Wouldn’t you know it, after we were sweating bullets about a month ago to cleanse our 98% full Gmail (resulting in a one day ban from using it due to excessive downloading) now they go and double storage space:

Gmail will increase the free storage gradually in the next days. On October 23, you’ll get 4321 MB of storage, then the growth will slow down until January 4, when you’ll have 6283 MB of storage. From January 4, you’ll receive 3.3 MB every day, that’s 10 times bigger than the current rate of growth.

Another good news is that Google Apps mail accounts will have the same quota as standard Gmail accounts, while Google Apps Premier Edition will have 25 GB mail accounts. Previously, Google Apps accounts had 2 GB of storage, while the business edition offered 10 GB per account.

Given all the previews we get from ******, *** *** and ********, that should last at least six months!

No real posting today because.

By the way, what could possibly be inside a comic with a cover which needs a 27-word balloon to explain that the giant ghost of an armed man rising over a castle is scary?

Apparently it’s sun spots??? Or the UN General assembly. Or the Second Avenue Slasher.

Thanks to all the kind folks who responded to my SPX plea. Trying to work something out now.

I’m looking for a ride from NYC down to Bethesda for this weekend’s Small Press Expo. Normally I would have no problem taking public transport, but I am still wearing an Aircast for my sprained ankle, and the idea of going up and down a lot of stairs from the train station to the Metro, etc., while carrying the extra weight of my luggage just doesn’t fill me with glee. I’m going down Friday coming back Sunday, exact times I’m not picky about, but I do have a panel Sunday morning so can’t leave too early. So if anyone has an extra space in the trunk they could spare, I’m be most appreciative. Contact me at the usual email.

When the cable goes out for nearly 24 hours, it’s hard to blog.

Regular readers may have noticed our irregular posting patterns of late, as opposed to our former machine-like clockwork precision. There are several reasons — changing seasons, a vacation-induced change in sleep patterns, recovering from our sprained ankle, etc etc etc. Another is that we’re STILL trying to cover some stories in greater depth, and that takes a lot of time and thought. We know this daily link blogging thing looks hard, but it isn’t — it’s easy as pie and chips. Thinking, that’s hard.

We’re a bit behind in many stories due to injuries, travel, pancakes, etc etc etc. We’re trying to clear out the queue and we’re just going to stick with the task until the next pancake attack.

Have experienced some travel related “setbacks.” Posting delayed while we ice and elevate.

We’re told the above is how they roll in Atlanta. And we say more power to them.

We’re rolling off for a few days, so we’re a little discombombulated. There may be a lot of posting. Or none at all. That’s how WE roll.

We’re just so swamped with this and that…a disappointing day on The Beat is bound to follow.

As some of you may know, when we’re not toiling away on The Beat we’re toiling away at Publishers Weekly on various odd jobs like splitting wood and fetching water from the old well. This is “clean-up” week, as they say, at the office, and we’re all supposed to be emptying out our secret hidey-hole cabinets and closets and what not. In an office chock-a-block full of book-loving packrats who gets hundred of free books a day, you can probably guess at the enormity of the task.

Anyway, we’ve been cleaning out our cubicle, and in just a few short years we’ve been able to amass a ginormous, community college-level (at the least) collection of graphic novels and promo pieces. Throwing things out is not our style, so we’re going to try to repurpose some of these fine books as GIVE-A-WAYS here at The Beat. See now, that ended up being exciting anyway! No purchase will be necessary to enter because that’s apparently regulated . And we haven’t figured out how we’ll choose the winners yet either. Probably essay contests or baton twirling or something.

Anyhoo, we may also be doing some reviewing, since we feel horrible tossing a book someone sent in without at least glancing inside…we’ll see. Reviewing is time consuming, but so is link blogging. No promises; we’re creatures of habit.

We’ve been listening to Venetian Snares lately to see if we like them.

We don’t.
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Mark Evanier went through 24 hours without electrical power recently and experienced our worst nightmare:

While waiting for power to be restored, I mused on how much of my life — not just professionally but personally — is entwined with computers and how I have trouble functioning when I don’t have access to one. The battery on my laptop lasted only so long and after it went out, I was rather paralyzed. Never mind not being able to write all the scripts and assignments and e-mails I have to write. It was worse than that. A thought would come up and my first instinct would be to go Google the topic for further info and —

Whoops. Can’t do that. Can’t do a lot of things I need to do.

Evanier found solace in his Blackberry, something we have been resisting the idea of for a long time, but something we are considering as a stopgap until the iPhone comes out in a version we like. Is that just giving in to the devil?

UPDATE: Aaaaaand as if by magic…cheaper iPhones! Yeah!

We apologize for the spotty blogging over the last few weeks, but we had to make hay while the sun shone. The time off has allowed us to recharge and hopefully clear out some of the mental debris. To that end, we’re going to try (we said TRY) to keep link blogging light for a bit and cover some topics in greater depth. Believe it or not, it’s hard work writing those 500 word essays, and requires a lot of focus that link blogging like a fiend doesn’t really allow us to do. So, we’ll see how it works out.

On a serious note, why if Tubby wearing a diaper on that cover?

We’re back at Stately Beat Manor, but everyone is taking it slow for the last week of summer, and so will we. In the mean time we’re catching up on our reading, taking the pulse of the people, and gearing up for exciting announcements, or at least droll japery.

We’re back online but still off the grid. Full service resumes tomorrow.

We’re back on the grid momentarily…but only partially. You see, as we’ve complained in the past, our main Gmail account has been approaching 100% for a few weeks now, and we’ve been too preoccupied with other pressing matters to attend to cleaning out our mailbox properly. We attempted to download all of our messages to our mac mail account via POP, but, in all honesty, ended up downloading everything twice, by accident. Since this created a far too unwieldy inbox, we deleted that account and set it to download overnight before we left for our vakay.

Upon arising this morning we were stunned to find that our Gmail account had instead of downloading peacefully, been SUSPENDED for at least 24 hours due to vaguely alluded to TOS violations. Of course, since we were on the road most of yesterday, this was not as frustrating as it sounds, but the reality is that our Gmail account is our main interface with the world, for business and personal matters and losing access to it is a serious matter.

Yes, yes we know it is free. And yes, we probably shouldn’t have downloaded nearly 4G of mail over a period of 4 days.

But what really gets our goat about this is the inability to contact an actual human at Google. We dutifully followed all the links and sent emails and whatnot, but after 5 hours we have yet to receive anything resembling an actual human response.

Luckily, we had some failsafes in place, but the takeaway from all of this is that our already tenuous faith in a hostile universe has been further tested. In (ha ha) Googling the words “gmail” and “suspended” we came up with one blog post that said simply, “Google is the new Microsoft” and we’re deathly afraid that is indeed the case. Sure maybe we did something wrong, but it can’t be THAT uncommon — a trained guide would be able to recognize what happened from our explanation and offer us some assurance that we would be able to get back into our primary email account again at some unspecified time. Or maybe tell us we were SOL. Tell us SOMETHING. The fact that they don’t even offer that is deeply annoying. We may very well be switching my primary email soon.

We’re on the road for a real and proper vacation for the next few days. Blogging will be sparse, but Mark Coale will be keeping the home fires burning and we’ll be checking in every day at least a bit.

If you’ve noticed a bit of slacking here at CBM of late it’s because…well, it’s August and we’re slacking. Pretty simple. Call it the Summer Fun Blogging Hours. Not that we could have as much fun as Betty and Veronica are having in heir Summer Fun special, because that just isn’t possible, but we are attempting to wrest some fun out of this summer. Not that we’ve been to the beach yet — or will be going this summer — or been to PS 1, or done too much of anything usually deemed “summery.” But we’re trying, by God. We’re trying. Later this week we’re going on a sabbatical to Ultima Thule, but hopefully it will give us a chance to catch up and even work on a few longer pieces since based on our own observations, pretty much everyone else has Summer Fun on the mind, too.

In the spirit of the season, we will be posting more Summer Fun covers this week. Because they just don’t make them like that any more. The time when a comics anthology was a children’s companion on the long drive to the lake house are long gone. Today you’re more likely to see a grown man bringing some comics with him on the train. Such is progress.

First off, we have to salute the Scooter. Holy Cow. The Money Store. One of the all time great shortstops.

Then there’s wrestler Brian Adams, “Crush” from Demolition. Soon there will be no wrestlers over 40 left alive, at the rate things are going.

“Demolition” reminds us of one of our favorite traditions from Useneton the old rec-sports-pro-wresting forum, wherein any old news that some idiot posted thinking it was a a hot one, would be greeted by the a refernece to the tag team Demolition.

At some point (now lost to history), independent wrestler Trevor Lowe (aka T-LOWE) responded to a post about something that was already well-known (like ‘Hulk Hogan Turns Heel’ posted months after Hogan joined the NWO in 1996) with ‘Yeah, did you hear Demolition lost the tag titles?’ This was considered such a witty and insighful response by RSPW denizens that it has now become a stock reference.

When anyone posts old news or widely-known information as if it were something new, someone is certain to reply with ‘Did you hear Demolition lost the tag titles?’ This has become so entrenched that variants have started to pop up, for instance ‘Ax and Smash (two memebers of Demolition) are very upset about their recent defeat at the hands of the Hart Foundation,’ or ‘Bill Eadie (the man who played Ax) called, he wants his belt back.’ As with all RSPW in-jokes, perhaps one out of every 10 or 20 of the uses of it is actually funny.

Our new use of Demolition refers to how we’re feeling today. We have a line-up of piping hot news items in our queue, but we have conflicting deadlines and about a dozen meetings and/or conference calls today. So…things will just some out as they get out, but it is kind of frustrating.

If it wasn’t the con that exhausted us, it was writing our con REPORT that now has us drained and listless. Weighing in at some 11,000 words, it was our weightiest and most self-indulgent tome ever. That’s 1/10th of a BOOK! Today we’re catching up on all the press releases we missed in the last few days. It seems EVERYONE is pacting and teaming and we need to get it all covered. And then…a new day dawns.

In the meantime, no further word on either the “Big Lego Man” of the Netherlands or “He-Man of Madison Square”.

Like viruses, comment spammers are always evolving. Once you catch on to the multiple link thing, they try to change the wording to slip by the filter. The latest trend is a horribly complimentary one — if these spammers are to be believed, The Beat is definitely doing something RIGHT!

I couldn’t understand some parts of this article SD Mayor about as tactful as a turd in a punchbowl, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.
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I have to say, that I could not agree with you in 100% regarding Where is your messiah now, Internets?, but it’s just my opinion, which could be wrong

Very , VERY behind answering emails, etc. We will get to it this week, we promise.

OH AND…we are currently looking for a new intern at Publishers Weekly. Hours are flexible. Duties include opening many boxes of comics, sorting them, updating databases, and as much writing and reporting as you would like to do. No pay, but you get mucho experience. We are basically looking for someone with an interest in journalism and magazine/web production. If interested, email me.

We’re not as sick as Dirk, but we do have a mild case of “Wesnoth-itis.” Symptoms include the desire to sit in a darkened room and play Battle for Wesnoth all day. Hey, it happens to everyone.

BTW, we have recently discovered this interesting blog called “Monkeys in the News” — but a lot of it is stuff we’ve covered well here at the Beat: monkeys overrunning towns in India, monkeys learning to move things with their brains, endangered bonobos, etc etc etc. We are closely monitoring it to bring you the very latest developments should they become available.