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Review of "The Best of The Joy of Tech"

by Nitrozac and Snaggy

reviewed by George Woolley

The Best of The Joy of Tech
By Nitrozac, Snaggy
November 2003
0-596-00578-4, Order Number: 5784
192 pages, $14.95 US, $23.95 CA, £9.95 UK

Short Review

:) :) :) :) :) of 5

This book is a compilation of geek humor comic strips with beautiful drawing, to kill for babes, and a sense of poetry.

If you have a soul, get this book. If you don't have a soul, borrow one (a soul, that is), so you can grok this book.

Best viewed by lovers of Macs and Linux.

If you wish, check out my longer review.

George Woolley of Oakland.pm

Parts

  • dedication, acknowledgment [3]
  • foreword, introduction [4]
  • comic strips [132]
  • JoyWords about the cartoon [47]
  • Joy of Tech Lexicon [2]

Notes:

  • approximate # of pages in brackets
  • foreword by Steve Wozniak
  • intro by David Pogue
  • JoyWord includes a JoyPoll for each cartoon and more

Some Recurring Subjects

  • geeks (e.g. #020)
  • babes and relationships (e.g. #134)
  • Apple & Macs (e.g. #309)
  • animals (e.g. #285)
  • Star Trek, sci fi, aliens (e.g. #489)
  • Linux (e.g. #240)
  • sweets & beverages (e.g. #169)
  • Microsoft (e.g. #450)

Notes:

  • with an example for each subject area
  • examples chosen to fit my taste
  • numbers are the sequence number and id of the cartoon
  • order of subjects is my hit on their relative importance here

A Couple of Links

Notes:

  • See first link for most recent comic strip.
  • If you lose the URLs, try to remember www.joyoftech.com.

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Longer Review

Contents

Notes:

What is 'The Joy of Tech'

The Joy of Tech is an on-line full color comic strip that comes out every day or so. It is geek oriented, but is beautifully drawn and poetic. There are geeks all over the place, but there are also a lot of to kill for babes -- and animals, aliens, ...

Oh yah, the strip is very Mac oriented, though Linux gets in on the fun quite a bit too. Microsoft, of course, gets bashed.

The strip is by Nitrozac (Liza Schmalcel) and Snaggy (Bruce Evans), two Canadian artists who met (kool!) at art school.

You can take a look at the Joy of Tech strip on-line at Joy of Tech Comics.

Joypoll: For each strip, there's a Joypoll which asks your view on an amusing question and provides amusing choices for answers.

Silly me. I never even noticed the poll until I got the book. In the book all the polls are grouped together in the JoyWords part of the book. They ad another dimension to the strips and the book. I found them, and the accompanying commentary, imaginative and amusing.

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The Title

The title "The Best of the Joy of Tech" implies that the book contains a bunch of The Joy of Tech strips. And it certainly does.

Are they the best? I don't know. I also don't much care. I was laughing too hard to worry about whether the strips selected are the best by some criteria. They were certainly good enough to make me happy.

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About the Reviewer

For many years, I favored Macs, but now I primarily use Linux. I'm a fan of the User Friendly on-line comic strip, which also engages with geek culture but is Linux oriented. I have a friend who claims Macs are not "real machines" and who thinks they are best used as boat anchors. I chuckle at that but don't agree.

Almost all the technical books I use regularly are O'Reilly books. I also find O'Reilly's non-technical books to be quite interesting. I like the way O'Reilly operates.

I took the geek test. Based on my score, I'm a geek. But I don't make it to any of the higher classifications of geek. Oh, well.

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Did it make me laugh?

Hey, I got the book so I could laugh. And I sure did. I'd try to describe some of the strips, but that's difficult. Besides you can take a look for yourself, OK? Check out some of the links I give under Some Recurring Subjects or just go over to www.geekculture.com and dive in.

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Did it make me cry?

Well, I didn't ever actually cry. But there's something more than laughter here.

An obvious example is the Our Dreams Continue tribute to the astronauts who perished in the Columbia shuttle tragedy. I've not articulated what's going on, but, for sure, there's more than laughs here, and not just in the one strip.

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Final Words

So, like I said in the short review, if you have a soul, get this book.

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Last Updated: 2003-12-08