A Thing About Stuff

By Shamus Posted Monday Mar 1, 2010

Filed under: Projects 30 comments

A few housekeeping questions from the past few days:

What’s the deal with those graphs in the corner?

They’re… comics? I guess? Little images designed to impart data of zero informational value? I don’t know what else to call them. I put the little branding on the bottom: “A Thing About Stuff”. That seems to be serving as a title for now.

A while ago I made this collection of silly graphs for Stolen Pixels. I enjoyed making them and they were well received. I had ideas for many more such images, but I didn’t think they were a good fit for Stolen Pixels in the long term. The comic is about videogame screenshots, and the graphs felt a little out of place. So I decided to make them a regular feature here on the site.

There are 15 of them right now, and the image changes once daily. Every once in a while I go crazy and make a few more.

Graphs? What are you on about?

You’re most likely using adblock. The comics are acting as a placeholder for ads.

What happened to the Team Fortress 2 servers?

I just didn’t have time to play. A lot of other people seemed to have the same problem, since the server spent a lot of time empty. Taking care of that server was like gardening. You have to prune the jerks and water the newbies, or the thing would lose its unique personality and be just another server. I felt like I didn’t have the time the thing required.

Hey! What happened to Spoiler Warning?

Randy escaped custody and fled to California. My bounty hunters (I keep some on retainer for situations like this) scoured the state, and after a couple of weeks they found him in a motel just outside of Barstow living under the name Marice LeVroom. Randy was recaptured after a brief gunfight and a car chase that resulted in the destruction of his rusty, dust-colored ’78 Impalla. I think a gas station was blown up in the process.

Anyway, we’ve got him again and as soon as he sobers up we’ll once again be making him play through Mass Effect at gunpoint.

Unless he escapes again. He’s wily, that one.

What happened to the rest of the Mass Effect 2 review?

The delay in the rest of the review was caused by the game itself. While playing ME2, I basically burned through all of my lead time in my various projects. (Comic, column, Let’s Play.) So I need to take a week or so and get caught up again.

What happened to the final strip for Chainmail Bikini?

The ball is actually in my court. Shawn has drawn the thing, and now I have to write some stuff. This is backwards from how we used to do things, but this is just a one-off thing. I’m just overcome with the need to make this one Meaningful and Witty because it’s the last. So I’ve been sitting on it for a week now, trying to come up with something to do it justice.

Also: Mass Effect 2.

Anything else going on?

I actually have another project I can’t talk about yet. It’s just a one-time deal, not an ongoing project. Still, it looks like it’s going to eat up a day or two this week. More on that tomorrow.

 


 

Formspring

By Shamus Posted Sunday Feb 28, 2010

Filed under: Random 17 comments

I love the idea of Formspring. Or at least, I’d love to be able to co-opt it for my use. People ask questions. You answer them. Looks like fun.

I get a lot of questions in email. Not simple, easy questions like, “Have you played Explodious 2: The Explodening?” No, it’s usually complex stuff about procedural content or DRM. Sometimes I convert the longer answers into posts here on the blog, but it’s always a little awkward to get permission to quote a private email in a public post and then to figure out which details of the email need to be edited. It also feels odd to take bits of text I sent as an email and post them here on the blog. I don’t know why, but it feels unseemly.

Formspring gives a way for people to ask publicly visible questions, but then the system sort of expects the person being questioned to put their answer on Formspring. Which, I have to admit, isn’t unreasonable. But I’d rather my answers become part of this site. What I really need – and just realized this while typing the previous sentence – is a way for people to post questions publicly. Hang on…

Okay. Done.

I made this page. I have no idea if it will help shift some of the private questions into public posts. If people find it useful, it’ll stay. If they don’t, I’ll take it down. Further suggestions welcome.

 


 

Authors@Google: Penny Arcade

By Shamus Posted Saturday Feb 27, 2010

Filed under: Movies 19 comments

Mike “Gabe” Krahulik and Jerry “Tycho” Holkins stopped in at Google and talked about how their road to triumphant success and heroism led through the valley of screwups, into the swamp of bad business decisions, and over the desert of being broke and not being able to pay the rent.

Hey! I’m on that same trajectory! I can’t wait until I get to “triumphant success” bit. That sounds like a lot of fun.


Link (YouTube)

An amazing story.

 


 

Experienced Points: Piracy Numbers

By Shamus Posted Friday Feb 26, 2010

Filed under: Column 184 comments

I have to admit I’m suffering from a little DRM Discussion Fatigue. For the past few weeks I’ve said to myself, “That’s it, let’s talk about something else now.” And then I end up authoring another one of these things. Another chance to put a few more whip-marks on the festering horse carcass that is the piracy debate.

It’s not that this stuff isn’t important, it’s just that I’m saddened that it can’t go anywhere. Pirates won’t stop doing their thing. Publishers won’t stop escalating their DRM efforts. People like me aren’t going to just shrug our shoulders and stop caring about the rights and privacy concerns that have made us so cantankerous these last few years. While we continue to exchange information and in some cases we even come dangerously close to understanding one another, we never approach anything that might be called an agreement.

Next week I will do my utmost to talk about something else. Hopefully something frivolous.

 


 

Stolen Pixels #172: Gotham’s Latest Superhero

By Shamus Posted Friday Feb 26, 2010

Filed under: Column 46 comments

It’s the gosh-darn Batman!

 


 

Shamus Plays LOTRO: Part 6

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Feb 24, 2010

Filed under: Column 33 comments

When Boromir got turned into an Orcish pincushion, the rest of the party didn’t really have time to give him a proper burial. In their haste, the best they could do was put him gently into a boat, arrange the weapons of his foes around him, and send him downriver while Legolas and Aragon sang him about four pages worth of poetic tribute.

That’s what a half-assed funeral looks like in Middle-Earth.

Boromir was lucky they didn’t have time to give him a “proper” funeral.

 


 

Stolen Pixels #171: Probe Away

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Feb 23, 2010

Filed under: Column 33 comments

To be fair, I wrote today’s strip before you people beat the joke to death in the comments. But yeah. You’ve probably made the joke yourself by this point.

(The title is intended to be a notification, not an invitation. Just so you know.)