lynnfredricks.com

An interesting northwest start up called Toonlet makes a fun set of online tools to rapidly create web comics. It gives you a lot of templates to start with, so that you can create mostly human (and alien) characters for your comics, add moods and the like. These types of characters aren’t the Batman/Superman type - more along the lines of what you see in the newspaper. You can also auto-generate character and then customize them.

The interface for building characters and comic strips is a very clever, easy to use set of tools that uses Flash - Flash without the pain of having to use Flash the product (vs Flash the player). It lets you resize, flip and make other transformations to your characters.

Toonlet is a lot of fun, and it has tools for sharing your creations with others - on your own website, through feeds and the like.

A shocking article appeared in The Sunday Oregonian summarizing how the State of Oregon has suppressed information concerning landslide predictions made by state geologists in order to appease local governments - over concerns of land development - that the negative reports could impact property values.

The Oregonian reported that Gail Achterman, chairwoman of the Oregon Transportation Commission - who also heads the taskforce on landslide risk stated:

The hard policy decisions have simply not been made…It’s easier to do nothing and wait for FEMA to bail you out.

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