News Archives

Garfield Minus Garfield is a comic strip

A comic strip with a difference. There's no Garfield. It might as well be just Jon. Go on, take a look for yourself! Garfield has been extracted from the strips leaving Jon just babbling to himself and frankly looking even more... affected... than he normally does.

I don't know but I think you might just have to have the exact right amount of wine inside you to appreciate this fully, so give it a go now or wait until you get back in from a night out... your call!

On logout buttons that don't log you out

I use the Barclaycard website each month to pay off my credit card. Fortunately they have recently updated their site. I say fortunately because there was a glaring bit of the way the site worked that didn't make sense and posed a bit of a security risk if we're being honest.

Until not long ago, when you clicked log out it didn't log you out.

Wait a second, it's not as crazy as it sounds. It's still crazy though, for when you pressed the button you were taken to a confirmation page asking if you were SURE you wanted to log out. Am I sure? Well just a cotton picking minute, I just clicked the log out button didn't I? Maybe you thought I meant I wanted some sponge cake?

This behaviour is bad because people are used to either being returned to the site's home page or to a page saying 'You are now logged out'. It's safe to say that once the page has loaded you are logged out. So imagine the user that clicks log out and then closes the window as soon as the page starts to render. If that action didn't log them out they just closed the window despite the fact they are still logged in! You wouldn't want to do that by accident on a public computer...

Maybe there is a little bit of value in making sure the user actually wanted to log out in some situations (although this could be done with javascript) but the worst that could happen is that they have to log in again. I rather think that security is the more important issue here.

Like I said though, my to my relief the recent site upgrade has fixed this little problem. However now if I want to pay last month's statement total I no longer have the option of chosing the amount from a list, I have to type it in a text field. That's not really very useful now is it? Come on guys, sort it out!

Copycats riding on others' success

Someone at work sent me this video the other day. Go on, have a look - it's quite amusing.

Seen it? OK welcome back. Now while that was fairly entertaining (it's funny because it's true!) I couldn't help feeling that the style was taking a little more than a leaf out of the book of Zero Punctuation.

For those unfamiliar with the work of Yahtzee on Zero Punctuation, you should go there and check out one of his reviews (pick a review of a game you have played and it becomes all the more funny).

Personally, I'd say the first video didn't so much take a leaf from the Zero Punctuation book, but rather took several whole chapters!

This riles me somewhat. It makes me feel a bit like I do when I go to the animation section and see shoddy titles such as 'The King of the Lions' and 'The Little Red Racing Car' complete with artwork barely across the fine line that would class it as copyright infringement.

How awful. Not just that they are cheap imitations but that shops actually consent to sell them. How awful that the people who make these knock-offs can't think of anything fresh or original for their team of hard working animators to apply their skills to and actually try to make a name for themselves. But mostly how awful that they are clearly marketed at a) Parents who can't afford the Disney version and are forced to expose their children to mediocrity and b) Adults buying for children who honestly don't know the difference and either don't see the Disney one or see the price difference and think 'Well how different can they be?'.

(Maybe I'm being snobby about parents who can't afford the 'Disney Premium' but that's a whole other discussion...)

If you look at it from that perspective, I guess the similarities between this video and ZP don't seem to matter so much. Sure the presenting style is quite similar and they are both animated quite simply with a sub-South Park jerkiness, but one is about games and the other about Netiquette. One has smooth black and white characters, the other has pixel based sprite characters.

Also the problem of misleading people is not so huge as firstly the people interested in those sorts of video are less likely to be mislead and secondly the videos are free to watch.

It's not as bad but it's walking up the same path and that can't be a good thing.

Irony at its best

Oh boy. I saw something today that made me look twice. I'm annoyed I didn't get a picture of it but it went by before I even thought of it.

The item in question was a bike. It was a bike labeled 'eco-bike'. It was motorised. It made me wonder if the owner of this stripped-down scooter realised that if they wanted to be 'eco' they needed simply to buy (probably at significantly less cost) a regular bike. With the pedals.

Probably would have got them there faster, too...

Holy Kamoly! New content?

Well, it took long enough to get here but here's the first of 3 new Bob's Your Uncle strips. Just 3 because that's all I feel I need to sort of tie things up nicely... Or at least provide some sort of decent ending. If you haven't read all of BYU then you can start at the beginning if you'd like...

After Bob is finished I fully plan on starting up Pirates! again but not on a particularly regular schedule, just as and when I can as I'm not getting a lot of time to just sit down and draw at the moment for various reasons.

I know it's a pain coming back to the site and seeing the same strip you saw last time. That's why you can subscribe and get told all about any new strips! If you want RSS you can probably see the RSS icon in the address bar. If you prefer email, all you need to do is register and you'll get the option to receive comic and/or news updates straight to your inbox. Could I make it any easier for you??