About
I’m a 30-year-old (as of this writing) member of several privileged groups (white, male, heterosexual, cissexual, English speaking) who has somehow managed to parlay that advantage into a very low-paid job (and since that sentence was originally written is now in a quite successful job).
I’m a member of a band called The National Pep who are currently going through some pretty major line-up changes, but who have made what I think are two very good EPs. I’m working full-time, politically active and also trying to collaborate on scientific research papers. This explains why I’m often too tired to blog.
Politically, I’m a member of the Liberal Democrats and on the left of the party.
My taste in comics and fiction runs to intelligent genre stuff, but I have a weakness for the DC Universe that means I’m more tolerant than I should be of merely adequate DC superhero comics. Conversely, I don’t buy enough indie material, even though the stuff I do buy I love.
Musically, my tastes go toward the very melodic or the very abrasive with not much in between – I love Bach and the Beach Boys, but also Varese and Beefheart. There are very few genres I dislike, and none I dismiss out of hand.
I don’t own a TV, but love Doctor Who – the original series only, though.
Comment policy – I have a low tolerance for idiocy, and none at all for personal abuse. First comments by new people get held for moderation, to prevent spamming, but I’ll let through anything that engages, however tangentially, with the topic of the post. However, if you insult me twice, or otherwise try my patience, you’ll get blocked. In particular, if you whine about what I ‘should’ be posting, or make demands that I respond to you, you get plonked. I’ve been trapped into reasoning with trolls before, and have no desire to waste any more of my limited time repeating that mistake.
On spoilers – don’t read any of my posts unless you’re prepared to deal with the fact that I talk about plot when reviewing comics, films and what have you. With very few exceptions, if a plot twist can spoil a work then it’s not worth discussing anyway.
Can’t find an email address for youse – sorry if I have it somewhere and have lost it down the back of the sofa. We now have a Manchester Liberal Drinks group on the book of faces. Please invite yourself!
You’ll need to give the police my address. It’s Fernlae House, Mill Lane, Hawkinge, Kent. CT18 7DB. I’m in most of the time.
Ooh, well done, you managed to find out an address I moved from nearly a year ago, and only get two misspellings in it.
And no, I’m going to report you – definitely now – for repeatedly threatening violence against me and now trying (and failing) to find my home address.
[...] About [...]
Hey Andrew,
It’s Claude from Hagley Road to Ladywood and sometimes Liberal Conspiracy writer.
I need to contact you about something. Could you very kindly drop me an e-mail as I can’t find your contact address?
Thanks very much and speak to you soon :-)
Andrew-
This might be of interest to you:
expo.bandcamp.com
cheers.
It certainly is! I’m amazed Tilt or Xian didn’t already tell me about it.
So I’m sort of alive again and trying a short fiction/serial fiction experiment on my new wordpress site, feel free to come by and rip me a new one.
Great to see you around again!
I would have just emailed you but I couldn’t find yoru address
Hey Andrew, only just today found your blog through a mention on bleedingcool[dot]com and have to say great blog, I’m currently reading the Seven Soldiers posts, very cool. But also looking forward to reading your piece on Dave Sim’s Cerebus, your blog seems to be a goldmine of great articles.
I also wanted to ask if you had the intend of compiling all the essays on Seven Soldiers into book form, like your Sci-Ence! Justice Leak! book (which I’ll be grabbing a copy of through Lulu as well)?
Hope your well and looking forward to future articles.
Quint
Thanks for the kind words!
The 7S pieces are being written very specifically to be published as a book, which I hope to get out towards the back end of next week, once I’ve finished the last two essays. I’ve only written a couple of pieces on Cerebus so far, but am planning on doing the same with it over the coming months.
I write on all sorts of subjects, not just comics, so feel free to ignore anything you find dull, but I hope you’ll find enough here to keep you interested.
Thanks again.
I’ll definitely be looking at all articles really, music being a big draw for me as well.
Just wanted to say, are you aware of createspace[dot]com, which is Amazon’s seller side of their website as their pricing/costs scheme is a bit more favourable then Lulu’s (both eBook and hard copies).
Thanks.
Yeah, I know about CreateSpace. I think Amazon is dangerously close to a monopoly as it is, though, so I’d rather disperse the rights to my stuff as widely as possible.
Hello! Just wanted to drop a line and say how much I’ve been enjoying your blog. Dr Who, Beach Boys, Beatles and Kinks under one roof – your taste could not be better and I feel like I’ve just come across my long lost brother! As a fellow blog writer myself (www,alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/www.alansalbumarchives.moonfruit.com) I know how hard it can be to find the motivation to write when no one seems to be reading, so rather than simply nod appreciatively at the computer screen and keep it to myself I wanted to say thanks – and please keep up the good work! I’ve added you to the links page on my site, hope that’s OK: we don’t get much traffic but it might help to spread the word a little! Thanks again! Alan
Andrew, congratulations on Dave Sims forthcoming “visit” to Mindless Ones, you must be excited; it seems like a great opportunity to grill one of your artistic idols (if you don’t mind the word “idol”). I’m impressed that you and the other mindless’ haven’t backed down from asking difficult but pertinent questions. Fortitudinous. One more thing, do you think that at any time in the future you will re-embark on your Cerebus posts? Cerebus is such a daunting work and it is useful to have an informed enthusiast as guide, particularly one whose mindset and generally fastidious approach will illuminate the darkness of Sim’s more extreme (and unpleasant) beliefs as they close in in the later volumes without harming appreciation for the very real artistic accomplishment or pretending the problems don’t exist. If that makes sense (fricking tortuous sentence construction there I know!).
Hello Andrew,
Thanks for your howto-strip-adobe-drm-in-debian-gnulinux. Finally an up to date conversion titorial.
I got to the point of installing ADE in Wine, but having a problem getting the pdf. I have an .acsm file pointing to a pdf on OpenLibrary. I tried opening it with ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Adobe/Adobe Digital Editions$ ./digitaleditions.exe /home/carl/dl/FiveYearsattheRadLab.acsm
… but ADE comes up and says “Sorry, the file you are attempting to open cannot be opened by Digital Editions.”
Apparently this .acsm file is my ticket to download the pdf, but it’s claiming that ADE doesn’t understand a .acsm file. This is all your software I’ve installed.
Hi,
I’m afraid I can’t be of much help — I didn’t write any of that software, just linked to it.
From a quick Google, it looks like the problem is actually with either your file or with the content provider — apparently some content providers use old versions of Adobe’s DRM that aren’t supported in newer versions of ADE. The best I can suggest is that you try redownloading the .acsm file — the command you’re running is the correct one.
Sorry I can’t be more help :-/