Plague! Houseguests! Nice weather! Bottomless todo lists! Stupid ‘life’ and ‘work’ etc! All of these, my friends, have stood between you and new comics. I GROVEL BEFORE YOU.
However, there’s a couple of RED HOT news items that cry out— nay, continually nag— to be brought to the attention of the vast middling-sized and peculiar demographic following this here 2dGoggles. VIZ:
— FIRSTLY, you may notice the banner has changed, and there’s a dazzling new Episodes Page for easier navigation. I say ‘easi-ER’ because I doubt getting one’s head around this sprawling mess of a blog will ever be ‘easy’. I don’t really know what’s around here or what it all means myself!
— TWO- the Geek Calendar is now available for purchase! I am Miss August. I can’t help but feel I’m mightily outclassed by every other month (Simon Singh! Aleks Krotoski! Brian Cox! ), but luckily no one does anything in August anyways so no one has to look at their calendars that much that month. Amazingly they managed to find one picture where I look a little bit like a normal person, because I saw some of the discards and I look like this:
SO many thanks to the lovely folks from Geek Calendar, sorry I flinched away from the camera like a cat from a spray-bottle! The photos in the Calendar look absolutely stunning and it’s all in a good cause, so pick one up from their website!
THREE AND VERY THRILLING INDEED!
(and also I want everyone to stop emailing me about it because I have just got to the fabled Inbox Zero and want to admire it for a while)
There is a momentous project underway— hang on, let me find a big enough font—
TO BUILD AN ANALYTICAL ENGINE!!-
John Graham-Cumming, of the splendid Turing Apology Campaign, is masterminding this scheme and you can read all about it on the website or on Oreilly.com.
This is plainly in a desperate attempt to save 20 bucks and win the coveted “Build a working Analytical Engine, Win a 2DGoggles TShirt!” prize, but as STEP ONE this project aims to finally digitize Babbage’s papers— something I’m sure we can agree ought to be done without delay. Who knows what gags might lurk in there! Actually this just goes to show you the power of Thinking Big because I had on my todo list ‘start campaign to digitize Babbage papers’, and not only did it get buried between ‘sew missing buttons on winter coat’ and ‘make some goals or something’, but also somehow I doubt it would have made the BBC!
I certainly hope the readers of this comic can muster a respectable display of support for this noble proposition, so get on over and pledge! Ten dollars, pounds, or euros is the going rate and I’m sure it’s plenty worth it for the chance of seeing something like this!
And finally— if you’ve recovered from that excitement— in addition to cramming in some work on Organist Pt 8, I’ve done a new wallpaper for Tor.com’s upcoming steampunk fortnight! You’ll be able to get it from their website and I’ll alert you when it’s up, in the meantime.. Teaser!
Comments
9 responses to “NEWS, Thrills, etc!”
“Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded”, edited by Jeff & Ann VanderMeer is on the shelves. I was very please to see a certain comic strip appearing within the pages!
Mr Checkov! I love it. Can I guess the rest? Pocket universe science fiction: the voyages of the Steamship Enterprise?
Never grovel, my friend. We here at the 2dGoggles appreciation club have infinite patience. Nearly enough patience to wait for Babbage fo finish his Difference Engine. Which he didn’t, in favour of a totally new design called the Analytical Engine…
What?? The waiting is over you say?
I, for one, am now impatient. (We can only dream that it will be properly steam driven, with none of this new-fangled diesel-electro-hydraulic stuff.)
If I had 10 bucks to spare after the dribs ‘n’ drabs I parcel out to progressive candidates in the US midterm elections, in a desperate gesture to keep our lumbering republic from sliding into a permanent slough of despond, I’d be happy to spend them on an actual Analytical Engine. Especially when you consider that a massive inability/unwillingness to even try to be analytical is one of the root problems we USers are struggling with.
I wish I were a mathematician. It must be a great comfort to enter that world.
BTW, Sydney, I saw your Tweets of disgust at the stupidity of the Times Style Supplement. We should never EVER pay the slightest attention to what such people write. And I can so easily see you in tartan flannel with a long-handled axe in your capable grasp. But what does “ATMBWRLT ” mean?
Oh, and I actually saw the banner a few days ago. It’s great! And not in, like, a fakey Tony the Tiger voice, actually great to look at.
I got nothin’, but good to hear about things we’ll be hearing about!
(I pledged, but things do not look good for our heroes without some seriously heavy lifting: “106 days left, 47247 more signatures needed.” I do hope there’s a Plan B.)
Jesus! My favorite cartoonist makes a comic about my favorite play writer!
They want to build a WORKING Analytical Engine?! That’s INSANE. Babbage never came close to finishing its basic design.
What an awesome project.
Speak of the devil!
http://io9.com/5665687/bringing-back-babbage