You.0 Continues to You.Dominate

There is some great new stuff at You.0 right now, submitted by you guys!

Anacruisin’

I just wanted to drop a shout-out to Brendan Adkins, an old reader and pal from the Checkerboard Nightmare days, who has been writing 101-word stories, one a day, for the last two or three years. They’re pretty slick, but my shout-out is not without motive.

I keep getting the urge to write, but I crap out after about 300 words, and I’m nowhere near finished. I don’t think those kinds of short stories are my strong suit anymore. I think I only have the patience/drive/ability to spit out something that’s 100 words. Not that that’s taking the easy way out — it’s a whole other set of muscles. But I’m enamored of that quick delivery, that immediacy, especially when you consider that I really only like short stories that serve up some awful ironic twist. Why sit through ten pages for it? I have a idea for, say, a man who if he stares at you long enough, your heart stops. That sentence just conveyed the concept. I don’t have to add much more to that to make it an interesting tiny piece of fiction.

Two ways to listen to Halfpixel

I once saw Scott meticulously whittling a bar of soap for hours. I asked him why. He said “it needs to be symmetrical or I can’t breathe.” I could worry about that, but I’d rather believe he’s just dedicated to quality. And if you know anything about Halfpixel.com, it’s our dedication to quality.

So now you’ve got two options to listen to me and Scott deliver groundbreaking internet radio. Every Thursday at 6:00 PM CST, you’ve got The Kris and Scott Power Hour. It’s an hour of chat straight from the top of our heads. Listen live, call in, or grab the download afterwards.

And every single day, catch the Daily Affirmation. It’s 15 minutes of highly-concentrated Halfpixel, perfect to energize your work day. You can even listen to it streaming using the Talkshoe badge on the right side of the Halfpixel main page — no need to download!

It’s our internet; you’re just listening to it.

That tagline doesn’t make sense.

I hate programming

I got sick so I’m not in the office today, unfortunately. But I can still work from home on my machine. So I decided to tackle something I’ve needed for a while: a script that will let people buy prints of a given Starslip Crisis strip.

Now, I don’t hate programming because it’s hard and I don’t get it. I hate it because I don’t even get that far. Point in case: this stupid script I’m trying to test. I wrote it, I uploaded it to my CGI directory. Instant 500: internal server error. I check the error log. “Premature end of script headers.” That doesn’t help.

Okay, so I check my interpreter and all that. It’s fine. So I try to upload a little “hello world” script to see if that runs. It also gives me the same error. I telnet in and run in from command line. It works! So why doesn’t it work from the web? The permissions are fine. I have other scripts in that directory that are running with the same permissions et al. So it’s not the programming I hate — it’s all the inconsistencies in all this godawful suexec, mod_rewrite, blankety-blank horse crap that’s in place that intercepts my script.

Programming would be awesome if we didn’t need computers to do it on.

A day at the Halfpixel office

I have arrived at Halfpixel

I got to the office for the first time today, and Scott surprised me with two giant vinyl characters to go on our wall: Skull and Vanderbeam!

More photos here. I have some other things to get done before I’m working in the office proper, and it’s killing me. Time to start!

Awesome illusion

This illusion is really cool to me because it’s not based on the human mind’s attempts at connecting lines or shapes that it assumes should be a certain way, but aren’t — it’s more high-level. Your brain is going to try to connect a human face, which is related to parsing a straight line and a circle and so forth, but it seems like it’s more in touch with our social wiring. If you’re like me, you’ll look at it and know it’s not supposed to be blurry, but you won’t be able to look at it for long because of eyestrain.
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Scion xA vs. Honda Fit

I’m buying a car very soon, having relocated here to Dallas. (More on that move when I have time!) I’m looking at two cars: the Scion xA from Toyota, and the Honda Fit. Both of them are kind of subcompact hatchbacks, and are very similar cars to boot. But I’m trying to hash out the differences so I can settle on one.

Here’s the forum thread we’re talking about it in: http://www.halfpixel.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=80

Does anyone else have input?

Flowin’ 89

I’m off to Texas. See you in four days.

B.C. To continue beyond death of creator?

I visited the Creators.com website this evening to see if there was more information on Johnny Hart’s passing. I saw a link at the bottom of their page for editors currently running B.C. in their papers. The link leads to the following note:

Dear Editor,

I’m sure you’ve heard the sad news about Johnny Hart’s passing. We are all mourning his loss. Johnny created two of the most successful comic strips in history, and it was important to him that B.C. and The Wizard of Id continue after his death.

Regarding the strips, nothing will change. The Hart family has been involved for years, and both strips will continue without interruption. At this time, we have already sent you copy for the dailies through April 28, 2007, and for the Sundays through May 20, 2007, for both B.C. and The Wizard of Id.

In tribute to Johnny, his family will be selecting six weeks of their favorite B.C. strips to honor his memory. We will be providing you with this copy for the dailies between April 30-June 9, 2007, and the Sundays between May 27-July 1, 2007. After those six weeks, B.C. will continue on its regular schedule.

The Wizard of Id, by Parker and Hart, will continue without interruption.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

Creators Syndicate

So it seems that like Dennis the Menace, Blondie, Hagar the Horrible and Shoe, B.C. will be continuing with someone else at the helm. By the wording it doesn’t seem like B.C. will become a re-run strip like Peanuts.

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