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November 24, 2004
You're Using Internet Explorer?!?!?
Y'know, if I go to another website that yells at me for using IE, I will start getting grumpy. Apparently about 96% of net users still use IE. But of course they should be using Firefox. Or Opera. Or anything but Internet Explorer! These sites are basically calling you, their readers, morons!
The reason so many people use IE is that it is free, works (most of the time) and comes with your computer. Most of the people I know have trouble switching to capitals and when they do they tend to forget to turn the CAPS Lock off. These people don't really want to have to work out how to download another browser and install it. The same goes for the other email clients. They want it to work. And not have to faff about to do so.
I tried Firefox, and yes, it works well, with tabbed windows and everything. But most of the sites I went to looked terrible. graphics were broken - you know how some sites build a big picture using little images? Well the images were all sepearted by a pixel so the effect was ruined. My own site was included in this at that point - surely putting a graphic right next to another is not so hard? Or are graphics just for IE and the (terrible) Netscape? Also frames were wrong. I switched back quickly. I still use IE though it is now 'hacked' as I use Advanced Browser, which fiddles with IE and makes it much more stable and does it better. And web pages look right in it. And it has tabbed windows that remember so you can go back next day and click 'back' to look at the Aria Giovanni page you were looking at last night. So ya-boo sucks to you, Firefox. I have to use Outlook (note - not Outlook Express, which really is for morons - at least upgrade to Office goddamnit!) so I can sync to my work network.
Basically, I wouldn't mind if all these elite netheads wouldn't just bugger off - most of it simply seems to be the usual anti-Microsoft ranting anyway. Imagine if Microsoft, in a fit of insanity, stripped Windows of all that funtionality - no more built in media player, etc - and you had to buy everything? Of course, you'd have to buy the software to make your mouse appear on screen, something to copy/paste, a program for looking at your directories... Kinda like my answer to fox hunting (kill every fox in Britain then see what the huntsmen say wehen they complain about not having a livelihood and how the foxes should have been saved from extinction), whale hunting (see fox hunting), or Iraq (gt every soldier and foreign aid worker out than detonate a nuke on an oil field - then issue an ultimatum that every day for the next ten days another nuke will go off, destroying first small towns but quickly working up to a 100 megaton blast at the heart of Baghdad, unless all hostages are released and the country realises that democracy can be a good thing - you can at least elect your dictator!).
Ahem.
The big arguement is that most viruses (to get back to my point!) are written to take advantage of IE. Sure, but what if 96% of the world used Firefox - surely no-one would use a virus on them...? Face it - You are just going to create more juicy targets for enterprising hackers.
Of course, what I really want to say to all these L337 fools is this: You want a stable browser? You want less viruses? Buy a fricking Mac And run Linux on it!!
PS - I would love a Mac for my art - though I would have to get a pirated copy of Photoshop, etc as I can't afford to get those as well as afford a computer that looks like a desklamp!!! See - these fools are the cause of software piracy too!!!
Posted by Badgers at 05:31 PM | Comments (2)
November 20, 2004
Sprained Bits
Let's get the work bit out of the way first. It sucked this week. No real problems occurred, it just sucked. If I could go part-time (and could afford it) I'd be going part-time. I can't, so I won't. Let's move on!
Probably the best bit of this week was Thursday night - I was in a house in Trawden and it was raining. Then it was sleeting. Then it snowed. A lot. It was great to drive through it, knowing the tyres have grip to go faster than the car behind who is really trying to get into my boot! So I did and left him to slither in the snow. Which was nice. I also saw a spectacular crumpled car on Friday afternoon - a small van had obviously hit the wall in the snow and been pushed back on the road as the wall was knocked down and the front of the van was totalled. But from that angle I didn't spot the side of the van ripped off by the impact! What a mess!
Probably the worst bit of the week was that the next moring I had to scrape ice and stuff ogff the car. That bit wasn't so bad, but having to fight to get into the car as the doors were iced up, and then when I finally got round to scraping I slipped on some ice and fell onto the bonnet smacking my wrist in the process! Thus last night I took a brief break fonm drawing, and hoped to get down to shed loads today (six pages and an all-nighter!) but it looks unlikely... and not just because I have just picked up my copy of Half Life 2!
Hopefully I'll get the three pages needed done this weekend, and follow it up next week with the final 3 pages and the start of Quatermiss And The Pit... Then I should be up to date for the comic again! We'll see how things go! At least I have some proper blue non-repro pencils at last so I don't need to draw with a stub (so the art will be better!) - they came yesterday but got took back to the sorting office... though there was someone in!
Other stuff? Well, whjile I was drawing on Monday on my day off I discovered a neat little Quatermass-style sci-fi play from the '60s called Orbit One Zero - not deep, but it would have made a great Hammer movie, with the green pulsing pillars, etc! Great fun to draw to for a few hours...
Ah well - not much to add if I am to get the head crabs dealt with in Half - I mean get some drawing done! Later, guys!
Posted by Badgers at 02:05 PM | Comments (0)
November 15, 2004
All Nighter
So, after the last entry I had tea and scanned the art into the computer. I then played Joint Operations. And went to bed.
Then I woke up at six and set to on doing the final lettering for the comics I drew earlier and a quick doodle for a tacky Kylie card I got Nick for his birthday. That I then redid on the computer (you will see it next Sunday at the I.T. comic site). Then, before Andrew turned up I had time to colour the Noids in the comics.
At Nicks Andrew revealed that he is not only going to be 'away' for a few weeks, he is also hooked on Everquest II. But he will come out with us. Just not for Nick's birthday in a week or so! James turned iu with computer, so we are finally able to play The Sims 2 (brilliant), Need For Speed Underground 2 (stunning at full detail on Ayumi!) and the new Medal Of Honour (the Pearl Harbour attack puts the movie to shame!). He may even be around more, which is nice.
On getting home at 7.30 I had tea and settled down to colouring after Top Gear. And I hadn't realised just how much would be needed - I really worked on those inks on Saturday! Midnight passed me by like a late deadline and fuelled by apple juice and MP3s I ended up completing the colouring and got the comics online at 4 AM. And then after adding messages on the sites to mention the fact that three new comics were online I fixed Dark Tidings Online.com (the easy way - by changing the background graphic!) and played Sims 2 for a little while. Then got back on the computer to do the rough lettering for the comics I hope to have inked and scanned today.
No sleep - I haven't done this in quite a while - even in the old days when I was doing I.T. and Charlie And The Demons I gave up about 2.30 AM! I have proved that I can do it, but after inking and possible scanning tonight I quit toill tomorrow night - I need sleep if I am to do my job tomorrow - but at least I know I can do this if i need to - and its one way to get the comic up on time...!
Now to get myself wakened up again to set to on the comics today!!!
Posted by Badgers at 12:19 PM | Comments (2)
November 13, 2004
No Diet Diary This Week (Again)
The Diet Diary is still a part of the site, though it won't be updated weekly... but you all guessed that, right? I haven't given up on losing the weight (what I've lost already has made a big difference) it's just that it isn't the most important thing in my life at the moment! And I'll bet you won't believe that work isn't important to me either. Or at least not my job, anyway!
Getting I.T. up to date is the most important thing in my life at the moment. More than money, love, or even playing Joint Operations! Guess what my week has been like?!?
Yeah, work is annoying me more than ever, but I need to keep going to work (though I have booked (via an email to a boss who is off with flu) Monday off to get some more stuff done on the comic (and hopefully to fiddle a little with the sites!) and maybe catch some sleep! Then it's a big push at work (which might, sadly, impinge on my drawing time!) to get a big job sorted by Christmas so that the New Year will see me up to date with the job. Unless I get killed in the fog - more on this a little lower!
Then I might just say sod it and pull a Jamie and quit.
Or at least I will when I get enough in savings to give me the breather.
So thats quitting in 2035 then.
So, getting away from my job (wish I could!), what have I done as work this week? Well I got the first batch of comics up last weekend, another batch online Thursday night, and today I pencilled and inked three pages - and while they looked crap in pencils, they look okay in inks. This has, surprisingly, little to do with the time taken to do them as I was watching last week's Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis while doing them, so I spent some time distracted. One frame took almost 45 minutes due to this, though it was a detailed one (that took about 10 minutes to ink!). When these go onlione (tomorrow night if I get them done quickly, or more likely Monday morning) I'll have all the strips online up to the Halloween strip - then it's just playing catch up over the next two weeks and then I will have to get ahead with Quatermiss And the Pit. Then I can get down to drawing Dark Tidings as well. And I know that DT will look different to I.T. - more grayscale with the occasional splurge of colour.
Ahem - can you tell what I'd rather be doing than my job?!? ^_^
So other stuff - I'm not sure if the Fellowship (odd to call them that when two of them haven't even seen LOTR!) is breaking up - James is being odd (I'm not ignoring him, I just don't start messages with him on Messenger all the time) though by his emails (and the fact that Marie wants him out of the house to have fun for a change) he mioght put in a brief appearance soon. Andrew is off after tomorrow to go to a beer festival then probably won't be around until Christmas or beyond as he is playing host to some Dubya voters again - the things he'll do to get out of going out for a night out with us! At least Nick is dependable (OMFG!!! Frodo and Sam overtones FFS!!!), especially when it comes to ringing me up at 10pm to see if I can see both of his monitors over Remote Assistance (I could), let me know he has bought another of the TFT monitors from Aria (mine has finally gone off to be swapped for a working one) then nagging for an hour or more. I worry about him. He's nearly 70 (well, 35 next week but it's half way there!), single (hey, I'm younger than him!!!) and still hung up on Kylie's bum. Someone must want him! If you are in Burnley sometime in the next couple of weeks or so and not choosy (he cetainaly isn't!), he is available and I will point him out to you at Lava...! Then you can get the late night phone calls!!! Andrew is available but not worth the hassle! I'm too busy to bugger about with romance so leave me soooo out of it!
Last bit - promise - as I mark the return of the crap driving bit! This past Thursday the area was under the thickest fog I have driven in ever. And I had all my headlights, foglights (front and back) on. So why was I nearly killed twice by idiots who obviously didn't see me?!? And this mnorning I take mum into town and nearly get killed on Yorkshire Street as a fool in a merc comes out of Plumb Street and keeps coming out (it wasn't foggy either, though his brain might have been!
Ah well - off to eat a little and get ready to scan and then play a little Joint Ops so I don't show myself up tomorrow! See ya!
Posted by Badgers at 06:50 PM | Comments (0)
November 06, 2004
If You Know What Is Going On...
...send me an email and let me know, eh? This week has been at least as annoying as usual. I got through the meeting on Tuesday without going to sleep. but the rest of the week has been seen through a zombie's eyes. I seem to be getting more and more tired! I've been able to get the three comics done and online as planned, and the next three are in the works for later this week. I haven't had the chance to watch Stargate and Battlestar (as predicted in the last entry), and for various reasons I might not be at Nick's tomorrow - it depends on what gets done!
Annoying stuff at work this week: Spending Thursday installing 6 loop systems, then finding that one guy's hearing aid has stopped working, so he decided on Friday that I had to go back and rip it up. An hour to install and a minute or two of pulling it though the carpet. And another who had been having problems with her hearing aid - unsurprising as it had fallen apart! At least I was able to palm 12 cases onto the guy doing the other area as he has just a little slakc (I'm booked up till the end of November) so far, with another 20 cases arrivig this week. You should all know that I will code HTML and fiddle with PHPNuke for food!
On the roads, it has been chaos - the St Peters car park is coming down, so the main road into town is a didaster area, - but elsewhere I have nearly been killed three times (if not more) this week! A truck ignoring the car beside it and coming onto my lane, a car taking a very wide and fast corner on my side of the road, and today one nearly smashed into me on a roundabout off the motorway as he realised he was in the wrong lane.
Bikes seem to be popping up everywhere too. I think dad might have caught something on the Jeremny Vine Show this week about cycling. I come home to find one in the living room - it will only cost £20 and is in good condition from the shop over the road - and today I had to take him to Feniscowles to collect another! This one was more annoying as he had just come off nights and was tired, so I had to drive. And I had to get iun his Siearra estate and moved the mirror so I could see more than my own lap. And the mirror came off. I swear this was not just a ploy to get me to go in my own car! Note to self - need to book MOT this week!
Interesting stuff this week - there has to be some - include the increased bandwidth on my set-top box - finally I am on a 1.5MB connection! This means Nick is now on a 300kbs one!
And of course America has the same president, God help us... place bets now if you think we will still have a planet in four years time! Also, a new patch for JO - and it is getting things ready for the new expansion pack this month - some things have changed back to how they were in the beta. Odd, but it works. And I've found myself playing at 1280x1024 on the new monitor - wow! Goodbye 1024x768!
And goodbye to you!
PS - No Diet Diary this week - no time - I'm 14st 10lb, should you want to know!
Posted by Badgers at 04:35 PM | Comments (2)
November 01, 2004
Yet Another Of Those Weeks...
Sorry about the late update (and lack of Diet Diary - you'll live without it, I'm sure!) but the last week or so has been very annoying!
Due to his gleeful crashing of Joint Operations for both myself and Nick last weekend I took James off my Messenger list, which seems to have lead to him gloating and sulking at once. And moving on to 'PLINGPLINGPLING' Nick instead - more on that later...
Work are a bugger, but at least I got some stuff done I've been trying to do for a while, and my boss discussed my ever-increasing workload and didn't preach at me (unlike my previous boss!) and tell me to get it sorted - he realises that I am getting too much piled on me! I was able to start on gathering 70+ closures together, which will help as certain companies (Universal-bloody-Aids) have finally installed things ordered back in April...
In other things, I was (for a week) a two-TFT monitor person as last week at Nick's I gave in to get another of the Digimate moniotrs fropm Aria - well worth it except that my tablet didn't like working over two screens and then yesterday night I turned on the extended desktop and it all went pear shaped! The new monitor basically got all corrupted and won't go un-corrupted - kinda like theway an old monitor looks when you put the resolution up too far. I've contacted Aria and the returns system is hopefully going to get me a replacement really quickly!
One sad thing is that we had to have one of Dad's snakes put to sleep. Prince was a bit of a runt (after a few years this 14 year old snake had barely grown after being kept in a tiny tank by a previous owner) and had recently virtually stopped eating. Then this past week he suddenly decided to twist himself round another of the snakes and try to bit it's head off! A bit of a change from the usual placid snake we knew. At the vets they felt that it might have been a kidney failiure - the lack of appiteite, the sudden grumpness etc - so it was put to sleep. Farewell Prince.
I did get round to getting the sites online (though not fully) this past week - I still need to fiddle with the site themes before I add any real content, but as I am not publicising them just yet it isn;'t a major problem. The same for the backlog of comics! I want to get the rest of ITGTW online by the 20th November which is tight, but possible if I get the chance to get down to it! Hopefully in the spare time I have between drawing, scanning, lettering and colouring, not to mention the site fiddling, I will get a chance to go to work... though I could always quit(!)
So, Sunday rolled round, and we decamped to Nick's, as per usual. I think Andrew is happy as it means he doesn't have to move the living room round! Most of the day was spent playing Guild Wars (an online variant of the Dungeon Siege style games) - and having a lot of fun. James was supposed to come over too, but spent a while PLINGing Nick while we were in a big battle with the undead... and sending cracks for games we don't have yet - as I typoed to him - "Burn off, drop off, bugger off!". Andrew's answer is to disable Messenger (tempting) and/or just turn it off when playing (as James and his 400 messages a minute can crash JO in seconds - Its worse than a Denial of Service attack!). Of course, this is the guy who wants us to use a Teamspeak server on Jo, but can't be bothereds to do anything about it! Ah well. Anyway, James didn't turn up (fit of pique? Too knackered due to having the tickets he was expecting for Most Haunted Live on Pendle Hill? Or pissed that he didn't get them? Who cares?!?) so we lived without him. JO was fun though - we climbed to the top[ of the table by defending F - pretty important in an endless match on Laba Laba Archipeleglo where the whole JO force is desperate to wrest the island from rebel hands!
So I got home (early - I think Andrew is still working to BST) to play more Guild Wars (well, the free preview test only ran up till last night), then found my second monitor buggering about. Ans do to today. I had a plan to wake up and exercise then go to work, but there were other plans happening... mainly as I spent 3 hours coming and going from a dream where I was trying to get up to exercise while my mind was too busy playing a super-detailed version of Rome: Total War... I really didn't need that!
Apart from Guild Wars, and a great game of Joint Ops during the week (I love Tanah Highlands, though I can think of a few people who don't like me on the map!) the best thing was finding that I had actually got £30 of expenses on my salary, and that I had more in the bank than I expected. And my Manchester shopping trip on Saturday of course (Dan Dare volume 3! Woo!). Things have got to improve.
So this coming week (and probably for a bit longer) I have got to get down to the comics (or else James will jut have to live without Dark Tidings next year), the websites andlots of other stuff. Thre goes my channce to watch Stargate SG1/Atlantis and Battlestar Galactica then! I might even have to skip some Sundays too (though I can still harass everyone on Messenger)! At least I should be thinner by the end of this week! See you Saturday, if I make it!
Posted by Badgers at 07:00 PM | Comments (4)