Today I got this e-mail from Javier Lugo of jlugographics.com:

Dear Friends,

I am proud and honored to announce that as of February 2008 you can commission a superhero pencil drawing from me and have it inked by professional inker and industry legend:

Joe Rubenstein!

That's right! Joe Rubenstein, inker of comic book legends like Frank Miller, John Byrne, Herb Trimpe, Michael Golden, Mike Zeck, Marshal Rogers and many more, has made it possible to collaborate with me on producing even more awesome artwork for you! So if you would like to commission a superhero pinup inked by Joe, let me know!

Here are his prices for inking 11" x 17" art:

• First Character & No Background: $105
• First Character & Basic Background: $130
• Per additional Character: Add $95

Please visit my website for details and pricing and thank you for your support!

Javier Lugo
J. Lugo Graphics, Inc.

Just thought to share the info here and give Javier a few more Google hits .

I've taken the general gallery offline while I update it. For some reason, the upgrade didn't go that well, so I'll have to wait until I get the time to fix it.

Update: The gallery is online once more. It turns out the problem was was with ver. 1.1.4. of ZenPhoto. The most recent nightly build installed without a problem. I still have to fix the custom theme I'm using, though, since the captcha text in the comment form is missing. OK that's fixed too .

But I now suck less after watching the "You Suck at Photoshop" series of informative and hilarious videos. The humor might be a bit dark for some, subtle, and at the same time a bit poignant, but for me it enhanced the experience and made it more memorable. I like dark humor, sarcasm, and irony, so I had no problem with it (made me laugh harder than I've had in months).

Like is says on LifeHacker (where I first came across it) "you might want to pop on the headphones to listen at work or in front of the kiddies."

Slacker is yet another attractive playlist for Websites. You need to download the Slacker Software Player first, and create "radio stations" similar to Last.fm and Pandora, but with more control on which bands you want in the station.

You can also choose to have a slimmer-looking player.

After a bit of getting used to it, I find I like what Last.fm offers, and the widgets aren't half bad either. Clicking directly on the track will only give you a 30 second preview. The only way to hear complete tracks is by clicking the big "Play" button, which then plays songs randomly. A way to go around copyright issues I guess.

However, b2evolution was allergic to the code as it was, and I don't have right now the time to convert it all. So, for the time being I'm only placing a stripped-down version of my Last.fm playlist widget. It doesn't look 100% correct in IE7--the Play button is not centered--but it looks perfect on Firefox and Opera.

Their downloadable AudioScrobblerapp is similar to Pandora: generating a streaming "radio station" tailored to your music tastes. Pandora's interface is far simpler, but I must admit I like using Last.fm's app quite a bit. The AudioScrobbler link I posted here is for the BETA version 1.4, which gives far more control than the current version on what you want it to run. For instance, when you open the app, it also activates LastFMHelper.exe, which doesn't help you very much if you don't have an iPod (and it stays active even when you turn off AudioScrobbler). You can tell the app NOT to open it next time. In version 1.3 (the current stable) you can't do that, only terminate the helper app manually and then renaming it to something else so it doesn't run next time (Windows will pop up a nag screen telling you it can't find the file each time you open AS though).