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In space, no one can hear you scream

By Space and Aliens

why can't you hear in space

The tagline for the movie Alien was ‘In space, no one can hear you scream’.

Well, I guess I couldn’t help myself and played with the tagline for my own still movie, called a cartoon.

But seriously, why can’t you hear in outer space? You might recall a recent Frank cartoon, which explored the concept of hearing under water. Well, the key to hearing is to understand that sound requires a ‘medium’ for the vibrations to travel through. In outer space, there isn’t much – no air, no gas… well, there might be the odd gas cloud or two, but the gases within the cloud are spread so far apart that you would need a super sensitive microphone to hear it.

So what’s your favourite tagline or quote from a movie?

October 30, 2015
Love1

Launching ‘The Art of Series’

By Products

the art of andy warhol

Welcome to the official launch of a new side project ‘the Art of Series’

This project pays homage to famous artists and their work. Timeless art favourites are interpreted through a cartoon filter and transported into everyday modern life. I’ve only just started, so welcome to the beginning of a journey. I’d love to hear your feedback, so let me know what you think after you’ve visited Andy Warhol’s page here?

PS. Stay tuned, as part of this launch I will promote it with another competition – Free for all to enter.

October 28, 2015
Love1

To be or not to be

By That's life

Hamlet asks the hard question

That is the question asked by many a cartoonist

Whether ’tis nobler in the work of drawing to suffer
The scratches and harshness of the HB pencil,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them by using the softness of the 2B ?
To HB, to scratch –  No more…
Choose 2B (and as Wham once said) Choose life!
Apologies Shakespeare, twas all in the name of good fun.

So, what’s it for you – 2B or HB?

Are you a stationary victim like myself and can’t walk past the callings of a new pencil, black felt tip pen or marker?

August 27, 2015
Love1

Do you have SMART KPIs?

By Work

Poor work KPIs

Our work has just finished setting KPIs for the year, so I’ll put Frank out of his misery and move on to the next work challenge.

What would you like to see Frank tackle next?

August 21, 2015
Love2

Symbiotic relationship woes

By Animals

The truth behind the symbiotic relationship

The truth behind symbiotic relationships

I love playing with the idea of symbiotic relationships, however it was only after producing this cartoon that I discovered that this well known example of a symbiotic relationship may not actually be a match made in heaven, but somewhere in-between.

It’s the African oxpecker bird that feeds off the backs of hippos, zebras and elephants. People used to think it was the perfect symbiotic relationship (what’s called mutualism – a relationship where both species benefit), with the oxpecker snacking on the irritating ticks. However, on closer inspection, the reality is that the birds are actually sucking on the blood from the open wounds created by the ticks (…a possible parasitism relationship where one species nourishes itself to the disadvantage of the other?) Yes, the oxpecker eats a tick or two in the process, but perhaps that’s collateral damage or a refreshing palette cleanser. The oxpecker does however provide the animal with an inbuilt alarm system. It screeches loudly when started and might just give enough warning to its host that a predator is not far away. If the warning serves no benefit, then perhaps its a symbiotic commensalism relationship, where one species obtains food or shelter from the other without harm to its host.

So who is the winner here? Oxpecker or Rhino? Or is it win-win?

August 4, 2015
Love2

Bottle of homophone

By Pot Luck

Bottle of wine

I love a bit of word play and today I’ve played with homophones

I can’t help but feel that a group of engineers must have got together and felt the need to create a set of labelled boxes to sort out all of the peculiarities associated with words of the english language. What am I talking about? It’s the old homonym, homophone, heteronym, polyseme and capitonym boxes. So what does each box hold?

Homonym  

  • Words that share the same spelling and pronunciation but have different meanings.
  • left (opposite of right or depart the building)

And now the engineers get a bit tricky with a box partly in a box (the homonym box that is)…

Homophone (‘same sound’)

  • Same pronunciation, different meaning and regardless of their spelling
  • wine (good to drink 🙂 ) and whine (speciality skill set possessed by my children)
  • to, too, two

Another box partly in the homonym box…

Homograph (‘same writing’)

  • Words that share the same spelling, with a different meaning and regardless of how they are pronounced
  • bat (animal or sports equipment)

And this type sits squarely inside the Homograph box…

Hetronym (‘different name’)

  • Same spelling, different pronunciation and meaning
  • bow BAU – front of ship  and BOH weapon of choice for Robin hood and his merry men
  • desert dihZURT– don’t leave just yet, we’re nearly at the end and DEZert– arid region

I think they just wanted to see if they could partly place another box inside the Homograph, introducing the…

Polyseme (‘many signs/words’)

  • Same spelling and distinct but related meaning
  • mouth (used to eat chocolate or the opening of a cave or river)

I think they came up with this one after a few glasses of whine… I mean wine…

Capitonym

  • Same spelling but different meaning when capitalised
  • march (uniform walk) and March (third month in year)
  • earth (soil) and Earth (our home)

I love the English language. What peculiarities do you like about it?

June 12, 2015
Love2

When Pie met Pi

By Pot Luck

Pie versus Pi

And now for a few fun facts about Pi / Pie. See if you can tell which fact belongs to which one!

  • March 14 is Pi/Pie day (3.14) and Albert Einstein was born on that day too.
  • Pumpkin Pie/Pi was introduced to the pilgrims second Thanksgiving in 1623.
  • In the Star Trek movie, Wolf in the Fold, Spock foils the evil computer by ordering it to compute to last digit the value of pi/pie. In the real world, computers can undergo a ‘digital cardiogram’ (a stress test) by computing pi/pie.
  • The American Pie Council is an organization committed to preserving America’s pi/pie heritage and promoting American’s love affair with pi/pies.
  • The Guinness World Records for memorising pie/pi (this practice is called piphilology) was achieved by Chao Lu, who recited pi from memory to 67,890 places. It took him 24 hours and 4 minutes with 4 years of practice.
  • Pi/pie cannot be accurately represented in fraction form. Most of us know it as 22/7, but this only represents 0.00000849%. However, it would be more accurately represented with this fraction 104348/33215 (00000001056%).

What’s your Pi/Pie story?

June 5, 2015
Love1
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