blog: things you should check out

You can now read Wondermark — and dozens and dozens of other webcomics — in an iPhone app, thanks to Comic Chameleon!

Comic Chameleon’s the brainchild of my friend Bernie Hou, a comic creator himself with “Alien Loves Predator”. There have been lots of other apps out there that harvest webcomics without permission, usually by scraping the images off our servers, and the app creators often charge for the app without paying anything back to the creators. Bernie’s doing it right — he contacted me and a bunch of other cartoonists, offered his development skills, worked out permissions and contracts, and I was thrilled to be a part of it. Now the app is out, and it’s great!

You can read, browse, and share the entire archive of Wondermark (and many other comics) totally for free — the app is ad-supported. (Bernie’s looking into a way to charge a buck or so to remove the ads.) An Android version is also in the works. But especially for a version 1 product, Comic Chameleon is really great and I recommend you download it and try it out! More information at the official Comic Chameleon site, natch.

“Hooray, now I can read the mouseover text on my mobile device!” — psssstt, click the black word balloon icon to the right and below each comic. The magic was inside you all along!

The one downside (in my opinion) is that Comic Chameleon only displays the comics, not these scintillating blog posts. So, enjoy reading comics on your phone or iPad — just remember to check in periodically to see what’s going on down here! Or, the official Wondermark Facebook and Twitter feeds will ping you whenever there’s something cool to check out, too.

Thanks, Bernie, for building such a neat app, and thanks to all of you in advance for giving it a whirl!

I found this video today thanks to a tweet from Sam Bosma and it’s incredible. John Merritt has been carving wood for 50 years, and in the video he shows off things he’s made: interlinking chains (including one out of a toothpick), trapped balls, working scissors and more — all carved from single pieces of wood. And it ends on a marvelously sweet note as well. Inspiring!

“Two Chips” by Adam Patch. [Video link]

“My wife drank a bottle of wine, then wanted to tell me a joke.”

“Omelette” by Madeline Sharafian. [Video link]

“Finally my 2nd Calarts film is completed! I wanted to make something that focuses on how meaningful it is to make food for someone you love.”

I LOVE THESE BOTH

Recently I was poking around the PBS channel on my Roku and found the 2008 documentary series Carrier. I like airplanes, and I wanted to be a Navy pilot when I was a kid, so my wife and I checked out the show out of curiosity.

I was expecting some cool stuff about fighter planes, but it turned out to be much more than that — in a great way. For six months, a documentary crew traveled on an entire deployment with the USS Nimitz as it went from San Diego to Iraq, as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The filmmakers have what seems like total access to the ship, and they follow the fortunes of several dozen individual sailors, from hotshot pilots to mess cooks, missile technicians to office jockeys, throughout the entire voyage.

It’s got lots of airplanes flying around, but it’s a very human show, about the people — from all walks of life, of diverse political leanings, and with very different personalities — who all have to live and work together in a hunk of metal in the middle of the ocean.

Here’s an LA Times article from a few years back:

The American public can watch what may be one of the riskier and more unconventional public relations strategies in U.S. naval history unfold on PBS’ Carrier, a 10-hour documentary series about life aboard an aircraft carrier during wartime….

Unlike with its one-dimensional recruitment ads that invite young Americans to “Accelerate Your Life,” the Navy did not pay for a camera crew to chronicle the warship’s six-month deployment that began and ended in Coronado, and covered 57,000 ocean miles including a combat mission into the Persian Gulf. The Navy paid instead by surrendering almost total editorial control to the filmmakers, who promised military officials they were out to capture the human stories inside the nuclear-powered ship’s massive steel hulls.

It’s super interesting, and I highly recommend the show, whether you’re usually interested in military-type stuff or not.

Carrier on YouTube / Carrier on Netflix

It’s 10 hours long, and since it’s a PBS show, there’s no commercial breaks, so it’s ten full hours. Make a weekend of it.

BONUS LINK: Woody Allen on Candid Camera, circa 1960. Guys I just love this video so much.