Obama in Austin!

I went to the Barack Obama rally here in Austin today, along with 20,000 or so other folks. It was a terrific event--the opening bands kept us entertained while waiting in the drizzle for Obama to appear. Especially good was Cyril Nevil, a roots-funk band from New Orleans with a lot of powerful songs.

Obama's speech itself was excellent, made us all forget about the weather and focus on how great it would be if somebody could actually get to the White House who'd be willing to set a new, positive tone for this country.

Here's one of the best lines from the speech, on the subject of Dick Cheney:

"Now, keep in mind, this is the same guy that said we'd be greeted as liberators, the same guy that said that we're in the last throes. I'm sure he forecast sun today," Obama said to laughter from supporters holding campaign signs over their heads to keep dry. "When Dick Cheney says it's a good thing, you know that you've probably got some big problems."

What I love about this is that it comes at a time when other politicians and pundits are *reacting* to Cheney's attacks, rather than attacking him directly (or, more accurately, dismissing him as incompetent and moving on). Josh Marshall writes about the GOP bitch-slap theory of politics:

The point of the whole exercise is not the underlying issue of Pelosi but what the exchange is supposed to demonstrate about both players -- that Cheney is strong (he hits) and Pelosi is weak (she complains when attacked.)

Obama didn't react to Cheney's insults, attacks and smears, he simply pointed out that Cheney has been consistently wrong about pretty much everything he ever said, and moved on.

Obama got a big crowd excited about making a difference, and everything there seemed to have a great time. My camera phone is shitty quality, but I took pictures.

Haven't found anything on Youtube or Google Video, but a local news station has video of the speech.

That's about it. I will end with a headline that writes its own punchline.

Jeff

BoingBoing links to rabid right-wing warmonger

Here's something bizarre that I don't quite understand. BoingBoing is one of the best free-thinking blogs there is, a terrific resource for news and links about subjects ranging from DRM and internet issues to cryptozoology and current events.

So why do they keep linking to Instapundit?

It doesn't make any sense. None of the BoingBoing posters have shown any signs of being rabid Bush followers and warmongers, so why do they keep promoting one?

Jeff

6:31pm

One of the most important aspects of a webcomic site would be how to represent a comic to the reader, sight unseen.

Inspired by this post, I developed a simple “Preview Grid” that took a few pages from the comic, cropped and reduced them and displayed them on the front page. That didn’t seem very clear, the large comics image was reduced too much to give an idea of what the comic looks like.

Now I’m considering a grid or a row of sample images, cropped but not reduced—which would be more abstract but give a better example of the drawing style in the comic.

Another option is to have the creator upload a sample image, but one thing I find frustrating in webcomics is to click on a beautifully-drawn, carefully-rendered, colored and airbrushed logo image or ad button, to find a crudely drawn B&W comic. I’d like to represent the actual pages of the comic to the reader.

The Republic Party

(from Crooks & Liars.

Jeff

WCN now has comments

Webcomics Nation now has comments. That's a good idea. :)

Jeff

1:50pm

There's not a lot to visually show for it, but I got a number of significant bugs worked out yesterday. Created a new temporary logo and added a splash of color to the page design.

The most significant thing (actually very simple) was that I added the first version of the "Start where you left off" feature. This would let you pick up any webcomic on the site, read it for a bit, and then come back later (days, weeks, months) and pick up where you left off. Everyone I've talked to has been enthusiastic about this idea and I know I'd love to have it on comics I read.

Right now it's extremely rudimentary--it just shows the first new page since your last signin date. In the future I'll be updating it so it actually tracks which pages you've read and which you haven't.

I've been futzing around with the comics display page for a long time now, I need to get a rough draft of the home page done, I'm tired of looking at the current homepage.

Jeff

Colbert Half-Life

YouTube user MonkeyjoeBla made a Half-Life 2 level based on Stephen Colbert's studio:



Jeff

3:23pm

Still looking for work.

In other news, I've updated the comics application I'm working on to include a link and RSS feed for all comments from a particular comic. That's just a minor addition, but I'm glad I got it worked out.

The single most important page on the site, the individual comics page display, is probably 80% complete. The navigation between pages, to other comics and to related tags is basically done. The next step is the navigation options by list of pages and (eventually) a calendar view. The navigation by list of pages is going to be fairly simple, at least until I work out how to add chapter headings. The calendar view will have to wait a bit as well.

The second most important set of pages is the process of adding or editing a new page, with adding/editing a new comic being a close third.

The way I see it, the one thing every visitor to the site will want to do is to view comics pages. That's what the site is for, after all.

For the smaller subset of comics creators, the most common behavior will be adding a new installment to their comic. The next most important behavior (if not literally the next most common) will be adding a comic itself.

Once those behaviors are robust and at least 90% good to go, the other features like friends lists and so on can be introduced.

Jeff

Conan beats Serena Williams at Wii Tennis

Jeff

Spore confirmed for DS

GoNintendo is reporting that Will Wright's "Spore" has been confirmed for the Nintendo DS. I don't have much to say about it except that it's awesome news! Spore has been pretty much the most anticipated game out there for at least a year now, and it would fantastic to see it on DS and Wii.

Jeff

"Do you guys have any haircut questions for us?"

These guys put up Lite Brites with cartoon characters on them to promote Aqua Teen Hunger Force, the devices have been up for two weeks in cities around the country, and in Boston people freak out and shut down the city. That's post-9/11 thinking for you.

Best quote:

Assistant Attorney General John Grossman called the light boards “bomb-like” devices and said that if they had been explosive they could have damaged transportation infrastructure in the city.

That is up there with this:

Saddam Hussein endured more than a decade of sanctions rather than give up a weapons of mass destruction program that turned out to be nonexistent. If sanctions weren't enough to make him surrender his imaginary weapons, I think we can safely say they wouldn't have been enough to make him surrender a prized, oil-rich conquest.

How on earth can it make any sense to discuss these things in HYPOTHETICAL TERMS? "IF" the devices were explosive, they would have caused problems. Saddam refused to give up his "imaginary" weapons. Sigh.

UPDATE: Greg Saunders references Scott McCloud in suggesting that it doesn't exactly take brains to recognize these figures are cartoon faces. Link

And Jesus' General gives a survey of the Free Republic's responses:

To: Howlin
Dry run.

To: Howlin
testing reaction times

To: Howlin
It looks like there is all kinds of testing, testing, testing going on.

To: Howlin
How could they find so many hoax bombs so quickly? That says a lot about the alert level of the passers by. Or were there also threats phoned in?

To: Howlin
Welcome to John Kerry's America

To: Howlin
Hate to see this happen, but could it be the libs are reaping what they sowed?

Jeff

Lara Logan vs right-wing noise

Lara Logan is my new favorite journalist. Not only is she brave enough to actually report from Iraq, but she's bold enough to speak the truth about the bullshit from the likes of Michelle Malkin and the President. And to top it all off, she's cute as a button!



Jeff