Like most people who shop regularly at a comic store I have a pull list that I submit when a new Previews magazine comes out.  Items are picked two months in advance and occasionally you forget what’s coming.  Last week I found Thor: For Asgard waiting for me.  Here’s the publisher’s blurb:

Beginning an epic adventure showcasing the God of Thunder as you’ve never seen him before! The vassals of Asgard are in armed revolt…Odin is missing…Balder is dead…and the entire continent is battered by a years-long winter. How can Thor …

I wholeheartedly enjoy the Spirit: it’s a classic character in a crime-ridden city with a colourful supporting cast, mixing action, drama and comedy in equal measure.  DC Comics has recently launched their second iteration of a Spirit ongoing series and collected the first two story arcs in The Spirit: Angel Smerti.  Here’s the publisher’s blurb:

In this first collection of the new SPIRIT series, an international crime syndicate wants to help Central City’s villain, The Octopus, consolidate control over the underworld. They’ve offered The Octopus the services of one of their …

I’m going to provide some insight on Elektra Lives Again from Epic Comics and Graphitti Designs.

This was a huge book for 1990: Frank Miller had collaborated with Janson and Mazzuchelli to produce epic runs on Daredevil and Batman, but his solo work with his wife Lynn Varley on Ronin didn’t get the commercial success the rest did.  Now Miller was returning to his creation Elektra doing the writing, penciling and inking with Varley painting.  Elektra Lives Again received a huge amount of press at the time: I remember drooling over …

This is a book that has flown very low on the radar of North American readers; I became aware of it via the excellent Forbidden Planet UK blog, a great spot for European works in English.  The Hound Of The Baskervilles is a graphic novel adaptation of the Conan Doyle work by Ian Edginton and I.N.J. Culbard.  Here’s the publisher’s blurb:

Ian Edginton and I.N.J. Culbard have teamed up again to create a visually compelling graphic novel adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s masterpiece. And the superb writing and beautiful art takes …

This is the story of an accidental purchase of a signed and numbered book from the 1980s.  I was rummaging among the discount trade paperback section of my local comic shop when I came across Mechanics: A Love & Rockets Graphic Novel by Jaime Hernandez.  I had seen his art around for years but never go into it so this seemed like a good time to do it based on a cheap purchase.

This is the second Love & Rockets book but it’s published in 1988 by Titan Books in out …

Nothing about this book from the outside interested me in the least.  When this collection was published site after comics site sang it’s praises so I decided to pick up Daytripper from Vertigo.  Here’s the publisher’s blurb:

What are the most important days of your life? Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá answer that question in the critical and commercial hit series that took the industry by storm, winning praise from such comics veterans as Terry Moore, Craig Thompson and Jeff Smith. Follow aspiring writer Brás de Oliva Domingos as each chapter …

Blast from the past: originally published September 25th 2001.
When I originally conceived of this article, I planned for two classes of server; a budget machine of $1500 and something decent for $3000. After researching the manufacturer’s web sites and comparing packages, it became apparent that an entry model in either price range made too many concessions. Hence the focus of a good all around machine for $3000, with a minimum of two drives, decent RAM and whatever features could be crammed in.
To research the various models and bundles available, I …

I saw a post recently on Chow that made me very skeptical: cook pasta in a frying pan, just covering the pasta with cold water and cooking on high until tender.
 
This goes against all thinking on pasta cooking: everyone says we need vast amounts of boiling water to properly cook pasta.  Yet this new recommendation came from Harold McGee, a very respected food scientist.  So I gave it a try.  And you should too, as the results were wonderful.  Watch the video, then try it out with my !

Blast from the past: originally published in 2003.

Testing RAID cards is a long and arduous process. The most difficult part was deciding on a standard cluster size for all cards. While the Promise cards can have from 8k to 2048k, Adaptec’s limit is 128k, and 3ware’s is 64k. All cards default to 64k cluster size, so who am I to argue? Just for comparison sake, I ran the Promise FastTrak100 with three cluster sizes to see the difference.

Blast from the past: originally published in 2003.

Cache plays an integral part in RAID types that use parity or error checking and correcting (ECC). How much cache to put on a RAID card to get the best performance is a tricky bit of business: the natural reaction is to max it out. Below is a comparison of benchmarks using three sizes: 64, 128 and 256 MB PC133 SDRAM on a Promise FastTrak SX4000 with IBM DeskStar 75GXP 20 GB drives.

Blast from the past: originally published June 1st 2001.
Being a computer technician and networking professional, I have quite a few computers at home. The problem is what to do with those old Pentium machines that just can’t keep up with today’s games. About the time I was contemplating all this two entertainment phenomena’s hit the big time: DVD movies and MP3’s. I of course wanted both, but didn’t want to shell out the big bucks. Then it hit me: use an old Pentium PC as an “Entertainment” computer to hook …

Blast from the past: originally published February 4th 2002.

So much has been made of Windows XP product activation, with every major PC magazine carrying a feature article and countless online rants, that I felt it was covered to death. The information had been presented to me at the product launch held by Microsoft that covered all there was to be said, but I had encountered a number of variables.

Here and there I had read that product activation was required, but you could upgrade pieces of hardware without reactivating. I was told seven hardware …

Blast from the past: originally published December 31st 2001.

I’m a big fan of Windows Update; one easy place to find all the updates needed for your system. I’ve found it works with Windows 95 up and long as your version of Internet Explorer is 4.0 or greater. With versions 5 and 6, you go to Tools, Windows Update. With version 4, go to Tools, Product Updates. Either way you’re brought to the Windows Update page, with lots of information available.

Products updates is my frequent destination for the latest operating system patches. It’s neatly organized into …

Blast from the past: originally published May 3rd 2002.

Once you have a small business up and running with a handful of computers you have to look at a serious backup strategy. Programs can be reinstalled, updates downloaded again, but the data generated by yourself and those around you is unique and should be protected. The best way to protect that information is to store it centrally and perform regular backups. To accomplish our goal we’ll look at both ends of the process; setting up the server and setting up the clients.

Let’s take a …

Blast from the past: originally published November 15th 2000.
Backup should be a key component of any computer user’s routine. No matter what we do with our computer, there are files you don’t want to lose. The only way to guarantee they’ll always be there is to back them up.

For the day to day user or individual who is concerned with system failure or file loss the best method is RAID 1. This process takes two hard drives and mirrors the contents from one to the other. After the initial setup …

Blast from the past: originally published November 23rd 2001.

What do you do when your ISP goes out of business, or changes it’s name? Both events have occurred in the Hamilton, Ontario area recently where I live, and have affected a large number of people. Everyone know about the demise of @Home, so local cable operators have changed their service to a rogers.ca or cogeco.ca naming. As well Hamilton’s Icom suddenly closed up shop. They’ve been around since 1991 when I set up my first dial up account. Now a slew of people have email addresses …

Fantagraphics keeps the hits rolling throughout 2011 and The Arctic Marauder is the latest in their Jacques Tardi translations line.  Here’s the publisher’s blurb:

In our ongoing quest to showcase the wide range of Jacques Tardi’s bibliography, Fantagraphics reaches all the way back to one of his earliest, and most distinctive graphic novels: A satirical, Jules Verne-esque “retro-sci-fi” yarn executed on scratchboard in a stunningly detailed faux-woodcut style perfectly chosen to render the Edwardian-era mechanical marvels on display. Created in 1972, The Arctic Marauder is a downright prescient example of proto-“steampunk” science fiction — …

Blast from the past: originally published April 3rd 2001.

There’s only one way to describe Counter Strike; a PC phenomenon.  For those few who haven’t heard of it, here’s a short history.  Half Life, a first person shooter with an excellent plot and gameplay, was released some two years ago.  With it came the ability to make modifications to the game and make new graphics, sounds and environments, collectively titled “mods” by the gaming community.  The most famous of Half Life’s mods is called Counter Strike, and is a strictly multiplayer …

Anything by Travis Charest goes right onto my “must have” list; he’s an amazing artist that seems to keep getting better.  Unfortunately he also seems to be getting slower with new work sorely lacking.  I anxiously awaited Weapons Of The Metabaron from Humanoids: here’s the publisher’s blurb.

The trio of Jodorowsky, Charest, and Janjetov show how the Metabaron assembled the galaxy’s most powerful and destructive weapons in an effort to become an invincible warrior. Travis Charest’s (Artist of WILDCATS, WILDC.A.T.S/X-MEN: THE GOLDEN AGE, and STAR WARS comics Cover Artist) long awaited interpretation of the …

Blast from the past: originally published August 20th 2001.

Whenever a game comes along with a new spin, you just have to check it out. Just such a title appeared: Tropico from Gathering Of Developers. You are a dictator of a small Caribbean island, and it’s your job to make it what you will. Tropico follows in the vein of “God” games, where you control the infrastructure and watch how it plays out with the inhabitants. The best of this genre has been the Impression’s series, of which Pharaoh was a personal favourite. How does Tropico …