Last thing I write about ‘The Talk Show’, I promise. So Dan posted a clarification yesterday, which you can listen to here.

In it he explains that as widely predicted John was the one to make the move away from 5by5. That’s not a problem and Dan acknowledges that it wasn’t an issue. What’s probably the most surprising is not the fact that Gruber went somewhere else, but the fact that Gruber kept the name of the show without consulting Dan - that is definitely a dick move.

In my previous post, I speculated that part of the moral high ground was with Gruber on this one. However it’s clear that actually that’s only a small part. The part where he chose not to do the Talk Show with Dan anymore.

You want to go podcast somewhere else, that’s your right, but the manner in which this was done was ALL wrong. I’m not talking about disrespecting the audience as much as disrespecting your friend. The name should have been retired like Dan said. Like I’ve said before, it’s just a shame how things went down.

Yesterday I finally got a chance to listen to the latest episode of ‘The Talk Show’ with your host John Gruber - this being the first episode on Mule radio, without Dan Benjamin.

Overall I thought the episode was pretty good. There were a couple of rough patches in there, one that stood out was when John was reading the sponsors. You could tell he wasn’t comfortable doing it and came off pretty stilted. Another was where he repeated a story that’s been told before (I already know about John’s HBO cable card issues) - honestly these are minor quibbles.

The biggest worry for many, was whether or not John could keep the conversation flowing and take on the role that Dan had in the old show - that is being an effective show runner and getting things out of your ‘guest’. In this regard I thought John did a decent job, much better than I thought he could.

There is a single president for this type of dynamic, which was in episode 57, which had Merlin Mann filling in for Dan (during Dan’s paternity leave). At the time I definitely felt John’s enthusiasm levels higher, but I thought that was the Merlin Mann factor. As it turns out John can lift it up, if he wants to (or in this case needs to).

The truth of the matter is that I didn’t feel Dan’s presence missing, but that’s only because my brain hasn’t really processed the fact that Dan won’t be on the show again. In my mind, he’s just away for an episode and will be back soon - except we know that’s not going to happen.

I think it will feel a lot stranger in the coming episodes and it really does depend on whether John can keep this level of conversation up. Will he eventually settle on a single person to do the Talk Show with him? I would imagine that would be the case….which leads me to my next point.

Rotating Guest

Gruber held his own and John Moltz was actually a very good guest. Wouldn’t mind hearing his thoughts on a more regular basis to be honest. Having Moltz in there changed the dynamics of the show because there were different angles to tackle on familiar topics.

The question I have is how many other similar types of guests can John have - before he runs out of interesting cats to talk to? Dan did something similar with the Pipeline show but then stopped it. Can he do a Zeldman and basically run the show whenever he’s got interesting guests or will he look for a permanent replacement?

All interesting questions to see how they pan out in practice, because clearly he’s not going to say how he intends to do this - not really his style.

Saturday morning, listeners of John Gruber and Dan Benjamin’s ‘The Talk Show’ podcast were greeted with a new episode, this time without Dan and on another network that wasn’t Dan’s either - the show had moved to Mule Radio.

This took everyone by surprise in that neither host had said anything was wrong up until that point - or that this was going to happen. It all happened pretty quickly as well, within the span of a week.

The really weird thing about all of this is that neither host has really discussed this in much detail - anywhere. Not on their respective sites (Daring Fireball, Big Week, Hivelogic, 5by5 Blog) or on their twitter accounts (@gruber and @danbenjamin).

Clearly Gruber was more prepared for this since he had to sort things out with his new network (Mule Radio), record a new podcast, decide how he was going to present it to the world (a single post on his website) and how he was going to respond to the fall out (ignore it). Which leads me to believe that it was clearly John who instigated this move.

The silence from Dan is completely uncharacteristic and I feel part of it is that first of all he’s a bit stunned by it and doesn’t want to say anything…yet. Eventually I think he’ll need to say something, he runs a podcasting network, that streams it’s content live. It’s only a matter of time.

Reasons

Obviously there has been a lot of interest, you can find a review of the situation (complete with relevant tweets) and potential reasons for the split.

I highly doubt this is a personal thing, because they’ve been doing this for many years (in various incarnations), so I doubt that John woke up one morning and realised he can’t stand Dan’s voice or demeanour.

There has been lots of speculation that this is down to money. Ultimately it’s about money, but I think that’s only part of the truth. I think more importantly is that I believe this all stems from Gruber not agreeing with a particular business decision by Dan. There’s a moral ground here and it appears to me that Gruber maybe on the higher level.

The reason I’m being specific is because John has left the network, none of the other hosts have left, so it has to be something between the two only.

Why do I think that?

Gruber isn’t a poor guy. He’s not going to be throwing away a friendship over a few 1000 dollars. He’s making $7500 per week just on the sponsorship advertising from his site. He’s going throw away a good thing for what $5000 from some t-shirts - or a slice of an app that is no Angry Birds or Tiny Wings?

Gruber would need to be reasonably upset to decide enough is enough. You only do that when you feel like you’ve been unfairly treated - and there was nothing the other party could do to make it right. Now here’s the other part. Gruber kept ‘The Talk Show’ name. He took that with him. He presented the old artwork before it was updated and used on the 5by5 network.

I’m not sure if that was written in the contract between Gruber and Dan, that the name is copyrighted to Gruber (since he came up with it?) or if Dan felt that he could/should give that name up since the issue stemmed from his part.

What’s was the straw that broke the camel’s back?

That’s the main question here. That’s the one everyone is curious to find out about. What did Dan do that was so outrageous to Gruber and not to any of the other hosts on 5by5? The answer could be something that every host would presumably have, a contract.

I would imagine that there be a standard contract for all 5by5 hosts - which includes terms about the use of the artwork, the name, money paid out etc. I think something happened during the negotiations in renewing Gruber’s contract. 28th July 2010, nearly two years ago is when the talk show started it’s new lease on life. Maybe the original contract was only for 2 years. Maybe there was a breakdown when negotiations began to renew the contract.

Those that hate Gruber might say that he was getting greedy and Dan wasn’t playing ball. That’s is entirely plausible. Another view might be that Gruber felt insulted by what was being proposed. That when the original contract was negotiated, 5by5 was a much smaller business. The landscape is different, in no small part due to ‘The Talk Show’.

To anyone who says “Eh, he only had to turn up and speak”, is missing the point. When’s the last time those people recorded 120 episodes of a podcast (including the old show)? It takes time and it takes commitment.

Why do I care

I kept asking myself the same question. Why do I even care. I care because the show wasn’t the John Gruber show, it was the Dan and John show. It was a show that I would listen to, even if I didn’t listen to another podcast that entire week. I listened to them on my long commutes and on a Saturday morning while making breakfast.

All good things come to an end - I’m not saying that they should do it indefinitely. What I would have felt appropriate is if the show was given a proper send off. The show deserved better and the audience deserved better.

Update 1: I thought I’d add this in because maybe the post above seems to defend Gruber at the expense of Dan. That wasn’t what this post was trying to achieve. I’ve been reading a lot of comments and posts from various people, and it appeared to me as though there was a point of view that wasn’t covered.

I wanted to present the point of view that John and Dan would have to negotiate terms for them to continue working together - typically captured in a contract. Without that contract there’s no way in knowing what those terms were/are. This post never claimed to know those terms. The reason for their breakup didn’t have to be some scheme by Gruber to get a piece of 5by5 or whatever. The reasons could be (and probably are) more complicated. The most important point about all of this is that contracts are negotiated every day. I had to do the same thing, every one does it in one form or another. People make decisions based on what they feel is right for them. The post never made up reasons.

How am I affected? Just like the thousands of other ‘Talk Show’ listeners, I won’t be able to listen to one of my favourite podcasts (and possibly the longest one I’ve been subscribed to).

We got married one year ago today. My parents were stressing out about it, and made sure to tell me about it as well. How it was such a terrible idea to have an outdoor wedding on the first week of May, in Lebanon. We should have pushed it back, at least 1 week if not 2. There were many clouds in the sky in the week leading up to wedding. The night before it really looked like the heavens were going to open up. It rained very early the morning of that day, and then it stopped to present this amazing sunny day.

Seeing my bedridden grandmother and other sickly family members make superhuman effort to come to the wedding was a gesture that I couldn’t help but marvel at. Having my friends and other family members travel from all over the world to come and visit was another aspect of this wedding that I will forever remember and cherish.

My wife was radiant (as all good brides should be), and the smile and happiness on her face was bright as ever. The food I’m told was pretty good as well, although we didn’t get to sample much of it to be honest as we were far to busy with everyone else.

Everything else was a blur. It went by far too quickly. It ended far too quickly for me. Months spent preparing for this day, gone in a matter of hours. Ultimately it was a good way to start off our marriage.

The first year of marriage has been both exciting and hard. The highlight for us was going to Malaysia for our honeymoon. A trip that Yasmine still talks about (and even calls Qatari Riyals as Ringits, because it sounds better). We were unlucky in our choice of first house, which was a construction mess - which triggered off Yasmine’s asthma, something she still has problems with. We ended up moving houses 6 months into our contract. Then I got made redundant. Because of this fact, we ended up moving houses again 6 months later, this time to a different country entirely.

It’s not been a calm year that’s for sure. Turbulent is one way of describing it. Thankfully life in Qatar is simpler. Quieter. That’s something we’re relishing at the moment. We feel much better for it. We feel like this should have been the start we wanted a year ago. We’re moving into our new house this weekend, so hopefully we’ll be there for more than 6 months.

Life with throw things your way, that’s a given, lefts hope that in the future the amount and frequency will be less than what it was in our first year.

Happy Anniversary.

A rare insight into Kowloon Walled City - As a building services engineer, and someone who is actively involved in building the future, these pictures completely blew my mind. This place was wrong on so many levels, I don’t even know where to begin. Thank god it got pulled down.

“300 interconnected high-rise buildings, all constructed without contributions from a single architect.”

When I first got into American superhero comics in the early 90s, the two companies that completely captured my imagination were Image and Valiant Comics. What made things even more exciting for me was that these two universes had just had an inter company crossover, with the likes of Jim Lee, Joe Quesada, Mark Silvestri, Bob Layton all contributing. For me it was and still is a magical time in my comic book reading history, painted with nostalgia and a simpler time.

Nearly 20 years on, and things in the comic book landscape have changed. Jim Lee sold his company to DC Comics and now is Publisher at the company. Joe Quesada went on to become the EIC of Marvel and then Chief Creative Officer at Marvel. Valiant disappeared from the comic publishing scene, unable to really use the properties that they had at their disposal. A connected universe that resembled Marvel in ways that no other comic publishing company had achieved since - mainly thanks to the founder, Jim Shooter. If you’ve not understood yet, I’m a huge fan of that period in comics.

Valiant was bought by Acclaim comics and that was their second coming. They tried to revitalise the universe, with new creators and new directions. Ultimately it wasn’t good enough and sales faltered, with the company shutting it’s doors.

The third coming of Valiant comics came under the direction of Fabian Nicieza, but wasn’t really all that memorable.

The fourth coming of Valiant comics was revealed this week, with the release of X-O Manowar #1 - and I think that they finally have the right direction to build something that might last. What makes this attempt different you ask?

The first and foremost aspect of all of this is the fact that they’ve combined some exceptional high level talent for their books. Not only that, they’ve secured Cary Nord onto an exclusive contract, which hopefully means 12 solid issues of X-O manowar, their flagship title having a consistent creative team.

The books they’ve chosen to release have also been considered. The cover to Bloodshot #1 is arguably one of my favourite comic book covers of the year so far.

The most telling part of this new vision, is the logo. They went direct to the top and best creative talent in Rhian Hughes to update their logo. The original compass dial is iconic (at least in my eyes). Hughes cleverly kept that motif but updated it to include the Valiant ‘V’ in there. It feels modern but at the same time reminds you of the past very clearly. Something he has done with the rest of the trade dress for these books.

The biggest loss in my eyes is the fact that they don’t have the Gold Key characters in the fold as well. The presence of Solar, Magnus and Turok in the Valiant Universe feels natural and so the loss of these characters is definitely one I will miss moving forward. Having said that they still have a huge library of characters from which to choose from, the likes of Ninjak, Dr.Mirage and Rai all come to mind.

And of course it would be great if they could get Jim Shooter to write a graphic novel for them…but somehow I doubt that will ever happen.

The April edition of my Cerebral Interviews newsletter is out. If you want to read that, then go subscribe and I’ll send it through to you.

I reproduce these here on the site, 1 month after they were originally sent, so here is the March edition.

Cerebral Interviews

Issue 03 - Vol 01 - Mar 2012

A Word In Your Ear

Cerebral Interviews attempts to capture the pop culture zeitgeist throughout the month. Published at the end of every month. 12 newsletters in 2012. No more, no less.

I was hoping to get more done for this edition, however I’m in the process of relocating countries, so this one is a bit of a short one.

If you’ve got any comments or want to share, you can contact me via twitter or by replying directly to this email. You can also continue the discussion of any of the points below on the dedicated Facebook page. Finally, if you liked what you saw, why not forward this to others who might like it or send them to the signup page. Thanks for reading, Khaled Abou Alfa March 2012 www.brokenkode.com

App of the Month

Sparrow for iOS. Sparrow on the mac redefined how I interact with my email. Sparrow for iOS doesn’t do that for my iPhone, but it comes damn near close.

Apple

25 Billion Downloads from the App Store. Here are the top 25 lists for both the iPhone and the iPad.

Apple announces the 3rd Generation iPad. Complete with LTE, Retina display and the same battery life as before.

Mike Daisey is a liar. Listen to the retraction on This American Life.

Architecture

Western Concourse Lounge at Kings Cross opens in London, and it’s stunning.

Enzo Ferrari Museum has finally opened in Modena, Italy. The original design was done by the late Czech architect and Future Systems founder Jan Kaplický.

On a personal note, this is the project that I am relocating to Qatar to work on the Qatar National Museum. Yes it’s insane, but the good kind.

Book of the Month

It’s hard to tell when this book was officially released, but I was only recently able to get a copy of Jim Henson’s Tale of Sand. The official page also has links to all the reviews but I’ve not found any that actually discuss what the book actually means or is trying to say (even in a round about way).

Crowd Funding

Albatros bookmark is an incredibly clever little idea. It’s already reached it’s required goal, but if you’ve ever wished a bookmark was clever enough to remember which page you’re on, this is it.

Comics

Dinosaurs vs Aliens usually I’d move straight on after hearing that title, but attach Grant Morrison’s name to it and you’ve got my interest.

One of the greatest artists Jean Giraud (aka Moebius) dies. Kim Thompson has written an amazing obituary. Robot 6 presents 6 essential books to get into the work created. Gavin has an amazing collection of images in tribute to the master, along with a series of videos. And finally the Forbidden Planet blog also has a collection of art to reflect on a master that has left us.

After over 10 years of legal battles, it appears that Neil Gaiman and Todd Mcfarlane have reached an agreement - maybe. The full history of this battle can be found here.

Contemporary Art

Takashi Murakami’s Ego exhibition in Doha has been open for a couple of months now. Here’s a series of photos from the exhibition.

Football

Lionel Messi scores his 234th goal for Barcelona, which is more insane, considering he’s still only 24 years old.

Movies

The Prometheus trailer was released, to every sci-fi fan’s delight.

Cerebral Interviews copyright © 2012 Khaled Abou Alfa

After two and a half years, my Lebanese experience finally came to a close. I’ve had a couple of weeks now to let everything settle down for a bit and gain a little perspective.

The Good

In many ways I am grateful for the experience. Many, many good things came from my stay here in the country.

• Met and married my wife.
• Was able to buy my first car (and now subsequently sell it, something which still breaks my heart), but it’s in good hands as it goes to my cousin.
• Lived on my own for the first time (having shared a flat with at least 2 other people for nearly 8 years).
• I was able to finally work on some projects in the country in my feeble and ultimately fruitless attempt at ‘rebuilding’ the country (more on this in a bit).
• Was able to visit various places in the country (visited the cedars, had a picnic in a valley along a river, visited villages in the mountains, the Beekaa valley, the Silk museum and the soap museum). There were many more places that I wanted to see - but that can come in the future.
• I was able to rekindle friendships and make new ones friends in the country.
• I was able to experience family life in a way I’d longed for my entire life, and attended several weddings.
• I was able to taste seasonable fruit and vegetables, in a way that reminded me of how my mother used to describe the seasons as she was growing up.

The Bad

Working life here was very tough for a number of reasons.

The fact that the country doesn’t have it’s own building standards that they need to adhere to where the final decision ultimately lies in the hands of the client (which begs the question of what a professional design team is meant to be doing). This issue was the toughest for me and one that I struggled really hard to rectify in many instances, but ultimately failed. If I think hard this is probably one of those items that I felt as though I was fighting a loosing battle and in my mind I was ready to leave.

The lack of professionalism between parties was also very clear to me. This could be marked up to a mixture of not knowing any better or even not considering the alternatives.

The Ugly

Which brings us to the ugly. Services in Lebanon are a complete and utter joke. The problem is that there is a lot of talk in moving things forward, but seriously little action to actually getting anything done.

In Beirut, the water is a mixture of clean drinking water, and salty water. I’m sure this isn’t a good thing, but alas there is nothing anyone can do about this. In the summer months it gets even worse. What makes this whole experience even worse is the fact that during the winter months, there is such an abundance of water falling from the skies, but due to Lebanese government incompetence and stupidity water is not stored in any discernible way.

We live in the year 2012, and yet still there are serious issues with regards to 24 hours electricity. It doesn’t exist here. In cities outside the capital, the electricity is even worse. People pay for the regular electricity and for the standby generator electricity (which in this case is a Prime generator). Again in the summer months this gets even worse.

Meanwhile the internet is soo expensive, it was prohibitive for many families. Now it’s gotten better, but it’s still compared to the service you’re getting something that is less than ideal.

Finally we have the transport. If you don’t own a car, you’re effectively fucked. I lived for 12 years in the UK without the need for a car. I’ve covered in excess of 46,000km in the last 2 1/2 years.

This is all the product of a country that has no government. The laws here are not enforced for everyone. Oh there is bureaucracy, but there are enough stories and instances where this is moved over in the name of bribery.

The problem is that I don’t want to be or can’t really be harsh on a country that is building itself after the war. The issue is that rather than moving forward and actually trying to rebuild itself, the country has been going backwards and getting worse.

Transport is no better than it was 2 years ago. A few roads got done, badly.

There is still no government.

Civil marriage is still not part of the constitution.

They’re still fucking around whether or not they should ban smoking from public places.

If you have a new car, you pay more road tax, than if you have an old and busted car that is chucking all manners of shit out of it’s exhaust pipe.

There is not a day that goes by that you don’t here about some food scandal. One of the richest countries with regards to food and natural vegetables is constantly plagued by the lack of a decent health department that just trounces on the assholes that would do such dirty things.

The noise pollution is completely unbearable. Honk first, think later.

Don’t stop at the red light. Don’t indicate.

Broken Dreams

Am I glad I made this trip? Yes, I’m glad. It was something that I had to do at the time. It was important for me to try this out. It was a dream in the beginning that ended up being more of a nightmare. This place is not for me. It never really was. The second my mum and dad left the country and raised my brother and I in Greece, that was it, our land was no longer this land.

Sure I’ll visit from time to time, but honestly this is not where I envision my children being raised, playing in concrete car parks.

This is not the Lebanon my mother planted ideas in my head about. My Lebanon, the one I dreamed of coming back to, died back in 1975 when the first war broke out and the country was ruined for all future generations. My hopes for the country have been squashed, and my memories of the beautiful architecture have been all but raped.

I will never forgive the greedy bastard developers of this country. Out to make a quick buck. I will never forgive the government that couldn’t and didn’t control that greed and try and create a better built environment. I have lived in 5 different cities (Doha will be my 6th) and I put Beirut as the worst city I have lived in - when it should have been my favourite.

It’s the promise of rebuilding that’s gone. The areas that are being rebuilt have nothing to do with the real Beirut.

When I went back to Lebanon, I knew that things would not be like I was used to my entire life. I actually embraced this fact and was actually looking forward to this fact. The problem was of course that I harboured the hope that in time, things would improve.

The reality of the situation however is that if things are to improve, they take a very, very long time to get there. They are at the mercy of people who really don’t understand what they’re doing (and are being paid in the process). If they don’t improve, they just stay in the exact same way, only rotting slowly. And then there are far to many cases where the situation actually becomes more difficult for those in the country. I could recount so many examples of this happening, but then I’d be contributing to the Lebanese’s favourite passtime (complaining), and I think I’ve done enough of it here.

I wanted to write this post, mainly because I want to make sure that my future self, doesn’t forget and remember all my time in Lebanon with rose tinted glasses. Time has a funny way of softening the sharp edges of an experience.

Future

So does the place have a bright future? Honestly, the damage is done for some places, and that is something reasonably frustrating. I don’t see the greed which is destroying the country’s heritage being removed any time soon. Within some areas there might be something that can be done in the future, but I don’t know whether or not this will occur in the next 20 years or will take a lot longer to happen.

I was once super optimistic about the future of Lebanon, and since living there for 2 and a half years, that optimism has been taken out of me, with a much more jaded and sceptical view having taken over.

The March edition of my Cerebral Interviews newsletter is out. If you want to read that, then go subscribe and I’ll send it through to you.

I reproduce these here on the site, 1 month after they were originally sent, so here is the February edition.

Cerebral Interviews

Issue 02 - Vol 01 - Feb 2012

A Word In Your Ear

Cerebral Interviews attempts to capture the pop culture zeitgeist throughout the month. Published at the end of every month. 12 newsletters in 2012. No more, no less. If you’ve got any comments or want to share, you can contact me via twitter or by replying directly to this email. You can also continue the discussion of any of the points below on the dedicated Facebook page. Finally, if you liked what you saw, why not forward this to others who might like it or send them to the signup page. Thanks for reading, Khaled Abou Alfa February 2012 www.brokenkode.com

App of the Month

Clear (from Real Mac Software) has quickly become the single best app I use when going grocery shopping. It’s so popular in fact that it has already sold 350,000 copies in 9 days.

Architecture

City Portraits by Victor Enrich. Manipulations of architectural photos with a unique nod to paintings by Escher. Some favourites, here, here and here.

Business

Beaker is a great new online publication, aimed at the ‘ideas generation’.

Comics

Traditional media outlets broke the story behind DC Comics’ Watchmen Prequels (here’s Entertainment Weekly, New York Times and USA Today). As you can imagine there has been some entertaining reactions. Notably by Alan Moore, who originally had this to say about the idea, and now has this to say about the reality. Here’s a nice editorial by Don MacPherson about the subject. Here’s an interview with JMS (one of the 4 writers on this project)

Culture

Google celebrates the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens with an awesome doodle, by Mike Dutton. Here’s an interview with the artist about the doodle.

Formula One

Mclaren unveiled their 2012 challenger - you’ll need flash to see the 3D model they’ve created of the car (or you could look at these hi-res pictures of the car and event).

Ferrari unveiled their latest challenger, and it is definitely one of the ugliest looking cars that the team has ever created.

Lotus F1 showed off their latest creation, the E20, with a nice video walkaround the factory with interviews.

Sauber released some photos online. Red Bull released some computer images - they really shouldn’t have even bothered.

The rest of the teams that have completed their cars (Williams F1, Mercedes, Toro Rosso, Force India ) chose to showcase their cars in the garage before the first test which was held in Valencia, Spain.

Geek Culture

For all you Lego and Back to the Future fans, these sets are nirvana. And while we’re on the subject of lego, these Star Wars sets are also pretty amazing.

Kevin Smith debuted his new show ‘Comic Book Men’ on AMC (from the people that give us Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead). Here’s a Q&A with Smith about the show.

Gadgets

Sometimes the simplest ideas are also the most intriguing. The Sonastand fits that bill in my mind perfectly. Part acoustic aid, part stand, this thing looks great.

While we’re on the subject of iPhone accessories, this review should help you make up your mind if you’re in the market for enhancing your iPhone photography with lens clips.

Life

Many things we do in life now don’t follow what was considered normal and acceptable several 100 years ago. Including your sleep of 8 hours at once. It wasn’t always like this you know. There was a first and second sleep…

Movies

As a precursor to that major award ceremony in the States, ‘The Artist’ cleared house and won 6 BAFTA awards.

At the Oscars, the major awards went to ‘The Artist’, which won in the categories for Music (Original Score), Costume Design, Best Picture, Actor in Leading Role and Directing. Hugo (which is a great movie that focuses on the beginnings of cinema in Paris) walked off with 5 oscars in the more technical categories. The surprise for me was Rango which won at both awards for Best Animated feature. Maybe because I was tired, maybe because it was late but I slept through this movie at the cinema.

Also, Angelina’s leg got a lot of column space and some spoofs.

Music

Another music icon, Whitney Houston has died, hours before the Grammy Awards.

This latest music video from OK Go brought back memories of actually being excited and enjoying music videos.

Software

Apple releases the developer preview to their next iteration of their computer operating system, OS X Mountain Lion - notice they’ve dropped the Mac from there.

Technology

Raspberry PI is an awesome initiative from the UK. Buy a rudimental computer for either $25 or $35. The bad news is that they sold out on their first day. The good news is that they’re ramping up production.

Websites

After over 2 years, I finally redesigned my site. You can read about it here, and you can see previous versions of the site here. As with most of these things, it’s still a work in progress that I get into in bursts of productivity, fix a bunch of bugs and clean things up a bit.

Writing

Fountain is a plain text markup language for screenwriting. If you’re a Markdown user (this newsletter was written in Markdown) and you happen to also write Screenplays or even comics, this has got your name all over it and I’m surprised it took this long to create.

Cerebral Interviews copyright © 2012 Khaled Abou Alfa

I’m in Doha. This is the second time that I visit Qatar in the last year. 9 months ago Yasmine and I passed through Doha on our way to Malaysia for our honeymoon. Ok, so the first time wasn’t really a visit, but still, we spent a few hours looking around the airport.

That was during the summer and so I remember the insane heat that greeted us. This time the weather is better, except I’ve not really had a chance to see the city as I’ve been on site all days working on this project, the Qatar National Museum.

Also since arriving we’ve there’s been a pretty thick sandstorm which has hit the GCC states and I can’t see across the bay.

Trying to find the right opportunity to make things work is also something that I feel was a rough ride but I think this could be it. The work is incredibly interesting and I genuinely enjoyed sitting down with the various specialists last week in London to get the nitty gritty details of the plethora of services that I’ll be discussing in the coming weeks and months.

Through it all my wife has been supportive even though our patience with everything has been tested, my family have been a great help as well and obviously my friends have really been there for me as well.

Once I get a good look at the city, I’ll start posting pictures.

Jean Giraud, one of the greatest masters, has died. I’m still not sure I’ve taken the news in to be honest, because I seriously felt like the man was still untouchable. I remember a few years ago watching a youtube video of him drawing on a Cinteq and getting more depressed at just how incredible this 70 year old was. The man was a genuine master and a term that I reserve and use only ever so sparingly, but a true genius. Any description I come up with won’t be able to do justice to the man’s works, but this post captures some of that magic, while this post captures some of things that I feel.

Continuing on from my series on Cognisant Design, this fourth article in the series, I’m going to concentrate a bit on pens.

I’m a bit of a stationary nut and have been for most of my life. For some reason ever since I was a little boy I remember my friends and I finding and creating elaborate boxes and containers for our pens; this was always considered one of the coolest ways to spend a weekend, and then show off on Monday. We all tried our best to outdo each other at school.

I think my love for pens might have started off with a gift by my father (when I was really young), which was this thin silver ballpoint Cross pen. At the time I thought the pen was the greatest thing in the world. To be fair, it’s a design classic. The only thing about the pen that never sat well with me was that it was a ballpoint pen. The ink in a ballpoint pen doesn’t flow as nicely and the lines are not as precise as I would like them to be. I’ve looked at their website now and there is something of an alternative, clearly they can’t make the smaller swivel pens with the rollerball ink in there - and even then I don’t know how good the ink will actually be.

Over the years I tried using fountain pens, but the fact that they ran out of ink constantly, were messy and ultimately I really didn’t like what was left on the page, it looked faded, I kept looking elsewhere. My hunt eventually led me to the greatest invention as far as writing equipment is concerned, gel ink.

Muji

For the last few (at least 8) years I’ve been a very staunch supporter of the Muji gel ink pens. Although these come in a range of colours, I’m a black ink man. Blue ink doesn’t do it for me. On my recent trip to London, I found that Muji had upgraded this line of pens, so that you can now buy the ink refills for a reasonable price - they also come in packs of 10 as well. God I love the Japanese.

As an aside, although I’m a Moleskin man through and through, I couldn’t help myself and picked up one of these threadbound notebooks. This has been a bit of a revelation. For smaller projects these are the ideal size to have one for each. They come with 72 pages and the binding is strong, while the pages are just the correct thickness and smoothness.

Pilot

While on honeymoon in Malaysia I was reading a copy of Icon and in it there was mention of the Pilot G-TEC C4. We were in this amazing bookstore, and I noticed these there and decided to buy 10. These have provide a very precise line and are great for sketching technical drawings. Some might say their line is a bit too precise, but they are very technical pens.

After looking on the Pilot website, one of the things that I would like to try is the Frixion Ball Slim pen - hey it’s got the word slim in it’s name.

Zebra

Another gel ink pen that I am enjoying at the moment for it’s thicker lines is the Zebra Sarasa Clip, at 0.5. I want to use the the 0.4 size. The surprising thing about these pens is the quality of the black ink, which is much richer than any of the pens that I have ever used. They can be a bit messy because they leave residues of ink which can be prone to smudging. As such I’ve not completely fallen in love with this pen.

Suppliers

I’d be remiss not to discuss your suppliers throughout all of this. One of the websites that kept coming up throughout my searches is Jet Pens. What a fantastic resource for pen geeks like myself. The other website to definitely check out is Cool Pencil Case. Unfortunately for me, the case that would I really, really, really want has been sold out. I’m going to see if my wife would be willing to try and make this for me, for one thing I can’t sow myself out of a paper bag (whatever that means).

The second issue of my monthly newsletter ‘Cerebral Interviews’ is out. If you want it, just subscribe here. I’ll send it off to all the new subscribers. If you want to know what to expect from the newsletter, here’s the content from the first newsletter for you to see.