Tag: Fun

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Band On The Web

Everybody knows that Dr Fun was the first cartoon on the World Wide Web. What do you mean you didn’t know? Ignorant mumble mumble. But a lesser known fact is that Les Horribles Cernettes was the first band on the Web.

According to this site:
“The Cernettes began when a patient CERN secretary was made to wait and wait and wait for the return of her permanently-on-shift physicist boyfriend. In an attempt to garner his attention, she asked physicist Silvano de Gennaro to write a song about her life, and got a few girlfriends to back her up. Then she stepped onstage in 1992 during CERN’s annual Hardronic music festival, and sang “You only love your collider” to the whole CERN population.”
…

“But the Cernettes’ real claim to fame is being the first band on the Web. In 1992, Tim Berners-Lee asked Silvano for photos of “the CERN girls” to publish on a new information network he’d invented. The image you see below is the first photo ever featured in a Web browser.”

“Collider” is pretty good, but “Liquid Nitrogen” is even better!

“You poured liquid nitrogen down my spine
as you told me you didn’t love me any more
and run off with the girl next door
…”

Pure genius. They are all so damn talented. Too bad they didn’t record any more songs. Their stuff is some of the best coding music that I have. I wonder if I’d like some more conventional Doo Wop music…

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My favorite web comics Part I

I like comics. I really do. Never mind that they’ve been labeled as lowbrow entertainment. Ok, maybe the Sturgeon’s law is more severe in regards to comics (probably 99.9 percent of all of them are crap), but still…

In print I like to read comics that are more properly called “graphic novels”. Ones like Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman” and Ben Katchor’s “Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer”.

I also enjoy funny pages of newspapers and political cartoons. I don’t really read newspapers, but conveniently these are available on the net. I use a small program that puts most of the comics that I like on one page (available here). I am going to write a better program when I have the time. For political stuff I go here.

But my favorite comics fall into “web comics” category.

Dr. Fun – first (and probably the best) comic on the World Wide Web. Dave Farley’s edgy, random and somewhat obscure sense of humor is absolutely great! His drawing style is amazingly expressive. Sometimes you need to know certain things to appreciate the humor. You need to know who Don Knuth is to understand this or it helps if you read Henry Kuttner’s “Twonky” and know what a Handspring module is before looking at this(it’s funny even if you don’t). The jokes can sometimes be hilariously off-color.Certain themes recur frequently in Dr. Fun – squirrels, snacks, microorganisms, Mr Potatoe Head, bathrooms and Star Wars, the Amish and many, many other topics dear to my heart :)

Dr. Fun logos are amazing pieces of art.

Read the FAQ and then go here and read, read, read. Dr. Fun book is coming out soon, email Plan 9 publishing at question @plan9.org and tell them that you want it.