What? No embedded video?

Since I am leaving my laptop at home while I'm away for the weekend, I think I'll just toss the new comic up now. John helped me figure out how to use Inkscape to make the linework much clearer and bolder, leading to what I feel is a huge improvement in general but also over the original version of the "Ben" strip.

Meanwhile, here is a really fun "Make your own Cat & Girl comic" flash widget I found in Dorothy Gambrell's extras section.

If you enjoy regional accents and have always wished there was a map you could click on, linking to different recordings of all the world's accents...then wish no more.

Anyways, I'm off to Broadstairs now - have a good weekend all! I'll be away from the internet until some time Monday, can you handle it?*

*Probably!

"I shoot all my employees"

Huzzah!

I got this week's comic done in plenty of time so I can spend some quiet moments during my weekend in Broadstairs getting ahead on the following weeks comic - which is longer and, judging by my thumbnail sketches, much more ambitious then what I've done so far. Eventually I'll probably cool out and settle into most strips being three to six panels instead of nine, but meanwhile I think it's worth the extra bit of struggle for the introduction of the main characters.

And for those who give a hoot and/or holler about the nitty gritty...

*The lines scanned a lot better this time around because I cowboyed up to a 2.0 pigment ink pen, only using the 0.5 for fine detail instead of everything.

*I think I'm going to stay with two pixels thickness for word bubbles but the search for good font continues. Until I find something better, I'm going to stand by what I used last strip - Kabel Dm BT 3.5pt

*I'm using the PNG format with the top level of compression (9) but what really made a difference in the size of the last strip was resizing it to be 800 pixels high (about a 50% reduction). Still, I feel like there is something I am missing so I'm going to experiment with other methods of image size reduction. The last strip was 474 kb - about a third of the first one - but I'd really like to get these down to at least the 150 kb range or even less, since I'm sticking with black and white at the moment.

I also think it's worth mentioning that the sense of accomplishment from drawing each panel has helped keep spirits flying much higher at Fort Brackenbury then they would if every single moment was spent job hunting. There is definitely something to be said for doing what you have to do to maintain a decent level of self-esteem while engaging in that particular grind - especially when there has been a long stint of "typical English weather". The boiling hot summer which I've been in fear of for months does not seem to be in a rush to arrive, which suits me just fine so long as there is a bit of sun while I'm inBroadstairs.

Basically what I am saying is that I want the weather to accommodate my needs and wants. All this being said, I should count myself fortunate not to be anywhere near the floods.

Finally, the title for this entry comes from the following VBS two-part series on bulletproof fashion.

Part One


Part Two

If I was offered a job where I was paid to look for work...

...I'd probably turn it down!

While I'm sitting at my laptop and probing the luminiferous aether of employment, here's a grab bag of amusment and disgust for you all to peruse. Just call me shameful Thomas.

My favorite guest comic by Ryan North

My favorite guest comic by John Allison

Chris Onstad doesn't ever do guest comics, sadly, but here is one of my favorite one-shots of his.

If anyone had any doubts about how ghoulish television programmers can be, this ought to stamp those out.

Captain Nemo would be proud.

And finally, I really think that we can thank Napoleon Dynamite for Eagle vs Shark.

Toss in Superbad and I really do think that for the first time in years, nerds - realistically portrayed nerds, mind you, not "nerds" - are going to be a new trend in film protagonists.

I gotta say, I'm in favor. These kinds of characters are way more interesting to watch then the vaseline coated WB set.

Drat

So it turns out I didn't get the job, namely thanks to the old "Need experience to get a job/need a job to get experience" joke. I've got savings enough to subsist for a while but if I'm still unemployed in about six weeks time then I may be forced to scuttle back to Canada. Even though I've thought about coming back for good in December, during more homesick moments, I really would prefer not to come back quite like that for all sorts of obvious reasons.

The other part of the rejection equation came, I believe, from my answer to what is easily one of my least favorite interview questions. The question was "Where do you see yourself in ten years?".

Now I do appreciate that there are those amongst us who have laid out grand architectural blueprints for their life - where they'll go to school, when they'll marry and precisely what job they shall have at specific ages. But man, even Joseph Stalin only managed five year plans. Even that plucky lil' fella. I myself am certainly not someone who can plan that far ahead in any meaningful way. I can fantasize all day long, but does that count?

Plus, even though it is clear that I was being asked specifically about where I saw myself career-wise the vagueness of the actual wording made me go a bit blank for a brief moment. I think I must have unknowingly given a very mild "Are you stupid? Also I am confused" look as I replied "Happy....?". I recovered my composure pretty quick and tried to cobble together some answer about how I wanted to be an editor and why I would enjoy that but it undoubtedly came across as just what it was - an attempt to give them the kind of answer they wanted.

Meanwhile, ten years ago I was fifteen and thought that maybe I'd like to get a job in marketing since I had cynically and naively deducted that that was a good way to get paid for being creative. Ten years ago I had no thoughts of film as a career (only "writing") and though I had enjoyed my trips to England thus far, I had no thoughts of moving there. Most of that came about seven years ago and I didn't begin to lay any concrete plans until about three years ago.

I completely understand why it is in the best interests of an employer to only hire experienced individuals who have known that they want to work in a specific field since a very young age and that they will continue to be in that field for the rest of their years. It's a much wiser investment then someone with vaguer ambitions who might just as likely try the role out only to discover it's not for them as they would fall in love with it and be a loyal employee for years to come. This is what makes it all the more maddening that I didn't figure out what I wanted to do at a very young age. Still, knowing this, it is hard to feel that folk aren't looking for someone whose first words were more along the lines of "In twenty years I see myself working in my second job along the corporate ladder as a Junior Assistant at a prestigious corporate law firm in either Boston or New York."

"Also, ma-ma!".

Addendum: The BBC had a great pair of articles today, one on a rather ambitious project and another on how a lot of people are missing the most obvious way they can help with climate change.

Meanwhile, screw you Londinium - I'm off to Broadstairs this weekend for some sun and beach and not job hunting. I'll be sure to bring my camera and have the webcomic done in advance, which should be a problem for reasons that will become apparent.

I.....can't.....get this....out of my head!

I saw it this afternoon and I'm tempted to see it in theaters again. It was everything it promised to be and then some.

True story.

If I was a rapper and of the right ethnicity, my handle would probably be "Black Gold"

This is a topic I've been reading a lot about lately and I think that, like climate change (the two topics are linked in several ways) the matter of peak oil will be one of the greatest world shaping factors in our lifetimes.

The documentary website.

Shrinking back down to the micro level, I have yet to hear back from the post-production company in Soho, which is odd since they did stress they'd call me back on Friday whether or not I got the job. I've dropped them an email, which I suppose is a little cowardly since I could phone them directly but I'm not entirely sure if I want to hear a rejection right this moment.

Boy howdy

Here we go! On time, in the Eastern Standard timezone at least. Ah well, progress continues to be made, new notions continue to be learned (particularly in the "Things Not to Do" category, but hey that still counts).

First World Problems
Strip #2: Charlotte