Waffle

I hope noone minds these: They're a bit of a chance for me to show off my art collection, as well as (hopefully) good fun.

As always, click on the "Caption Contest" link if you can't see the file. By the way, the winners will be announced by an extremely partial judge - me, Adam Cuerden - about one week after the image is posted.

I don't know how long this series will run. I have LOTS of 19th-century art, so, really, it depends on when it stops being fun.

I'm not sure if I should go on with the experiment in digital work. The latest update turned out better than the previous one (though there may still be changes to the colouring) but it took forever to make, was not a lot of fun and I still don't have a good working process for digital inking. As a result, pretty much every procedural decision I made while working on it turned out to be wrong, and once again a lot of time was wasted. I'm not that happy with the result either; being better than the March 16 update is an awfully low bar to clear, especially with four weeks between the two updates. I think next update, I'll be definitely going back to inking on paper and setting aside enough time to do it all properly. Having Easter Monday off from work should help with that.

On the other hand, Aggie hated the switch to digital when she got started on it, and is now getting much more comfortable. Maybe all it needs is more time and practice.

In the longer term, I'm concerned about my ability to keep a big-production comic like this Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan storyline going in my spare time from work. Perhaps I need to do a simpler comic that I can write and draw in two hours per episode and that doesn't put such demands on me. I've been developing some ideas during the last working week (time I don't normally spend on regular ROCR anyway because it tends to come in two-hour blocks) and will be posting some sketches as Vote incentives on Topwebcomics next week. To be continued....

You will need:

1 Rabbit 1 Bouillon Cube. Lamb for preference, chicken will do otherwise. 4-5 parsnips Rosemary (fresh, for preference) Some butter

Preheat oven to 180°C / 350°F. Sear your rabbit in a hot frying pan in the butter to seal in the juices, then transfer to a roasting pan. Add about an inch of water mixed with 1-2 bouillon cubes. Slice both ends off the parsnips, then cut in half lengthwise and add to the water. Sprinkle rosemary on top. Place in the oven, and allow to cook about 90 minutes.

No salt is necessary. The tears of your children at being served Easter Rabbit will be sufficient, and provide a delicate flavour.

Goes well with: Lamb of God; Garlicky mashed potatoes.

I read The Book of Taltos during my fourth air trip to the US, some 9 months after buying the book with the intention of reading it during my first. It collects two short fantasy novels by Steven Brust, set on the planet Dragaera and featuring the human mobster Vlad Táltos. I have one other collection of Brust novels, The Book of Athyra, on my to-read list, having got both books on the strength of the first collection, The Book of Jhereg. Maybe it's the headache I had throughout the trip or maybe the very circumstance of reading a book on an airplane makes me less receptive, but I didn't really like Taltos very much. (I've also soured on the comical novels of Christopher Moore after reading them on airplanes).

Brust is rare among fantasy writers in prominently featuring an openly Marxist/Trotskist political dimension to his writing. Unfortunately, in these two novels, the political bits (the sections describing how the theoretically absolute monarchy in which the stories are set is in fact constrained by economical and material factors, the sections describing a proletarian uprising) are about the only memorable bits. While the construction of the plot and setting is outstanding and one or two characters are interesting, there's little that an experienced fantasy reader won't have seen before and rather too much that they will have seen far too often already. On the other hand, the stories get better with recollection, and may benefit from re-reading, especially in more favorable circumstances. So I'm kind of on the fence as far as this book goes.

For the first time in years, you can now vote for Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan on a topsite list. Vote for ROCR on Topwebcomics! Update: link corrected.

I discovered not one but two very promising fantasy webcomics today: The Meek, and Lumia's Kingdom.

The Meek has fantastic art and lovely colouring and reminds me a bit of Zander Cannon's The Replacement God. At only six pages into the story, it could go in a lot of different directions, but from the commentary, the creator has thought about the concept for a long time and has put a lot of work into character and concept art prior to starting on the comic proper. That is a good sign.

I instantly liked the title character of Lumia's Kingdom. Her attitude reminds me of Kel's in a lot of ways, including the bit of quick thinking in a crisis. The art is not as pretty as The Meek, but it's more than serviceable.

I'll be following both comics in the next few months, though I'll hold off on putting them on the front page list until I've seen more of their stories unfold.

I've been doing a lot of stuff to the website lately. Here's what's been changed in the latest tune-up:

Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan and Chronicles of the Witch Queen now have ads from a new ad provider, Webcomics World. This represents a significant policy change for me as I will be allowing some Flash ads, which will have Behaviours. I will pre-approve those on a case-by-case basis but I will no longer be denying them automatically. We'll see what happens - there's the potential for good earnings there, which will make it easier for me to spend more time and effort on webcomicking again.

To compensate, I've cut the horizontal Google ads on the archive pages on the main site, and will be looking to cull more advertising if this pans out.

The Drunk Duck mirror also gets one of the new ads, because a) it is actually bringing in decent pageview numbers, and b) it looks like I will have to put a lot more work into it in the next month or two, as the infamous FRAMED!!! Great Escape Crossover is due to be repeated there. I will have to write to the other artists involved to try and give all pages a permanent location.

The cast page for Invasion has been updated, as has the main cast page. Individual cast bios on the main site now have comments enabled, so people can write their own notes on the characters. I have also made a start on a cast section for the archives on Modern Tales, and updated the Fan art section there. The interface for uploading fan art was broken the last few times I tried using it last year, but it works now.

I have added some new stuff to Odds and Ends and to the DeviantArt site

This leaves me still having to update the old Comicgenesis site which I essentially forgot about midway through Aggie's tenure as a guest artist. That might be a more complicated job, but as I'm sitting at home with a sore foot, I might as well do it now.

All this work on various mirrors entails a serious reduplication of effort, but that is paying off. Because of the different automated cross-promotion/reader-alerting tools that the various systems have, the combined sites now have about 200,000 pageviews a month, for a comic that has in recent months updated once a month. The reason I'm doing it now is that the Invasion storyline is due to end next Monday, and after that, I want to get back to Feral as soon as I can, though it's likely I'll post a little bit of filler first. If the new ads pay off, I may well soon be updating more frequently again, though it's unlikely that I'll go back to three or more new updates a week.

I've sent DFG one more page I drew over the weekend. So I kept my promise of cranking out one other page.

I didn't really enjoy it though. All weekend, I've been fighting back fatigue and so I wasn't focused on anything and got gradually more depressed. It didn't help that I didn't get any exercise all week - it's making me feel weak and sluggish. Also, I have hardly spoken to anyone who wasn't a co-worker all week, except Aggie who I talk to online all the time. I love Aggie... but it's not good for me to just talk to a person on the other end of a webcam.

So I'm back to square one in terms of how focusing on my projects is working out. I have to push myself to get out there and run, to keep seasonal depression at bay, and I have to push myself to socialize with people in my own area and in meat space. That will, however, leave me once again with proportionally less time to finish the work that I feel has been breathing down my neck for some time. I won't make any claim to being a great artist, but I do have an inner need to be working on my art or else I don't have a sense of purpose. So not having time for it because after my work day I have to perform social and physical maintenance on myself, even though I realise that I need that too, that I need to be out and about and meeting my friends, frustrates me.

I did no work on the other projects - I was going to read the script to Muscle again but I ran out of time. I overslept again on both Saturday and Sunday - it seems like I can't wake up in the morning anymore once the pressure of the working week is off me. Just doing that one not very complicated page was all I managed.

Well, that, and Christmas shopping, which is now halfway done. Only 5 hours of trudging through town and another 2 hours of looking online - so if I can spare another 7 hours next weekend, I should be golden.

This must-read post from Publius on why liberals fear social conservatives is very succinctly argued:

Social conservatives aren’t merely a group with which liberals disagree – they’re a group perceived to threaten our lives in tangible ways. Outside of the Christian Right, gay rights isn’t some abstract morality play. It’s a direct assault upon some of our closest friends and family. That’s what’s so radicalizing about Prop 8 – it wasn’t merely a political debate. These out-of-state groups decided to reach into the lives of complete strangers and rip an already-established right to wed out of their arms. What social conservatives viewed as promoting God’s will, others viewed as a direct and cruel assault on thousands of loving families. This perceived sense of attack is especially strong on sexual privacy issues. It’s not so much the substantive disagreement that is driving liberals’ loathing. It’s the perception that the Christian Right would intrude on – and dictate – the most intimate decisions of people’s lives. For many women (and men), the idea of forced pregnancy and contraception bans aren’t abstract arguments – they’re pretty terrifying. Same deal with Terri Schiavo. Again, what was so oogedy about l’affaire Schiavo is not the abstract philosophical debate about “life.” It was that a group of frenzied social conservatives decided to intrude on the Schiavos' privacy, publicizing and overruling a private and wrenching family decision. Even worse, they actually convinced Congress – in the midst of two wars – to intervene. Other issues – such as stem cells and creationism – aren’t quite as scary, but they’re still perceived as intrusions on our lives. The restrictions on stem cell research have surely set several cures back many years – costing God knows how many lives. And as a fairly new parent, the idea of social conservatives seizing a state or county school board is suddenly a lot scarier. Anyway, the larger point is that there actually are substantive explanations for people’s hostility to social conservatives. It’s not that people are snobs or bigots. It’s that they see the social conservative agenda as a direct threat to some of their most cherished and intimate rights.

But as someone who has spent most of his time writing in the past couple of weeks, I find the structure a bit strange. It ends:

But until liberals stop thinking that social conservatives are trying to intrude on the most private aspects of their lives, they’re going to remain extremely hostile.

Which sounds like it's building up to an argument as to why we should stop thinking that social conservatives are trying to intrude on the most private aspects of our lives, but instead leaves the reader hanging.

Gee, I wonder why.

I ran 56:44 net (56:49 gross) in the 11 km at this year's Thesinge Run on Saturday, finishing 18th out of 49. I'm very satisfied with this result. Prior to the event, I didn't feel ready for it - I'd come out of trainings feeling like I couldn't keep up with my training-mates and on the day itself, I had some mild asthma problems. I was also worried that I'd knock myself out in the first few kilometers, because I'd never run an 11K or even a 10K before.

In the end, the asthma concern actually helped me, because I had another motivation to slow down at the start. My breathing was irregular during the first half but stabilized during the second. I was able to talk throughout the event. At the 1K point, the guy running next to me clocked us at 4:50, at which I slowed down a bit more. I passed the 4 Mile mark (official length of the 4 Mijl van Groningen) at a little over 33 minutes, and could speed up a bit during the last 2 kilometers, catching up again with the guy with the stopwatch before finishing.

Wilma de Vries, winner of the women's 11K, told me she'd seen me finish and that I was looking pretty good at the finish line. In short, I ran the race by the book and finished with energy to spare. Good. Next year, if I'm still in the Netherlands, I'll knock a few minutes off that time.

I love the Thesinge Run. It's only in its second year, but it's well-organized, with many of the teething problems from last year dealt with. The start was earlier in the day so no one had to run in the dark, and there were real dressing/showering facilities and a pasta meal after the run this year (I didn't go to the pasta meal, preferring to drop by at my parents, who live nearby and hit them up for food instead). Because the community center had been renovated, partly with the takings from last year's run, there was a bar as well, so when I fancied a beer after the race, I could have one. That drew some comments from people in the audience as I was drinking beer while still in my running clothes. Also, this year's weather was fantastic.

What hadn't changed was the inclusive atmosphere, with the entire village turning out to help out, encourage runners, take photographs and have a good time with the event and make everyone feel a winner. The different categories were also set up to allow everyone to take part, with special kids' runs for the very youngest (though young children who felt up to it could also take part in the adult events and the women's 4K was in fact won by a nine-year-old girl) and generous time limits allowing people to walk the 4K and 4M. It's the camaraderie that makes the Thesinge Run so much fun - that and running on gravel and shell paths running through farmland. I didn't notice quite as many cowpats as last year, which I'm grateful for.

Me at about 2 km || Me at a hundred meters or so from the starting line, though I can't tell if it's the first or second time I passed that spot