Scott McCloud at Hijinx Comics

I had a great time last night hanging out with my son Jacob (8) at our local comic store Hijinx Comics with Scott McCloud, his family and a bunch of other locals in the know. Scott McCloud is probably the most self-aware and thoughtful person creating comics at the moment. I liken the year-long tour he is just finishing to a professor travelling the world to spread his knowledge. His original book Understanding Comics has been worth re-reading every few years - it's one of those books, like Edward Tufte's. Any kind of collaboration between them would be an amazing thing to behold.

The other thing we really enjoyed was his family being there. Jacob was amazed to find any girl who liked Pokemon as much as he does, and Scott's wife Ivy is also a great presence in any room. Many thanks to Dan Shahin for organizing the get-together.

Atlassian has acquired Cenqua

Which is not surprising, given how many of my customers use both Jira for bugtracking and FishEye as a front-end browser for their version control. What's funny to me is that I suggested it to Scott Farquhar, the CEO of Atlassian last month at the Silicon Valley Atlassian User Group meeting, but I didn't pick up on why he looked a bit surprised by my suggestion that "hey, y'know, Atlassian should buy those FishEye guys!". Next time, I'll just ask if he wants to play poker.

No word on the terms of the deal, but from my perspective, it's great news. Best wishes to all involved.