Etymotic Research hf3 headset + earphones
Figure Drawing: Design and Invention
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And one with a lighter outline around the character:
If you aren’t reading The Abominable Charles Christopher, you’re missing out on one of the best illustrated webcomics out there. Above is my take on the Abominable himself. Which version do you prefer?
-Krishna
P.S. Keep those Fan Art requests coming, folks.
The 4 foot banner I ordered arrived today. Preparing for my first convention just got more “real”.
-Krishna
Today’s guest-strip was written and drawn by my good friend Tauhid Bondia. I’ve been a fan of Tauhid’s work since his “Spells & Whistles” days years ago – and his recent return to webcomics via Good Ship Chronicles shows that he’s back on the scene with a vengeance.
I look up to Tauhid’s work. I never imagined in a million years that he’d draw a PC Weenies guest-strip, but lo and behold – he did. Tauhid is one of the true gold standards in the webcomics community. He’s talented, humble, and a great person to bounce ideas with. I am very fortunate to call him my friend.
Thanks, Tauhid!
-Krishna
On the docket for pluggage this week:
In this week’s episode of Art & Story Alive Jerzy, Mark and I discuss the artistic plateau and how to push through when you’re feeling too comfortable with your art. And don’t forget the new daily Art & Story Extreme, where you can eavesdrop on Mark and Jerzy’s studio conversations. It’s less structured than Art & Story, but a lotta fun!
Tomorrow’s UNcubed (or today’s, depending upon when you read this) is probably the most experimental I’ve ever gone with a comic strip. When I say it’s different from anything I’ve done before, I really mean it. Take a look (the next installment should be up Wednesday morning) and let me know what you think.
At long last, a new robot makes its debut at the factory. Take a peek.
Recovery-wise, I’m doing a little better today. I’d like to extend my sincere thanks to everyone who wrote in and offered me words of encouragement. My shoulder muscles and back still burn but the pain in my neck (ha!) has diminished. I’m hoping I’ll be back to normal within a week or so.
Also, I’ve got a few freelance gigs that I’ll be catching up with on Thursday, along with further work on the PCW / UNcubed sampler and PCW trade paperback. It’s going to be a busy week!
-Krishna
I’m extremely pleased and honored to share today’s guest-strip with you, which comes by way of the mind-blowing talent that is the ever-unstoppable Rasmus Pettersson.
Rasmus, who hails from Sweden, writes and draws Glitchtown, a surreal look into the lives of three test subjects: Isaac, Leslie and Houston (They think they are in a webcomic) ;)
In fact, if you look closely at today’s strip, you can see Leslie make a cameo appearance in the first panel. And as an added bonus, you can catch Bob in Monday’s Glitchtown comic.
Rasmus really sets the bar high with his take on The PC Weenies. Thanks again, Rasmus, for knocking this one outta the park! :)
-Krishna
I’m taking a break this week, with some fantastic cartoonists filling in for me on Tuesday and Thursday. It’s been a crazy weekend, and I need some time to recoup from the accident.
In the meantime, I found these in the PCW catacombs. Enjoy!
-Krishna
By now, many of us have realized (painfully or otherwise) that having a back-up drive is important mandatory. Over the past two years, prices for drives have dropped to relatively affordable levels. Case in point: the average internal SATA terabyte drive is under $100.
I make two separate back-ups to two separate drives, using both Shirt Pocket Software’s SuperDuper and Apple’s own Time Machine. SuperDuper runs nightly, building a fully bootable backup of my main internal drive, while Time Machine runs hourly, performing incremental back-ups.
This system has served my needs very well on my desktop system. On my laptop, however, it’s a completely different story. Because of its mobile nature, it can be up to two weeks before I remember to make a back-up. Backing up a laptop’s hard drive takes more effort because it needs to be tethered to another device. (I haven’t yet made the jump to an online back-up system.)
Most external drives are big and bulky and are difficult to transport around. What I needed was a portable drive with a very small footprint, for back-ups on-the-go.
To that end (and for the purposes of creating an offsite back-up), I purchased a Maxtor 160GB OneTouch 4mini drive from CompUSA this past week.
The price was reasonable – I paid $44 + tax for the unit. Inside the box is a small instruction manual, the drive and a USB cable. The cable has two separate USB connectors on one end (one for power only, the other for power and data), in addition to a small connector that connects directly to the drive.
Maxtor’s instruction manual recommends to plug the Power USB connector first, then the small connector, followed by the Power + Data USB connector. This implies having two free USB ports on your system. Thankfully the drive works just as well when only using the Power + Data USB connector.
I didn’t install the included back-up software, so I can’t comment on that. Both Mac and PC versions are provided. The drive comes formatted for Windows (NTFS). This format is read-only on the Mac. I reformatted the drive using Disk Utility to allow both reads and writes to the drive.
The Maxtor OneTouch mini is extremely portable and seems to be constructed very well. It’s slightly larger and thicker than an iPod Touch, making it very convenient to transport. The drive itself is very quiet – so much so that if it weren’t for the large blinking LED indicator, I couldn’t tell if the drive was ON or not.
Read and write speeds were decent – no quantifiable numbers here – but certainly much faster than copying data onto a Flash USB drive.
I’m generally satisifed with my purchase, but I do wish Maxtor had included a travel pouch for the drive and cables. Aside from that minor quibble, the OneTouch Mini makes for a good portable back-up drive.
I use mine to back-up all my important documents and photos. I’m planning to purchase another OneTouch mini in the near future to have a rotating monthly back-up drive that I can place off-site.
Given that a decent 500GB drive can be had for $70, $40 for 160GB doesn’t seem like such a great deal on a GB/dollar ratio. What you are paying for, first and foremost, is portability.
I’d recommend this drive for laptop users wishing to have a portable back-up drive. If you have a desktop system or work with your laptop in a mostly tethered setting, there are better deals you can find elsewhere.
Highly recommended.
-Krishna
