On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

1. I actually got some sketching time - with actual ballpoint pen and paper! - taken care of today. It's been weeks since the last such session!

2. Took in several video presentations during Day Three of Typewknd!

3. Did some housekeeping on my new computer's hard drive, exporting files so that I could clear some space. Before, I had 45-50 GB free space. Now, it's 75-78 GB available.

4. I got an hour's walking exercise in today. Half of it via the shopping errand for newspapers and groceries, the other from walking around the block. Usually, that latter was only three circuits around the block. Today, it was four.

5. Celsys has announced that Clip Studio Paint's got a new update, v.1.10.0, to become available to users starting in four days. Apparently, the big thing is import/export ability re: SVG files. They specifically refer to working with Adobe Illustrator, but we'll soon see if any and all graphic designware that can create SVG files can play nice with this. Corel, Affinity, Inkscape, and whatever else is currently in play, hopefully.

6. Solved my Clip Studio Paint brush size menu problem: it was millimetres vs. pixels. I fiddled with that setting and confused myself as a result. Oops.

Word from The Beat, Bleeding Cool, Comic Book Resources...reporting on massive layoffs at DC Comics effective today.

I stopped reading the bulk of their current series back when Flashpoint v.2 ended, which brought the lesson to me that sooner or later your money will be considered "too old" for the editorial regime of the moment. A lesson that many fans older than me learned in the late 1980's in the wake of Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Eight years before that mini-series was something called the "DC Implosion". It was similar in scale and scope to what I'm reading about at the moment.

I worry about what will come of this "restructuring".

When I saw and first retweeted this one, it was about five minutes old. Renaissance Press is local to Ottawa, and is run in part by a friendly acquaintance of mine, and the conference is to be held on Zoom. May already be in progress.

https://twitter.com/renaissancepre1/status/1268251134096883713

Something of concern:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robsalkowitz/2019/07/31/where-does-dc-fit-in-atts-vision-for-warnermedia/#17bfed2e79b7

I stopped reading their ongoing series after the second Flashpoint mini-series, but have been occasionally picking up trade collections of favoured material from my era of preference. Evidently, I should be doing more of that, and faster.

If you live in Canada, you'll remember a company called MapArt. They are based in Oshawa, Ontario. MapArt published folding maps of cities and towns and provinces, and eventually got around to publishing street and road atlases too. They became known for a certain presentation style, one that got highlighted in Cynthia A. Brewer's book Designed Maps: A Sourcebook for GIS Users as an example of how maps could be designed well for their users to find their way around those cities and towns. Orange spaces for urban spaces in general, bright pink for landmark buildings, yellow lines for major streets, white for the side streets...and here's an example of their classic style:



But for some reason(s), they weren't able to continue publishing their maps in that design style.

But the style changed hands, first to a publisher called RouteMaster. Now, it's being used by G. M. Johnson and Associates Ltd. out of Vancouver. They're using the data and the design style for folding paper maps, as is right and proper. I'm happy with the Ottawa and Halifax editions that I bought via World of Maps here in Ottawa a few months back. My issue with them is the lack of street and road atlases being published using the same material. For my purposes as someone trying to get around Ottawa - or any other Canadian city - the atlas format is less awkward to work with as I'm walking or bussing around town.

I don't know if posting this commentary on Dreamwidth will get me even one step closer to an admittedly selfish desire. But I thought I'd get this on the record anyway.

I've seen the chatter about his impending death here and on Facebook. Rob Sawyer's been saying on Facebook - in the hours leading to my writing this - that it's a matter of hours or days, not weeks or months.

I don't have the history of close contact with Mr. Hartwell that some of you have had. I met him in passing perhaps two hands' full of times over the decades at assorted conventions here in Ottawa-Gatineau and maybe in Montréal. Never got to work with him on anything. I've certainly bought and read works that he had a hand in helping some of you get into publishable condition, and for that work I am grateful.

For those of you losing a friend or colleague or relative?

I'm sorry for your pain. I'm here with you.

Rob McClennan's got links to photos taken at the Fair. You may want a look at what some of those of us running tables there have been up to over the years.

Any thoughts about this?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-coker/amazon-ebooks-kdp-select_b_1139260.html

Courtesy of the New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/business/media/15libraries.html

Not sure what I make of this yet...

You may want to read this:

http://community.livejournal.com/welovethecbc/97678.html