| #262 - "Chafed Dickens [5 of 5]" |
[Дек. 25, 2009|01:51 pm] |
#262 - "Chafed Dickens [5 of 5]"
The finalle to the Chafed Dickens storyline, and the last strip of 2009. I wish to thank everyone for the support in this 10th anniversary year, and those who cheered me on during this Christmas Weekly spurt. Have a Merry Christmas, a great holiday season, and see you all in 2010!
This final strip in the Chafed series underwent some changes since I first mapped it out several years ago. It was originally intended to be a Mark and Mike strip, with the two of them discussing the dream. Mike wonders if he learned the obvious lesson, but Mike replies, "Who could concentrate on what they were saying? Those woman were hot wank material!" However, I decided to change it when I saw inspiration from an online "critic":
"The problem with OEL is that IMAGE comics, that Ninja High School guy, MegaTokyo, and Scott Pilgrim, already came up with the idea of stealing anime and manga ideas and art first. [And if I want to really be a dick about it, the Sexy Losers guy, which is why he's resorted to Kevin Smith-style humour to cover up his weakness in character development. Although I will admit that Japan did rip off his magic sex doll idea with that manga and movie..." from here, emphasis mine.
Weakness in character development? This made me do a double take. I've heard this criticism before and it always struck me as an odd criticism to find in a gag comic. Sure, the characters are all two-dimensional. That's because in a gag comic, the gag is more important than the characters -- the characters existence is to get to the laugh. Initially I tried hard to not have a lot of recurring characters, but I found that established characters were handy as a shorthand towards jokes. In a four panel comic, the less explanation one needs to get to the punchline, the better.
Since SL is a gag comic, I've strayed from developing any characters to maintain that shorthand. Mike jerks off anywhere and anytime. Mrs. Shibata is a horny housewife. Chie gets semen in her face. Touro fails to get Madame X in bed. That's all you need to know about these characters. Developing the characters any further would ruin them utterly, and SL would change from a gag comic to being another pseudo-love opera. The characters would learn and grow, and well, let's be honest, learning and growing is a lot less funny than fucking up.
So FUCK character development. It was never my intention to do a happy-good-feely comic with characters that you could laugh and cry and otherwise identify with. This is potty humor. This strip is an acknowledgement that these characters are icons of their idiosyncrasies and nothing more. |
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| (без темы) |
[Дек. 24, 2009|08:53 pm] |
| [ | Настроение |
| |  angry | ] |
Damn. I have a wicked good christmas eve story, and I'm too drunk to type. |
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| SXEmacs/LJ v1.22 (drafts & disaster recovery) |
[Дек. 22, 2009|12:54 pm] |
SXEmacs/LJ
wasn't behaving itself very well in times of trouble and
disaster. This version addresses that short-fall. The changes
log below explains the nifty new features.
I'd like to say a big
THANKYOU to
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) peanuthorst for giving me the idea for these new
features. Without his 'puter crashing I wouldn't have thought
of it. :-)
Summary: SXEmacs/LJ drafts and disaster recovery.
Keywords: enhancement, internal, newfeature, user-visible
This changeset adds a couple of nice features to SXEmacs/LJ. You can now
save a post you are working on to edit/submit at a later time. To save
the current post simply invoke #'save-buffer `C-x C-s'. To edit that
draft later, `M-x lj-edit-draft', it will prompt for a draft file name
completing in `lj-drafts-directory'.
It is possible to have multiple drafts at any one time.
Another cool feature added, is that lj-mode now has its own abbrev
table.
Some disaster recovery has also been implemented. Now when you start
SXEmacs/LJ it will check to see if there are any auto-saved drafts in the
drafts directory. If any exist you'll be asked if you want to recover
them, say "yes" and the draft is recovered and you are dropped into a
lj-mode buffer with the recovered draft. If there are multiple drafts
that need recovering then they are all handled and separate lj-mode
buffers are created.
* lj.el (lj-drafts-directory): New.
(lj-generate-new-buffer): Create a file on disc for draft purposes.
(lj-edit-draft): New.
(lj-post): Save the draft out to disc prior to posting to LiveJournal,
and delete it once the post is accepted.
(lj-abbrev-table): New abbrev table for use in LJ-Post buffers.
(lj-mode): Use the new abbrev table and turn on auto-save.
(lj-session-auto-save-files): Return a list of auto-saved drafts.
(lj-recover-drafts): New. Recover auto-saved drafts.
(lj): Use #'lj-session-auto-save-files and #'lj-recover-drafts.
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| Fuck You And Your Number One Single |
[Дек. 21, 2009|01:21 pm] |
Rage are Christmas Number One in the UK.
Does this mean the Machine has been raged against? Of course not, since the masses are still all buying *stuff*. In any case RATM are actually signed to Sony, which is the same label that X-Factor singles are put out on - so the label certainly isn't suffering. I don't expect Simon Cowell to become an insomniac over this incident.
Has this been a victory of style over substance? Possibly. Reaction to RATM's politics ranges from serious followers like anti-Globalisation types who love to disrupt the economic order to more sanguine metal fans who like the music but don't buy into rock stars as political figures - and rightly so, as it's a rocky road lined with hacks who went too far and ended up creating a backlash against themselves (Bono, Sting, Geldof).
That said, it certainly can't be doubted that RATM are saying *something* in their music - whether it's a cause worth fighting for or not, the existence of a message is clear. The fact that music fans either love or hate RATM shows that they are at the very least a thought-provoking act - even if the only thoughts that come to mind for some people is how most efficiently to throttle the fuckers with their guitar cables.
On the other hand, who exactly is Joe McElderry and why should I give a fuck about him? What does he have to say, thought-provoking or obnoxious or anywhere in between, that I should listen to? He's just an 18-year-old that has worked a system and made it to the top. Ironically, his life is now far more precarious than it was before he was famous, as his expectation of what will be delivered to him has had its bar set to the stratosphere. With Cowell and Sony behind him, arena gigs, music videos and a slew of pop singles will follow - but what's his long term value? X-Factor and its ilk have had a history of dropping their winning act like it's hot after only about 6 months on average. What'll he be then, 18 and a half. And from then on his life will consistently fail to deliver him the highs that he is now already accustomed. He's already getting rather cruel comments on his Facebook page about the imminent demise of his career. Eating kangaroo balls must surely come next. That's a tender age to be told that you're already past it, like Logan's Run on steroids. When I was 18 to 18 and a half, I went from first year college to... a little further through first year college.
X-Factor products are a victory of the bland over the complex. Corporate machinations over art. Groupthink over individualism.
People complain that Rage are vacuous because of the nihilism evident in taglines like "Fuck you I won't do what you tell me." The only message that I get from X-Factor, on the other hand, is "If a huge commercial media venture tells you to buy something, you should buy it." I know which is worse. |
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| SXEmacs/LJ v1.21 is released (bugfix) |
[Дек. 20, 2009|04:03 pm] |
I noticed a bug in the sql cookie extraction code. It wasn't
picking the right sql query of the two that
SXEmacs/LJ
now supports (Mozilla-based and Chrome-based). Now fixed.
As always,
download here
Summary: Fix SQL cookie extraction
Keywords: bugfix, internal, trivial
This changeset fixes a problem with determining if the SQL cookies are
Mozilla-based or Chrome-based even if lj-cookie-flavour isn't set.
* lj.el (lj-extract-sql-cookies): Add an argument to distinguish between
Chrome-based and Mozilla-based sql queries.
(lj-get-cookies): Use it.
(lj-extract-sql-cookies): Don't bother copying the cookie file to the
lj-directory.
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| SXEmacs/LJ v1.20 released |
[Дек. 19, 2009|05:27 pm] |
I'm using Google Chrome
as my main web browser now, so figured I
better make sure
SXEmacs/LJ
supports extracting Livejournal
cookies from Chrome. So, without further ado…
Revision: slh--main--0.5--patch-12
Archive: steve@sxemacs.org--2009
Creator: Steve Youngs <steve@sxemacs.org>
Date: Sat Dec 19 17:13:59 EST 2009
Standard-date: 2009-12-19 07:13:59 GMT
Modified-files: lj.el
New-patches: steve@sxemacs.org--2009/slh--main--0.5--patch-12
Summary: Support Google Chrome cookies
Keywords: enhancement, internal, newfeature
* lj.el (lj-cookie-flavour): Add chrome.
(lj-extract-sql-cookies): Support Chrome sql cookies.
(lj-get-cookies): Support Chrome cookies.
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| #261 - "Chafed Dickens [4 of 5]" |
[Дек. 19, 2009|12:15 pm] |
#261 - "Chafed Dickens [4 of 5]"
We return to the Chafed Dickens storyline to bring you the Ghost of the Future, who may or may not surprise you. Next week: the unexciting conclusion to this uneventful five part series.
Volume 6 begins with this strip. No surprises here for LiveJournal readers, as I've posted the inks to this strip earlier. Not much else to say, except, I hope that the final strip of the Chafed series will be up on time (and I think it will). |
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| Square Your Circle |
[Дек. 16, 2009|04:55 pm] |
Loling here at the vacuous corporate slogans in a brochure I got at a conference recently. Sounds like a more trite version of Confucius.
Your partners are your destiny.
To go far, explore first what is near.
There are times when everything must change.
Trust is built on a promise.
The leanest run the best.
A torch well passed burns no one.
To work well, work together.
Surely the corporate buzz terms market has long since slipped into self-parody? |
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