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  • Organizing Friends

    Posted on by Stickman Comment

    This will be a somewhat INTJ post. For those not familiar with the term, it basically means I’m going to say things that make perfect logical sense, but will make certain people’s hair stand on end as they think, “that’s horrible, you’re putting people into little boxes and labeling them! You can’t do that!” If you find that happening, feel free to step away from the computer, have some tea, and forget you ever read this post.

    While talking with a friend, he mentioned I knew how to pick friends, and asked where he ranked. And I found myself looking for a grading criteria for my friends. Some friends are better than others. They’re more entertaining, more useful, more funny, etc. But it’s a complex web. Friend Alpha might be beautiful and intelligent, but have the social skills of a skunk. Friend Beta might be horrid to the eye, but extremely intelligent and funny. Putting them into the traditional “high score” list, with a clean numerical scaling, doesn’t work well.

    So I examined my friends. And when I say friends, I mean the people that have had a large influence in my life, or who I try to talk to regularly. The following does not include acquaintances, heroes, and the like. What I found is that I have four major categories that I care about concerning friendship with others. These categories are as follows.

    1. Pleasant Company.

    The first category is non-technical. It’s a very personal truth that usually doesn’t apply to others. Stated simply, it’s the answer to the question, “Do I like to be around this person?”

    This category covers the funny, attractive, and entertaining areas of a person.

    Some people who fit into this category are:

    • A friend who cuts to the heart of issues with a single sentence. He’s very abrasive at times, but the raw honesty is extremely refreshing. He’s also almost always right.
    • A friend who does not impress me with intellect, social skills, or even looks. But is a really nice guy, and fun to hang around.

    2. Collaborative.

    I very much enjoy working. I like to get things accomplished, create, and inspire. Many of my friends were chosen, or gain additional value to me, as we can work together to accomplish some goal or another, combining our skills.

    Some examples of this include:

    • An old high school friend who came over one weekend to play games. We ended up working on and finishing a big website project that weekend.
    • A college friend who saw an opportunity to enhance products they were selling at a convention by having me use some of my tools that were lying around.

    3. Educational.

    One of my most valuable categories is being able to learn something from a friend. Not everyone fits into this category, as teaching is its own skill. First you need to know something well enough to be able to explain it. Then you need to have the skill to explain it clearly.

    However, those that freely teach and share what they know have great value to me. An example of this is:

    • A friend who taught me a significant portion of social analysis skills, to understand people, how they work, and what their goals are.

    4. Teachable.

    Lastly, I noticed that I had a few friends whose greatest value didn’t fit into any of the other categories. People who I’ve given advice and ideas to, who I’ve been able to watch grow and progress, but don’t really give much back.

    Not that it’s a lopsided friendship. I love teaching. I had considered becoming a teacher of some sort when I was growing up. And watching someone take what you’ve taught them and become better for it is amazing in itself.

    The experiences of the teachable people are more theirs than mine to share. I just did some talking, they did the actions.

     

    This system is by no means complete, current, or accurate. It might change in five years, I might have overlooked something major, and these are all my categories. This was more of a spur of the moment pairing that made a lot of sense, based on my own tastes.

    If it makes a lot of sense to you, try picking a few categories of things you find most important in a person. What attributes of your friends have made you the most happy, or had the most difference in your life? If you’re aware of these, it may be a lot easier to find people whose company you’d enjoy.


    Friends Main Philosophy 📎and tagged

  • Starting a Webcomic

    Posted on by Stickman Comment

    I’ve heard from a lot of people over the years about their plans to start up webcomics. And I’ve given a lot of advice about how to make webcomics. But it’s all in different places, like IM logs, my head, unlogged chatrooms, IRC, and my miniforums, and it’s just not practical to expect people to go dig up all that information for themselves. So this is a post to hopefully help those people that want to start a webcomic.

    This post will be separated into the following categories:

    -Why Make a Webcomic
    -Website Hosting
    -Webcomic Engine
    -Planning the Comic
    -Making the Comic
    -Promoting the Comic

    Why Make a Webcomic
    ——————-
    Everyone has their own reasons, and most of those reasons are valid. Valid reasons include:

    1) I want to improve my artwork.
    3) I want to learn to be funny.
    2) I want to make something to entertain me and my friends.
    5) I want to make new friends.
    4) Everyone else is doing it.
    6) I want lots of people to congratulate me on my birthday.
    7) I love to draw!

    But there are a number of invalid reasons. Here are some invalid reasons to make a webcomic:

    1) Fame. The internet is no place to get famous. The last person to get famous on the internet is Miss Teen South Carolina. And you don’t want that. Getting famous on the internet is a bad thing.

    2) Fortune. A webcomic is no place to try to earn money, especially if you don’t have an awesome work ethic. The few “successful” webcomics I’ve seen did not get big until many years after they started, and only did so after lots of hard work.

    Website Hosting
    —————
    If you need help on hosting, then I’m going to take the easy way out. I don’t want to try explaining things like setting up your own local webserver, buying a domain name, or paying for a shared server. So let’s play it easy and go with “free and simple webcomic hosting.”

    Here are four sites that host webcomics for free:
    –Drunk Duck
    –Comic Genesis
    –Webcomics Nation
    –Smack Jeeves

    There are many more, but some of them are harder to get into or are specialty hosting sites. Xepher is an example of a slightly more “exclusive” webcomic hosting site. Exclusive is awesome, because you tend to get more freedom and control. But it also means you’d better be ready for a commitment, because they take themselves more seriously.

    These dedicated webcomic sites are awesome because when you sign up, you’re magically in a webcomic community. People can find you effortlessly. Also, no technical knowledge is required, and if you do have technical knowledge you can customize your site’s appearance and function.

    The downside is that it’s free because there are ads on your site. Also, free hosting sites have a reputation of downtime and lagginess.

    Webcomic Engine
    —————
    Each of the sites in the last section have their own way of updating and maintaining the webcomics they host. It would be a good idea to sign up to each of them and see how they work, and then pick your favorite.

    The rest of this section is for people that are hosting their comic themselves, be it locally or on a shared server, or whereever. Some specialty hosting sites may require you to have your own engine.

    The webcomic engine is what powers your comic. If you have no engine, then you’ll be manually editing files and links whenever you upload a new comic. If you have an engine, then updating your comic can be as easy as uploading the latest comic image and having the whole site magically rearrange itself. The “back” button goes back one comic, the “latest” button goes to the latest comic, and etc.

    Engines come in a few flavors, from PHP to ASP to JavaScript and from simple to really complex. The first thing you need to look at is what your hosting provider supports. PHP is the norm for paid hosting, and “nothing” is the norm for a free website.

    I’ve created two comic engines, one extremely simple and one rather complex. Both require PHP.

    The complex one was never finished. It included adding news to the comics, editing old news, comments that stick to specific comics, mass updating of previous comics/news entires, a queuing system for uploading comics and having them update later, and all sorts of fun things. But as I said, I never quite finished it, so I won’t be distributing that until I get around to finishing it, which is probably never.

    The simple one I created was for Maglot‘s comic, Cry of the Wolf. You can download this simple comic engine here: http://www.skaarj.com/extras/comic.zip. It includes some instructions on how to use it.

    If your hosting provider doesn’t allow the use of PHP, there’s still a solution besides hand-editing everything whenever you update. You can find/make yourself a Javascript comic engine.

    Back in ages past, before the giant webcomic hosting places went up, you could find webcomic engines easily on the internet. These days it’s rather much harder, and you usually end up making them yourself.

    Planning the Comic
    ——————
    There’s a right way and a wrong way to make a comic.

    The right way involves:
    -Creating your characters, and creating character sheets for them to use as reference so the characters always look the same. This includes costume sheets for all their different outfits.
    -Creating the environments the comic takes place in, and creating reference sheets so the environments don’t go changing all the time.
    -Creating the props that appear in the comic, including reference sheets.
    -Creating the story. All of it. This is the real time consumer, and has a ton of substeps going from idea to general storyline all the way down to rough drafts, then the final comic.

    As far as I know, the number of books that teach you how to draw comics can be counted on one hand.
    –Graphic Storytelling by Will Eisner (father of the graphic novel)
    –Comics and Sequential Art by Will Eisner
    –Making Comics by Scott McCloud
    –Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
    –How to Make Webcomics by several famous webcomic authors (edit: Added here on Oct 9th, 2011)

    No doubt there’s more, as an Amazon search can point out, but Making Comics and Comics and Sequential Art are the ones Rob Kmiec recommended.

    It’s important to decide the following, as well:
    –Daily gag or serious story?
    –Standard panel style or freeroam?
    –Colored or black and white?
    –3D, traditional, or CG?
    –Daily or whenever?

    Making the Comic
    —————-
    So you’ve planned everything out. You know what kind of comic you’re making, how you’re making it, how often you’re updating, who all the characters are, where the story is going to take place, and what the story is from start to finish (or at least have pages of ideas for jokes for your daily gag strip).

    The Beginning
    The first thing you need to do is make the first half-dozen pages before you even put anything online. This accomplishes a couple things.

    1) It lets you know if you’re actually going to be able to handle it. If you planned for a daily strip and it takes you three months to make half a dozen pages, then you’ll want to rethink your update schedule, and/or your method of creating the comic.

    2) It creates confidence. Most webcomics seem to die after zero to two pages. If you have more than that already up, then you’ve proven to your viewers that you broke the barrier most people fail at.

    The Buffer
    Having a buffer on your comic is a very smart thing. To have a buffer means to have more comics ready than you’ve committed to giving.

    For example, say you have a Monday, Wednesday, Friday comic. You’ve spent two weeks and created six pages before you put anything online. In order to create a buffer, you would create even more comics, perhaps spending two more weeks to create half a dozen more. Then you start the comic by putting the first half-dozen online, and keep the last half-dozen to yourself. In case you get sick, or can’t update, you’ve got extra comics to fall back on, and your readers won’t see a hiccup in the schedule.

    Just make sure after you start digging into your buffer that put in extra effort to build the buffer back up, or you’ll just use it up and that’s that.

    Keep at It
    Updating a webcomic can be hard. But if you stick to your schedule, you’ll eventually get to your end goal and be finished. If you need support, talk to your friends, family, or (if you have some) your readers.

    Communicate
    The most effective method of communicating to the readers of your comic is in comic form. Most people don’t read news posts. I personally think that if someone doesn’t care enough to read the news post, then they don’t care enough to know. But how you communicate is up to you, just know what’s most effective.

    It’s polite to inform your readers (or reader) when an update is going to be missed or late. You don’t need to tell them about your personal life if you don’t want to, just tell them it’s going to be missing or late.

    Promoting the Comic
    ——————-
    I’ll admit that while fame shouldn’t be a reason to start a webcomic, it can be a reason to continue a webcomic. Who wants to spend time making a webcomic if no one’s going to enjoy it?

    You should start promoting your webcomic once you’ve got a solid base of comics. That base is up to your discretion, but the marketing tactic is like this: The good art draws them in, and the good story (or funnies) keeps them. If people can’t see the awesome story, you may want to wait until you’ve got enough comics to do that.

    Notice I said you should have a solid base of comics before promoting. I don’t want to see any one who’s read this promoting their comic before they’ve even put anything online. I’ve seen those promotions before, and visit their empty sites, and get horribly disappointed. Most of the time, those sites stay blank forever because they were expecting instant fame, and got no responses because they had no content. Don’t promote your comic until you have something to promote!

    There are two ways of promoting. The free way, and the pay way.

    Free
    -Post on forums that you have a comic, and give a sample or two in the thread itself so people can see what it’s like then and there.
    -Sign up for one (or all) of the many webcomic listings, like The Belfry or The Webcomic List.
    -Sign up for one (or all) of the many webcomic contests, like Top Webcomics or Webbed Comics, or buzzComix. Just don’t expect to get anywhere near the top, especially not at first. People do check the low-rankers on those, so it gets your name out there.
    -If you’ve got a lot of readers already, get them to promote your comic. Word of mouth is the most effective method of advertising, because it’s sincere.

    Pay
    -Advertise on other webcomics that are similar to yours. Advertising a sci-fi comedy on a historical horror may not be the best idea.
    -Check out Project Wonderful. It’s an effective auction-style advertising solution. From what I can tell, it’s focused heavily on webcomics.


    Art Friends Tutorials Webcomics

  • Gone for the Weekend

    Posted on by Stickman Comment

    Next weekend I’ll be visiting a new friend up in Canada for her birthday on the 22nd. I’d forgotten, but my birthday is on the 20th! Yay, birthdays! Send presents!

    When crossing the border, you need a government issued photo ID and a passport or birth certificate. At least, that’s what I’m hearing. I don’t wanna get stuck in Canada so I’m bringing them to be safe.

    But really! Send me presents! There’s someone out there that reads this, isn’t there?


    Birthday Friends Vacation

  • Transformers Review

    Posted on by Stickman Comment

    So I went and saw Transformers, the movie. I saw a few things done right, and I saw a few things done wrong. At least, in my opinion.

    The biggest thing they did right was capitalize on the 80s. True to Transformers, the movie was about big robots shooting at each other.

    The next thing they did right was play on the whole secrecy thing. Sure, you can have giant robots storming about. But if you’ve got giant robots storming about that no one’s supposed to know about so they try to “hide,” that makes the tension rise, and can play good for comedy.

    One of the things done wrong is a “trend” that Hollywood has decided is awesome. That is: shaky cam. The writer of Faulty Logic said “apparently every action scene was filmed by a geriatric Parkinson’s sufferer who was afraid for his life.” That’s a bit extreme, but that’s comedy. At least it wasn’t as bad as that last Borne movie.

    In their defense, they did have a few “slow motion” scenes where you could really see what was going on. Those were awesome, and I wish they’d done it more.

    A friend on the Booster Logic team said that a lesson can be learned from the video game industry: just let the main character and enemy be in sight at all times, and then you can actually tell what’s going on.

    On a side note, a friend of mine was complaining the other day about the mech fighting games people have made. Supposably, in the future, wars will be fought with giant mechs against giant mechs. If you think about it logically, it would start with one side using them, maybe just a couple thrown in, with standard military fair on its side as well as the enemy side. You wouldn’t get clean mech-on-mech battles for a while, if ever.

    Transformers did a good example of illustrating just how possible that concept is, and how well it can work, too. Even though “movie magic” was in effect and people didn’t even get injured when they probably should have died.

    Using my standard movie rating, I would give this a four point five. Dependant, of course, on if you like action movies and Transformers. See it in the theater if you can (just… don’t sit close to the screen) and buy the DVD if you’d like.


    Animation Friends Movies Reviews

  • Eureka!

    Posted on by Stickman Comment

    I’m not sure if this is the “It’s past three in the morning and you’ve gone mad” phase, or “It’s finally clicked” event, but I think I’ve got something important. Probably very basic, but important. Especially in relation to art. It’s one of those “It’s so simple, I can’t believe I didn’t think of it” kind of things that everyone says they would have thought of themselves, but no one did for some reason.

    There’s been a great many things I’ve learned at DigiPen in the last year I’ve been there. I’ve put this knowledge to use when working on my own art and working on other pieces of art, and I’ve seen that it’s effective and proper. The latest one is a lovely little critique I left on this piece.

    Last night… or tonight. I can’t remember… I was speaking with Mr. Maglot. The problem we both expressed to having was that even though we can learn all this amazing and wonderful knowledge about art, when we draw the drawing just “happens.”

    I’ve talked with my friend Ember about art, and he said something that Betty Edwards mentioned in her book that a lot of people experience. When you’re doing art, you lose track of time. You’re making something, then BAM, it’s suddenly hours later and you find yourself with something finished on the page.

    The problem Maglot and I were expressing is that during that multi-hour “BAM” that’s occurring, there isn’t much “left brained” or logical thought going on. We go into auto-pilot for drawing, and just draw.

    So basically, the situation is thus:
    -Art knowledge is awesome and excites and is so very, very useful.
    -You can’t actually use any of that information when you’re drawing.

    When I was younger, my church would also talk about making your choices before you did them. Being a Mormon, we don’t do things like smoke, drink alcohol or coffee, have premarital sex, kill people (without good reason), and other things some people put as commonplace or acceptable. They taught us at church to already make the choice before the event happens. If you’re never in a situation where someone offers you alcohol, great! You never have a problem. But if you haven’t decided that you won’t actually drink it, you may find yourself trying to decide whether to have some or not during that moment.

    It’s very similar to the “say no to drugs” thing, except it explains the principle behind it and says “make your choice” instead of “say no.” Though I guess they did want us to make the no choice anyway. Right, back on subject.

    The whole making up your mind beforehand method is actually very effective. And it works with lots of other things, too. Which brings us back to art.

    One of the first things they taught us at DigiPen was “WTF.” That means “What’s that for.” Whenever you start a picture, that’s the question you ask yourself.

    Something else they mentioned, after giving us all sorts of knowledge about art, is that it’s just a big toolbox, and like any toolbox, there are some tools that are right for the job. You’re not going to be using 50 different tools to change a light bulb. You’re going to want a stepladder, and maybe some heavy rubber gloves if you’re really paranoid. And maybe some sunglasses in case you forgot if the switch is on or not. But you’re not gonna pull out the crescent wrench, and the left-leaning gyroscopic horseshoe tuner, because you don’t really need those. Yeah, they’re useful, but not for this job.

    So lemme try and bring this all together in an actual lesson we call the “oh no it’s 4am and I haven’t gone to bed yet” lesson on art.

    In order to apply the art knowledge you have into your actual art practice, you must decide before you even start the picture what your goal for that picture is, and what tools you’re going to use to reach that goal.

    The choices of what your goals can be is an entirely different discussion.

    According to the Modified Bloom’s Taxonomy Accordion Diagram (which I have never mentioned before now but it is a stepladder of learning things) everyone starts out on any given topic as ignorant, and eventually becomes better and more knowledgeable and practiced until they internalize the knowledge and it becomes second nature to them at the top level.

    To start, you learn of the existence of the left-leaning gyroscopic horseshoe tuner and all about its greatness. Then you find a situation that’s a good use for it, pull it out of the box, and go… what the heck do I DO with this thing? You stumble around with the knowledge you have, because you know it’s a good tool, and after 10, 50, or a thousand drawings specifically trying to use it, you finally reach the point where you you don’t even have to think about using it because it comes naturally. So you pull it out when you’re changing a light bulb and crank an extra 50 watts out of a 60 watt bulb without even breaking a sweat.

    Another thing I’ve learned tonight is that obsession is respectable to limited levels, proportional to the person’s own desire for the subject, until it passes a certain point and the level of respect plummets.

    That is: To someone with a Beanie Baby desire level of 5.0, they will respect a Beanie Baby collector’s obsessive tendencies to the level of 8.0. However, the average person has a desire level of 3.3, which only allows them to respect to the level of 6.3. Therefore, the original Beanie Baby collector has a respectable hobby, and the later has an unhealthy obsession.

    This principle is why gamers think staying up all night playing games is “cool,” while parents think it is “not cool.” If the parents had a higher desire level for games, they would also see it as “cool,” baring other crazy ideas like “growing boys need plenty of sleep.”

    I need to make graphs for this later, and not talk about it at 4am. They would probably help it make more sense. Or not make any sense at all, so I could stop trying to explain it.


    Art Church Friends School Tutorials

  • Bunch of Stuff Happened

    Posted on by Stickman Comment

    It’s probably best to order things chronologically rather than categorically for this post. It’s a long story that lasts about five days. I’ll see if I can condense it into less than five days of reading.

    It all started on Thursday, December 14th. “High wind warnings” were on the news, saying winds would get up to 80-90mph with 130mph gusts. Silly me didn’t realize quite how serious this is. If these numbers don’t mean much to you (and you haven’t been watching the news), then this is enough wind to knock over many, many trees. And when trees fall down, they land on things. Like power lines. And cars. And roads. And houses. But back to the story at hand.

    I showed up at DigiPen campus around 4pm, I think. My plans were to mat mount the final project for Art 101 so I could turn it in before 5pm the next day, when it was due. Then I would work on animation. I’d expected the power to go out, as I’d brought some flashlights.

    When I arrived at school, there were signs posted at every corner that the school was closing at 10pm instead of midnight due to the high winds warning.

    After I left, it was only slightly gusty. I took the “back road” home, like I usually did, because even at 10pm traffic is decently heavy and moving around 50mph through Bellevue. Besides, the back road was a straight shot to my house, and the freeway went in the opposite direction for a bit before turning my way.

    The back road was already littered with tree branches. It was fun to dodge them, and felt a bit like a video game. Then something above me went SHAZAM! and all the lights on the street went out. The scariest part of the drive was when a few cars were coming in the opposite direction so I was effectively blinded, and my car a puddle I didn’t see and sprayed water off the side of the road. Normal enough, except the puddle didn’t end. After the three cars had passed me, I could see the end of the “puddle” about 50m further up.

    The last exciting thing about the back road was when I was halfway home. The sky lit up briefly with this beautiful blue and purple explosion in the distance. I was sure it was the power at my house. Fortunately, it was all the power just before my house. Unfortunately, that meant the streetlight were out, and traffic in the Seattle area is notoriously bad not because of the sheer amounts of people, but because the people suck at driving. So no one had no idea that a downed traffic light means you’re supposed to behave like it’s a stop sign. And no one knew the proper way to handle a six lane, four way intersection as a stop sign, either. I’ll admit, it’s a little daunting, but if you face it logically you don’t have a problem.

    The power didn’t go out until an hour or so after I got home. I spent that night doing general maintenance. I cleaned the dust out of Goliath, this webserver, I put a new PSU in the internet gateway box (which had a faulty fan for the past year or so and required external cooling), and I took the last of the good pieces out of my downed main computer (namely, the CPU) and put it into my secondary machine. So I’m still down to one desktop computer, but it’s almost as good as my best one was. I also did a little general cleaning around my desk. The rest of the night was spent drawing some Trivium comics.

    So the power went out Thursday night. Friday morning at something before 7am I get a call from my good friend xcXEON wondering how things were and if everything was ok. I told him we were out of power, but otherwise fine. I was out of touch. I don’t normally watch the news — I’d heard about the strong winds from my brother, and probably then only because I live in the same house as him. The scope of power outages and damage was much larger than I thought it was, which is why he’d thought it important enough to call me. I enjoyed talking to him, it had been a while, but then I had to get ready and go to school. I had a final project to turn in, and an animation to redo so I could try to up my grade in Animation 101. I had my friend check www.schoolreport.org to make sure DigiPen wasn’t closed, got up and headed out.

    Bad idea. The first road I tried was blocked by half a dozen downed trees. (Ok, only three were visible, but I bet there were more further down) After going through a dozen intersections with broken stoplights, I finally made it to DigiPen after only a little over an hour. Not like it meant much. The doors are electronically sealed, and there was no power. A random programmer and I took a walk around the block to gawk at all the pretty damage from downed trees. Later, the head of facilities showed up and told all the people milling around the sign that said “DigiPen’s closed” that the finals will be rescheduled, and the final project that’s due will be turned in at the start of next semester. I asked about www.schoolreports.org and he said they’d managed to leave a message for them around 8am. The cell phone lines were jammed, and there was probably a downed tower or two.

    I was not looking forward to driving home. Against my better judgement (I claim curiosity), I took the freeway home. I noticed a few cars by the side of the road as traffic crawled along and wondered why they were there.

    A few places started getting power restored during the day. The first ones were the stores and malls. Makes you wonder. A gas station or two got power, and then I noticed something a little scary. There were only one or two gas stations in the area that had power. The line of cars wrapped around the block.

    The night, my dad informed me he was out of gas. Completely empty, and maybe only enough to drive to the gas station. I told him since I was going to be up late working on drawing Triviums, I’d take his car out at around 11pm and gas it up.

    Another bad idea. There was one gas station with gas left (the others had their lights of with “no gas” signs in the driveways) and the line was still around the block. I managed to make it home, and left a note for my dad to take my car, since it still had half a tank.

    Saturday, my friends I’m working on Booster Logic with called me and said their power was back, and that I could stay with them until mine came back.

    I left out two events. One was a trip to a church Christmas dinner party where I brought my phone charger and charged it while I was eating, and the other was a trip to Bellevue Square Mall where I picked up the Playstation 2 game Disgaea: Hour of Darkness. I got lucky. The game’s rare, and the Gamestop at the mall just happened to have ae copy when I was there.

    So when I got the invite from my friends, I packed up my PS2, Disgaea, Shadow of the Colossus (another great game), a change of clothes, my clothes for church, and left. My dad wasn’t interested in taking a free shower for some reason, so he stayed behind in our dark, cold house that was starting to smell a lot like burnt candles.

    The next couple days were a blur. Disgaea is awesome. I felt no guilt, as the power was out at my house and all my plans revolved around the internet (which they didn’t have yet). Been a long time since I’ve played a game for more than an hour or two without feeling guilty that I should be doing something else more important.

    I called my mom about halfway through to see how they were fairing at home. Turns out my dad had tried to light a fire and hadn’t put it far enough back in the fireplace. Nothing burnt down, but the entire house was filled with smoke. It still smells, and probably will for weeks. They also got invited to stay at someone else’s house, but for some reason my dad had declined them again. I’ve been taught that doing good deeds is all well and good, but denying other people the good deeds they want to do isn’t actually very nice. I don’t think anyone ever taught him that. Or maybe he just really needed his special matress for his back, since it’s so bad. Who knows. (I’m rather certain he doesn’t read this, and my mom isn’t tactless enough to tattle-tale on me, so I should be safe in questioning his sanity here.)

    So the last thing of note that happened was this: I woke up this morning at around 10am to the sound of my phone ringing. My brother was calling to let me know that the power had come back on, and that he wanted to make the internet work, but the power buttons on the router wasn’t working. I let him know it wasn’t broken, and I’d just flipped the switch on back, but I’d prefer he wait for me to get home and get everything working.

    I started packing up and I noticed the end of the extension cord that I unplugged my phone from wasn’t glowing green. I checked, and the cable modem/router wasn’t lit up. Oh noes, I thought. What have I done! Then I noticed that the red light on my PS2 wasn’t lit up, and I realized the power was out.

    So I packed up, came home, turned on my computers with only minor issues, and here I am.

    Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get those Triviums I drew inked, or this Christmas Special will never go live.


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  • New Webcomic: ehunno

    Posted on by Stickman Comment

    I’ve been pestering a friend of mine to start a webcomic for a while, and with the help if his girlfriend he’s finally gone and done it!

    The comic, called ehunno, can be found at http://ehunno.tragically1337.net/ but will be found at http://www.ehunno.com/ as soon as the whole registration and nameserver mess clears up.

    I spent most of today setting up a slightly modified version of Trivium’s comic engine on his server. The Trivium comic engine (and before that, the Morrowind comic engine) was supposed to be a “professional” project for me that I would eventually finish and sell/give to people that wanted to make webcomics, and it would be so easy to set up and use that anyone could do it. I never did finish it, so it’s got little holes all over the place, but it works well enough for my needs. I had to mess with it terribly to get it function on his server with most of his layout. And there were a few tweaks he wanted to make it behave differently.

    The deal that I made with them is that they’ll update twice a week while I’m updating Trivium three times a week. I’m looking forward to what those two come up with!


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