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Obligatory Hackles strip.

Pigzip.

Dude,

read Dilbert to get more insight into the Industry then you ever wanted.
Also you may want do have a look at Userfriendly, Hackles and early Reallifecomics.

Maybe all this wisdom can help you picture, where you are going.

For your Internship, be ready to be the *** of the Company.

Do not stop looking for more internship opportunities.

And the obligatory Hackles: http://www.hackles.org/cgi-bin/archives.pl?request=284

I would include a sound effect (i.e., Mooooo~) here, but I have no idea what kinda sound effect Penguins do.

Sure, I could find some variant of PNG that would work, but could I be sure that it would work on every browser?
gif like (8 bit or less pallette based with a single transparent color) work just fine accross every major browser back quite a number of versions.

if you are trying to match colors in the png to other colors on the page you should write the png WITHOUT color correction information to make it work right in most browsers (if your editor insists on writing this info use something like pngout to strip it).

Some programs (e.g. photoshop) also have notoriously bad png output support and third party optimisation software (of which i belive pngout is the best arround) is always worthwhile if filesize bothers you.

you might wan't to take a look at png tips for cartoonists which covers a lot of the issues with using png for this type of artwork.

This is a classic example of keeping the wrong priorities. First you look at what this school uses for software, then you look at what they'll be doing in the future and only then can you decide what OS might suit the job best. Even without knowing all these issues I think you're on the wrong track here. You might even be better off mixing the two. Still, this is just your regular Hackles example.

Hackles: Preston, do you consider programming more of an art or a science?
Preston: Quiet! I'm trying to cut and paste 300 lines of code into 7 different places!
Hackles: Never mind

See cartoon: http://hackles.org/cgi-bin/archives.pl?request=37

This reminds me of this Hackles Strip:

"I wrote a super, new compression algorithm -- I call it pigzip! Look how much space I'm saving by pigzipping all our application data!"

"I can't believe it! This pigzip took 3 gigabytes of data, and compressed it down to only... 3 bytes... wait... I'm guessing there's no decompression algorithm yet?"

"Its harder than it looks."

I agree. They should come up with movies based more on realistic cartoons such as Hackles and User Friendly.

Obligatory hackles reference:

http://hackles.org/cgi-bin/archives.pl?request=108

So it looks like the original story here wasn't such a fluke after all. I was really kind of shocked that anyone would even look at it or want to use it given that it was written in Common Lisp for experimentation.

The language we write the system code in is currently not quite Slate, but it's designed to make the C code more consistent and relatively safe. We spent some months debugging the new implementation, so this release is focussed on being debugged. Future releases will have more features, and so forth.

And, no, I still don't care about the online magazine of the same name. Just think of it as "Clean Slate" Smalltalk or Slate Smalltalk. Too many other things are named Slate or some variation thereof, anyway (see the USPTO's registry).

My partner on the project plans on full compilation without a C back-end, but also that it will take time, so I can't promise you guys a darned thing yet - don't hold your breath! (He's a talented guy, and great to work with, but things like this take time to develop.)

UML Gone Wrong

# include <stdio.h>

Best tech comic: Hackles

Why? It has lovable characters (unlike User Friendly).

Mmmm, standards compliance....

Forgot to give the url. Sorry.

I just thought that strip was hilarious. Here's a link for those wondering what we're talking about.

A lot of the web comics are poor quality, make obvious jokes, and have lame characters. Sure there are some good ones. and I do like the cheap laughts, but reducing the barrier to entry also reduce the quality level.

shared by all who know of a classic MS 'we are sorry'. I thought of this comic when i read "Bill Gates is proud of the achievements Microsoft has made in increasing the security of Windows. As for the effects on people being attacked by SoBig.F, etc? Gates says this is "something we feel very bad about"."

enjoy

not to mention respecting the most important factor in seat allocation for geeks

Hackles also refered to this soaft (saop+soft) opera :
it's here

I like your site, but I didn't see any transparent-background (shaped) pngs. Last time I checked, the major browsers rendered them with a gray background.

IE 5.x and 6.x draw 32-bit PNG images with a gray background, but they properly draw 8-bit PNG images that use binary transparency. In GIMP, convert your transparent images to indexed mode before saving them as PNG.

As I said, I don't see any major web sites using png's yet.

Several online serial comics have switched, including Hackles, home of the PNG Tips for Cartoonists. To see more GIF-free sites, visit Burn All GIFs. However, you are correct: Few to no web sites that advertise on network television have switched from still GIF to PNG.

the image covers up the first word(s) of some paragraphs. For example, I see this: t (.mb) programs into one ROM for

Which browser did you use, and at about what window width? Mozilla 1.4b handles wrapping around floated elements correctly, at least on my pages with screenshots.

I like your site, but I didn't see any transparent-background (shaped) pngs. Last time I checked, the major browsers rendered them with a gray background.

IE 5.x and 6.x draw 32-bit PNG images with a gray background, but they properly draw 8-bit PNG images that use binary transparency. In GIMP, convert your transparent images to indexed mode before saving them as PNG.

As I said, I don't see any major web sites using png's yet.

Several online serial comics have switched, including Hackles, home of the PNG Tips for Cartoonists. To see more GIF-free sites, visit Burn All GIFs. However, you are correct: Few to no web sites that advertise on network television have switched from still GIF to PNG.

the image covers up the first word(s) of some paragraphs. For example, I see this: t (.mb) programs into one ROM for

Which browser did you use, and at about what window width? Mozilla 1.4b handles wrapping around floated elements correctly, at least on my pages with screenshots.

Here is a Hackles comic that I found which satires people's "real" use of broadband internet access at the office.

There's also a list of comics using png.

Every once in a while I'll pick up a wIrEd at an airport or whatever. This is shortly followed by memories of why I canceled my subscription years ago. In the same way that fashion mags set up these unreasonable (and arbitrary) expectations of what it means to be a woman, wired has set up this buy-buy-buy wannabe geek culture. Example:

Sure, you might have DSL and Wi-Fi, an Xbox and a TiVo, maybe a Bang & Olufsen stereo with 5-foot speakers and a six-CD changer, but you're still an amateur in the world of extreme home networking

Extreme home networking? Is that like extreme programming? I had this burrito last night then I hunkered down for an evening of Extreme defecation

The ad:article ratio in wired has to be as high as Cosmo's, not to mention the high number of thinly veiled ads in the fetish section. But, we do get insights like:

Stored as 1s and 0s, music, video, and even television can share the same network.

What insight! What's worse is that these freaks at the forefront of graphic design somehow manage to obscure deep insights like the above with layouts and graphics that make the articles unreadable. I had to hold this one article at an angle because the paper was reflective silver before finally giving up. I guess I'm not an extreme reader! Form over function in all they do.

The preceding was an extreme /. post

Spleen vented. whew.

if you appreciate the "humor" of UF, you'll love this

hackles.org

It is in complete accord with the stuff that gets moderated as "funny" on slashdot.

Honestly, I think that is one of the things that makes web cartoons better than print-only comics: They aren't controlled by money.

Syndicated cartoonists must adhere to some pretty strict guidelines. Their comics are printed in mainstream newspapers, where using the word "gosh" will get you angry letters from blue-haired grannies all around the country.

Web comics are created under no such restrictions. Anything is fair game- mainstream demographics be damned! As a result, the average webcomic is much more interesting and daring (if much less polished looking) than say, Marmaduke or the Family Circus.

Anyone can create a web comic- there is even a webhost, keenspace, which will host anyone's comic for free.

Art can only thrive and evolve when there are artists out there who do it purely for the sake of art. If you do it for the money, you aren't so much an artist, you are an entertainer (which isn't to say that you can't make an entertaining comic).

Drake Emko
hackles.org (nerdy animal fun!)

Personally, I don't see how micropayments appeal to anyone psychologically. How would you like to make a million minor financial decisions every time you go online?

Hmm, I want to read this yahoo news article, but is it really worth $.03? Dilbert could be funny today, but do I want to pay $.02 to take that chance?

People like subscriptions because they feel they are getting a good deal. For one low price, they can read as many comics as they want. It's like going to a buffet- even though you're not going to eat everything there, it's nice to know that you can if you want to.

For that reason, I subscribe to Keenspot premium- I pay $40 for a whole year, and I get to read as many ad-free Keenspot comics as I want, no hassles. I don't have to click on payment links every time I want to look at a new comic, and I don't have the psychological burden of making a hundred petty micro-financial decisions every day.

Drake Emko
http://hackles.org (nerdy animal fun!)

Yes, bandwidth is a huge problem for online comics. Unlike most types of content, comics exist as large, bandwidth-hogging image files. And when a cartoon site has a few years' worth of archived strips that people can look at, the GBs can really add up.

I don't pretend to know how to make money with online comics, but I can tell you that many webcomics could cut their bandwidth bills in half by optimizing their images:

1. Stop using GIFs! Fer crying out loud, use PNG images indexed to 256 or less colors. You don't have to worry about Unisys royalties or any such nonsense, and it compresses much more efficiently than GIF.

2. If you use PNG images, further compress them with pngcrush. It's free and doesn't degrade image quality at all.

3. If you use JPEG, use jpegoptim to optimize compression losslessly. The results may not be too dramatic, but every byte counts.

Drake Emko
http://hackles.org (nerdy animal fun!)