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2000-2007
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11.30.08
I've posted a new comic
for the month. I really didn't mean for this to become a once a month
comic. The weird thing is I've got three comics almost completely done
just sitting on my hard drive. I just didn't have a chance to post
them. Things have been really busy lately, and I've been just taking
what little free time I have to read, play guitar, and other things I
can do in 15 minute intervals. I haven't decided to give up on any
projects yet, but I'm definitely feeling like I don't have enough time
to pursue everything I want to do. I've been reading a book called
'Anathem'. It's about the 'Avout', which are basically monks who live
in a giant clock and spend their time working on projects. I wonder if
the author just feels like I do, and invented a whole world where
people got together and decided to give up on all the stuff that gets
in the way of reading and working out problems, and just live simple
lives based on doing those things.
Nothing else exciting has been going on. My wife is still pregnant, due
Feb 17th. Everything has gone smoothly with that.
We're having a girl and naming her Eleanor. I would love to say having
a pregnant wife has been taking up all my time, but honestly she's been
really healthy and active throughout the whole pregnancy.
Work is about the same as always. We're planning to move all our
development to JAVA, though we've been planning and working towards
that forever. I'm still not sure the infrastructure team will be ready
to run anything, and I'm not sure I'll get any assignments in that
vein. It's a waiting game right now, but I should know in January if
I'm finally going to be able to do the sort of work I thought I was
being hired for two and a half years ago. At first I was really
interested in learning all about how mainframe stuff works, but now I'm
just tired of taking a week to do an hour's worth of work, and ready to
start working with stuff developed in this millennium.
I've almost completed my pocket guitar amplifier. I'm thinking about
doing a 'steampunk' case for it. I'll post pictures, and maybe a
recording, as soon as I've got it working. After this one, I might make
myself a full-sized amp. Nothing too big, just 5Watt or so. I would
love to do it with vacuum tubes and make the entire wooden case with a
steampunk style. Mostly, though, I'm realizing that I won't be able to
build any effects into a pocket sized one.
10.12.08
I've got a new comic
posted. This one was slow comming. It took a long time because I didn't
like the snow effects I was coming up with, and I kept hoping I'd find
something that was simple to apply and would work for the rest of the
comics. Sadly, I failed. It's been sitting, pretty much finished, for
about a week.
I've also posted a mix
of Pink Floyde's 'Wish You Were Here'. It's pretty rough, but
still better than the last time I tried this. I made some mistakes
recording and not everything is recorded at the same level. All told,
it's about 8 tracks. I posted it because a friend of mine keeps bugging
me to give her something to work with, and it's a really complicated
song with a lot of parts...so, if she can put drum and piano tracks
together, I can always go back and re-record the rough parts. At least
then we'll both be working. I also took some pictures of my guitars and
recording gear that I'll post on the Forums.
I've done a ton of work on the MUD
lately. While I was at a friend's LAN party, it was suggested that I
make it playable through AIM. AOL's SDK is horrible to work with, but I
learned a lot about working with external .DLLs in JAVA. Now you can
send an AIM message to 'TheZombieThreat' and play the game. It's slower
than Telnet, and sometimes freezes when AIM thinks I'm spamming by
sending too many messages at once. When that happens, it just needs to
wait, it'll start communicating once AIM stops blocking it.
Also, I put together a source forge page for the
server, and they're hosting a Subversion tree for me. I'll link it once
I get a chance to clean the code up so it's not so embarrassing.
There's lots of stuff in there that I just threw together at the last
minute because I wanted to make it work before my lunch break was over.
I converted a friend's
short-story to images, so that I can post the story on the page in
basically the same format that the comic is in. We decided on images so
that people would have to work at it a bit if they wanted to copy the
text. I was hoping to have it posted with this update, but this update
was already behind because I was trying to get EVERYTHING done before
making it.
09.04.08
I posted a new comic!
It was done about three days after posting the last comic, but I just
didn't get around to posting it. I have scripts for the next five
comics, and I'm hoping to get one done this weekend. So, hopefully we
can get back to a weekly, or at least bi-weekly schedule.
I still haven't posted anything for the music
project, but I've been doing a lot with guitar lately. I got a new
Gibson Les Paul Studio guitar and I've been trying to justify the
purchase by learning to play better. I can almost play Crossroads, so
If nothing else, I'm progressing. Until about February of this year I
thought I was musically retarded. Now, of course, I realize I was just
lazy.
Everything in life is going pretty
well. I'm in JAVA training at work. I've been programming in JAVA for
about 10 years, so they're basically paying me to sit through three
months of classes on stuff I already know how to do. That might sound
like fun, but it's actually the worst job I've ever had.
Christy is starting to show. She gets more
obviously pregnant every day, and we're going to find out the sex on
the 19th. I'm pretty excited about that. I keep telling people, I don't
care if it's a boy or a girl...just so long as it's a genius.
I feel like I'm in training to be a father. When
I work out, I do it thinking 'I want to be able to play with my kids
when they're older'. When I practice guitar, I think 'I'll be able to
teach my kids how to play'. In the beginning, I guess it's mostly about
just being there. But, once they get old enough to take interests in
things, I want to be able to teach them, and take part...rather than
just getting drunk and watching TV like most people seem to.
08.21.08
Wow, it's been a while. I haven't had a free
weekend to work on things in over a month, and for some reason I was
dragging my feet on this comic.
I think this works better than the previous comics. I just haven't felt
like working on it too much.
I have been working on other things. I've got
some new graphics in the works for the web-page, I've been practicing
guitar quite a bit, and I'm starting to learn harmonica. I've picked up
some basic recording equipment and I'm trying to start a music project
in the forums. It's not much, but it'll give me and my musically
inclined friends a reason to learn new songs and practice a little more
often. I'm sure this will fall flat like the comic and MUD, but I'm
doing it either way. The 'projects' I post here are really just a means
of saying 'This is what I'm doing, if you'd like to join you're more
than welcome'.
The mud is basically in stand-still. Honestly, I
feel like it's been completed to a certain point. It works, or at least
seems to. The problem is that, without a community playing it, I don't
know where to go with it. Until I know where to go with it, there's not
a lot left to be done. I would still like to make something that people
use, but I'm competing against things like WoW, and TV. In that
competition, I'm pretty much outclassed with no chance of getting
anyone interested. I think that kind of game is contrary to what I've
always wanted to do. I like small communities. I like to be a part of
something where I can create as well as consume.
I've always felt like listening to something,
watching something or playing something was pointless unless I could
add to it, or participate in some way. Otherwise, what's the point? You
aren't really involved, you're just a spectator.
I think I always imagined a small group of people
like me, who weren't interested in things like WoW and TV. I imagined
people at home, working on different kinds of projects and learning new
things. I thought people would want to take part in something. I
figured if I could just build the framework of a comic, MUD, Forum,
etc...a community would just spring up around it. The truth is that
people want to do what THEY want to do, if they want to do anything at
all.
07.17.08
New comic
posted today. I'm still learning this new style, but I'm
making good progress. This was the first black and white comic that
only took as long as the color comics did. I'm also happier with the
result than I have been the last two. I've got a long way to go, but I
feel like I'm making good progress.
I've also got 80% of the MUD graphics done. I
just need to get the images for the items done. The mapping works
pretty well. I'll have the rest posted by the end of the weekend. Now
that I have the JavaScript communication working, the possiblities are
endless. Since my time is limited, I'm having a hard time deciding what
takes priority. Hopefully, when I post it, I'll get some testers, and
I'll have suggestions to help me along.
06.30.08
I finally posted a new comic.
My life has been incredibly busy lately, and I've been
exhausted. So far this month is a blur of weird occurrences and
life-changing events.
The night after I made my last post, my car was destroyed!
Apparently someone just happened to lose control of her vehicle at 2am
in front of my house. She slammed into my car without even hitting the
breaks. The cops actually showed up and let her go before I was able to
see her, and they insist she wasn't drunk. I don't know how someone
hits another car without even hitting the breaks while sober, but I
guess the authorities decided I didn't need to know.
So, a few days pass, and I'm riding my motorcycle
to get to work. I pull it out of the garage, and it won't start. I'm
already fighting with an insurance company, and I just don't really
need this. Then, my wife comes down stairs, and just before I can say
'I need a ride to work', she says 'I'm pregnant'.
I guess I'm going to be a father. It's not like
it was unplanned. We've had a room set aside for the entire year we've
lived in our house. Honestly, I was just relieved because we've been
trying for a year and soon it would be time to look into fertility
experts and hospital visits. Still, after a year of trying, it came as
a bit of a shock. Then I priced daycare, and almost had a heart attack.
As if this weren't enough, I got an email from a
guy I know here who's in grad school. I asked him some questions about
getting back into school, and he explained the process. So,
in general, they want you to take a course at the graduate level, then
use writings and recommendations from that course in your application.
So, I'm working on getting into that course.
Also, I'll be re-trained in JAVA at the same
time, because at PSU, you can never know something well enough to avoid
more training. I'm thinking I'll just take the 3-month course as an
opportunity to get SUN Certified. I'd played around with the idea a few
years ago, and now that I'll be paid to do nothing but take courses on
the subject, I feel I may as well use that to my advantage and get
certified in the process.
So, that's been the past three weeks for me. I
also ended up traveling every weekend but the last one. I'm usually
feeling a little overwhelmed in the summer, so I'm hoping that things
will slow down a little soon. At best I'll be a new father, in grad
school, with a full time programming job.
What this means for the site is that I've got
another few serious commitments that are going to have to come first. I
really want to finish the project I'm working on with Krev. We
discussed it, and it should only run another 13 pages or so. I think I
can finish that, though probably at a rate more like bi-monthly.
My graduate work might actually relate to the MUD
in some ways, because it's a logical framework for building AI players
and testing user-reaction. I would like to work in AI, so having a game
where I can implement a new AI in a matter of minutes really helps. I
guess in the end, we'll just have to wait and see.
All I know right now is that the days are too short, and somethings
bound to get left behind.
06.03.08
New comic
has finally been posted. This one was written by Travis Wingard
as part of a running series we're going to work on together.
I like the gag-comic format, but I've been wanting to try something new
for a while. This took twice as long to do as my regular comic, and I'm
still not happy with it. I think once I get the hang of it, it'll go
much quicker. I'm not promising one of these every week.
The MUD hasn't had any attention since I started
the new comic style. I've got some plans for that and the election
game, and I've missed working on them, so I'm sure I'll post some
updates soon.
05.22.08
New comic
for this week, as well as a comic
from a week and a half ago. I never thought these little rant posts
were important, but my traffic logs would beg to differ. An average
week is about 100-150 page views. When I don't update the comic, that
falls to about 10/week. My last comic got about 10 views total, so I
guess people really read this.
This will be the last comic of this style for a
while. In the last post I mentioned Travis and I might collaborate on a
script. Well, he sent me a first draft of the script and I liked it so
much I plan to pause work on the 'usual' comic to work on this project.
I am hoping to stick to the same update schedule (~1 per week). I
really liked the script. I hope I don't ruin it with my art, and people
really enjoy it.
I have added the code to the MUD for the new
mapping system. I want to have that posted on the test server by next
week. You'll be able to watch your icon move across a map of the area
while playing. I think that will help people get interested in the
game, since most people were complaining about not being able to get
their bearings. Also, I'm going to re-word the error messages to be
more helpful to new players.
Also, I am working on a new web-game project that
will focus on a simulated election. The general idea is that each round
will start with you making political promises. Those promises will
effect your overall popularity with special interests, industry leaders
and lobbies. It will also effect your popularity with the people. The
more popular you are with industry, the more money you will get for
that round. The more popular you are with the people, the less you'll
have to spend to get votes. The game is a resource management game
where you have to base your decisions on financial and political
fallout. I like the idea of doing it based on primaries, rather than
presidential elections, because we can have 10+ players all competing
in a primary race. I'm still working on fleshing out the rules, but I
don't think it'll be hard to modify some existing game code I have
lying around to get a test version of this running pretty quickly. I'll
keep everyone updated.
I have a Paranoia game starting on the Forums.
E-mail or PM me if you want to play.
04.30.08
New comic.
This one is about brain tumors. I think about brain tumors a
lot. For the past few years, I've had these flashes in my right eye. No
one has ever really explained it, or figured out how to get it to stop.
It's probably just my EXTREME case of astigmatism. At least, that's
what they tell me.
No comic last week because I was in NYC at the
ComicCon. It was a really great trip, except of course for the fact
that the 5 train has NEVER just taken me directly to my destination. I
don't even think the 5 runs on the route they say it does. I've been
going to NYC pretty regularly, and the 5 is either on a late-night
schedule, or under construction. I was there on a Monday afternoon, and
it was on the late-night schedule (Just for that week, I was assured).
If I ever get rich, I'm going to buy my cousin an apartment in
Manhattan, just so I never have to ride the 5 train again. At
least when we get off the train, his apartment is right there, and he's
always cool to hang out with. I don't think I could make that trip to a
place that wasn't at least pleasant.
Everything in life is going pretty well. I've
been talking to a friend of mine about collaboration on a comic. He's
going to do the writing and I'll handle the art. I'm going to try to do
non-SD characters for the first time since high school. I've been
toying with sketches, and I'm coming to the realization I'm going to
have to re-learn how to draw. I'm actually looking forward to that,
though, because this time around I can avoid all the bad habits that
were holding me back before. We'll probably post the comics here, so
you can hit the forum
and tell me what you think.
Speaking of the forums,
we're trying to get a Paranoia RPG going. It'll be play-by-post, so if
you're interested, go to the forums and let me know.
04.16.08
New comic
posted. More important, I posted a new comic viewer. I wrote the first
one in JAVA, but it was universally hated. I guess I couldn't expect
people to load the JAVA runtime just to view a comic.
This highlights a core belief of mine, though,
that it's good to make mistakes. I'm not saying you should go out of
your way to make mistakes, but I do think people go too far out of
their way to avoid them. I've seen people over plan even the most
simple tasks. It's not unusual for me to see the planning phase take
three or four times longer than it takes to write the software. Then,
inevitably, it's wrong anyway.
This is a perfect example, because each version
of the viewer took about four hours to write. If I were to do this same
project in a large group, the planning would take at least two weeks.
So, I could write and rewrite the software 14 times in the same period
it would take to get a single version out. To make matters worse, what
we finally decided on would probably have to be replaced anyway.
I'm going to comicon this weekend in NYC. I'm
sure I'll get at least one comic out if it. I could probably make a
comic out of the nightmare of planning a trip like this with people.
Seriously, does it always have to be like herding cats?
04.08.08
I posted a comic.
It's about when I actually went to the Obama rally. I got a few
pictures and a video. I think the comic really does say it
all. I just can't join the cheering masses. When I see everyone moving
in one direction, I start looking for the cliff.
I've been behind on things for about a week now.
I got a cold, and more than feeling sick, I've just felt tired. I think
I'm on the upswing now, and hopefully I'll get some more updates and
things together soon.
I did add some code to the MUD so that I can
build in graphical features. I've found that people just don't
know what to do with a text-only game. I'm not building 3D stuff into
it or anything, but some nice maps and web tools for managing your
character will probably be along the way. Just stuff to help people
feel like they know where they are in the game, and what they're
supposed to do.
04.02.08
new comic!
People who know me know I get upset about the
news. I am very prone to arguing, even when it's not in my best
interest. I've always thought that if you're wrong, and you continue to
keep your mouth shut, then you'll be wrong the rest of your life.
Arguing is how we test our ideas and internal logic against reality.
The news bothers me because it's one-way. Most
people assume that everything said on the news (or on TV in general)
MUST be FACT. What I've come to realize is that most 'news' is either
sensationalized to get you to watch, or it's somehow skewed to favor
the political views of the corporation that's feeding it to you.
You can't even really trust the Internet. It's
usually just biased on a smaller scale. No one really wants to present
you the truth, in any raw un-biased way. So, you have to take each
important story, research it from different sources, hopefully with
competing bias, and somewhere in the middle you might find a little
nugget of truth to help you make any important decisions with. Of
course, you're just deciding for yourself what to believe...and you may
be biased.
03.25.08
This comic
is probably going to make someone angry.
I can't help it. I mean, he ROSE from the DEAD.
That makes him a zombie in my book. Sorry it wasn't posted right on
Easter, but I didn't come up with the idea until Easter Sunday. I
figure it's still close enough that people will get the joke.
That's two Zombie comics, and a zombie game all
in two weeks. The funny thing is that I never really got into the
Zombie meme as much as some people. I feel like it's just a simple
stand-bye theme for when I need something.
03.11.08
This comic
is late!
I just couldn't figure out a punch-line for this
comic. I had the art done on Monday, and finished putting the words in
on Saturday. Seriously, even everything below this sentence was written
on Wednesday.
Sorry the comic is late this week, but I've been
working like crazy on some MUD changes that should be posted tomorrow.
I tried some new things with shading and eyes in this comic, so
hopefully that goes some way into making up for it.
This is the first comic I've ever done
that depicts a significant other. I've never really thought about it
very much, but Christy (my wife) likes to dwell on that fact. I guess I
just see the comic-making part of myself very separate from my
real-life self. One day, after I snap and commit a horrendous crime,
psychologists will puzzle over that statement.
Things in my real life are good. I'm trying to
gear up for the summer. I know I'm not going to be able to keep this
pace going with updates once I can get outside. I'm getting some
friends to start drawing guest comics as we speak.
When I was a kid, I had no interest in being
outside. The seasons changing seemed to go largely unnoticed. I can't
remember having waited for spring until I was an adult. Even in
college, the changing of the seasons meant more about deadlines and
living arrangements. Now that my life is pretty stable from day to day,
the seasons changing is the one thing that reminds me how fast time is
moving. If I lived in a place with mild seasons, I might miss a decade
of my life without noticing.
With that statement made, I am very
excited about spring. Friends of mine who teach will be more available,
concert venues are starting to name dates and I'm already planning my
weekends. So, if I'm late on a few comics, at least it's because I'm
out living life. Think of it as research for the comic.
03.02.08
New comic!
New Store!New
Web Service!
Updated MUD!
The new comic is something I wanted to
do for the store, then I decided I really liked it. I've been asked to
do a few T-shirts and I decided to make some stuff for myself. I can't
guarantee any of the products. I haven't had a chance to order yet. If
there's anything you would like to see, just post on the forum and let
me know. Also, I want to make a Froshapalooza T-shirt and I'm looking
for ideas.
The new Webservice is a high-score page for the
MUD. Right now it just lists the top 5 zombie killers. I've said before
that the game isn't about killing, but I couldn't think of anything
else to score people on. The system is easily configured, so hit the
forum with any ideas of what stats we should be tracking and I'll see
what I can do to add them.
02.27.08
New comic!
It's late, but at least I'm managing one post per week. I did some MUD
updates, and have the store almost ready. I already have what I'm going
to post for next week done, so I can all but guarantee it'll be posted
on time. This comic was done a while ago, but GIMP crashed and I
realized I hadn't saved the past two hours of work. I didn't get around
to re-doing all that work until now.
I'm still working on MUD stuff, and plan to spend
the rest of this week on that. Hopefully you'll see a post between now
and Sunday detailing the work I've been doing there.
Thanks for reading!
Bishop
02.18.08
Another late comic.
Not too late, though. I'm trying for an update every Monday. At least I
have a good reason. Chits and Krev came down to visit and we spent the
weekend on marathon gaming.
We started with SingStar. Yeah, imagine a 250+ lb
man singing 'Material Girl'. It was great. Then we decided to go out
and play some pool. I'm really out of practice, but it was still a good
time.
The grand finale came when Krev decided to buy
the new version of risk called GodStorm.
The difference between this game and regular risk is that it takes
place in ancient times, and you pray to your gods for help. You get
spirit points at the beginning of every turn, when you get new armies.
You spend these points to call in favors from your gods.
I started out with Atlantis as my only easy
conquest. I soon took over the north, and Chits had taken the south.
Krev was working on taking over Germania when the real war started.
While I'd been fighting with Krev, Chits was gaining strength. I
over-extended my forces into Asia Minor, and Chits took the opening. He
summoned the god of death, and marched across Asia Minor. He only
stopped on his path to annex my temple, where he called to the god of
death to raise 10 armies from hell. After summoning the god of war, he
walked across the middle lands into Germania, destroying everything in
his way. Finally, seeing the end of my people, I spent the last of my
spirit to sink Atlantis. It's a good game.
A few people have been playing the MUD, and I've
gotten some suggestions. I'm going to work tomorrow to implement some
changes and hopefully I'll have that updated and a post about it soon.
Thanks for reading. I'll try to keep things
moving along.
02.11.08
Sorry this comic
is late. It just took a lot longer to finish than I'd planned on. I
will post a bigger update when it's not so late at night. Maybe school
will be canceled tomorrow, and I'll have all day to work on comic stuff
for a whole day. We'll see.
02.05.08
I finally got the archives posted. My
friends have been pressuring me to do this for a long time. I think
everyone looks at their past through rose colored glasses and this must
certainly be the case when they talk about the old comic. I'm not going
to point out all that's wrong with it, only that I didn't have the
tools or the time that I have now, and it showed.
One thing I would like to make a comment about is
the rants. I tried to find as many of them as I could, and I think I
did a pretty good job. After reading through them, though, I remembered
my state of mind when I wrote them. I considered the rants as my own
personal HBO Stand-up comedy show. I tried to channel Lois Black, and
in some cases, even he would have walked away shaking his head. So,
please, try not to take it too seriously.
Some of it was more genuine than I like to admit.
I couldn't go home after college. Things have always been tenuous with
my family and it wasn't an option. I guess realizing that I would have
to find a place to live, and get a real job, made me pay attention. It
doesn't take a genius to see that every republican in my lifetime has
thrown us into some kind of war and recession.
I saw it coming, and didn't know how to deal with
it. Somehow saying 'I was right' doesn't make me miss the life I had
planned any less. At the time, I was looking for someone to blame. I
guess, since Bush is such a motherfucker, I decided it didn't even
matter anymore if it was his fault or not.
Now I just hope everyone reading this is okay,
and that things will get better for the ones who aren't. I didn't get
the life I thought I would, but it's still better than most and I just
don't feel like complaining anymore. So, don't email me about the
opinions I held 5 years ago. Just try to find some humor in it and move
on.
02.04.08
This new comic
is about a Grue.
The first thing everyone I show this comic to asks me is 'What is a GRUE".
Well, if you don't want to click on those links to Wikipedia, then
suffice it to say that a Grue is a monster that would eat you
if you didn't have any source of light. It was used as a
device to force players of the Zork series of Text Adventures to find a
light source, and complete that section of the game, before moving on.
Anyone that knows me at all knows how much I love
Interactive
Fiction. When I was in about sixth grade my best friend stole
his brother's D&D books, and we started to teach ourselves how
to role-play. I had a TRS-80, with an external floppy drive and I knew
how to program in BASIC. I started making D&D themed
text-adventures for him based on the 'Choose your own adventure' style
books that read at the time.
When I saw this video,
I got all nostalgic and decided to make this comic. The Internet is
great for esoteric interests. I say that because I have to admit that I
don't even KNOW anyone that would appreciate Mc Frontalot's
interpretation of text adventures in the same way I would. There are
few people that would watch that video and think 'Wow, that's an
awesome classic computer collection'.
Also, it looks like they're making a documentary on the
subject. I just hope I can somehow procure a copy of it, since I'm sure
it won't be opening in a theater...well, at all.
I'm going to make an effort to post the 2000-2006
archive tonight. Right now, I have to get back to work.
-Bishop
01.28.08
Alright, now I've got time for a proper rant.
This week's comic was based on the JCL programming language. Most
people don't even know what it is, so I'll give a little explanation.
JCL is the only language I've ever used where a misplaced comma might
result in a nuclear meltdown.
JCL is actually a programming language that is
used on IBM mainframe computers to tell the OS what resources to
reserve for the program you want to run. So, it's a programming
language for running programs. See, back in the day, there were no
standards or anything, and nothing was written to be 'easy to use'.
Actually, some things were written just to be difficult because the guy
who wrote it liked to feel smart by being the only person that
understood it.
JCL goes something like this:
JS20 EXEC PNAT,2365,COND(0,GT,JS10)
So...even programmers are looking at that and
thinking WHAT?! I'll explain. This line means to execute a
program (defined earlier), using Production library '2365', if 0 is
*NOT* greater than the result of Job step 10. UNLESS IT'S OPPOSITE
DAY!!
Programming on a mainframe is filled with these
little challenges. I use an editor where you type 'N' for the next page
of code. Now, if you're thinking that you would type 'P' for the
previous page, you're wrong. That command is 'PREV'. Apparently these
features were written by two people. Two different people. Who had
never met. Two people who were each so stubborn they wouldn't change
their way to match the other's way. I just want to be clear that we're
talking about two VERY SPECIAL people here.
Sometimes work feels very much like the comic.
Mostly because we're sometimes working with systems that no one really
understands completely and we're doing things that could be disastrous.
Everyone is very nice and forgiving about things, but deep down you
still know you could accidentally do some real damage if you aren't
careful.
01.27.08
New Comic!
It's late, I have to get up early tomorrow. I'll post a real rant
tomorrow.
01.20.08
New Comic!
I've had guests Friday, Saturday and Sunday night. I love company, but
I'm feeling a little behind in my projects. Things in my real life are
going well, just very busy.
I've tried to stay on my computer-geek theme with
this one. I used to work tech-support. I heard people refer to CD-ROMs
and 'Shiny records', I've actually been asked to connect a computer to
the Internet that someone bought off a truck at a 4H meeting. I've just
about seen it all.
The funny thing, though, is that until the movie
'Hackers' came out, people pretty much just figured that you got an
expensive box, and the more you had to spend, the better it was. In the
year 1-AH(After Hackers), computers became magical and the people who
knew about them were regarded as magicians. Suddenly, I had people
asking me if I could erase their phone bills, make their computer talk
back to them, etc, etc...
The most annoying result of this was that, for a
few years, people who knew they needed new computers would
make one last-ditch effort to avoid spending money by asking me if I
knew some kind of secret that would make a 386 run Windows XP.
One time, in this golden age, My friend Bart
convinced a cheer-leader that, when she saved data to a floppy, it
actually got heavier. Then she ran around the computer room getting
people to try saving things a bunch of times, then pulling out the disk
to check it's weight. Sometimes I miss the old days.
I'm still working on three things for the site.
First, I'm making a shop so people can buy T-shirts. I might have that
done by the end of the week. Second, I have MUD updates almost ready.
If everything goes well, those will be up tomorrow night. Third, I'm
working on tracking down all the original coredump comics. I still
haven't had time to hook up my old computer from college and check to
see if the ones I'm missing are on it.
01.13.08
New comic!
This one is about Voodoo.
Voodoo - noun; Any section of code that cannot be
understood, but works anyway. Also applied to any fix to a
process or OS that works without the user understanding why.
Not to be confused with:
Vodun - noun; A polytheistic religion practiced
chiefly by West Indians.
The word Voodoo has become a common programming
term, but I always like to imagine that waving a dead chicken over my
computer will actually do something. I think superstitions are
inherently ridiculous. Also, let's face it, the chicken is obviously
the funniest bird. I mean, no one would ever argue against that. I've
seen a funny duck here and there, but it's just not in their blood.
As a programmer, it's common to hear someone say
'Ignore that piece of code, it's Voodoo.' Meaning that they
don't even know anyone who knows how it works. Sometimes, it's a fix
we've stumbled on. Right now, I can make a library that I'm working
with run only if I re-initialize the sole instance of one of the
classes. I've talked to the developer of the library, looked over the
code, and still no one knows why it works. We look and see that the
class looks to be properly initialized, but the code fails. Then we
re-initialize it, and it works! I'm just glad it's not my code.
So, that's the comic, and a little inside look
into programming culture. I'd always hoped to make the comic more and
more for programmers, because I think we have a real culture that most
people on the outside don't fully understand. We're tasked with working
on systems that are far to complex for one person to comprehend and
that leads to common jokes, experiences, superstitions and even urban
legends.
There was a small problem with getting the really
old comics back online. I have tracked down most of them and I am still
working on it. Also, I added a 'stats' command to the MUD, as well as
making some code fixes to the way user settings were being handled.
I'll be uploading that tonight, barring any unforeseen catastrophe.
01.04.08
New year, new page! I thought I'd make some minor
updates to things that I wasn't really happy with on the old page.
Also, I found my old comics and posted them, and put a forum up. There
is a MUD test-server running! Try it out, then let me know what you
think on the new forum!
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