robot-alert!

The other thing I did today to stave off boredom was to scan in some of the comic strips I drew in Angouleme... which themselves were drawn to stave off boredom, curiously enough. I am considering doing a limited-edition printing of this, just for laughs, with a silkscreened cover. If you want to download an e-book version of it click the link below. It's about 1.7MB.

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Yes, I have been laid up for the better part of this week with an awful, lingering bug. Today's means of preventing insanity was to try and do some drawings in my journal, and fortunately I was able to do this without falling into a swoon. The page is kind of hard to read, so if you click on the link you can see the full-size version.

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Poor James has been ill again. He's had terrible flu, brought over specially from France. He's a poor little cactus. Please send him supportive messages. And don't forget to buy his book, available from amazon.fr. Even I think it's quite good.

My book, The Grand Tour, debuted at the Angouleme comics festival last week. It's a memoir of a series of trips I took a year ago, through Europe and the US, where I met up with old friends and family and finally attended my sister's New Age wedding in California. The book is in the form of a sketchbook diary I kept while travelling, and clocks in at about 160 pages. It's a far more personal work than anything else I've done, and creating it in an improvised setting, without a studio or any special equipment, completely changed the way I think about comics.

There was a fair amount of interest in the book at the festival. Since it's rather long, no one had had a chance to read it yet, so I haven't had any responses. The publishers, Editions Flblb, sold a decent number of copies, considering it costs 19 euros (about 13 pounds). It's an unconventional book in that it combines elements of travel writing, sketchbook and memoir, so it remains to be seen what people will think of it. In my own personal experience, it's the first book I've done which has been enjoyed by people who have no interest in comics or drawing.

The book has been published in French, but I am going to try and distribute English editions of it in the form of a CD-ROM. If you're interested just contact me at contact@mattmatt.com.

The book is available on Amazon France and other French e-commerce sites.

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I had a long week last week. On Sunday I drew a minicomic to give people at the Angouleme convention in France. On Monday I stayed up all night writing an essay for my illustration programme. Tuesday handed it in and tried to get some sleep. Wednesday I took my minicomic to Angouleme - my first time going from Birmingham and it was pretty easy. Wednesday night through Sunday morning I was at this big chaotic festival with thousands of people, trying not to go insane. My festival included going on stage to accept a big prize for an English zine whose publisher wasn't there. I got back last night to find a letter about how the tenants in our house in Didcot are allowing their dogs to crap all over everything. Marv is still in the Peak District having a nice time with our friends. She doesnt know yet but I brought her back a present from France.

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I just discovered something called Blue vs. Red or is it Red vs. Blue? These guys make these kind of amusing sitcom-type movie episodes, using the video game Halo to act them out. The characters are all wearing body armour and helmets so that the only way you can tell them apart is their colour. It's kind of funny, but after the first fifteen seconds you start to wonder why these guys don't have anything more rewarding to do. Or for that matter why this is so popular - lots of guys sitting around watching the first season on DVD...

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I have just ordered a small robotic insect. According to Total Robots it can be configured to seek out, or avoid, light sources, like a tiny robot dracula! Hopefully it will also be possible to programme it to attack non-mechanical life-forms.

Cybug behaves like a living organism; it can be configured to be either photo-tropic (light seeking) or photo-phobic (light avoiding). It can easliy be adjusted to behave aggressively like a predator or timid and slow moving like a herbivore. Cybug is also equipped with two 'antenna' that help it avoid obstacles in its path.

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A site all about things in Birmingham that aren't terrible.

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A guy is digging out a big hunk of the front of my building this afternoon, with a hammer and chisel. I can only assume he's an official workman of some kind rather than a crazed vandal. Hopefully either way it won't go on too long as it's making the entire building shake & is starting to drive me up the wall.

Click on the link to see more riddles and the answers.

Oft I must strive with wind and wave, Battle them both when under the sea
I feel out the bottom, a foreign land. In lying still I am strong in the strife;
If I fail in that they are stronger than I, And wrenching me loose, soon put me to rout.
They wish to capture what I must keep. I can master them both if my grip holds out,
If the rocks bring succor and lend support, Strength in the struggle. Ask me my name!

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Robot dogs will allow US troops to more easily invade mountainous and forest-ridden nations.

the Army's Tank-automotive and Armaments Command, or TACOM, has just doled out $2.25 million to two robotics firms to prototype a big, mechanical dog capable of carrying ammunition, food and supplies into battle.

The contracts are part of a broader Pentagon look into robots that take their cues from nature. Defense Department-backed scientists are studying swarms of bees and packs of wolves for ideas on how to get drones to work together. Man-made snakes, lobsters, flies -- even elephant trunks -- are just a few of the animal-inspired devices being created by military-funded researchers.

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This would be a pretty sad press event to go to. Especially when the US Mars probe has just landed and is walking around cheerfully looking for stuff.

Members of the press are invited to attend a 'live' opportunity to monitor the success of the first attempt to communicate with Beagle 2 via Mars Express. The orbiter is scheduled to fly over the Beagle 2 site at 12.13 GMT. The result of this communication opportunity will be announced live during the briefing by Professor Colin Pillinger.

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There's been a lot of talk about how the US invasion of Iraq parallels the UK takeover of the area (from the Turks) at the end of WWI. But if you want to get a better idea of what they're talking about, try watching "Lawrence of Arabia". (The book, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, is probably more worthwhile, but I wouldn't know.) The dynamic is painfully familiar -- a facade of "we will liberate the Arabs" with the private acknowledgement that the vastly more powerful Western states are free to take over the area for their own interests, since there's no one around to stop them.

The film is in fact about the creation of the Middle-East as we know it today, and it reminds you that it wasn't so long ago that the West created that world. One of the main characters, Prince Faisel, ruled the new state of Syria for a time, and later was the first (British puppet) ruler of Iraq.

Of course, the stakes back then were not as high as they are now. At that time, the Arabs did not have guns or the technical expertise to run things for themselves. The British wouldn't arm them against the Turks: "Give them artillery and you give them their independence." Nowadays keeping the Arabs in line isn't quite as simple a matter.

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James has just confessed that he finds Jennifer Lopez very attractive. He is thinking about buying her video.

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Stuff from the papers over the hols in the absence of real news... which I can relate to today...

We round up some of the more outlandish stories that have made the news this week.

Friday January 2, 2004

Humble pie
A village bobby found himself on the wrong side of the law in a shop full of customers when staff refused to serve him a sausage roll. Constable Dougie Brown was on duty in the village of Nettleham, near Lincoln, when he tried to buy the snack in the local Co-op store. Staff were obeying Section 178 of the Licensing Act 1964, which forbids the serving of alcohol or refreshments to a police officer on duty.

Safeway in the doghouse
The owners of a dachshund are preparing to face Safeway in court over an injury to their pet, Muffin, who was partially paralysed jumping for one of the supermarket giant's advertising leaflets posted through the letterbox of their home. Retired company director Gordon Musselwhite, 62, and his 61-year-old wife Susan have issued a £2,826.65 claim against the supermarket in the small claims division of Plymouth county court.

Hospital wings
A Liverpool grandmother had mixed fortunes when she suffered a heart attack on a plane full of cardiologists. Dorothy Fletcher, 67, was flying to her daughter's wedding in Florida when she collapsed with chest pains. A stewardess asked, "Is there a doctor on board?" and 15 heart specialists - en route to a cardiology conference in Orlando - stood up to offer help.

Feline groovy
Kevin Rymer, 39, was celebrating after scooping US magazine Pet Product News' 2003 Editor's Choice Award with his new invention: a toilet seat for cats. The Feline Evolution CatSeat is a device designed to be mounted on a normal toilet and features retractable shelves, which are textured to replace the feel of litter.

This year's lav
Suffolk nurse Sharon Wymark had an inauspicious start to 2004 when was forced to celebrate the New Year locked inside a lavatory at the Ashmore Nursing Home in Stanton, near Bury St Edmunds. Disaster struck just before midnight, but Sharon was able to imbibe a celebratory drink through the keyhole of the toilet door with a straw as the chimes struck.

Skim reading
French scientists have discovered the secret to perfect stone-skimming. To get the maximum number of bounces the angle between the stone and the water must be about 20 degrees, the researchers found, using a specially-built stone-skimming machine which let them alter the speed, spin and angle of an aluminium disc.

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The Grand Tour is now starting to show up on French e-commerce sites. Here's a link on Amazon that lists Hawaii and Grand Tour (along with some other joker.)

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