Blackmoor Vituperative

Amazon is really putting some effort into making DRM-free MP3s commercially viable. They have a “Five for five Friday” deal where five albums are $5 each. That’s not bad at all. You might consider checking them out.

A custom figure maker called Sillof has created a series of figures for a Steampunk version of Star Wars that is really quite nifty. Check it out.

Charlton Heston, who won the 1959 best actor Oscar as the chariot-racing “Ben-Hur” and portrayed Moses, Michelangelo, El Cid and other heroic figures in movie epics of the ’50s and ’60s, has died. He was 84.

(from Film legend Charlton Heston dead at 84, Yahoo! News)

I am a little late with this, but the last few months have been very busy. Even so, it brightened my day to read about it.

On 24 October a district court in Moscow has confirmed the “no copyright infringement” verdict.

Earlier this year, on 15 August 2007 AllofMP3.com was acquitted of all charges brought up by IFPI. Consequently the Federation filed a protest on behalf of the labels. This protest was declined last week. This time IFPI promised to go as far as the Supreme Court.

This was yet another victory for AllofMP3.com in court.

(from Court confirms legality of AllofMP3.com ,AllofMP3.com)

Peter O’Toole is just so cool. I just found out that he has written two books (autobiographies, both), and is in the process of writing a third. I intend to read them. I will probably have to go to a library: they appear to be both out of print and expensive.

Net neutrality is a complex issue, but here is the main thing you need to know about it in order to support it:

The Digital Rights Mafia is against it.

Just a quick entry to mention a list of Gary Gygax jokes, and a really neat gallery of art made from A4 paper.

This is perhaps the most brilliant thing I have seen in the realm of web-based comics.

Garfield Minus Garfield

This has to be the craziest case mod I have ever seen.

In 1979, there was a Flash Gordon cartoon that I think about any time the subject of Flash Gordon comes up in conversation. I still recall the fantastic spaceship designs, Ming’s menacing metal army, and the seductive swivel-hip-action of Princess Aura. To my thirteen-year-old eyes, this was the best cartoon I’d ever seen. According to Wikipedia,

“The series was an homage to the original Flash Gordon comic strip and featured most of the original characters, including Flash’s girlfriend Dale Arden, and the scientist Hans Zarkov. The series is still regarded to be not only one of the most faithful adaptations, but also one of Filmation’s finest overall efforts to this day.” [1]

I have been looking for this episode on DVD ever since old television shows started showing up on DVD. As it turns out, I was not looking closely enough, because the show was released on DVD in 2006!

I rediscovered some other gems of that era during my search, as well: Blackstar (a guy with a magic sword who rides a dragon — a classic!), Josie And The Pussycats (my first exposure to cat-girls), the short-lived Star Trek animated series, and Isis (who introduced me to the wonders of Egyptian mythology).

The one of these I am looking forward to seeing most (aside from Flash Gordon) is Josie And The Pussycats. Although the show was technically a spin-off of the Archies, it really owed a great deal more to Scooby Doo, with its fun (if simplistic) plots, engaging characters, and musical chase scenes. Incidentally, I am also a huge Scooby Doo fan (although I think it went downhill when they started meeting Don Knotts, the Harlem Globetrotters, and the Addams Family).

Oh, and you know what started all of this? I was actually looking for Superman DVDs.