Wow! I thought this wasn’t up until tomorrow, but as it turns out, a Guest Comic I made for the most excellent-est Brian Carroll from Instant Classic has gone up at his site and we’re getting a veritable barrage of new visitors from there. Thanks Bri! And welcome everybody. Hope you enjoy your stay =)

— sergio at 05:46 PM  

I am an avid code thief. I surf the web, find interesting stuff and shamelessly right-click on it. I then proceed to select “View Page Source” and take a long, hard look at other people’s code. I dissect it, follow the internal links to find their CSS file, examine it, turn it inside out and, if I find particularly interesting techniques, tinker with them until I get the gist of how they’re implemented. I guess I must be a horrible person. Then again, maybe I’m just a curious web surfer.

Interestingly enough, there are those who firmly believe that other people shouldn’t be allowed to take a look at their pain-stakingly crafted, sweat-filled HTML code. From time to time, I’ll run into sites that use awkward javascript tricks to block the right button. Sometimes they go as far as displaying a dialog stating their copyright instead of the expected menu, thus breaking browser functionality and annoying the user. Other times they stuff things in an intrincate maze of frames. One complicated enough to baffle a blind monkey on an acid trip.

The funny part is that when you circumvent these laughable “security” measures, it usually turns out that these people either copied their html verbatim from other sources, or their code looks good enough to have been implemented by my fucking Pet Rock.

A basic truth is that html code on the Internet is not unlike speaking in gibberish. You may think you’re doing ok and no one around you understands your cunningly crafted *secret* message, but in reality, more than half the people listening to you are giggling as you openly confess your profound fascination with Pokemon.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe stealing other person’s work verbatim - as in: changing the background color to the most offensive shade of fucsia you can find and calling the resulting beast “my r0xx0ring WeBsItE, yo!” - is not only wrong. It’s stupid. And dumb. And should qualify people for neutering. But these techniques do nothing more than annoy the legitimate visitors and provide joke fodder for the people who would really be interested in seeing the code.

We all have to accept that we’re working with an open medium. Great designers don’t seem to have a problem with it, and make their techniques freely available (the keyword here is learning).

So, for all you prepubescent paranoid freaks who keep using those right-click blocking scripts: If you’re like, totally sure that your code is the freaking shiznit, don’t put it on the web! It’ll be better for everyone.

Just a thought.

— sergio at 09:05 PM  

Since I lost last weekend and the week hasn’t been very forgiving work-wise, the comic is on hold. Most likely until Saturday. Then, next week’s comic should follow closely. I’m not planning on dropping this week’s comic altogether, but I’ll need some time to finish all this stuff up and get some decent sleep time. You understand, right? I knew you would!. Bye.

— sergio at 11:41 PM  

- Hey! would you pose with us for a photograph so we can go back home and tell everyone we were hanging out with hot girls?
- Oh, and I suppose you’ll make up all kinds of stories about us…
- Of course we will! We’ll say we did all sorts of weird stuff together!
- Umm… ok.

smile!

So… there you have it. I had hot sex with these girls. All of them. One by one. Upside down. In a tub. Wearing blindfolds. Hell yeah!

— sergio at 10:56 AM  

My cousin got married last Saturday. This was a semi-momentous event to my psyche given that I used to have a huge crush on her when we were growing up. This is the sort of thing that gets me in one of those moods where I start to reevaluate my position and purpose in life. Luckily, there was plenty of whiskey around, so I coped accordingly. After a while I could barely remember what the party was about.

In case you’re wondering: No, I never acted up on that crush! Jeez, who the hell do you think I am? our children would’ve had pig tails, for crying outloud!

After the wedding, we went to Sabinas’s Town Fair (this all happened in Coahuila, a northern Mexican State, where my father’s family is from) with another cousin — it pisses me off to no end that English doesn’t differentiate between male and female cousins. From hereafter, cousin is male and female shall be cousinette, capisce? — Anyway, it was a lot of fun. In most of the games (knock the bottles, shoot the monkey, etc.), you would win beer instead of money or plushies (which I thought was a remarkably honest approach at communicating the event’s intent).

If you asked me to describe the Fair, I’d say there were all sorts of moving, blurry, shiny things that kept spinning around me. I do remember that my cousin and I took turns at riding the Mechanical Bull in an attempt to win the favor of some blond girl whom we failed to notify of this fact, so in the end all we got to show for it were aching, scratched legs and backs. We also coerced some cute girls into allowing themselves to be photographed with us, so I may have some pictures to post soon.

Since going all the way up there was a 12 hour drive (I live in Guadalajara — 5 hours from Puerto Vallarta, for Springbreaker Geography), we seized the chance to go to the US, so I was in Eagle Pass (a little border town 3 hours from San Antonio). There I bought Equilibrium which, critics be damned, I love to pieces. It made me decide that Neo is a fucking wimp!

Thanks to all the people who have been dropping emails and messages my way. I’m always glad to hear from you. I’m working on the new comic, which should be up tonight if I’m not mistaken.

— sergio at 04:23 PM  

Today’s comic is shameless fan service.

That said, I was very surprised when DOA3: Extreme Beach Volleyball was announced. Finally, we have a game that openly caters to our lowest voyeuristic fantasies, as well as our unhealthy fascination with fictional characters! Given my ages-old, platonic and *secret* love for Wonder Woman, I welcome this new age of openness with glee!

Think about the implications: at last, we can sing the praises of pornography in public! We can admit that we don’t empty the cache of our browsers because of security! Tell the one you love how that Google search she saw on the auto-complete feature for “Anna Nicole’s humongous floaters” wasn’t really an investigation on safety devices! Come on! let’s start the revolution! I’ll get the ball rolling by confessing that I don’t floss, *don’t give a rat’s ass* about Playboy’s articles and used to torture cats by throwing them 12 feet in the air!! (it’s true: they always fall on their feet — unless you tie their legs together) Ok. Your turn. Confess. Shout it into the wind. Open yourself! Rock the place! Get freaking crazy!

…

… any time now…

… anyone?

… damn.

— sergio at 12:27 PM  

The attack of the soBig virus on my mail has finally subsided, for which I thank thee. My Inbox listing was starting to look like an Anne Rice book (long, repetitive and utterly pointless).

There’s a new comic up today, and I have yet to properly pimp the brand spanking new cast page, which features art by the extremely hot and talented Amanda Hardy from RDT and WILT fame. Scrumptious.

It’s the beginning of a new month, so VOTE!! (Do it once a day. It actually increases your sex appeal). Also, we’re doing better than ever in the Rocketbox Top 10, so feel free to VOTE there too =). By the way, I put those little buttons at the left column for this precise purpose. The small squares below them are for accessing the Rant archives, in case you like my rambling so much you want to go through them (fat chance).

— sergio at 10:52 AM