I’d have about three or four years of blog posts right there.

Don’t even begin to ask about the hundreds of books that are safely stored in boxes from before 2002. No, I wouldn’t get rid of most of them. Yes, I have seen that lovely 25 shelf bookcase in IKEA, and when the dust settles you can bet I’ll be forking over $200 for one.

Make that three.

So currently the house looks like a disaster zone. It seems that for every trunkload of old newspapers and plastics that go off to the recycler, no volume is lost from the pile of stuff in the house itself. Stuff expands to fill the space it’s in.

But today I’m leaving the books and the old He-Man action figures and the suddenly rediscovered drawings from when we were 5 to Samir, because today I’m going to lock myself in the kitchen and not come out until I figure out what every single bottle of arcane masala and every single funny looking utensil my mother had was used for, and neatly rearrange it.

Wish me luck.

V