Comic Round-Up

I've been keeping busy lately but I always try to save time for comic book reading. Recently I've been in an "exploratory phase" as I hunt for good reading while I await my favorites' to produce more volumes (i.e. Y: Last Man - Nov 2006, Walking Dead vol. 6 - Feb 2007, Invincible hardcover vol. 3 - Feb 2007, Ex Machina vol 4. - Dec 2006). Anyway, I've done well to find at least a few good graphic novels. Here they are in no particular order:

Pride of Baghdad
From the author of "Y: Last Man" this is an interesting self contained story that is beautifully illustrated. I'm not a huge fan of the "talking animal" genre (i.e. I though M3 was just "ok" but critics loved it) but this story is still worth a read. I'm happy that this isn't in a series format becuase it benifits from being concise.

Girls Vol 1: Conception
Girls Vol 2: Emergence

Girls is a really unique comic that kinda reminded me of "Walking Dead" in terms of pacing and character progression. Some may think that the story is too protracted but it held my attention. And this story is so bizzare it actually makes the drawn out story arc really very enjoyable. I' m eagerly waiting for volume 3!

SuperMarket

I haven't even finished reading Super Market and I know already that its worthy of recommendation. The art work is amazing- beautiful pastel colors and impressionistic imagary. (It is so good I found myself lingering on pages just staring at the images.) And don't foreget the story teller - Brain Wood (of DMZ) does a great job at quickly pacing the plot (with a requisite dose of social commentary provided by the hipster progtagonist)


Torso
Powers Vol 1: Who Killed Retro Girl
Powers Vol 2: RolePlay


I'm sorta on the fence when it comes to Brain Bendis' work. I really liked Torso (the "true crime" comic following "post-Al Capone" Elliot Ness as he chases a serial killer) so I decided to try reading a few volumes of the Powers series (note: All of Bendis' stuff I've read I was able to get from my local library so its hard to hate on free reading). But I can't really recommend any of his work though, which is a shame. This is because he chooses to brake one rule about graphic novels that I ascribe to: no matter how beautiful or well told a story is, you can't mess with the visual narrative to the point where that the reader can't find the next cell to read. I'll give him credit for being one of the best story tellers out there but he always messes up his stories by trying to be too clever about cell spacing or placment of the text and illustrations. It is so furstrating not knowing where on the page to look and reading text out of sequence or in the wrong order. Hey, Bendis, stop trying to be a smart guy and stick to the convention of left to rigth top to bottom. Jesus...

Moto Q and Comcast DVR

So, after much anticipation the Aver Media Box (see blog entry: TV, Tivo, Media Center and LCD monitors) turned out to be a big piece of crap. The thing was completly unusable and seemed like it was broken even before it left the manufacturer. Luckily, I was able to return it to Amazon no questions asked. So, I'm not out $160 bucks but still peeved about the waste of time. Tangentally related, I've decided to order the new DVR from Comcast. The hardware is installed by Comcast (for a once time $30 fee) and its relativly cheap at an extra $15 per month (on top of the other cable fees). The unit they supply is a Motorola dual tuner that allows two shows to be simultaneously recorded while you watch a third channel. I think the dvr also has about 80gigs of space which is a lot of tv time (cuz i'm not recording any HD). Anyway, this is related to the piece of crap Aver thing becuase the DVR has a DVI output which means I should be able to hook up my flat panel through the DVR- Sweet! Also, the big tech thing in my life now is my new phone: the Motorola Q. This thing kicks so much ass its crazy. The first money I spent, from my new job, was on a set of bluetooth headphones and a 2 gig minSD stick. Now, the commute to and from work is a lot easier since I can listen to music the entire way. And, as soon as I apply the new firmware upgrade, I can watch Ipod videos on it too!

Work and Such

So I've started working at Children's Hospital as a "research developer" and I'm working with Dr. Steve Porter on a grant based project involving the use of a personal health care record system in the domain of patients with ADhA. The personal health care system we are using is called Indivio and was also developed at the hospital. Dr. Porter and I are trying to create a user interface (that uses Indivio as a back end) to cater to low literacy individuals who are using the system to enter patient information regarding ADHD. This project is really the third in a series of projects based on the best practices of collecting patient information in an electronic format (the "asthma kiosk" and "parentLink are the predecessors of this project). I'll try to keep the blog updated as I continue to work on this project!