A new book from Zaptoons

I've just read the first draft (as it exists so far) of a new book coming soon from Zaptoons by none other than Mike Milo. I really like it! This one marks a bit of a different direction from our other books to date. We'll keep you posted as yet another kids book project takes shape.

Zoundry to the Rescue

Last month I posted a rant about Blogger's terrible, horrible, wretched image controls. Through the magic of the internet, Priyantha from Zoundry found my post and answered (Thanks!) to inform me of a newer version of the application Zoundry Blog Writer. This is a common-sense WYSIWYG blog-editor that works much like a word processor.

The world of PC applications is sometimes baffling to me; there's often no shortage of applications that all do the same mundane thing (I could replace NotePad about 10,000 times a week) but on the flip side, there's often very common tasks for which virtually no one seems to have taken up the challenge of making a capable application.

Millions of people write blogs these days. That's just an obvious fact. Yet there are so few desktop applications for blogging. To me, a dedicated desktop blog application is as logical a tool as a desktop word processor. Having to rely on Blogger's online controls, or convert to a whole new system that still may not provide the features I want (like LOGICAL image placement) seems a bit silly to me, as compared to an infinitely more practical switch to a better blog writing tool.

By my estimation, Zoundry is blazing the trail. I have to really thank Priyantha for taking the time to post here and notify me of a newer version with features I've been wanting. Even in its present beta stage, Zoundry seems to be improving with each new release closer to 'master'.

I'll be using Zoundry to post here and to other blogs. If you're a blogger yourself, head over to their website, download the Zoundry application and give it a spin. It supports a host of blog-types such as Wordpress, Blog Harbor, Nucleus, etc.

Nice touches: I love that links are created automatically from the clipboard! Very nice drag and drop image controls, nice option to upload thumbnails only, and nice option not to resize. Leaves Blogger's online application sorely lacking.

My *minor* gripes: Would it be possible to have an option not to rename the image files? Could the sidebar post listings remain sorted by date, newest first? New posts drift to the bottom.

Things that will really make it shine: A basic HTML editor. Option to justify text.

Overall, Bravo! Obviously much time and effort has gone into the application. Many thanks to the folks at Zoundry for creating such a great tool that makes life that much easier!

This post was created with Zoundry Blog Writer 0.9.126.

Ignoramooses article

Here's an article from way back yonder in 1998 whe our cartoon The Ignoramooses came out. It was featured in a paper back in my hometown- sort of a "Local Boy Makes Good" sort of thing.

Anyway, you can read and see more about The Ignoramooses here.

Update

Whoosh. I'm in the middle of a very tough series of weeks working at Fox Television Animation. I've put in some brutal hours lately, but I do enjoy my work.

Currently my wife is away in Finland visiting her family- normally I'd use the added time of her not being here to do more writing, but currently that just hasn't been in the cards.

More later as things get back to normal in the coming weeks.

Server Service

Zaptoons was offline yesterday due to a small misunderstanding with the hosting company that serves this site. Basically, they can’t seem to get my billing information correct and they zap me offline once a year after sending my bills to the wrong email. I’ve updated this information three times already, but somehow their servers can’t seem to make the adjustment and everything switches back to outdated information. After 24 hours of server downtime, the matter gets resolved after I’ve pulled my hair out and dealt with increasingly surly tech support. No doubt this would happen again next year like clockwork- if I were game for it. I’m not.

I won’t name names, as I’ve no intention of publicly trash-talking the hosting company by name, but many of you may have received an error message from them if you tried to access the site yesterday.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be porting Zaptoons (and several other sites I run) over to a new hosting company that boasts much better support service, has greater features, boasts faster hardware, and is cheaper to boot.

This change isn’t just due to recent inconveniences with the current hosting company, but the fact that we’ve actually outgrown the server that runs this site. We need more web space, and more bandwidth to handle ever increasing traffic, and it was inevitable that we’d have to find a bigger server sooner or later. So I’ll be making the change sooner, rather than later.

There may be a small gap – a day or so- where Zaptoons is unavailable while the new DNS servers propagate- but it shouldn’t be too long.

I’ve learned my lesson- as with most things, it always pays to shop around!

It's a Beautiful Google Earth!

New York, New York

Maybe it's old news for some, but I've just gotten the chance to play with Google Earth this holiday weekend, and all I can say is... "WOW!" I'm simply amazed by this program!

If you haven't already, run to this site and download Google Earth! This is an incredible piece of commercial software originally developed by a company called Keyhole, now purchaced by Google and made available as a free download. It uses satellite imaging and 3D data to render a virtual earth that you can explore from overhead.

WARNING: If you're a person with an inquisitive mind, be prepared for your productivity to take a nosedive! This earth simulator is very addictive for explorer types; you can easily fritter away hours in virtual flight over the world.

Be sure to toggle the buildings feature on, to see large city skylines in three dimensions. (US cities only). Here I was flying above Los Angeles amid the spaghetti maze of freeways and skyscrapers downtown.

You'll need a PC (sorry Mac users) and a fairly decent graphics card capable of basic 3D rendering. Most PCs from the past few years should fit the bill.

Zoom from space to the ground and focus on details with astonishing clarity. Not all of the world is shown in the highest-res detail, but there's enough of it to keep you exploring.

Some things of note: in the application options (under tools), set the level of elevation exaggeration to 2 or 3 for the most 3D effect. If you have a fairly modern system with a good graphics card, set all the levels of detail and distance to their highest. Under the cache tab, increase the amounts of disk and memory as your system allows.Once you're set up, kick back and enjoy exploring the globe. You can use the navigation controls to tilt the view plane, fly over any location, zoom in and out etc. to your heart's content.

The names of cities and towns pop up as you near them. In North America, you can toggle street names on, taking the guess work out of figuring out where you are. You can toggle all manner of borders on and off to help you identify cities, counties, states, countries, land masses, bodies of water, etc.

There are a host of tools that make this application quite useful. The measurement tools let you visually calculate distance between points on the globe. You can toggle markers for schools, hospitals, nightclubs, gas stations, banks, etc. There are also user-created markers from the Keyhole community that pinpoint various sights all over the globe.

Simply type an address or point of interest into the search window and sit back as the program 'flys' you there. If you don't know where to start, simply take the guided world tour to get you up to speed.

Hurricane Katrina

Once again, disaster befalls us. I’m simply stunned at the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina. My best wishes and prayers go out to the people caught up in that epic battle between man and nature, especially those trapped in the devastated areas of Louisiana and Mississippi.

I’d just like to do my small part in reminding everyone to donate to relief efforts underway to help those in need during this time of crisis. Please give what you can to the relief organization of your choice.