Well, not about me really, but about a program I was involved in. It was called the Innovation Incubator and it took a whole lot of time out of my day, but in the end it was worth it, getting to go to Canada and work the room during cocktail hours with hundreds of journalists and web nerds from the Washington Post.com, Slashdot, Yahoo, the LA Times, Google and the like (and Joe Grimm apparently). There were some good panel talks at the conference too, but I was too busy roaming the streets of Toronto looking for poutine and drink specials with my friends to attend any. After having gone through the creation process with 4 separate ideas and working with two entirely different teams of people from the June till October, I ended up on the LockerTalker project.

“Seven journalism schools have been working since June to develop new approaches to community news under a Knight Foundation News Challenge grant of $230,000. The schools are Michigan State University, the University of Kansas, Kansas State, Western Kentucky University, Ithaca College, the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and St. Michael’s College. The students are part of the first generation to grow up on the Web, which was proposed and launched in the very early ’90s. Thursday was announcement day for their three tools.”

It’s a long story. Maybe I’ll tell you about it sometime.

Screw candy. Come Halloween time it’s people’s creative sides that really gets me excited for this time of year. Wired’s Underwire blog is currently taking submissions for your best Geek Jack-o-lanterns. I think I’m gonna carve me up a Bobomb when I get a chance.

It’s the weekend before Halloween, and geeks all across the land are sharpening their knives and getting ready to gouge orange gourds. Pumpkin masterpieces range from Battlestar Galactica cool (a Cylon Jack-O-Lantern, complete with the bouncing red “eye”) to delicately nuanced Mac O’Lanterns of geek titans Steve Jobs and Steve Ballmer. (Read the Geek Culture tutorial on making these surprisingly photorealistic creations).

Via Boing Boing.

Before he penned Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson had a short stint as a cartoonist for his collegiate newspaper, The Kenyon Collegian, as well as a political cartoonist for the now defunked Target Magazine. Some of his lesser known drawings as well as a bunch of rare sketches of C&H, cartoons, political work, and even a little bit of commissioned material can be found at the regularly updated Calvin and Hobbes: Magic on Paper archive. From the colleague who submitted Watterson’s Keyon comics:

“I didn’t know Watterson very well, but my roommate Jeff grew up with him in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. We crossed paths a certain amount. I remember I had the same history class my freshman year, and we were in different classes for the same drawing teacher, Marty Garhart. Interesting tidbit is that Jim Borgman of Zits fame was two years ahead of Watterson at Kenyon, and also studied under Garhart.”

Watterson’s political cartoons, while they’re not as easily read as his later comics, still have a certain appeal to me. The Rels artwork Bill did for his brother’s band is also pretty cool. Check it all out here.

Get ‘em while they’re hot. The Photoshop Roadmap has put together a collection of 100 high-resolution brushes for Photoshop that are ripe for the browsing. Some looked more useful than others to me but the quality of the collection is still impressive. The article also provides some choice links to other Photoshop brush resources.

Lets dive today into a sea of brushes. Hundreds of thousands of sets are lying undiscovered like pirate treasures all over the web. Due to this phenomenally vast amount of Photoshop brushes available, directories are becoming very popular lately. Designers are collecting them like mad. Not to mention that finding the most unique or bizarre set is a must.

Check out the whole collection here.