SimplePhrase Blog

Here's the Wikipedia entry on Asiago. It's a crumbly, sharp, parmesanish, slightly cheddarish cheese, and the rosemary sets it off nicely. Good stuff.

Post this helpful sign wherever you deem it appropriate. I have one on my refrigerator. If you actually use it, I'd love to hear about it.

Link to sign (pdf)

Amazon Link

William Gaines and his company, EC (Entertaining Comics), published horror, war, crime, and science fiction comics in the early fifties, before the Comics Code Authority effectively shut them down. The stories were amazingly consistent and enjoyable; the art was incredibly high quality. These comics are cultural treasures, and I love the crap out of them.

EC had three horror titles: Tales from the Crypt, The Haunt of Fear, and The Vault of Horror. Haunt of Fear is my favorite, and Vault of Horror is my least favorite. So I didn't enjoy this collection as much as some of the other EC stuff. But it's all good. After the work of Carl Barks, these are my favorite comics of all time, so even the "bad" stuff is awesome.

The EC Archives series reproduces the comics, complete with letter columns and what not (but not ads), with completely refined color, in nice hardbacks. They're a decent value at Amazon prices. Unfortunately, they're getting hard to come by, with further publishing of the series now in question after shakeups at Gemstone, the publisher. So it goes.

So I retired When I Woke Up, my abstract fiction strip. If I do produce any more flash fiction, I will post it here on the SimplePhrase Blog or start another blog. Or, on the off chance I change my mind, I'll just delete the good-bye post and continue on as though nothing happened. I don't anticipate changing my mind, but this is me we're talking about, so I'm leaving it a little open.

Why am I making an end of it? Because I've come to feel over the past few weeks that further posts wouldn't be offering anything particularly new. It would just be more. And the more I produced, the less special any of it would be. I think the strip served its purpose, and now I have the opportunity to break it off clean.

Those of you who have interest in my writing may watch this space; any further developments on the writing front will be announced here on the SimplePhrase Blog.

Prairie Breeze is an award-winning cheese from Milton Creamery in Iowa. It's a cheddarish cheese with fruity, nutty overtones and crunchy bits. It is… incredibly delicious. Seriously. I took one bite and about swooned. You gotta try this stuff.

It is popular wisdom that looking at a back-lit screen for long periods causes eye fatigue, and that for this reason E-Ink is superior to LCD for e-readers. I don't think that's necessarily the case. This belief on my part has not been based on any rigorous research. Nor have the people making the eye-strain case done any rigorous research. It's all anecdotal.

But now there's an article in the New York Times [Link] that discusses the issue. Turns out, different screens (and paper, for that matter) can be better or worse depending on the circumstances under which they are used. Which shouldn't be too much of a surprise if you think about it. More significantly, the article claims that blinking and resting your eyes periodically is a more significant factor than screen type when it comes to eye fatigue.

I am pleased at this information, because it bears out my point of view that back-lit screens are not necessarily bad for your eyes. Considering how much time I spend looking at a computer screen, it would suck to be wrong about that.

I have here a new tube of toothpaste from the grocery store. It's Crest brand. This particular variety is called "Whitening Expressions." The flavor is "Extreme Herbal Mint." The box says, "Whitens + An Explosion of Extreme Mint."

I'm sorry, Crest people, but your efforts, impressive though they may be, are in vain. The cold fact of the matter is, it's toothpaste. No matter what you say, it's just not going to be exciting.

Over on Twibberish, I entered the phrase, "You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs." Here's what it gave me:

We can not oppose the Omelette.

I was really amused. I'm going to have to start using that in regular conversation. Marvy.

I've added a new feature on SimplePhrase. Check out the SimplePhrase Timer Bar.

So what is it? Well, my fondness for watching progress bars has been documented elsewhere. And I figured a progress bar would make a good focus for meditation. My first instinct was to make something with VB.Net, but I didn't want to bother with downloading and installing the tools. In that case, JavaScript was an obvious choice. I already have a text editor and a browser, and that's pretty much all you need. And if it's JavaScript anyway, why not put it online?

So there you go.

Uncharted Seas has been added to the SimplePhrase B.L.O.G.

That is all.