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Interview: Ask Illiad Anything
You've probably read Illiad's User Friendly cartoons more than a few times. But who is Illiad? How did the strip develop? Why would anyone bother to spend so much time drawing a comic strip so geek-oriented that it'll never be as popular as, say, Family Circus or Mary Worth? Hey, don't ask me. Ask Illiad. Please post your questions below. The usual horde of Slashdot moderators and semi-trained mammals will pick 10 or 12 and forward them to Illiad. Answers will appear Friday.
Dear Illiad,
:)
/proc/kcore >/dev/audio,
First off, thanks for the laughs you've given all of us.. Here's my question. The lettering you use in the strips.. are they hand-done, or is it a font?..and perhaps you wouldn't mind sharing it, if so?
cat
Bowie
Boxers, Briefs, Panties, or Other.
Sounds like where I work, cept we do have a Miranda./ 19981011.gif
"Man she looks hot in jeans"
http://userfriendly.org/cartoons/archives/98oct
Actually, the characters are black and white. They have white skin, surrounded by a black outline. :-)
(except for Dust Puppy, who is black.)
I noticed the lack of non-whites too, and it sucks. We'll have to protest Columbia Internet's hiring policies.
Ahem......
Why would anyone want to drink a pale imitation of the real stout?
And anyway, "Irish Cream Stout"??
Hmmmm, yah theres lotsa dairy in it, whatever
Guinness for strength
Shades B)
Actually, I remember reading somewhere that their name was a spoof on an old CBC newscast/magazine type show called "This week has seven days".
I worked for a small ISP that was purchased, two day's after the rumors started that we were going to be bought out UF comes out with the buyout plan.
but even these so called 'all black shows' occasionally had some 'white people'
Why does this hour only have 22 minutes?
Metric time.
According to the CRTC (Canadian broadcasting regulator) TV shows that air in Canada can have a maximum of 6 minutes of paid commercials per half hour leafing 24 minutes for the show while their US counterparts have 8 minutes of commercials. This means that all American shows that air in Canada last only 22 minutes and with only 6 minutes of paid advertisements the other two must be unpaid public service announcements or station promotions. By the same token for a canadian show to be marketable in the US it is usually mate 22 minutes long to allow for a whole 8 minutes of commercials and have a better chance of being picked up by an American station.
Just my US$.012 (CD$.02)
I've *met* Iambe, and I don't remember her looking
like that........
isn't it ougadougou? if so, that's because they didn't want to write it oogadoogoo or ugadugu. they're a "french colony".
Crusade's first episode was pretty bad. It dragged on and used overly dramatic dialog. It was clunky the way B5 movies have often been clunky. The episodes after that were pretty cool, though. I'd say the writing was about on par with the B5 series.
Posted by Dante_Aliegri:
it has to do with the fact when he tilts, he is so light, the air pushes him back, thus he gets a pendilum effect with a Minumum of movement.
Personally, I can't wiggle right with a mouse...
so I got a trackball.
I'm wondering if Dust Puppy plays any mods...
DanteAliegri [ it was dantealiegri@dustpuppy.org....but nooo... rit can't fix dustpuppy.org, so its danteSP@Magnus.net]
--Your wit is as sharp as you make it
have you ever considered Koosh Dust Puppies? That's one thing I'd love to have on my desk :) Of course, it'd probably be something that the company that makes Koosh would turn down but if any were ever made I'd buy a whole case of 'em! Maybe if there's enough interest... Oh well, keep up the good work, I never miss a strip.
How good are you at q3test? Can Dust Puppy kick your ass?
When you came up with the design document for 'Pac Man', how many of your co-workers laughed at you, saying it would never work? How many of them are dead now?
Relate to us the tale of how you prevented the Nazi's from gaining control of our atomic weapons at the end of World War II.
When you were lost in the deserts of Turkey, dying of thirst, did you, even once, wish you were back in Seattle in a bubblebath with Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates?
Is Miranda as hot as I think she is?
Four-digit slashdot ID. Recognize.
Is the User Friendly Project For Humanity getting anywhere?
What are you using, Gimp, Photosop, or?
I need a stuffed Dust Puppy to sit next to my stuffed penguin at home. I also need a stuffed Crud Puppy to sit on my work machine.
"Dogs and cats, living together...it's mass hysteria!"
hmmmm what to ask.... As many questions as there should be and I can't think of one, ho hum goes the day.....
matguy
Net. Admin.
matguy(.com)
Why does this hour only have 22 minutes?
- How do you come up with fresh ideas for a strip every day?
- Are any of the characters based on real life characters?
- Will there be more songs? I love the Dustpuppy and Erwin duo.
:)
Thapada, thapada, thapada, thats all folks!- the Crazy Fraggle
Illiad, do you leave your Num Lock:
a.) On?
b.) Off?
c.) Don't Care?
d.) This poll sucks?
./brm
Well, I and many of the others have been badgering him to finally do "OS Wizard" (you may have noticed it on Segfault a few months ago) but he has not succumbed yet... we know of his secret though and will spread word of his llama shagging ways... oh dammit! Ok..ok... just badger him until he does it.
As an amature artist/cartoonist, i'd like to know what tools you use...do you sketch it out on a huge piece of paper (like some cartoonists do) and then scan it and shrink it down or just maybe have great mouse hands and do it with Gimp...?
"I want peace on earth and good will toward men." "We're the U.S. government. We don't do that sort of thing!!"
Would you consider a bowling trip?
The correct URL for today's strip is of course, this.
My question: What is the capital of Burkina Faso, and why does it have so many vowels?
How did you feel about your own appearance in "After Y2K" ? Planning on returning the favour ?
superblog.org: all your favourite blogs on o
The viewer then takes his "knowledge" out to the local sports bar or something to impress the other loser^H^H^H^H^Hpatrons there.
Man you must be a lucky stiff:-)
take that any way you please
-- Life: Hate the Game... Love the cereal
I just want to know who is on Illiad's payroll at my ISP.... It seems that everytime we are having situations or crises that there just "happens" to be a UF out around that time that mirrors or is an exact rendition of what is happening to us. Perhaps it's due to the fact that we have roughly the same amount of staff as Columbia Internet??? :-)
But my question is WHERE'S MIRANDA...... We don't have a Miranda!!!!!!
Thanks for the humour Illiad.. It helps me and the other techies "sane" in an otherwise insane world.
-- Life: Hate the Game... Love the cereal
As I love the RotoRouter, the ICan'tInternet, and other fake box labels, will you have other made-up or joke names on those cartons? I just gotta get me a RotoRouter 8000 for the home LAN, after all, and want some neat-o accessories to go with it.
Occasionally there's a stack of boxes labelled "BeOS 4.5" or something similar, often with the Dust Puppy sitting on top. What makes you decide what names to put on the boxes? Is it your favourite stuff, advertising/product placement, or what?
Chris
Bloom County Characters have appeared in UF. Fairly recently too.
#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}
F(#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}%cF(%s))
That has happened. Here is the comic: http://www.userfriendly.org/cartoons/archives/99ju l/19990714.html. This is Illiad's comment about the comic:
:)
A WISH FOR THINGS THAT WORK
00:01 PDT 15 JUL 1999
I got quite a bit of mail from people who really enjoyed the salute to
Bloom County in yesterday's strip, and I thank everyone for their words
of praise. It should be obvious by now that Berke Breathed's Bloom
County has been by far the greatest influence on my cartooning. I only
felt it was fitting to offer a tip of the hat to my two favourite characters
in that venerable strip, Opus and Oliver. And to answer a few of the
letters, no, I probably won't bring the Bloom County characters back,
aside from the legal issues, I just don't think it'd be right if I laid it on
that thick.
Is that the new thing? i saw maybe five minutes of one of the episodes the other day and it was boring as hell..
now i just watch The Sopranos on hbo during that time-slot.. oh well, i got bab5 season 1-5 on video.
------ Poo-tee-weet?
From what you saw there, does Iambe have a 'Q' tatoo as seen in This Picture?
Does Arcterex really look like his picture on the UFie page? If so, did his family get a good settlement from the malpractice suit? :)
Probably because except for the celebrities (ESR, Gates, etc) everyone in UF is based on local people and there were no minorities in the office. (Not suprising, Vancouver has a moderately large Asian population, but other than that, is mainly European.)
I wouldn't imagine it's at all deliberate.
Actually, I believe it was "This hour has 7 days". It was a weekly hour long news program that went over the previous week's news.
The 22 Minutes crew are paying homage to that old CBC anchor program. (Of course their way to pay homage is to have a joke at their expense).
[We don't come from a planet. We come from a grid sector.]
I hate to be morally insensitive (actually, I don't, but no need to be rude...) but has anyone considered that it might just be very hard to draw different skin tones in a black and white comic strip?
Not EVERYTHING has some deep, sinister, overtone, unless it comes out of Microsoft.
So, because the thought that "minorities" weren't represented in User Friendly never crossed my mind, am I a racist white pig? Thought so. Is it just me or does anyone else out there think that adding "minority" characters to comics, TV shows, and movies just to "keep things equal" is just as discriminatory as leaving them out? If there's a useful purpose for a "minority" character, then by all means add the character. But the plain and simple fact is, "minorities" don't always fit into certain situations, just as us whitefolk don't always fit into others.
I, being a middle-class white male American, watch predominantly "black" sitcoms (ie, "Family Ties", "Cosby", "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air", that sort of rerun stuff) from time to time without even giving the slightest thought to the fact that there are very rarely any white people on these shows. It doesn't occur to me that there should be; the shows are about black families. Why should there be white people? So you have to ask yourself...why doesn't this work the other way around? TV shows with a mostly-white cast get called racist or discriminatory. Hmmm.
I know this isn't the time or the place, but in light of recent events I had to say something. :)
--
Wonko the Sane
Cream stouts were invented as a health drink. Brewed with milk sugar (lactose), also known as milk stouts. Like guiness, but with more of a malty sweetness. Thick as mud. The head is practically as dark as the beer, and you can chew on a good cream stout. Or at least, that's what a cream stout is supposed to be. Yet another reason why Sam Adams is just not the beer it's cracked up to be. If you like the guiness that gets imported to the US, you'd probably like a good cream stout. Mackeson's Triple Stout is a good one, even though it doesn't say anything about being a cream stout on the label, iirc. And to think, I got college credit learning this...
Itachi
Does this ring a bell with anyone else?
99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code,
fix one bug, compile it again...
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
And these questions are answered in it.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Remember those Koosh Ball things? They used to have them that had faces on them. Now they could easily use that same process to replicate our favorite little ball of dust. Make it Gray with 2 big eyes and 2 feet, be pretty simple to do. :)
Yea, I saw a commercial with a big dust-puppy in it to. I think it was a honeycomb comercial.
Non gratis rodentus anus
...by characters from other strips (eg Opus/Mac from Bloom County)? Seems your (Iliad's) style/format would lend itself to the same sarcastic humor that made Bloom County so enjoyable.
Pardon me if this has happened before (I'm new to UF and Linux and may have missed a bit of history). Love the strip.
"I may not be a smart dog, but I know roadkill" -SlinkyDog
...and thanks to you and Bishop282 for the link!
"I may not be a smart dog, but I know roadkill" -SlinkyDog
These are probably semi-newbie questions, but
here goes . . .
When did you first come up with the idea for User Friendly?
Was it a spark of inspiration or something you've been waiting to do for awhile?
Will User Friendly continue to be a comic strip, or might it move to animation?
There seems to be an unspoken connection between various geek comics on the web.(ie After Y2K etc.) Is this by accident? How many other online comic artists do you know?
Is User Friendly an exclusive solo effort? Do you have an assistance with any drawing,inking, coloring etc.? Or is it all just done on computer?
And Finally
Do you folks out there like Murphy's Irish Cream Stout as well as Guiness?
AgentSmith
Disconnect a human and he'll swear he's the center of The Matrix.
I only know of 1, National Post (Canadian)
Who are you? What do you want?
(Okay, lame Babylon 5 reference... I miss that show.)
Most techs here in Vancouver are either Caucasian or Chinese. While it's common to find one or two Asians in an otherwise white tech group, I guess they just don't have any out at Para^h^h^h^hColumbia.
It's actually more common here to find all-Chinese shops, so I wouldn't get too bent about it.
Do you have any little decorations around your computer (like beanie babies, stress balls shaped like a globe or a computer, penguin stickers, and/or your favorite Dilbert/User Friendly cartoons) and if so, what are they?
Whan the Dust Puppy plays Quake, how _does_ it
do that *wiggle* thing?......
I just can't get the hang of it
Simon
Dear Illiad,
I extremely enjoy looking at your funny comic strip. In fact, it's what i have setup as my 'homepage' on my browser. I've gone through all the archives and have laughed my head off at some of the jokes. The only thing that strikes me as odd is that how come I havent seen 1 black, hispanic, asian, native american, etc. in the whole strip ever? What's up with that?
Sincerely,
Frank, a.k.a. i244