News Archives

Scalable comics?

Posted on 31/08/2007 at 07:09:49 by MakTheYak

Woo yah! I've devised a way in Photoshop of saving crisp clean files for the interwebs when making comics, but maintaining scalability! So you can increase the size of them without losing quality or getting pixellated details. I'm really rather pleased with myself. Could this spell the end for my Flash comic days? I don't know about that, but it's a good start.

Of course the only time that would be useful is for my lofty aspirations of a collection in the form of a book. No harm in forward planning though!

Here's today's Marmaduke.

4OD? More like DOA...

Posted on 30/08/2007 at 07:19:52 by MakTheYak

I missed the IT Crowd on Friday night. A tragedy I'm sure anyone who has seen it will tell you. So what better time to load up Channel 4's On Demand service, 4OD? I've used it once before to catch an episode of Shipwrecked that I missed. It was a pain in the ass to set up then but I managed to get it to a state where I was able to watch the show I was after. So now I'm thinking it's all set up and I'll be able to watch all the shows I miss without much problem.

WRONG.

Apparently I have a problem with my DRM. MY DRM? If I had a choice I wouldn't have any DRM so I don't think it's fair to refer to it as MY DRM. I click the help button which takes me to a generic Microsoft help page about DRM which lists a few problem scenarios. Unusually, Microsoft was actually quite helpful. That is, compared to Channel 4. My problem is far too vague to even begin to work out if it's even on the list of help topics.

I'm a busy man and sometimes playing by the rules is a waste of time. If DRM is my problem, then I'll just get rid of the DRM. So I went and found a torrent and downloaded it in the time it had taken me not to fix Channel 4. Hardly an incentive to 'go legit'.

If the series is good enough I'll buy the DVD. If not I'll probably just delete the file after watching it anyway.

Enough ranting - how about some comic?

I'm back!

Posted on 29/08/2007 at 07:10:32 by MakTheYak

Did you miss me?

I've been a bit busy over the bank holiday weekend and so sorry I was unable to update during that time. But don't worry, I'm back now and will hopefully be able to keep up the Marm for a little bit.

Oh yes, today's strip!

So I was looking through my RSS feeds and came across an article on Penny Arcade in Wired. I have a lot of respect for those guys - they have accomplished so much and seem like genuinely nice people so I found it a really interesting read. Shame about the title though. I don't know if the word 'dork' has exactly the same meaning in the USA as it does here or whether in traveling to the other side of the Atlantic it's slightly cruel and derisive edge gets weathered away. Still, the gentlemen in question seemed to be pretty happy with the article and so I guess it should be considered pretty accurate.

PS. Phoenix Wright 3 is amazing and anyone who hasn't played any of the games should get going right away. There's no time to lose!