Decomposing Train

I am updating the site with the latest version of Comicpress and redesigning it to make better use of the new templates.

Production-wise, I am working on the script some more, and laying out the pages.  The first pages might be published before Hell freezes over, or not.

I’ve also just picked up a copy of Scott McCloud’s Making Comics.  I haven’t had a chance to read much of it, because I have had a god-awful sinus cold for the last few days, but I enjoyed Understanding Comics and I can only imagine this one will be even more enjoyable and informative.

I’ve finally upgraded to Firefox 3.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that my menu customizations (mostly) transferred from version 2 to version 3 without any problems.   It is mildly irritating that Tab Mix Plus doesn’t yet work with FF3, but 70% of my plugins work just fine.

Overall, I hadn’t noticed any big improvement over version 2.  Nothing has leapt out at me as being “way better” in Firefox 3 than it was in 2 — in fact, not being able to use my Tab Mix Plus customizations actually makes tabbed browsing more annoying in the new version of the browser.  Hopefully, TMP will be made compatible soon.

The only thing that I can say is better in 3 is that they’ve finally fixed the annoying tooltip bug.  Now I can read the tooltip punchline in Dinosaur Comics without having to view the HTML source.  The bug in firefox was identified in 2003.  It finally got fixed in 2008.  Hooray Mozilla!

Once again, I’m busy trying to get this site to display properly on different browsers, and there’s some fiddling problem with the sidebar CSS that is giving me a headache.  Argh.

Here is the link from Comics Reporter.

I like DMG’s work, even though I have to be honest and say that I’d never heard of him before I read this interview. However, after digging through his blog E-merl.com, he does some great stuff. I’m especially enjoying Necessary Monsters right now.

The weird thing is, thinking about it, I must have actually met Daniel in person once.

If he was at the UK Web & Mini Comix Thing in 2006 (he is listed as one of the Exhibitors for that year), then I probably did. I went to every table and talked to everyone there that year. In particular, I probably annoyed John Allison with my extensive ignorance of yacht rock but he was still nice enough to give me a button that says, “It is the moon.”

From Wired.com’s Threat Level:

The U.S. Senate overwhelmingly voted Wednesday to grant retroactive amnesty to the telecoms that aided the President Bush’s five-year secret, warrantless wiretapping of Americans, and to expand the government’s authority to sift through U.S. communications, handing a key victory to the Bush administration.

The Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee Barack Obama (D-Illinois) voted for the final bill, despite intense lobbying by supporters who used Obama’s own online organizing technology to try to hold him to his promise to fight any bill that included amnesty. New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, Obama’s former rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, voted against the bill.

Richard Koman at ZDnet sums it up:

Obama issued a statement saying the bill was the best resolution that lawmakers were able to reach. But with the vote so lopsided, Obama could have easily voted against the bill, confident that it would pass anyway. It comes down to a matter of politics. The political tea-readers decided that there was no political upside to being against enhanced government spying, and so a vote was cast. Pity.

So much for Change.