Quote of the Day

In keeping with today's theme of webcomics-related posts...Here's the QotD:

"Is chintzy one of those racist code words, like "gyp"? I await the terse communiques from Lower Chintzia."

-Penny Arcade's Tycho Brahe

By the way, the first Penny Arcade book, Attack of the Bacon Robots, is worth every penny (heh). It's a funny thing shelling out $13 for something that you can get for free, but the book is really the ideal way to read any comic. It feels more fluid to read; easier to consume some how. Now I'm thinking about buying the first Starslip Crisis book and the new Wigu book...Should Questionable Content ever be available in book form, I may swoon--or something.

Woah...

They're not kidding when they call it infinite canvas...

Thanks For Sharing

What's better than someone walking down a hallway having a speakerphone conversation on their cell?...Someone walking down the hallways having a speakerphone argument on their cell.

Nena was right, everyone is a Captain Kirk.

Fortune Cookie

I just opened a fortune cookie from last night that says: "Stop searching forever. Happiness is just next to you."

On my left is a PC and a laser printer, on my right is a box of cookies. Happiness?

I hope not.

BGNews Thing #2: The Horrors of File Sharing

Oh the horror, the horror of file sharing!

Today, the BGNews featured a front-page news story abount some national student group's quest to make sure we all "Download Legal", as well as a staff editorial defending their claims.

The news story was kind enough to allow campus music-guru-type Alex Merced to give the opposing side of the story; that the labels are actively screwing us, and that's why we download.

Allow me to go further...

Here is a list of albums I have purchased in the past year or two:

Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine
Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins - Rabbit Fur Coat
Metric - Live It Out
Metric - Old World Underground, Where Are You Know?
Sufjan Stevens - Illinois
Broken Social Scene - Broken Social Scene
Broken Social Scene - You Forgot It In People
The Arcade Fire - Funeral
Cat Power - The Greatest
Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
Stars - Set Yourself On Fire
Feist - Let It Die
Green Day - American Idiot
Modest Mouse - Good News For People Who Love Bad News
Modest Mouse - The Moon and Antarctica
Spiritualized - Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space
The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots
The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots 5.1
The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
The Postal Service - Give Up
The Decemberists - Picaresque
Rilo Kiley - More Adventurous
The Shins - Oh, Inverted World
Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand
Cake - Fashion Nugget
Cake - Comfort Eagle

That's 28 legitimate, legal CD purchases that would not have happened were it not for the fact that I had already heard (and loved) these albums through file sharing.

Were it not for file sharing, I probably would not have ever heard of half of those albums. I'm totally sure I would have never heard Feist, Stars, Cat Power, Broken Social Scene, Spiritualized, Jenny Lewis, and Sufjan Stevens (which is sad because that's some of the best music I've ever heard). I'm totally sure I would have dismissed American Idiot and Extraordinary Machine had I not heard the whole albums first.

And that's the point. File sharing is the best advertisement for music that's ever been invented. With file sharing you can listen to a greater variety of music than 99% of radio stations out there will ever provide you with. You can't explore music with traditional options. It simply isn't possible. Even with something like iTunes, you're limited to 30 second clips...I'm sorry, that's not good enough. How many people would have bought Dark Side of the Moon if they had just heard 30 second chunks of it? It's the brilliance of the whole package that matters.

The problem here is that I am not an idiot. I will not buy an album because I heard one good song on the radio or saw an artist on TV. I want brilliant albums with brilliant songs, and the only way to find things like that is to listen to whole albums (especially considering the assinine state of music reviews).

At the same time, consider the technical side of "Download Legal". They want you to buy DRMed garbage. I refuse to buy a whole album on a medium that has been purposely broken. Music is a shared social experience. If I can't send something I love to a friend, than there's no point in buying it. If I'm limited were I put it (such as what brand digital audio player I chose to buy), there's no point in buying it.

BGNews Thing #1: President's Day Hillarity

Right-Wing BGNews columnist Alan Calcaterra writes some hillarious shit, I must say. Today, he wrote what starts out being a perfectly innocuous column about President's Day facts:

President's Day is today, and most people think this is a meaningless holiday.

It actually does have a lot of meaning because it was created for the celebration of all the presidents of the United States.

Originally, George Washington's birthday and Abraham Lincoln's birthday were two separate federal holidays in February until 1968, when Congress passed the Uniform Holidays Bill.

The bill, however, didn't become effective until 1971, combining Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays into one day called President's Day. It exists to honor all presidents and it is celebrated on the third Monday of February.

See?...Good wholesome President's Day fun. But, Alan is a right-wing blowhard, and that means that on President's Day, he has an irresistable temptation to start worshipping Ronald Reagan. It's like a moth drawn to a flame. So, lets go to the next page...

TBN, which is the most-watched religious network according to the Neilson ratings, is airing the award-winning documentary "In the Face of Evil: Reagan's War in Word and Deed," which is about Ronald Reagan and the 40-year campaign against the Soviet Union and communism.

Oh, there it goes...This is actually a triple word score for Alan, because he mentions TBN, Reagan, and communism in the same sentence. It's like a reactionary shish kabob.

The film has been getting great reviews and broke box office records in multiple cities when it was released in 2004.

It is considered one of the best documentaries on Reagan and the Cold War, and TBN is expecting high ratings for this President's Day feature.

The documentary is based on Peter Schweizer s best-selling novel "Reagan's War: The Epic Story of His Forty Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism." This book is best known for saying that Reagan achieved the final victory over the Soviet Union through direct confrontation.

So, in honor of all of the presidents, go see a right-wing propaganda film today!...

I consider him to be the greatest president of the 20th century. His contribution to ending the Cold War and fighting communism was one of the biggest victories ever in U.S. history because it was the first time the U.S. fought against a superpower with nuclear weapons.

O RLY? FDR says hi.

Message Board Post of the Day

Bless you, GAF:

In the last couple days my PC has shut off a few times out of nowhere. It is usually preceeding by a message that my video card isn't getting enough power and that the settings are being turned down.

I havent changed anything with my PC's setup in months. Is this just a problem of my PC not getting enough power?

On the back of the Power Supply there is a red switch. I have it on 110. Do you think turning it to 240 would help?

I'm really clueless here. Thanks GAF.

It Never Fails

It's after 2AM, and I have found yet another cool thing...

uBrowser is an experimental Mozilla based browser that renders everything through OpenGL. Want to see cnn.com waving like a flag? Slashdot mapped on a sphere? Digg on a cube? Digg scrolling by like the intro to a Star Wars movie? This is the browser for you.

Quote of the Day

Today's QotD comes from a poster named Axolotl on Fark:

I'm old enough to remember when we were the good guys.

The US did not invade without prior attack.

The US did not torture.

The US believed in the right to public trial.

The US did not spy on its own citizens.

The US had legitimate popular elections.

The US was a role model for other nations.

The Most Merciful Thing

Once again, it's the wee hours of the morning and I stumbled upon something incredibly cool. Behold the 128k mp3 internet stream of MIT's campus radio station, and their 1-2AM program on Mondays called "The Most Merciful Thing". Basically, imagine three nerds with microphones talking about odd science and politics while Holst's "The Planets" plays softly in the background.

Still A Unique Problem

I have noted in the past how I tend to find the coolest things on the Internet after 2:00AM. This explains why I was watching Abbott and Costello's "Who's On First" routine at 6:00AM.

What's In A Name?

For those of us who can't afford real Nixie Clocks, there's now a Konfa...err...Yahoo Widget Engine widget that simulates the experience.

See, this is the problem with them calling it Yahoo Widget Engine...Saying something is a "Yahoo Widget Engine widget" uses four words, one of them twice, where saying Konfabulator widget is rather more concise. You can't just say "widget" for simplicity, since there are something like a half-dozen incompatible ways of putting widgets on one's desktop.

Really, calling it Yahoo Widget Engine screams "we're marketing droids with no creativity". It screams "we're bundling all kinds of useless shit with this neat thing". It screams "turn off the lights, the party's over".

The whole point of the word Konfabulator was that while it was literally nonsense, it sounded exactly like a word that described what the thing did would sound like. "Konfab" gives one a sense of infinite possibility and "-ulator" sounds like machine. It's a machine that does lots of stuff, which is exactly what it was. It's a platform for making little doohickies.

The whole point of the word Konfabulator is that it sounds exactly like "widget engine" without saying somehting as needlessly dry as "widget engine". It sounds like something that Willy Wonka would be selling. It was the perfect way to position the product. "We're the slightly silly guys," it says. "We're the one's with the imagination". These are the people who use something called Spidermonkey. These are the people who offer a Werewolf Monitor. Konfabulator is Willy Wonka rolling down a carpet.

Yahoo Widget Engine sounds like something you try to sell a CIO. Willy Wonka becomes a PR flack. If they had the slightest bit of talent over there, they would have called it "Yahoo Konfabulator" or even better, "Konfabulator, by Yahoo".

"But, but, but..." the no-talent marketing hacks go, "Konfabulator doesn't really tell people what the thing does. Yahoo Widget Engine makes more sense". Does it? Ever actually seen anything in real life called a widget?

The whole problem is that what hese little desktop programs are too hard to concisely describe. Apple's Dashboard name tries to make an analogy to all of the meters on one's car dashboard with their widgets. It's not a bad idea, to a point. They're both small instruments designed to tell people things they want to know. You're current speed is a lot like the outside temperature in that regard. These widgets work well for "at a glance" information.

But the angle that the name Dashboard misses that the name Konfabulator attempts to hint at is that the information your receive is infinitely customizable. You can have a widget telling you where the ISS is right now. You can have a widget tell you where earthquakes are occuring. The possibilites are endless. It's crucial that the name of the product express those possibilites. That's why you need a creative name like Konfabulator, because the name Yahoo Widget Engine sounds like "we take a dump on your desktop".

Kristofer Straub Is Fully Responsible. He Is Sorry.

This Checkerboard Nightmare "Blamination" is hillarious. "I'm in prison" is the new "It's such the don't".

Quote of the Day

This must be the week of webcomic QotDs...

From Starslip Crisis:

Enjoy it while you can. It may be your Final Soup.

Quote of the Day

From Diesel Sweeties:

You'll always have fan fic.

At least until the F.B.I. seizes your laptop as evidence.

Quote of the Day

Sigh.

Was your dog raped this morning?

-Eric Burns, in a rather sad and disgraceful (and low locked) comments thread at Websnark. Not surprisingly, William G. was involved, though atmittedly he has promised to stab himself in the eye with a fork (because he got involved in "drama" not because he was trashing Penny Arcade's charity, kind of sad...).

Thought #1: I don't think I'll ever understand how the mere mention of Penny Arcade seems to bring out the worst in people. I mean, you mention to someone how an online charity effort has raised hundreds of thousands for sick children and people generally have good thoughts...But mention that Gabe and Tycho were behind it, and the teeth come out. "They must have some hidden agenda", they spit. "Do they really mean it?", they wheeze. I cannot see where someone can object to Penny Arcade running a charity, on any grounds, unless they have an irrational hate of Penny Arcade. That goes way, way beyond any actual criticism of what Penny Arcade is and steps into catfight territory.

Thought #2: When it comes to the policing of online communities, I tend to like the places that allow the balls to the wall, dirty as hell kind of online flaming/cage match drama that you could see building in that thread. Eric Burns does not stand for that sort of thing. However, there is such an acidic side to the webcomics community (moreso than even videogame console wars, I think) that I can see why Mr. Burns does what he does. He wants Websnark to be a place full of well thought-out discussion and characterized by generally good feelings. He wants his place to be a candle in the darkness forcing back the kind of acidic idiocy and hate that (at least I think) William G. regularly dips into.

Let It Be Known...

If I were rich, I most certainly would own a Nixie Clock. Sweet jesus that is cool. It's like the ultimate in Dr. Strangelove styling.

Quote of the Day

Today's Quote of the Day goes to Kristofer Straub, creator of the Checkerboard Nightmare and Starslip Crisis webcomics. Over at Websnark, he posted a comment concerning Ctrl+Alt+Delete:

The way I described it in my forums (where we had a much more literate discussion about CAD than the bitter-sounding snipefest I posted at CxN) is that gaming humor, or any genre for that matter, is like Legos. There's only so many things you can build with the kinds of pieces given. You'll never escape the 2x4 brick (two friends playing games on a couch). You need the little rubber wheels for the car (funny violence). So it's understandable that gaming comics are going to have similar elements.

Penny Arcade took its pieces and built an M-Tron Magna-Rover. PVP took the same pieces and built a Buccaneers playset. CAD pulled the curtain back and showed us an M-Tron Magna-Rover sitting on top of a Buccaneers playset. The pieces are all there, as they have to be, but CAD doesn't do anything new with them.

Late 80s-Early 90s Lego lovers represent!

Imagine

Occasionally, I have the crazy idea that perhaps, in a multiverse of parallel universes, we're the evil universe. December 8th is one of those days. Here was a mind with so much left to give, robbed from us three and a half years before I was born. I got robbed, you got robbed. We got robbed, and for what? Like I said, maybe this is the evil universe.

William G: Part 3

Back in October, I wrote a nasty little post about webcomics pariah William G.

Today, I get a little "comment notification" email, and guess who's name I see...

William G.

It would seem that he found my little post. And he decided to leave a nice little post of his own.

So I just followed my referres back and I find some retard fanboy talking out his ass.

Oh well, I expect it from you clowns now. Keep up the mental masturbation, idiot.

I'm not at all sure if he realizes this, but knowing that the actual William G read my little post (which I never expected...hell, I was surprised when I got any comments about that post, nevermind one from the man himself) and actually felt the urge to leave a note is one of the coolest things that's ever happened to my Internet-self in the roughly 7 years of online-selfdom I've had. And in some small way, it does pleasure me to know that William G knows that I think he's a "scum-sucking pig", a "webcomic asshat", a "sewer rat", and most importantly, the "Richard Hogland of webcomics".

However, on another level, I think that when I posted that insult-laden entry I missed an opportunity to really say what I thought instead of going for the brief high one achieves by splatting a rant onto one's blog.

My problem with William G is precisely this: William G is not actually a "sewer-rat" or a "scum-sucking-pig" or any of that. William G is Indie Rock Pete*. This is a person who has become a pariah because he told several hundred thousand people they had bad taste. He hates anything that is remotely popular, that's why he "reviewed" PA and PvP and Megatokyo first on his late comic review blog. He named one of his subsequent blogs "doyourowndamnedcheerleading.blogspot.com" His Blogger profile actually says: Rest assured that my tastes are better than yours. Maybe that's a joke...Maybe not. Comics assembled from templates, no matter how brilliant they are, are simply not good enough for him. He compared Penny Arcade to pro-wrestling. He once listed a list of comics you should read simply because no one has heard about them.

William G, in his quest to destroy unoriginality and cliche has become a cliche. And his problem is, like Indie Rock Pete, he doesn't want to comes to terms with what he is.

*William G analogous to a sprite comic character? Muhahahaha.