An extremely cool simulation of a computer experience using paper and transparencies.

http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=I9TtDecveCE

Growing up i was, like many kids, a comic book reader.  My friend zack and I used to walk up broadway to "Forbidden Planet" a great comic book store in new york, and hunt for comics for hours.  My tastes were pretty mainstream, I collected the X-men mainly, but i also loved Cerebus the Aardvark with its unbelievable background art, and the strange Tales of the Beanworld.  And my father had a very old Superman compendium and some shazaam comics that were magical.

But sometime in high school i lost all interest in comics.  I would still go into a comic book store occasionally to see if i could rekindle some interest, but it never happened.

Then a few years ago zack suggested a graphic novel (basically a long book-sized comic book) to me, I *think* it was Kingdom Come, which revisited some of the comic book heroes i had read growing up.  That was a huge eye opener -- it tapped into all of the deep seated memories and emotional attachment i had to the comic universe, but somehow made it interesting and accessible again.

Now we come to Watchmen, which completely blew my mind.  This is a tale of comic book heros from an adult perspective.. Just a remarkable achievement.

I don't know if someone who never read comic books as a kid will get much out of these high quality graphic novels, but if you used to read comic books as a kid, but lost interest in them, I cannot recommend Watchmen more strongly.

As you might guess, what's motivated me to make this post is the impending release this week of the Watchmen movie.  I have no idea if it will be good or not but you can get the graphic novel on amazon for $11.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmen

Dear lord.. this is real.  Personally i think this planet is not good enough to deserve the people who have what it takes to create stuff like this.

Just to *assemble* it before you can play with it:

The puzzle has 975 individual parts.
Each face has 101 stickers, making a total of 1212 stickers.
20 hours on masters and molds.
12 hours casting parts.
30 hours cleaning up parts and sanding (!!)
7 hours assembling all 975 parts
6 hours stickering.

tutorial and videos on puzzleforge

Twitpay is a new site that let's you send small amounts of money to other people very quickly and easily using twitter.

It seems like a nice idea with a clever implementation, and most of all they've focused on making it EASY to gift money; as I've written about before, I really think that is the key to making this kind of approach succeed.

As fellow travelers in the very small circle of sites that are dependent on micropayments, I think we should be supportive of efforts like this, and wish them the best success.  Any time it becomes easier for normal people to fund each other through small donations, I think the entire community benefits.

Today, we’re taking Twitpay out of beta and putting it out there for everyone to use.
As we’ve thought about what’s important about social payments, a few things stayed in the front of our minds: they have to be really easy, and they have to be secure. We got the easy part down on Day 1: just tweet the money and it goes! If you haven’t used Twitpay yet, here’s how it works:

• 1. Post a tweet like  ”@ev twitpay $1 because Twitter is awesome”
• 2. There’s no Step 2!

http://www.twitpay.me

Also check out the twitpay blog (interesting reading): http://blog.twitpay.me/

First of all let me say to everyone who has participated on the site over the last 4 years, that it's been my real pleasure and honor to meet and talk to all of you.  This website has been the highlight of my life during that time.  I don't expect everyone to feel that way, but I hope you at least feel like the site has brightened your day a little, once or twice.


It's never easy asking for money (that's why I've avoided running a fundraiser for 2 years), but that time has come where we need to raise some extra cash to help pay for our hosting costs and other expenses, and to help fund future projects.

Donations to the site from ordinary people have made all the difference in the world.  They have made it possible for this site to remain advertisement free and pay for a now pretty heavy duty pair of web servers that run us almost $6000 a year in hosting costs.

Thinking back to the early days of the site when we were running off a $20/month shared hosting plan brings a real smile to my face.  We are currently serving about 30gb of traffic and a million hits each and every day.  I think that's pretty remarkable.

It was money from donations that made it possible for us to send dozens of mugs and shirts out as rewards for people who participated in the last freeware programming challenge we had.  It's true we can't afford to send out giant monetary prizes like the big companies do, but we are proud of what we do, and proud of where our money comes from.  For me personally, the donations make it possible for me to spend more time working on the website and software for the site, and interacting with users; and I can't think of anything I'd rather be doing.

Most of all, donations have made it possible for this site to stay true to itself, and have made being part of the site something I think everyone involved in can be proud of and feel good about.

If you've already donated to the site and are not in a position to donate again -- don't think twice about it, we're grateful for your support.

But if you've not yet donated, or can spare a little more, permit me, on behalf of site, to ask you to take the trouble to make a donation now.  I can promise you that we will put it to good use as we work hard to make this site even better in the coming year.

-mouser (jesse)

ps.
Cody (our bird/duck mascot) has insisted I tell people that if they cannot make monetary donations, he would be happy to receive chocolate coins in gold foil wrappers, or else hand drawn pictures of himself to hang on his wall.

We don't do enough posts about new small sites and blogs.   Here's one that I was emailed about by the author.  Looks neat.

the whole philosophy behind Web Talk is to deliver to you the best news…in pills. Many people don’t have a lot of time to spend in front of the computer nor do they want to read long articles about new software, online services or interesting web sites. I like getting straight to the point and I do believe that the only way to achieve that it’s to give concise, brief, accurate and verified news.

http://www.webtlk.com/