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I remember asking about the Aardman studios in the puppet making area where Grae would be found, and being net with a surreptitious, "Ooh, we don't talk about the Wallace and Gromit deal here. " Very mysterious.

No mystery really. Being beaten at various awards, again & again by the same plastecine puppets year after year, starts to become a bit of a sore point after a while! 

I'm impressed, Grae.  Regardless of my OTHER (less than complimentary) thoughts upon seeing the trailer, I did like the character design and "look" of the thing.  Shame about the yankificaion.  

Thank you.

The English/American hybrid world was a bit weird. One week you've dressed an anthropomorthic fox in a corduroy suit, the next you're fitting a teenage beaver into an american football uniform! The final film worked better than thought it would.

[are]

I built Fantastic Mrs Fox.

Crikey, you really are a puppetmaker Grae! What a cool profession. So what other things have you worked on?

Corpse Bride was the last big project, the rest is pretty much most of the kids stop-motion series of the last few years: Bob the Builder, Engie Benjy, Postman Pat, Bill & Ben, Andy Pandy, Fifi, Roary the Racing Car and so on!  

Hey Grae. I came in with a twoth and we chatted yes? Do you know of Will Hodge?

Hey! Yeah, that's right. I do know Will, I think he's at Aardman's at the mo.

I built Fantastic Mrs Fox.



I'm pretty sure I've met Krombasher.

Any subscribers still progless? What happened with the couple of you who got empty envelopes? Even when it's late, my prog has usually arrived by Wednesday, but still MIA.

Add me to the empty envelope gang (we should start a support group). When I rang Denise on Monday she said that I was the fourth person with an empty envelope to call that day & she sounded mighty pissed off. Warehouse droids sent to Mekquake methinks! Still no replacement prog yet, but at least the Meg arrived ok.

I re-read the Sprawl trilogy earlier this year for the first time in about a decade and was really impressed with how well it held up. Near-future SF is always in danger of dating badly, quickly. But the only part that jarred for me (reading 70's/80's SF in the 21st Century) was the use of megabytes as a large amount of data storage.

Whilst perhaps I should've said Vehicle Exise Duty, not road tax, there has been a levy for every car long before the change of ruling to measure against C02 emissions.

And as for the deaths on the roads myth, I can only ever speak from my own experience. If you want to base your argument on statistics, then my experince would read like this.
Years with a drivers licence 18. Accidents 0. 
No of cyclists who have run read lights that I've seen this week (Two car journeys) 11.
No of times cyclists have been stopped by police for running red lights 0.
Accidents I've seen invloving cyclists on pavements. 4 (off the top of my head, and they're within the last six months)
Number of cyclists who have ridden away. 3.

I have nothing against the bike as a form of travel. But it is being misused to a such degree that if the riders I see were behind the wheel of a car it'd be national headlines.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that there hadn't been some sort of car levy since 1936, just that cyclists do pay for roads.

I said in my post that I wasn't going to defend bad behavier & I'm not, The Red Light Jumpers are a danger to themselves & other road users (but mostly to themselves), the cyclists on the pavement shouldn't be there, end of story.

But, the same behavior that you listed, happens everyday perpetrated by car drivers. The reason that it barely makes the headlines is that it is so common that it isn't considered worth mentioning.

I dislike the division of people into mutually exclusive groups that never cross over, I cycle, drive, walk and use the tram. I'm not just coming at this with 'cyclist's eyes'.

There's a classic example of this just opened recently in Inverness:
http://cycle-scotland.blogspot.com/2009/06/cyclists-welcome-inverness-latest-cycle.html

Eeek!   

Policing cyclists would probably cost more than would be returned given the small number who brave using main roads, and probably difficult to sell given how the practice is seen as 'the green option', but some sort of policing would be an idea - it fucks me right off that some use the roads when there's a cycling path option, but I'll go out on a limb and suggest they're the kind of arseholes who walk sweeper-formation on footpaths, taking my 'arseholes in any vehicle' theory to its logical conclusion by being arseholes without a vehicle.

My personal experience of cycle paths is that they tend to be poorly maintained, poorly thought-out, poorly lit, glass-strewn mugger magnets. They often seem to be put in just so the local councils can tick a box on their list of 'green transport' obligations without any more effort than a can of green paint. Shared cycle/pedestrian paths are the worst of all worlds, the cyclists tend to go too fast & the pedestrians tend to wander across the lines into the cycle path (assuming there are any lines). Generally I find roads are the more sensible option.

Here are a few choice examples of quality cycle paths http://homepage.ntlworld.com/pete.meg/wcc/facility-of-the-month/March2009.htm

The thing that annoys me the most is I have to pay;
Road tax

(snip)

What does a cyclist pay for?

I'm not going to bother defending cyclists behaving like morons, just as I wouldn't bother to defend drivers behaving like morons, but I'm just going to touch on this persistent myth.

No one has paid Road Tax since 1936, roads are paid for out of general taxation by drivers, cyclists, pedestrians, everyone. Vehicle Excise Duty is a tax based on the level of CO2 emmissions from your car's engine. I'd be happy to pay V.E.D. for my bike, but since it would fall into Emmissions Band A that's £0.00.

Seriously, I think there'll be no restrictions unless a pedestrian is killed by a cyclist. And even then, I can see it being at the expense of cars.

Drivers kill about two pedestrians a week, cyclists kill one every two years, which group represents a greater danger?

I'm astonished you lasted so long, Jim!

Well done for fighting the good fight, as long as you were able.

- Trout

I must concur with Trout!

I will miss your attempts to inject sanity to the JB Forum. I still consider it a daily 'must read', but in the same way as people will slow down to stare at a car crash.

Not including those already mentioned, and in no particular order:

Shortpacked: http://www.shortpacked.com/index.html

Real Life: http://www.reallifecomics.com/

Air Force Blues: http://www.afblues.com/

Waspi Square: http://wapsisquare.com/

Dominic Deegan: http://www.dominic-deegan.com/

Girl Genius: http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/ (Actually this is my favourite at the moment & I've been buying the dead-tree editions)

Fans: http://www.faans.com/index.php

Doctor McNinja: http://www.drmcninja.com/

Menage a 3: http://www.menagea3.net/index.html (NSFW)

Sister Claire: Pregnant Nun: http://www.sisterclaire.com/

Anders loves Maria: http://anderslovesmaria.reneengstrom.com/ (Occasionally NSFW)

Flaky Pastry: http://flakypastry.runningwithpencils.com/

There're a few more, but that'll do for the mo!

What a fabulous first post.

Although it is worth pointing out that Defoe contains anachronistic technologies, mad sciences and wild magicks, so has an awful lot of wiggle room in these matters.

And also that Nikolai Dante is set in the 27th century, so while the weaponry may look like flintlocks, this is more of a stylistic conceit than an accurate representation of the technology.

Great video though, an excellent demo of how the firing mechanism of a flintlock actually works.

My guilty little habit: I now lurk around the Byrne Robotics forums daily, just to observe the occasional outbursts of grumpy 'It was better when I was a lad'-ness & Moore/Morrisson/Loeb/'Insert creator's name here', has destroyed comics rants that pop up every now and then.*   

*(To be fair, not all of them are from John Byrne, quite a few of his posters seem to keep buying comics just so they can complain about them)