T w e n t y S i d e d
Chainmail Bikini #4 is up. Shawn is now colorizing the strip, and I think it looks great.
A reader pointed out that when you go to the comic URL, you’re always redirected to the most recent one. This is fine, except if you hit “bookmark” you’ll end up saving that particular comic instead of the “front page”. If you want to bookmark, save this URL:
http://www.feartheboot.com/comic
I’m disappointed at how many corporate networks ban Fear the Boot. (I’ve seen many complaints about this from DMotR readers.) It makes no sense to me. My site is higher profile, it LOOKS more frivolous, and it’s a bigger timesink. (Not much to do at FtB except participate in the forums. Most of their content is audio, and most people listen to that on the way to work, instead of at work.) I occasionally use rude language and post screencap comics. I post about anime and link to many sites that do the same. I’ve got ads on my site and pictures of dice. By contrast, Dan does everything he can to keep the FtB pages work-safe, and yet that site seems to be banned far more often than this one.
I wonder why that is?
Patreon!
Why Google sucks, and what made me switch to crowdfunding for this site.
Who Broke the In-Game Economy?
Why are RPG economies so bad? Why are shopkeepers so mercenary, why are the prices so crazy, and why do you always end up a gazillionaire by the end of the game? Can't we just have a sensible balanced economy?
Spoiler Warning
A video Let's Play series I collaborated on from 2009 to 2017.
The Opportunity Crunch
No, brutal, soul-sucking, marriage-destroying crunch mode in game development isn't a privilege or an opportunity. It's idiocy.
Quakecon 2011 Keynote Annotated
An interesting but technically dense talk about gaming technology. I translate it for the non-coders.
OMIGOD FIRST POST
My workplace network likes FeartheBoot but bans the images section of LiveJournal. @_@ Odd…
A lot of places ban big media downloads/streaming audio for bandwidth issues. I’d imagine that some places may selectively ban sites from which these big downloads are coming, rather than cutting off media downloads altogether.
The fact he has the words Chainmail Bikini on the site might have a little to do with it.
An important point: FtB was banned long before the comic showed up.
And actually, “Chainmail Bikini” DOESN’T appear on the site (only in images) for this very reason.
Danged annoying.
I was guessing the “game” or something similar is in the meta tag for your new comic but not it twentysidedtale but that is just a guess.
Stephen is almost certainly correct. It’s because of the audio content that they are blocked. When the filterbots scan through sites they are almost certain to tag FtB as Podcast/Multimedia due to the number of large file download links.
We ran metrics once at work on how much bandwidth is used by employees for streaming audio feeds. It’s about 30% of our total bandwidth usage. Or at least it was until we throttled the hell out of it with our packet shaper.
My company blocks the main FtB site, but allows Chainmail Bikini. Go figure.
For anyone curious, here is the original B&W strip:
http://www.feartheboot.com/comic/images/gallery/004b&w.jpg
I decided to color it as a test, and once I saw the results I knew I wasn’t going to do the strip in B&W any more.
Yay for colored comics!
The audio is probably, as others have said, a big problem for some.
Other companies ban forums on principle. Mine bans the ones it knows about.
They don’t know about FtB yet.
Heh heh heh.
Steve.
My work bans the main FtB website, but not the podcast. So, I can waste an hour (or however long it is) listening to that, but can’t take a couple minutes to look at CMB. Oh well.
At my work, at least, it’s because FtB is classified as a “Game” website, while yours is not.
At my work, FtB is classified as “Music/Web Radio, Newsgroups/Blogs”… Banned :(
Regarding which page to bookmark: I usually like to bookmark the page with the archives list, because I typically like to read the previous strip one more time before going to the new strip.
However, on the FtB site, the archives for Chainmail Bikini aren’t set up yet. :( There is a page there, but there is no list of comics, nor are the navigation buttons hooked up.
Oh wow, I didn’t even realise #1 was up!
Good news! FtB is (at this point, anyway) not blocked by the firewall at State Farm Insurance! Hoorah!
Also, a side note: I find it amusing that the comic is called “Chainmail Bikini” despite the fact that none of the players are female. Of course, the PCs haven’t all been revealed yet, so perhaps one of them might be engaging in a little transgender roleplaying? Hmmm…
I, for one, do actually listen to FtB while I’m working. For the first time I’m my life, I’m disappointed that my commute to the office is too short, as it doesn’t allow near the amount of time most of my podcasts take in an episode.
Zack:
*Whistles Innocently…*
My company blocks most non .com, .org and .edu address, a lot of “Lifestyle” type sites and especially foreign websites. A good number of keywords are blocked as well. I’m surprised I get this site, what with all the “Game” tags in the keywords. One of the results is while I see your text all of the comic images, as they are hosted on the .mu site, are blocked and all I see is white. Real pain that. Is OK though, I come here mainly for the prose not comic.
I have it on good authority that Fear the Boot is blocked because The Man ™ doesn’t want you to fear, but rather to love the boot.
“if you hit “bookmark” you'll end up saving that particular comic instead of the “front page”.”
That’s the way I prefer it. That way, if a week goes by without having a chance to read the comic, I don’t have to click “previous” several times; I just pick up where I left off. And when I’m done, I just hit ctrl-D and I’ll be able to pick it up again next time. I also like all archive pages to have the same title, like “fear the boot archives” so that a single bookmark gets updated. That’s actually one of the few things I don’t like about Firefox: it creates a new bookmark every time, regardless of page title. That and the fact that it randomly crashes a lot more the Internet Explorer.
It is quite annoying that the site is blocked, but I will survive by looking from home
[Whistling Shamus] Er…
…are you saying that Chainmail Bikini = Metroid?
Steve