Things I Did Yesterday, if it were still actually 24/03/10

Like a lagging bullet, "yesterday" I:

- Worked. I got in early, as Josh and I were heading to a graphic novel workshop for London librarians. We jumped in a cab and headed out to Whitechapel, to the Idea Works there. Idea Works, by the way, was apparently an abortive attempt to rebrand libraries for the 21st century before a new marketing guy came along and decided that “library” was actually a brand after all. No doubt hundreds of thousands of pounds later. Local government really is like a sucker on the street corner with his bag hanging open. Anyway, very modern place, all quite nice inside.

- We did a GN workshop last year which was a bit of a disaster. Well, not really on the whole, but I gave a speech that completely fell apart thanks to my nerves, so I was a little anxious about having another presentation this time; a ¾ hour one, no less. It went fine though, mainly as I was just rabbiting on about stock. Also, we had a smaller group discussion in the morning which made me feel a lot more comfortable with the people there. So the day went quite well, all told. Certainly made some good progress winning people around to specialist supply for their GNs. An got to knock off at 4.

- Went home. Fully played the Trials HD demo, which now leaves me wanting the full game. Highly addictive. Sat down and worked out how I’m going to juggle my money over the next few months. SA has left me and Alex pretty skint, and now I have to make a student loans payment to NZ IRD as a apart of my amnesty agreement. So that’s another £700 down the tubes, leaving me a serious shortfall of cashflow for the month. Looks like a bit of subbing lies ahead.

- Started rewatching Flight of the Conchords, which I’ve been meaning to do for a while. Still good.

- Played around with the two leading desktop digital comics applications: Longbox and Graphic.ly. Both are in beta release (0.5 & 0.2.1, respectively) and both still have plenty of issues. My machine is getting a little long in the tooth, but the lag in both programs seemed a little ridiculous. Still, that aside, my initial impressions are that Longbox seems to have more features available (most as yet locked in beta), but Graphic.ly has a much nicer, leaner interface. Longbox is, frankly, ugly. It’s too busy on its home page, the net result being an initially very confusing entry into the program. Both are quite buggy, and Graphic.ly had a persistent crashing problem for the first 6 or so times I tried to start it. So, lots of work to do on both. I’ve got the complete Miracleman as cbr files, which Longbox will allow me to import into my library, so the next step is to try reading those to see just how bearable the reading experience is. Not sure if I can import to Graphic.ly. Not obviously, anyway.

- Watched the first episode of the new season of Nurse Jackie. It was fine, but completely skipped by the big threads of last season’s cliffhanger. Not a promising start. I hope this doesn’t mean they’re going to string things along even more.