G.T. Labs

g.t. labs

Jim Ottaviani at TCAF, May 5-6 in Toronto

The Toronto Comics Art Festival is one of my favo(u)rite shows of the year, and I can’t wait for this one because Leland Myrick and I will be right next to each other talking, signing, sketching (him, not me!) and planning our talk** all about Feynman.

So, come visit the Toronto Reference Library and meet me at table 125, then move on to talk with Kate Beaton, Guy Delisle, Gabriella Giandelli, Jeff Smith, Gabriel Bá, Alison Bechdel, Tom Gauld, Kazu Kibuishi, and Bryan Lee O’Malley. And that’s just a few of the guests.

If history is any guide, it will be great.

(**The talk is not at TCAF, but at the American Institute of Physics on the occasion of Feynman’s birthday. That’s next week in the DC area — though Feynman’s birthday is everywhere — and I’m not sure if it’s open to the public. If/when I find out more, I’ll give a shout.)

Feynman + Hark! A Vagrant = Stage Fright

Hark! A Vagrant header

If you don’t read Kate Beaton’s Hark! A Vagrant, today is a good day to start.

I’m showing her header, but it’s a trick: Today’s strip isn’t by Kate.

Leland and I tried to capture the spirit of her feature, at least, and I hope we did…but speaking for myself, I had a real case of brain freeze when invited to write a script. “How do you… I mean, how can anyone… What I’m trying to say is I can’t…!” In short, I panicked until realizing that mortals can not write like her. Then I was free to write something like me, and hope it would be kinda sorta Hark!-esque. Leland’s art sells it.

As for the real thing(s), this and this and this are a few of my favorites by Kate herself. Oh, and this. You get the idea, I’m sure. Subscribe and find some favorites of your own…I have, for years.

Feynman in the New York Review of Books

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A review of our Feynman book appears in the current issue of The New York Review of Books.*

That this exists at all is wonderful in and of itself. What makes it more wonderful is that it’s a positive review, made apparently without reservation by its writer, who said (among other things that made me blush): “These images capture with remarkable sensitivity the essence of Feynman’s character.” and “The Ottaviani-Myrick book is the best example of this genre [graphic novels] that I have yet seen.” 

But what blew the top of my head clean off is what you already figured out by looking at the cover…the reviewer is Freeman Dyson. If you don’t know who that is you can look him up now, or better still pick up a copy of his book Disturbing the Universe and dig in. Because even though he appears in our book too, you shouldn’t wait until August to read more about him.

Anyway, wow.

* Note that I don’t think you can read all of the article for free online unless you subscribe (or are at a library that subscribes) to the NYRB.

Skepticality!

Trust me, that’s a real word. In fact, it’s the official name of the official podcast of Skeptic Magazine. I mention it because I was just a guest on show #131. Swoopy, the host, asked me excellent questions and I talked on and on and on.

If you’d like to hear that, head on over to Skepticality now and download and/or stream to your heart’s content. If you’re not reading this in late May, 2010 and I’m no longer front page news, you can click on the “past episodes” link and you’ll find it in the archive.

While you’re at it you may notice that I also joined Derek and Swoopy in #036, back in October, 2006. But listen to the episodes featuring James Randi, Phil Plait, and folks from Mythbusters instead. They’re all better than mine. Trust me. 

Back to “The Imitation Game”

I’ve let the Turing script mellow to its full flavor consistency for a month, and am now heading into the rewrite stage. Meaning, I’m sure the flavor is not quite right yet.

In the interim, besides doing the normal things that make up normal life — day job, paying taxes, seeing family, etc. — I read 13 novels and story collections, 2 non-fiction books, and 4.25 (I’m a quarter of the way through Urasawa’s Pluto) graphic novels. And some magazines. I think I can consider my mental palate cleansed.

Of the fiction, the best were a collection of stories by Peter S. Beagle called The Line Between and Feed, by M.T. Anderson. In non-fiction I found The Voice of the Crystal by H.P. Friedrichs inspirational and fascinating, and though it didn’t count towards the tally above because I haven’t finished it yet — not even close — Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin is great so far. On the graphic novel side of things, I liked Raina Telgemeir’s Smile and Hope Larson’s Mercury.

I also watched the fifth and last season of “The Wire”. Like many, I was a little disappointed with it since, unlike the previous four seasons, which were brilliant, this was merely excellent. I’ll probably watch the whole thing again, from the beginning.

But first, a return to Alan Turing’s life, discoveries, inventions, and secrets.

Turing machines and scripts

Yesterday I finished the first version (version 1.5 is probably more accurate, since I did extensive rewrites and polishes along the way…) of the script for “The Imitation Game”, and the following video showed up on the Make blog:

It’s that kind of world sometimes; meaning, wonderful. You can learn more about this amazing project at Mike Davey’s site. Now I’ll spend roughly a month trying not to think about Turing or his work. (I’ll fail.) Then, round two.