I started reading FreakAngels a few months ago, I thought Neil Gaiman mentioned it somewhere (but at this point I can’t find the reference), and if Neil mentions it, I’ve at least got to take a look at it. It’s a good series, it’s from the UK and feels like it. Lots of pages with just artwork, no people and no dialog, and it’s not just that the artwork is great (it is great!) but the pictures tell a story to. It makes me want more, so I’m always left wanting.

The whole series, all five volumes (so far) is on line, they release about six pages a week on Friday (about every 3 or 4 weeks it seems like they skip a week) and you can read the whole series from the beginning on-line. I found it a when I was home sick for a few days in a row and read most of it. Just make sure you read Freak Angels from the beginning, if you just go to the main site http://www.freakangels.com/ you start with this weeks’s story.

It’s the story of a bunch of kids, born at the same time on the same day and they’re “connected” but it’s more of a (present day?) post-apocalyptical society where they are trying to make things better; they have abilities / powers to help, but that’s not the only ways they help (they’ve takes a group of regular people to take care of and defend). It’s more complicated than that, but I don’t want to give anything away (there are a few flashbacks and I don’t want to speak out of order).

Sidebar: Reading this series made me think the UK series Misfits, they’re very different story-lines, but the buildings and the accents made me go back and watch both seasons of that series again (they only do six episodes a season).

But I’ve liked the series and sometimes Friday mornings it’s the first thing that I do, see this week’s episode, I’m pretty bummed when it turns out to be a skip week.

They’re winding the last story down, I’m not sure if there is only a week left or only a week left in this volume (I’m going to guess former). I have so many books, I wish there was a universal way of buying these digitally that would always be forward compatible. I think I’ll buy one of the shirts (I just never wear t-shits very often, but it’s the same ones some of the characters wear) or just see if there is a donate button.

I did order a graphic novel that one of the artists colorists did called “Fish and Chocolate” by Kate Brown, I’m enjoying that story so far; I’m savoring it slowly since it was pretty pricey shipped from the UK and was self-published.

So it’s an interesting story, but it’s post-disaster, it’s not a happy-go-lucky story, but there is a nice moment or two. The characters are interesting, but sometimes I got them confused with each other. Otherwise, it’s one of the better graphic novels I’ve read in a long time.

So I guess I shouldn’t complain about life too much. Things could certainly be worse.

Although, that’s not really true, one of the things I learned from volunteering at the shelter (and/or the crisis hotline) is that if you’ve got problems, it doesn’t matter if someone else has it worse, they’re still your problems (and you’ve got to work them out). Although, sometimes, diagrams like the above sometimes help to put them into perspective…

Jessica Nagy does these great diagrams on index cards on a great site called “Indexed” and she’s got a book or two (or three) out with similar types of content.

I got way overwhelmed with my RSS feeds, I’ve got gobs of them (almost 300). Many of those feeds don’t get updated more that once a month (if ever) so they really don’t impact the list, but a dozen or so update 2-4 times a day. Plus, I recently added everyone coming to WordCamp Chicago (list of attendees) another 100 or so feeds; I’ll prune that down later.

I’ve been over a 1000+ unread items for ages and even when it gets back to 700-800 it just jumps back up! Lately , no matter what I do, I can’t even get it under 1000, so I cleared out all my posts. And started over…

THey really need a way to click a button to ‘mark all posts older than __ days as read’ and that would help with when it gets full.

Hopefully I’ll do better catching up in the future.

I’ve got the feeds syncing with my iPod Touch (but if I’m not of WiFi there are no images, which makes some feeds useless) so maybe that will help. I use Doppler (you can try Doppler Lite for free).

I’m really looking for an off-line Google Reader the includes the images for off-line viewing, any tips? Other than storage space, once you’ve written the reader the image caching doesn’t seem too hard, but it still eludes me….

So one of the many sites I read is the Costa Rica Blogger. It’s humorous, has great tips and interesting reads. In particular, today I read a post titled Legal Ages in Costa Rica which lets you know the legal age is for drinking alcohol, buying cigarettes, etc. And related to that he talks about the issue of him trying to get his son into see the latest Batman movie.

In general it’s a blog about Costa Rica covering all sorts of useful information and humorous anecdotes. For example recently they’ve talked about pricing for a dental cleaning, trips to the national park, cost of living and more…

I usually enjoy Indexed, a site where Jessica creates simple Venn diagrams or graphs that are humorous and/or have double meanings.

Today’s was funny so I thought it was a good time to add them to my From My Feed Reader list (while slightly sticking to my list my political sites first theme).

She’s also released a book called Indexed with new “cards” and best of material in it.

One of the oldest blogs and most political blogs I read is Dean’s World. Their tag line is “Defending the liberal tradition in history, science, and philosophy.” Lots of authors for posts so lots of different viewpoints are shown. They cover topics ranging from politics (mostly) to humor to Battlestar Galactica (and have an open comment post once a weekend where you can talk about anything).

I’m not very political so many times I don’t know what they’re talking about but that doesn’t stop me from coming back. But if you haven’t seen it, it’s worth checking out.

When I say “oldest blog” I mean they are one of the blogs I’ve been reading for the longest time. I’m not sure how I first found them – from a national story or something more local (Dean is in South-East Michigan). Check out some of the many times I’ve mentioned Dean’s World in my blog.

Unfortunately, you do have to register to comment, but they do make it pretty painless and it does count out a lot of the junk.

So I keep meaning to share what blogs I’ve been reading (187 different ones are in my feed reader as of today), this will be my first of my new category called From My Feed Reader.

I’m starting with Feministing because I’ve been enjoying their election political commentary and since it’s election time I thought I should start with them (instead of saving them for later). While it’s a lot more political than I am, I enjoy listening to many of their opinions (it’s a multi-person authored blog).

Young women are rarely given the opportunity to speak on their own behalf on issues that affect their lives and futures. Feministing provides a platform for us to comment, analyze, influence and connect.
- from the Feministing Mission Statement

In addition to their main blog. they have: