Newsarama’s “Best Shots” have declared Accent UK’s “Robots” Anthology a success, despite their jaded views on the world of anthology comics. It’s great to see the Accent UK anthologies getting the recognition they deserve, not least because Robots features “And Man Begat” by myself and Stu.Art and the upcoming “Victoriana” is set to feature “The Clockwork Occultist” by Terry Cooper and I.

To quote Newarama’s wise words …

“Robots is a better anthology than Image’s Popgun.”

Read all about for yourself at http://www.newsarama.com/comics/040920-Best-Shots.html

Today’s tech tip is a quick an easy way to make image maps, something I’ve always found quite fiddly and time consuming. There are tools that you can download to do this and, of course, a lot of HTML IDEs do this, but if you’re a little bit of a purist and you like to cut your HTML in a text editor … image maps are a pain!

So, for a quick and easy way to create an image map wherever you are … check out Image Map It Today.

The folk at Image Map like you leave a very small (2×2px) image link in your code, just so they can track how many people have used their software, and for what. Seems like a reasonable trade, but it is easily removed from the code if you aren’t happy with it.

GeekDad has very kindly selected the top 100 friends that you wish you had on Twitter and provided links so that you can dutifully cyber-stalk them.

And I have obeyed.

I am now following the “100 Geeks You Should Be Following On Twitter” like a good boy, but on my part more as a curious social experiment to compare who tweets more often and more interestingly – the friends I have found or these professional geeks at arms.

So, check them out. I’m following them right now. You should be to.

Go. Follow!

The last, I think, of our podcast appearances from the Bristol Con 2009 is featured in Comic Book Outsiders Episode 46.

Chaired by Scott, from Comic Book Outsiders, the Orang Utan panel metamorphosed in a round table discussion on indie comics that also features Stu and I, and the guys from Geek Syndicate.

It’s somewhere in the region of 45 minutes of unplanned, unscripted, but hopefully insightful and amusing banter between the two studios as we share war stories from the world of small press comics.

Particularly worth listening out for are the moment where I blantantly repeat myself and then shamlessly deny it, and the moment that Pete Rogers confesses that the biggest hurdle Orang Utan Comics face is Monkeys with Machineguns .

For the benefit of the tape, I think he just means that we’re both tall.

Many thanks to Scott for chairing the panel and special thanks to Peter Rogers and Ian Sharman for sharing their panel with us … absolute gentlemen as always.

Barry and Dave, the Geek Syndicate, very kindly made mention of Monkeys with Machinegun’s MWM Live! mini-event at the Bristol Small Press Expo in Geek Syndicate – Episode 119.

I must admit, I was a bit concerned about words in these guy’s mouths when I wrote “Scott vs. Geek Syndicate” for Scott from Comic Book Outsiders, but it seems to have gone down well. Writing dialogue for fictional people is much easier, as they rarely come back to you and want to talk about it …

It’s a scary world out there, especially when you realise that there are people like Bas Rutten waiting to “deliver a headbutt … out of nothing”.

I don’t know what to really make of Bas Rutten Street Defense, other than it probably means I should stay indoors. Forever.

The excellent fellows of SideKickCast have posted our unedited, unexpurgated, mildly humorous, and erratically rambling interview from Saturday Night in the Mercure Bar at Bristol Comic Expo 2009.

It’s not quite The Panel of Legend, but we drop our fair share of “f-bombs”.

If you have the time, why not enjoy …
An Evening with Monkeys with Machineguns

In these days of bloated software that requires multi-gigabyte installs, websites that take an age to load even on a 24 mbit connection, and keyrings that have more storage capacity that it was original thought was required to hold the world’s knowledge … it’s nice to see some standing up for elegant, efficient coding.

Congratulations to all of the #tweetcoding round 1 winners.

Picked this up on the Geek Syndicate forum. Looks really interesting, fantastic styling and a great retro feel. I particularly like the effect on the “Mercury Men” themselves.

If you are intrigued like me, you can follow Mercury Men on Twitter.

The tables are turned on Barry and David as Geek Syndicate are interviewed at the Bristol Comic Con. A great insight into how one of UK geekdom’s most popular podcasts got started, with the added value of Barry looking a little bit sinister in the early moments