Month: October 2012

Digital vs Physical comic shops

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I came to a realization this week.  We may have hit the time where there are more people with iPads than there are people with access to comic shops.  I did a little math, and based it off London Ontario (where I live).  We have 350,000 people in London.  Adding in the places within 30 minutes outside of London with no comic shop in their home town, we get to about 425,000 people.

London has 4 full time comic shops.  425000/4 = 106,250 potential customers per shop.  Multiply that by about 3000 Diamond Accounts, which means that approximately 318 million people have access to a comic shop.  Considering though that the best selling comic of 2012 sold 318,000 copies (for Walking Dead #100), we can probably assume that 5% of the general population is an agressive number…but for fun, let’s make that 10%, which means 31.8 million potential comic fans have access to a comic shop.
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The Digital Comics List – October 2012

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ComicXology

My ComiXology list October 2012

I’m mostly off physical comics, with the only notable exceptions being stuff for the kids, and archived collections for myself.  By and large, just like with magazines, I’ve switched entirely to digital.

With Digital, I also find I’m sampling stuff I never would have before, simply because I don’t have to deal with physically storing them, and it is easier than ever before to buy something on an impulse.  If I read a review of something that looks interesting, in less than a minute I can start reading that comic.

This is something I’m going to try to keep up with every few months.

What I’m trying – this is new titles I’m trying (stuff I didn’t buy last month):

  • Batman – Death of the Family part 1
  • Cyberforce – Freebie from Image
  • Happy – a new Grant Morrison series
  • Revival – a new “rural horror” series
  • Uncanny Avengers – reading 1 month behind

What I’m reading regularly:

  • America’s Got Powers
  • Animal Man – reading 1 month behind
  • Batman and Robin
  • Earth 2
  • Glory – reading 1 month behind
  • Green Lantern
  • Justice League – reading 1 month behind
  • Lookouts
  • Manhattan Projects – reading 1 month behind
  • Saga
  • Swamp Thing – reading 1 month behind
  • Teen Titans  – reading 1 month behind
  • The Walking Dead
  • Wolverine and the X-Men – reading 1 month behind

 

52 Posts in 52 weeks

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I don’t blog anymore.  I micro-blog a LOT (Twitter, Facebook, etc), but I went months without a post this year, and the worst part was a gross picture of my innards was the highlight of my blog.  That ain’t right.

I used to do at least one blog post a week, it was a summary of cool stuff I found, and what I was doing.  Looking back on those blog posts now is a cool look at who I was.  I want that back.

There’s no reason why I can’t get out 52 posts in 52 weeks, so this is the start of that.  Every Monday Morning you can expect a new blog post for the next 52 weeks.

Starting this week, I’m going to post the same thing, once a week, with the same format.  A little paragraph blurb, followed by the same stuff in the same format:

  • Album of the Week: (What I’m listening to)
  • Comic of the Week: (Best comic I read that week)
  • Book of the Week: (What I’m reading)
  • Podcast of the Week: (What I listen to on my way to work)
  • TV Show of the Week: (Best moment from TV that week)
  • Movie of the Week: (What movie did I see that week)
  • Website of the Week: (Best site I went to that week)

If I don’t have something in a category, I won’t add it.

Here’s a “for instance”, for this week, here’s how that looks.

Fab’s Mom’s Spaghetti Sauce

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This is my take on the way that my buddy Fab told me his mom makes spaghetti sauce.  It’s not exact, because his tale had a lot of “she throws in a bunch of sausage and bacon, and about 50 other types of meat.”  Not being of Italian descent myself, my body is not genetically built to convert all of those things into energy and instead stores it in my “troublesome t-zone”, aka “my gut”.

So this version is designed not to kill me.  It’s also designed to be thrown together quickly, and then I just “set it, and forget it”.

Ingredients:

  • 1 Can Diced Tomatoes
  • 2 Cans Tomato Paste
  • 2 tbsp Brown Sugar
  • 2 tbsp Italian Seasoning (or you can just season with Oregano, Onion salt, garlic powder and bay leaf)
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 whole onion
  • 3 cloves garlic
  • 1 small roast beef (inside round is good)
  • Salt and Pepper to tastse

Combine Diced Tomatoes, Tomato Paste, brown sugar and 1tbsp of italian seasoning in the crock pot.

Heat olive oil, add onion and garlic and brown (which means you only flip once, otherwise you’re poaching them) in oil.

Remove onions and garlic from oil and combine in crock pot.

Rub meat with 1tbsp Italian Seasoning, and salt
Brown meat in remaining oil to sear in juices.

Put meat in crock pot. Turn crock pot to hi until it boils, then reduce to low, and leave simmering for 4 hours.

At the end of the 4 hours, remove the string from the roast, and then stir the sauce.  The meat will begin to dissolve into kind of a stringy sort of meat by-product.

When we ate carbs (which unfortunately are the enemy), we found this goes really well with a rigatoni since the sauce kind of creeps in the spirals and gets all delicious!

Now that we’re anti-carbites, we eat it with Spaghetti Squash.  It’s terribly delicious.

Making the Sausage – My DIG London talk

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I’m speaking at DIG 2012, it’s my first formal speaking event, though I have tons of public speaking experience on the radio, TV, as well as live at department meetings, company functions, colleges, and as a panel member at the Banff Interactive Festival.  It’s a 50 minute session too, so I’ve got a lot of time to make good use of.

I thought it might be an interesting exercise to publicize all of my prep, document all of the steps, and see what it looks like.  I have an outline done, and this week I’m starting on the actual narrative.

So this week, here’s my Dig 2012 talk outline – Innovation for Small Teams.  Let me know what you think in the comments. Continue Reading