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Saturday Morning Watchmen

Wow, just brilliant, Watchmen as imagined as an 80s cartoon.  Warning, minor spoilers, which you probably wouldn't get if you haven't read the book anyway.

November Comics

http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/13915.html

November was a bit of an odd month with the Big 2 not shipping any of the big crossover issues, and also missing some of their bigger titles. So by pure rank, everything will move up a bit, so some of the comics perennially on this list will be a top #100 comic this month.

127. Invincible
129. Ex Machina
150. 100 Bullets - This one is ending pretty soon, so it probably won't pick up any new readers except in the trades.
167. Air - The story has been picking up lately, and I got Cairo as a gift and devoured it, so I'm willing to give G. Willow Wilson some more slack.
169. DMZ
190. Scalped
202. Cleaners
223. Army @ Love - I know I keep waffling on this one, but the latest plotline has hooked me.
251. Transhuman - Series has ended, be sure to pick it up in the trades though.
263. I Kill Giants - This one ends this week. Again, you really should pick this up in the trades, it's one Joe Kelly's finest works.

XML is the shit

I was lookin' at a bunch of our webserver and A/B testing logs and I realized: XML is the greatest format for log files EVAR.

Our logs are full of likes like:

111,2,5(c=2;p=c&98214884&p&1019&pid&93820&),1229978832,
extra2["http://www.ill.com/", "Microsoft 3.6; blah blah"]

where we've got a list of things, but some things are 'children' of other items in the list, so we throw in some extra [] and () and {} to say which parts are related to other parts.

Then we use grep to pull stuff out, or (in the apache logs case) I make some perl code to parse shit out with a badass regex.

But this is all silly... if we used XML, we could use something like xml_grep2 which lets you pose an xpath query against a file to grep out what you want. It would make it hella easy to pick out particular pieces of data (like browser type or request URL) from a log line without having to make crazy regex's that deal with whitespace and quotes and what not...

It's funny that I've been using XML to program stuff in (spring, ant, e.t.c.), but really I ought to be using it just to record stuff in.

Change of scenery

I'm going to move the comics pull list and quick reviews over to twitter, which seems like a media better suited for it.  I'll probably resurrect the monthly gems post over here.

12/10 Comics

Pull List:
TERRY MOORES ECHO #8
SECRET SIX #4
I KILL GIANTS #6 (OF 7)
INVINCIBLE #56
PHONOGRAM 2 #1 (OF 7) SINGLES CLUB
100 BULLETS #98 (MR)
DMZ #37 (MR)

Reviews:

100 Bullets 98 - Really hard to see how this can get wrapped up in 2 issues. B

Secret Six 4 - Right as I was beginning to enjoy the relationship between Bane and Scandal it looks like it might end.  Hopefully the hinted at return member is the Hatter. B

Action Comics 872 - While I expected the New Krypton event to be a bit darker, it's still a decent read. B

Final Crisis 5 - No less confused, but liking it better. B

Comics 12/3

Pull List:

CRIMINAL 2 #7 (MR)

ARMY @ LOVE-THE ART OF WAR #5 (OF 6) (MR)

Reviews:

Secret Invasion 8 - Total dreck.  Only thing redeeming about it is the final page which introduces the Dark Reign. F

New Avengers 47 - Reading this makes me wistful for Alias.  B

Justice Society of America 31 - B

The Boys 25 - The X-Men parody is not working for me yet. C

 Authority 5 - The continuation of the much less interesting storyline from 4.  While I understand the need to establish the new team dynamic, it's so far afield from the previous incarnations of The Authority, that I'm having trouble getting over the cognitive dissonance. C

Comics 11/26

Pull List:

UMBRELLA ACADEMY DALLAS #1 GABRIEL BA CVR

DMZ #36 (MR)

TRANSHUMAN #4 (OF 4)
WALKING DEAD #55 (MR)

RUNAWAYS 3 #4

Reviews:

Ultimate Spider-Man 128 - A little wrap up story before Ultimatum. C

Batman 681 - Obviously if you care about Batman at all, you are reading this issue, so make your own judgement.  For me, I think it's brilliant. A

Secret Invasion - Inhumans 4 - The story ends setting up the Inhumans getting back to be involved with the larger Marvel Universe, which can't be a bad thing. B

Transhuman 4 - A

Secret Invasion - X-Men 4 - Pretty much the only thing I do nowadays when I read a X-Men book is see if my old condo gets painted, but instead I end up seeing the Transamerica Pyramid every damn issue. C

Captain America 44 - This version of Batroc is still marring my appreciation for the story. C

Superman 682 - B

Umbrella Academy - Dallas 1 - Though the familiarity with the family takes away some of the uniqueness of the book, number 5 makes up for it in pure awesomeness. A

X-Factor 37 - A much needed improvement from last issue.  Still has a ways to go before matching the pre-Manifest Destiny work. C

Google flexes it's muscle

Sort one petabyte in six hours.  Let's do some silly apples to oranges calculation about how much this would cost on the AWS.  I don't know what algorithm they are using, so I'm using very naive assumptions.  Using the smallest EC2 instance, we have 4000 * 0.10 * 7 (have to pay a full hour for those 2 extra minutes) = $2800.  A high CPU instance would by 8x or $22,400. 

For the S3 piece, let's assume that the source PB is already stored.  I don't know the details of the algorithm, but the ephemeris storage would be probably be used for the mapping, but then stored back out for the final result.  I'm not sure how long we would want to keep around the sorted result, but storage costs for 2 PB is $246.50 a month, and you spent at least 20x generating the data, so you'll probably keep it around.

Bandwidth is free between S3 and EC2, but we'll still have to pay for the GET and PUTs.  They mention there are 1 trillion 100 byte records, but don't tell me how they are stored as files.  Taking the extreme (every record stored as a different file) just pulling the data would cost you one miiiilion dollars.  On the other extreme, if you somehow structure the data in the max 5 gigs filesize, it would stretch across 200,000 files, which if you just grabbed them once each would cost you a mere $0.20.  If you choose to store your final output that way, 200,000 PUTs would cost you $2.

Comics 11/19

Pull list:

SCALPED #23 (MR)

INVINCIBLE #55
PAX ROMANA #4 (OF 4)

DEADPOOL #4

ATOMIC ROBO-DOGS OF WAR #4 (OF 5)

EX-MACHINA #39 (RES) (MR)

Reviews:

Invincible 55 - Kirkman returns his lense to the galactic setting with this issue centered around Allen the Alien.  As he himself says, he's a fan favorite, and a nice break from the angsty issues the last few months. B

Deadpool 4 - A bit disappointing start to the new arc following the strong SI intro story. C

Atomic Robo - Dogs of War 4 - B

Angel - After the Fall 14 - B

Robin 180 - C

Ex Machina 39 - A very slow and dull build-up. C

Greatest Hits 3 - B

Comics 11/12

This week's pull list:

ANNA MERCURY #4 (OF 5) PAINTED CVR (MR)
GRAVEL #6 WRAP CVR (MR)
SIMON DARK #14

I KILL GIANTS #5 (OF 7)
WALKING DEAD #54 (MR)
100 BULLETS #97 (MR)

Reviews.
100 Bullets 97 -  The body count slows down for what I assume will be the final arc. B
Amazing Spider-Man 577 - Mediocre fill-in issue.  Though as I've noted before, because of the writing challenges, all the issues feel like fill-ins. C
Detective 850 - Great art and strong story.  I have to say with all 4(?) Batman titles supposed crossover-ing for R.I.P., I can't quite understand how they hang together, so points off for DC trying to get a cheap sales spike. B
I Kill Giants 5 - Wow, I finally caught up with this title a few weeks ago, when I learned that Joe Kelly was writing it.  An amazing and heart-breaking story of a misfit whose rich inner world is futilely battling with the pressures of the real world. A

Fables 78 - The backup story is a yawner, but the new direction of Fables is nicely ominous. B

Gravel 6 - Though a welcome break from the formulaic (but fun) gathering of plot coupons that the eponymous protagonist has been busying himself with the past 5 issues, this issue still misses the mark for me.  C

Simon Dark 14 - I'm cooling off on this title.  C

The Cleaners 1 - Ever wonder who gets the job of cleaning up crime scenes?  Me neither, but this book takes this real life profession, which is good enough fodder on its own for an issue, and adds just enough 'weird' to it that it entices you for the next one.  B

Push 1 - C
Wolverine 69 - Not sure how I missed the fact that Millar and Niven were working on a out of continuity Wolverine story, but now that I'm clued in, I'm loving it.  It's a bit of a pastiche of Miller's 'The Dark Knight Returns' and his own work in 'Wanted' (comic not movie).  My friend Josh says of Millar: 'He wears his psycho-sexual symbolism close to the surface...'  Though I'm not quite sure what that means, I think Niven's version of Spider-Girl applies. A (for the whole arc so far, I would say the issue ranks as a B)
Action 871 - While I was initially hyped on the New Krypton premise, this is mostly filler. C