Elsewhere, 9/5 (The “Hello Seattle” Edition)

Congratulations are in order for Jeffrey Overstreet: his first novel, Auralia’s Colors, is now available. I had a chance to read some of it, and it’s a very enjoyable and fanciful work, part Neil Gaiman and part Mervyn Peake.

The 2007 Toronto International Film Festival doesn’t start until tomorrow, but the Twitch crew are already posting reviews of films that will be playing at the festival, including Sad Vacation, Blood Brothers, and Flash Point. You can find all of Twitch’s TIFF 2007 coverage here.

NY-based noisters A Place To Bury Strangers — whose name is, interestingly enough, Biblical in origin — have inked a deal with Highwheel Records to release their next two records.

Khoi Vinh (of Subtraction fame) has launched A Brief Message, which “features design opinions expressed in short form — 200 words or less.” The first issue deals with that age-old question, “Is print design dead?” I don’t know about that, but I do know this: I positively lurve Vinh’s design.

Christianity Today interviews Park Eun-jo, the pastor of the Korean missionaries who were, until recently, held hostage by the Taliban: I don’t want this to be a stumbling block for missions.

Reason #1258 why I like ExpressionEngine so much: the EllisLab staff is starting a weekly video series in which they will address the EE community, answering questions and whatnot. The first video is up, and answers some questions posted on the forum concerning becoming a professional web developer.

Also on the EE blog, Lisa Wess has been doing a series entitled “The Importance of Semantics” that’s full of EE development tips and tricks. The first article is here.

Ekonet has just posted their latest net-release: Blink, by Virginia-based Michael Duane Ferrell (recording under the alias “Elian”).

Also on the netlabel front, Autoplate recently released Twile’s Traum-a, which they describe — fittingly, I might add — as “cinematic dub electronica”.

This just in from the “Proof That Studio Execs Aren’t The Sanest People Around” department: some folks are making a movie version of Joust. Yes, that Joust. And it gets even better. They’re describing it as “Gladiator meets Mad Max.” That sound you hear is me trying to swallow whatever it was that just came up in the back of my throat.