Five 5 Star things on a Friday... 31 MAR 2017 Edition

Ugh, you let one little thing lapse in your memory and next thing you know, you haven't done it in years.

Internet Comment Etiquette with Erik

This Youtube channel was one I was vaguely aware existed for a few years, but I have a tendency to ignore all things Youtube. I mean, it's all Minecraft videos and toy unboxing and a way to listen to music without buying it, right? WRONG. Some friends of mine have adopted a Youtube-heavy entertainment life, so I was exposed to how wrong I was. Very. Internet Comment Etiquette is very sharp and very, very funny.




Love and Rockets Volume 4



My beloved Love & Rockets continues, back in the magazine format. I really loved Volume 3/New Stories, but the one-a-year release was almost too much to be waiting for. At time of writing, Issue 2 is meant to be out on Wednesday... if I forget to correct that, hey, sorry. Go back and pick up Issue 1, you jerks.

The Jackie and Laurie Show



My life is made of podcasts, still (always?). I've been finding that my concentration is totally shot to shit recently so a lot of them just kind of wash over me, but I always pay attention to Jackie and Laurie when they roll around. Two hard working comedians, giving their spin on life, the road, comedy, everything. It's even great as they struggle with filling the time in their allotted hour.

Dino and Andy's Skull Juice

What? Another podcast? I could actually fill five things with podcasts for weeks, but you guys don't need that. Dino and Andy run almost as the polar opposite of Jackie and Laurie (above) in all things but quality, and I love listening to them back-to-back.

Colleen Green

Colleen Green is awesome. Case closed.



And I'm out. Maybe I'll be back? Who knows.

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Five 5 star things on a Friday... 16 MAY 2014 edition

I knew there was something I had meant to be doing over the last few months. Always find myself likely to slip on these kind of commitments. ;)

*Two* podcasts (quelle suprise)

Put Your Hands Together

This show is so funny, I can't even. It was linked to in the recent Rolling Stone article about the "20 best comedy podcasts right now" (many of which I download regularly) and it deserves the slot and more. The hosts are fantastic, the guests are hilarious. Check it out.

Swap Meet Podcast

The best Irish podcast available right now, for my money. Someone once said that as much as content, rapport between hosts is key in podcasts, and these boys have both - they give each other a piece of pop culture to check out and review and get back together for the show to discuss it. It's a great format. Check out their recent Simpsons episode!

Instagram




Flickr can probably claim to be the first social network, legitimately. But they never pushed into the mainstream like Instagram has managed to - being from before the smartphone era might be part of it. I really like the way Instagram works and they manage to make hashtags actually seem worthwhile!



Prophet

Sometime since the last time I posted, Prophet Volume 3: Empire came out. I've never been a big anti-Liefield person, but I've never really cared for Superhero comics so if you had told me a couple of years ago that I would be *addicted* to what Brandon Graham would do to a Liefield Superhero comic canon, I probably would have laughed in your face (Even though I've always thought of Brandon Graham as *the business* - buy Walrus or check out King City).



Bad Machinery

I've been saying since forever that everyone who can access the Internet should be reading John Allison's work. If you can't obey that basic command by now, there is no hope for you. If you find, like me, that is webcomic entertains you and touches your heart, you should buy his book or his merch! And Lottie is the best, before that question comes up.

Who knows if or when this feature will return (although it will probably be on a Friday, if I was forced to give an estimate)! Follow me on Twitter or Instagram for more constant updates.

Five 5 star things on a Friday... 14 FEB 2014 edition

I'm posting this quickly on the Saturday morning after dumping some of the first post I wrote up. I'll have to come back and edit some photos or something into this in a bit.

Dr Sketchy's

We're getting a Dr Sketchy's in Galway! And not just a visit or a session, a permanent "chapter" of our very own. The first session coming up on the 8th of March in Munroe's Live will show us the course for the future, but seeing as Dr Sketchy's is one of my favourite things, this is outstanding news!

Book Club

I joined a book club recently. After years of trying out other ones and/or trying to organise my own, this one probably has staying power seeing as it's organised by one of the local book shops. Getting a range of varied opinions on a book you might not have read otherwise is an experience that can't be beat. That can't just be me, right?

Improv for Humans

Matt Besser's Improv for Humans is an hilarious podcast that just can't be beat. I can't remember why I decided that I should add an improv podcast to my routine, and I can't remember why I settled on this one, but I'm glad I did. There's something about I4H - you learn a lot about the ideas behind improv while listening and you get an awful lot of quality entertainment.

Dark Souls

Oh Dark Souls. I keep messing myself up on this one - I get frustrated and take breaks from Dark Souls, breaks that last way to long and then my skills go rusty. I have to mash my way through the end of the game now, because Dark Souls II is coming very, very soon, and that'll probably be the only game I buy at full retail price this week.

Blendoku

This is a great app - a really great app. I don't normally like having games on my phone, but this is top notch puzzler. You have to sort colours by their hue gradient - sounds easy, but it gets really, really tricky quickly enough to be satisfyingly challenging. And it's free!

Five 5 star things on a Friday

I don't know if I'll keep up this experiment either, but I have to start doing something to exercise the old blogging bug more than "just" galwaypubscrawl.com. Here's Five things I thought were the tops this week. I'd be lying through my teeth if I didn't make explicit that this was inspired by Jon Schindehette's 4x4 feature over on The Art Order

Five 5-star things on a Friday (attempt at a new feature)

House of Leaves
I re-read House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski. Astoundingly good suspense/horror book when it was released, if you give it a little while before you re-read it, the gap between your memory of events and what you read opens up a load of suprises all over again.

WHFRP
Of interest to nerds, I started running a Warhammer FRP 1st edition game, specifically The Enemy Within campaign, last Sunday. I've forgotten how good that game is, and how visceral it can be. Obviously, over time I have come to love games that model reality (or attempt to) more - like GURPS and so forth, but WHFRP was my first RPG... 23-odd years ago, and I still have an immense love for it.

Mansun - Take it Easy Chicken

I really loved this album when it came out. Another nostalgia attack, this was triggered by suddenly remembering the lines:

It's slashing down/We are drowned

while getting soaked at work during the week. Attack of the Grey Lantern is going back into rotation for a while.

Throwing Shade

Throwing Shade would get 5 stars off me every week and any week, but if you listen to the intro on this episode and don't choke from laughing, you're basically a monster. You can also see them doing their thing with your eyes on their Funny or Die channel.

Marble Season
I picked up Marble Season recently and just got a chance to read through it. For a long time, Jaime Hernandez was my choice of the Hernandez Brothers - I could always see where Gilbert was going, but I felt I couldn't follow him there. Recently I've started to develop a fondness for his work, mostly because of the contents of Love & Rockets New Stories over the last few years. Marble Season is very different from his usual themes, but you definitely know it's Gilbert behind the work. Excellent, and anyone could see elements of their childhood in it and maybe find themselves remembering the dumb stuff they used to do. :)

Fun! I'm going to try and be back with 5 more things I enjoyed next week.

14 OCT 2013 - More Inktober

11th -


12th -


13th -


Why is there a weird disconnect between file display in Windows and what uploads to Blogger? Is rotating images stored in some meta-data (ie. Windows doesn't actually rotate the image, just tags the pic to remind itself to display images rotated to fool you?) That's one of those lazy things that make more work in the long run. I'll fix these rotations later, somehow.

Inktober 10 OCT 2013

People have been rocking the Art for Inktober on Twitter and Tumblr and Instagram - you should go check it out.

I've been meaning to do something with it, so I start on Day 10 - let's see if I can manage to go to the end of the month!



If I forget to post them here, you can find me on Instagram.

Ignore the man behind the curtain, he's probably a ghost...

Inspirational images for a comic? maybe....