In this weekly column, filmmaker Danish Aslam will be your purveyor of the finest quality random facts, useless trivia and other esoterica from the world wide web. He lives mostly behind a keyboard and may or may not be a wizened old green man who speaks in grammatically incorrect aphorisms. You can find more on his home page http://pictually.me/dontpanic

22 Panels That Always Work. And 4 Panels That Never Do.

Not many of you will know who Wally Wood is, even if you are comic book aficionados. Which is fine, despite the fact that he one of Mad magazine's founding cartoonists. But what you should know is this little piece that he did called Wally Wood's 22 Panels That Always Work! (Or some interesting ways to get some variety into those boring panels where some dumb writer has a bunch of lame characters sitting around and talking for page after page!) This little compilation of visual notes has pretty much become gospel for aspiring comic book artists over years and can also be fairly insightful on the consumer side of things. What's funnier though, is the reply created by Mark Waid titled '4 Panels That Never Work'. It speaks for itself.

The Dark Knight Kind Of Rises But Mostly Falls

This is going to be the last Dark Knight post ever, I promise! Ah, who am I kidding? Anyway, so here's a hilarious take from the good folks over at How It Should Have Ended on, well, how TDKR should have ended. Check out the page for a chucklesome collection of similar videos, including Prometheus and The Avengers. But, since this is a Dark Knight post, here's some more Batman goodness: The Honest Movie Trailer version of The Dark Knight Rises. Rabid Nolan fans need not click.

B.A.S.E. Jumping

Does jumping off a cliff wearing nothing but a wingsuit and a parachute sounds like a perfectly sane weekend activity to you? If your answer's 'Yes', then you need to either get yourself checked for excessive adrenaline levels or apply for a BASE number, of which only 1,400 have been awarded till now.

B.A.S.E. jumping (the acronym apparently stands for Buildings, Antennas, Spans and Earth, the four things you can jump off from) may seem like something that is not an absolute requirement to lead a normal, well-developed life, but when you see these videos you may change your mind. The first one is a music video created for Mat Zo's appropriately titled song 'The Sky' by the excellent people over at Infinity List (check out their website for a massive collection of videos from various other sports as well). And before you grab your handy bedside parachute and jump off your second floor 1BHK in Lokhandwala, here's a great collection over at Discovery Channel to whet your appetite. Enjoy.

Famous NYC Album Covers

One of the great joys of browsing through a record store to buy LPs (or so I'm told) used to be the artwork. Bob Egan over at PopSpots obviously thinks so too, hence this compilation of Famous Album Covers Locations in New York. Superimposing the covers on the real locations themselves, he's made a collection that almost transcends time as in some of the photographs, the past peeps through via the covers and juxtaposes with the present and the way it's changed.

The Birth Of E-News

Mark Potts was a reporter for The Washington Post in 1992 when Robert Kaiser, the managing editor, was invited by Apple's then CEO to Japan for a conference on the future of digital media. The seven-page memo Kaiser wrote on the flight back is one of the first instances of the traditional print media wrapping its head around the inevitable future. In this blog post, Mr Potts recounts the early days of digital news and how he helped develop the mockup for prototype electronic newspaper which would foreshadow the websites and iPad-friendly newspapers that are fast replacing newspapers today. Fascinating read.

15 Floor Plans Of TV's Best Homes

This one's only for the extreme TV junkie. Most of us are aware that Chandler and Joey's apartment has a Foosball table right near the door and Frasier has a balcony that we never get to see from the outside. But BuzzFeed has compiled 15 floor plans of TV's most famous homes to finally put things into perspective. I had no idea that Frasier's apartment was shaped like that, for example. If you've been looking for an excuse to redecorate (or maybe even remodel), you may just have found one.

Nolan vs. Nolan

I told you I wasn't done with Batman yet! But this one's serious stuff. David Bordwell, one of the most respected American film theorists (and creator of the brilliant blog Observations On Film Art), has written an insightful piece on Nolan's cinematic form that needs to be read by any cinephile. Nothing much else to say, really.

Gangnam Style!

And finally, something to put a smile on your face. I debated for a while whether to post this video or not, mainly because I just can't decide whether it's one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen or one of the catchiest. Probably both. For those of you living under a rock, 'Gangnam Style' is a music video made by South Korean rapper Psy which currently has over 50 million hits on YouTube and sits at #65 on iTunes' most popular downloads chart. But rather than passing judgement on it, I'm just going to leave you with the video itself. And, to put things in context, here's the description put up by the singer:

"From two years of break, PSY is finally coming back with his 6th album 'PSY6甲'! The album's weighty title song 'Gangnam Style' is composed solely by PSY himself from lyrics to choreography. The song is characterised by its strongly addictive beats and lyrics, and is thus certain to penetrate the foundations of modern philosophy." You may never see horse-riding the same way again.

PS: And just to prove how popular this video really is, here's footage of Nelly Furtado singing it (and doing the signature step) at a concert in Manila. And here's a detailed post with a self-explanatory heading: 'OK, What The Hell Is Gangnam Style?'