Archive for October, 2005

From Scoop:

Uncle Scrooge #347 leads off with Escape from Forbidden Valley, a new Don Rosa sequel to a classic Carl Barks epic. In search of Amazonian nutmegs for Scrooge’s favorite tea, our ducks approach Forbidden Valley, a lost world of live dinosaurs whom Donald once stampeded. The local Stickaree Indians, whose village the saurs savaged, get even by abandoning Don in the valley… alone! It’s up to Scrooge and the boys to save him, and wouldn’t you know it: the big rescue is made a little more difficult by a certain profit-making opportunity Scrooge runs across! This feature-length story is graced by a magnificent Don Rosa front cover. (continue…)

I for one would love to hear from anyone who’s read this issue. What’d you think?

Well, lookee here! I’m now linked to from Lockergnome! Does that score me major geek points or what?

Last week, Laura Brown wrote about Blogger’s new word verification system for “potential spammer blogs”, and I directed her to the applicable Blogger Buzz articles. This week, she gave me a hat tip. Thanks, Laura!

Just by way of clarification, I’m not entirely sure a visitor flagged her blog, but it seems to be the most likely possibility. Blogger’s spam-flagging system is so vague (it’s just a button that says, “Flag?”), new users may think they’re clicking on something that will “flag” the blog for their own future reading—the way it works in an e-mail reader. “Oh, look at that! I can flag this blog, and maybe Blogger will list it in a “must read” page for me! That’s so nifty!”

Perhaps Blogger ought to clear up the meaning of that button a bit…

This is pretty cool — a tool to show other bloggers near you (geographically)!

This is really cute! Calls to mind the old side-scrolling adventure games… well, it does to me!

I, for one, really like all the “steal these buttons“-esque link images you find plastered all over web pages these days—they’re like baseball cards or something. I might just add this to the sidebar. Of course, it’s been getting pretty full lately. Hmm… what to prune, what to prune…

Welcome to a world of action, adventure, honor… and thinly veiled Christian allegory.

I’ll admit, for the first few chapters I couldn’t get past the hokey allusions… “Oh, okay, so the king (whose title is always capitalized ‘King,’ in case there was any doubt who he’s supposed to be) is named Eliam. El-I-Am. So, like, his name means ‘I am God’? Wow, thanks for so deftly slipping that in there.” (See EDIT below.)

But man, am I a sucker for a story. Once I dropped the whole “cocky editor” schtick, I actually started enjoying the story. Really enjoying it. Like, “staying up way past my bedtime to read just one more chapter” really enjoying it. As Larry the Cucumber from VeggieTales once said, “I laughed, I cried… it moved me, Bob.” I was surprised how much I’d gotten into this book.

My recommendation? If you can handle the Left Behind novels without too much eye-rolling, you will probably see this as our generation’s Chronicles of Narnia (which like The Door Within had lots thinly-veiled Christian theology), but all others approach this book like you would a popcorn flick. In other words, don’t expect much more than a fun ride, and you’ll love it.

So… I’d give three (out of five) stars. Cheesiness aside, it was alright.