Archives for the month of: January, 2003

Swimming in SPAM

January 30, 03 //
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My email inbox is typ­i­cally con­sumed by the lat­est and great­est “INVENTION!” and the extra-annoying “LOSE WEIGHT in 32 DAYS with­out EATING”.

The ratio of spam ver­sus “real” emails amounts to the following:

6 “real emails” : 150 spam emails

I fig­ured that I would either remove myself from this planet and find one with­out forced adver­tis­ing meth­ods or face the real­ity that this is how the Inter­net works, includ­ing emailing.

To solve this prob­lem I recently down­loaded Mail­washer, a nifty lit­tle pro­gram that rests in the taskbar and checks the email on your server (before it’s been down­loaded to your computer).

At this point using hueris­tic meth­ods, Mail­washer checks the incom­ing mes­sages and marks them ‘Pos­si­ble Spam’, ‘Spam’, or ‘Virus’. You then have the option of delet­ing the email, bounc­ing the email to the orig­i­nal sender or black­list­ing the sender.

After play­ing with the pro­gram for a bit I’ve cut down on the amounts of spam that I would get on a daily basis — tremen­dously. It’s like com­ing out from under the deep end and breath­ing a breath of fresh air.

Well, minus the moody swim teacher and the plas­tic col­ored rings.

Sideville Concepts

January 28, 03 //
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A lit­tle over a year ago, kar​tooner​.com was in pre-production for a small inde­pen­dent film called Sidev­ille. It’s inspi­ra­tion were the projects that Tim Bur­ton has put together over the years, most notably The Night­mare Before Christ­mas.

Sadly, the film was set aside due to time con­straints and a vari­ety of other rea­sons. But, there is a light at the end of the tun­nel (kinda) because I’m post­ing an early test film that Adam and I made dur­ing the pre-production phase of the film. Orig­i­nal test footage is lost and will never be found.

Puphedz Comic Books

January 28, 03 //
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Accord­ing to the offi­cial Puphedz site, some great things are in the works:

“Hey gang! The PUPHEDZ are doing the fes­ti­val cir­cuit cir­cuit. Yes, I know, that’s a really Hol­ly­wood thing to do, but hey, we need to do what we can to spread the word. This is how the fes­ti­vals scene is shap­ing up:

Also, you can now pre-order the DVD of our first episode, The Tattle-Tale Heart, at on-line retail­ers like Ama­zon, Block­buster, Buy, Net­flix, etc.

And, now for the really big news The PUPHEDZ are going to be com­ing to you in comic book form. Yes! PUPHEDZ comics! It’s in the works!

Episode’s 2 and 3 are also in the works. We’re still clean­ing up from the first one, but scripts are under­way, and pro­duc­tion will prob­a­bly be under­way before summer.”

This news is straight from the horses mouth and sounds like a won­der­ful pro­gres­sion of the Puphedz fame. For more infor­ma­tion about the Puphedz, you need to visit their offi­cial site at The Puphedz and read our spe­cial write-up on the suc­cess that is Puphedz.

Marshmallow Snow

January 28, 03 //
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From where I’m sit­ting, there is a patch of snow droop­ing down from the roof. It looks as if the Stay-Puff Marsh­mal­low Man was blown to pieces and the rem­nents are leak­ing (or stick­ing) down the sides of the house. Now I’m hav­ing flash­backs to Ghost­busters — oh, how I miss the zany adven­tures of that dys­func­tional crew of ghost hunters. That, and Inspec­tor Gad­get. They revisit me in my dreams at night with their respec­tive theme songs as well.

It’s been cold, but noth­ing out of the ordi­nary. A few nights ago (after work) I was stuck out in the mid­dle of a hail storm. Believe me, you’ve never expe­ri­enced life until your stand­ing out in the mid­dle of what feels like a storm of descend­ing gum drops. I fig­ured out that if I ran to the phone booth and hud­dled inside there it shielded the cold wind and the gum drops from impound­ing me into the cement. Whew.

We went and saw Con­fes­sions of a Dan­ger­ous Mind, the slightly skewed auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Chuck Bar­ris. Over­all, it was an inter­est­ing movie that seemed to bor­der­line real­ity with exag­ger­a­tion. Typ­i­cally, movies that mess with your mind (like Don­nie Darko) freak me out. Not to the point where they are unwatch­able, but where I dwell on their images for a while.

With Con­fes­sions, it was a movie where you ques­tion every­thing on screen from the get go. I mean, how often do we hear of Pat Sajak or Alex Tre­bec enlist­ing them­selves in the CIA or FBI. Or, do we?

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