A new era for Asterix

I received the long-awaited new Asterix book this morning, the release of this album is an important event in the history of European comics. This new Asterix adventure is the first which the original creators of the indomitable Gaul (Goscinny and Uderzo) did not have a hand in (though Uderzo did help draw the cover i think).

The Asterix saga is at a major turning point therefore. The creators were either too old to continue or had already passed away, the only way the franchise could continue was with new blood at the helm. You can imagine the team of Ferri and Conrad, who created this story, felt a huge amount of pressure when they were putting Asterix and the Picts together...

NuAsterix (a term i invented, feel free to borrow) could well live or die on how good this story is. If it was bad then there might not be much chance to keep the characters going much longer. Luckily Asterix and the Picts is actually pretty good.

I wouldn't say its the best Asterix book but it is definitely the best for some time, and certainly better than most of the ones Uderzo wrote and drew on his own after the passing of Goscinny. Not that i am as down on Uderzo's version of Asterix as some are, the books are still OK but lacking the subtlety and warmth of the older books.

Asterix and the Picts takes a bit of a middle ground, it still has some of the more slap stick graphically heavy humour of Uderzo's Asterix but more of the word play and puns of the original version. The story gets off to a bit of a clumsy start but then starts to find its feet and includes a few genuine laugh out loud jokes. In truth the book is a bit safe and maybe lacks a clear identity but you can understand that because of what is riding on it. I suspect NuAsterix is now safe for awhile at least and hopefully subsequent books will begin to establish more of the new identity of this third wave of Asterix. By Belanos what a relief!

Now the big question is, can the success of a NuAsterix one day spawn a NuTintin too?

A826 w/c 20/10/13

I started Chapter 3 of my thesis this week, this one is on the Stratford tramway itself - why it was built, how it was operated, how well it did et cetera. I've made good progress through the week and got up to a couple of thousand words already.

One thing i did do this week is upgrade my word processor (Apple Pages) from 09 to the latest version. I really shouldn't have done that. Endnote no longer works properly, luckily i only use the Pages integration as a short-cut to search for references so i can do this directly from the client, its no more than an inconvenience. Some of the other changes to Pages are a bit annoying, such as the word count is no longer in the status bar but has to be floating over the page. No matter where you put it it will get in the way at some stage!

Hint for future thesis writers, DO NOT change your word processor half-way through.

Starting my MOOC

I started my first MOOC today (Massive Open Online Course), which is the University of Applied Sciences in Potsdam's Future of Storytelling course. The first set of video lectures were interesting and i hope the rest of the course over the next few weeks follows suit. I am interested in this course both for my own creative projects and also as it could be useful for possible future jobs, you never know.

Although not directly relevant to a web developer job (for example) there will likely be elements of the course that are helpful just as my History courses proved in areas like research skills and writing. Of course an outsider (such as a manager...) might not be able to appreciate how it could be relevant but things you learn and skills you develop can have beneficial side-effects elsewhere in unexpected ways.

I also completed my latest Lynda course on jQuery anyway. Its been a multi-disciplinary day!

Train video

I took a couple of videos of my model railway Project Eskalon yesterday. This ones shows that by using one of the industrial wagons as a match wagon little No.17 can work with my Liliput wagon. This is the Eskalon engineering train, rushing ballast to where it is needed.

Dipping a toe in the MOOC waters

MOOCs or Massive Open Online Courses are pretty big now. They are university courses offered free to everyone with an internet connection. A few friends have taken such courses and i thought it was time i tried one too so i have enrolled on the very interesting sounding Future of Storytelling Course offered by the Potsdam University of Applied Sciences via iversity.

It lasts for a few weeks but shouldn't get in the way of the "day job" academic wise (i have plenty of free time at the moment anyway!) This course isn't related to my masters in any way but may be useful for career purposes and general interest as i do quite a lot of writing online. If the course works out there are a few others starting in early 2014 i have also got my eye on.

If thats not enough i've got a free trial on the Lynda software training site too and i'm trying to get the most out of that improving my career focussed skills as they are lagging badly in many areas. Seems a better way to spend my time during the Winter months than on Facebook anyway.

A826 w/c 14/10/13

A quiet week due to being away for much of it but i did get feedback on my second chapter from my tutor and it was largely favourable which was a relief. I had feared i had gone off in totally the wrong direction but it seems not and most comments were about the formatting not the actual content which is a lot easier to fix.

I think i'll revise chapter 2 (and 1) before i go ahead with chapter 3, i have that planned though.