This site has now been retired. I've moved to my new site Silverknife, where you'll find new blog posts and all my latest projects and photos. These pages will remain for at least a while, as I know some of you are still looking through the archives, but I'm reposting my travel journals and many other articles on the new site. Come and check it out.
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Not much news today - had a very nice sushi session but nothing particularly to add to my original sushi posts, so I'm just going to post a quick sandwich recipe.
Yesterday while at the fish stall getting sushi components I noticed that they had some nice crayfish tails, and since I had no particular plans for lunch I picked up a couple of tubs, two large floury baps and some salad bits, and decided to try a slightly unusual fresh summer flavour combination.
Another link for the box on the left, and it's actually the access point for a whole community of pages created by one man. To those who have experienced his extraordinary strange and striking worlds, Chris Onstad is one of the most unusual and brilliant (and prolific) creators on the web. His webcomic Achewood has been running since 2001, and continues to be stunningly original and entertaining.
At first tasteless, bizarre and disturbing, once one gets past the first impression one discovers a world of heart, true originality and strange philosophy. Achewood's character's are amazingly complete and rich for their simple design - the dialogue in particular is extraordinary. It's been said that truly great character designs (for example on The Simpsons) are so distinctive that they can be identified instantly just from a sillouette. The exact same is true of Chris Onstad's characters' dialogue.
You can read a few lines of speech, and very quickly tell which character is speaking, from Roast Beef's strange mannered diction "Oh I am your mum and I just took you to school in the car of pain" to Ray's oddly-emphasised jargon "The HELL I just walked home from Mexico! Somebody cook me some damn Emeril food!", the characters leap out at you in text even without the quirky graphics.
The comic has also spawned a collection of other pages accessible from the home site - Onstad has created blogs for many of the main characters, their personalities instantly identifiable in their topics and writing style. Ray the cat also has an advice page. Onstad's own blog is in many ways similar to Blogjam - he's an avid foodie and cook, a trait which often comes out in his characters - and he posts all kinds of interesting experiments with ingredients and methods. Enough raving now. Go read it, you won't be disappointed. Just read a good few strips before you make up your mind, the style needs time to get under your skin.
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