They are on the Facebook. One of them has been on this blog before. Others are new.
She is real good babby.
The Examiner
W-town’s got some new independent media: The Examiner launched yesterday. The mission is to “look deeper and think harder” which, in an era of frankly embarrassing daily newspapers, sounds worthwhile to me. It’s “peer-edited” and they’re encouraging participation from anyone nearby.
Sounds like a great Wgtn-focused companion to Scoop’s lively Werewolf monthly. Also, another good example of traditional media channels being challenged from the grassroots. Help it find its audience and take a look!
(Of course, this being W-town, two of the three launch articles interview friends of mine, and I know half of the listed contributors as well. Wellington isn’t small exactly, but it sure is densely interconnected.)
The Winding City: Episode 1
The first ep of Conan’s weird-Wellington web series, The Winding City, is now live.
It’s a neat starter with several friends-of-this-blog appearing onscreen or doing stuff offscreen. Well done to Conan and to all involved. Do check it out!
Bar graph fail
On Twitter, Jack said this:
Good summary of o’seas film production funding. We aren’t giving them money, we’re giving some of their money back. http://bit.ly/hRPBVf
The link goes to an article by Chaz Harris called Taxpayers don’t pay for movie grants!
This piece insults the “journalism” behind articles like this one from the Sunday Star Times:
Taxpayers fork out big bucks to movie studios
I read that SST article while in holidayland, and while it was rubbish in all the ways Chaz mentions, it was accompanied by a big infographic that amazed me so much I carried it home with me to blog. (Yes, I have a problem. Shush.)
This is the infographic (click to enlargenise):
Have a close look at those horizontal bars. You’ll note that the orange bar denotes “estimated NZ production expenditure” and the red bar “estimated grant”, both in millions of dollars.
Look closer at those numbers, and how they relate to the lengths of the bars. Pick an obvious one, at the top of the second column: Avatar. See how the red bar is half as long as the orange bar? See how the numbers for each are ~72 and ~11?
The proportions are out of whack throughout – the red bars are all about three times as large as they should be. The reds and the oranges are all in scale to other bars of the same colour, but the reds and oranges don’t scale to each other, even though weighting the red against the orange is the whole purpose of the graphic.
This image is credited to this guy, but I am loath to land him with all responsibility. This is an editing fuxxup. Very annoying, particularly because there’s already a lot of nonsense being bandied about on the topic. At the very least get your bloody bar graphs right. They’re not that complicated, really.
—
Just back from the beach. Maybe someone already wrote about this. If they did I missed it because I was at the beach. It was good. This post excepted, I’m still on holiday from blogging this week. I haven’t even finished going through Jenni’s guest Friday Linky from two weeks ago or re-read the mall ninja stuff from Pearce’s guest the week before. I recommend both sets of linky to those who missed them due to holiday action.
(If anyone wants to volunteer to pull together a last-minute linky for Friday, give me a shout…)
New Years Linky (by Jenni)
Hi everyone, I’m Jenni. Since Morgue and Cal still have a baby I’m doing the Friday linky this week. I gave this a lot of thought, I mean come on. Morgue’s Friday Linky is a Big Deal. People have come to expect a certain level of awesome from the links and the responsibility of providing said links should not be taken lightly. I hope I don’t disappoint you.
A life coach authored article worth reading if you’re the type to evaluate your life as we head into a new year…why are so many people unhappy?
Meg Cabot (author of The Princess Diaries books) on The Princess Thing and how people are looking at it wrong.
Those of you who read my blog will know about this guy anyway, but I love this guy so here he is again. Mark, a gay, educated and sensitive to sexism man, reads Twilight. Hilarity ensues. He’s also done all of Harry Potter and is just starting the second book of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.
An infographic that shows how the world has changed in the last decade.
Jezebel has been running a rather excellent review of the best female comic creators of 2010. Check out Part one and part two.
For low effort, big impact reading try the Twitter length horror stories at Dead End Fiction.
I will abuse my linky writing power to bring your attention to this short animation done by my sister in law’s family. The narrator is my husband, Lee.
Looks like I’m meant to have another video in here, so here’s Tron: Legacy in 30 seconds.
And so concludes the Friday Linky – Jenni edition. You can check out my blog here. I hope you weren’t too bored.
[morgue adds: SO not bored! This stuff looks really cool, can’t wait to dig into it! Thanks Jenni! Go check out her blog for chat about writing, crafts, and other random things, including the always delightful Things I Love Thursday.]
About Willa
For those wanting details, here are details. Everyone else, feel free to skip.
Willa is named for her paternal great-grandmother – my father’s mother. G-gma was Williamina and known as Mina, but we went with the alternative spelling Willamina to be known as Willa (and for an easier time spelling her name). Both versions are Scots variants on the Germanic form, Wilhelmina. It means “protector”, which is a pretty good name meaning to have.
Willa’s middle name Therese appears on both sides of the family tree. She’s taking my last name, Davie, at least for now. We don’t have a long-term strategy for a family name. We can talk about it with her when she’s old enough to have an opinion, I guess.
Willa arrived weighing just under 9 pounds (just over 4kg), which is big but not huge. She was long, 53cm I think, so she might have inherited my height. She could just lift her head right from birth, and a week on is easily able to support her own head long enough to turn it towards whatever she wants to look at.
Willa likes to sleep with her hands on either side of her forehead, fingers curled forward. She’s a good healthy feeder and is generally very content and happy. We are seriously counting our blessings in this regard because a lot of our friends have had rough rides with their new babies; hopefully this good streak will continue. (Cal jokingly argues that she deserves some easy time after a long nausea-ridden pregnancy!)
Willa has big feet. I took four randomly-selected pairs of baby booties to the hospital; three pairs were much too small, and the other just fit.
We read her her first story today; Hairy Maclary. Of course she had no idea what was going on but I think she picked up that something a bit special was happening. She spent most of the duration looking at the book rather than at Cal or me, and Cal thought she liked listening to my voice. (It’s a good book, lovely to read. Also: full of dogs, which fits into Cal’s masterplan to have every child in the world love dogs.)
She’s wonderful, basically, and the most amazing thing is how much it seems like she belongs here. Having her in our lives is perfectly right.
Oh also I’m total stereotypical dad with a camera full of baby photos. But I will try not to spam y’all.
[We haven’t opened our hoose to visitors just yet, but I look forward to showing her off soon!]
Lookalikes
Christmas Linky (by Pearce)
Hi. I’m Pearce. Morgue and Cal have had a baby, so today you get linky from me.
An explication of James Bond’s taste in whiskey.
Black Christmas is a compilation you can download for free of The Cramps’ favourite Christmas songs.
In that vein here is a YouTube playlist of Lovecraftian Christmas songs, by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society.
Richard Pryor in the Star Wars bar, because I couldn’t bear to link to the Star Wars Holiday Special.
Homosexual Frogs is an interesting discussion of the Political Correctness thing.
Gruesome Victorian-ish porcelain dolls.
I first ran across Shrine of the Mall Ninja a couple of years ago courtesy of William Gibson’s blog.
It was eight years yesterday since Joe Strummer died. Lest We Forget.
Brian Cox teaches Shakespeare to a toddler:
Merry Christmas to all!
[morgue says: awesome! Hey y’all, go read the Pearce blog! It is full of coolness.]
Willamina Therese Davie
Willa arrived about 4.45 this morning. She’s happy and well. Cal is delighted by baby and fact she’ll be able to enjoy a Christmas feast. Dad = thoroughly chuffed.
Waiting Linky
[yes still waiting come on baby]
Time lapse – 10 years
Hear the individual recording tracks of Helter Skelter and Gimme Shelter. There’s probably more of these out there.
Great article about young Haitians learning to make films. (By Anne Nocenti who used to write Daredevil back in the day, funnily enough.)
The entirety of the 1910 Frankenstein film
The AV Club’s been running a great series, Whatever happened to Alternative Nation?, which is an account of the “alt rock”/”grunge” era from the perspective of a guy who grew up amongst it. Which is to say, he writes about my life, dude. Well written and worth a read for those who, like me, had their minds blown a bit when they first heard Smells like teen spirit in ’91. (Though I didn’t become a Nirvana fan for a few years after that.)
Photoshop at work on Megan Fox
From my bro: Law & the multiverse, a blog deconstructing the legal ramifications of superhero stories.
Amazing coin-based stop-motion film. (With 1-minute making of at the end.)
And finally… WTF Woody from Toy Story? (not safe for work, or for your dignity)