sorry folks.. in Crunch!  No time for comics!! Giant monster attack!!!  Movie looking great!

See you in a few weeks!

Throwing a chunk of hunky red meat to you baying hounds at my heels, here’s some Brunel beefcake I mysteriously found time to draw:

This was actually very necessary preparatory groundwork, as there’s a lot of Brunel, and coffee, in next episode.  I’ve also devoted some time to an exhaustive search for the all-important Brunel theme song.. SORTED:

I always like to have a soundtrack for every project I work on.. heck, I have individual soundtracks for every character, or sometimes every shot. Funny that way. The nifty 8tracks.com thru the magic of computing and the even more mysterious magic of copyright law naviagation allows me at last to present a Selection of Musical Stylings from my internal 2dgoggles sountrack:

Tracks are:

A Drop Filled With Memories x Susumu Hirasawa
Album: Paprika (Original Soundtrack)

The Calculation x Regina Spektor
Album: Far

Texas Eagle x Steve Earle & The Del McCoury Band
Album: The Mountain

Enterprising Young Men x Michel Giacchino
Album: Star Trek

M79 x Vampire Weekend
Album: Vampire Weekend

Humpty Dumpty x Aimee Mann
Album: Lost In Space

Discombobulate x Hans Zimmer
Album: Sherlock Holmes

Extraordinary Machine x Fiona Apple
Album: Extraordinary Machine (John Brion)

Human x The Killers
Album: Day and Age

“Texas Eagle” is the alternative Brunel song because it’s cool and train-y; ‘Enterprising Young Men’ I kept listening to over and over when I drew the Difference Engine interiors that open Economic Model pt 2. “Humpty Dumpty” is a painfully appropriate Ada song for her descent into Poetry addiction.

What else… a few weeks ago I was doing some clearout of the Old Homestead and came across this:

Made at some indeterminate point in my Youth. A most serendipitous find, as not only is it Alice-related, that, my friends, is a Thaumatrope, the invention of which is sometimes credited to none other than Charles Babbage! Of course it’s also sometimes credited to Roget, of Thesaurus fame, and Herschel, of astronomy fame, and a few other random guys in waistcoats. Nobody assigns it to Wheatstone, whose optical toy invention was the stereoscope– I’ve been trying to come up with a cut-out-and-keep stereoscope but it’s not QUITE so simple as I would like. Nothing could be simpler than a Thaumatrope however so here is one for you Kids to Make at Home. Get a responsible adult to help you with the scissors, and if you can find a responsible adult, congratulations! and be sure to file the sighting with the RSPB. Click the image for the PDF.

Instructions here.

In other news, I’ll be making an appearance — my VERY FIRST comic con appearance! of any kind! — at Caption in Oxford on the 31st of July and 1st of August. Not quite sure yet what this will involve, I guess I’ll be on display on some sort of slowly revolving platform, with a small placard describing my History and Features. Please do not climb on the exhibit.

Anyways, that should keep y’all busy, Organist 6 should be up in a couple of days.. coffee! monkeys! Inspiration Speeches! Top hat conundrums!

This would be Babbage’s lecture trip to Italy, from which Frederico Menabrea wrote his Sketch of the Analytical Engine, which Lovelace was to translate the next year.

So I know what we’re all thinking…

EPISODE!

Title: The Vigenere cipher (I drink a lot more wine than I break codes, so my brain insists on pronouncing it, the Vioginer cypher) was the supposedly unbreakable code secretly broken by Babbage in the late 1840s by means of, as Simon Singh puts it in his great The Code Book, ‘sheer cunning’.

Materials:  The Experimental Carriage (aka the Mystery Mobile, to be equipped with oil-slick and missile launchers etc), spy-vs-spy, James Bond, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Charade, codes and cyphers, my vast knowledge of 19th century Italian secret police drawn from ‘Tosca’. Poss. Menabrea could appear.. was he Entertaining? Might make plausible Tintin-esque military Dictator type?

Method: haphazard

Hypothesis: (this is my husband’s theory, which is is very keen on Sharing for the World’s Edification) That the 17,000 pounds the British government put towards the Difference Engine, was ACTUALLY for the Black Ops project of Babbage’s code breaking.  I counter that Babbage’s open, dare I say, transparent personality was not exactly suited for espionage.  Why, he’d be giving away his secrets in his widely-read autobiography, where he enthuses about his deciphering project that involved the copying out of 26 separate dictionaries broken up by letter count and frequency! Babbage had that most enviable of gifts, viz. huge piles of personal cash, but would he be spending his own money on stuff like this?  Hmmmmmmm…..

Anyways.. what was I supposed to be doing? Oh yeah, The Organist! Next episode.. uh.. soonish. Really!

Next episode should be up in a couple of days; in the meantime, some bits of news. This just in: my fanart has higher production values than my actual art:

I don’t know about you but I think it’s AWESOME. Babbage looks way hotter than he has any right to do, but you’ll never find me objecting to that.

In other Epic Feature Film news, why no, I hadn’t heard they were making an Ada Lovelace biopic, Enchantress of Numbers. Someone should send me an email or a twitter or something about that! Almost certainly it will not contain Salamander People I’m sorry to say. I’m feeling strangely proprietary about those crazy kids now so they better get them right! Title by the way from a letter from Babbage to Lovelace, that he intends to visit her and- “forget this world and all its troubles and if possible its multitudinous Charlatans– everything in short but the Enchantress of Numbers.” Babbage! If he’d been blind, he could have been a poet you know!

Having fended off the Giant Monsters (my shots are some of the ones where the thing is attacking the guy, and some of the ones where it’s smashing things!), I now find myself with a mouse infestation. Building better mousetraps will keep comics production at its usual blistering pace, but hey if you read this comic you already know enough not to be holding your breath between episodes, or you’d be an alarming shade of blue by now.

Well, a similar phenomenon seems to have been out to get me last week. As we all know last year’s Ada Lovelace Day post triggered a near-catastrophic disturbance in the space-time continuum resulting in the creation of a pocket universe.  To prevent a similar breach this year, bad-luck particles caused me to trip over a cricket bat, and collide into the already precariously overburdened  bookshelves, resulting in loud crashing sounds and a finger mysteriously sprained in such a way that I could hold a mouse to well enough to do my day job, but not a pencil in order to draw the comic.  Very funny, particles.  VERY FUNNY.

Well, I’ll fix their wagon because I was halfway through a bunch of indecisive doodles before their interference and I’ll just put them up instead shall I?

We’re all about the documents here at 2dgoggles so I turned to them for inspiration.  Here’s a corker:

When the Meteorological Society was formed it was decided to admit women, and four ladies were elected on the original foundation; among them the Countess of Lovelace– Byron’s daugher ‘Ada’.  In a little while one of these ladies, the wife of an eminent meteorologist, wrote to say that she had been told it would be injurious to the Society to have women as memebers; she, therefore, thought it her duty to resign, and she hoped the other ladies would follow her example.  One of them did so; but another, who could not be made to comprehend the necessity for mainting the scientific disabilites of women, refused to withdraw, and no one even suggested the propriety of resignation to Lady Lovelace.  But the two ladies who remained members are since dead, and no others have been elected..

I will just bet they didn’t suggest it.  I’ll bet they didn’t have the guts.  Say what you like about Ada Lovelace, she was brave as they come and didn’t mind telling people where to go, I’m fairly sure it went down like this:

Man, sexual shaming and patronizing ridicule of women trying to pursue science was such an awful thing back in Victorian times.  It’s a good thing those days are over!

(I feel incumbent on me to mention that my husband strongly objects to the word ‘rectum’ here.  He thinks ‘ass’ is less vulgar.  I think Lovelace would use the proper scientific terminology.  Discuss in the comments! ) That creeping sensation that you’re Ruining Everything by your very existence is one I’ve felt a time or three and it’s pretty horrible.  So here’s to you, nameless meteorologist, on Ada Lovelace Day!  I couldn’t hunt down who the lady who stayed actually was, so that drawing is based on Sarah Frances Whiting.

Sometimes I felt that comic was just liiittle bit bitter so as an alternate post I had this whole elaborate set up planned of which only one panel made it in postable form.. naturally it’s a pun:

Good old Babbage! Man reading all this Victorian stuff can get you down, but he always cheers me back up again. In my book he’s the reigning champion of women in science for his age– he gives a shoutout to Maria Agnesi in his autobiography; Mary Somerville was a close friend of his whom he often asked if she could give a ‘a day to the engine’ when he wanted to talk it over. And you can bet he’d be all over Ada Lovelace Day! I feel I just have to link to my two favorite Babbage/Lovelace primary docs online here–

Ada Lovelace is an Enchanted Math Fairy! and:

Anyways, the above setup was to lead into the introduction of this year’s Ada Lovelace Day lady, Eleanor Cressy (yes they were actually called Extreme Clippers). Roughs:

She’s pretty damn cool and could be a fun character so I shall definitely bring her back if transport is required for Babbage and Lovelace.. except in the pocket universe it’s airships. Definitely airships.

So that is my somewhat crippled Ada Lovelace Day post! Be sure to have a browse around all the fantastic women in tech in the slowly growing list of posts!

This is obviously going to be a pretty important day around 2dgoggles.  This whole site, after all, owes its entire existence to Ada Lovelace Day, so I’m feeling just a little bit of, you know, pressure to produce an interesting  post.  Look for stuff both here and on my personal site!

For starters though, with the help of Ace Graphic Designer Lorin O’Brien I’ve drawn up a tshirt:

Available at the Ada Lovelace Day shop at Spreadshirt.net!  Proceeds go to hosting costs etc. for Ada Lovelace Day.

In other news, you can hear my endless ramblings on the subject of comics and Ada Lovelace miraculously condensed into a not entirely incoherent 1/2 hour at Shiftrunstop.com, the groovy tech podcast for the MIND.  I don’t know if I did justice to my Very Important Opinions on Ada Lovelace there but it’s a start!  Trailer with ME in Glorious Technicolour and tragically no flattering gauze over the lense.

So think about cool techie chicks  to post about and go and pledge! Who knows what might happen… your life might be taken over by an imaginary comic I dunno… this project has some pretty heavy good karma around it is all I’m sayin’.

I’ve assembled a slideshow of my talk– with the warning that THIS POWERPOINT CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE ORGANSIT! It’s about 15 minutes long; that incoherent high-pitched squeaking you hear is me erming and ahing and forgetting all my brilliant punchlines.

I believe you can see it a bit bigger onsite at myplick.

I also did a little comic for their handout newspaper thingie (click for larger):

Footnotes to the comic!

–”Make ‘em laugh, make ‘em cry, make ‘em wait” was the motto of Wilkie Collins; he was pretty good at it, as anyone kept up until 3 in the morning by the last chapters of “No Name” can attest. Personally I’ve nailed the ‘Make ‘Em Wait’ part.

–Charles Babbage did indeed propose writing a three-volume novel, as he describes in his autobiography: “solely for the purpose of making money to assist me in completing the Analytical Engine.” On consulting with a poet friend, he received the dispiriting news that it was likely to cost him more to publish a novel than he would ever earn back from it.

–The Classics gag (Latin and Greek) is shamelessly robbed from Alice in Wonderland; Laughing and Grief are amongst the subjects (along with Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils) included in the excellent education of the Mock Turtle.

–In her Notes on the Analytical Engine, Ada Lovelace speculates that the Engine could potentially “compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.”– that is, ” supposing that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations”. Computer-composed music has been achieved; the world still awaits scientific storytelling.

AND, if that’s not enough crazy overexposure, I’m going to be on the ShiftRunStop podcast this week, where they have inexplicably asked me to appear despite having heard my Smooth Dulcet Tones at The Story.

This entry has been heroically posted inbetween hockey periods.

In grovelling recompense, I give you: Wallpapers!

Click on any of those to pick them up in 3 sizes over at 2dgoggles drop.io spot. Babbage is in colour because I lurves him best.

Also, you wore me down… new Brunel tshirt! Click on the pic to go to the zazzle store (aside: preparing my report to Babbage as to whether he could have funded the Analytical Engine via tshirt sales. Short answer: no.)

News, news… if you’re in London on February 19th you can come watch me flail helplessly effortlessly spellbind a fascinated audience with a presentation on graphic storytelling; or better still, go catch one of the actually cool people at The Story, a one-day conference about stories and story-telling!

As you can see from the following chart, the organizers may have the FULLEST CONFIDENCE in my masterful, nay, guru-esque command of the story process:

But a little thing like not having a plot will not stand in the way of progress here at 2dgoggles! Part 1 teaser:

And, because it’s been AGES without a Primary Document of Interest.. just to whet your appetite, spot Babbage in this Shocking Scene of Musical Violence! Note the check trousers why babbage why??! You think you know all about Babbage and street music? Oh, my friends, you have no idea…

Cracking cheese, Gromit!

Hi-rez by request! 200dpi, should print at 5x5inches-ish.

I make one extremely contraversial statement in that interview that is bound to set off a firestorm.  That is:  the fashion of the 1830s is hideous. Here at 2dgoggles we pride ourselves on our strict historical accuracy on all points save one.  And on that one point, I feel myself entirely justified.  There is just no way I’m going to draw clothes like these:

As you can see from the following chart, the comic unfortunately coincides with the absolute nadir of western fashion in the last 500 years.. what are the odds!  Babbage, seriously, you’re a statistician– what are the odds??!  Ghastly proportions, nasty pointless detail, huge lapels.. I swear to god, it wants only polyester.

Further proof:  spot the point at which fashion FALLS OFF A CLIFF (Alfred Roller drawings courtesy of Wikimedia):

I’m doing what I can to keep the clothes bearable.  This means going for a generic-olde-fashioned-dress for lovelace, with a vague nod to the bizarre lozenge-shape bodices.  No power on earth can save the men’s jackets of this period but anyone can look good in a poofy shirt and a waistcoat (can we bring those back?  because they’re stylin’).

Mind you, much of the time I’m just going to have to throw everything out the window and put Lovelace in trousers, not only because she would totally have worn them if given half a chance, but as Marian Halcombe puts it in “The Woman in White”- “In my ordinary evening costume I took up the room of three men at least.”

Yeah, no kidding, Wilkie Collins.   You try composing a comic panel with three women having a conversation in skirts five feet in diameter.  By the way– it seems like everybody knew everybody else in Victorian England, but sadly there is only the slimmest of connections between Wilkie Collins and Ada Lovelace– his father met her once and described her as delightful and simple-minded.  It’s a shame they never met as I have a feeling they would have gotten on like a HOUSE ON FIRE.

We do have some info on both Babbage and Lovelace’s dress sense: in true geek fashion, it seems to have been terrible.  Sources:

Babbage: the waistcoast story. I darkly suspect Babbage would have been a Hawaiian-shirt-wearer.. not to throw a cloud over his memory or anything.

Ada Lovelace: awkward, badly dressed geek.  -this is a recollection of Lovelace’s visit to her father’s old estate the year before she died;   it is typical of her in this anectode that she goes through two entirely different personalities in the course of three days (speaking of clouds over memory, I should say that the actual extent of Ada’s racing losses were around 3000 pounds, as far as scholarship can determine.).  There are surprisingly few contemporary descriptions of her; see seems to have been rather reclusive.  You can see everything I’ve found regarding her from the period online here (the entire list of my primary sources is here).  From “bouyant and hearty” to “melancholic” to “haughty and arrogant” or was she “without an atom of pride”?   “She had, indeed, a most variable personality”, wrote her first biographer Doris Langley Moore.. indeed!

Anyways, doodling away on “The Organist” but won’t make any promises as to time.. Giant Monsters being what they are and all.  In the meantime, any nagging questions re the comic, I’ll make this an ‘any questions’ post.