Microsoft wants your body!

Via the MIT Technology Review: Microsoft has patented the use of human skin to transmit electrical signals and power in United States Patent 6,754,472 :Method and apparatus for transmitting power and data using the human body.

Basically this is to allow your PDA in one hand dial your cell phone in the other. How this is supposed to reduce the “redundancy of carrying multiple mobile devices,” I don’t know, or why it would even be necessary as cellphones and PDA are already on their way to melding into one devise, complete with digital camera and internet access. As for the other obvious observation on this patent, I think Mara E Vatz summed it up nicely:

This concept reminds me of a process most people used to useÑwhich involved storing a phone number in our mind, transmitting it via the nervous system to our hand (either one!), and dialing the phone ourselves.

Lost and Found

Hooray! After searching for about a year now, I’ve finally found the piece of Dicebox gift art that David Lee Ingersoll did for me just about exactly four years ago. And it was just where I thought it would be, in a stack of art that I must have gone through about a dozen times in the past year. Oy.

What inspired me to give the search one more go yesterday was the lovely drawing of Griffen and Molly that I received from Kris Dresen in the mail yesterday as a birthday present. These two events in turn prompted me to spend last night updating the Dicebox Gallery in general. Not only will you find those two pieces, but another lovely piece by Dylan Meconis as well as examples from both Barry’s and Christopher’s Dicebox fill-in stories.

I’m starting a tally…

So, I just had a birthday and, as opposed to New Year’s, this is the time I take stock and make goals.

One of these said goals is to see how many time I can get Kris Dresen to say “What’s wrong with you?” to me over the coming year.

Oh, by the way, Kris just had her birthday on the 13th. Geminis unite!

Pliny’s Error

Then.

Now.

(For the record, I drank beer.)

What do you do with a drunken sailor?

You know, having Scott link to me twice this past week has made me regretful that I haven’t completed my redesign here. Or been posting more. There’s all this pesky life getting in the way.

And some of that life includes the upcoming, first ever Stumptown Comics Fest—this Sunday, no less! If you live in Portland perhaps you’ve seen the flyer:

Apparently Indigo Kelleigh, show organizer extraordinaire, thinks I have draw appeal. Seriously, though should be fun. I’ll be in attendance as will Indigo, Ezra Clay Daniels, Christopher Baldwin, Barry Deutsch, Kevin Moore and many others—including unofficial attendees Bill Mudron and Erika Moen! You’ll probably be able to locate these last two at my official table spot, especially Miss Erika who’ll be hawking a paper version of her latest comic offering, I Like Girls. I’m actually not going to have that much to sell myself, some art prints, maybe some original page art.

One thing Kip noted last night is that our lil’ comics gathering happens to coincide with the opening weekend of the
Rose Festival. He wonders how this’ll effect the size of crowd we get, I’m more curious about the type of crowd we get (when do those battle cruisers arrive?).