|
|
You are viewing the most recent 25 entries.
8th January 2010
murnkay @ 1:02pm: A-Team movie trailer
 This entry originated at adampknave.com. Well it’s here. The first A-Team trailer. Starring Liam Neeson as Hannibal, Sharlto Copley as Murdock, Bradley Cooper as Face and Quinton Jackson as B.A. Baracus, it’s kinda… well look it’s an A-Team movie. It should make no real sense and be a series of “Huh? What?” moments strung together with a black van. The van is in the trailer. The last moment in the trailer is really “Huh? What?”
So this might be… well good is the wrong word, but good.
murnkay @ 10:10am: Change in Design, 3
This entry originated at adampknave.com. So in rethinking my site (and if you’re reading this off adampknave.com, via LJ or RSS – take a look, the site is cleaner and tinier now) I started thinking about what I present and how.
One of the things I realized was that I have three main components to everything:
Prose/Comics – My writing. Free fiction is hosted here, information about stories, etc. The site is a gathering point for data on all my projects. Now the Bibliography page looks funky in the new site and I’ll get there this weekend, but that’s not the point. The idea is that the site exists to promote, expose and discuss my writing work. So it needs to have it and have it accessible and readable.
Blog – I enjoy blogging. Writing essays like this, or sharing a fun link, bit of news whatever it is. The blog portion of the site makes me feel connected to the world. It is also, through RSS, and LJ syndication, my broadcast point to the world. So it’ll also mention the writing, and refer over to it and promote it. This way the antenna goes up and the signal goes out. The blog portion of the site is often the first face, the thing that captures readers. So it is important that section be face-first and well-heeled.
Satellites – Here’s the one I had trouble defining for a while. Twitter, Tumblr, my various columns and other internet spots of presence that do not and can not live on this one site. What are they and how should they be treated? It wasn’t until the other day that I even realized what I wanted to call them. Satellites. They’re small points that aren’t attached to the main structure but circle it, leading people back (sometimes) and spreading the word outside of this one spot. So that’s my next move. Moving columns and side projects out of the bibliography section (where they never belonged) and merging them with other site presences in a new satellite section.
That way, when you come to adampknave.com you’ll see the first face, the blog, instantly. you’ll also get hints of the rest, and links to it. Clean and simple pointers that will lead you across all the different facets of what the site does in a simple and logical manner.
So let’s see. I’ve spent three days thinking about this, spent last night redoing the site, and have written a few thousand words on it. Now I have to just finish the work. In a year or so we’ll see if the thoughts stand when I adapt everything again, but I think they will. They theory has been growing, every year, to this place where it feels matured and right. We shall see.
7th January 2010
murnkay @ 11:43am: Christopher Lee – headbanger.
This entry originated at adampknave.com. So Christopher Lee is going to release a metal concept album. According to Geeks of Doom: Charlemagne, which will be released on March 15, 2010, is a concept album about King Charlemagne, the First Holy Roman Emperor.
Here’s a sample:
Some more about the album: “The Carandinis, Lee’s maternal ancestors, were given the right to bear the coat of arms of the Holy Roman Empire by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. Through his Carandini ancestors, Christopher Lee has a direct link to Charlemagne, and has decided for the first time in his life to pay homage to his distinguished ancestor, who is credited as “The Father of Europe”.
Charlemagne is a concept album with original words and symphonic metal music.
Composer Marco Sabiu, best known for his collaborations with Kylie Minogue, Take That, Pavarotti, Morricone, has created a truly epic canvas by introducing modern metal symphonies, in a style which resembles a movie score. Marie-Claire Calvet, a graduate from Bristol University, transports the listener into “The Dark Ages”, with a very powerful storyline and mesmerising lyrics. A full orchestra, heavy metal musicians, choir and special guest vocalists bring the legend of Charlemagne to life.”
murnkay @ 10:24am: Change in design, part 2
This entry originated at adampknave.com. Yesterday I talked some about why you should update your site. At the same time, Ariana discussed what your site does. As in what it is for. These two dovetail enough I wanted to continue the discussion I started yesterday.
I’m going to, quite obviously I would think, use my own site for this. I know it fairly well and it has all the problems I want to solve. Because when you’re redoing a site, and you’re looking at technologies to incorporate that maybe you’ve wanted a while, and a look that gets the right feel across you also can’t forget the most important part: form follows function.
I could build a beautiful site all about video blogging. Except that I don’t video blog (vlog, oh vlog how I do not like you as a term) at all so it wouldn’t help me much. My site needs to do what I need it to do. Which brings to question: what exactly is it that my site does, and, once that is known, does it do it well at all?
All right. So let’s look at adampknave.com and see what it does.
Huh. It does… way too much crammed into way too small a space. There’s a blog filled with both silly pictures and funny videos and essays like this and life rambles and humor articles. Then it tries to sell my books and comics. Then it also has links to my satellite things: twitter, columns, my tumblr (oh yes I have one, shhh) etc. Things that are me that I want to point readers to but are not, necessarily, part of the site itself.
So then what is the site? It’s a place to find out about me, as a writer, and also to … get everything else in the world. Why would someone coming to the site want to stay? The posts are scattershot, so maybe if they find a topic interesting they’d stay for a second post, until everything drifted off that topic again. Maybe they like the TV show parodies, etc. Well, all right, fine I need to admit and know that no blog I ever run will be a guided missile of purpose. It will always be the noise that falls out of my head. But separating the prose and the comics from that noise some wouldn’t hurt. Otherwise people come and they see everything at once and that can be a bit much.
Overloading visitors is never good. Simplicity is nice. Find out what they came for and give it to them. Let the visitor choose what they want to dig into and when. A controllable environment. Now, I have some ideas about that, and some of them may be outdated. A few of them are far above my abilities as a graphics person and coder.
But with some advice, and questions and a bunch of work I can pull it off. The trick, then, is to make sure that what I want to do is mobile enough to work as I move forward. Some things won’t be, of course, but the more that will the better. Less dead links out there the better. While designing this next incarnation over the coming months I will also be working, in my head, on where it could possibly go next. Now a lot of that will be scrapped when reality comes to play, but it doesn’t hurt to think about.
Finally, going forward, what will adampknave.com be? That’s the question, isn’t it? Well. It should be a hub for every aspect of my life online. A single source for everything I do, including information about my prose and comic projects, a blog/RSS feed for broadcast streaming purposes (and read Ariana, guys, if she doesn’t get to that one I know I will eventually. But chances are she will, and she’ll do it smarter than I will), consolidated satellite management and streamlined outreach management. One single place where you can, easily, find and touch and experience and explore every inch of any project I put in the public: from novels and funny images I dream up, right down to my 4am thoughts, if I want to share them. It should be a full data hub.
So what does your site do, what is it for and how can you make that come across better?
6th January 2010
murnkay @ 11:48am: Change in design
This entry originated at adampknave.com. Something that’s come up a few times with a friend or two has been the idea that any webpage should hit a redesign roughly every year. That’s not a firm date. Some do it every six months, some do it every two or so years but the general rule of thumb is about a year. I’ll say this and in return I get asked why. My response has often been “Because.” which is hardly a response at all and seems like a lot of hand-waving. So, I thought I would dig into that why some, here.
The easy, quick answer is simply to keep things fresh and looking new. Which is true, sure, but overly simple. Everything redesigns. And yes a lot of it is to look current. Capabilities change. Graphics change. Sensibilities change. Audiences like to feel that the thing they are ingesting is fresh and current. Take NBC for example. Below are a bunch of the network’s TV logos and the year they put them into place:
That was an example off the top of my head. You can take any brand, or magazine, or publisher of books and see the same evolution for yourself. Branding adapts and evolves over time. Webpages are branding for things. Some of them are corporate, CNN, for example, and some are personal, right here, but they represent brands. As such they need to grow and change to reflect, even at a very basic level, that they aren’t standing still.
( Read the rest of this entry » )
5th January 2010
murnkay @ 9:58pm: For Immediate release: Popgun at The Comic Book Club, Feb 16th
This entry originated at adampknave.com. Feb 16th @ 8pm come see me, Vito Delsante and Nick Tapansky whore it up and laugh it up at the Comic Book Club with hosts Justin, Pete and Alex. The Comic Book Club is a live, weekly show about, well, comics. It’s perfectly hysterical, to be honest. So I’m a bit excited to be able to announce this very special event. Details below, but short form: Feb 16th, 8pm, @ The PIT, tickets are $5. Real details and such are below. I hope to see some of you there!
COMIC BOOK CLUB: A Live Weekly Talk Show about Comic Books
Hosted by Justin Tyler, Pete LePage, and Alex Zalben
Featuring:
***Popgun Spectacular!***
w/ Adam P. Knave
Vito Delsante &
Nick Tapansky
Tuesday, February 16th @ 8:00 PM
Tickets: $5
Online: ThePIT-NYC.com
Phone: 1-800-838-3006
Questions? 212-563-7488
The Peoples Improv Theater
154 West 29th Street, 2nd Floor
Between 6th and 7th Aves.
Check out the website:
http://www.popcultureshock.com/comicbookclub
Check out the web stuff:
http://www.youtube.com/comicbookclub
The show is sponsored in part by Midtown Comics:
http://www.midtowncomics.com
Check out the podcast on iTunes:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=273148505
adgy @ 6:09pm: D'awwww!!!
  Tony and Carina were so cute.
adgy @ 3:53pm: Adgy's Top 10 albums of 2009
 Now that I've got some time, I want to try and get this done. If I still have time a little later, I'll do my top 10 movies of the year, too. We'll see. These are my 10 favorite albums from this past year. Like it says at the top. I posted 30 runners up a couple of days ago and just haven't had the time to finish this. Just like previous years, I am embedding a single track from each album in the entry so that you can choose to either stream the track right here and now (by pressing the "play" arrow on the left side) or download the mp3 and listen to it whenever you want (by clicking on the "DivShare" link). Or you can do both. I'm also including links to purchase the albums on Amazon in the album's name on the off chance you like a sample track so much you must immediately purchase the album from whence it came. See what I do for you? ( The List )( Year End Mixes )
4th January 2010
murnkay @ 2:15pm: CLANGCLANGCLANG!
This entry originated at adampknave.com. No, bird, stop that. You are a bird, not a metal worker. You will break your face. Silly bird. Oh, silly silly bird.
murnkay @ 9:21am: Catersode 1: The Phantom Cat Menace
This entry originated at adampknave.com. I hate Phantom Cat. See, I am so used to having a cat around when I’m home that when I travel somewhere and stay at a place, like a hotel, without a cat, my reflexes are off. I keep turning around, looking where I step, being careful where I sit – because of cats.
Because of cats that don’t exist. Not particularly helpful.
It’s worse at night, though. Say… when I try to sleep. I expect a cat jumping on the bed at some point. My body is used to that. Very much so. So when I go to bed, I expect it. And when it doesn’t happen I can’t fall asleep. Nothing, no cat, has leapt upon the bed and demanded I pay attention to it before I dare go to bed. No little lump of solid mass against my hip, burrowing in like a sandworm.
It’s Phantom Cat. That stupid set of cat reflexes that are utterly useless when you aren’t around a cat and that, no matter how much you want to, you can’t turn off. When you go to a friend’s house and check the sofa before sitting, in case there’s a cat under foot. When you start to almost shuffle in a dark room that isn’t in your apartment, because you know that’s the best time for cats to trip you up. ARGH!
Of course, for me, what ends up happening is that I stay away just long enough to get used to no cat. Then I go home. Now, the reflexes all kick in within seconds of getting home but that always winds up being about ten seconds too late. Somehow, in that slice of time, I end up tripping over the cat or something, as if I’d never lived with a cat before.
Still. Phantom Cat is one of those dangers. I don’t know a single cat owner who doesn’t get it, dog owners probably do as well, I’d guess, those they wouldn’t call it Phantom Cat I suppose. Fish owners must be immune. They must be.
Phantom Cat. Just another way they’re out to get us and warp our brains.
2nd January 2010
murnkay @ 12:57pm: Doctor Thompson, I Presume
This entry originated at adampknave.com. At least 80% of this article was written live and on the scene at the Hunter S. Thompson signing in NYC on Weds Feb 7, 2003th using a Handspring Visor and an attachable keyboard. As such, any factual mistakes are mine and mine only.
So here we are … hella long line sitting on the damn floor of the B&N while we wait for this shindig to start the fuck up …
It’s 5:25 now, HST gets here at 7 or so. They just told us the are already almost out of wrist bands. Yeah it’s a fucking rave here alright … you need a bright green wristband to get something signed. We were smart though. One item signed per person and I had my copy of the book and got one for Unrepentant at the Strand (Laszlo got his book there too) so the book itself was cheaper. which is fairly spiffy – the B&N folk looked like the might care if only they weren’t swamped by fuckers waiting for the good Doctor to show up.
Next to us is a very very nice guy – clocking in at about 6 foot goddamn with a damn cool beard. He went and pissed and came back with coffee and a cookie and decided to offer it around. I love this town I tell you, people are fucking well friendly. The line keeps breaking up, there goes a woman (who let us know she will be out of town March 5th till the19th – by accident, she was on her phone) and she is off to the bathroom too.
Behind me someone asked a friend “I wonder if he’ll sign this” followed by a chuckle. I hope no trou were dropped.
( Read the rest of this entry » )
1st January 2010
adgy @ 8:05pm: More best of the decade stuff.
 Love HK Film's top 50 Hong Kong films of the last 10 years as voted by their readers. Obviously, there are going to be some disagreements about the order, but I think it's a pretty solid list. I'm one of the few people in the world that seems to prefer Kung Fu Hustle to Shaolin Soccer... Good place to pick up a few recommendations, that's for sure.
adgy @ 7:53pm: Movies I've seen in 2010
 I've been keeping track of every single movie I watch on my LJ since 2005. This is me continuing that. I find it comes in handy quite a bit. Each movie gets a rating and a comment if I feel like commenting on it, and this entry gets bookmarked and I come back and edit it every time I watch a movie. I include a link to each film's IMDB page whenever possible. * = first time seeing Movies seen in a theater1. Where The Wild Things Are* - 9/10 Movies seen elsewhere1. Girl Boss: Escape From Reform School* - 8/10 I have yet to see a Miki Sugimoto movie I didn't like. I should screencap this one because there were a lot of pretty images amidst all the ladies fighting. Not listed on IMDB. 2. The Matrix Reloaded - 8/10 I don't care, I still enjoy it. The freeway scene is hot shit. 3. The Matrix Revolutions - 7/10 So much wasted potential. And not enough Monica Bellucci. 4. Kill Bill Vol. 1 - 9/10 5. Before The Devil Knows You're Dead* - 9/10 So good, it was almost Coen Brothers good. 6. Before The Devil Knows You're Dead* - 9/10 Watched with commentary by Sidney Lumet, Philip-Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke. Pretty alright. 7. KillIng Machine* - 7/10 Fun movie, but not quite what the title implied. Bonus points for the castration scene and Etsuko Shihomi looking totally adorable. Sonny Chiba movie #1 for the year. 8. Shogun's Ninja* - 6/10 Great director and lots of great actors, but not a good movie at all. Sonny Chiba movie #2 for the year. 9. The Return Of Sister Street Fighter* - 8/10 My least favorite of the series, but still fun. Totals:Total # of movies to date: 10 Total # of different movies: 9 Total # of movies seen for the first time: 6
murnkay @ 3:40pm: Space Battleship Yamoto
This entry originated at adampknave.com. Star Blazers (Space Battleship Yamoto) is getting a live action movie? Oh holy shit! This looks awesome! Here’s the trailer:
31st December 2009
adgy @ 1:57pm: The Best Music of 2009: Honorable Mention
 If you were to ask me to make a list of every album that was released this year that I liked, that list would be over 200 albums long. I made a considerable effort this year to try and listen to new bands and new types of music and some of it was well worth the time and some of it wasn't. There was a lot of it that I really liked, but didn't really get a chance to listen to repeatedly enough. Some of the stuff in this honorable mention list might have made the top 10 if I had a couple more months to properly absorb it. But I don't, so I can't. I would like to make mention of them, though, on the off chance that someone reading this feels like trying some new music. Allow me to make 30 recommendations (not counting what will be my top 10). These are not ranked in any order. I'll write a bit about each album and probably copy a lot from the artist's LastFM bio to help save time and to help cover the fact that I don't know much about music beyond what I like and don't like. Just like previous years, I am embedding a single track from each album in the entry so that you can choose to either stream the track right here and now (by pressing the "play" arrow on the left side) or download the mp3 and listen to it whenever you want (by clicking on the "DivShare" link). Or you can do both. I will have mixes with my actual Top 10 post, if you'd rather wait (though not all of these discs will be represented there). ( On we go. )
adgy @ 9:51am: Philip Glass for free.
 I don't know about you, unless you're The Lady, but I love Philip Glass. And so it is with great pleasure that I inform you that Amazon's MP3 store is giving away The Orange Mountain Music Philip Glass Sampler Vol. I for free.  21 tracks selected from different periods in Glass' work, including a bunch of soundtracks. Highly recommended.
murnkay @ 8:45am: Star Wars + Clerks = win
This entry originated at adampknave.com. Someone found a way to make one of the prequel Star Wars movies watchable! Revenge of the Sith + Clerks = worth your time.
30th December 2009
murnkay @ 8:41am: Custom Hoodies…
This entry originated at adampknave.com. It seems the folks over at Calgary Cosplay make custom hoodies. They’ll make you a Pikachu hoodie, or a (Other Pokemon I can’t name) hoodie, or whatever. Some of these custom hoodies go for $150 bucks and up.
Of course Pokemon aren’t all they do. Megaman, for example. And, you know, Pedobear.
Nope. Not joking. $175 bucks for your very own custom, hand made, Pedobear hoodie.
I can’t see anyone wearing that and having it end up well. Unless it was a Pedoflashmob. That might work out. But short of that? No. Just… no.
Powered by LiveJournal.com
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
