Just a reminder that the deadline for the cheapest tickets for the Greenbelt Festival is at the end of October, ie in a few minutes. However, due to unforseen whathaveyous you now have one more day to order your budget passes at the Greenbelt website.

Talking of Greenbelt (tenuous link), you might remember that a few years ago I and a few others dressed up as Ned Flanders from the Simpsons at the festival and got our pictures in the Daily Star. I posted the photo here. Well, the ‘Ned Flanders Appreciation Society’ have been in action again, this time on the Graham Norton television show. A report by one of the Ned-ees is here on the Ship of the Fools website.

I had the misfortune to watch the programme itself, which really was awful, though well done to Simon and Steve for getting on there. It was quite amusing to see Graham Norton swearing that the Ned Flanders Appreciation Society really is genuine and really has an annual meeting once a year. Somewhat of an inexactitude there I think Graham.

Posted by Dave at 11:28 pm on October 31, 2006 and filed under Festivals and Exhibitions, Greenbelt, TV.

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Posted by Dave at 12:50 pm on October 31, 2006 and filed under Cartoons, Environment.

4 Comments

Admired by Charles and Ray Eames, Buckminster Fuller and Saul Bass, Sister Corita Kent (1918-1986) was one of the most innovative and unusual pop artists of the 1960s, battling the political and religious establishments, revolutionising graphic design and encouraging the creativity of thousands of people – all while living and practicing as a Catholic nun in California.

So says the Guardian on a slide show page about an Exhibition of Sister Corina’s work currently showing in London. The official site has more examples of her work, and there is a new book of her work published by Four Corners Books – more about the book, ‘Come Alive! The Spirited Art Of Sister
Corita’ can be found on their site. Thanks to Richard Embray of Four Corners Books for the image used in this post.

Posted by Dave at 3:46 pm on October 30, 2006 and filed under Art, Books, Design, Ecumenical matters.

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I have noticed when talking to technical internet geek types that they give me a funny look when I mention that I still use the old fashioned Outlook Express e-mail programme. In these circles using Outlook Express is akin to walking around with a big hat on saying ‘what an idiot I am’, so I decided that I would try one of the more fashionable e-mail programmes, Eudora.

Well, I tried. The download is easy enough, but when it comes to importing messages and settings the programme trundles away for ever giving you no idea what is going on before finally dying in a heap.

For now I will continue to wear a hat proclaiming my idiothood.

Posted by Dave at 3:22 pm on October 30, 2006 and filed under Technical.

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I’m sorry that the site has been down for the weekend. I’ll say nothing more about it at the moment except that I was aware of the situation but could do nothing about it. I just hope that no subscribers requiring an urgent cartoon have been let down in their hour of need.

All being well normal service will resume tomorrow. As we’ve been away I may be a little behind answering e-mails etc – please bear with me.

Posted by Dave at 12:41 am on October 30, 2006 and filed under CartoonChurch progress.

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I took this photograph in a seaside town yesterday.

I’d like to reassure everyone that any peering on my part was merely to ascertain the extent to which peering was or was not allowed. Once I had read and understood the notice I was quick to bring any peering that I had undertaken up until that point to a sudden and abrupt end.

Posted by Dave at 8:35 pm on October 27, 2006 and filed under Art, Photographs, Signs.

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Part three in a hastily thrown together selection of links.

People who don’t do their drawings on paper:

indexed
Graph-like things on index cards.

gapingvoid: "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards"
Hugh draws on the back of business cards. (His work may contain strong language at times.)

gapingvoid: how to be creative
Hugh’s ‘how to be creative’, his best selling blog post I think.

Posted by Dave at 6:22 am on October 26, 2006 and filed under Cartooning, Links: bloggers.

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Thinking about cartooning specifically in part two of my hastily thrown together links series.

Chewing Pencils: Helping you make money from drawing cartoons!
Matt Glover has been building up this ‘how to’ site about cartooning over the last few months. At the moment there is a bit of a ‘Christmas cartoon’ contest going on there, but there’s lots of good stuff in the archives.

The Cartoon Fiend
Interviews with various cartoonists. Very interesting. May contain non PG rated material.

Posted by Dave at 6:22 am on October 25, 2006 and filed under Cartooning.

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A hastily thrown-together set of links.

We’re going away for a few days and so I’m just going to leave some links in the fridge for you to heat up. They are all of the vague theme of ‘being creative’.

Nick Page » Ideas and Creativity
Nick has written lots of books, mostly Christian sort of ones I think. This is where he answers the ‘where do your ideas come from?’ question.

DaveJeffery.com: Top 10 Creativity boosters
More ideas for getting ideas.

Posted by Dave at 6:00 am on October 24, 2006 and filed under Art, Links: bloggers.

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I spend a large percentage of my time online dealing with spam. E-mails, comments on the Wiblog system and comments on this blog are the main three. Automated anti-spam systems can help a bit, but at the end of the day one still has to go through everything for what are called ‘false positives’, which are like ‘false prophets’ but spelt differently.

One day the whole internet will be so overwhelmed with spam that we will have to give up on it. I will be so inflicted before most people, at which point I will turn off the computer for ever and spend my days tending a small vegetable patch.

Posted by Dave at 11:40 am on October 23, 2006 and filed under Cartoons, Technical.

8 Comments

The publishers of my book, ‘the Dave Walker Guide to the Church’, have sent me a list of all the shops that have ordered copies of the book. The list must be treated with some caution, as it could be that the shop has just ordered one copy in for a customer meaning that it isn’t actually on the literal shelves. Having said that I was very pleased to see so many Waterstones branches included. Has anyone seen a copy in a Waterstones? It is now on their website, which is splendid.

It still seems that Wesley Owen aren’t generally stocking it. Come on Wesley Owen, you can do it!

I’ve added the list to my info page on the book and to the ‘read the rest of this entry’ section of this post.
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Dave at 9:36 am on October 20, 2006 and filed under Books, CartoonChurch progress.

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I ordered a new PO Box for my CartoonChurch.com mail and card orders and suchlike and suchforth. I then decided to send myself some letters so that I could (1) test the PO Box and (b) get some post because I like post.

I sent one letter on October 2nd, the day that the PO Box was due to start working, and one four days later. Both letters arrived on Tuesday. The 16th of October.

Better late than never. It does mean that after an initial hiccup the PO Box is now at last working. Therefore I can now be postally contacted by writing to:

CartoonChurch.com
PO Box 6250
BASILDON
SS14 0DD

I am quite pleased with the last bit, 0DD. Please note it is ‘zero’ DD, not the letter ‘O’ DD. Please do not make your 0 look like an O or the post might not get through.

I have hopefully now updated all the places on this website and the various forms so that they all have this address. My Rayleigh address and PO Box should still work for a number of months, but this is now the one to use.

If anyone would like to send me post of any kind (not bills) then please do.

I have to say that the whole postal situation with this and also my forwarding of mail has been a bit of a bother as both have been quite unreliable. But I do still remain a fan of the Post Office and in particular their local branches, which are once again in the news. On which note, if any record executives are reading I’m really hoping that someone will release ‘Don’t close the Post Office‘ by JonnyB (previously reported here) as a single. Never has the time been more timely.

Posted by Dave at 11:55 pm on October 19, 2006 and filed under CartoonChurch progress, Current events.

6 Comments