I was going through my server statistics, and I actually got a hit for this page from someone who searched on the web for purple lettuce. This boggles the mind. Mine, at least.

I’m halfway through the new Harry Potter book. I’m liking it so far. Will comment on that later.

— sergio at 12:44 PM  

This strip marks the end of the Tron-ness. It was fun while it lasted, and we now come back to the usual style. You may have noticed that there is now a drop down thing that allows you to check out the things in an order not neccesarily chronological… thing. Thanks a lot to Peter who, it seems, has weird ways of spending his spare time (like coding php). I’m working on some extras (I haven’t forgotten, Amanda, really!) that I’ll upload as soon as they’re ready.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll post something juicier here. Yeah.

— sergio at 02:35 AM  

That took a while to complete and was somewhat late due to work problems, but the comic is now up (and hey, I haven’t missed any weeks yet, so it’s not that bad, right?).

You’ll notice the amazing 3D graphics in today’s comic. These were taken from screenshots of GLTron, which is a fabulous and very entertaining Open Source game. Andreas Umbach, the programmer, was kind enough to allow me to do this stuff. I’d also like to recommend Armagetron (make sure you install the moviepack, because the default look is just plain ugly), another Open Souce Tron Light Cycle game. This one doesn’t look quite as nice as GLTron, but I love the gameplay in first person mode. Plus, it has networking!

I also want to welcome all the visitors coming from Crazykimchi.com / Kung Fool. Hyung Sun Kim was kind enough to link to us and that has brought a veritable avalanche of new visitors. Hope you enjoy your stay. For the ones who are new to the comic: we’re in the middle of a storyline. It doesn’ t always have this Tron look. You may want to check out the archives or go directly to this comic to see where this stuff started.

— sergio at 12:09 PM  

I just spent two straight days (by that I mean I slept under my desk) debugging Assembler code by going through it line by line. So, I’m now in Happyland. Coffee is my friend, my companion, my joy!

What this means: No comic foh you!. Not today at least. I think I’ll have time to do it tomorrow… Oh, look at the pwetty colors!

— sergio at 12:22 PM  

I usually try to keep the geekiness to an acceptable level, but I had to go all out on this one. Unix geeks will surely recognize Cron and the “fork” thing. As a cute extra detail, the number Cron is shouting is the actual UNIX time for when I have to be at work after uploading this comic. Bye now.

— sergio at 03:42 AM  

Everytime I look at the stats and see a surge in hits from people wanting to check out the new comic I feel this pang of guilt I can’t shake, but such is life, right?

If I have learned anything from drawing this Tron story arc, it’s that it is the most freaking time consuming thing I’ve done so far for the comic, and that my computer is becoming too outdated to handle this shit. I know a new comic should be up there by now, but I still haven’t finished it. It’s coming along nicely, though, most of what’s left is coloring. So check back tomorrow, it should be up by then.

— sergio at 10:51 AM  

I’ve felt less chatty than usual lately, hence the lack of rants. As I sat here, wondering what was wrong with me, I started browsing and going through my usual list of webcomics, when I had an epiphany: After taking a long, hard look at Tycho and Gabe’s posts at Penny Arcade I decided that what I need is a Nemesis. An enemy I can hate. Someone who will contradict everything I say with bad spelling and grammar. A mischievous foe, unparalleled in cunning and wit.

To obtain this mythical, hateful person would be a laudable objective. It would liven up the rants, give me an excuse to post more and create an entertaining atmosphere filled with witty banter and engaging posts. But alas!, it is not my destiny to have such a person. Since I pretty much do everything around here (and by that I mean that all of the slacking in the site coding, design and updates can ultimately be blamed on me), I lack a partner to exchange unpleasantries with. What a conundrum, huh?

The solution to this problem, then, might be to invent someone. This could be Evil me (bleh), Mini me (done), or maybe Whiny me (as if I don’t do enough of that already). I can picture it right now:

Me: Despite what this strip may suggest, I am quite fond of Apple hardware. I truly believe they have done a great job with the integration of their applications and OS X. I find it very commendable that they have put a pretty face on UNIX.

Evil Me: j00 are teh sux00rz and th4t eez bullsh1t!!1111!! LOL I am teh l33t h4x0rz and I’ma beat yo a$$ bitch!

Me: You raise very valid and thoughtful points. I shall address them one by one in…

Evil Me: n00b!!! n00b!! fuk yuose!!!

Me: Indeed. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.

Evil Me: j00 haf NO ballz!!!

On the other hand, making Evil me an AOLer may not be a very good idea. I’ll have to work on this later..

About the strip content: I do like Apple machines. Except the ludicrously big and unwieldly 17” tiBook. You all know what I think about that one. I used to see them as toys but I must admit that they won me over with the whole OS X thing. I mean, lickable interfaces!!! and IN UNIX, NO LESS! Their marketing department, on the other hand, sometimes misses the point spectacularly. The “speed of lightning” quote actually came directly from the original description of the Quartz Extreme windowing system of OS X. This caused quite a few laughs over at Slashdot when it was brought up, since lightning is not very fast, really. They also choose the damnedest names for their technologies, (Velocity Engine?? — puh-leeze!!).

— sergio at 07:32 PM  

I’ve had quite a busy week. I’ve also spent inane amounts of time playing Armagetron and GLTron (I know, I’ve been a bad ‘toonist). So I’m sorry the comic’s not up yet. It is, however, already drawn and inked and should be up by Tuesday night. It features the next in the adventures of Joe and Dixon in the Program Universe (because Tron is so cool). I’ll also work on ranting some more. For the time being, I present you with a sample of the original sketches for the new comic:

EDIT: New comic’s up. Will work on the rants later. I’ll leave the sketch here so you can take a look at everything that happened to it.

— sergio at 02:34 AM