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Complete Moomin Strips to be released in five volumes!

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On June 20, 2006

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This was apparently announced back in January, but it only just came to my attention, thanks to Peter Trei over on rec.arts.comics.strips:

D+Q to publish MOOMIN THE COMPLETE TOVE JANSSON COMIC STRIP in September 2006

Drawn & Quarterly will publish the first of a five-volume series of MOOMIN: THE COMPLETE TOVE JANSSON COMIC STRIP in September 2006, it was announced today by Chris Oliveros, President & Publisher of the Montreal-based graphic novel and arts publishing house. This is the first time the strip will be published in any form in North America and will deservedly place cartoonist and author Tove Jansson among the international cartooning greats of the last century.

“All of us at D+Q are huge fans of Jansson’s Moomin children’s books, especially the editor of the series, Tom Devlin, who brought the Moomin comic strips to our attention,” said Oliveros. “The quality and quantity of what Tove created in the MOOMIN comic strip is nothing short of astounding.”

“To comic strip fans, there are few surprises or unknown strips out there that have yet to be published in North America,” said Tom Devlin, Editor and Production Designer. “To be the editor of a five-volume series that will bring the comic strip of one the most internationally renowned children’s authors and her creations to a whole new audience is thrilling. Comic strip fans as well as fans of the MOOMIN chapter books will be fascinated by the caliber of Tove’s cartooning skills.”

Jansson is revered around the world as one of the foremost children’s authors of the twentieth century for her illustrated chapter books regarding the magical worlds of her creation, the Moomins. The Moomins saw life in many forms but debuted to its biggest audience ever on the pages of world’s largest newspaper the “London Evening News”, in 1954. The strip was syndicated in newspapers around the world with millions of readers in 40 countries. MOOMIN: THE COMPLETE TOVE JANSSON COMIC STRIP; BOOK ONE is the first volume of Drawn & Quarterly publishing plan to reprint the entire strip drawn by Jansson before she handed over the reins to her brother Lars in 1960.

The Moomins are a tight-knit family – hippo-shaped creatures with easygoing and adventurous outlooks. Jansson’s art is pared down and precise, yet able to compose beautiful portraits of ambling creatures in fields of flowers or rock-strewn beaches that recall Jansson’s Nordic roots. The comic strip reached out to adults with its gentle and droll sense of humor. Whimsical but with biting undertones, Jansson’s observations of everyday life, including guests who overstay their welcome, modern art, movie stars, and high society, easily caught the attention of an international audience and still resonate today.

Oh, I want it. I want it very much. 🙂

Shameless self-interest

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On June 10, 2006

In Blog

So now I have this perfectly functioning laptop with wireless capability, thanks to baiku, who thinks I was doing HIM a favour by declutterling his house during move-time. One of the reasons I’ve avoided just outright buying a laptop is that frankly, they’re too expensive for what you get out of them, for as little as I actually *need* one for travel. It’s not as if my job is frequently sending me hither and yon to the point that I need a portable computer at all times. It’s a luxury, and as luxuries go, there’s only so much I’m willing to pay for one. As it is, I’ve put about as much actual money into this unit as I’d like.

But frugality aside, I’m still a gearhead, and that means I want to trick out my gadgets with as much mojo as I can muster. And there are a variety of upgrades I could perform on this unit that would make it even more spiffy. And people are always saying “So, what would you like for your birthday/Christmas/etc.”, and I always say “Oh, I dunno.”, because usually, I don’t.

So here’s, for my own reference and the reference of anyone interested, a list of what I’d like to upgrade on my Dell Inspiron 4000, should anyone want to contribute towards it. (I don’t expect anyone will, but just in case people who are prone to giving me presents (or who happen to have spare parts lying around that would suit — I don’t require new, just good working order) are reading this.

  • A couple of new batteries
    The battery in the unit will hold a charge for about an hour to 90 minutes, which is OK but not stellar. There’s room in the unit for two batteries at once, with a theoretical run-time of about 8 hours, give or take.

  • A larger hard drive
    The drive thats in there now is a 5GB drive, which will hold the OS with enough room left over for some minor file storage. But if I want to, say, offload con photos on it, it’d be nice to have a bit more room on it.

  • More RAM
    128 MB once seemed like so much RAM, but it’s hardly that much these days. The unit will take up to 512MB (2×256 PC100), and I’d love to max it out some day.

  • A portable optical mouse
    I have an old fashioned USB ball mouse plugged into it right now, and that lets me work easily. (Both the touchpad and the eraserstub pointers are somewhat annoying to use.) But an optical mouse would work better on odd surfaces, so I’d like one eventually.

I’m sure there’s other nifty stuff I’d like to have for it eventually, but those are the main things. Mostly, I’m just happy that I have a working machine. Thanks to everyone who donated old parts (especially baiku, tarkrai, and katyhh) in my quest for computer mobility. 🙂

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