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Archive for January 2002 Part 4 in an Ongoing Series Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the United States must now prepare for potential surprise attacks "vastly more deadly" than the events of September 11th. When asked to clarify, he maintained that although he couldn't specify the nature of the surprise attack/attacks, he could say that they would be, in fact, "vastly more deadly." Defense Secretary Rumsfeld supports the $48 billion increase in Defense spending. Rumsfeld asked reporters attending the press conference to "imagine the worst disaster imaginable... and multiply it eight trillion times." "Or not," added Rumsfeld. Some Democrats, though a bit skeptical, agreed to support the plan. Rumsfeld allayed their doubts by using quantum mechanics to describe terrorist threat superposition. "A mere hair's breadth away from us, in the future, there is infinite potential for attacks to occur at any instant," he said, speaking from the White House after the press conference. "However, the potential given to those attacks' potential has yet to be determined." Confirming our worst fears, Rumsfeld said it was likely in this context for eight trillion duplicates of the World Trade Center to suddenly appear in New York and be struck by eight trillion instantly-materialized commercial aircraft. The iPod in the webcam pic is not mine. I can't really afford it, but it is pretty neat. How many damn earthquakes do we need, anyway? We had like five or six last night, and I just felt other decent one. Melissa and I agreed that it's better to 10^6 4.0s over the course of a week or month than it is to have one 8.0. Anyway. Last night I bought the first component that'll be used in my next machine which I intend to build sometime in June or July, and the beauty is, I can use it right now! It's a GeForce 3, and it's goooooood. I think I'll pass along this P3-933 to Kurt once I build the new one. I'm sorry if I'm scaring/pissing off you guys by saying I'm thinking about what I'm gonna do with this strip every three months. I really, truly am not thinking about ending it in the next six months, and whatever thoughts I do entertain along those lines have to do with changing CN's format. I don't think you're going to see any new series of comic strips anytime soon. What I'd like to do is redesign the site, in order to fit that new format. I've kinda decided I want it to be wide, like the Sunday Calvin and Hobbes, and in color. Does that mean once weekly? Probably. But who knows when that would happen. Once I redesign the site, I can refocus the scope (i.e., separate personal stuff into one section, and "content" elsewhere), and fix some ugliness in the way I maintain the site already. A couple things: 1) Often I start thinking, "hmmm, what kind of main character could I create for a new comic strip?" And overwhelmingly, I can't think of anything. Nothing is iconic enough to suit me. Here are some characters I consider iconic: Bugs Bunny - iconic due to popularity. What's his deal? He's a rabbit. That's it. He deals with problems that coem his way. He's not a rabbit DOCTOR, being a rabbit is his line of work. (It seems to me if you have an animal as a character, they don't need to work. If it's a human, they have to be a human *janitor* or *schoolboy*, and that's their "deal." I also find that most anthropomorphic comics have lions and dogs which also have normal jobs, and I never understood why they needed to be animals.) The Tick - he's a superhero, that's his drive. I guess Bugs' drive is to get developers and hunters to leave him alone. But, The Tick's drive to be a superhero is liberating as a premise, not confining. That's the key. Checkerboard Nightmare - I feel Chex is the most iconic thing I've come up with. Simple design, instantly recognizable, the name fits, he's got a cute nickname, and his deal is that he's a checkerboard nightmare. He isn't also a chef, that's all he is, and it's enough. So as I'm trying to come up with new characters, I'm thinking they're going to be human. But being some guy isn't enough -- so they have to be... a spy? It feels confining! I could redevelop my Chronoshock whatnot, as I did a few years ago but never did anything with. My other option is to revamp Checkerboard Nightmare, and put him in a different, more open premise. What I'd really like to do in a new strip is (a) move completely away from self-aware humor, and (b) try to make it more like a print strip, in that I'd be inking it, coloring it. I'd want to move to a more complex look. I like how I do the strip now, it just that I can recycle art if I want, and there's only one line thickness. 2) It bears repeating here: If I ever see another webpage made by some quasi-goth chix0r whose "About Me" page says that she’s "your worst nightmare and your most amazing dream," "a goddess AND a devil-woman," "cute, sassy, but dabbling with evil" and a wall of webcam pics of her smirking, I will punch my eyes out and use a novelty twisty straw to suck out my brain. http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/0118WaveShooting-ON.html think to yourself, is it worth it? Better to just let the guy you know think you're a jerk for not waving. Actually, that'll probably get you killed faster. I hate Microsoft too, but I specifically hate IE 6.0 because 15% of the time, I'll go to a page and all the images are broken. So I'll go to Image Properties and look at an image directly. It's there. Reload the page -- nope. No images. No amount of reloading will bring any images up; IE is convinced this session that that web page as no pictures. So, for the second time, I'm going back to IE 5.5. [Later: I just went to microsoft.com to see if there was a patch or update -- guess what happened to their images?] Take this recent one for example. Isn't my punchline here better than the original "Darn coin's defective!" ?  I just thought of something. That's not really the punchline; Mrs. Potato Head's line is the actual punchline. Mr. Potato Head (wow, sick of typing that name out) delivers additional material, which is unnecessary, but adds flavor. Ultimately it's tacked on, and I do this whenever I can. I name this writing phenomenon "the tack-on!" See if you can find examples of tack-ons in Checkerboard Nightmare! I know I can. As some of my friends have known, I've been ailing for the last month, and have gone to the doctor a few times. The last couple of days, I've felt vague flu symptoms. Sitting up and writing this, I feel that same throbbing pain one gets when one has the flu, except in my upper left abdomen. I'm generally sore and tired, for no reason. At the moment I have a 100F fever. I just took two Tylenol... I think I may have mono. Whether it's behind my other problem is not clear, but I guess I'm seeing the doctor this week too. UGH. Blueshift jumped today. He made me proud. He's not as consistent as Unraveled, but neither was Unraveled at first. His water gets cloudy one day after I put him in there. I'm going to do an experiment: put him in a tank with no plants or gravel, and see if it gets cloudy. If so, I'll proceed from there. Otherwise, somehow I'm thinking it's a plant. https://orders.webpower.com/iFriends/viewprefmain.htm I love the idea of freedom of information, and the right to advertise any way one wants to. That's why I hate to hear it when sites that employ guerrilla advertising tactics get deluged with tens of thousands of bad e-mail addresses. I would hate to hear about that happening. http://www.ntk.net/media/dancemonkeyboy.mpg Bill. (loading tranquilizer rifle) I better put him down before he starts spilling the beans about .NET. The MothCam has been enlarged, for increased moth viewing enjoyment. Also up, unless I took it down already, is a picture of me and the OOTB that I got off eBay, with the hanging mobile gimmick intact! Those are not very easy to find. The question is, do I put it together, or leave it flat? Hmmm... probably leave it. I could make a photocopy, paste it on posterboard and make the mobile out of that like they do in the movies, but it's hardly worth the trouble. |
