Demonac's Blog [Another Gaming Comic]

AGC #414

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 12:46:20 GMT

Slightly overdue, but here's Here's AGC #414. If you've read "season 1" of my Real D&D Excerpts you know that players will go waaaaaaay farther than this if they get an idea into their heads on what to do...

Anyway, I blame the late on working 7+13+9 hours between 2pm Friday and 6:30pm Sunday. There was not a whole lot of time to write stuff, especially with hour-plus internet tech support issues coming up while I was home.

Gotta go...

Superad?

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 01:58:01 GMT

Yes, I finally removed the sidebar ad that "follows you" on the AGC homepage. Not that I was getting a lot of outcry, but I gave it enough time to prove that it wasn't generating enough revenue to be worth the various problems that it caused on many browsers. So it's gone.

In other news, with great appreciation to a few readers who contributed (some of them contributing a lot), we're up to 100 AGC comics transcribed to Oh No Robot, the tool that makes individual webcomics searchable by text. Considering that your average AGC strip is a big blob of text, the ability to search for a key word or two to find the one you want sounded pretty darn useful to me. So at some point in the near future, I'll be adding this search bar to the comic viewer and/or mainpage somewhere. I'll also try to keep transcribing a couple more strips every day (I can do the more recent ones at a pretty good pace, because for most of them I have the scripts and can do it... it's the older ones that I would have to do from scratch, because the text scripts either don't exist, or are in paper form).

Another Awesome Show

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:50:59 GMT

Lately, we've been watching a lot of Boston Legal. It's an excellent funny series - the kind of comedy where the characters are allowed to develop and grow over time, and where the endings are (generally) predictable, but how they get there is entertaining and often quite unpredictable.

It's no West Wing but... well interestingly enough, we've seen a number of appearances by West Wing cast-members (generally as bit characters), whereas two of the important characters are played by familiar Star Trek actors, William Shatner and René Auberjonois (Odo).

So it amused me to no end when, upon entering a tense meeting with Auberjonois' character, who sat flipping pages in a large book, the resident smartass on the show (Alan Shore) noted "See how he doesn't look up as we enter? It's a technique taught in the 'forties to establish dominion."

To which I could only respond, "Of course... His people ruled the Dominion."

But anyway, if that's too Star Trek for you, it's not the show's fault. Boston Legal = good.

AGC #413

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:49:48 GMT

Wow, can't believe it's been a whole 6 days since my last blog post. Although, since I have worked or slept just about every hour since 2pm last Friday, I didn't have a lot of time at home...

Here's AGC #413.

AGC #412

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 03:50:15 GMT

Boing! It's AGC #412... this fight may eventually come to an end!.

And at my girlfriend's request, another 'conversation' (sigh):

DEMONAC: [mumbles two syllables]
GIRLFRIEND: What?
DEMONAC: That was just mumbling.
GIRLFRIEND: What were you saying?
DEMONAC: It was meaningless...
GIRLFRIEND: So you were saying...?
DEMONAC: The first two syllables of Ice, Ice, Baby
GIRLFRIEND: ...
DEMONAC: At some point you're going to stop asking me.
GIRLFRIEND: That may have been the end.

In my defense, there was a biography/documentary on Vanilla Ice on TV last night. I know... no excuse.

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 04:04:20 GMT

There are webcomics, and then there are webcomics.

The sad thing is that I get 2x to 5x as many hits as normal whenever somebody links an AGC in the Order of the Stick forums.

Sure, 95% of people who follow the link will take a look at one of my ugly texty comics out of context and immediately hit their back button...

Still good for my (generally trivial) ad revenue though.

Freezies are really good on cold days

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:04:36 GMT

GIRLFRIEND: "...I'm having another. Eww... this one tastes like ass"
DEMONAC: "What color is it?"
GIRLFRIEND: "I think it's melon-y..."
DEMONAC: "Is it peach? Cause peach would taste like ass. Fuzzy ass."
GIRLFRIEND: "Maybe it's cantalope... {offers a taste}
DEMONAC: "Hmm..." {ponders a while} "Eww... it tastes okay at first, then it comes on."
GIRLFRIEND: "The tip was worse... the middle tastes different."
DEMONAC: "It tastes like booze..."
GIRLFRIEND: "Booze freezies?"
DEMONAC: "Beer freezie?"
GIRLFRIEND: "Maybe it says on the packet... cherry, grape, orange, blue raspberry, cream soda, tropical fruit flavor. Oh, maybe it was cream soda?"
DEMONAC: "No, white is cream soda, it must be tropical fruit ass..."
GIRLFRIEND: "Right, so you had the cream soda. Ya, it must be tropical fruit ass."

AGC #411

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 15:25:58 GMT

Here is AGC #411.

And Here is a 12-inch tall cake that looks like Diet Coke:

Source, with comments. She has a lot more artistic cakes too...

Day off

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:29:22 GMT

09:30 am Call from work, congratulating me for a job well done yesterday.
11:00 am Call from work, day off canceled, back to work today

brought to you by non-twitter... simulated twittering with no software involved

attack of the spam

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:47:05 GMT

So, the other day at work, things were pretty slow for a bit (though of course it got busier later, making me regret a few moments wasted), so I whipped out some of the spam-faxes I've been saving up.

Now, whereas email spam is filterable and ultimately ignorable, costing no real measurable amount of anything to the average consumer, with spam-faxes, the spammer is wasting your paper and toner, knocking your equipment out of power-saving mode, and in our case, occasionally printing a spam fax in between sets of documents that we were intentionally printing. "Hmm, realVSbudget for April, cheap vacations to blah blah blah, Labor costs..."

Anyhow, in order to comply with spam regulations (or something), they must have had some kind of contact with an employee that for some stupid reason gave them our fax number, but they also each have a phone number at the bottom to remove yourself from their lists. And that's why I saved a few for a spare moment.

So I call the first one, and it's just a glorified voice mail system where they want you to say your fax number on the recording. It lets you repeat the message back to you and redo it until you're happy with the result. And they apologize for any inconvenience, etc.

The second one I call is this tinny recording of what sounds like an asian woman's voice. Difficult to understand, the quality is so bad, but I get that I'm supposed to punch in the number(s) to be removed (including area code, of course). Thing is, once it's entered, the software that comes on to repeat back what you typed in is a strong male voice (possibly a little british) "You have entered five, five, five, six-seven, one..." Then the tinny-sounding woman comes back to warn "it may take 30 days for your number to be completely removed from our system. Goodbye!" Really gives you that warm feeling that you're dealing with a legitimate company.

AGC #410

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 04:29:09 GMT

Voila, comic #410, where I experiment with yet another new way to cram way way too much text into the already grossly oversized panels of my artless monstrosity.

Now to sleep briefly, work all day, then see another house late in the evening. Nice relaxing Thursday...

Simulacrum...

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:22:20 GMT

I know quill18 is interested in Sims 3, as doubtless many other people are, but my girlfriend pointed me to this blog, Alice and Kev, and I think anybody who reads it can't help but be a little fascinated by the little project. Make sure to start from the beginning (don't worry, it shouldn't take long to get caught up).

And, just popped out of the oven, we made some homemade Onion Rings today. We'd tried once before with a different recipe, but these ones definitely came out much better, and now that we know the process, we can frig around with the spicing in the future (we already toned down the italian spice a little).

Househunting is proceeding a little slower... all the houses that come up in our price range are bigger than we need, but either need way too much work, or are situated far enough away that we'd incur way more transportation costs (plus time lost commuting). We really just want something very small, but in good shape. Fortunately, we are in a position where we can be patient and wait for something to come up.

AGC #409

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 04:34:28 GMT

Yay, comic #409 right 'on time' (insofar as I'm trying to do every 6 days, but can't guarantee it). Flipping through 3.5 books for reference just reminds me of all the character concepts I haven't had a chance to try out yet... Some time I should build that fear-based melee-assassin.

Random facts about buying a house around here...

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 01:56:36 GMT

"affordable bungalow" means even though it's 20 minutes out of town and a whopping 600 sq. feet, it still costs 60,000 dollars. But it does include a storage shed... so really, it's like 2 sheds for the price of one 60,000-dollar shed.

Somebody thinks you can charge 75,000 for a mobile home on LEASED LAND. You don't even own the dirt under your house. It is "freshly painted" though.

"quiet neighborhood" means "...no one can hear you scream". In other words, it's so far away that there is no medium within which sound can travel.

"unique home" means no yard (unless you count a rock outcropping), the two bedrooms are above a weird addition and accessible only by stairs with a rickety quarter-spiral at the bottom. Did I mention blood-red bathroom?

"close to amenities" means "you need a car"

"with a little elbow grease" means the house was built in the stone age. Claw-tub, no shower, stairs four inches wide, windows from before plastic (or possibly metal) was invented... but it does have a special hobbit-sized pantry.

If the house has a second unit, that unit will NOT meet the legal requirements for a rental property. Even if it is currently rented out (which would mean having to evict someone or immediately be illegally renting, which would make it more difficult to evict them later if you had to).

AGC #408

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 03:11:38 GMT

I've posted comic #408, which is good because I'm going to be working all Saturday (13 hours), and won't be in any shape for posting anything, most likely.

One channel on tv has been advertising Kate & Leopold, showing that Hugh Jackman is actually willing to travel back in time to make bad movies before I even knew who he was.

Not even close to releasing the second Twilight movie (I just saw the first one the other day), now they are going with yet ANOTHER change of directors for the third... David Slade who directed 30 Days of Night. "Ya, I have vampire movie experience" "You're hired!" Not sure 30 Days of Twilight is quite what the fans of the franchise are looking for...

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 21:34:59 GMT

Hmm, at the time of writing this (it's probably changed by now) the first thing you see when you look at my comic page is an ad that says "How NOT to make a webcomic". Bravo :P

I would just like to say "Yay!" for my employer's prescription drug plan (so far it has a very good success rate for covering stuff that has been prescribed to us), "Yay!" for my girlfriend's new business cards arriving in the mail (they have good print quality and came in a nice little plastic case, which bodes well for when people purchase business cards from her shop.

Writing my fantasy novel is progressing slowly. I still have a hard time just "cranking out code" (as a programmer might put it) because this story gives me a weird perfectionist disorder. I'm gradually working through it though...

Getting up early sucks

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:34:20 GMT

I don't know what we were thinking when we set an appointment for 9 am across town on my day off. Maybe they didn't give us a choice at the time, I forget.

I'm a little concerned about the fish at work. There was an incident where far more food than intended ended up in Admiral Akbar's bowl. He was very busy flitting around, converting all of those flakes into little tubes, and I could swear he was larger Sunday than he had been on Friday (before the incident). I hope he's okay. As for the other fish, the lazy-eyed bottom crawler known as Jar-Jar... I'm not as concerned about his fate, for some reason.

AGC #407 - The Art of Not-Dying

Sun, 31 May 2009 04:19:12 GMT

I just posted AGC #407, so you can finally see how Jill plans to avoid a version of 'heat-death' that is far more imminent than the question of the rate of positive or negative acceleration in the expansion rate of the universe (dependent upon the gravitational constant of the universe). Anyway, umm... yeah. Read comic.

Allergy failure...

Wed, 27 May 2009 02:06:39 GMT

For some reason my nose just started running like a faucet. For no reason. Even though I just said "for some reason". I lied. No reason.

Random thought: at some point during the day, I remembered (also for no reason) that a henchman in one Bond movie was named "Mr. Kil". I looked it up on IMDB and it turns out it was Die Another Day, the last (and therefore most ridiculous) Pierce Brosnan Bond movie. Makes me wonder, though, if any early drafts had a line like
"Mr. Kil, would you PLEASE perform your eponymous action...". If so, it was cut :P

I'm not usually big on April fools jokes, so I'm like 2 months behind, but I just saw what Starcraft 2 did on their official site. I have to say, if I was playing Terran on BNet, I would have a hard time not occasionally (at a key moment) messaging my opponent with "Hell, it's MORPHIN' TIME!"... and just let their imagination run away.

Things just got serious... AGC #406

Mon, 25 May 2009 12:04:36 GMT

Voila! AGC #406 is up and running. I do like when I get into the action...

I decided to throw a few slogans at www.typetees.com, to see if anything would stick. It's a site where you give them a line to put on a t-shirt in 65 characters or less, you vote people's ideas up and down, and ones that rate really well have a chance to be hand-picked, designed and printed, with the originator of the idea winning $400. Bearing in mind the tone of the site, and trying to save my best ideas for elsewhere (I know someone who can potentially make more than that, and make SOME money a hell of a lot more reliably, from a really good idea)... this is what I came up with for them.

Brilliant? No. A quick laugh? One can only hope...

If you are put off by huge blocks of text...

Tue, 19 May 2009 14:57:39 GMT

...you would have stopped coming here long ago anyway.

Here's AGC #405, advancing the 'in-game' plot, if not the actual plot.

404: Comic Not Found

Wed, 13 May 2009 22:10:03 GMT

I thought about making a "quick" 404-error based comic, but with no funny inspiration for one it seemed like a waste of time, so instead you get AGC #404. Which you probably prefer anyway.

Commercial That Made Me Laugh: OMNASIN
I saw an ad for this on TV, it's a Nasal allergy spray. In addition to sounding like it ought to be a boss about 2/3 of the way through a Final Fantasy game, it states "The most common side effects that may occur with OMNARIS are headache, nosebleed, sore throat, and ear pain." Ear pain? Thank goodness I can trade my runny nose for a mere sore throat and headache, but if I spray something in my nose and my ear starts to hurt, I'd be concerned about what it happening in between O_o

Gay rights idea...

Wed, 13 May 2009 03:04:45 GMT

We were watching another two talking heads battle it out on gay marriage, and we got discussing the issue again. We felt the pro-rights guy was sandbagging a little; he kept accepting the premise of his opponent's arguments, rather than turning it back to the basic human rights dimension. Lou Dobbs wasn't too helpful moderating, but he at least called the anti-rights guy on his side's specious "destroying the sanctity of marriage" crap.

Later, I got it in my head that somebody could make a very effective bus ad campaign to help the nation figure out, based on certain... unmistakable precedents... where the law ought to stand on the issue:

It may offend some people, but ultimately I think that would paint the right sort of comparison. Now we just need an american pro-rights group with a lot of money to take up the cause.

Observation from watching movie/tv commercials

Tue, 12 May 2009 13:24:17 GMT

Everything is worse than the last thing...

Repeating the same action again and again, expecting a different result...

Sun, 10 May 2009 23:30:32 GMT

It's either 'the definition of insanity'... or a computer.

We're learning that whenever there's a power bump around here (fortunately it's nowhere near as often as at my parents' place), out internet will randomly stop working for about 4d6-2 hours.

Now, when the internet goes out, I don't know about you, but the sum total of my knowledge and experience is thus: Keep turning network components on and off, plugging and unplugging them in different sequences until it starts to work. I have shared this delicate science with my beloved girlfriend, who is 100% as capable as I am at plugging and unplugging network components, and probably just as capable as I am at interspersing a variety of confused and perplexed facial expressions, supplemented by increasingly convoluted strings of curse words.

So it is unimaginably frustrating for her (and baffling for me) when I get home from work after she has lost most of a whole day of productive time, and I do the exact same thing she has done 20 (30? 50?) times and it randomly starts to work. And we both sit there sort of stunned, then slowly go about our business because what else are we going to do? Oh well...