Thank you for stopping by. I’m pretty excited about this new site because its the first time I publish in english. So please be patient and merciful. This site is displaying work in progress. You’ll find at the moment two different issues and as my time and efforts it allow I’ll update them either way several times a week. For a wider introduction to myself please read ‘About me’. You can find more of my previous work at ‘My Other Playgrounds’.

This site is ment to be my new home for my graphic issues as well as my new blog where I can publish things I found interesting, moving or just good enough for a laugh.

I hope you enjoy it.

A few days are gone since I climbed the stage of “live” with my small web comic. But I’m happy to make progress. There are some new Droopy pages since then and  I even had the time to translate some more of the W.A.Y.D. cartoons so far.

I am really new to this web comic stuff and as I remember how it started out it is really encouraging for me how quick one is able to learn. A few weeks ago I was writing to the author of the adorable Hicksville Comics asking him how he got figured out the complicated css-style and php-programming stuff. I was – and still am – really a rookie to this kind of business. He wrote me a very kind mail explaining how he got started off and he was truly not exaggerating when he wrote that this would take a lot of time and in a way ‘geeky’ efforts to handle it. At that point I thought it would take me years to get a reasonable site started. I am sure a lot of my brain cells died during the painful learning process, but it feels like a whole bunch of new ones became active. Some sort of a lose/win situation?! … – however:

I proceed.

For now I hope to update the site nearly every day at least three times a week - uhm, once a week. Please feel invited to comment and bookmark or rss my site, it makes me happy if you do so.

Have a great day 

Lars

I am now in the U.S. almost a year and this comic blog here is online since april. Though my most efforts of the last weeks were going into the comics on this blog I was still publishing on my german toon blog ‘Wo Willst Du Hin???‘ and on the cartoon portal Toonpool. I am very proud that these efforts now were appreciated by the toonpool crew by publishing three of my strips in a whole page feature in the berlin newspaper ‘Berliner Kurier’. It is a quite large newspaper and – as not common in germany – they feature every sunday a big comic supplement. It means because of that very much to me beeing published with a whole page in one of the nations only comic supplements. Thanks again to the toonpool crew! (By the way: Toonpool is an international cartoon and comic portal where you will find comics and cartoons from authors all over the world, such as ‘exotic’ cartoon nations like Saudi Arabia, China or the French Southern Territories and the Polar Regions. So if you like comics, cartoons and caricatures and if you dont mind taking a look beyond your own nose – go there and you will find every day dozens of new publishings from all over the world and Germany. Most of the international toons are in english and some of the native ones come with translations via a translation tool. The whole thing is a big community as well with a scoring system and the possibility to make friends, found theme groups and communicate. It is a one-of-a-kind and a must-go I would think).

I know that updating with new pages of ‘Droopy’ lacked a little bit in the last days since I had very much things going on privatly and I was a little bit discouraged proceeding here. But in the end I know that out there nobody cares whatever my personal reasons are and the only thing what’s counting is to keep my story telling. I hope I will find the time in the next days to update the story with new pages. I am just glad that I don’t make an ‘updates every weekday’-blog and I hope you will follow the story despite of that. Meanwhile you could try to translate the comic feature ;) – Just click on it to enlarge!

Though the main issue of this blog is still my comics I will change the way I publish here a little bit. Drawing comics is a time consuming effort and not at least it depends on the creative input and the right settings in life to provide a steady output. My objectives with comics where never of professional nature – I draw them when I want to draw.

I understand my blog in a more broader scope and I want to keep it a little more alive. That is for why I changed the subtitle from comic stories and cartoons in to _issues. There are a lot issues going around and I will pick the most interesting to me and publish them here. That might be things of all kind of nature, out of the interwebs, out of my head, out of inspiration throughout the world. That might be music, comics, films, stories, pamphlets, nonsense or hilarious – whatever comes to my mind.

This is my playground, let’s see what happens.

Let’s make a start with that one:

Ohio is a piano. Doh! I knew it! I live in Ohio and I am a musician too, so I think that is why the guys over there at Cartogrammar.com put one and one together and created this wonderful Piano-Map. Click it out, its Flash.

See you soon.

Lars

If I could I would… but I have nothing to add but these links.

Yeah, those times we were really working on it. REALLY!

And some old dudes try to commemorate.

((via nerdcore))

…here is the best you can have of german culture next to Thomas Mann:

Heiteres Berufe-Raten.

My original intent was to promote the new Loriot channel at youtube, but it doesn’t work outside germany unfortunatly. Damn b…

Viel Spass anyways.

Last year when we just moved into our new house in Columbus we had a really nice Halloween experience. All the kids from the neighborhood where on the streets to do their trick or treat. Our (back then) two year old son was very happy to do so as well. He never again learned so quickly to say the right phrase in the right place: Trick or treat! and Thank you! It was really fun and we felt pretty enriched by participating in a (for us: new) tradition that stands so much for american culture.

Well, this year was different.

Halloween took place on a saturday.

A Buckeyes football game day.

When we got home last thursday we where wondering about all the people on the streets and why some kids where already doing trick or treat. We blamed it to the matter of the really nice and warm weather and at the same time we where kind of suspicious it would have something to do with the fact that this years Halloween is on a saturday. Additionally there was – due the matter of fact that we arrived pretty late at home – only one poor boy ringing at our door and I was so confused that I was asking him if he didn’t know that Halloween takes place not until saturday. He just nodded and ran away (to my apology: he even didn’t say trick or treat or anything just stared at me and held his bucket right into my face with big hoggish eyes).

We were so damn right but in a completely wrong way.

I asked a colleage of my wife on friday why we have seen so much folks around already on thursday and she explained to me that most of the parents won’t expose their children to all the drunken folks so if Halloween takes place on a saturday most parents decide to do the trick or treat walk already on thursday. Unfortunatly for us, yet: it was already friday.

Well, anyway on saturday we gave it a shot with our poor child, but all we’ve seen was some homeless cats, some tumble weed and a lot of glances through windows displaying a bunch of people staring at a 42″ screen watching a football game.

You can call it cultural ignorance or better: inexperience. But it left a pale taste on my tongue of what importance a football game is related to old fashioned traditions. Maybe football is (nowadays) in a same way a tradition like Halloween.

Though I’m afraid my 3-year-old son has a different opinion about it.

UPDATE 11-04-09: The parents doesn’t decide when its going to be happen, there is an official beggars night time frame in most neighboorhoods, published in the local newspapers.

On November 9th 1989 the berlin wall came down. For me, born and raised in east berlin, it was a day of unforseeable importance for my life and the fact that I am now sitting here in my house in Columbus has a direct dependance to that day in autumn ’89. I was an annoying 16 year old boy who had trouble at school and never fitted into any system neither the ruling political one back days nor any of the following ones. But what I had in common with more than a million other people on the alexanderplatz demo at the 4th of november was the anger about beeing captured and oppressed by a grey, old, boring, extremly narrow-minded and unimaginative crowd of so called politicians but better described as a crowd of nasty little dictators. But exactly those attributes wich I did describe them with just a few lines ago where the stumbling blocks it needed to make the wall history.

It was the at-that-time-secretary of information Günter Schabowski who declared at a press conference on november 9th that every citizen of the German Democratic Public is allowed to travel wherever they want to.

Of course there was a lot big efforts going on before that date and they were all of central importance in the process of history. Beginning with the polish union Solidarnosc, followed by the big names of politics at that time, Reagan, Gorbachev (glasnost and perestroica) and the political demonstrations (the so called monday demonstrations or peace demonstrations) in Leipzig during ’88/89 and many many other.

But it was a boring press conference,  a little last question of a journalist and a tiny peace of paper and an obviously overstrained old man what made it the initial moment of a history change.

Since I am here in the USA I am asked a lot about my memories and my views about the wall and the living in east germany and all that kind of stuff. So if you are interested on further and deeper informations about that topic jump to the international site of Der Spiegel, they recently published a huge collection on articles and commentaries in english around that topic too.

Now I need a bridge…

Ok, here it is: what has twitter in common with the Berlin wall? Well, they both carry a lot of short messages of more or less big meanings. The logical step at the doors of the 20th anniversary after the wall came down is the project Berlintwitterwall.com. People can leave more or less meaningfull short messages, like in twitter, and it runs over a picture of the berlin wall decorated with graffity art. It’s there to commemorate, to comment or just to taste a glimpse of that feeling one must had have 25 years ago when were writing a graffity on the west side of the wall (doing that on the east side would have ended with handcuffs on your wrists). Exciting? Here comes the turnaround: since the project is open it is used more and more by chinese internet activists to leave critical comments about the chinese government (I suppose — I read about it -> there). What happend next was that the chinese government did lock the website down at least in china. Isn’t that crazy? They build a virtual wall to block a virtual wall that remembers a real wall break down 20 years ago. You dont have to be chinese to find that extreme cynical.

Go there, leave a comment! Berlintwitterwall.com

Remember all the scientific studies in the early decade about internet addiction? In the context of the slideshow by David Gillespie (below) it seems to be absurd that there where ever those kind of concerns, and those days are just a handful of years ago. With the massive replacements of tools, processes and interaction the internet has grown (and will even more) to something what is irreplaceable because we can’t replace our selfs. The people is the internet and the internet is the people. That doesn’t mean there will be no outside world anymore. There always will be products, processes, interactions, sensations, experiences and behaviours wich are only possible in the physical world. But everything else will either be in the clouds — or obsolete.

In this context another fine article by Frank Schirrmacher on edge.org is going to philosophy about the way we are changing ourselfs with the net. Frank Schirrmacher is co-publisher of the national german newspaper FAZ, wich has a kind of a conservative attitude, and so has his contribution to the topic too. But it stands in his subject far beyond any contemporary discussions and the reader (or listener) will definetly gain in his/hers point of view about the impact of the internet nowadays and in the future.

And a more specific and very clarifying post regarding the way and chances of paid content by Felix Schwenzel on his (german) blog wirres. He is one of the leading bloggers in germany.

Slideshow by David Gillespie. Takes about 15 min.

Although I always was terrible in mathematics at school one of the first things I admired on computers was the mandelbrot phenomenon. Daniel White tries to expand the usual 2-dimensional ways of displaying the graphical outputs of the mandelbrot formula into the third dimension (at least in a graphical way, as far as I understood his explanations – but like I said, I am a complete idiot when it comes to understand mathematical problems). What comes around is incredibly awesome. I mean, believe it or not: those pictures are created by a formula! With some astonishing help by Daniel, of course. Please visit his page and read how he did it. There are also some hints in the text to other people working on stuff like that and a forum full of fractal-fans and stuff.

I mean: Numbers! Isn’t that beautiful?

((via nerdcore))

“In August 2007, Sophie Lancaster was kicked to death, simply for dressing differently. Two years on, and in tribute to the outgoing, bubbly girl who was denied the chance to live life her way, a British make-up brand has commissioned a short film by award-winning French director, Fursy Teyssier. Produced by creative agency Propaganda, in association with iconic British band, Portishead, Dark Angel is a beautifully haunting rendition of Sophies story.

The aim of the film is to raise awareness of The Sophie Lancaster Foundation and generate £500,000 to help educate young people about tolerance. Since Sophies death, weve been working with behavioural experts Huthwaite International, to put together an interactive youth workshop that does just that.

But this essential education programme can only be delivered with your help. Please, please show your support watch the film and make a donation. Were hoping to reach over 1,000,000 hits, so forward the link and help us spread the message.”

For donations go to: illamasqua.com/sophie

((via nerdcore))

I really don’t want to appear as a fractalomaniac or so, but I think this video by Chris Korda is an meaningful addition to my recently post about the 3-D fractals. I find it so astonishing because it shows in another dimension what is so awesome about this fractal phenomena: it lets you experience that the virtual world is larger than (our physical) universe. The number is (to be exactly): 2^316. Phew!

Video by Chris Korda

((via Hypergraphia Indulged))

Yesterday I was updating my wifi router encription method from WEP encryption to WPA2, since the WEP encryption is not very secure. Anyway, at some point it blew my internet connection and the router needed to be reconfigured from the ground. I was trying to get around with the options but at some point I realized that I’m gonna need help from the support hotline. I needed some of the information wich is printed on a sticker on the packaging of the router. Great idea putting it there! — Packaging long gone since I own the router for almost two years now. I hardly remembered my son used it as a swimming pool for his plastic fishes back in summer. — Are we supposed to keep all the packaging of all the products we bought ever for, lets say, 10 years? Like with all that tax related stuff?
Well, maybe it was a bit of my own fault, but what really scared me was that I had to call the customer support hotline of AT&T.

There are a lot of funny postings out there on the internet about scary experiences with customer support hotlines and not a small number of them are related to this company.

But my experience was different. Infact, I was helped quick and polite and after a little bit of back and forth they offered me a solution wich worked out perfect. And just to make it clear: this was not my first attempt to call (or chat with, like in this case) a customer support hotline and with a lot of other companies and offices I had similar horrifying experiences like the ones in all those fittingly internet postings.

Afterall I had kind of a reciprocal feeling and for a moment I was utterly confounded.

But just as to rectify my view of the world I discovered today (with my great working internet connection) this little blog and I think it is very funny. It is called theoatmeal.com and a lot of you guys might know it already. It has a story (among a lot of other brilliant and hillarious issues) wich fits perfect to my now-95%-world-view of customer support hotlines.

Ladies and Gentlemen, please click to enjoy:

Greg Pattillo, Beatboxing and Rhythm Flute

((via feingut))

I watched this thing 6 times in a row and my mouth is still open. Guess I have to watch it frame by frame. It’ll take me light years. Sigh.

“
After hovering over Mount Everest and the gorges that plunge to the Ganges, you are pulled through the Earth’s atmosphere to glimpse the inky black of space over Tibet’s high desert. So begins The Known Universe, a new film produced by the American Museum of Natural History that is part of a new exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City. - … - The structure of The Known Universe is based on precise, scientifically-accurate observations and research. The Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History maintains the Digital Universe Atlas, the world’s most complete four-dimensional map of the universe.

“

((via kottke))

13 Gift Ideas for the Geek Who Has Everything ((at Discover Magazine))

In March 2009 Clay Shirky wrote an excellent essay about the nature of changes happening to society, newspapers and journalism (“Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable“). It got more than 1,200 responding links since then (a tremendous amount). That remarks how important that topic seems to be especially in the blogging scene, wich is apparently no wonder.

Now, in this Interview with Jay Rosen from the New York University he explains how he tried  with this essay to write in a way that people from inside the newspapers can comprehend and get on the subject wich is far beyond the very only existence of newspapers. From my point of view this is the real goal he has achieved with the text. He compares our situation with the 1500s, when the invention of print changed the whole (known) world in a revolutionary way.

The Interview is pretty long (but it is worth it; it deepens and substantiate the topic and brings a lot of lights to the surface), below is just the first part, so make sure there’s enough leisure in the place.

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Part 2 · Part 3 · Part 4 · Part 5