Friday, September 30, 2005
It all started with that pesky
Tom R making me think about RSS... he linked to an
article by Dave Winer, and suddenly I found myself debating how feeds should be linked to on my sites...
Previously I had gone with an orange XML button, which linked to the feed. I was blissfully happy until I stopped to think about it...
I'm not going to go into it all here but you can follow my train of though over on my 9mmfilm blog:
First I just did a quick test to see if a 'Subscribe' button would look ok.
Then I started weighing up the pros and cons of it.Then I came up with a possible solution I could be happy with.And finally I researched some more and solidified my ideas.All just to change one tiny little button on our blogs...! Admittedly, it's a potentially important little button.
So now, you might have noticed, we have a 'Subscribe' button (Dave Winer will be happy!) with a little help button next to it (thanks to
Alan from Spoiltchild for perfecting that concept!).
The help button leads to a
page explaining a little bit about subscribing and feeds and what have you. It also has some links for further reading if you're interested - you should have a look.
This weeks funny cartoon features Stephen, in his first recurrance - though I have a feeling he might crop up again. Stephen was first seen in '
The last romantic' which was back in February.
I don't have too many notes on this weeks cartoon, except to say that it gave me this lovely idea for a t-shirt:
I'll be working on getting the shop section of the site up and running over the next couple of days... but in the meantime the
shirt is available on our Euro Spreadshirt shop... but it's a secret!
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Dry Bones is run by Yaakov Kirschen who has been producing his cartoons since before I was born. Yaakov was good enough to link to us from his site, and I was curious about his cartoons so I browsed on over and started reading. Yaakov has a
blog and
site, I started at the blog and discovered the site later. I'll be honest with you, I'm not entirely comfortable with
some of the humour, or viewpoints, but I do think that the entire project is very interesting. His site states that he is "Using Humor to fight anti-semitism". I have to admire him, after all, BifSniff cartoons can't claim to be doing anything worthwhile really - except keeping myself and Bif off the streets and chained to our computers instead.
Yaakov's site states
The "Dry Bones Project" Foundation is a not-for-profit organization that uses humor and cartoons to fight anti-Semitism and build pride in the Jewish people and the Jewish state .
An
article by JTA(Global News Service of the Jewish People) linked to on the site says:
“My experience with Dry Bones has taught me that people laugh when they see the unexpected appearance of what they perceive to be the truth,” explains Kirschen, 66. “The strength of cartoons is that when you get someone to laugh, at that instant they see things from your point of view.”
The Brooklyn-born cartoonist, who immigrated to Israel in 1971, never has concealed his contempt for those he perceives as Israel’s enemies, and the Dry Bones comic strip long has served as an outlet for Kirschen’s strong Zionist beliefs.
Creating the new nonprofit simply represents a more organized effort to fight the anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism that has emerged in the Western world over the past few years.
"We plan to educate those who might be tricked into supporting this war against our people by holding the perpetrators of these assaults and their ideas up to ridicule, satire and exposure," Kirschen says. "Humor is a very basic tool of the Jewish people, and for the entire Judeo-Christian world to be under attack and for us not to use humor would be a silly failing." [...]
"Unlike many cartoonists whose mission is to go for the jugular, Ya’akov sees his mission as educating people," says Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, who says he welcomes this latest initiative.
"As anti-Semitism has mushroomed these past few years, he’s used his Dry Bones to show how ludicrous and untruthful it is. And I think he’s been quite successful," Foxman says.
The blog features new and old cartoons with notes explaining the background of the cartoons. Sure, I don't agree with some of the views and some of it makes me uncomfortable, but then these are the sorts of issues being dealt with. And I, unfortunately, can't claim to know enough about the situation in Israel to even begin to criticise. But because Yaakov gives the background to the cartoons I
can begin to educate myself and make informed decisions as to whether I agree with his points on a case by case basis. And having recently read
Palestine
by
Joe Sacco, this cartoon blog gives me another side to the story.
And there are definitely times when Yaakovs views and my own enter a common ground:
So have a look and see what you make of it. And drop by here after and leave a comment - I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.
When doing the recent redesign of the site I was thinking to myself that it would be nice to have the cartoons searchable.
The following day I received a call for my brother who said "Your cartoons should really be searchable, I saw a really funny one the other day and now I can't find it..."
So it had to be done. But how?
The complication here is that I want to set the search to only search the cartoons, not the other blogs on the site. I can deal with them seperately some other time, but I think it's essential to be able to search the cartoons without other clutter.
I considered Google search, but I couldn't find a way to do it in
Google's Adsense for Search...
Jon Hanna on the
Open List pointed out there is a way to search a particular directory in Google using '
inurl' however it's not available in adsense and I don't see a way to implement it on the site. (if anyone knows a way,
drop me a line!)
So
Patrick O'Beirne (also on Open) suggested
Atomz, they have a free version available for sites less than 750 pages in size. So it'll do us for a while. I have implented it on the
cartoon pages and it seems to be working quite nicely. I still have to tweak it a bit. Sometimes it appears to be bringing back results from the other blogs on the site. I have set it only to search the cartoons directory
I think but I'm not familiar enough with their interface to be sure I'm doing everything correctly.
It seems to work well though because it searches the alt tags of the cartoons-- all our cartoons have the caption from the cartoon set as the alt tag (was I thinking ahead or what??). So as long as you remember something from the title we give the cartoon OR the caption you should be able to find the cartoon.
For example, the title for this weeks cartoon is "A deadly game...", but searching for Death will find it because Death is mentioned in the caption. Same goes for the cartoon my brother was searching for. He remembered it was something to do with exposure... and sure enough searching for exposure through the Atomz search brings back the cartoon "
When will I be famous" which has exposure in the caption.
So... so far so good. Any feedback or suggestions more than welcome as always!
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
I found this site somewhere recently and meant to blog about it. This guy,
Ray Caesar, uses 3D software to create some really lovely... em... things.
They have a kind of victorian feel to them (mind you I'm no historian) with a measure of Tim Burton thrown in and of course the oversized dolls heads just cap it all. Often it's the subtly evil nature of them that gets me... you're looking at an innocent looking, yet creepy image of a girl with her cat... and then you notice her hands...
I prefer his older galleries, but I can't deny some of his newer stuff is
damn nice too.
My
Canadian cousin sent me a link to a site called
xpressyourview.com, mainly because of the
very funny cartoon they feature on the home page right now.
I dunnoe, it just really appealed to me. It's really simple but the cartoonist just gets everything right as far as I'm concerned. But then, I am watching '
The Power of Nightmares' at the moment, so obviously I am predisposed to this kind of humour.
'The Power of Nightmares' is a TV documentary that claims that the perceived threat of global terrorism is a politically driven fantasy.
If you haven't seen 'The Power of Nightmares', it's well worth watching. There's a
good article about it on the Guardian website. I've only watched the first of three episodes, but so far it's fascinating. While I try not to take any view at face value, as the Guardian says, the evidence for the assertions made is not easily dismissed.
However, 'The Power of Nightmares' may scare and depress you - the cartoon will give you a smile... :)
Tom R brought my attention to a cartoon published in the New Yorker which a lot of people seem to think is the bees knees, judging by what Tom quotes in his post. As you may have already guessed, I don't think it's the bees knees.
My reasoning being that I'm really not sure what the message of the original cartoon is. According to Tom's site, Bob Mankoff, the cartoon editor of the New Yorker said:
While many cartoons on blogs have been submitted and rejected by The New Yorker, this one, seemed to us, to perfectly capture the irony inherent in a communications phenomenon that permits so many to say so little about so much. I think it will become a classic
But with the original wording of the cartoon, the dog could have been an eloquent and insightful blogger who's posts had a way of cutting to the core of the issue at hand - but he just
preferred inane barking.
Yes, I guessed that the cartoonist probably meant the cartoon in the way that Bob Mankoff read it, but my first reaction to the cartoon was tainted by the fact the message wasn't clear enough.
As I said on Tom's site
I’m not sure that cartoon works for me, because the way he’s phrased it makes it seem as though there is a diference between having a blog and pointless incessant barking when the joke appears to be insinuating there isn’t…?
Here's the cartoon:
And here's how I thought it should read when I gave it some thought:
Yeah, I know I think about things waaaaaaaaaay too much. This is the kind of thing I'm sure I annoy Bif to death with all the time. And before anyone jumps on me, I'm just saying all this because it occurred to me - I'm not saying the guys a crap cartoonist or anything. Trust me, I'm sure I could go and find loads of our own cartoons that I would now do differently etc...
Oh and finally, I have no idea of the legality of reproducing and editing the said cartoon, so if the owner/creator contacts me I'll take em off straight away!
UPDATE - Tom R made a valuable point in
his new blog entry on this cartoon he says:
the original cartoon is ambiguous and it is possible this ambiguity which has led to its wide appeal (everyone takes their own interpretation and finds that funny!).
UPDATE - I realised I didn't credit the cartoonist... for shame for shame... his name is
Alex Gregory. Check out this related
cartoon of two dogs chatting by the same cartoonist... and also another
EXCELLENT technology based cartoon!
Monday, September 26, 2005
Because I have a couple of blogs I sometimes wonder what should go where... but the comic connection in this one decided me to place it here.
It's three o clock in the morning, I should be in bed asleep, and I start to wonder... what if you made a film with Spiderman and Captain America in it? Nah... too boring. Throw in a mexican wrestler for laughs. THEN, make Spiderman EVIL and take away his webs. INSTEAD of his webs give him a SWITCHBLADE and let him kill people in all kinds of vicious ways, pitting him against Captain America and the wrestler. Only every time Spiderman gets killed he can CLONE himself!
Insane you say? Perhaps, but it's already been done. In Turkish.
Read it and weep...It's even
listed in IMDB...
Thursday, September 22, 2005
I think
this weeks cartoon is pretty funny... not raucously hilariously funny, but nice little chuckle funny. It's probably not the most original cartoon in the world, but the execution of it I think works. From Bif's "Look! Penguins!" approach to the expression on Deaths face at the prospect of seeing penguins, I think all in all it works pretty well.
Because it would be hard for you to tell from the angle, I thought I should mention that it features Ryan who was last seen in '
the price is right...'
Only one real note about the drawing of this one, when I sketched in initially I didn't include the background:
I had a good idea I wanted them to be on a cliffside by the sea, like in '
Seventh Seal', and that's what I drew:
But something was really bothering me about it. The perspective was wrong and the top left hand corner made everything look flat. I thought about changing it and then thought, sod it I could end up messing with it for ages and still not get it right. But then it bothered me so much I changed it. And it made a huge difference.
And the point of all this? I haven't a clue. Except maybe little things can make a huge difference!
Friday, September 16, 2005
I wasn't too happy with
the way this weeks cartoon turned out. My end, that is, the drawing. Just the way it goes really. You win some you lose some.
I don't know, I just had a better picture in my head but it didn't transcribe. Mind you, it's not the worst or anything, I mean it gets the job done.
I'm happy with the way the hands turned out... they were pretty much drawn first and I thought everything was on track, but then nothing else I drew came out the way I wanted. Plus, I spent way too long on this cartoon because I kept trying to do something better with Gail... and trust me, this version is a big improvement on the original.
This was the original sketch:
But when I had the whole cartoon done, I realised that Gail looked all wrong and was just boring looking... like she was just standing there... plus it was a crap drawing. She needed to look as if she were more clambering after the hands...
So I redrew it. A few times! And finally I more or less just gave up. Luckily the point I gave up at was the best attempt, but I still think it's just that: a best attempt. Maybe it's just because I had such a good image of it in my head...
The more i look at the hands though, the more I like them. Probably just me trying to see the positive side of a cartoon I'm unhappy with overall, but to me the hands really do look like they're scuttling off on their own...
Anyway, never mind. The next one will be better.
Well, as Bif
already pointed out, Digital Strips were
incredibly quick off the mark in
noticing the redesign and had nice things to say about it - I also notice that Brian (who feature in the cartoons of
Brian and
Martin) also popped over to thank Digital Strips... that guy is a menace. In a nice kind of way ;).
Anyway now I noticed that
the Evil Network also
noticed the redesign and they too had kind words. Thanks guys!
The Evil Network, a long time ago now (in interweb time) gave us a really encouraging review when we weren't long doing this:
"a single-panel gag comic that is a bit strange, where the jokes seem so well paced, the art affectionately off-kilter, and the overall style simply wonderful [...] This is concentrated originality."
Then I also happened to notice that we have been
Bless'd by Blogg'd! I'm not 100% sure just yet what that means, but it can't be bad! Thanks Blogg'd!
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
If you were subscribed to the xml feeds of Bif's musings or the cartoons themselves, you may have noticed that I had to move them.
SORRY, SORRY, SORRY... but the site was a complete mess, and I had to tidy house and make it all much more manageable... I promise I won't do it again - so PLEASE resubscribe to the
Funny Cartoon feed and
Bif's Musings feed.
We're still plugging away making little adjustments and improvements, but we're pretty much there now I think.
Oh and here's
a link to my feed - I didn't put it in first off coz it hasn't changed. But seeing as I haven't gotten around to putting the links to the feeds on the blog pages I thought I might as well put it here.
I
will get around to those links soon though...
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Yeah, so I made a bit of a mess of certain aspects of the redesign... sure, there's always something. Anyway, I changed the site structure a bit to tidy it up and make it more manageable. However this meant that some links now led to defunct pages which were scheduled for deletion... luckily
most of the issues were salvageable through the htaccess file. Not all mind you. So if you get a couple of 404's, please bear with us, we're doing ervything we can to ensure everything is locate-able.
Oh, and if you do stumble across a 404 or some other undesirable I'd REALLY appreciate a heads up about it...
drop me an email!
Also, due to a known issue with Firefox and iframes I had a bit of trouble, but I solved it thanks to a guy called
Nick Momrik. It's a bit of a kludge, but hey - it works. If you are having problems with unsightly iframe flickers (happens a lot with adsense for example) check out
his solution. Seeing as
Firefox is our browser of choice, we felt it essential to fix. I would like to point out that I think this is the first time I have ever had a problem during development from Firefox... it's nearly always IE gives the trouble!
It's about 1am here, and I have just gone live with the new design. I would have preferred more time before going live, but isn't that always the way?
The problem (or one of them) was that just after I took the site down and started messing about with structure etc, Blogger went down. For just long enough to screw with my schedule.
Anyway, it's up now, but I wouldn't say complete yet. Definitely tweaking to be done all over the gaff. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE if you spot something broken or generally crap
LET ME KNOW!!!
I have no idea yet how this well affect our Google rankings and what-not. I have tried to maintain my focus on findability, but with this redesign I focussed more on usability. So usability and brand took priority over findability. As always I have tried to meld both in my design, but when it comes to the crunch sometimes you have to make tough decisions.
For example our homepage is now a lot cleaner and crisper and less cluttered. However this
may result in less for Google to appreciate on it.
Overall I hope the site is easier on the eye, easier to navigate and generally more pleasing.
As I said to Bif earlier, hopefully whatever we lose when it comes to Google we will make up with more sticky visitors due to a more cohesive site. Especially since we plan to run banner ads soon.
So I hope you like the new look, and I hope more improvements will be on the way too.
Friday, September 09, 2005
Very happy with
this weeks cartoon. It features Inspector Lynch, who featured in the
'Not so just desserts' cartoon in March of this year. I had hoped make a reappearance to be honest. I liked him as a character. And I think this one is pretty funny.
We went back and forth a bit as to whether it should be a loaf of bread or a chemical compound type thingy, but a) I didn't know how to draw a complex carbohydrate in, and of, itself and b) the bread seemed to fit with the pudding... Inspector Lynch seems to have a food thing going on there.
So because bread is a very common source of complex carbohydrates which most people would know it seemed to make sense. I toyed with a potatoe to, but the bread just seemed to work. Closer to the pudding maybe.
So to be sure we were on the right track I sent bif the sketch I had at an early stage so we could change it if necessary - here's what I sent him:
I thought you might be interested to see the initial sketch vs the finished product. This is one that all just fell together for me - from concept to sketch to finished piece.
I'm glad too, because I like this guy. I hope Bif comes up with a few more funny Inspector Lynch cartoons.
Thursday, September 01, 2005
Well, I'm proud of myself for getting
this weeks cartoon done. I'm begining to think that Bif no longer sits around thinking up cartoons, he just sits around thinking of ways to make my life really difficult.
Here's what he sent me:
"At a critical point in the battle, Colonel Wagstaffe made the fatal error of launching a charm offensive"
A group of well dressed dandys carrying gifts, holding out their hands to be
shaken etc etc, walking into the middle of a battle field with a bunch of
barbarian/savages ala Braveheart of Zulu. Maybe have Colonel Wagstaffe in
the foreground cheering them on.
I'm just not up to that kind of challenge, I'm afraid.
As you can see, I didn't follow his instruction exactly... and I cunningly suggested the speech balloons in order to make my life easier. Of course, I didn't tell Bif
that was the reason...
Although I did everything I could to make my life easier, it still remained a damn tricky one to draw. Plus Flash crashed on me at one point when I was nearly finished the initial colouring and it mucked up a load of stuff when I re-opened the file. I nearly cried at that point... but it all worked out in the end.
Despite Bif's insistence that it was a la Braveheart or Zulu, I immediately pictured this with Indians. Native American Indians that is. Dunnoe why... maybe the word 'dandy' made me think of westerns for some reason.
I loosely based the dandies on an
image of two dandies I found through google, and the Colonel I based on a real colonel called
Colonel Elias Piessner. I didn't do any research to see if any of these people were from the same periods, or if they would have been encountering Indians... nor did I check if Indians would have had both mohicans and long hair! The indians I did a few google searches for two, but mostly they came out of my head from old stereotyping cowboy films.
After all my hard work, I hope people get it - I mean, I had to look up 'charm offensive' to make sure it meant what I thought it meant!
