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#5021 – bali ha'i airfare prices

you know, maybe i’ll go to bali after i graduate. the good news is that 4 nights / 5 days fits perfectly in the time that i have off from august 26 to september 1, letting me stay from august 27 – 31 and leaves time for travel there and back. plus, a swank 1-person room at the contiki resort is only $482 and includes brunch, dinner and transfer to and from the airport. plus, look at what it takes to be a millionaire!

the bad news is that round trip airfare to and from DPS? “only” $1500-$2300! that’s the cheap airfare!

on a side note, airfare is weird — some flights leave on the 25th and take 2 days to get there, and others leave on the 26th and take 1 day to get there. either way, i’d want to arrive on the 27th not too late, unlike some of these flights that would arrive at 11 pm. there’s ones that make you change in tokyo, hong kong, or seoul… here’s some examples of itineraries:

BWI – ATL – ICN – DPS

BWI – IAH – NRT – GUM – DPS

BWI – IAH – HNL – GUM – DPS (duration: 75 hours 50 min, leaves on MONDAY, arrives on THURSDAY WTF.)

BWI – LHR – SIN – DPS

at least the flights from IAD are a bit more sensible, but i just thought these were funny.

the shortest trips i can find are about 24-25 hours.

the good news is that i’ll be getting a bonus that’s targeted to be about the price of the airfare. the bad news is that we may get anywhere from 50% to 150% of this bonus depending on how the company did between 2005 and 2008, so it’s not set in stone. and then uncle sam gets to take 25% of the bonus AGAIN. so we’ll have to hit 150% for me to get the airfare after tax. fnah.

anyway, i might make this my awesome goal. if not, i may have to settle for someplace like hawaii.

huh. i actually found a sensible flight with a sensible departure time and a sensible arrival time, leaving late on monday night and arriving in the afternoon on wednesday, and for only $1615 round trip including taxes via a stop in taiwan. holy crap, this just might be doable! 4 months, 30 days!

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#5020 – when the sun says goodnight to the moon

one of the guys i wrote the other day about the japanese songs he posted 4 years ago wrote back to me with an mp3 of one of the songs i was looking for, and an awesome version of that same japanese song by a mexican band as well. haven’t heard anything back yet from guy #2, but it doesn’t really matter anymore — i remembered that i had made a video dvd of pictures of my trip to japan years ago, and i used those same songs as background music on the dvd! so, a little bit of experimenting with ripping the dvd and extracting and re-encoding the audio and now i’ve got copies of all of those same songs! good, good!

and now it’s time for bed.

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Clango Cyclotron Is Now “CC”

Diesel Sweeties Vol 1

There might be some folks that call Clango Cyclotron “CC” for short, but as far as I know Clango is still keeping his full name. No, the big news is that Richard Stevens, creator and artist of the web and print comic Diesel Sweeties, is releasing Diesel Sweeties under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license as part of the comic’s eighth anniversary. Know what I have to say about this? WOW. This means that now you or I or anyone has explicit permission to take the comic and do what they want with it, as long as they’re sure to follow these two rules:

DO: Be clear that the comic was created by Richard Stevens 3.

DON’T: Sell it.

Anything else is fair game, which is the point of Creative Commons licensing — the original creator can release their work so that others can use the work, and the original creator is able to allow people to modify, adapt and republish as permitted. The specific terms of the license are available here (legalese).

Even though releasing things under a Creative Commons license isn’t new, what I think is remarkable is that the comic itself is under syndication. However, Richard was able to secure a deal with United Feature Syndicate that allows him to continue the online version of the comic in addition to the print version. He describes how that came about in an interview with Randomville in June 2007:

Rv: It’s been a few months now since United Feature Syndicate picked up Diesel Sweeties for publication in newspapers across the country. How has that been going and what is it like working, in-part, for The Man?

Stevens: Aside from the far-tighter deadlines, it hasn’t been very different at all. Out of 100+ comics, I’ve only had 2 rejected and both got repurposed into web strips. Aside from if I was making trillions of dollars off it, it couldn’t get much better. It pretty much pays my rent, which takes some of the pressure off t-shirt sales and the like. I’m really enjoying it.

Rv: How did this arrangement come about and how has it impacted the work you do?

Stevens: Editorial cartoonist Ted Rall started working for UFS last summer with the mandate to find cool, new stuff… under an extremely tight deadline. He was aware of me from my inter-netting and gave a ring. There was a little contract haggling with UFS so that I could keep doing my web stuff, then I jumped right into it! The main impact so far has been really good. Actually TALKING to editors has forced me to think harder as far as word choice and I think my writing’s gotten better for it. I also had to figure out HOW to draw pixel art in black and white, which was a really neat challenge. All in all, it turned out to be a very productive “back to basics” process of re-examining how I make comics and re-learning some of the fundamentals.

Rv: How have long-time fans of the web-comic responded to the new print comics?

Stevens: Mixed, but mostly positive. A few people just “don’t like it” but they keep reading the web version, which is totally fine by me. Most people seem to be reading both and digging it.

Rv: What feedback have you received from fellow web-comic creators about syndication? Have papers been receptive in signing up for the comic?

Stevens: Also mixed, but mostly positive. I know a couple webcomics people who want NOTHING to do with syndication, but none of them have given me any hassle. I’ve definitely had a lot of conversations with other artists who are curious and would like to try their hand at it, which has led to some new cartoonist friends. I dig that because I really hadn’t made any new friends for a while.

The comic is going to be released in 10 volumes over the span of 10 weeks, and I’m happy to host a mirror the comics as they are released here. Now I wonder what this would be like to read on a Kindle…

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#5017 – when vinyl rips rip

new icon! because sometimes photography sucks. not today, though. even though i didn’t take any pictures, i uploaded an oldie to fitzpatrickphotos.com.

today i had my midterm exam for my project management class. if i don’t get a low A then i’ll expect to have a high B. i got a 100% on our first quiz and a 100% on our first part of our project, so i have a good feeling about the exam, even though some parts were pretty tricky and i had to BS my way through a question or two. 5 months and 6 days left now!

tonight i was poking around through my hard drive (specifically my folder of miscellaneous music) and i got to thinking about a few different albums. unfortunately i can’t find them now, which means that my computer must have ate them when my old hard drive went kaput.

i was able to do some sleuthing and find the names and artists of some of the songs (hard to do since i could only remember how some of the songs went, and since they’re old and in japanese it’s a little difficult to say what they were).

on the bright side, i found the music blogs that i downloaded the songs from.

on the disappointment side, those songs were posted 4 years ago and the download links don’t work anymore. 🙁

maybe tomorrow i’ll try emailing the folks who run those blogs and hope they might be able to send me the songs. it’s annoying to be so close to the music and not be able to hear it, though. if only the internet wayback machine archived mp3s too…