blog: things you should check out

I’m pleased to announce that as of this week, classic Wondermark episodes will be running in The Onion’s A.V. Club every Monday and Thursday! Many of you know that Wondermark ran in the print edition of The Onion for several years and it took a global economic collapse to defeat my talon-like hold on that paper. Now, after patiently waiting across the street and pretending to read a magazine since 2008, I’ve managed to sneak into the A.V. Club through an unattended back door and will be frantically hacking some HTML onto their site twice a week until they notice. Check out my curated selection of favorite episodes from Wondermark’s 7+ year history, twice a week at the A.V. Club!

Recently I had the honor of being a guest on FourCast, a lively talk show in which various personages issue outlandish predictions regarding all manner of future events. I was pleased to be invited, and despite a technical hiccup or two (which I blame on sinister agents aghast and furious at the cunning accuracy of my predictions), I think it was a smashing show all round.

Here is an MP3 of the episode, or here is the same thing with video:

And, of course, I cannot let this subject pass without a friendly reminder that if you like nonsensical talky stuff, then there’s also my nonsensical talky program Tweet Me Harder! Here is (what I feel is) a particularly strong episode, in which we give an infant the 55-year-old arms of a murderer just to see what happens.

I’m selling a 16mm film camera! A bunch of years ago, on a lark, I decided to buy this Krasnogorsk K-3. The K-3 was invented by the Soviet Union to capture battlefield footage on 100-foot spools of film, and it has a wind-up crank so it doesn’t require lugging a battery pack around or any external source of power at all. The 17-69mm F1.9 zoom lens is also removable and swappable (it’s got a Pentax M42 screw mount), and the camera’s even got a built-in speed control to shoot from 8 to 48 frames per second.

Here’s some footage I shot with it a few years ago (apologies for low YouTube quality):

And here is the eBay auction! I’m even offering free shipping (to the U.S.) because I am kind of dumb, and I’ll toss some free Monocle Poppers into the package too. The auction ends tomorrow is over. Thanks!

In 1900, three years before he and his brother accomplished the first controlled, powered heavier-than-air flight, Wilbur Wright wrote to renowned engineer Octave Chanute for advice, one inventor and thinker to another:

…My business requires that my experimental work be confined to the months between September and January and I would be particularly thankful for advice as to a suitable locality where I could depend on winds of about fifteen miles per hour without rain or too inclement weather. I am certain that such localities are rare.

I have your Progress in Flying Machines and your articles in the Annuals of ’95, ’96, & ’97, as also your recent articles in the Independent. If you can give me information as to where an account of Pilcher’s experiments can be obtained I would greatly appreciate your kindness.

In 1917, after decades of inventions, feuds, lawsuits, the death of his brother from typhoid, and only one year before his last flight ever as a pilot, Orville wrote a letter of his own to a certain Master Milford T. Ware:

Dear Sir,
I have your letter of October 21st. I am sorry that I have no drawings of gliders that I can send you.

I’m kind of having fun pretending that the brothers were writing to each other. What a mismatched pair my Imaginary-Wright-Brothers are, ol’ earnest Wilbur and cantankerous, cigar-chompin’ Orville.

“We’ll never getting this thing to fly!” barks Orville, pacing in his shirtsleeves in the dusty bicycle-garage, as Wilbur reaches into his suspenders for a pair of calipers to check a measurement. By way of response, he confidently spins a propeller — “Oh, no?”

With a sputter, a crack, and a clatter, the motor seizes and tumbles into a pile of bicycle gears. Outside, chickens scatter as the air heats for the hundredth time that day: “Willl-burrr!!!!”

(This post is really to bring to your attention the existence of 100,000 aviation photos and artifacts recently posted by the San Diego Air & Space Museum on Flickr — where the latter letter was found — and the website Letters of Note, which reprints correspondence from all manner of notable figures, and whence the former letter was found. Both collections are well worth your exploration.)