Waffle

The following press release just went on Comixpedia. Feel free to copy and spread around:

Webcomics history returns - The Stone of Contention comes back online
after 10 years.

The next storyline in the long-running webcomic Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan is a piece of webcomics history: the early story "The Stone of Contention"was one of the first story-based comics to be published online. Lost to online readers for many years, it is now coming back in a remastered, retranslated, relettered version.

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Courtly Manners has got its first piece of fan art! Dig this pencil drawing of Krakatoa in low-rise riding breeches with riding crop by trusty guest artist Yonaka Yamako. As I write this, Yonaka is having some trouble with her websites so no linkback for now, but I'll fix it in the Gallery entry itself when she comes up from under.
There are two other Yonaka pieces in the Fan Art Section, (Update: link corrected) by the way, both from the earlier guest weeks.

The new webdesign on rocr.net was ready to go live earlier than expected (now that's a change), but there are a few things that still need to be fixed.
The work was actually rather fun (another surprise), but I do count webdesign as one activity that I shouldn't do for too long at a time. Today, I snapped at a reader who emailed me with questions and screenshots which showed that it looked very different for him than it did for me. Eventually, it turned out that this was simply a matter of the reader reloading the stylesheet, but my reaction showed that it was time to get away from the redesign project for a while. It's functional, tested in Opera, Firefox and (buuerk) IE. I expect that recent, reasonably standards-compliant web browsers won't have much trouble showing the site, and people using other browsers may notice some oddities below the fold if they bother to look, but nothing that breaks the core function of the website: to show the latest comics and the free archives.

I do wish I could figure out how to close the gap between the blog and the link list, though. Expanding the dimensions or the padding on any of the blocks involved has the effect of pushing the blog out of its place in the middle on at least one browser, which is not what I want. I suspect it's very simple, but I don't see it.

Apart from that, I don't think I need to do much except copyfitting: cutting down the space for the blog and lengthening the two other columns. That's doable.

... now that was actually rather gripping. It could have been the one where we fans would all gather around in an angry mob, descending on Russel T. Davies' house to set his testicles on fire, and believe me, I was not the one who made that phrase up.

But it wasn't. For all the potential awfulness of having the episode set in a TV station broadcasting twisted caricatures of The Weakest Link, What Not To Wear and Big Brother, it worked. And the slow introduction of the Enemy Who Must Not Be Named worked as well and was a credit to Joe Ahearne's direction. Plus a few bona-fide scares including the moment when Rose gets a face full of disintegrator ray - all in all it had me on the edge of my seat even though I'd had much of it spoiled in the weeks before the episode went on air.

It's not quite the one where we gather in an ecstatic crowd to strew Russell T. Davies' path with rose petals and offer him sexual favours either, though. It's only the first half of a two-parter, the second part of which which still has the potential to be testicle-arson-inducingly awful. We'll see how the leader of the Enemy Who Must Not Be Named turns out to be interpreted this time around. One week 'till judgment day!

Starting next week, Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan will feature graphics that are 800 pixels wide. Adapting the current website layout, sidebars and all, to that is doable, but leads to a problem with the archives, in which there are comic graphics that are 650 pixels wide, 550 pixels wide, 480 pixels wide...widening the content area to fit 800-pixel graphics will leave big ugly gaps on those archive pages.
This is solvable in many ways. I may return to liquid layout, get rid of the sidebar (putting most of the links contained therein into the area below the comic), or find a way to hide the whitespace in the archives. I may even publish larger versions of the oldest comics although I'd recommend against holding your breath waiting for that to happen.
I have a hard time imagining a liquid layout that doesn't annoy people while moving between pages in the archives. I think I have a basic design that will retain two-column layout, but I may run into difficulties. I'll spend Saturday and maybe Monday trying things out - the site may look a bit funny although most of my testing will take place in a specially-built Movable Type site. The new layout has to go live on Wednesday, so I'm well overdue working on it.
I know that there are people out there with strong opinions, so if you fancy commenting on important webdesign issues or giving advice, feel free to post on the forum or email me at reinder@despammed.com.

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I don't need training for this! I'm as skilled in the art of procrastination as a person could possibly be.

Which is more than I can say about the copywriting skills of whoever came up with this one. I know it's tricky to get it right in so little space, but honestly.

Two more updates in the DeviantArt gallery. One of them is a familiar piece: the cast image for the Fire Elf from "The Corby Tribe", shown this time at a larger scale and cropped a little differently from earlier versions of the same image.
But while looking for the source image for that one on my hard drive, I found another image that I'd all but forgotten about. It's a cover image for the Night of the Dragon story. I think it was made in 2001, when I had plans to put out a print collection of the short Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan stories from the mid-1990s. That collection never materialised, just like many other ideas for new print editions of Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan; I was not, and still am not, willing to put in the work unless I'm sure it can sell and make a serious difference to my income from doing Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan. But I did find the time to draw some cover art; today, I don't remember whether or not I even showed it to anyone. Here it is though, now.

There is some sort of diplomatic row going on between the Belgian and Dutch governments. The Belgian foreign secretary, Karel de Gucht, called the Dutch Prime Minister a mix of Harry Potter and middle-class stuffed-shirtedness, a man in whom I cannot detect any trace of charisma. This scandalised the Dutch Cabinet, who called the Belgian ambassador on the carpet for a good old-fashioned flogging. It also seems to have scandalised the Belgians, or so it said on Dutch radio although the Belgians in my coterie of minions hadn't heard of the whole controversy. Then again, they gave the impression that they'd be more surprised if De Gucht ever took his foot out of his mouth.
It didn't scandalise the Dutch population nearly as much. Apparently, the popular Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reported that 80% of those surveyed agreed with the substance of De Gucht's comments. And De Telegraaf is a right-leaning paper whose readership one would normally expect to broadly support the current government.

What can I say? Mr. Balkenende is a stuffed shirt, a goody-two-shoes without charisma. That's why we elected him. I know that we're live in the era of the short attention span, but for heaven's sake, the year 2002 isn't ancient history. I'll recap for the benefit of the crack-addled baboons who have allowed this non-item to dominate the news cycle (this includes members of the Dutch government):

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Good news about the buffer and the side projects! I'm making great progress. Here's what I've been up to:

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Dinosaur jr, a name from way back when. Back in the days when I was a little sk8er boy, this was one of the favorite bands around. Tonight I saw them live, at the Vera-club: their first gig since they re-united. They huffed and puffed and blew the house down! Bit older, lot greyer, they captivated the audience (very little young-uns) from the start. Their mix of punk, rock, metal and americana and good songmanship with a lot of distortion made me realize that this one of the key bands of the late eighties and early nineties. They have such a distinct sound, though I couldn't whistle a single one of their songs, do know how to write them. A good time was had by all, the band including.
Suicidal Birds opened for them. I hadn't heard of them before. A punk-rock band, with a female lead singer and female guitarist, that's something that grabs my attention of the bat. Turns out they're from Frysia, which is something I wouldn't have guessed, they have a very mature and international sound. The singer, responsible for all songs, drives the songs, and drives them well, Indy 500 well, as far as I'm concerned. A tough job, opening for a huge band like Dinosaur jr, being a complete unknown, they did very well. I hope (and expect) to hear more from them!