I wish I had the book MediaWiki Skins Design when I first set out to design a MediaWiki skin for my philosophy subsite. It would have saved me so much time and trouble. Those were the days when I didn’t have a baby. I could stay up half the night going through hours of CSS trial and error just to tweak one or two little design elements. I could never do that now. As soon as I have time I intend to use some of the info in this book to clean up my skins. Nothing like this existed to my knowledge when I set out to make my skins. Documentation is often the weakest link in the open source community. This book fills an important gap that should democratize MediaWiki even more, making it more appealing to a wider swath of the web population. continue reading »

This review originally appeared in the Sequential Tart Webzine on December 1, 2006.

Publisher
Brooke Spangler
http://agirlandherfed.com

Credits
Creators: Brooke Spangler

Grade: 7
A Girl and Her Fed follows the daily life of a young, single, female, liberal journalism intern who is under the surveillance of the fed. Her fed knows that she is not a terrorist, but ever since she has written an article defending civil liberties, he has just been doing his job by following orders to open her mail and watch her. This sounds like a deadly serious subject, but the topic is rendered hilarious by its treatment by Brooke Spangler. continue reading »

This review of Oz/Wonderland Chronicles #1 originally appeared in the Sequential Tart Webzine on December 1, 2006. If you’ve not yet read the comic, be aware that this review contains spoilers.

Publisher
BuyMeToys.com
http://www.buymetoys.com/

Credits
Writer: Ben Avery, Casey Heying
Penciler: Casey Heying
Colorist: Snocone Studios, Casey Heying
Letterer: Comicraft
Cover Artist: Joe Jusko, Boris Vallejo

Grade: 8

This second issue of The Oz/Wonderland Chronicles begins with Humpty Dumpty singing on a wall, when he is rudely interrupted by the Jabberwocky, a fearsome creature imagined in a poem and brought to life. As Humpty falls off the wall, Alice wakes from a nightmare in which she has seen these events unfold. She immediately sits up in bed, grabs her guitar and begins to compose a song out loud, singing Humpty’s lyrics. continue reading »

This review of V for Vendetta originally appeared in Sequential Tart on November 1, 2006. If you’ve not yet seen the movie, you may not want to read it, because it contains spoilers.

Studio
Warner Bros. Pictures
http://vforvendetta.warnerbros.com/

Credits
Director: James McTeigue
Starring: Hugo Weaving, Natalie Portman
Rating: R

Grade: 9

The movie V for Vendetta is based upon the eighties comic book series written by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd. The Wachowski Brothers wrote the screenplay. Hugo Weaving plays V, the larger-than-life revolutionary behind the Guy Fawkes mask. His character is a master of guerilla theatre as much as he is of one-man guerilla warfare. He has been compared to Batman, but unlike Batman, he does not protect the status quo. His largest mission is to inspire rebellion against the extreme right-wing, totalitarian Norsefire regime that has come to power in a future United Kingdom. When watching this movie, the audience is immediately confronted with both V’s subversiveness and the movie’s political relevance. continue reading »