IBM (NYSE: IBM ) today announced the local availability of the Virtual Desktop for Smart Business, a new workforce mobility solution offering anytime, anywhere, access to corporate data from mobile devices, such as tablets or laptops on the move.

Thank you, first and foremost, to theSwede. When I told you I wanted and needed to do some creative work, over a decade ago, you simply said "Okay" and were nothing but supportive. None of this would exist without you. Thank you as well to both Cannonball and Torpedo. Someday you'll be old enough to read these, and I hope you find them all as enjoyable, meaningful, and as embarrassing as they are/were intended to be.

Thank you to Mom, Dad, Hanna, Emma, my grandparents, all extended family, for giving me the experiences, insight, and humor that crafted STW. Thank you Mitch, Donna, and all for their support as well. Thank you to so many friends, innumerable to name. Your support has meant everything.

Thank you to classmates, advisors, and colleagues from the past 10 years at Cornell, NIST, and Northeastern, particularly to those who never found out about STW when it needed to remain a professional secret, and just as particularly to those who were in full support and encouragement when the secret came out. Thank you to so many students, but especially everyone from the NU ChemE class of 2015, who I am ever indebted to.

Thank you to so many in the comics/creative community, especially Danielle Corsetto, Jon Rosenberg, Joan Cooke, Christopher Moore, Jessica Hagy, Holly and Jeffrey Rowland, Sara McHenry, Gary Tyrrell, Zach and Kelly Weinersmith, Matt Lubchansky, Monica Keszler, Ryan Walsh, every artist I have collaborated with, so so so many others. Thank you for all that you have done to bring me into your world, and for all that you have done for my career.

It's been a very long time since I worked there, but thank you as well to Three Point for all those experiences at creative writing that almost certainly led to the creation of STW.

Thank you to Westley, Sprite, Wakefield, Shiv, and Bitey, too. Why not.

And finally, thank you to all of you kind readers. For however long you have read STW, thank you. I am so incredibly humbled by your support and kindness and so incredibly grateful for all that you have given to STW as well. I wish all of you whatever joy and happiness that you deserve.

STW ran for 10+ years and 3500+ comics. It's as much yours as it is mine, now.

Thank you all, so harking much.

So, hey, STW alumni, long time no lecture. How are things?

Happy New Year to you all. May 2020 bring you nothing but good, and may we all fight all the monsters together.

Figured I would start running old comics through the RSS feed, so here you go.

In case you missed when Surviving the World ended, we ran a Kickstarter to put together a book collection of some of the best STW comics from the entire 10+ year run. The book came out pretty tremendous - there's 300 comics in beautiful color, all the 'file under' jokes, all the addendum and archive jokes, some new jokes, a soundtrack listing, a foreword by Christopher Moore - it's really nice and most people liked it as much as I did!

Anyway, we have some additional copies that are now on sale at Topatoco if you want an extra copy or a first copy, whatever the case may be. I will eventually get the PDF version of the book up and available for sale as well, if any of you are so inclined.

As for me, I am professoring away, working on some other projects, still doing bad jokes and things on social media, all while still making STEM comics, and hopefully will have some new work to share with you soon.

Other than that, for now, I hope life-long learning continues to bring you new enlightenment and I hope you all continue to get all joy and happiness you deserve.

The STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2013.

The STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2010.

The STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2011.

The STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2015.

The STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2017.

The STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2014.

The STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2018.

Thoughts from 2020: If I had ever had an agent, I would have pitched a book of nothing but mazes like this. Maybe I should find an agent and pitch this anyway. This is definitely not the best known STW maze - it's not the one that people kept trying to rip off for their own shirts and designs and companies - but it was a pretty good one to be the final maze of the comic.

Also, this was #3500, and it was a pretty good one for the last big numbered comic. I won't lie, looking back, a lot of STW is only 'just okay', but I can enjoy when some were slightly better than others. I think this was one?

The STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2014.

Thoughts from 2020: We still can't keep flowers in the house because of the cat. This is why the aloe plant is now in my office at work. Did you know aloe is poisonous to cats or something like that?

The STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2012.

Thoughts from 2020: Sprite the cat is still with us, by the way. She's at least 14 now and we've had her for 13 years as of last October. She is still the greatest cat ever created. And she pretty much always hated being put in the labcoat like this.

The STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2014 on the "I Love Charts" Medium site - I was allowed to repost comics on STW but I don't think I ever did, so this is the first time this comic has appeared on STW.

Thoughts from 2020: The worst part about being in every STW means that I get to see how freakishly young I looked even just six years ago. Stupid children stealing my youth.

"Hark" was the four-letter new-slang insult that a reader suggested adopting sometime in 2011, and it remains a stupidly fun curse word for me, especially around the holidays.

I got 2 cents for every view of the comics on the Medium site during the first 3 months it ran, and then got 1 cent for every view during the last 3 months (incidentally, also why I started making 2 additional comics per week for them as opposed to 1). I think I spent most of the income on comics.

The STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2016.

Thoughts from 1/14/2020: I developed IBS-like symptoms, or what is essentially an allergy, to caffeine about 8 months ago. Looking back on all the comics that involve coffee like this one, I'm not surprised why. By the way, it's difficult to get through the day without caffeine and caffeine-free tea just doesn't cut it.

The STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2008.

Thoughts from 1/15/2020: I don't continue to hold that you will get the same grade in ChemE whether you study all night or get drunk the night before, but I use that line with my students all the time. That said, electrical engineering remains black magic.

The STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2011.

Thoughts from 1/16/2020: I made this comic when I was still 27. What the hell was I focusing on at that point?

The STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2014.

Thoughts from 1/17/2020: Considering this now pedagogically ... I'm not sure this is helpful for students at all.

The STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2016.

Thoughts from 1/18/2020: This comic was kind of simple and dumb and yet you still maybe learned something from it, so all in all it was kind of the perfect STW.

The STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2009.

Thoughts from 1/19/2020: This comic came out in December of 2009, about six months after STW got really popular, and I remember someone shared the image on Twitter and Neil Gaiman retweeted it, and that led to another brief boost in popularity. It's weird to think that STW started at exactly the right time - I don't think it would have made a dent if it started today, and I don't think something like this really could have started today. Anyway, life and history are weird.

Get the STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2016.

Thoughts from 1/20/2020: My smile in this one perfectly captures my true delight in this terrible pun. In so many ways, this is one of my favorite STWs. It's also in the STW book. Speaking of ...

Get the STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2014.

Thoughts from 1/21/2020: There was a brief period of time when I was being asked to submit various chart jokes to WIRED. One got in - a pie chart showing Vin Diesel's moods were 50% fast and 50% furious. This one was one that got rejected so screw it, I made it into a STW.

Get the STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2015.

Thoughts from 1/22/2020: I look ridiculous.

Get the STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2012.

Thoughts from 1/23/2020: It's a living.

I only had one newly born baby at the time of this comic. Remember people asking for updates about Cannonball as we were doing our best to keep her from arriving early? Now she's got a sibling and Cannonball is almost 8. Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.

Get the STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2013.

Thoughts from 1/24/2020: One of my students, the semester this comic was released, drunkenly typed this up and submitted it as a comment in my course evaluations, which means the text here has been a part of every promotion dossier I've had to submit.

Oh, look, you can see I'm kneeling, like I was in about 60-70% of all the comics I made. That's just bad cropping, there.

Get the STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2008.

Thoughts from 1/25/2020: I did this far more often than I should have and was a terrible example of safety - to be fair, I was following the culture that was set at the time. Now I teach safety and so it's very much a case of "Look at me, kids, do you want to be as pathetic and awful as me?"

Get the STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2017.

Thoughts from 1/26/2020: Continues to apply in all things.

Get the STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2008.

Thoughts from 1/27/2020: There were three comics of this "Sports vs." theme. This is probably the best of the three? I used to play several sports in high school for my Catholic high school, and they would want us to pray as a team before each game, and then we'd usually follow with someone saying the name of a saint, and then the rest of the team responding "pray for us". Usually someone would say "St. Sebastian", who was the patron saint of sports, so the "pray for us" made sense. There'd be a "St. Bernard", since that was the name of our school, and the "pray for us" was obvious. And since we were terrible in almost all sports, I'd throw in a "St. Jude", and everyone would readily respond with a "pray for us", as a matter of practice ... not knowing that St. Jude was the patron saint of hopeless causes. It is fair to say that St. Jude did not come through for us in most cases, or perhaps he stayed true to his cause and thus did come through? Anyway high school sucked.

Get the STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2010.

Thoughts from 1/28/2020: The dumbest thing I did was ending recitations on the site, and I did that just 2 or 3 years in. At that point, I was getting 10 to 20 emails a day from people trying to get a question on the site, and when I ended it, that dropped off completely. Ah well! Of course, I realized this and tried to recapture the connection not long after with 'homeworks' or 'big questions', but it was too late. On the other hand, my actual students would have had a field day with recitations if I was still doing these by the time I became a professor.

Get the STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2018.

Thoughts from 1/29/2020: The day after STW ended, my youngest child, Torpedo, lectured the hungry hungry hippos on making sure to share the food. I remain endlessly delighted by this memory.

Get the STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2018.

Thoughts from 1/30/2020: I think this came out the day after my joke about Batman and Conditioner Gordon that continues to pop up and send out Google alerts with my last name that continue to irritate my Dad.

A few months after STW ended, I did a way-too-long thread on Twitter that ran with and completely beat into the ground this rhyming wordplay scheme.

Get the STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2012.

Thoughts from 1/31/2020: This seems like the totally mature comic that a person would publish just two months before they became a dad. Setting a strong example for the youth of near-tomorrow!

Get the STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2008.

Thoughts from 2/2/2020: The first raptor impression on the site! I totally stole the whole raptor thing from a guy I knew freshman year of college, and he was perfect at the noise and movement, but he transferred out after that year anyway.

There was no re-run yesterday because I briefly participated in Hourly Comic Day. Here are eight I made before giving up on it. Not sure I'll do it again, unless I start actually drawing.

Get the STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2017.

Thoughts from 2/3/2020: This was very hard to make, given a 10-second timer on the camera, and needing to get the book prepared in-between my monkey toes, let alone raising everything to the right height. Also no one appreciated how clever this was, because, alas, that's the way of things.

Get the STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2016.

Thoughts from 2/4/2020: There is a real problem with making endless comics for ten straight years that have your face in them, as you will get set in your mind that is what you look like, and anyway I'm 37 today and I'm now trying to remind myself that that's the way of things. The sad thing is I know I somehow got a little more mature along the way, and that's the real depressing thing. Hurray!

Get the STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2016.

Thoughts from 2/14/2020: Westley was a good dog and he was forced into a labcoat far too many times.

The 'roses are red' rhyming scheme joke is my favorite part of this stupid holiday.

Get the STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2014.

Thoughts from 2/16/2020: This comic was made in honor of my sixth wedding anniversary. I then self-plagiarized it for when I officiated my friend Ron's wedding this past summer, and then self-plagiarized it again for when I officiated my sister's wedding last fall. And now I'm posting it on the day of my parents' 40th wedding anniversary. I have better comics about love but this one kind of drives the message home better than any of them.

Get the STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2017.

Thoughts from 2/18/2020: I just spent my weekend grading 148 exams for two classes and I'm brain numb right now. So here's an old comic about grading.

Get the STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2018.

Thoughts from 3/8/2020: It's International Women's Day so let's destroy the old system, if that's okay with all of you.

Both Torpedo and Cannonball seem likely to continue on this path, as most people of their generation will be, I assume.

Get the STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2014.

Thoughts from 3/10/2020: I remember making this comic six years ago but I did not remember that 'file under' tag, I must have been feeling particularly blasphemous that day.

Get the STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2012.

Thoughts from 4/12/2020: I remember this comic coming out just days before Cannonball was born and even though I was hallucinating to the point that the chair I was sleeping on was literally talking to me, those were certainly simply times than right now.

I hope that all of you and your families are healthy, both physically and mentally. May we all make it through these times as best we can.

Get the STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2010.

Thoughts from 4/13/2020: This was originally thought of in 2003 after a bad summer camp experience, and was developed in response to dumb political talking points in 2010. I have no possible idea why I've been reminded of it now ...

I hope that all of you and your families are healthy, both physically and mentally. May we all make it through these times as best we can.

Get the STW Book!

This comic was originally posted in 2017.

Thoughts from 5/8/2020: Hey, it's my mom's birthday! Happy birthday, mom. Thanks for not throwing me into the sun.

Get the STW Book!

A new IBM (NYSE: IBM) study of more than 1,700 Chief Executive Officers from 64 countries and 18 industries worldwide reveals that CEOs are changing the nature of work by adding a powerful dose of openness, transparency and employee empowerment to the command-and-control ethos that has characterised the modern corporation for more than a century.

White marble, dark chocolate, one light source. Problem?

Not at all. Because pretty much everything you can actually see across the top of that box is not really the "correct" tonality of the chocolate. It's all specular highlights.

Controlling the density of specular highlights is what compresses the subject's wide tonal range and unifies everything into one smooth exposure.
__________Read more »

UPDATE: Both workshops filled very quickly. I only do these about once a year; apologies for the imbalance. I have set up a system so people who are potentially interested in future small-class lighting workshops can receive advance notice. More info here.

__________
I'll be teaching two, full-day lighting workshops in the suburban Baltimore/DC area on December 6 and 7.

They are two separate one-day events. These are small-group workshops, with a maximum class size of 12 people each day. These are shooting workshops, and you'll be behind (and/or in front of!) a camera for most of the day.

Assuming you arrive at this class with a basic understanding of f/stops and shutter speeds, you will leave with a strong foundation in the fundamentals of off-camera lighting. You will be comfortable using single and multiple lights both alone and/or balanced with a mix of ambient lighting.

All lighting gear will be provided. We will also provide lunch.

You will need to bring a camera that is adjustable in manual mode and has a hot shoe connection for a flash, a lens that covers normal and/or portrait range, one or two fully charged batteries and an empty storage card. Maybe a notebook and pen if you like.

That's it. Just show up ready to learn and to have fun. Leave the rest to me.


Details

Dates:
December 6 and 7, 2019

Time:
9:30am - 5:30pm

Price:
$259

Location:
Sandy Spring Friends Lyceum
17715 Meeting House Road
Sandy Spring, MD 20860


Note; These are the only small-class lighting workshops I'll be teaching in the US this year. In the past, these have tended to fill very quickly. So if this is something you'd like to do, I'd suggest signing up sooner rather than later.


Sign-Up Links

Friday, December 6 [FRIDAY'S CLASS HAS BEEN FILLED]

Saturday, December 7 [SATURDAY'S CLASS HAS BEEN FILLED]

Sydney, Australia – 29 May 2014: The IBM (NYSE: IBM) 'Heart of the City' installation at this year's Vivid Sydney is using data analytics to map and visualise the real-time movement of festival attendees with WiFi devices walking around the 40-plus installations along the Vivid Light Walk precinct.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the appointment of David La Rose as Managing Director of IBM Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ). He replaces Kerry Purcell, who will return to a senior leadership role in IBM Japan.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the appointment of Professor Iven Mareels as Lab Director of IBM Research-Australia.

IBM Appoints Katrina Troughton as Managing Director of IBM Australia and New Zealand