Websnark

January 6, 2010

Wednesday: Maintenance

Upgrades are being performed at this time to resolve ongoing issues with comments.

You may experience temporary issues with the site as of 10:30pm Eastern time on 6 January 2010 as we sort this out. When we're in the clear, I'll post again.

Apologies for any difficulties you may be experiencing.

Posted by Wednesday Burns-White at 6:02 PM

Eric: Administrivia: Updates and Upgrades and Technology -- oh mercy! Wait, I always get that part wrong....

This is just a note to indicate that with the new year comes new underbody enhancements that will lead to more extensive upgrades and enhancements for this, our Websnarkian home. Now, I'd go into some depth about it all... but I haven't really got a clue about it.

There are advantages to marrying a woman who's more technically savvy and far better versed in both website development and content management systems than you are. My wife, for those who I haven't said it to recently, is awesome in every conceivable way.

There is... change on the horizon, but that's still where it is for the moment. In the meantime, you might run into some interesting issues along the way. Please have patience. Were this 1997, we would put up an animated gif of a road sign where stick figures were digging a trench. As it is not, we have spared you this. Progress, bitches.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:07 AM

March 27, 2008

Eric: The Deal(tm)

Here is the Deal(tm).

I am having a wonderful time writing the "State of..." essays, and I'm not dropping the project. Unfortunately, I've been having major sleeplessness issues of late, to the point where my doctor has prescribed chemicals that cause luminescent butterflies to render me largely unconscious during those times. They remind me of Gossamer from this webcomic I once knew....

...anyway....

While my brain chemicals sort themselves out and I get back on track, writing simply isn't. I don't have the brain for it. I've been pushing myself to get back into gear -- I actually just wrote and posted a couple of Superguy episodes to push my head back into writing space. For whatever reason, I've always been able to write Superguy when my brain is starved for rest and oxygen.

With luck, by the end of the weekend I'll have my sea legs under me again, and will be back to "Stating of," and possibly even Justice Wing and/or Myth writing.

And is it weird that my brain is turning a new RPG idea over my head... one that would require me to have a conversation with, in no particular order, Chad Underkoffler, Shaenon Garrity, Phil and Kaja Foglio, Jeffrey Channing Wells, Darren Gav Bleuel, Howard Tayler, David Willis, Andy Weir, Bruce Baugh, Randy "Action" Milholland and Gary Olson? Or is it just sad and hopeless? I don't know -- my brain is soft and sleep deprived.

(No, the project is not "Credenza: The Role Playing Game.")

Regardless, that is the Deal(tm). In the meantime, please enjoy some jazz.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 5:43 PM | Comments (21)

March 11, 2008

Eric: It's the middle of the night and daylight savings time has screwed my sleep schedule. Naturally I'm messing with my ad model

Hey gang. You might note that the ad block on the side (which had been four square ad blocks) has vanished, replaced by a single sidebar ad. The four buttons on the bottom of posts have also gone away, at least for now.

This is in the area of experiments. I'm curious what kind of change this will bring to the daily ad revenues. We may go back, we may stick with this. We'll see.

In the meantime, if you have a skyscraper sized ad, right now it's pretty cheap to put it up over there. If that's what you're into.

On the other hand, I finally had Geek Girl porn advertising on the site, and you know I've been waiting for the day I could say that. Ah well, one must make sacrifices in this world.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:34 AM | Comments (3)

February 29, 2008

Eric: The State Back on Tuesday!

Right! Way too much prep work tonight, leading to little time to sit down and do a decent job of things. And as I've nodded off twice at the keyboard, it won't be before I actually sleep. Since, you know, I'm driving and doing a border crossing and spending many hours not (we hope) falling asleep and dying.

If something quick comes up, I might ping in, but this is, essentially, valentine's day for us, and you know, the computer isn't really my first resort then.

Thanks, all!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:32 AM

July 24, 2007

Eric: It's a small web after all!

Because the web is a sprawling place that is largely concentrated in the Bay Area to this day, there is some minor effect on Websnark thanks to the (rumored and very possibly false but way too amusing not to pretend is true) drunk guy killing off the world wide web as we know it. As we use Typekey here (we're so, so close to being able to ditch it forever!) the downing of all of Six Apart except their corporate site (what a thing to be redundant) has made it difficult for people to comment here on the 'Snark.

If you've commented or otherwise authenticated Typekey in the last couple of weeks, it may work for you. If not, it may not. Either way, we apologize for the inconvenience!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:07 PM | Comments (8)

April 2, 2007

Eric: On the other hand, it's not the worst thing ever. I mean, Unfettered by Talent is way crappier. Maybe.

(Dude! I drew Snarky! Click on the thumbnail for the big size!)

For those of you playing along at home, the copy of Sidewinder: Wild West Adventures referred to on eBay sold, and sold nicely! Within its pages you will find my first ever drawing of Snarky -- and wearing a cowboy hat no less!

It was also noted to be terrible. I was a little concerned the winner would think it merely "incompetent," but then I put the tail on and realized "no. No, this counts as full on terrible." Certainly, Ursula Vernon, the artist who created the original Snarky pictures (as well as the Snarky-in-Bow-Tie picture from the proposal video) would blink twice and shiver quietly to herself when she sees it.

Also in the picture, you will note both Eric A. Burns and Wednesday White, which is always nice to be able to show in any picture.

So anyway! Yaaaaaay! Stay in school, kids!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:20 PM | Comments (15)

April 1, 2007

Eric: P.S. No, I was serious

For the record, the previous post was not an April Fool's Joke. I really, legitimately am a dumbass. No April Fool's post this year. I'm a bit tired.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:02 AM

March 28, 2007

Eric: Quick magic update!

Well. Not five minutes after posting, I got e-mailed by Microsoft. They say that they've removed the incorrect designation, but that "...although we have removed the incorrect designation, it may take up to 24 hours for you to see this change reflected."

So, points to them for rapid response and repair. And if you're an IE7 user and you notice this going past 10:30 Eastern Daylight Time tomorrow, please let me know so I can follow up with them.

In other news, we are at one hour and forty-two minutes before the Websnark Edition Sidewinder auction ends! We're at $50 -- which seems to be a pretty solid bid by someone who clearly wants this. And honestly, I didn't expect this to go as high as fifty bucks as it was, so I'm pretty freaking stoked about it. But if you're going to do an event auction, it might as well be an event auction, so I'm mentioning that we're coming up on the end times for it, and if you actually want my book, my signature, and my terrible sketch of Snarky in a Cowboy Hat -- and want it more than fifty dollars worth -- now is the time to jump in.

Thanks, all! The Extravaganza has been staggeringly successful, people have been extremely cool, and I'm really psyched. I'll try to do non-site, non-auction content later this morning.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:39 AM | Comments (7)

Eric: I think Jim Breuer starred in that movie. You know. *That* movie.

So. Apparently Websnark's been flagged as a suspicious Phishing website by Microsoft.

Let me back up.

Microsoft is a company that is dedicated to the concept of safe internet usage by all, particularly when using their flagship browser, Internet Explorer 7. To this end, they have developed a number of technologies to try and make the Internet a safer and better place. One of those technologies -- highly touted, I would add -- is their Anti-phishing filter. This uses a combination of automatic scanning and user reports to both warn users of potentially dangerous websites that might be stealing their information for nefarious purpose or identity theft.

They... apparently think Websnark is one of those sites. Or they're concerned that it is. The page assures me that a security veteran checked and has reasons for concern.

Uh... huh.

I found this out, by the by, by a couple of readers who sent me information about it. They also used the tool to say "um, no. This website isn't phishing." Because... um... it's a blog.

I mean, bear this in mind throughout this essay. This is a blog. I don't collect personal information on this website. I don't even authenticate users of this blog on this website -- you have to go to the oft-disliked Typekey for that. And if you decide to donate money with the paypal link, you're sent to Paypal to do the donation bits. I don't have any mechanism for storing personal info on this site.

In fact, the only information you can put on this website... are comments. You may optionally include a link to your own website in the comment. But somehow I don't think either of those constitute personal information, and I don't really see how we can call that "collection" to begin with.

So, getting up and opening my mail, and seeing several readers point this out....

...well, I feel like that guy in the movie -- you know, man. The movie -- who is half awake (possibly stoned, though I am not myself stoned and in fact cannot really become so due to smoke allergies, which is not relevant other than in a disclaimatory sense) who has gone to his door at eight A.M. to see Channel 7 News standing there with cameras asking if I would like to comment on the giant robot that's destroying downtown that seems to be made out of my car (license plates included).

You know. That movie. Braveheart, I think. Anyway, I digress.

Getting coffee, I went to the link one corespondent provided, after she mentioned that she went to report me as, you know, a blog and not a phishing site and the response said I would need to go to their form to tell them as the owner of the site that... um... we're a blog and not a phishing site.

So I went.

And discovered that the form will not render on a Macintosh running Firefox.

Seriously. It's a jumble that can't be followed.

So I opened it in Safari.

Same deal.

I stared for a long moment. Now, remember, Internet Explorer is no longer developed for the Macintosh. So the implication here is Mac users have no way to dispute their inclusion on the antiphishing filter.

Do I think this is a nasty master plan on Microsoft's part to encourage people to go to Windows by pissing them off? No. No, I really don't, because that would be stupid and the part of Microsoft that makes decisions like that isn't stupid.

Do I think they halfassed the form and never bothered to do basic cross-compatibility or cross-platform checks?

Yes. Yes I do.

Fine. I go to a Windows box and open the form in Internet Explorer 7.

The form... presumes we are a business.

I admit. I have ads. And I solicit donations. And I've been pimping the auctions and all. All that said... at most this is a sideline. And for the most part it is a blog for blogging things.

But I go through the form. It wants to know why I collect personal information.

I respond that I don't. We're a blog. We don't do anything not bloggish. And the only authentication experience is Typekey, and that's not even done by my website -- it's done by Six Apart.

It wants a link to my privacy statement. This link is required.

I kind of stared at that for a long time.

For the record, I have no privacy statement on my site. This is because I don't collect personal information of any kind. Anything you post in the comments is going to be public because they are comments. That is the entire point of having a comments section. If you don't want your comments public, I trust you will e-mail them instead!

After a while, I link them to Six Apart's privacy policy, since Typekey is the only thing that possibly could be construed as collecting private information on this site, and it's not mine to begin with.

I mention in a few more places that... you know, we're a blog, and we don't collect peoples' information for any purpose, because we are a blog and I'm more interested in writing about crap.

In the comments, I ask for anything -- anything -- they think constitutes a phishing attempt to be brought to my attention, because I'm honestly flabbergasted here. I don't know what the Hell these people are talking about.

I submit it. It promises to get back to me with any change in status.

I assume that for the moment, if you're using Internet Explorer, it will probably warn you that we are suspicious. I have no idea if that will change. Because Microsoft is dedicated to ensuring the highest quality and safest internet experience for users of Internet Explorer.

It's worth noting? Firefox seems to know we're a blog. Just for the record.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:30 AM | Comments (23)

March 7, 2007

Eric: Bottom Ad Buttons, Take #2

Hey again, gang. At the advice of a very knowledgeable person in the ways of Project Wonderful (as well as the feeling that the 2x4 grid didn't look all that good), we have redone the bottom ad buttons, so that there are four of them instead of eight. If you bid on them before, your bids are now gone as these are new ads (you are naturally not responsible for those bids any more). If you would like one of the new slots, please go forth and bid on them!

For the record, I am very pleased with how Project Wonderful is going for us. And I've actually got posts auto-queued up straight through Sunday (on topics that don't need... well, topicality), so with luck we're back on track!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 5:33 PM

March 6, 2007

Eric: Is it really *Wonderful?* I mean, *is* it?

As you may notice, we have moved to Project Wonderful for our onsite ads starting now. Since I had a long break, we're at a low ebb for pageviews, which makes this an odd time to step into the action, Dekarangers, but what the heck.

If you've a mind, go ahead and bid for ad space. There's four square ad-spaces on the sidebar and eight four 'button' ad-spaces on the bottom of the front page and just before the comment section on entries. I moved the front page ad area up a bit, too -- wanting to be sure it was seen better than the Google ad was seen on said front page. It's in the same sidebar location as the last google ad on the individual entry pages.

EDIT: Weds also says that if we get bids up past fifty cents -- yeah, I know, good luck to us, right? -- she'll work out how to set up OpenID on the comments system. What this will do is let people comment using their Livejournal authentication info instead of Typekey, causing massive betterment. It's been on the list since the announcement, so it seems like a good inducement!

And dude? go read Shortpacked. Walky Wednesday Makeout Ad Bid for the win.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:45 PM | Comments (18)

February 14, 2007

Eric: Life is what happens while you're making other plans.

Yeah, posting every day. Hah hah... good times, good times.

There's this play I'm in that's ramped to high. I get to be pure uncut evil. There's the chain of minor to not so minor illnesses that define my life. There's... well, there's trips to Canada to see my fiancee. You have to grok that in the priority list.

And... well, there's writing. I've done quite a bit of it despite all of the above. It... er, just wasn't for Websnark. But on the plus side, I feel once again privileged to wear tweed and a beret when I go to coffee shops.

I'll play some catchup on here over the next few days. Lots of goodness to talk about in the world. Thanks, all!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:37 AM | Comments (8)

February 1, 2007

Eric: Many notes, in various forms.

Work started just before 7 and ended... hm. A couple of minutes ago. No breaks today. There was... a problem last night. Tomorrow will be the same. No Wiiplay tonight, and restricted before that (I was deathly ill at the start of the week, and this much exhaustion can't possibly help with that.)

I haven't written my Order of the Stick snark yet, though it keeps getting better and better. This is amazing stuff. If you're not reading it, you ought to be, really.

PvP launched its animated series today, which served as a backdrop while I worked. As Scott Kurtz himself admitted in comments, the pacing wasn't as solid as one would like, and he promises improvements with that. The voice acting was pretty darn cool (I know there was the Skull controversy, but at this point I can't hear him any other way). The others were at least serviceable -- and Brent is spot on perfect. If I had my wishes granted by scantily clad djinni... well, first off I'd be mind numbingly rich, the workstuff would be dealt with, and Wednesday would be declared Canada's Ambassador Without Portfolio to New Hampshire, but at some point we'd reach my PvP animated wishes, and they'd include a little more of the really good incidental music and more of a patter. However, it's worth noting I'll be back next month to see the next, and that's the core thing you can ask of a first episode.

Note to T and Phil. I will, I swear to God, write back. I'm just exhausted.

Note to Frank. See above, times six. Man, do I have things I owe you.

Note to WiiFolks. I'll be adding everyone tomorrow night when I recover from round to from Oh My God Work Is Eating My Soul. I'm excited to see the enthusiasm.

Note to Wednesday -- I love you, and I'm sorry I'm not exactly focused at the moment.

Note to Activision. Marvel Ultimate Alliance for the Wii is f-f-frickin awesome.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:41 PM | Comments (32)

January 29, 2007

Eric: The current necropost list, as of the 29th of January

For those who haven't seen my slow but steady efforts to 'make up' posts done after the fact, here's what I so far have. I call these necroposts, because they revive a dead day and give it the horrible false impression of life in the form of a post.

The January 11 Necropost was on Malfunction Junction.
The January 12 Necropost was on culling iTunes.
The January 14 Necropost was on the superhero fiction site Star Harbor Nights. (Which also gets the sweet spot for the first post in the archives after the proposal.)
The January 18 Necropost was a brief, random note about Apple's hold music.

I still owe necroposts for: January 15, January 19-24, and January 27-28. Each day my intent is to do the day's post first, so as not to go farther into post debt, then with luck do at least one other necropost until we're all caught up and happy, shiny people.

I should have made this a necropost for like January 28, thereby cheating and cutting down on the backlog, but that's just not the way I roll.

(For those who've wondered, oh Hell yeah I intend to write about Order of the Stick.)

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:31 PM | Comments (7)

January 26, 2007

Eric: Perhaps my favorite correction of all time.

I have been told in the mail which is electronic that in fact "shunpiking" is in the dictionary.

I have confirmed this fact.

My thanks to those who e-mailed. I'm curiously delighted by this turn of events -- it's somewhat like discovering that Bigfoot has been in the Bronx Zoo since 1977 and they just have a bad publicity department.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:18 AM | Comments (8)

January 16, 2007

Eric: RSS and Atom happier, agree to reconcile with site.

Hey gang. Found what was causing us "trouble" on the ol' website's RSS and Atom feeds. I anticipate RSS readers becoming flooded with posts, momentarily.

In the background, I'm writing, including lots of catchup posts to fill in the missed days. When they go up, I'll post a "current" link to them as well, so that you know.

Dude.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:24 PM | Comments (11)

January 7, 2007

Eric: Erratatica!

I've had some interesting (and sometimes spirited) reaction to my recent City of Heroes post. I stand by it, but in writing, I let enthusiasm and memory guide my writing, and said memory failed me in a couple of areas. Areas which should be acknowledged and corrected.

For those who are new around these parts, when I need to issue a correction -- and it does come up -- I leave the original essay up. It seems to me that the nature of discourse requires we have our errors stay in the record.

The errors, it's worth noting, were not in the thesis. The core theses -- that Issue 8 was a superior edition to City of Heroes which both introduced great innovation and highlighted other innovations that have come along to distinction, leading to a revitalized game that deserves to be played -- I stand by without comment. The errors were in supporting materials.

Probably the most egregious was in terms of the various holiday events that have happened. I had forgotten that last year's winter event had temporary powers (including a really cool Jingle Rocket Flight Thingy, and yes indeed, a costume part) aplenty, for example. And I ascribed the first co-op Hero and Villain mission to the Halloween event, instead of to the Valentine's Day event from significantly earlier. The halloween event didn't have a co-op mission -- but it did have the ability to add a permanent costume slot to a character, which was a really cool perk.\

The reason this is important is twofold, really. One, because it again highlights that the innovations listed predated Matt Miller's heading of the development team. We need to remember that Jack Emmert initiated many if not most of the innovations that have revitalized the game that he was one of the core visionaries behind.

The second reason this is important, however, is it really does highlight the stronger public relations position the game is in now. I remember very clearly, when City of Villains was scant weeks before release. I was in the beta, and like most folks in the beta I loved City of Villains. There was a groundswell of excitement both for the expansion/new game, and for what it implied for the future of City of Heroes itself. (Things like Elite Bosses/Archvillain scaling, the more mature mission design, contacts who gave cell phone numbers early instead of late in a contact tree, and... well, Masterminds, which remain the coolest archetype ever. I still wait for the last to be ported in some fashion into City of Heroes -- perhaps by creating a 'duplication' powerset). There was some real, hardcore excitement.

Which is when "Enhancement Diversification" was first announced. And it was announced on the beta forum for City of Villains, where anyone who broke the NDA to tell the regular community about it would be subject to losing their beta status and very likely from City of Heroes entirely.

Naturally, someone immediately broke NDA. And a huge maelstrom burst. Now, I don't actually think the Cryptic team was trying to deceive anyone. I think they had decided the Enhancement Diversification scheme was the best thing for the game, and they were actually going to their beta testing community with it because they actually meant to... well, beta test it. However, the way it all went down made a lot of people angry and upset.

And it made them angry and upset just a few weeks before the first sequel game and/or paid expansion of the game came out. Scant weeks before they wanted people dropping money in stores -- and recouping a lot of investment and development costs -- their most devoted fanbase was, to be blunt, losing their shit.

That was, to put it mildly, a public relations problem. It got people angry when they wanted them frothing with excitement. And it was hardly an isolated incident.

Matt Miller, on the other hand, has built significant momentum and enthusiasm, both by having several successful big changes and events in a row, by teasing future upgrades and new elements ("oh, gosh, we accidentally turned the Wentworth's contacts on on the test server! How could we have so foolishly let people see these potential future plans that we're doing -- woe! WOE!")

Now, there's been problems too. Maybe most significantly, there have been some persistent bugs in the game. One of the most serious I'll quote from the Known Issues page:

Gauntlet and other Inherent Taunt powers currently do not effect Lieutenant, Bosses or Underling rank critters.

What this means is one of the lynchpins of team-based City of Heroes, the Tanker, has trouble with his most important power. Tankers are designed to absorb massive amounts of damage, so they have the power to attract the attention of the enemy, so that the squishier heroes can avoid being smacked around. Take those abilities away, when it comes to the most dangerous enemies, and that's a major problem. Heck -- one of the things I love in Veteran Rewards is the team base teleport, and I've been dumped out of it back to the zone I just left more than once.

But despite persistent issues, the majority of players seem to be pretty darn happy and excited about the future. Not blasé, not pissed off, not accusing the devs of immorality... happy and excited for the future.

That's public relations. And they're doing it well. And that's a good thing for this game.

Had I gotten the details right the first time around, that would have been made clearer.

(I also had a couple people point out I described the Event co-op missions as 'task forces,' which mean something quite different in the game, and I called the old Faultline a Hazard Zone instead of a Trial Zone. I regret those errors too,)

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:44 PM | Comments (17)

January 6, 2007

Eric: On my way....

...way down south, to pick up Weds at the airport. So this will have to do for today's post. (Really, from my point of view, the "Girls with Slingshots" snark from last night was really from today, since it was posted after midnight. On the plus side, we may have resolved the oddity that prevented posting as an East Coast blog, so my time and Websnark's may yet reconcile once more.)

I will see you all... tomorrow!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:31 PM | Comments (5)

January 5, 2007

Eric: And here we go!

Here we are, and now the site is officially on Pacific Time. We will see how quickly we get comments back (it's looking hit or miss right now), but by two am on the East Coast they should be there.

Enjoy!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:01 PM | Comments (6)

Eric: Because Movable Type is Weird....

...we need to match the system clock of our hosting company to the Movable Type clock to make certain things Go, all Pakled style. Which means despite the fact that Weds and I both live in the Eastern Time Zone... Websnark is moving to Pacific time. For now.

In practical terms, Movable Type is going to fall back three hours in time. Which is all fine and good, only it will then think anyone who tries to post in that three hour block after we do the reset is trying to spoof the system, and will reject the comments.

So, at 11 pm EST, we're going to reset the system so it thinks its 8 pm PST instead. No one will be able to then comment until roughly 2 am EST/11 pm PST/who the hell can figure out Mountain. Not that I figure anyone will deeply care.

In conclusion... EXCELSIOR!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:45 AM

Wednesday: Upgrade complete; enter when ready

Essential site maintenance was performed tonight. If all has gone properly, you should perceive nothing out of the ordinary (except possibly some extraneous entries on your RSS feed).

As we all know, nothing ever actually goes properly. Worlds collapse, goals fail, and no one loses those fifteen vanity pounds for more than like three weeks before they like pie again. Archie tries out that one thing with the new character designs, and a bunch of people who are really too damned old to care just lose it.

Also, long-overdue CMS engine upgrades have a habit of going slightly batshit.

The usual.

So, if something is actually breaking for you, we'd like to know. It's the only way we can keep things from operating in an expected fashion.

Use websnark (location identifier) gmail (full stop punctuation or decimal point) com if you prefer private communications, or comments are not working for you.

Please provide as much information about your browsing environment (browser, browser version, operating system, version of operating system, phase of moon, if you happen to be reading via feedreader/Livejournal/whatever) when offering up a feedback report, and try other browsers first if you can before making a report. The more information you can give us, the more readily and rapidly we can address a problem.

Thanks!

Posted by Wednesday Burns-White at 3:03 AM | Comments (18)

January 1, 2007

Eric: A new year, a new challenge

So here's the thing. It's time to get back to work.

2006 was a transitional year for me, in a lot of ways. This was the year of Wednesday, of travel, of Canada, of Modern Tales. In sports terms, this was a rebuilding year for me. For the first time in about six years, my writing output in all media was under two hundred thousand. Clearly, I needed some time off.

But that's done, now. It's 2007, and there's bills to pay and work to be done. Here and elsewhere. It's time to get back to work.

My quota, starting today (January 1, despite the fact that I'm writing this on the second) is 1,500 words a day. That can be here, or in stories, or whatever -- though I now have an aim to have something on here each and every day, whether fifteen hundred words or not. I won't count Livejournal posts to that quota, mind, unless said Livejournal post is a proper essay (which most of them aren't.)

Done properly, that will mean no less than five hundred and forty-seven thousand, five hundred words of productive work done by December 31, 2007. That's quota. That's not exceptional, that's just showing up to work. If I want to feel good about myself, I need to do better than that.

Websnark, as stated, is a part of that process. Days I miss, I'm going to try to make up. If that means I do multiple posts and officially call them "earlier days' posts" a la Milholland, then that's what it means and I won't feel guilty about it, neither. I'm also going to try to bank posts 'in advance' as I do this, to get some buffer, though some things will need to be done more quickly than that, of course. I want to have at least 365 posts at the end of the year.

Folks will also notice the Tip Jar has been reset back to Websnark, instead of Lea Hernandez. People have done some amazing things for Lea over the course of the last few months (and she announced a pretty amazing thank you as a result), and I'm leaving the post with the donation paypal button up for people who have linked to it and anyone else who wants to pitch in and help the continuing efforts to help out over there, but quite honestly things have been tight enough at Casa Websnark that I really need to at least give people the option to tip if they feel it's appropriate to tip. It's never a requirement, mind, but the option is there for folks, and I appreciate your consideration as always.

Let's do this thing.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:00 AM | Comments (18)

September 20, 2006

Eric: Needful things and personal appearances

First off, and by far most importantly, Paul Taylor, the man behind Wapsi Square, has had a child with his wife. Unfortunately, the little one was born almost a month prematurely, and there are ongoing and mounting medical costs. His confederates at Blank Label Comics have put together a joint fundraiser to help this family through these expensive early months. There's some kick ass art and other such things being auctioned there, so go have a look and bid often.

If you'd like to contribute directly, there is a Paypal link on Wapsi's front page, or you can Paypal to pablowapsi@yahoo.com. In my case, I've both donated what little I could directly, and I also took the time to buy the Wapsi Square Print Collection, which I've been meaning to do anyhow. It's 160 pages of tasty goodness.

Secondly, for those of you who might be in a position to attend, there is a bit of excitement at the end of the week. Wednesday White and myself -- your action Snark team -- are two of the guests at the upcoming Free Culture Webcomics Lecture Series at Swarthmore College. In addition to Weds and myself we have good friend (and Modern Tales editor) Shaenon Garrity scheduled to be there. We have excellent online acquaintences (and people I'm looking forward to meeting in person) Howard Tayler and Rich Burlew coming. Finally, J.D. "Illiad" Frazer is coming, who I can't call an online acquaintance (I'm not convinced he knows what Websnark even is), but who I'm still looking forward to meeting.

The lecture takes place at 7 pm on Friday, with workshops on Saturday to boot. So, come on over if you're able and get your Academic on.

You know, after you give Paul Taylor a hand.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:05 PM | Comments (7)

August 30, 2006

Eric: Stuff.

It was a busy day. I actually have a long essay written, but it's held back right now for editorial reasons.

Hey, it can happen.

I would like to point out, however, that I would really like to learn to play the Theramin. This is because of that meme about the mixing of the Simpsons theme with Star Trek? Any musical instrument played via stabbing gestures into the air is a worthy one.

God help me, the song I most want to play on a Theramin is "Don't You Want Me Baby" by the Human League.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:27 PM | Comments (20)

August 24, 2006

Eric: Typekey woes

Typekey's face down in the toilet, throwing up and moaning something about loving all of us and wanting to start a band.

We're working on getting typekey sober and healthy. In the meantime, we apologize for the commentless inconvenience.

UPDATE: It is now working... well, as well as it ever does. So there. Please enjoy commenty goodness.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:23 AM | Comments (7)

August 19, 2006

Eric: Two things to know.

Hey gang. It's your old pal Eric, with some notes for you!

First and foremost, please be advised that for the foreseeable future, there will not be actual content laden posts on the weekends over here. (At least from me, and Weds is pretty darn slammed for time these days, so....) I'm clawing my way back into the light from the darkness, but that doesn't mean my days are completely open, and I'm going to need the weekends to get brain back, work on other things, spend (for the moment, telephonic) time with Weds, go to see movies with planes and snakes -- that kind of thing.

I am trying to hit each and every weekday on Websnark, moving forward (so long as I have something to actually write about. This isn't my job, and I'd rather miss a day or even a week than... well, suck. I hope those days are behind me, now). The weekends, not so much. However, for as long as I continue to have the will to keep the Adventures of Brigadier General John Stark going, this time, there will be updates on the weekends as well. (Right now, we're written and composed up through next Wednesday. By the end of this weekend I'd like to have a two week buffer going.)

Secondly... thanks to the power of Netflix, I have seen the pilot episode of Aaron Sorkin's next project, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

Aaron Sorkin still has it in spades.

And he is unafraid to laugh in the face of a network that ousted him, then came begging him to return two years later.

That is all. We'll see you on Monday.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:23 AM | Comments (5)

July 1, 2006

Eric: Because I'm honestly not dead.

A brief to do list.

• Jim Baen.
• Shortpacked.
• Order of the Stick.
• Schlock Mercenary.
• The Schlock Mercenary collection.
• The Girly collection.
• Narbonic. (As always.)

And now, medicine.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 6:07 PM | Comments (29)

June 22, 2006

Eric: Summer Session done et mah brain!

Hey gang!

So, after all that buildup, and after several days of essays that I charitably think don't suck... I proceeded to have work hit me over the head with several blunt objects, to prepare for multiple summer sessions -- more than one of which decided to sit on their information until, oh, a day and a half before the session started.

On the plus side, I just met a Deputy Ambassador from a pacific rim nation. He was startlingly polite and humble. I was as helpful as possible. I mean, sure. This is a nation we've had peaceful relations with for centuries, but you never know what straw will break that camel's back. I can safely say we will not go to war because of me.

Er, today.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:20 AM | Comments (14)

April 27, 2006

Eric: Slight Service Change, For Your Convenience, Citizen.

Hoy, chummers.

Just an administrative note. With the slowdown of posting, I've switched the behind the scenes mechanism from showing the previous seven days worth of posts to instead show the last eight posts themselves here on the front page. That way, we can camouflage a lack of output keep things looking nice out here on the front page, and give anyone who comes by several entries to have a look at.

When (if?) we ramp posting back up, we'll switch back to a time based format to keep newer entries from dropping off the page for irregular visitors to see. Thanks, and enjoy a soy based fruit smoothie beverage.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:36 AM | Comments (31)

April 26, 2006

Eric: Going tharn

(Both from PvP. Click on the thumbnails for full sized... whoa, dude -- look at all the people)

First and foremost, you'll notice a couple of thumbnails on here. As listed in the attribution, they're from PvP. Specifically, they're from the last couple of days of Scott Kurtz's run of guest strips, as he takes some time to do things that need doing.

They're significant to me, however, because I wrote them. Greg "[nemesis]" Holkan did the artwork, and as always he did a wonderful job.

This is astounding to me. I mean... we guest stripped in PvP. This blows my brain apart. And I appreciate the opportunity that M. Kurtz gave to us. I hope people get a chuckle out of them -- they're City of Villains dependent, of course. I mean, you expected that, right?

So, have a look see. I hope you like them. And thanks to Holkan for the drawings and sketchings, and thanks to Kurtz for not looking at them and snorting in derision.

Which brings me to this post, which isn't really about the guest strips. It's about Websnark. And a lot of other things, mostly related to Websnark.

See, I did this play. And it was wonderful. Lively. Fun. And draining and exhausting, and leading inexorably to post-theater depression, which most actors get when their brains realize "wait, the play is over." Along with some grueling times at work, in a year that's been pretty much wall to wall grueling times. And so Websnark slipped to the wayside. (As did most other things I work on, including Gossamer Commons, John Stark and my writing. And Comixpedia articles and and and....)

Well, it's over. And several days now, I've settled back down and thought "Right! Time to get back to it!" And opened up a client to write a Websnark post.

And, about ten minutes later, I've closed the window and gone and done something else.

I'm tired. And I'm a little freaked about some stuff going on. And there's so much to do in the day. It gets overwhelming. And so I seem to be locking up a bit.

It reminds me of Watership Down, by Richard Adams. You see, Watership Down is about rabbits. And their culture. And their ways. Well, one of the conditions a rabbit can fall into is called tharn. It's that point where fight or flight is so overwhelmed by danger or chaos or overstimulation that the rabbit just freezes. They lock up, right where they are, almost paralyzed in mind and body, with their only hope being that the hawk will pass over without noticing them.

I'm not entirely sure why, but at least my public side has gone tharn.

Maybe it's just the overload of the theater. I mean, the addictive quality of theater is you go out, full adrenalin, and let everything out on stage -- especially when you're in a "character role" in comedy. Your job is to bring the house down, so that the leads can then ride the energy and make people feel things. It's an august and noble tradition, and it means that you open up your calloused skin and let people jab at you with sticks, metaphorically speaking. It's perhaps not surprising that after all that, I just haven't regenerated enough to be able to reconnect to the outside world.

On the other hand, it's also entirely possible that things are changed more deeply than that. It's a very different world than it was when I first started sticking stuff up here in August of 2004. In Internet Time, we're officially a mature site now. In terms of "webcomics criticism," we're the Grand Old Person (we weren't the first, mind, but still.) Certainly, the webcomics criticism world doesn't need daily stuff from me to keep churning along, happy and free, generating drama and commentary and -- when it all works right -- real thought. And the webcomics world itself, despite regular pronouncements of doom, is flourishing. Lots of cool people are doing lots of cool things completely absent any thought whatsoever of what critics might say.

Maybe it's time to rethink what I'm doing over here, or when or why I'm doing it. I've written a Hell of a lot in Websnark over the last couple of years. Maybe my brain just needs a rest from that stuff, and needs to focus on other writing for a while.

I don't know.

This isn't a retirement letter. This isn't a "gosh, give me support so I know you'll miss me and I'll come back wahhh cry of attention." This isn't a statement on behalf of Wednesday or anyone else. This is just me, your old pal Eric.

Going tharn.

Will I write more here? Almost certainly. Will it be daily again? I don't know. It's not you guys. It's me. In the end, as I've said more times than I can readily count, it's all about writing what I want to write, and then moving on to the next thing. I can't say for sure what that next thing is going to be, what venue it's going to be in, or when the next thing will include Websnark next.

I'm just sure of four things, really.

1) I love this place. I really do. And that will have an impact.

2) I'm going to keep writing, whether for 3 people or 30,000.

3) I need a break from things, at least for a while.

4) Meatballs don't work well in a panini press.

When the mood strikes me, I'll post. I hope some of you will still be here when that happens, but it's okay if you're not. I am humbly pleased and proud that you guys showed up in the first place.

Heh. On a day there's a PvP front page link to Websnark, I'm talking about how you won't see so much of me for a while. Give me this, I have timing.

Until the next time, this is Eric, saying "hey, dude."

Going tharn.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:44 PM | Comments (59)

April 19, 2006

Eric: A true thing.

Some folks have asked me when there will be more writing, over here.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:51 AM | Comments (16)

April 13, 2006

Eric: Administrative notes.

Of the two site principals, one of them has been unable to hold up his end of the bargain of late. However, behind the scenes he keeps a dedicated cadre of program control and administrative process keepers -- a small committee, if you will -- designed to keep things flowing not only here at Websnark, but through his creative endeavors.

We are sad, broken people. But we have no salable skills and he never notices when we take three weeks off for 'personal time,' so what the Hell.

Here then are a few notes from the administration.

1. One of the principals of this journal of wit and whimsy -- the one we work for -- has been indisposed by 'theatrics.' Apparently, whilst he claims to be a dedicated wordsmith, somehow he feels several hours a night of crossdressing and caterwauling followed by several more hours of ibuprofen and babbling about "energy" takes precedence over his duty to self and site. We have been give certain 'positive considerations' by the producers of this opus to ensure he remains healthy through the run of the show. Please be assured that we shall beat him senseless the morning after the last performance, however.

1.1. Pictures shall be forthcoming. Why should this fellow be embarrassed on a purely local level when we can spread the embarrassment out onto the international stage?

1.2. Alice in Wonderland, for those wondering.

1.3. The "Duchess," for those wondering which part in Alice in Wonderland.

1.4. Yeeeeees... we covered above that pictures would be forthcoming.

2. You might have noticed some "issues" over the last couple of days with accessing this site. Unfortunately, the hosting company has had some difficulties, which they have acknowledged. It is being worked out, and we have received all assurances that things should be normal forthwith.

2.1. For some value of "normal."

2.2. We do not promise things will be 'more' normal than they have been to date.

3. Obviously, there have been some doings in the world of Webcomickal art, which said theatrical type has not addressed. We shall cover the basics as best we can, as quickly as we can.

3.1. Whilst those who were attracted to Achewood during the epic "Great Outdoor Fight" might have been somewhat surprised to move on to the adventures of a five year old stuffed otter searching for his good friend the tattered old couch at the refuse transfer station down by the old marsh, we here in program control are full well glad to see the return of Philippe to the forefront of the strip. Further, there is something delightfully creepy about the world Philippe is walking through. This is the world of Trouble Man and No No. The world that on its high end gives us Cartilage Man. On this end, we have our new blind friends. There is darkness in Achewood, but it is not always what might be expected.

3.1.1. "The transfer station takes them all through its doors... and when they can work no more they fall in among the trash and become it and are gone" might, in the opinion of we here behind the scenes, be the single most Achewood sentence ever written.

3.1.2. With the possible exception of 'I know Todd.'

3.2. At the very least, Zortic has been deserving one of the infamous "submitted without content" posts for the inclusion of the Websnark "You Had Me And You Lost Me: GPF" snark in the Da Rlingtin Code storyline. Another victim of rampant, foolish theatrics, I suppose.

3.2.1. Zortic has been overdue for mention in general.

3.2.2. Hot red haired pirate mother. For the record.

3.3. Yes, there is subtext aplenty in the Davan and Peejee phone call over in Something Positive. Yes, yes indeed.

3.3.1. People have been speculating that this means that "Davan and Peejee will get together." As if they were not already together. Please. They live together, they are there for one another, Peejee naturally assumes she will move to Texas when Davan does. There is a name for a committed couple (even an unofficial one) that doesn't have sex, you know.

3.3.2. No, it's not "marriage." Jesus Christ, people. I don't know how the principals put up with all of you.

3.3.3. In the previous strip. Linzie indicates she wants a riding lizard from Texas. One of her rather random suggestions was a 'snark.' While this was certainly meant in the Lewis Carrolian sense, it's as close to an acknowledgment as we're likely to see from that side, and so we feel humbly proud.

3.3.4. Or 'drunk.' We might mean we feel humbly drunk.

3.3.5. In general, the 'phone call' motif over the course of this arc has worked very well. It conveys a combination of distance and connection, all at once. And that's interesting.

3.3.6. Did you notice Branwen was the only one of the cast not pictured on the other end of their phone call?

3.3.7. We did.

3.4. It has come to our attention that this space has not mentioned Narbonic recently. No doubt that was an oversight.

3.4.1. See also "theatrics" and "drunk."

3.4.2. The 'madness cure' is an excellent plot hook. We down here in the Administrative Annex are reminded just slightly of the Doctor Timothy Thirteen cameo in the original Neil Gaiman Books of Magic. Which was one of our favorite bits in that series, so it's a good thing to be reminded of.

3.4.3. Our other favorite bit was, of course, the Zatanna section when she went back to fishnets.

3.4.4. Don't you dare fucking judge us.

3.4.4.1. Yes. We stole that joke. What makes you think we care?.

3.5. Shortpacked has moved on into the realm of self-insertion.

3.5.1. More self-insertions should involve fights to the death.

3.5.2. We also feel that the scene works best with the fight music from the original Star Trek playing in the background.

4. We do not know when our employer will deign to get his head out of Lewisian theatrics and back into Lewisian referenced-essays. However, until he does, we are certain he would want us to express his regret at his lack of time or appearance in these hallowed halls.

4.1. Not that he feels such regret. He's such a poseur.

4.2. And not that we are inclined to express said insincere regret. After all, it's nothing to us. He'll continue to pay us in expired medication and John Stark Vodka no matter what we write here. It's not like he'll ever read it.

4.3. The "shopping for tires" essay? That was entirely us. He was passed out in a haze of mescaline and Earl Grey at the time.

Until next time, we remain....

The Administration.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:32 AM | Comments (43)

March 17, 2006

Eric: This is sadly a significant portion of my week....

The problem with citing examples in essays is sometimes you end up muddling your point rather than making it.

I've had a bit of correspondence with various folks today about my last post. Specifically, about the reference to This Week in Webcomics Boning. And it's raised a worthy point which really needs to be brought forward. In part because the strength of the example only works from one perspective. From another perspective, it makes me guilty of exactly what I'm railing against in the essay.

See, I remember the original post that Fleen had that made reference to This Week in Webcomics Boning. It was by Gary Tyrrell, who's been the breakout star of Fleen to date. And it was made in reference to a specific thread of comments in a post by a person whose name was indicative of a day of the week. And I remember his followup, where he announced the recruitment of the new weekly columnist:

News: Fleen will shortly have a new contributor! Due to overwhelming response regardaring This Week In Webcomics Boning, we have obtained the services of an insider. Join us on a trip inside the seamy underbelly of webcomics: the booze, the drugs, the parties, the fast cars and faster women … each Thursday, all this and more will fall under the scrutiny of our very own Tuesday Crimson. Naturally, we will be protecting Ms Crimson’s identity closely, but trust us: she’s got the dirt.

Now, obviously "Tuesday Crimson" is a pastiche on Kelly Cooper, as we all know. Regardless, I got it in my head that Tuesday was recruited specifically by Tyrrell (or was Tyrrell or Lowrey writing under a pseudonym) to produce a specific sendup. In other words, that it was a joke.

Well, we had the first two columns by Crimson, and hey. It wasn't. Crimson has a specific style and is going for a specific satire, but is either a real person writing an independent column or an incredible simulation coded by Phillip Karlsson.

Now, if my initial assumption had been true -- if "Tuesday Crimson" were a joke meant to lampoon a prominent female critic -- then it would have been a perfectly good example for the previous essay.

However, she's not. She's an actual person doing actual writing. And it's been pointed out to me that I'm actually making exactly the same assumption about her that I rail against in said essay as a result.

I failed to adjust my view of Crimson to the reality. I let the initial impression linger in my brain. And when I wrote the last essay, I used that impression to support my point.

However, that impression was wrong, and Crimson should be taken on her own merits. Regardless of her subject matter. Exactly as I said should be done by all of us in the last essay.

I hate irony.

My apologies to Gary Tyrrell and Tuesday Crimson.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 7:26 PM | Comments (13)

March 10, 2006

Eric: Mmmm... version 1.0... I'm an idiot...

There's nothing quite like that New Mac smell, you know? The crisp smell of virgin aluminum, the frighteningly bright display. The iSight camera built into the enclosure....

Needless to say, I'm a touch preoccupied. More when I've transferred my life and seen what's broken.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:11 PM | Comments (28)

March 3, 2006

Eric: If this were a newspaper, it would appear on page 7 of the Lifestyles section, under a review of a local man who plays the spoons.

As is always the case when we address some controversy or other, there's been significant discussion about the History of Webcomics thing and my recent essay on it.

One of the people who disagrees with me is Eric Milliken, who draws the savagely brilliant Fetus X. He rendered a rather emphatic opinion about my essay. And he and I had a discussion afterward, in the comments. One of the things he did was actively disagree with my definition of secondary sources versus primary sources. In his own words:

Your idea that eye witness accounts are not primary sources seems to be based on the unreliablility of eye witness accounts. Keep in mind that "primary" in this case does not mean "best;" it means "first."

And, well, what is there to say? He's right. I'm wrong.

The thrust of my essay isn't changed, when it comes to the methodology in question, mind. See, the reconstruction of events and their placing in historical context is, in many ways, similar to forensic science. There is of course a place for eyewitness accounts -- it's often absolutely necessary to have them, and sometimes they're all you've got. However, eyewitness accounts don't compete with actual physical evidence. When you have physical evidence, you reconstruct events to fit it.

So it is with history. When you're working out exactly what happened in a Revolutionary War battle, you often have to go from personal accounts, because there's nothing else. So you go through reports written and letters home and any other account you can find. You locate where those reports agree, and use those points of agreement as a framework. But you also find all the places the reports disagree, and weigh the differing versions against each other. And of course, you take any physical evidence you have -- actual terrain alterations from cannonballs, or embedded pieces of metal, or receipts for the purchase of food for the soldiers (giving you another count to work from), et cetera and so forth, and where reports disagree you go with the interpretation that fits the evidence the most closely.

That is the kernel of my disagreement with Campbell's methodology. I stand by that -- and I stand by the essay as written.

However, as Milliken pointed out, I was wrong about terminology, and I both acknowledge the error and apologize for it.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 6:22 PM | Comments (13)

February 23, 2006

Eric: It's Burns's technical woes Part 824! Also, I don't really dislike sudoku, so don't send me mail

I'm beginning to think there may be a manufacturer's issue at play here.

Last night, for the second time relatively recently, my powerbook G4 (aluminum model) died a horrific death. Which would make me think it's a lemon, only it was a completely different G4 Aluminum than the last one. Both times, the hard drive suddenly ground into paste, leaving nothing of note behind but a sad, sad Eric.

The difference between this time and the last time it happened is... and this may shock and amaze you... I learned my freaking lesson the last time. Since the last time, I back my computer up daily. It's a cron based system using a hot little utility called "Superduper." I plug an external hard drive into it when I get to work in the morning, and the program slurps files over.

So, the absolute worst case scenario is I lost everything I did... from 11 yesterday morning (when the cron job finished) to about 11:20 last night. Twelve hours worth of 'stuff.'

Losing twelve hours worth of stuff is officially a 'pain in the ass.' It is not an 'unmitigated disaster.' For those you playing along at home.

I've synchronized my backup (which I'm running off of right now) to a second redundant backup, and I'm now letting a utility play with getting those changed files off the disk. Maybe it can do it, and maybe it can't. Either way, I'm holding off on reading my e-mail until after I see if it can recover the mail I read yesterday. (Though that offsite backs up as well, so I'm not losing sleep either way.) So, if you send me mail today, expect me not to get it right away.

Thanks, all. Enjoy the shrimp!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:25 AM | Comments (52)

February 20, 2006

Eric: Typekey's down again.

Typekey's down again. I don't know why.

Tomorrow is another day.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:37 AM | Comments (25)

February 19, 2006

Eric: Huuuuuurm.

Okay.

Typekey validations are suddenly failing.

We're working on it. But for the moment, comments are unhappy.

We still like you, however.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 5:25 PM | Comments (9)

February 18, 2006

Eric: Blast!

We're going to need to export our entries and reimport them.

Why?

International communism. And broken links.

So. I'm going to kill comments momentarily, and then we're going to purge and rebuild.

On the bright side? I got to use 'purge' in a sentence.

[EDIT: Comments are back on and the operation is complete for now. No guarantee that there won't be further maintenance, though, as and when things are found. -- weds]

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:14 PM | Comments (5)

Eric: I was right -- it's *totally* a website

We're continuing the slow process of getting the website completely happy. One thing we've discovered is that a number of the entry names have changed, which means (unfortunately) that some old links won't work any more. And that we need to change the links on the front page. This is, in the end, just one of those things. There's nothing to be done for it.

So... everybody dance!

Ecto, which is the client program we both use to update Websnark, isn't fully talking to Websnark yet. And by "fully," I mean "at all." I blame alien spores. Or possibly Jeff Rowland. Though Jeff Rowland can kick my ass, so maybe it'll be easier to blame alien spores after all. Alien spores are fragile and cowardly, and I can take them if they decide to punk me out. Not like Jeff Rowland, who knows a thing or two about taking care of himself.

It's a very strange feeling, having Websnark up on cement blocks. I've gotten so used to Websnark just being a constant, that it's odd to throw variables into the mix. Even though the tuneup has been successful (the new site and the new hosting are faster and peppier and full of love -- which only makes sense, since after all, we're paying significantly less.)

(Wait... that doesn't make sense at all. Um... vote Quimby!)

Anyway. It's disturbing, but also somewhat liberating. I mean, in the end... we've exported the full site, found a new host, uploaded it, and imported the entries. And while some of the links are unhappy, the graphics didn't break and everything is... well, there. And that has me very happy indeed.

We're still doing stuff, and we'll continue to do stuff. Wednesday's got her hands into the deep wiring and chrome, and she occasionally cackles a Mad Scientist cackle, so everyone should get to see the results of that soon enough. And me? I'm just glad it's beginning to hum along.

Of course, with humming comes an ineffable desire... to write something.

Which had been concerning me. See, the breakdown of the old hosting (there was something causing load that their automatic systems misdiagnosed, and which they seemed unwilling or unable to correct) had shaken me and frustrated me, and slaughtered the tiny lobe of my brain where all the critical commentary lives. I didn't know if that lobe would regenerate quickly or if I'd have to feast on the brain of Phil Kahn in an effort to steal his lobe. As it works out, it came back. So, if I eat Phil's brain, it will purely be for fun.

More later. There's more stuff to do, right now.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:59 PM | Comments (17)

February 17, 2006

Wednesday: Okay, nothing better happen.

So far, so good. I assume that folks are reaching the site without having to use the interim address now, or will shortly. (If you're not, and you control your own DNS, now might be a good time to refresh cache.) Canonical URLs should get switched back to what one expects early next week, which includes the syndication feed (please, please don't change the address assigned to the LiveJournal syndicated account!). There's still work going on behind the scenes, so I should apologize in advance for any structural or presentational issues which may come down within the next few days.

Is everything okay for you guys?

Meanwhile, before anyone worries: to the best of my knowledge, Eric is safe and unharmed by the storm presently affecting large chunks of northeastern North America. However, he's also intermittently and unpredictably without power. (For example, as I write this.) Mind, if you're in northeastern North America, you already know the deal.

Posted by Wednesday Burns-White at 11:30 PM | Comments (11)

February 16, 2006

Eric: I could be wrong....

...but I think we have a website.

Dude.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:55 AM | Comments (84)

February 14, 2006

Wednesday: "Hon? Why is the site 403ing at me?"

Remember the early-to-mid-nineties and those really annoying "Under Construction" gifs that lots of people thought were the cleverest things on the planet? The ones which resulted in a bunch of seldom-updated homepages all starting out, "As always, this page is under construction"? Yeah, I hated those too. (Look, I fidget like this constantly. Stop looking at me like that.)

So. See. You... y'know that downtime we had earlier?

No? Ah. I see. You were sleeping. Well, that's a good thing. You needed that nap, you know, after that thing this weekend.

Well, we had some downtime earlier. And that was just, like, it. So, there's some stuff we have to do behind the scenes and under the hood. Important stuff. Like move to a new hosting service provider. And make sure it all works before we flip the switch. And mow the lawn.

If you don't see logorrhaea for a couple of days? Yeah. It's not you. That lawn? It's really bad. All overgrown, and full of deprecated markup, and kind of patchy. And we really don't want to go throwing new posts onto the lawn before we have to mow it.

EDIT: Don't forget that you can use the Snarkoleptics LiveJournal community if you happen to find the site unavailable, or want to start a new discussion with others. You need an LJ account to make a new post to the community, but those can be had for free.

Also, comments you make here from this point onwards, until the move is complete, will not appear on the new site.

Posted by Wednesday Burns-White at 8:43 PM | Comments (14)

January 25, 2006

Eric: Yet More On Burns Night

I've had other questions sent to me about this most Scots of nights. Well, as it turns out, the Wikipedia entry on Burns Night has a good solid grounding on formal and informal Burns Night revelry.

For me, Burns Night has always been about Whisky and Poetry. I remember a truly wonderful, drunken Burns Night back in my Ithaca days where we sat about, getting drunker and drunker and scouring my copy of the Norton Anthology for any poetry we felt like declaiming in a drunken rant.

Tonight, I will indeed read a poem or three, potentially reciting them to my cat. And I have rather a lot of Scotch on hand, including a wonderfully casky Bowmore I got for Arisia. I got it because it came with a hip flask, actually. But the scotch turned out to be superior, which is a nice thing.

So, imagine me if you will, tippling of the water of life and reading poetry to my cat and to all who come in spirit.

And imagine me not having Haggis, because honestly, that shit be nasty.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:29 PM | Comments (38)

Eric: Clarification

Burns Night is not my Birthday. It's Robert Burns's. Theoretically.

But thank you for the well wishes anyway.

I'd pass them on to Robert Burns, but he's been dead for quite a while.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:01 PM | Comments (3)

January 24, 2006

Eric: For those who have asked...

...we're doing minor adstuff again. No bigs, ignore if you wish. Hopefully it won't be too obtrusive.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:13 AM | Comments (8)

January 13, 2006

Wednesday: Um.

We are standing outside of our panel. This isn't right.

They keep talking about things that aren't what we're here to talk about.

That's just wrong.

Seriously.

Posted by Wednesday Burns-White at 7:52 PM

January 4, 2006

Eric: Just as a reminder...

...Weds is in town.

I wouldn't expect much in the way of... like... stuff here, over the next couple of days.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:18 PM | Comments (67)

January 2, 2006

Eric: Modern Tales Submission Guidelines (as promised)

As promised, here's the Modern Tales submission guidelines. With this post, Submissions are now open, provided you follow these guidelines in doing it. Consider it... a test, grasshopper.

Oh... you might notice a minor little thing in the draft. Something about "non-exclusivity?"

Yeah.

We're not requiring exclusive rights to our free webcomics. If you want to maintain your own website, with all your archives, in addition to being on Modern Tales? That's fine by us. And if you're a member of another collective, regardless of size, we're okay with you staying a member of that collective, provided they don't require exclusivity (since... well, if they do, you can't be on Modern Tales, can you?)

Oh, finally? It's not going to be called Modern Tales Free. That's just a shorthand to make clear which part of Modern Tales we're discussing.

Ladies and Gentlemen? The floodgates are open.

EDIT: I realized I should have put this one behind a cut, so I have. Click on the link to see the guidelines. If you haven't, already.

---

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES (1/2/06)

Modern Tales is now accepting submissions for MODERN TALES FREE. We are interested in both ongoing and limited series webcomics ranging from single panel up through infinite canvas. We are not interested in one-shot submissions at this time.

REQUIREMENTS

Modern Tales is looking for professional quality webcomics updated frequently. Successful submissions will have solid art and writing and a proven history of meeting regular deadlines. Update schedule is negotiable, however all Modern Tales Free webcomics must update at least weekly. The more frequently a strip updates, the more likely Modern Tales Free will accept it.

Modern Tales is willing to work with new artists, but preference will be given to artists who have a proven track record. Previous publication is acceptable, and strips with good depth of archive are desirable. Queries are unnecessary.

Submissions must come from a Cartoonist (artist, writer or both) with creative control and copyright authority on both the current strip and the strip's archives. If the submitter shares creative control, copyright authority, or both with any other person or legal entity, this information must be disclosed as part of the proposal along with all applicable contact information. Submission packages should include a cover letter, a complete list of creative personnel working on the strip (with appropriate contact information), a link to the current home of the strip (if applicable), and at least five comic strips (links to archived strips are acceptable, as are uploads or attachments). Examples should be typical of the strip, demonstrating its strength and range. If a given strip is strongly story based, the examples can be sequential but do not have to be. Submitters must be at least eighteen years old.

The cover letter should include the goals the Cartoonist(s) have for the strip, the projected length of the strip (particularly for limited series), the strip's update schedule and a sense of where the strip is going. This is the sales pitch, so treat it accordingly.

At this time, all submissions should be sent to MODERNTALES.SUBMISSIONS@GMAIL.COM. We cannot accept submissions to any other e-mail address. Any supporting documentation or files should be included as an attachment. Text files should be saved as plain text or rich text format and attached. Example strips and other graphics may be attached directly, or links provided. Please note that Gmail has a 10 mb limit on incoming messages, so plan accordingly.

Modern Tales receives a lot of submissions. While we will work hard to answer you as quickly as possible, please understand that response time is often measured in months instead of days. Please, no followup queries for at least six weeks.

TERMS

Cartoonists on Modern Tales Free not paid directly by Modern Tales. They will be given an area of their web pages where they may sell advertising (using Google AdSense, AdBrite, cj.com, or any number of other third-party advertising vendors -- or using a private advertising server we will set up for them) if they wish to do so. Ad space on the cartoonist's pages will be allotted like so: There will be a single standard 468x60 ad banner across the top of all pages on the free site, to represent Modern Tales's stake. That banner is site-wide and its compensation will go entirely to Modern Tales. An additional skyscraper sized advertisement (the more successful ad in today's ad market) will be entirely the artist's to use if they choose. All funds from ads sold into this space will go directly to the Cartoonist. Cartoonists may also choose to advertise merchandise, graphic novels, other comic strips, or anything else they wish in this space. Cartoonists who do not wish to sell independent advertising may choose to leave this space blank.

Modern Tales Free is a NON-EXCLUSIVE collective. This means that cartoonists are free to mirror their Modern Tales comics (both current and archived) on a website of their own or any other website. Cartoonists who are members of other collectives may continue to be members of those collectives as they wish (assuming those other collectives are also non-exclusive). All print and merchandise rights remain with the cartoonist. Modern Tales claims no rights save the right to display current comics and archives.

Modern Tales Free gives access to Modern Tales services like the private ad server, the Small Press Swapmeet, and the like, as well as the Modern Tales advanced content management system.

Modern Tales Cartoonists are expected to provide consistent updates in a professional manner. The most successful cartoon strips on the web have a consistency of appearance, and that consistency is key in developing a readership. When accepted, Modern Tales and the Cartoonist will set a schedule for updates. Hiatuses can be negotiated as needed, but inconsistent updating can be grounds for removal from the Modern Tales site.

QUESTIONS

How do I put together a submission cover letter and proposal? I've never done anything like that, and I don't think they covered it in school.
If you're foundering, let me quote former Girlamatic Editor and all around cool human being Lea Hernandez:

BEFORE YOU SEND ME YOUR PITCH, BUY or BORROW and READ *How To Write a Book Proposal by Michael Larsen. (Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1582972516/qid=1066192984/sr=2-1/ref=sr21/103-7710080-8024610) While it is geared towards non-fiction proposals, it does teach everything you need to know about crafting a readable proposal. I can't say for sure I'd know for sure if someone HASN'T read this when they pitch, but I bet I can tell who HAS. What I do not want to see is your entire story written out in a single-spaced block in email. Have mercy.

That's not the only way to do it, of course, but if the whole thought of building a pitch that sells is scaring you, this should help ease the pain.

The terrible, terrible pain.

What does 'Non-Exclusive' mean?
This means that your comic strip remains yours. We don't expect you to take down your own site, hide archives away, break ties with existing collectives or otherwise remake your online presence to conform to Modern Tales. In fact, using Modern Tales's Tooncasting feature, you can easily build a home page that shows the most current strip, designed however you like, and use Modern Tales Free as your archival method, seamlessly.

If you're part of some other organization, and want to remain a part of that organization, make certain they don't have an exclusive arrangement with you before submitting.

Why do I have to be at least eighteen to submit my proposal?
Because in the United States of America, which is where Joey Manley and I both live, and where the corporate offices of Modern Tales reside (such as they are), a person must be at least eighteen to enter a legally binding contract.

What advantages does Modern Tales give me?
Modern Tales is one of the best known comics collectives on the Internet. We have a reputation for outstanding quality and have been the home to some of the best webcomics on the web. In addition, we have a strong reputation outside of normal webcomics circles, both in the independent comics press and in the broader community (including past coverage in the New York Times.) Modern Tales can provide you with an entirely new audience for your work, without cutting ties with your existing audience.

Modern Tales also provides some of the best content management tools in the industry, including integration with some of the most popular systems and services. We strive to make it simple for our creators and cartoonists to get their strips onto the web and out to the people.

Further, Modern Tales has robust cross promotion. Our goal is to build Modern Tales Free into a strong community web site that will let cartoonists express themselves and support each other, while getting exposure from one another.

Over the past several years, we've also seen what works most consistently for folks who want to make some money with their comic strip. Overwhelmingly, those tools that let a Cartoonist merchandize or advertise for themselves without a middleman getting in the way seem to work the best. While Modern Tales is a collective, we want to give our Cartoonists every possible means of succeeding -- while giving them the all of the advantages of a large collective.

Finally, Joey Manley bakes a mean peach cobbler.

Once I get a strip on Modern Tales Free, I can launch as many others as I like, right?
Actually, no.

Many webcomics collectives use a model where creators can use their affiliation however they wish. Modern Tales Free, however, is organized around a more traditional print model. It's not an individual creator we're bringing onto the site -- it's a specific webcomic. Current Modern Tales Cartoonists still need to submit new comic strip ideas just like everyone else. And just like everyone else they sometimes get rejections.

Now, I won't pretend that we won't give some preference to folks we've worked with before. It's always easiest to accept a comic strip from someone we already know we can work with, know will update on time, and so on. This is also why we're more likely to accept a strip from a cartoonist with a proven track record than from an unknown.

I was rejected! You hate me!
Technically, that isn't a question.

However, it's safe to say we don't hate you. We get a lot more submissions than we can possibly use. Modern Tales is a business, and as such, we have to make our decisions based on an overall plan. We might pass on a good strip simply out of a question of balancing our selection, for example.

If you're rejected with a given strip, go on and conquer the world with that strip. If you succeed, we'll be applauding you with the rest of your loyal subjects. And if you come up with a new project, feel free to submit it as well.

Finally, we are astoundingly happy you submitted in the first place. Seriously. Getting submissions absolutely makes my day.

How can I improve my chances of being accepted?
First off, have all the basics down pat: make sure the example strips you send us really highlight your strengths; clean, clear art and good writing are always going to catch our attention; demonstrate that you're consistent with updates -- long, regular hiatuses are a warning flag to us; give us every reason to believe you take this seriously, as an art form and as a commitment.

Once you've got that, it's a question of attracting our interest with your subject matter and its execution. There's a balancing act between the cliche and the obscure that can be hard to manage -- if you send us a comic strip about a set of college roommates and their cute talking animal, it's going to have to be really, really good to stand out from the eighty-five others we've seen in the last week. On the flip side, if you're going to do a comic strip about the crystallization rate of sugar in a saturated solution, there'd better be something compelling in it.

What's off limits?
On the whole? Nothing. We're not limiting by genre or style. Single panel gag humor? Four panel newspaper style strip? Extended or expanded canvas? It's all good. Horror? Humor? Funny horror? Frightening humor? Good enough. Fantasy? Science Fiction? Left Wing humor? Right Wing humor? Good enough, so long as it's good.

Mature themes are also acceptable, though full on erotica or pornography is not. (Not because we're prudes, but because we work with PayPal, and PayPal won't accept erotica or pornography. So, keep it to a hard R or NC-17, but not X.)

This is Modern Tales. Does my strip have to be alternative/experimental/literary/Fantagraphicsish/whatever to be accepted?
Nope. It just has to be good. The real strength of a collective like Modern Tales -- one with an editor, submission guidelines and all the rest -- is that readers can come expecting quality work. That's our overriding concern. We want all the readers who come over to find stuff they like reading.

Can I e-mail my submission to one of your other e-mail addresses? Or through your blog? Or send you my submission in the mail? I want to stand out from the crowd.
Please submit all submissions to MODERNTALES.SUBMISSIONS@GMAIL.COM. No submission sent by any other means will be considered. Seriously. I will laugh. I will laugh and delete your submission and never reply to you. And you will sit and wait and hope and wonder for all eternity.

It's better by far to send it to the right address, don't you think?

Can I call you at home and pitch my strip to you?
Only if you want to hear a grown man cry.

Actually, even if you want to hear a grown man cry, the answer is still no.

Can I submit for consideration on Modern Tales's subscription service?
Not through this process. Subscription-only webcomics on Modern Tales are going to be few and far between, moving forward. If you're interested, you should query before sending a submission. Send those queries to MODERNTALES.SUBMISSIONS@GMAIL.COM, outlining in general terms what your proposal is. Make certain you explicitly state you intend your project to be subscription-only. I will forward your proposal on to the subscription editor, and at that point will have nothing more to do with it. Just for the record.

When I submit to Modern Tales, I'm also submitting to Graphic Smash, right?
Not directly, no. Though the related imprints are often called the Modern Tales Family of websites, each one is independent. By submitting through this process, you're telling us you're interested in being on Modern Tales Free in particular. If you're interested in Graphic Smash, Girlamatic or Serializer, you should check those websites for their submission guidelines.

That being said, if I see a high-action webcomic submitted to Modern Tales Free that I think is good, but can't use right at that moment, there's every chance I'll forward it on to Graphic Smash's editor. If he or she agrees with my assessment, they may contact you directly.

If Graphic Smash carries action webcomics, Serializer alternative comics, and Girlamatic comics that appeal to young adult and adult women, what does Modern Tales carry?
Modern Tales doesn't have a specific theme to our comics selections. We want quality webcomics across the whole spectrum of webcomics. We want the best comics in the known universe, regardless of their genre or style.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:56 PM | Comments (39)

December 30, 2005

Eric: One Websnark related side note on the last post!

One quick, necessary bit of business, regarding Modern Tales and my new job.

As I said last post, submissions for Modern Tales are not currently open. They will be, soon, but they're not, yet.

When they're opened, there will be a specific procedure to follow. That'll be the only way to submit, to keep my sanity somewhere close to the "sane" side.

Preemptively, I have to ask folks not to use Websnark to... well, try and submit things. Or "call my attention to them." Et al. I know some folks will want to, because... well, because for a year and a half, I've seen what they've done to attract a snarking. ;)

So, I'm not going to consider submissions right now. When I do, they'll have to go by the system we put in place. Please don't use my Livejournal or private mail to do end-runs around the system.

And I'm going to officially change the rules over here, slightly. (For just about the first time, I'd add.) Use of Websnark comments to lobby submissions/recruitment for Modern Tales is officially Out of Bounds.

Plus, it would annoy everyone else to no end, and how exactly would that dispose me to accept your strip, hmmmm?

Thanks, guys.

EDIT: I've had an e-mail request to post those submissions guidelines here on Websnark when they become available. That'll be an exception to the "not a Modern Tales info site" rule, but since I'm putting a specific rule against using Websnark to lobby, it seems fair that when we have a methodology we will let folks here know how to use it.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 5:37 PM | Comments (26)

Eric: I'm torn between a serene "here's some news that might interest you" and "OMGWTFLOLBBQ" for a title to this post. I think I'll just go with "wow."

So, in the last twenty four hours, a really big thing has happened in my life. A monumental thing. A huge thing.

Weirdly enough, it could also be construed as a big deal in webcomics.

And, among other things, it means some things over here at Websnark are going to change. At least where my involvement is... er... involved.

Yesterday, after my various posts, I received an offer. I have now accepted that offer.

Over the next month or so, I am going to be the new editor of Modern Tales.

Joey Manley is not going to the sea, mind. And bear in mind, this is Modern Tales, we're talking about. Not "The Modern Tales Family." I'm not taking over Graphic Smash, Serializer.net, or Girlamatic. However, things have been changing in the Manley empire for some time. Webcomics Nation has launched, and done well. Manley's priorities are changing.

And at the same time, Webcomics on the internet have also changed and evolved. We're not where we were in 2002. And so sites like Modern Tales have to evolve and change. Manley has some really, really good ideas for doing that change.

And he wants me to be part of it.

As editor, I'll be doing all the fun whip cracking. I'll also have a chance to shape the forward evolution. Part of my responsibilities will be submissions, acquisition and recruitment. My tastes and my biases will help shape the site as a whole, and what you will read there. And I sincerely hope you will be there.

Plus, you know, I'm getting paid. Which means I'm getting paid to edit.

Which means I'm getting paid in my degree. Which is like hitting the lottery for a guy with an English degree.

I'm thrilled. I'm excited. I'm astounded. And I'm a little scared.

In part, because this means things over here will have to change.

Oh, I know what I'm supposed to write, over here. "Don't worry, True Believers! Websnark's not going away! We're going to keep doing what we're doing! This is just something else I'm doing with my time." And yeah, Websnark isn't going away. I'm going to keep writing. Weds is going to keep writing. Stuff. Things.

But of course things are going to change. If there's one truth that came out of the Fleen debate from earlier, it's that we need to understand what biases and influences are going to shape a critic's opinions. As of this moment, I can't write anything about a Modern Tales comic without you knowing that I'm the editor. It's unethical to do otherwise. And you have to balance my thesis with the knowledge that I have a direct stake in the success of that strip.

Further, a number of webcomics creators are going to submit strips to me, in hopes of making it to Modern Tales. And, well, I'm not going to say "yes" to all of them. Or, reasonably, to most of them. If you think for one New York Minute that's not going to influence how those creators look at me, you've never gotten a rejection slip.

And, some people are going to declare I've sold out and gone to the devil. Others are going to declare that Modern Tales has gone to Hell and I'm the gatekeeper. There will be Drama.

I have credibility right now. The only way I can maintain that credibility is if I be straight with all of you. This is literally the first post I've made since accepting this position, and I'm letting all of you know what's going on. And I'm really, really thrilled. I hope most of you are happy for me. And those who aren't, I hope will still be cheerful.

As for things moving forward, MT wise? Watch for announcements. Comixpedia's a good place for that. I really don't intend to make Websnark an organ for distributing Modern Tales stuff. This site is remaining independent of MT. Wednesday's status isn't changing. (And I had to discuss this with her first, among other reasons because it would have a direct impact on Websnark, and I needed her okay before I could move forward.)

This also means some of my online habits need to change. I mean, I'm becoming an editor. A submissions editor. Naturally, some people are going to want to take any in they can find to... well, submit things. I can't be quite as open and accepting of stuff this way.

For the record? Submissions will be open soon, but are not open yet. I just got the job. I haven't sharpened my pencils yet. More news as events warrant. Watch MT for details.

Finally, I'm excited and a bit daunted on another level. See, I've been doing the Op/Ed thing for a year and a half. I've had my theories and my theses. I've put forth my opinions.

And now? I get to put up or shut up. I've talked the talk. Now I have the walk in front of me. That's frightening. It's also thrilling. I can't wait to get started.

To sum up?

Wow.

Wow.

Thank you, and good night.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:48 PM | Comments (82)

December 26, 2005

Eric: Seriously. Boxing.

It's a day of traveling, visiting family, traveling, returning home, and traveling.

On the other side of the equation, Weds is having some computer issues.

So, please take this opportunity to sound off! It's Boxing Day, the most wonderful day involving Boxes and Boxing in all the year!

If I get a chance, I'll do some of that writing I've meant to do later on this morning.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 7:47 AM | Comments (49)

December 24, 2005

Eric: A brief Administrative Note and Wish

I have two -- count them, two essays started that I haven't had time to finish. I don't have time to write the third I need to start, either, because I have to get in my car with my cat and go do things that mean it's Christmas.

I will hopefully have some writing time later, in and around doing things that mean it's Christmas.

If, however, I don't, I hope you all have the very best possible Christmas. If you don't celebrate Christmas, I still hope the day is phenomenally good to you. If you celebrate other things, I hope they're good too.

(If I come back and discover a "War on Christmas" debate in the comments, I will sob. Sob tears. On Christmas Eve. Just for the record¹.)

Merry Christmas, everyone.

---

¹ If preemptive guilt can work for mothers, maybe it can work for me. If not... well, everyone likes debate, right?

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:09 PM | Comments (46)

December 19, 2005

Eric: So... we need to have a little talk....

It's an interesting day. As we speak, Wednesday "Wednesday" White is preparing to enter a long tube that will fling her across the Atlantic. I'm going to pick her up tonight... only to see her fly back off tomorrow so she can... you know, spend Christmas with her family in a less distant land than she usually is, but still. (Stupid family.)

As a side note? Yeah, don't expect tremendous punctuality over the next couple of days. Life's good.

But, with one half of the action team in a plane, it seemed like a good time to... well, have a little chat. because I'm a bit concerned.

A few days ago, Cat Garza -- who I've recently begun to have some discussions with, usually under the aegis of the Webcomics Examiner, announced the birth of his daughter, Beatrix Cayce Garza.

This was tremendously cool, of course. As it was when Jerry Holkins, of Penny Arcade, announced the birth of his son, Elliot Jacob Holkins, back at the end of November.

In both cases, I thought Dude! I need to post a congratulatory note! Because in both cases this was tremendously cool. And because congratulating people on what is, after all, one of the defining moments of their life is the sort of thing I want to do with my time and my part of this here blog. In fact, you might remember that last year I did congratulate Mike Krahulik on the birth of his son.

(As a side note, I also mentioned that we just needed to get Holkins bred and we'd officially have them both chained to their jobs to keep providing sweet sweet food to their children. Mission accomplished, kids.)

But. I didn't post a congratulatory note for Holkins or Garza. Because I was scared someone would use the opportunity to trash the new father in the comments. Both Holkins and Garza have plenty of... whatever the opposite of "fans" are who don't seem to be able to set aside that enmity even in the short term.

Now, I figured I was being a little ridiculous. I mean, who would try to burst that balloon? Honestly. Especially among we the Snarkoleptics. We're a generally cool and froodish bunch.

Well... when I posted last week about the charity and its astounding good fortune... I figured out I was right to be concerned.

Please note, this is not a discussion of the people involved in that incident. Nor is it an excuse to trash them now. Those involved have contacted me privately to apologize. One person who needed to apologize publicly to another reader, in my opinion, did so before contacting me to apologize. We closed comments on that particular post, and this is not an invitation to reopen them. This is about me.

See... I love Websnark.

I love the venue. I love the chance to write. I love the chance to be read.

And I love the dialogue. The discourse. I love the snarkoleptics. I love having feedback. I love the debates.

But... I don't like not being able to congratulate a man on the birth of his child without feeling it might turn ugly. I don't like that at all. And I won't stand for it.

Only, I'm not entirely sure what that means. "I won't stand for it." Because I don't want to kill the discussion.

There are steps I can take. I can enable screened comments, for example, which means they wouldn't show up until I went in and said "yeah, that's kosher." Only that inexorably changes the positive aspects of our current system -- and adds a billion times the workload on the server side of things.

I can turn comments off entirely. Point people exclusively to the Snarkoleptics community to post comments on their own dime and off my server, and just write essays here. I've had a number of people suggest I do just that.

But I don't want to. I want to believe that people are basically kind and decent, and while they might get passionate, they don't get mean for no reason.

Some of our out there just started snickering. "Welcome to the internet, newbie," they snort.

Others say "hey -- I have a good reason!"

Here's the thing. I'm not a newbie. I've been doing this since 1987. I was on Usenet and bulletin boards. I've been on every iteration of the Web since the Web came to life. I've been on fora and on BBSs. I've been part of fandom. I've flamed and I've been flamed.

But I honestly believe that, barring a few people who just get off on making others miserable, the internet can be a place where people can come together, can disagree, but be polite about it. And more to the point, I honestly believe that just because we're on the internet doesn't mean we surrender the rules of basic society, of reasonable behavior, of discourse.

I work at a school. In some cases, I'm a teacher. In all cases, I'm responsible for educating my students about proper behavior online. And what has become clear, time and time again, is that the kids honestly forget there are real human beings on the other side of the electronic divide. They forget that this isn't some kind of game. This isn't some kind of contest.

It's just people. It's just communication.

I think of all of you as my friends. And I say things here that inflame passions. And I accept, as part of the cost of doing business, that you guys will insult me, sometimes. That's why the rule is as it is. "You get to insult Eric, when he writes an essay. But you don't get to insult each other." The point is to provide feedback. The point is to present opposing points of view. The point is to tell me I'm full of shit when I need to be told that.

The point is not to be mean to people, just because you can be. Or puncture someone else's balloon for no damn reason except you can.

I remember telling a friend, back when the incident happened last week, that the worst part -- more than disgust, more than shock, more than even what was said -- was the sheer disappointment I felt. I had asked people, just that once, to say nice things or not say anything at all. And I said to that friend that I had learned my lesson.

Maybe. And maybe not. Because I'm here, right now. And I'm being stupid enough to come out on stage and say "guys? We need to remember the spirit of what we're doing here. We want to discuss issues, and debate theses, and knock around ideas. Not people. Okay?"

Okay?

Because I like what Websnark has become too much to just give up on it.

Congratulations, Cat. Congratulations, Jerry. May you both know all the joys that new life brings, and may both kids grow up to be a thousand times cooler than you are, in every way, so that you both become bitter old men while your children win Nobel Prizes and discover life from the Andromeda Galaxy.

As for me? I need to finish cleaning the bathroom. Wednesday's coming for dinner.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:03 AM | Comments (67)

December 15, 2005

Eric: Public record.

Comments on the last post are now closed.

Comments aren't even being opened on this post.

And I'm more than a little bit disgusted right now.

Want to yell at me for it? E-mail me. I'm going to bed.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:52 AM

November 23, 2005

Wednesday: It is coming. From Nanaimo.

Look, I didn't mean to desert you. I do still like you. I do.

But, suddenly, I either couldn't sleep or I was sleeping all the time. I'm serious; there'd be spaces of 24, 25 hours awake, then three hours asleep, and then insomnia. This makes stringing words together a bit awkward.

Then, there was the doctor's visit. And the other doctor's visit. And the lying in bed on painkillers, because ow, and then the insomnia. In me, insomnia begets insomnia. I turn into Scott McCloud, in that I can't stop thinking.

Then I sort of turned thirty. It wasn't intentional. You'll understand, of course, if I had to go out for a while when that happened.

Honestly, I didn't mean to turn thirty.

Anyhow. The net result? I've had a decent amount of sleep for a five-day period, but over fourteen of them. You didn't want to read what was going through my head at the 25.5 hour mark the other day. Trust me. It involved complaining about nonconfidence motions and, well, giggling.

Ki is being worked on. You'll get to read more about that soon.

But, right now, because the doorbell kept ringing today, and things have not yet been recovered from properly, there need to be pills and a dark room real, real soon now. Just for a few hours. It's not you. I swear. It wasn't your fault.

Let me just go season this brisket (this is England; we don't have a Thanksgiving) and take the coedine-laced alkaseltzer, and I will be with you in ... cooooooolours.

Posted by Wednesday Burns-White at 2:56 PM | Comments (44)

November 16, 2005

Eric: Passages

(From General Protection Fault. Click on the thumbnail for full sized David Willis is God, and Jeff Darlington has a sense of humor, praise Buddha.)

Time continues to pass, no matter how frightening that seems. It feels like we just launched Websnark sometime last week, sometimes. I'm never quite clear on just how much my online life has changed now, but it clearly has. And I've changed. And this blog has changed.

And time continues to pass.

It's November 16, which means we have reached another milestone. The third and last current "You Had Me, And You Lost Me" essay has come up on Lastday and failed to renew, so the Sandmen have hunted it down and shot it. Or at least removed it from the front page.

It's official. We can talk about General Protection Fault again.

And that has me thinking about Sluggy Freelance.

No, stay with me here.

You see, last year at this time I was wrestling with GPF in my head. This was a strip I had literally been reading for years. A strip I once had loved. A strip I had watched grown. But it had grown in directions I didn't want to follow. That's not Jeff Darlington's fault. Nor have I ever said that GPF fans were wrong for continuing to like the strip. But, for all the reasons I laid out in the original Snark, I had to move on, and I wanted to explain why.

That's why I have a blog, you see.

Well, I knew this day was coming. I knew that, as with Megatokyo and It's Walky! before, that the strip's link would be coming off the front page. And that it would be happening for the same reasons that those two strips had their "You Had Me" status expire. Namely, I don't read the strip any more. It's unfair to continue to have a strip laying out what I perceived as problems with the strip as if those problems were immediate and ongoing when a full year had passed and I didn't know if the strip continued to have those problems or not. Or if, indeed, the passage of time had vindicated the webcartoonists and their vision over my critique. No one says I was right here. That's not the point.

In a way, the You Had Me... essays were among the most personal I put up on the site. I tried, of course, to build a thesis with them -- explain why I had grown to love those strips, and why I had stopped loving them, using examples. I tried to make them as open as possible. But those essays were ultimately even more of an expression of opinion than normal. (If it's possible to be more than 100% opinion, which everything else on this site is. Stick with me here -- I was an English major.) They weren't fun to write. They were hard. It's hard to look someone in the eye -- someone who has given you years of free entertainment -- free entertainment -- and say "look, here's how all the stuff you're doing isn't working for me." It's hubris, in a way.

But, it's also honest. And if I'm not honest on this site, what's the point of me writing on it?

I stand by all those essays. I stand by those opinions. And my "expiring" their status doesn't change that fact. They're still in the archives. You can easily read all of them by clicking on the Category link in the sidebar.

But, I can't pretend they're current. And it's not appropriate to continue having a moratorium on discussing them. And that's especially true of General Protection Fault.

I'm not sure why, but I've gotten about six times the mail about GPF since I dropped the strip than I got for Megatokyo and It's Walky combined. Some of that mail was negative towards me -- that's the price of doing business as an essayist, of course. But a lot of it was... well, structured like this. "Eric -- I know you don't read GPF any more, but did you see today's strip? Man, you wouldn't believe it. He's done...."

And then they would talk about something they found particularly egregious, or particularly illustrative of one of my points, or what have you.

I always found that interesting. Here's a strip I've explicitly stated is no longer part of my daily life, and I've had folks from far and wide... well, bringing it up. Often. Linking to bits and storylines.

And, because I've been curious, I've gone and looked. So, this is a strip I don't read, but I'm actually fairly up to date on it. Which seems odd to me.

Why GPF and not Megatokyo? I'm honestly not sure. But there it is. And during all this time, I haven't commented over here about the goings on of GPF, because of the moratorium, but also because even if I've kind of kept up to date because people link things to me or talk to me about them or send me mail... well, I don't read this strip. It might be a technical definition, but I'm sticking to it. One of my guiding principles on Websnark is I don't read strips out of a sense of schadenfreude. If I don't actually like a comic, I don't go on reading it. Even if I "kind of keep up to date" because people send me links or the like, I don't put the day to day energy or effort into reading that a decent critique requires. I'm not qualified to comment on GPF these days.

Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to Sluggy Freelance. Because over the course of the last eleven months, I've undergone quite a sea change when it comes to Sluggy.

As I've mentioned before, had the Shortbreads not died an abortive death each time I've tried to put them out, Sluggy Freelance would have gotten last years overall "Bringing the Story" Shortbread. To me, that means that of everything that was done last year, Sluggy was the comic strip that did it all right. "That Which Redeems" was, in my opinion, exceptional storytelling done exceptionally well. It was everything that is good and right and mete in the whole "Cerebus Syndrome" concept. Pete Abrams just did everything right.

If you would have told me a year ago that I would have seriously considered replacing General Protection Fault on the "You Had Me, And You Lost Me" list with Sluggy Freelance, I would have called you a liar. To your face.

But here we are, and I did indeed strongly consider it. Certainly, Sluggy is the strip closest to "You Had Me" status of anything I read. It's been on the (sadly not often mentioned any more) Why Do I Read This Comic, Anyway list for... well, pretty much since the start of Oceans Unmoving. Almost as many people who've written to me saying "I know you don't read GPF any more, but could you have a look at this..." have written saying "dude, why exactly do you still read Sluggy?"

And it's been harder and harder to answer them. And more and more of the snarks I've written about Sluggy in the past year have been negative, and it continues to be a truism for me that if I'm on balance being negative about a strip, I'm probably not enjoying that strip, and I should let it go.

Had it become an active plan? Dropping GPF from the sidebar (and the You Had Me status) and putting Sluggy Freelance on? Not really. I hadn't decided. But I was leaning that way.

And then, last week, Pete Abrams put an open letter on his front page. (This link will only work until it goes off the front page... since... well, I don't know where or if Abrams archives old news items.) This letter talked about "Oceans Unmoving," and about the difficulties of telling a story like this, and the reasons why he told this story. Here's a quote:

Hey everybody! I wanted to let you all know what a horrible mistake I’ve made in and with the comic lately! You see, I like throwing in epic complex storylines from time to time. That Which Redeems required a lot of background info about the “Dimension of Lame” and explaining too much detail could slow down the story at times, but I chose my battles and told my tale and was very happy with the finished product. Then I made a mistake.

I’m kinda like Hereti-Corp! “Even our mistakes are big!”

Timeless Space (a concept that was so durn cool and simple in my head) is a whole environment in which next to everything needed explanation and it has slowed the storytelling process immensely. There is just too much to comfortably and seamlessly weave into the daily strips without buckets of words or hundreds of panels. And to follow it so closely after That Which Redeems was very bad timing. But I really wanted to get back to Bun-bun who had been waiting far too long to be gotten back to (similar to Oasis and Aylee).

He then goes on to discuss exactly how he feels that things went off the rails, and go through the potential solutions he discussed. And he mentioned that this would all probably make a really cool Graphic Novel that would be read all at once, instead of a daily strip.

And I had a sudden and pernicious flash of deja vu. From my original essay on General Protection Fault:

It was over. It was finally over. And don't make any mistake -- it was a major blow to GPF. It got bad enough that Darlington actually had to post disclaimers swearing that the funny would be back, give it time, this was the payoff to the whole series, no honestly. Just have faith. And if it's just too much and not why you're here, then just drop GPF for a while and come back in December!

Guys, when you have to tell your fans to stop reading until your plotline is over... you've lost. You have completely lost.

Seeing something that evoked the ineffable sense of Surreptitious Machinations in Abrams's current plotline struck me. But not nearly as much as the difference in tone.

You see... Jeff Darlington didn't say "look, I screwed up." Darlington was and is convinced Surreptitious Machinations was his masterwork. He really, really liked it. He liked how it came together. He liked how it read. He is very, very proud of it.

And I have no right to say he shouldn't be. None.

Nor is he the only one. I know of people who loved Surreptitious Machinations. I know of people who absolutely disagreed with every point of my essay.

The point of the essay, however, wasn't that Jeff Darlington was wrong or bad. It's that he had me -- he had me as a reader and fan -- and then he lost me. It's not that Darlington did things wrong. It's that his vision no longer matched up with what I wanted from my daily GPF reading. And there's no reason that it should. Nor is there a reason Darlington should care that I left. People have different tastes. If he could glean insight from my essay, good enough. If he read it and said "well, whatever -- I'm going to tell the story I want to tell the way I want to tell it," good enough.

The point, which I am belaboring, is that it didn't work for me any more, and I didn't get the sense it would work for me after that... so I left it behind. C'est bien.

The difference between that and Peter Abrams's open letter is that Abrams does think this has gone badly.

Not "I've gotten some of you upset but this is pulling together the way I want it." No, this is "I had an idea and I think it was a bitching idea but it didn't come together the way I expected. I don't want to drop it entirely, and I don't want to force a sudden and unsatisfying ending, and I think it might make a good graphic novel but that's not what I'm doing here! Which he did say, actually. Well, what he said was:

I think the whole story and all its complexities will come together as a nice tale once together in one piece (this probably would have made a great graphic novel, but as it were, I’m not in the graphic novel business) but for now I understand the torture to daily readers. Now the question is what do I do about it?

The distinction is subtle, but it's there. Darlington had a story he wanted to tell and he felt he told it successfully. I didn't enjoy it, on the other hand. Abrams had a story to tell, but it's not going successfully, in his opinion. And I concur.

It's the difference between "he's going away from the stuff I liked, and it's time I go off on my own direction," and "this isn't what I like, but there continue to be signs we'll get back to the stuff I do like."

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't think Pete Abrams cares if he has me as a reader. (Pete Abrams is one of those people I'm moderately sure doesn't know who I am. And there's nothing wrong with that.) But as I said, "you had me, and you lost me" is a personal thing. That open letter gives me reason to hope.

And if I have hope, then he hasn't lost me. Yet.

So. Obviously, with GPF going off the list, the sidebar item had to go away. There was nothing left to put in it. (No, Garfield doesn't count.) So, I took a suggestion given to me by the Snarkoleptics a while back, when we first discussed whether or not the "You Had Me" essays would expire -- I'm putting in an "Evergreen" section. These are some of the snarks and essays I'm proud of. Three of them are mine, two are Weds's (I haven't discussed them with Weds, so they may change when she says "dude -- I don't want the Sailor Moon thing there" or the like). And I'm officially soliciting suggestions for other classic snarks to put up there. Here's your chance to say what we at Websnark have done really right.

And otherwise... the question is, what's going to change. There's nothing currently on "You Had Me, and you Lost Me" status. It remains in the arsenal, but it's unused right now. How're things going to change?

Well, for me, they're not. You see, I don't read GPF.

But I'm not the only writer for this website.

And the other writer? Does.

I strongly recommend you watch this space tomorrow. I've seen some advances. Dude.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:50 AM | Comments (61)

November 15, 2005

Eric: This was the night when I had had nothing.

There was nothing.

I went to the writing of things, and there were no things to be written.

It was like going to the big canister of cookies, but there were no cookies. Instead, there was some crumbs and a napkin at the bottom.

Wednesday says it's because I'm having my period. "Tell them," she said. "Tell them your menstruation has taken away your words!"

Achewood is good.

Penny Arcade's new site looks nice.

Questionable Content is absolutely fantastic recently.

VG Cats did a good strip too.

I miss Chex.

I'm going away now. Away and sleeping. And maybe tomorrow there will be words. Or cookies. I'm totally good for cookies.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:53 PM | Comments (51)

November 7, 2005

Eric: Hrm.

So, we had to lock the comments on a thread.

Only, something in the latest version of Moveable Type is causing the comments people already made to vanish into the night. This is not what we want (we want the record free and open).

So. We're working on that. So if you see comments have vanished on one of the existing posts, know that A) they still exist in the system (I checked) and B) we're working on displaying them again.

Thanks all.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:27 PM | Comments (27)

October 27, 2005

Eric: Comics Nation -- no news here.

Hey all. I'm up to my throat today, but I've been getting some mail so I figured it'd be easiest to respond to it over the PA system instead of individual phone calls. So! Here we are!

Apparently, Comics Nation has vanished -- their URL suddenly redirecting to a placeholder page. As a good number of people first heard about it from me, they're wondering if I know anything.

I don't. In the wake of the controversy that erupted around it, and some of the things said then (and I really don't mean to rehash it), I ultimately decided to use other methods of backing up my reading list and take the time to rebuild my Safari Tabs. So I haven't been using it. Looking at it, however, it seems to me that either the domain was allowed to lapse, letting someone snipe it, or that they're having significant account problems and their hosting service has redirected to a placeholder in the meantime.

If someone knows or finds out more, and passes it to me, I'll pass it to you.

Peace, y'all.

EDIT: Taking a couple of seconds to run a Whois query shows the domain expired two days ago. I suspect that has something to do with it.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:53 AM | Comments (61)

October 17, 2005

Eric: A fast update

Things have been better, but things have also been worse, and this isn't about that. Though for those who have wondered, yes I'm still sick.

And there is much to discuss.

There's things with Goats, which is doing something wholly remarkable, and which deserves comment. And of course, Penny Arcade... well, nailing a win. And I'll write about both of those. I will. And there's other webcomics stuff, and life stuff, and things mulling through the sinuses and the ear-ringing, and stuff with Nanowrimo.

And, much to the distress of others, there's yet more stuff to say about video games and John Stark. And more to the point some things to say about Gossamer Commons. And I'd like to say I was sorry to have them on the docket for discussion, but it occurs to me I'm not, so I'm not.

But for now, as I clean the apartment in between naps and medicine, on a day that was supposed to be a vacation day.... well, I hope you're all well.

There is much to discuss. And I have every intention of doing it.

But not right now.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 6:41 PM | Comments (29)

October 5, 2005

Eric: Okay? Guys? For the record?

Preview mode on comments doesn't work.

We all know it doesn't work.

It's sad and pathetic it doesn't work, and I wish it did work. And I have occasionally looked at plugins and other addons to make it work. But for right now it doesn't work.

Here's how comments like to work. Don't use markup to break paragraphs. Just hit the "return" key and space them out. Do use markup for links or emphasis or the like.

The exception to the above is blockquoting. If you blockquote, put two breaks (<br><br>) between paragraphs, but do not hit return at the same time. Hitting return as well as putting the <br> marks in means you're doubling the breaks, which makes for long and unwieldy looking bits.

It sucks, but it's not because we don't like you.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 6:03 PM | Comments (22)

September 25, 2005

Eric: It's like wearing pimp clothes, only without the sexism or the stereotyping!

You'll notice another sidebar tweak -- one that folks have asked for before. There's finally a link to other projects -- I've got a link to Gossamer Commons, if course. You'll also see a link to The Adventures of Brigadier General John Stark. That's right -- John Stark's voice has taken flight in my brain, and at least until I run out of ideas, he's going to appear daily at Webcomics Nation. The first strip is up -- the one you've seen before. I've queued up strips straight through to the end of the week. (I'm not sure if it's ripping off Daily Dinosaur Comics, Sinister Bedfellows or both, but I'm having fun so what the Hell?) As Weds and I develop our little online forays, we'll make sure there's appropriate linkage going on.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:30 AM | Comments (16)

September 22, 2005

Eric: It's like putting out a call to the Blue Blaze irregulars!

I am developing a need to develop resources for various projects. Among those resources are folks wise in the ways of language.

In particular, I could use a reference point for Latin (modern or classical -- or both!) and Greek (also modern, classical or both.)

I could also use a conversation with someone well versed in alternative punk music -- particularly current/modern alt-punk with a certain measure of popularity that seems ironic. (Otherwise known as "the kind of music you might expect any given 19 year old Suicidegirl to listen to.)

All of the above are for writing projects of one kind or other. Thanks in advance!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 4:30 PM | Comments (34)

September 19, 2005

Eric: It Be Both September 19 an' also PIMP DAY! Scupper me wi' a handspike, else!

Darrrrr! It be talk like a Pirate day! Tis a holiday I can sink me hook into!

Also? My next Comixpedia column is up, over to Comixpedia.

I can say without fear of contradiction that it is, in fact, a column. I'm not making any other promises.

Darrrr!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:29 PM | Comments (35)

Eric: A brief, disturbing note.

Everyone who keeps track of their statistics and who has the modules enabled to track search string pings knows the surreal joy that is reading your search strings. I'm certainly no exception to that. I mean, how nice to know I track for people searching for "Superhero porn."

However, it disturbs me that I receive so many search pings for the string "it puts the lotion in the basket."

I mean, honestly.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 7:49 AM | Comments (19)

September 14, 2005

: FAQ: About Websnark (Revised 20 April 2006)

What the Hell is all this?

This is Websnark, a commentary weblog. We comment on... well, stuff. Frequently the stuff that we find on the web, though not exclusively. Essentially, we write about whatever interests us at the time of writing.

Who exactly are you people?

Eric Alfred Burns and Wednesday White. Eric started the site in August 2004; Wednesday came on board in February 2005. See the Cast List.

Why all the webcomics stuff?

We like webcomics. A large percentage of the stuff we read online consists of webcomics. So it's often the stuff we're thinking about, which means in turn it's the stuff that we're writing about. You see? Of course you see.

Wait -- I come here for the webcomics stuff. What's all this about superheroes or games or Jack Chick or your personal lives or crap like that? Isn't this a webcomics site?

No. While webcomics make up the (vast) majority of what we talk about, this isn't a 'webcomics blog' so much as it is a place for us to write about whatever it is we want to write about. If that's TV instead, or fandom stuff, or trashy religious entertainment, or pop culture, or the Astronomy Picture of the Day, or even whatever happened to one or the other of us on any given day, that's what it is.

Also, these days? Chick tracts are also webcomics, by some definitions.

Why 'websnark?' What is a snark?

The word "snark" comes from Lewis Carroll's poem "Jabberwocky" "The Hunting of the Snark¹." It's a kind of beastie. In computer terms, a snark is some kind of threat or problem on a computer. However, the word has come to also mean sarcastic commentary or the sarcastic expression of opinions. He snarks, she snarks, they snark. That kind of thing. So, since our humour typically runs to the sarcastic, Websnark becomes our place to snark about the web. Eric picked the name out. (Eric tends to be more positive than negative in his snarks, because he's a wuss. Wednesday tends to be a little less shiny, because she's a fussbudget. Balance kicks ass.)
Elsewhere, 'snark' has come to refer to weblog posts about webcomics; it used to just mean posts from here ("My comic's been Snarked!"), but the term's drifted. It's both appealing and humbling to see how the term's shifted meaning and focus.

So, that means you're a webcomics site, right?

No.

What schedule do you follow when posting?

When you read it, it's been posted. There's no set schedule. Sometimes, if either of us gets a chance to queue things up a little, we'll set them to post through the day at regular intervals, but there's no promise. We'll occasionally disappear for a few days as other commitments or health considerations take precedence. We try to get something out at least once a day, though.

What gives you the right to criticize other people's work?

Well, we pay for our hosting, you see. Which means that we're paying for the press this is printed on. And said press is in the United States of America, where the site's owner lives, which means the right comes from the United States Constitution. (Yes, even for the Canadian in the crowd, what since she's using that American press.) If you're reading this in another country... well, we get to publish it, but whether or not you get to read it is your own lookout.

I love your site, especially when you really lay into crappy work! Why do you spend so much time saying nice things instead of bad things?

Eric: I hear this more often than you might think. It always surprises me, though. I mean, is schadenfreude really that important to you?

The answer to your question is quite simple, however. I snark about the things I encounter on a daily basis. The things I tend to read are things I like. Now, if I like them, I'm not going to insult them on a regular basis, am I? So, there's going to be a lot more "this is so fucking cool!" from me than me trash talking things. It's the way it is.

Wednesday: Wait. I'm confused. I don't like anything.

How can you say such mean things about [Megatokyo/It's Walky/General Protection Fault/Whatever]? That's my favorite webcomic! You suck and are wrong! And bad! Wrong and bad!

These are, by definition, opinions. They're not 'wrong,' they just belong to one or the other of us. We're not always going to agree. (Eric and Wednesday can't even always agree.) You are perfectly free to like things that we don't. You're perfectly free to keep reading things we've put on the 'You had me and you lost me' list. We respect that. We're also free to dislike them. And to make fun of them. It's what we do.

How can you say such nice things about [Sluggy Freelance/Something Positive/PvP/Whatever]]? That webcomic sucks! You suck and are wrong! And bad! Wrong and bad!

Eric: Once again, you'd be surprised how often I get this one. I like stuff I like. If you read the snarks, you'll figure out what it is I like about them. You might not agree with me, but I hope you'll at least see my point. Still, it all comes down to the same thing as the last point -- I like what I like. Don't sweat it if you don't like it.

You don't seem to read one of my favorite webcomics. Can I suggest it to you?

Absolutely! Some of my favorite recent finds -- like Freefall and Questionable Content -- came from people suggesting comics to me. I can't promise I'll get to them soon or snark them when I do get to them, but I truly enjoy reading webcomics and cartoons of all stripes, and so I'm always glad to have more to check out!

Hey! I know a webcomic that's really terrible! Would you look at it so you can make fun of it?

Um. No. We don't go looking for things to insult just so I can insult them. That's not criticism. That's just being mean. We don't care if you think we're funny while I'm being mean. We don't choose to be mean to people just because we have a website. When we are sarcastic (or even mean) to sites, it's usually after we've been following that site for years and really liked it at one time (or even still like it now). So, don't bother e-mailing us links to Gonterman comics unless you actually like Gonterman's comics and you want us to read them because you think that one of us will like them. There are plenty of all-negative snarksites on the web, if that's what you want. We even read and enjoy some of them. But that's not our thing.

Wednesday adds: This is distinct yet again from trainwreck fascination, which I see as a valuable learning tool. I don't enjoy being mean, but I do enjoy figuring out why something's broken.

Why do you have thumbnails of other peoples' comics on your site? Isn't that a violation of copyright?

Nope. Even though we wouldn't call this a review site, much of it is critical commentary. It's perfectly legal to use examples of art we're commenting on or producing critical work about, under fair use, in the United States of America. Your local laws may vary, of course. Further, we always either thumbnail art (so that the 'salability' of the original image is not diluted' or excerpt bits of it before putting it up, and we also credit our sources. The combination means that we're perfectly able to use the art on my site, even without asking first. (Or even when someone says we can't -- no one gets to restrict fair use.)

Hey -- I clicked on a thumbnail to get the full sized comic, and it took me to the webcomic itself! Why don't you have full sized images on your site?

For several reasons. 1) We don't want to inadvertently overstep the bounds of fair use, so we specifically excerpt or thumbnail only, here. 2) We don't think it's fair for Websnark to become a 'first stop' for people who want to read cartoons -- they should read those cartoons in the context the webcartoonist intended, on their site, seeing their site design, advertisements and so forth. 3) Much of the time, we're extolling the virtues of a webcomic. Naturally, we want to increase traffic to the site in question. 4) Websnark is not made of bandwidth.

You think you're so smart! Do you think you can do better?

Eric:Well, I don't know if I can do better or not. I certainly can't draw. I try to write pretty well. But in the end, that's not really the point. I write criticism because... well, I am pretty good at that. Mostly.

Wednesday: Not yet. I use writing as a learning tool, and part of the reason why I became involved with writing about webcomics in the first place was to sort out for myself what works and what doesn't. It's an ongoing testing process. But many critics aren't themselves primarily creators -- Roger Ebert, to use an overly worn example here, is not exactly best known for his screenwriting, but his film criticism is no less valid.

I'm an webcartoonist, and I'd like your feedback. Will you give it to me?

Glad to! No promises on how quickly we can get back to you, though!

I'm a webcartoonist, and I don't like the snark you wrote about me. Will you take it down?

Sorry, but no. You are fully free to comment on the snark, refuting it. We won't remove your comments unless they're outright inflammatory beyond responding to us. (We've never actually deleted a comment on the posts to date. We don't permit commenters to insult others in the thread, though, and have had to lock a couple as a result.) If you can convince us that we were wrong about something, we'll put up a snark saying so. But the original posts don't come down. For better or worse, when they go up, they go up for life.

Seriously, dude. I don't like what you said. If you don't take it down, I'll sue you for slander.

Okay, first off, slander is oral in nature -- we'd have to publicly speak lies about you to slander you. The term you're looking for is libel. Second off, this is a commentary site. Everything on this site is opinion. And, legally speaking, opinions are not libel, because they don't make a claims about you -- they make claims about one or both of us. They are the truthful assertion of what we think of you. See, if one of us were to claim you fucked dogs, and you in fact didn't fuck dogs, that'd be libel, and you could sue. If, on the other hand, we say that you seem like a dog fucker to us, that's an opinion being expressed -- in our opinion, you have qualities that put us in mind of dog fuckers. I'm not claiming you actually fuck dogs. It just seems, in our opinion, like you're the kind of person who would. That's not libel -- it honestly is our opinion of you. And you don't get to sue us because we have a different opinion from yours, y'damn dog fucker.

What's that phrase in your masthead that changes periodially for?

That's the raison d'etre of the site, as the French say. The reason for its being. And it stays crunchy in milk with the great taste of raisins in every bite. Mostly, it's there to set a tone. We make no claims for its success.

Do you have a list of past raison d'etres?

Sure! A partial one, anyhow:

• We snark, because we love.
• Because "Comixpedia" was already taken.
• No, no one gives a crap what I think.
• Because my cat never comments on my opinions.
• Because Charlie Brown never got to kick that football.
• Less expensive than Scotch and less painful than running your head into the wall; it's win-win!
• Someday we're all gonna get killed by someone who likes Yu-Gi-Oh.
• Noted for its clever turns of phrase, and... stuff... like... you know, that... stuff....
• Fishing for compliments since August.
• 50,000 words in 30 days? Simple. Making them cogent? You've got to be kidding me.
• Jesus Christ, I'm drinking wheat!? How the Hell do you drink wheat!?
• Two writers. One cat. 4000 miles of ocean. Let's do this thing.
• Oh no! I have psychosomatic Kaposi's sarcoma!

What's that creature in the corner of the screen? He's so cute! Where did you get him?

Eric:That's Snarky! He's a Snarkasaurus. He was created by Ursula Vernon, the webcartoonist of Digger, when I asked for someone to do quick doodle art for my Comixpedia column "Feeding Snarky." That I got such a fantastic piece back from that request blew me away, and I later commissioned that more complete piece from Ursula to be the site mascot. He's sleeping because a guy called Mckenzee, who's one of our dedicated readers, coined the term "Snarkoleptics" as a title for the fan base.

I love your site? Can I link to you? Or to individual entries? Or stuff like that?

Sure! Of course! Hell yeah! The only way a site like this grows is if people tell their friends about it, and we like it when people read our stuff. Also, it gives us a serious lift when people like (or hate) something so much they post a link to it. There is no greater joy for a writer than impact. Further, we think "link policies" aren't only unenforceable and potentially illegal, they're just downright rude. It's the Web. Links are what create it. Jesus Christ on a stick, be glad when people want to see your stuff.

Do you have a link button I can use?

Not at this time. A couple of people have created them for me and use them on their own sites, and that totally delights us. Sooner or later, we'll either ask to use one of those officially or make our own, but for now, there's no official one.

Will you link to me? And use my linking button?

Only in the context of a Snark, right now. The closest thing to a links page we have are Eric's daily trawls. (Wednesday's still working on her equivalent ma.gnolia collection, since she finds it easier to make lists when there are extra toys involved.) If you produce something that we read every day, you might end up in one of the trawls. But right now, we pretty much link stuff in the actual snarks. As for linking buttons -- we don't currently use them. It's nothing against you.

Hey, I want to send you e-mail. What's your e-mail address?

The best place to send us e-mail is at WEBSNARK at GMAIL dot COM -- decode it and let fly. It's like a reverse rebus, isn't it?

¹As reader NathanielK reminded Eric. Not that he should have remembered that on his own or anything. It's not like he named the fucking website after it or anything.

Posted by Eric and Wednesday at 5:07 PM

September 3, 2005

Eric: The question is, will a new Webcomics Wiki-based encyclopedia be considered notable enough for Wikipedia inclusion?

Xerexes, over at Comixpedia, has taken up the challenge of a Webcomics-specific wiki based encyclopedia! You see? A good idea gets proposed one day, elaborated on with some truly fantastic comments and discussion, and acted upon the next!

My understanding from Xerexes is that all the folks who expressed a desire to be involved on many levels will get an opportunity to do so. And beyond those who want to pitch in with the myriad administrative details, pretty much anyone on Earth will get a chance to contribute material and depth to the encyclopedia.

Like we said in the comments of the last snark, we're not looking to replace Wikipedia. Or compete with them. However, Wikipedia doesn't currently fit the needs of the webcomics community (and there's no reason they should -- they're a general encyclopedia). And rather than try to force them to change into what we need or could better use, it makes sense to... you know, create the resource we need or could use ourselves.

Vive l'Internet.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:58 PM | Comments (37)

August 24, 2005

Eric: This is what happens when you tweak things while whistling shreds your sanity

Right. I managed to kill the main index template. We have a default up top, and I'm going to bed. I'll fix it in the morning. Snarky will return soon, I swear.

EDIT: Okay. I couldn't rest without fixing some of the stuff. So, Snarky's back. The About Section and Trawls are back. The Categories... well, work again (and there's a list of how many entries each category has, next to them. Because we can). Under them, you'll find the new "Recent Comments" feature, which lists the 20 most recent comments. Next down are the Weekly Archives. Under that, you'll find a list of the 20 most recent entries. And finally, below that you'll find the Technorati link, the Creative Commons license link, and other such fun.

STILL BROKEN: (Weds? If you want to try and figure this out while I'm asleep and you're awake in the morning, I will be your best friend, I swear.) The Individual Archives (when you click to add comments or whatever) choke on the sidebar. Now, the sidebar is just Snarky, on those pages, but I think it actually looks better (and would look more consistent when navigating here from the front page) if it, you know, actually has a Sidebar on these pages. So... um... yeah. Totally be your best friend.

Night, everyone.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:44 AM | Comments (17)

Eric: Time for a change, dagnabbit!

Since we were tweaking the sidebar anyhow, it was just plain time for an overhaul. The old stylesheet was nice, but inefficient. And besides, shaking things up is just plain American.

Or, you know. Canadian.

Maybe it's universal.

Anyhow. Let us know what you think of the changes! (And thanks as always to Movablestyle.com, which has lovely resources for sites like ours.)

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:12 AM | Comments (24)

Eric: Sidebar Changes

After a suggestion from Matt "Action" Sweeney, and some cajoling of broken bits which the good people at Six Apart helped us resolve, we now have some sidebar changes. If you scroll down below the categories list, you'll now see A) that we've gotten rid of the superfluous "Calendar" function (seriously, did anyone ever use it? Ever?"), B) stripped back the Recent Entries list to the last 20, and C) added a Recent Comments listing below the categories, so you can easily keep track of new comments as they're posted and people can actually get their names on the front page if they want.

Below the Recent Comments, we still have the weekly listings, which some people truly love to use, what since it gives you a full listing of entries for a given week, for folks who've been away and want to get caught up.

And, we've bumped up the "days displayed" back to our traditional 7 days. We'll see if it so badly hits bandwidth that we need to restrict it back again.

Enjoy, all!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:56 AM | Comments (9)

August 23, 2005

Eric: Utterly random and superfluous congratulations go to PRODIGAL!

Yes! Prodigal! Congratulations! You are the proud poster of the Ten Thousandth Comment to Websnark!

10,000 comments.

I think I need to lie down.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:51 PM | Comments (13)

August 21, 2005

Eric: And now, the plug!

It's once again time to plug a new Feeding Snarky over at Comixpedia -- and this is one I'm actually particularly proud of. It's also one of my longest columns to date.

And it's all about porn!

Well, no. It's not. But there's a lot of porn in it. Sweet, sweet sex-positive porn. And some thoughts on perceptions.

Check it on out, when you get a chance!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:42 PM | Comments (34)

August 9, 2005

Eric: Shirts sent, and I'm made of foam!

There is a weariness that settles over you. It soaks into your bones and flows through your spleen. It colors your thoughts and makes your brain the consistency of mush. And then, on top of it all, you feel sick.

This is where I live. Metown, population yo.

Through it all, however, I've managed to put in the "Revelations: Strunk and White" shirt order, and make preparations for the next shirt and other bits of stuff for the purchasing.

Also, there is the chance for other exciting bits of goodness. I for one would like to see tea mugs. I mean, dude. Tea mugs.

Or not.

Anyway. I'll make an extra effort to not be so crap tomorrow, and give you snarks and writings!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:59 PM | Comments (16)

July 28, 2005

Eric: The monthly pimping of other things I write!

I should have mentioned this at the beginning of the week, but this month's Feeding Snarky is now up and available over at Comixpedia.

This was a "topicless" issue -- and let me say for the record that there is something desperately wrong with the word "topicless." It looks misspelled, only I don't for the life of me know how I'd spell it differently. So, this particular column I ruminated about awards -- and about the concept of validation and "Best Hair."

It's a good issue, overall. I love Jeph Jacques's cover art a terrific deal.

It also features a review by the second woman I know of to have the surname of "Astruc." I love that name. It seems mysterious and enigmatic. One also assumes it could describe a truck full of posteriors, but that seems unlikely.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 7:20 PM | Comments (17)

July 8, 2005

Eric: A call for help, for fans of Amber Greenlee

I received the an e-mail from Amber "Glych" Greenlee, artist of the truly excellent comic strip No Stereotypes. She asked me to post the following message on her behalf, and I'm glad to do so.

As someone recovering from data loss of his own, I know exactly how Glych feels. If anyone can help her, please do so. She's a cool person.

Due to multiple computer crashes in the past, it looks like I've completely lost my infamous Flash Framed Finale from the original incarnation of No Stereotypes. I have all of the other comics that have been lost due to wonderful readers who've saved the majority of the archives on their home computers, however this one seems to be gone from the compiled lists of those readers. If anyone has it, or thinks they know someone who has it please e-mail me at: glych(at)panel2panel(dot)com. Thank you for your time and attention.

-glych

If this causes a heated debate in the comments section, I'm going to start drinking scotch heavily.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:03 AM | Comments (68)

July 4, 2005

Wednesday: [w] Silence Perpetuated

Eric's Powerbook fell over last night. Dying-to-dead hard drive. And he has Familial Obligations today. So. Well. He won't be around.

So you're stuck with me.

Oh, stop that face. If it makes you feel better, I'll go put on a beard.

Posted by Wednesday Burns-White at 12:03 PM | Comments (18)

June 27, 2005

Eric: Webcomickry

I'm trying to do some webcomicishness snarks today. I really am. Things aren't directly sparking, but coffee will soon be involved. With hanging with Weds over the past couple of weeks, I know things have been killer light over here (since... well, both the writers have been doing noncomputer stuff), but I swear it will return.

It WILL RETURN!

At the top of my brain, of course, is a breakdown of the Question, the Huntress, Black Canary and Green Arrow as ectypes of the archetype that Batman represents within the mythological construct of comic books, but if I do another JLU snark without talking about webcomics first, someone's going to kill me with a large knife.

So, like, dude.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:17 PM | Comments (37)

June 22, 2005

Eric: Note on a clarification re goggles doing nothing.

I made a quick addition (without changing anything) to my little visceral reaction to the yiff petition. If you care at all and are reading this via RSS or the like, you might want to go back to see it. Alternately, you might not.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:15 AM

June 6, 2005

Eric: Due diligence

I would be remiss if I didn't mention there was a good dissenting essay about my Digital Strips/Penny Arcade Snark over at Goats. Jon Rosenberg calls bullshit on me and does it well.

(I still stand by my essay, mind -- but I respect Rosenberg's dissent.)

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:28 PM | Comments (57)

June 4, 2005

Eric: Day of Recovery

Barely did anything today, other than recovering from the week and weaning myself from the frightening levels of caffeine I've managed to start putting into my body. With luck the latter will become more manageable with time.

The control key on my keyboard was broken by... er... my cat's face, so I'm also a little off my game. (The poor thing jumped for the coffee table, missed, and did a face gainer right into the keyboard. There was, to quote Two Lumps, lots of pettings and gooshyfood afterward.) Still, I'll work to get real posting done tomorrow.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:57 PM | Comments (2)

June 2, 2005

Eric: Upgrades!

We've upgraded to the latest Movable Type install here at Websnarkia, which means that pages will hopefully load faster and maybe -- maybe -- Typekey will stop hating Internet Explorer. Let me know if anything weird happens to you.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:09 PM | Comments (4)

May 15, 2005

Eric: The Comixpedia Shuffle

It's the collaboration issue of Comixpedia, and this week I have not one but two Collabertastic articles. The first, my Feeding Snarky column for this month, goes into some detail on the difference collaboration made from my first -- terrible webcomic and the pretty-damn-spiffy Gossamer Commons of today.

(By the by -- tomorrow's Gossamer Commons -- which will be 'today's' Gossamer Commons within a few minutes Today's Gossamer Commons has some of the most kicking of ass art Greg's done yet -- it absolutely proves the column's accuracy, in my humble opinion.)

Also in this week's dispatch is Taking Their Lumps. This is an interview I got to conduct with J. Grant and Mel Hynes of Two Lumps. Grant and Hynes were astoundingly cool interviewees.

I... um... didn't come up with the title, for the record. Not that I'm distancing myself from the title. No no! No... I'm... all about the puns... no... really... um....

Anyway! In addition to me doing my writerly things on those two pieces, there's lots of good collaborative fodder so far. I'd have pimped out some of it last week, but as you all know I've been pretty sick and burnt out. Of particular note so far is Alexander Danner's Guide to Collaboration and this month's Modern Humor Authority strip, penned as always by Kristofer Straub, has me weep with the beauty that it evokes in my turgid soul.

And of course there's more! And more to come later this month (I haven't seen anything from Ping Teo this month yet, for example -- and if I go too long without seeing Ping Teo stuff in Comixpedia, the shakes come back and I have to start slaughtering Klingons and Starfleet officiers until the Founders restore my Ping Teo writing injection tube.)

All in all -- it's some damn good writing at Comixpedia this month... except the Lilim.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:15 PM | Comments (6)

April 17, 2005

Eric: Also, nowhere in the article do I make reference to 'Chicky-babes.'

It's that time of the month again -- time for my latest Comixpedia Column. It's Women in Webcomix Redux month at the 'pedia, which... actually gave me some trouble. I have a good number of female webcartoonists I follow. I've also written Comixpedia columns about some of them. But... I dunno. I have difficulty segregating them from the main body of webcartoonists in my head. Shaenon Garrity, Glych Greenlee, Meaghan Quinn, Aeire, Ping Teo, Wednesday White, Lea Hernandez, Danielle Corsetto, Jennie Breeden, Mel Hynes, Kelly Cooper, and all the people I don't remember but whose stuff I look at on a regular basis help build a tremendous part of the overall cosm of Webcomics. I don't see any good way to slice them free of the whole and say "here we talk about the chicks!" They are what they are.

Of course, I'm a guy. There is a school of feminism that says I don't actually get to have a say on these matters. (Not one I subscribe to, but still.) However, Ping Teo's own column covers many of these same themes, in similar ways. I recommend that column too, by the by.

In any case, I found a topic that kind of touches on the above while not. So go have a look. It's free, after all. And then go looking at other articles, because they're generally quite good. And the number of articles written by people named Eric/k is up to three, and that means quality!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:29 PM | Comments (44)

April 11, 2005

Eric: I'm not sure what's geekier...

...the fact that I'm pathetically happy there are 4,444 comments as of today, or the fact that I'm writing a post about it.

It's like there's an odometer on Websnark and it all just lined up!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:19 PM | Comments (12)

April 6, 2005

Eric: And so, for the first time...

...we've actually closed comments on a Snark. Chances are likely you know which one. If not, you're happier not knowing, trust me.

Suffice it to say, it was getting intensely personal towards people other than myself, and that's not kosher. If folks want to scream at me for doing this, feel free.

(This isn't an invitation to pick up that conversation in this Snark's comments, mind. The whistle's been blown on it, and it's over. Because I'm a giant mean baby.)

Essentially, if you want to agree or disagree with something I say in a Snark in the comments, you're allowed. If you want to debate with each other in the comments on something related to the topic or to a tangent that grows out of the comments or whatever? Cool. If you want to insult me? Generally fine so long as it doesn't escalate into people insulting each other.

Personal insults to each other get shut down. If a warning doesn't suffice, we close comments on that snark. If they persist cross-snark, there's banning of users. Why? Because this isn't a schoolyard and that's not what we're doing here. There's eight hundred thousand other forums on the web, plus personal e-mail for being mean to each other.

I have to admit -- the fact that we went 664 Snarks before hitting one where this happened is pretty damn good. The fact that we went just shy of 4,200 comments on Websnark before this happened is remarkable. This is a testament to you guys -- to the fact that the debate here is extremely high signal, low noise. And the fact that there is massive coolness 99% of the time even when we disagree with each other is what makes Websnark such a fantastic place.

Well, that and Wednesday. Because Wednesday knows from the Cool.

Anyway. Commence fascist comparisons in five... four... three... two... and fascism is go.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:52 PM | Comments (102)

April 5, 2005

Eric: Fair Warning.

Back in November, when we hit our 333rd post here on Websnark, we discussed the concept of Interventions. Specifically, we invoked an Intervention of Ralph, the Demon Prince of Apathy. Who, predictably, didn't give a fuck. We also mentioned the 111th post, Random reader question randomly answered, which due to numbering weirdness is trackback post #106, but which is in fact the 111th post. That was the Divine Intervention Post, which in In Nomine terms meant it was essentially selfless. And that actually was born out, I think -- it was a very short post on why we give a damn, and it was very much outwardly oriented.

Why do I bring this up?

Because numbering oddness aside, this post you are reading is the 665th post on Websnark. Or as we like to call it, "the Guy Who Lives Across The Street From the Beast."

Which means the next post is 666. The Infernal Intervention. Which in In Nomine terms means it's the selfish one. Or, as the demons like to claim, the post of Enlightened Self-Interest.

Don't expect us to be throwing the horns or hooting and shouting or junk like that. This is all about selfishness. It's a celebration in the truest American style -- Materialistic.

So. Don't go into it expecting equanimity or a plea to think of the children. That'll come later, after Liberal Guilt consumes me. And you know it will. Because I am weak. And fraught with guilt.

You know, 'fraught' is a fun word to type.

Anyway. Infernal Intervention is next. Let's all be there!

(Eat snacky smores.)

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:44 PM | Comments (8)

March 28, 2005

Eric: On the nature of On.

Alberto tomorrow. I need to absorb its unique view* of ecumenical history (a series of past events).

It is, in fact, on.

* A sight. Something visible to the human eye.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:41 PM | Comments (1)

Eric: Fifth grade punk rock novel.

(But, you know, at least I'm not being all Piro about it.)

Oh, it is on.

Seriously. It is, in fact, on.

When we come to this point in history, professors of "that which is on" in the future will accept that this was the point in time at which it officially went from not being on, to in fact being on.

Seriously. On. It is.

Dude.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 7:59 PM | Comments (8)

March 27, 2005

Eric: A day of... well, nothing.

It was a day of nothing. Nothing at all. All worthy things passed by me with no acknowledgment. And barely even any notice. It was, in short, a null day. In terms of Websnark, anyhow.

Though I did unravel Gossamer Commons's RSS troubles -- not that Bloglines has noticed or cared. Fucking Bloglines. And Weds and I brainstormed a new CMS (Wordpress based, most likely) for GC. And Greg bounced some thoughts and continued to build the buffer on the strip.

Oh, and I wrote some scripts and did some work on Sekret Projekt Wu.

So it wasn't a total waste. I just... didn't have something for here, today. And so, I suck.

I'm tired. I'm going to bed. Night.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:20 PM | Comments (8)

March 15, 2005

Eric: There are days....

...when you just don't even feel like reading webcomics. Or much of anything else on the web.

With luck, that'll change, but for right now I'm just keeping the browser off and reading the cheerful mail.

So very cheerful, that mail.

Later, all.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:59 AM | Comments (37)

March 13, 2005

Eric: For the record...

We just broke 600 posts on Websnark. This is the Six hundredth and First.

Just sixty-six to go before Infernal Intervention!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:21 AM | Comments (7)

March 12, 2005

Eric: The new cast page is here! The new cast page is here! My name in print!

So, since the Interpolated Wednesday White seems to have decided she likes the look of the joint and isn't bolting at the first sign of trouble, it's clearly time to make it official. So, we've now updated the Websnark Cast Page to reflect that fact, and folks should go and poke at it with sticks if they want.

I've been psyched up the wall to have Weds writing here, in part because I like her writing and in part because when I'm feeling under the weather, she's the kind of person who IM's me and says "hey, you want me to cover something so you're not stressing about it?" This is pure gold, as far as I'm concerned.

My cat, despite calls, has not gotten a cast page entry. This is because she's a cat, and therefore can't spell. Or type. Or resolve language. In fact, she's got a brain the size of a walnut mostly oriented towards hunting, preening, cleaning and seeking out warm things.

It's worth noting that I typed that sentence, and out of nowhere she meowed at me. Honestly. So she may not concur with this description.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:03 PM | Comments (9)

March 5, 2005

Eric: Too much to write, too much to do...

...the first night of City of Heroes in close to a month, plus writing writing writing.

Not a day I could get stuff in here. It happens. We move on.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:59 PM | Comments (5)

February 24, 2005

Eric: Dude.

So, you may have noticed, in as much she told you, that I've given the Imperial Wednesday White the keys to the Snarkmobile. This was not, as she might lead you to believe, purely because she caught me when I was stunned at having been invoked as part of a comic book publisher's efforts to get comic store owners to stock a worthy comic, and therefore vulnerable to her virtual wiles.

(As for the reference itself? Holy fuck.)

However, I decided a long time ago that if I let anyone through the gates, it'd be Wednesday. She and I don't have 100% the same tastes or range in webcomics or any of the other blatherings I do around here, but we're darn compatible. More to the point, I trust her opinions and judgment. For one thing, she's smarter than I am. For another, she writes better.

No, we're not dating. And no, I'm not trying to date her. Jesus, can't you think of anything else?

So, while I suspect the vast majority of blatherings will still be mine, I've invited Wednesday to blather whenever she wishes on whatever topic she wishes, because I figure you the readers will enjoy it, and I will too.

She's not going to be on a 'schedule' or 'clock' or 'anything else in single quotes.' But if something comes up where she wants a venue? I'm her hookup.

(Technically, she's the second person I've given the login to. The first person is a close friend who, should I get hit by a bus, will tell all of you where to send stuffed animals.)

Of course, this means I really should pick up the damn place....

Edit: To avoid confusion -- especially on RSS feeds, since it's not set up to say who posts things, when Weds posts, she'll put a [weds] tag in the title. Work for everyone? Cool.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:43 PM | Comments (10)

February 16, 2005

Eric: A day.

It was a busy day at work. It was a busy day of recovery and internalizing the medical issues I found out about yesterday (the less said about the better). The evening I've spent deep in Gossamer, Sekret Projekt J, and conversations with the smartest human being on the planet. Midway through all of this, I got e-mail from the composer of I'm Just a Bill. E-mail referring me to his publishing company regarding some quoting I want to do in Gossamer Commons, and perfunctory, but dude -- Dave Frishberg sent me e-mail. How bad could it be?

Pretty bad, actually. Both the health issues and things I had to do, plus some monetary things that needed doing. Plus some chores. Including getting new Renter's Insurance, because it's been an interesting enough year that I want to be sure things are okay in case of disaster.

All of which is why I haven't written anything here today. But I still like you.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:48 PM | Comments (3)

February 14, 2005

Eric: Moving Day, one of these days...

Sometime in the next week to week and a half... we're going to be moving. Pair.com's been mostly good (though with some weird troubles here and there), but at this stage it's costing a little too much to continue as we're going. I'm shifting over to the Talk About Comics Hosting package.

Why? Huge huge huge savings, and a certain symmetry. It just makes sense to me to be hosted at a Comics oriented company.

(Note -- this doesn't mean Websnark's becoming affiliated with Modern Tales or any other of Joey Manley's official sites. It's not that I'd be against being identified with those sites -- they're among my favorites -- but given I do critical commentary, it's best folks know for certain that editorial and creative control for the 'snark isn't changing.)

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:22 AM | Comments (1)

February 13, 2005

Eric: It's that time of the month, again!

No. Not that time of the month.

My latest edition of Feeding Snarky is online at Comixpedia! Go forth and read it!

This one might get me some interesting comments.

Also in this weeks' offerings is the latest of T Campbell's groundbreaking History of Online Comics columns. It seems less about history and more an informative current affairs piece now, but by God it's insightful, and you should read it.

Sadly, I haven't noticed anything by the Invisible Wednesday White yet this month. But I'll keep you posted.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:36 PM | Comments (24)

February 7, 2005

Eric: Weird Database issue

We had a database hiccup, which was blocking comments (or me updating Websnark) for a little bit. It seems fixed now, but I'm going to keep an eye on it for a little while.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:06 PM | Comments (2)

February 2, 2005

Eric: Blacklist seems to be turning the tide

For the record, MT-Blacklist has blocked 167 trackback spams. If any of them had gone through, of course, the Nofollow tag would have made them worthless to the spamming company, so with luck I'll get on a list as too much trouble for my worth.

Which is the story of my life, really.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:05 PM | Comments (4)

February 1, 2005

Eric: Get your hands off me, you damn, dirty spammers!

So, woke up this morning, rolled over, and opened up the powerbook to suck down the morning mail. Hey, you have your traditions and I have mine.

Boom. 60 new messages to Websnark. Now... sixty new mail messages to my websnark accounts is no big deal, but this was sixty new comments. That meant either someone was royally pissed off over my post about Shortpacked, and we had a flamewar in progress (maybe someone doesn't like action figures?) or someone had found a way to spam me.

Yup. It was "B." I had 60 new trackback pings inviting all of you to check out Poker Online. I'd have had more, but the throttling had kicked in (which also meant people were having trouble making legitimate comments).

So, it was finally time to install MT-Blacklist. Which I have now done. We'll see.

Among other things, it means older entries will auto-moderate, which isn't a bad thing, but might mean some delay if you want to, oh, comment on the Megatokyo post or something.

Secondly... it might mean to some that hey -- we don't need Typekey any more. I mean, if I'm going to put in the magic Blacklister, why should we have the largely broken authentication service?

The answer to that is actually simple: Blacklist isn't anywhere near 100%. Right now... as annoying as it is to post through Typekey (especially if you're on Internet Explorer, which just doesn't work with it), there is no comment spam at all. The last time I used MT-Blacklist with a blog, lots of comment spam got through.

Now... it might be a good idea to set all entries to moderate, and then set it so Typekey entries are automatically approved, which can be done with this version of MT-Blacklist. That means that anyone who doesn't do a Typekey thing would need to have their comments approved by me before they appear. The problem there is... well, I have something of a life, and so comments might sit, unapproved, for a very, very long time.

Of course, I could designate some other approvers. But hand in hand with that comes... well, other writers here on Websnark. Which people have been mentioning to me for a long time now, and which I admit might not be a bad idea. Only it is an official Step.

I dunno. What do people think? How best do we repel the boarders, keep me sane, keep me from having to do websnark stuff for hours a day beyond the actual writing, and make everyone happy?

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:46 AM | Comments (19)

January 26, 2005

Eric: A Correction.

As I've said before, when I make mistakes here in the chair -- the mighty, mighty chair -- I will not conceal them. I will own up to them.

I reported that I had a lovely few drams of Dalwhinnie single malt scotch when I was celebrating Burns Night, in yesterday's post.

In fact, I had a few drams of The Dalmore. Which is quite a different scotch. It was wonderfully smooth, though reminded me it was indeed whiskey. The distinction is profound -- Dalwhinnie is a Speyside single malt, while the Dalmore is a Highland single malt scotch. Also, the Dalmore is a definite article, and Dalwhinnie is not.

Just to keep things clear.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:22 AM | Comments (6)

January 24, 2005

Eric: Some days, I'm just too tired...

...and this is one of those days. Work was a grind, and I'm still pretty exhausted from the slog home last night.

I did play some City of Heroes, but just long enough to earn the second 'event' badge for the Winter Lord attack. Said Winter Lord attack has been underwhelming at best, though the 'snowball' power was practically worth the price of admission.

Maybe next year.

G'night. Snarking tomorrow.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:45 PM | Comments (2)

January 16, 2005

Eric: Comicsnarkia! Or something like that.

I haven't had a chance to read through all of this week's offerings yet, but I should mention that over on Comixpedia, the next edition of my monthly column, Feeding Snarky, is out. This particular column goes into one style of Funny (since this is the "funny" issue and all), and invokes Men in Hats, Hound's Home and Nukees for examples. And that makes me a happy person, because I loves me the Men in Hats, Hound's Home (well, old Hound's Home. Recent stuff hasn't worked as well for me) and Nukees.

Anyway -- I'll have a look at the rest of the week's offerings too, but if you're jonesing for me to blather on about webcomics, here's something for you to chew on!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:54 PM | Comments (3)

January 2, 2005

Eric: Thoughts on the future of Websnark... in a technical sense

So, there's some technical stuff that's always bothered me about Movable Type. Key among that stuff is the trouble so many commenters have with Typekey, which seems very much like a beta service pressed into general release. (I'm sorry -- I'm as big a proponent of Firefox as the next person, but if your browser based comment authentication service won't work with Internet Explorer it's a problem.) So I'm thinking about switching to WordPress. Wordpress is free, and it's robust, and looks like it has excellent features, and it looks like it has ways to block comment spam that doesn't involve blocking... well, everyone else.

Yeah, it means I'm out the money I spent on Movable Type, but so what? MT did what I asked, and if I've outgrown it, that's okay. And sure, I'll need to learn how to tweak Wordpress to get all my stuff. And processing things properly so that all my old linked thumbnails work will be grunt work, but that's okay.

The problem is... it doesn't seem to have an engine to upload and thumbnail images, and that's a dealbreaker.

Yeah, I could manually thumbnail, but I'm not going to. It would take too long. So does manual uploading, for that matter. I suppose I could use MT to upload, and then post in Wordpress, but that's downright stupid and I won't do it.

I see there's a thumbnailing plugin out there (probably based on Imagemagick). But it needs someone else to upload things via FTP first. Which might be workable and might not be. But it brings to mind exactly what I would like in this functionality.

I would like, beyond anything else, to be able to input the URL of an image, have it find it, give me the dimensions of the image, and let me set the dimensions of the thumbnail. It then would save the thumbnail and let me put in the link to the page the original came from, and stick that into a post for me to write. Preferably with settings that would let me decide alignment, hspace and the like.

That would make my life tremendously easier, and it's vastly beyond my ability to code. And yet, I suspect it wouldn't be hard to code.

I wonder if there's anyone out there I could pay to do this thing for me. Thoughts?

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 4:30 PM | Comments (9)

January 1, 2005

Eric: And a happy new year to all.

It's 2005. I have no joke here. I just hope this is a really good year for everyone.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:01 AM | Comments (2)

December 29, 2004

Eric: Acknowledgement of my own limitations

I'm working diligently on the "Bringing the Story" Shortbread List, but as I work on it I need to acknowledge where I'm coming up against the wall, hard.

First off, the number of nominees in each category are going to have to drop from six to five. There's just too much writing to do, otherwise. So, if your favorite doesn't get nominated in a given category you think it's perfect for, assume it was nominee 6 and I'm just an idiot who doesn't know a damn thing.

Secondly, as with the Funny Shortbread list, I'm not including traditional Syndicate Newspaper Comics. I don't feel good about the exclusion -- I think the distinction is artificial, when they're both available on the web -- but even with the gaps in my reading (we all have gaps) there's simply too many to consider to be comprehensive. So, no, Annie won't be up for "Surreal Story" or "Adventure" any more than Foxtrot was up for "Gag a Day Funny."

The problem with doing that is it implies there isn't a level field between the newspapers and the web, for whatever reason. And that's not a good thing. Frankly, Narbonic was the strip I felt Brought the Funny more than any other strip last year. That's why I gave it the Overall Shortbread. There isn't a newspaper comic strip I'd have picked over it. But by not including them in the first place, there's a sense of "ghetto." A sense that somehow, the webcomics scene and the newspaper scene are different.

But, there's a practical dimension involved, too. As it is, I spend my time bemoaning all the stuff I don't read. To bemoan all the newspaper and independent paper strips out there too would be too much. So I do what I can. And I acknowledge what I can't do, here, so everyone knows going in what the criteria are.

Thanks, all.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 4:19 PM | Comments (7)

December 23, 2004

Eric: Totally meaningless statistics.

Since the start, I've written 365,910 words in this thing, not counting this post.

If we still went by the "typewritten page" standard (man, I totally want a USB printer that's actually a Smith Corona manual typewriter that types itself) of 250 words a page, that 1,463 pages, plus a little bit.

There are essayists in American History that are revered and extolled, to the point that Freshmen in College are forced to read them years after the essays are relevant, that didn't write so much as 500 pages in their entire career.

I am not getting paid for this.

Just, you know, for the record.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:00 AM | Comments (9)

December 22, 2004

Eric: Gastrointestinal distress is all the rage in Milan, darling.

Hi all. My local time is 4:40 am, I have significant pain in my intestines, and I have a body temperature of 100.2. Obviously, I'm not feeling at my most chipper.

I've decided that the Shortbread lists will have to start coming out next Monday, and proceed until the end of the week. That will give me a chance to get over this piffling inconvenience and do some serious writing without stress. Oh, and there's some family obligation over the weekend if I remember correctly.

I'm going to go lie down and accuse my cat of poisoning me.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 4:39 AM | Comments (5)

December 20, 2004

Eric: A fast Anacrusis correction

A reader (not Brendan, but someone else) wrote in to let me know that my examination of Anacrusis's archives wasn't quite accurate. I indicated that Anacrusis had been running almost as long as Hitherby Dragons. In fact, Hitherby Dragons unofficially began on 25 September 2003, and officially began on 26 November 2003. Anacrusis, on the other hand, actually started on 18 July 2003, two months before the earliest dated note in Hitherby's archives, and was off and running full out from day one.

The 18 July 2003 entry is called Stephanie, and while it's not as deft as later entries would become, it's still a good read and shows the strength of the 101 word limit right from the start. I wonder if Brendan's found the weblog equivalent of the haiku.

Mm. Hopefully not. 90% of all haikus suck.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:22 AM | Comments (9)

Eric: Server move is complete! And Thunderbirds are GO!

People have noticed that the commenting, search, and... well, pretty much all automated features of the site have been down for a little while. As I told you not too long ago, they were moving me to a whole new server, chock full of new server goodness and that new server smell that makes you feel so proud to be an American.

I've done the necessary bits of maintenance to acclimate Movable Type to its new home. At this stage, everything should work. Please let me know if you come across something that's still unhappy.

And thanks, all!

Edit: Okay -- Typekey, which is my eternal nemesis, has decided to bitch about the server move. So commenting's still dead. I'll get it running as quickly as possible.

Comments are working. Game on!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:46 AM | Comments (2)

December 18, 2004

Eric: Potential Websnark Technical Issues

So, it's pretty clear that I'm going to break the bandwidth limit for my current account, and so it's time to do the move up to the next level. However, this upgrade means moving to a machine. So, sometime in the next two business days, there's going to be some downtime while the shift takes place. The good people at Pair are handling it, and it should have at most momentary outages as far as being able to see Websnark. However, this might break some of the key functions (like commenting, not that commenting doesn't seem broken to begin with), and might need some repairs on links and the like.

With a little luck it'll be smooth sailing, but if not... well, I warned you, didn't I?

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 6:01 PM

December 17, 2004

Eric: One note

I'm on cold medication today (I can endure symptoms until they involve bad sinus headaches. I'm a total wuss when it comes to bad sinus headaches), so even though I'm at work and snarking alike, I'm also definitely spacey. So if my word choices or punctuation or spelling or thesis seems... odd, in a snark today... please bear in mind that I'm not entirely sure I'm sapient today.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:22 AM | Comments (1)

December 13, 2004

Eric: We have a WINNAH!

Wow.

After five days of auctioning, we have a winner in our first ever custom snark Websnark Charity Auction. That winner is Jac Olwyn of the United Kingdom, who bid an astounding $255.00 to beat out Shaenon Garrity of the USA's West Coast in an auctioneering duel to the death.

Olwyn's already made the Paypal transfer, and I'm turning that transfer around and sending it to Child's Play. So, all Olwyn needs to do is e-mail what custom Snark topic I'm going to be producing, and I'll set myself to whatever research needs to be done to do that topic justice. It should be sent to the Websnark address over at gmail.com, or alternately to the same address used by Paypal to complete the transaction.

Thank you... and thank you everyone. This is going to help out Child's Play a lot... and is an incredibly good feeling to boot. You all deserve to feel a bit of this pleasure... and if you want to feel more, hit Child's Play and donate some cash. It's fun and fulfilling, and who wouldn't want something fun and fulfilling in their life?

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:22 AM | Comments (4)

December 12, 2004

Eric: Sixteen Hours left in the Websnark Auction for Child's Play

The eBay auction ends in sixteen hours, at 8 am Eastern Standard Time tomorrow morning. Now, it's been a phenomenal success (we're at $172.50 as of this writing!) but, since it's for such a good charity (remember -- Child's Play for more information), if you've got money to spare and any inclination to spend it on kids, feel free to do so by bidding. Or, just hit Child's Play itself and donate money there.

In the end, we're going to do some good things for Children's hospitals. And that's a good thing, any way you look at it.

Thanks, everyone!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:57 PM

December 10, 2004

Eric: An update on the Websnark Charity Auction

So, when I told you all I was putting a Snark up for Charity to benefit Child's Play, I honestly thought I could end up looking really stupid. "What if no one bids on this at all," I thought. "Won't you be embarrassed?"

Well, sure, I decided. But what the heck. It was for a good cause and it seemed likely someone would bid... and it might even get up to twenty or thirty bucks, and wouldn't that be nice.

Shows what I know. As of this writing, with roughly two days and twenty one hours remaining, we're up to $147.50 for Child's Play. I have some suspicions of some of the folks who have bid... and I'm honestly kind of stunned.

I've also had a number of people say "boy, I'd love to bid, but it's gone way out of my price range" to me. Which I can understand. I mean... a hundred and fifty bucks? While I heartily encourage anyone who wants to bid that to do so, I can fully understand not bidding that. But it seems to me we should do more of these.

No, I'm not looking to do one where I get the money. That would be hubris. But there's a lot of charities out there, and a lot of them could use our support. Maybe one of these a month would make sense -- say, do one in January for the Cartoon Art Museum....

I wonder if I should do a second Child's Play auction now, too -- I mean, sick children and all -- but would that perhaps make the people who've bid on the current auction unhappy? I'm not sure. In any case, I'm thrilled. Thank you all.

One friend, amused by this, said "hey, Eric. You've promised a thousand words -- at least -- on any moderately safe for work topic, right?"

"Yeah?" I answered.

"Well... that's four standard typewritten pages," he said.

"How 'standard' is a typewritten page in today's world?" I asked. "When's the last time you saw someone typewrite a page of text."

"Shut up," he answered. "My point is... what's to stop some kid from bidding, winning this auction, and telling you to 'snark' on the subject of his history or English paper?"

I thought for a moment, then checked the bidding, which was at $122 at the time. "For a hundred and twenty two dollars to charity?" I asked. "The fucker's getting an A."

Words to live by, old chums.

And please. If this has gone way out of your price range, head over to Child's Play and donate. This is for sick kids. You can't get more Christmas Spirit than that.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:05 AM | Comments (8)

December 5, 2004

Eric: Comixpedia: The Quickening

It's the start of a new week in a new month, and that means a new Comixpedia issue. And it wouldn't be a Comixpedia issue without the latest Feeding Snarky, by me.

Actually... that's a bald faced lie. It would indeed be a new Comixpedia issue without me. I could be hit by a bus tomorrow and Comixpedia would just continue on and on and on and on....

But enough of that. It's a good issue, beginning their Year in Review. My column's... well, it's sort of there. However, two -- count them, two -- new parts to T. Campbell's seminal "The History of Online Comics" are appearing, and they're well worth the read. Part Seven covers the growth of professional webcomics and the movement towards subscription models. Part Eight covers the growth of the post-Keenspot/post-Modern Tales collectives and dropdowns that have grown up. These are incredibly simplified descriptions of complex topics that T. handles excellently, so go read them.

And go read my thingy too. I mean, what the heck. It's right there.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:23 PM | Comments (2)

December 1, 2004

Eric: A simple ground rule and a simple boundary from me, to a very small number of you

Hey all -- it's your pal Eric, with a fast clarification just to make sure everyone knows the ground rules.

This thing you're reading? This is my blog. It's where I go to blather about things that catch my attention, and then move on.

I'm not being paid by anyone for it. Heck, I dropped my Google ads (the day before I got a high profile link that caused a spike in my readership. No one said I didn't have a fine sense of timing). In fact, I'm paying for it, each month. It's here because I like doing it, and people seem to like it.

I only bring this up because I've been getting a (very small) number of e-mails that have been getting increasingly angry because I haven't snarked a couple of strips. Strips which might well be worthy, mind. There are many, many, many worthy strips on the internet. Many of which I've never mentioned.

So, let me be perfectly clear about something, just in case there's some confusion.

I don't need to snark a given strip, just because some of my readers happen to like it.

In fact, I don't need to snark a given strip even if I happen to like it. There's comic strips on my trawls you've never heard me say anything other than the trawl blurb about. There's comic strips on my to-date-unwritten-up "Sporadically Checked" list I've never mentioned on Websnark. It's not because they're unworthy. It's because I haven't been struck by something I wanted to say about them yet.

And there's no rule that says I ever have to.

Now, there's a simple solution, if you happen to want to see critical commentary written about your favorite strip and I'm too much of a blind asshole to provide it for you: you can write it yourself. We could use a lot more sites doing the kind of thing I do, or that Ping Teo does, or that Comixpedia and the Webcomics Examiner do, for that matter. I heartily encourage others to get into the act.

If, on the other hand, you don't want to do that... well, go post it on Snarkoleptics. It might be based on Websnark's fan community, but it's not "my" community -- it belongs to its members (Hell, I'm not even the Mod or owner. I just hang there like everyone else does). Post what excites you about your favorite webcomic. Post what you think is an exciting trend. Post whatever you like, so long as you're not being mean. I not only won't try to stop you, I'll read the post and, if I have a comment, I'll comment.

But don't think for one minute I "owe" a Snark over here to anyone. If I don't get struck with the snarkish impulse when I look at a strip, I don't write about it. That way, you guys know that whatever I do write on here, I actually mean.

Those are the rules. Those are the boundaries.

Thanks, all. Have a lovely cup of chai and enjoy the show.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 6:17 PM | Comments (8)

November 29, 2004

Eric: How does someone "un-sell-out?" And what do you even call it?

So. You might notice a difference on the site design.

No... I haven't had my haircut.

No, I didn't lose weight. Jesus.

Okay, look, I'll just say it. Google Adsen-- er, Ads by Goooooooogle are gone.

I didn't mind having the ad bar there, and it was sometimes fun to see what batshit crazy things their algorithms came up with for my pages. But to be blunt, they didn't bring in enough money. After over three full months, I'd made $43.51 -- a nontrivial amount of which was after I got PvPdotted -- and my daily average was three cents.

Three cents.

They don't pay out until you hit a hundred bucks. At this rate, even if I have major links every other month or so, it'd be summer before I even saw money. Without major links (and I never ask people to link to me -- if they want to, they will ), it would be a long long time.

This was meant to defray the cost of running this site, including the upped bandwidth costs. But honestly, I can afford it and it's not like I'm seeing any of "my" money anyway, so screw it. I'll design Cafepress tee shirts or something.

Besides, the page looks nicer without it.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:25 PM | Comments (6)

November 21, 2004

Eric: A day without merit.

It had to happen, eventually.

I don't have anything to report or snark on today. I've got nothing. I did some City of Heroes (mixed day of it), and I did some research and notes and math for Trigger Man, and I did a whole lot of nothing.

Well, tomorrow should be a productive day, at least. I hope you guys had fun.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:24 PM | Comments (1)

November 14, 2004

Eric: UPDATE ON BOING BOING

I e-mailed Mark Frauenfelder, who posted the link in question, before I put the snark up. I then snarked, because... well, that's what I do.

Mark, when he got my e-mail, immediately deleted the link and said he was sorry. He found it funny, and wanted to pass it along.

That is an amazingly cool response for him to take. It doesn't change the fact that I've lost a day (I can feel the effects coming on now, though the heart's still racing), but quick response and contrition counts a lot in my book.

So yeah. They remain a class act. For the record.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:39 AM

November 13, 2004

Eric: Dogpile on Greg Dean!

Over on Comixpedia, they've posted one of their regular "pose questions to a Webcartoonist" calls, this time for Greg Dean, who writes the widely read Real Life Comics. They've cleverly hidden this open call in an article called Call for Questions for Greg Dean of Real Life.

In the week since the call got posted, they've had exactly two questions for Dean posted. And I wrote both of them. I assume this means that Greg Dean's audience isn't Comixpedia's audience. Well, I don't know if they're Websnark's audience or not, but on the off chance they are, schlep on over there and ask some questions, already! This is a long running strip with distinctive art. It's sometimes inconsistent -- long time readers of Websnark will know they spent a good amount of time on the "Why do I read this webcomic, again" list, but they also pulled off that list -- but it's always beautifully drawn and often hits the truly excellent stage. So go! Go now! Ask questions, already! I want to read the answers Dean puts out! Entertain me!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:39 PM

November 10, 2004

Eric: Community Spirit

Your friend and mine, mckenzee, of "Sinister Bedfellows" has started a Snarkoleptics Livejournal Community. While I'm going to cheerfully leave it in the hands of others, I'll be glad to make note of new snarks on it, giving LJ users another tool for finding stuff.

What's it best used for other than that?

...I dunno. What exactly do we do around here?

Still! Check it out, if you want!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:47 PM

November 7, 2004

Eric: The Comixpedia Shuffle....

It's another month, and that means a new "issue" of Comixpedia. This month is Journal and Autobiographical Comics, so naturally I did a column on comparing photo-based comics. Damn it, can't I get anything right? On the other hand, this is my third column, which supposedly is the magical point where I go from being "some guy who writes a column for Comixpedia" to "Contributing Columnist," and that's just damn cool because it makes me sound like I should be working out of a newsroom exposing corruption. Plus, it was a chance to talk about A Softer World, Sinister Bedfellows, and the fact that they're not nearly as similar as they appear, and that's just plain fun.

This issue also features the extraordinary Wednesday White's review of The Devil's Panties. I'm hopelessly besotted with the thought processes of Ms. White, as you all know, and Jennie Breeden's The Devil's Panties has to be about my favorite comic strip that's never actually been snarked. I couldn't tell you why it's never appeared on Websnark, but it's a failing of mine, not Breeden's.

If that weren't enough, Kelly J. Cooper has a very interesting examination of the core definitions of the autobiographical in comic strips, and that's neat and deserving of a read. And in addition to my column, I actually got to be a news item, on the strength of my having named star systems after webcartoonists and the like for Trigger Man and NaNoWriMo.

So, a fun time at Comixpedia this month.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:14 PM | Comments (2)

October 24, 2004

Eric: Four minutes to midnight, and I'm just saying "hi?"

I have four minutes to post something and maintain my streak of posting something in this every day since the day I started it.

I haven't even read a webcomic today.

What have I done?

Well, let's just say this. Whoever thought it would be cute and funny to have giant ROCK CREATURES move FASTER THAN ANY OF US HEROES and maintain an idea of where you are after you teleport TWO HUNDRED YARDS to get away from them and then KILL YOU WITH GIANT ROCK HANDS needs to be shot.

Oh, and teleport self is the coolest power ever.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:55 PM | Comments (5)

October 19, 2004

Eric: Making a couple of changes to the old FAQs

Hey all! Just letting you know we've made a couple of changes to the FAQ. First, we've added an entry on "Biscuit, Tasty Tasty" to the Lexicon. It seems like I use it enough that I should say something about it.

Also, by popular demand (believe it or not), I've added an e-mail address to the About Websnark FAQ. That address, for those of you wondering, is websnark AT gmail DOT com.

Salut!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:55 PM | Comments (2)

October 13, 2004

Eric: If anyone is wondering if a lot of people read PvP....

...let me assure you that yes, they do.

For the record, I did half as much Bandwidth yesterday as I did for the entire month of September.

That's a nice feeling, for the record. And no one parked on the lawn or spilled chips on the carpet, either.

On the other hand, I'm completely out of Sobe juices, now.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:31 AM

October 6, 2004

Eric: Change is good

Now that we have a new mascot, it seemed like a good time to take a step (just a step) away from the "cookie cutter Blog" design of Websnark. So, I went with yet another cookie cutter blog design -- but this one doesn't see as much use.

I've saved the old stylesheet, so if this one really isn't liked, we can go back.

Comments?

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 4:48 PM | Comments (8)

October 5, 2004

Eric: I have not forgotten you!

Hey all. Busy day today. Very very busy day today. There will be snarking, but it will come later, after the busyness.

Wait, does anyone actually care?

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:11 PM | Comments (9)

October 4, 2004

Eric: Column number two!

My second "Feeding Snarky" column is up at Comixpedia. This one's on the pitfalls of politics in webcomics. Or topical content of any kind, really. It's less specific than the last, and there's more smartass in it. With luck, people will like it.

In other news, it seems I do have some fans, and there is at least tentative discussions of bowling shirts.

That's right. Bowling shirts.

Admit it. It sounds cool.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:59 AM

September 30, 2004

Eric: We've turned the tide!

No presidential ads, no fart dolls, no Latin dating services... just a bunch of links for comic book art. Google Adsense has regained its sanity!

For now.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:15 PM | Comments (1)

Eric: Jesus Christ. All right, all ready. I'll block the damn site.

Clearly, I'm just cranky today, but I've had it up to here with the "George W. Bush Fart Doll" ad that keeps coming up. Why on Earth Google thinks I want that on my site is beyond me, but it's the first damn thing added to my filter list. In a few hours, Fartin' George should be banished forever.

Yeesh.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:28 AM | Comments (2)

Eric: Mrph.

I fully accept that webcartoonists want to and deserve to protect their art. I don't have any complaint about that at all. Whatever steps they take are okay by me.

If, on the other hand, you use javascript tricks to make it impossible for someone to download your art in any capacity, there's no way for me to get a thumbnail of it for an entry.

I respect this. I honestly do. But more people click-through on the entries with the bit of color and art on them than the ones that lack the color and art on them. And I'm not going to go and ask for samples. I'm just not. To do so would involve pre-snark collusion, and that would color the result.

Which might be fine with people. However, if you're one of the people who does the javascript trick so people can't download your pictures -- especially if you're one of the folks who really wants to increase your traffic, and hopes that people render feedback and commentary on your work -- just bear in mind that this snark isn't on the strip I was going to snark, but instead is on the fact that I can't put up a thumbnail.

Just, you know, for the record.

On the other hand, I may be convincing a few hundred artists to do the javascript trick now... which is fine too. It's their art, and their choices. Always.

Of course, it's also my choice as to what I'm going to talk about here, now isn't it?

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:19 AM | Comments (5)

September 28, 2004

Eric: Bereft of Snarkiness

I got nothin'.

Seriously. If I look at my daily trawls one more time, I think I'll throw up. Not because of them, but because my eyes hurt, my head hurts, I'm tired, and nothing's jumping out and saying "really good" or "really bad" today. I just got nothin'.

So, chalk up today as the first unqualified miss, even if I did put up a post saying "hi, I got nothin'."

More tomorrow.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:18 PM | Comments (1)

September 25, 2004

Eric: On weekend posting

So... here's the thing. I don't seem to be good at updating on the weekends, except for those days that I am. Today wasn't a banner day for Websnark, though there was an actual entry.

Should I just declare weekends optional, or set a schedule, or should I just not sweat it as much as I seem to? I mean, I've posted a Hell of a lot of posts in the last seven weeks. Sooner or later I have to accept I'm just not going to post in a given day, don't I?

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:35 PM | Comments (7)

September 24, 2004

Eric: Some people will assume this is my normal state of being.

I've come over all dizzy and overly hot, which might be dumping syndrome (if those two words mean nothing to you, then you'd druther I not explain further. If they do mean something to you, then it's going smashingly so far, thanks.) or might be the flu, so with the blessings of my boss I've taken to my bed. I am now drinking fluids and rereading Digger front to back.

God, I love Digger.

In other news, I got my copy of the Narbonic collection in the mail today. Once more, there were gerbils drawn on the packaging. That is so freaking cool.

In other, other news my cat is sleeping on my leg. She likes it when I'm ill.

More later, when the world isn't spinning and Wombats aren't talking to me.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:34 PM | Comments (1)

September 22, 2004

Eric: Internet Explorer 6.0 hates Websnark. DAMN YOU MAX POWERS!!!!

Deprecated.

Well! Here's the latest directly from Six Apart, the cheerful people who make Movable Type and who are working on helping us all with our Typekey problems:

Okay, it looks like you've encountered yet another IE quirk that has to do with what Microsoft calls "leashed cookies". This will affect those whose MT installation is on one domain but their blog site is on a different domain.

"Leashed" cookies are new to Internet Explorer 6. They're cookies that Internet Explorer prevents from being used later, by a third-party site. So when the TypeKey commenter cookie is set (for the domain where your mt.cgi script is installed), IE won't allow that cookie to be used on your blog site, because it thinks it is a third-party cookie.

You can add both sites to your Privacy settings in IE so that it will permit cookies from both domains to be used (but your visitors would need to do this also). You might also be able to set up your MT cgi script where it is accessible from both of your domains (your host can advise you on if this is possible and if so, how to do it), so you can use the same domain name in your templates for the CGI path as your blog site.

There may be some other workarounds available on the support forums; these are the two which I have heard about as potential solutions.

Regards,

Shelley

So! If you absolutely have to use Internet Explorer, make sure to add www237.pair.com and www.websnark.com to your privacy settings and it should work. But I personally recommending setting IE on fire and using Firefox instead, and it should be okay.

Thanks to Shelley. I'll keep working on my end and see if we can resolve the greater issues.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:52 AM | Comments (3)

September 21, 2004

Eric: Internet Explorer's puttin' a hatin' on me...

For whatever reason, it seems to be that (some) people using Internet Explorer can't get Typekey to work right now. Six Apart is working with me to try to fix it. Firefox is working fine, so that's what I recommend folks use. Plus, you know, it has less of a stench of evil.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:39 PM | Comments (6)

Eric: Meaningless Acknowledgements

For the record, as of yesterday Websnark.com was one month old.

In that month, while we had a couple of extremely light/crap days, we never had a day where no posts at all showed up. This is the 161st post.

On the one hand, I can't believe so little time has passed. It feels like I've been doing this for a year.

On the other hand, I can't believe I've managed to keep this up for so long.

On the gripping hand, I can't believe you people are coming and reading it. Thanks for that, by the way.

Onward....

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 4:59 PM | Comments (1)

Eric: If you have had trouble with Typekey...

...please try again, commenting on this very post. The good people at Six Apart have given me a suggestion I've used to hopefully resolve the issue, but as I can't reproduce the problem myself, I count on you, the reading public to tell me if it's still causing trouble.

Thanks, all!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:19 PM | Comments (4)

September 20, 2004

Eric: I'm home. Isn't that enough? Well? Isn't it? Punk?

It was an excellent trip back, beautiful and sunny. And I came across a 200 foot tall obelisk commemorating a Revolutionary war battle.

Well, of course I went to look at it. When you're driving along, round a corner and see a massive granite phallic symbol arching into the Vermont sky, you don't just ignore it. I took pictures, too.

Anyway, I'm tired. Back on the regular 'schedule' tomorrow.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:39 PM | Comments (1)

September 18, 2004

Eric: An acknowledgement, both of an event and of a point.

This is a quote from the author of Comanche, from the Comixpedia thread.

You are completely right, and I have conceded to that before - in its current incarnation, Comanche (as every other comic viewer of the many that are available), is using bandwidth from artists websites without paying for them by displaying the ads! We need a new business model that allows the web artists to get their money when people use the alternative viewers they prefer. This model is nowhere to be seen (and not too many seem to be looking for it).
I have, therefore, made a decision: Until a viable solution is found, I will pull the program from the web! As of now, Comanche isn't available anymore!

Yet I don't think you have any reason to be happy about that! There are other comic readers out there, and there will be new ones in the future! Eventually webartists (as well as providers like Keenspot) will have to find a way to incorporate alternative viewing methods into their business model.

(The emphasis was his.)

First off... cool. He recognized the points being raised and he acted. While pandora's box is still well and truly open (and was open before Comanche), he's acted with responsibility and I think he deserves credit for that. It's not easy to do.

Secondly... in the rest of his point....

Well, he's right.

This is something webcomics are going to have to deal with. If not Comanche, than with something else. Some have taken drastic steps already to ensure that rippers have a hard time ripping (I know Something Positive's files have all been renamed to non-sequential things, to prevent automated scarfing).

Pandora's Box is open, and it won't be closed again. And people who deliver content over the web -- and who want to make money doing it, in particular -- are going to have to deal with the result.

He went on to quote Jack Valenti -- as I said in my last snark on the subject, there's been an attempt to conflate Comanche with file sharing and things like the betamax decision. While I don't think the situations are equivalent, there is something to be learned by looking to the past: you can't uninvent technology, and you wouldn't want to try.

So.

How do we do this? How do webcomics creators get to continue their creating and explore new business models without having them circumvented by people who want to read the strips in new ways? Do we have to begin incorporating the advertisements and business models into the structure of the strips themselves? How do we avoid overwhelming bandwidth with larger graphics files then? And there won't be any links involved, then. And people will hate it.

I don't know. I honestly don't have any answers here. And Comanche's author has been right about one thing: the questions have been asked, now.

On the other hand -- this is the internet. No doubt we can find some way to use porn to solve these problems. Porn: is there anything it can't do?

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:33 PM | Comments (10)

September 17, 2004

Eric: And! I survived the trip!

I am typing this entry from a Wifi hotspot in the internationally known Moosewood Restaurant, in Ithaca, New York. I survived, and except for a screwup on the Penny and Aggie snark, everything distributed.

Ithaca is rainy today, but Ithaca is always rainy. I lived in Ithaca and I lived in Seattle. Seattle had an omnipresent mist from November to March. Ithaca has big-ass drops of rain from the moment the Cornell students arrive to the moment they leave.

It felt nice. Like a baptism. Like a homecoming.

Okay, it felt wet. What do you want -- I'm exhausted.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:53 PM | Comments (1)

September 16, 2004

Eric: Trying desperately to fit everything in before driving until my eyes bleed....

It's a busy day at work, naturally. Even though I'm trying to get everything done, because the sooner it's all done, the sooner I can get in my car and drive. From central New Hampshire to central New York. At least eight hours on the road.

Snarking will come as quickly as possible today, but understand if it's a hair... abbreviated.

(Does anyone actually care if it's abbreviated or comes at all, for that matter? I mean, this isn't a webcomic -- it's just me blathering on about stuff I can barely understand through all the fumes.)

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:57 AM | Comments (5)

September 15, 2004

Eric: Yeesh. See what happens when you say 'horror' and 'pantsman' on the same page?

Suddenly, three out of five Google Adsense ads Ads by Gooooooogle (who thought up that silliness?) are for surgical scrubs or kids' sized scrubs.

I don't get it either. Well, at least scrubs are dirt cheap. Or they were. Some of these feature logos and characters, which means they're probably more expensive than jeans now.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:32 PM

September 14, 2004

Eric: The power of scheduled posting compels you!

Today's snarks have been served up, despite the extraordinarily busy workload, thanks to Movable Type's latest version having the ability to schedule posts in advance. So, after my brief coma last night, I whipped out some snarkage and scheduled it for today. Assuming all went well, you had momentary entertainment through the morning, while I was able to desperately slave at work. What a glorious world we live in!

I'm going to Ithaca, New York this coming weekend. I'll be online from there, so Snarking should continue, but we'll ration the posts out through the glory of scheduled posting. Scheduled posting. It makes it seem like I care more than I do.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:29 PM

September 13, 2004

Eric: Today and tomorrow...

We are handing computers out to our student body. The school year is beginning.

Snarks will be later rather than sooner. However, after this, it's all biscuits and gravy.

Thanks, all!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:07 PM | Comments (5)

September 11, 2004

Eric: This is a small test.

Hi all. This is a small test of the "scheduled posting" system. We'll see if it works. If it does... um... go me!

More snarks later.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:44 PM

September 10, 2004

Eric: And now, a word about my sponsor(ed link™)

If you've been watching the (cough) Ads by Gooooooogle block on the side, you'll notice it's learning about us more and more. The pet food seems to be mostly gone, and more and more comic strip stuff is appearing. This is cool.

However, it's not actually capable of reading. Otherwise, it would have noticed that I have little to nothing good to say about current Dilbert. Once, I liked Dilbert. Dilbert however won't get a "you had me and you lost me" essay, because I try to be detailed and insightful in those essays and there's no good way to pad "it stopped being funny around 1997" to 250 words. And I have a degree in English Literature, so I know from padding.

That's not what gets me, though. If you click the Dilbert merchandise link, you discover it takes you... to a Cafepress site.

Does Dilbert, arguably the most popular modern first run comic strip in the free world, really need to use a Print on Demand shop for its tee shirts and mugs?

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:00 AM | Comments (1)

September 7, 2004

Eric: Wherein the author gets pulled into paid copy

Hi gang!

One of my paid RPG writing projects just went into playtest. As I'm contractually bound to those folks, a lot of my ancillary writing time will have to be devoted to that for the next couple of weeks. I should have at least some snarking every day, but understand that when someone slips me filthy lucre, they buy my loyalty, so.

I can't say what project or for whom, yet. If I did, they'd haul me up the thirteen steps and throw me off the pyramid, and no one wants that, do we?

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:57 PM | Comments (1)

Eric: Random reader question randomly answered

"Why do you care so much about webcomics, anyway?"

Because art matters.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:54 AM | Comments (1)

September 3, 2004

Eric: It's like they can see inside my mind. Of course, they *do* have six years worth of my archived e-mail....

It's another killer day of systems administration. Between that and reading the Narbonic archives and giggling like a madman every second I can spare away from the machines handling everyday life, there's going to be another day of late updates from me. But, like yesterday, I do promise there will be snarks, as soon as there can be. I don't promise they'll be any better than yesterday's snarks, but then you're used to that, right?

In the meantime, I have to point out something Google (excuse me, Goooooooooooogle. I mean, what the Hell?) Ads have managed to do.

After days of pet food, cat comics, and "make your own blog," they've started advertising Krazy Kat shirts.

God help me. At the rate I'm 'making' money off of Google ads, which after all are meant to defray operating costs for Websnark, it'd be months before I could afford to buy a Krazy Kat shirt. And yet, it's classic Herriman. On a shirt. Damn it, Google ads have figured me out! It's insanity! Insanity!

(How has Narbonic managed to avoid my radar before now? This is brilliance! BRILLIANCE! Garrity's opinions of my patter aside, of course.)

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:44 AM

Eric: Unsnarked out of fatigue...

This was a brutal day's work at the day job. And tomorrow's likely to be the same, though I'll try my level best to have higher levels of snark for you all.

For the record, I have strips in my upload directory, but I don't have the brainspace, the energy or the concentration to do them justice. So, Greystone Inn, Irregular Webcomic, Achewood and American Elf? I'm sorry. I'll try to get you guys in tomorrow.

As for now? Bon soir.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:33 AM

September 2, 2004

Eric: It's a busy day....

...and me with eight strips set aside for snarking, too. Sorry gang, but for the moment the day job has me in thrall. You'll get stuff at some point today, though, and that's a promise.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:55 PM

August 30, 2004

Eric: FAQ: Cast Page

So, I've received more than one note from folks that while it's all well and good for me to campaign for webcomic cast pages, I don't have one of my own here on Websnark.com.

"But..." I said in reply. "This isn't a webcomic."

"Put up or shut up," they replied.

So. Here's the cast page. Enjoy.

Eric Alfred Burns is one of the heroes of our story. Like all good English majors, he makes his living as a systems administrator. He also has a bad habit of writing. Born in a very small town in the very far north of Maine, Eric has lived in different places in Maine, in New Hampshire, in Ithaca and Syracuse, New York, and in Seattle, Washington. He currently lives in New Hampshire, but is wondering if his roots are beginning to get a touch long and therefore need uprooting.

While systems administration puts food on his table, Eric lists his occupation as writer. In addition to Websnark.com, Eric has written and published short fiction and poetry. He has also written for and designed Role Playing Games, including work for Decipher and Steve Jackson Games. He was one of the primary authors on the ENnie nominated Sidewinder: Wild West Adventures, and the subsequent Sidewinder: Recoiled won the Gold ENnie for best Electronic Game (non-free). He's listed as a contributing author on Recoiled, and would be much prouder if the sum total of his 'contributions' wasn't stuff from the first edition of the game which they rewrote parts of to make it sound less like the somewhat urbane Bat Masterson and more like Festus from Gunsmoke. But Hell, they got the gold with it, so why should he complain?

In the webcomics world, Eric writes a monthly column called "Feeding Snarky" and occasional features and reviews for Comixpedia, where they have learned to curse his procastinating name.

In addition, Eric has the unfortunate distinction of being an amateur novelist, but is deep into work on a novel that will hopefully change his professional standings. He has tried his hand at webcartooning himself, and epitomizes the old saw "those who can't draw, snark." He has learned from this mistake and is now hard at work at writing webcomics instead. He is hard at work on Gossamer Commons, as drawn by Greg Holkan and Peter Venables.

Eric has a cat named Sarah, which is short for Seraphim Kyriotate. He has yet to notice angelic behavior from her.

Wednesday White is, at most, a cameo in all things. An uneducated boor, she used to sneak onto university newspapers' staff because the high school papers wouldn't let her in. Every few years, it occurs to her to write something. This time, it landed her in webcomics. "If I write about it for a little while, I'll learn how to do my own sensibly." You see where that gets you.

This way lay contributing to Comixpedia then throwing stuff at The Webcomics Examiner. She's worked as a free-floating associate editor for Comixpedia, and handles site maintenance and script editing tasks for Gossamer Commons.

She loves trashy religious pop culture (all religions; she's not fussy), Canadian public radio, and sorting through artistic trainwrecks.

The pair can be reached at "websnark" "at" "gmail" "dot" "com." It's like a reverse rebus, isn't it?

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:19 PM | Comments (14)

August 27, 2004

Eric: Websnark Update Pool: Sauce for the Goose, Mr. Saavik....

Hey, if Websnark can't update at a consistent time in the morning, the least we can do is mock it incessently, right? Pot, my name is Mr. Kettle.

I'm on vacation today through Monday, so I slept gloriously, deliciously in. So while you might used to Websnarking having happened sometime before now, it's only happening now. And that's okay.

(Of course, I also snarked stuff after midnight, so technically the first snarks of the 27th already happened. Also, this is a blog, not a strip, so people are used to new entries coming up randomly. Also, no one gives a damn when this thing updates.)

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:33 AM

Eric: One week from philanthropist to sellout -- I rock!

You'll notice (if you're reading the site instead of an RSS feed, anyway) that I've thrown up Google Adsense ads in the sidebar. I like the Google ads. I kind of enjoy playing "what ads show up for my weirdass posts" anyway, and a few pennies towards future bandwidth won't be a bad thing.

I can understand its fixation on Little Orphan Annie merchandise. I actually make reference to Annie on these pages, and how often do you figure that happens on Adsense aware sites? But why it's trying to sell my readers Pet Supplies is utterly beyond me.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:32 AM | Comments (2)

August 26, 2004

Eric: It's like playing with LEGO sets, except instead of blocks I'm using EGO!

We've started tweaking the templates. This is a beginning of the process, not an end, but as we were coming up on a deadline (namely -- the daily comics trawl lists were about to expire from the front page) we needed to adapt so people could easily find the ground rules.

So, over in the sidebar we've now added three sections. "About Websnark.com" currently has the Mission Statement, such as it is, and will ultimately have the about the author and (not so) frequently asked questions list, along with explaining the funky terminology we seem to be developing. You know, "The Funny," "The Story," "First and Ten Syndrome" and the like.

Below that, we have the Daily Comics Trawls. Soon to be added to that are the Collected Page Trawl and the Sporadically Checked Trawl. I might or might not put a specific "Why Do I Read This Webcomic, Again" list here. If I do that, however, I'll probably make a whole new Safari tab group for things on that list, and that's one more step to oblivion. OBLIVION!

Below that is the "You Had Me, And You Lost Me" list, which lists the snarks I write about those strips once read and why I stopped reading them. Which, if you get right down to it, is meant as a public service. While I don't expect cartoonists to change their strips to reflect my tastes, it can't hurt for them to know why someone who once read their strip faithfully decided to give it up.

Below that is the Category archives and all the other tchochkes Movable Type throws in by default. Eventually, because I can already see a pretty hefty impact on my bandwidth (and right now that's more exciting than frightening), Google Adsense ads will get slid in there to help maintain the site.

Slowly, we're going to make this into our place. And by 'our,' I mean 'mine.' No offense.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 4:26 PM | Comments (2)

Eric: Rethinking image use

While going out and doing the snark thing, I want to be a good Internet Citizen. I want to use the artwork of others appropriately, without stealing their bandwidth or detracting from their rights as copyright holders, as artists, and (in some cases) as entrepreneurs.

At the same time, Websnark is both critical and satirical, making commentary on specific bits and pieces of internet culture. All perfectly protected under Fair Use.

It's a balancing act, and I think I'm going to shift things slightly, just to err on the side of not being a bastard. Not being a Bastard™. It gets you chicks.

So, instead of having the "click on the thumbnail for full sized goodness" open up a local instance of the artwork, where possible I'll have the "full sized goodness" actually open up the relevant web page on the person's site. So, if you want to see the full sized goodness, you actually have to see it on their site, in context of their design, advertising and so forth. I'll continue to use the thumbnails, as I think they're both useful and pleasant, but they're downsampled significantly at best, and often won't let someone see the point to any great degree.

Understand, I think copyright wise I was in the clear with the other method, but the letter of the law isn't the point, sometimes. Even if I'm snarking negatively about someone's site, the idea is for you the readers to check out what they have on that site. If I don't want you going to their site at all (in my autocratic way) I'll neither use a thumbnail nor provide a link.

So, while this does mean it'll push bandwidth up on their sites a scosh, it'll be within the context of the specific pages. And if there's subscriptions required to read someone's archives, it means you'll need to spend money. Life Can Be Like That.

Here's an entry I specifically ask for comments on. I want to do what's right by folks, here.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:09 PM | Comments (2)

August 25, 2004

Eric: A quick note on webcomics and bandwidth

I tend to put part or all of the strips I'm reffing up on my Snarks, with a link back to the comic itself. Generally I put a thumbnail of the strip up, with a "click to enlarge" option, unless the original's size is conducive to just being there.

For the record, I move copies of the strips into my own storage space and all bandwidth consumed by Websnark is my own, not the creators. Ultimately, I want people to follow the links and read the strips for themselves (yes, even the ones I bitch about). I don't want to steal the bandwidth from the people I'm snarking about. That's just not cricket.

So the costs for this site are mine, not others. That's the upstanding way to trash people, damn it!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:14 AM | Comments (1)

August 20, 2004

Eric: Daily Comics Trawling: the Day Comics List

I read a lot of webcomics. And by a lot, I mean "almost none, compared to how many web comics are out there." I mean, there's a ton of digital art floating around, and I read... well, everything I have some interest in reading. Jesus, what do you expect me to do? Read stuff I couldn't possibly care less about?

Actually, some of you do expect me to do that.

So, while I always reserve the right to update these lists, here's what I'm consistantly checking.

My method of organizing this ton of comics is through Safari's 'bookmark tab groups' feature. When I'm ready to read a block of comics, I select a bookmark that opens up some 20-25 comics at a time. That way, they all show up and I can just read and close window, read and close window. It's not quite as fast as scanning a comics page in a newspaper, but it's a Hell of a lot faster than schlepping out to get a newspaper in the first place.

I have two of these tab lists, plus a 'clearinghouse' page for a third group. These are the fodder I'm almost always going to have available to comment on, so you'll see a lot from these.

This first list is called "Day Comics." Originally, this list was formed out of comics that update in the morning. Over time, it's become something of a Keenspot clearinghouse with a few ringers (including some that really should be in the "Night Comics" block, like PvP.

These entries (in the order they come up in the tab list) are:

• Superosity, by Chris Crosby. This strip is utterly, totally weird, in a good way. It's incredibly consistent, too. If you didn't like it yesterday, you're probably not going to like it today. If, on the other hand, you liked it yesterday, today's probably not going to disappoint you.
• Sore Thumbs, by Chris Crosby and Owen Gieni. Touted (and often reviled) as a Gaming Comic and a political comic, this still-freshman strip really isn't either. This strip takes on political and gamer trappings, shoves them through a manga cheese grater, and comes out with something not quite as weird as Superosity, but still pleasantly warped. These aren't liberals and conservatives. These are complete idiots on crystal meth and LSD.
• Greystone Inn, by Brad J. Guigar. One of those "why am I reading this, again?" strips. I think I got into it because Guigar is a true student of the comic strip art form -- when he gets into the history of comics, he doesn't talk about "User Friendly" or "Sluggy Freelance" or even "Bloom County" or "Peanuts." He brings up "Popeye" and "Dick Tracy" and "Lil' Abner" and "Mutt and Jeff." I respect that tons. And the art is really clean. And he's never late. So it stays on the list. Maybe sometime soon I'll laugh at it again.
• Nukees by Darren Bleuel. Now this one I know why I read. Besides having a great sense of humor and a fantastic sense of character, Nukees manages a balancing act a lot of webcomics fail: it has full out storylines (some of them quite series) and yet manages to be funny every single time. It never has to put a cavet about how this is a serious, plot building storyline and no, honest, the funny will come back later. The funny is there, damn it. Even when Gav is lying on an operating table having a near-death experience with an Egyptian Goddess.
• Ozy and Millie, by David Craig Simpson. On its last legs on my list. Inconsistency in publishing along with a real feel that Simpson's either burnt out or just doesn't care like he used to -- and a systemic loss of funny along the way -- mean one of my favorite "Calvin and Hobbesesque" webcomics from the last several years just doesn't thrill me any more. We'll see.
• RPGWorld, by Ian Jones-Quartey. This one I stick to, despite an increasingly sporadic schedule. Its quality has remained high since the beginning, but we've also seen a real growth of the artist throughout. Ian J. was literally a kid when he started this strip. As he moves forward, learns more about Art (he's in Art school now) and develops as a person, increasing sophistication continues to flow into his strip. I'm willing to wait for quality like this, and can't wait to see where he goes from here.
• Sinfest, by Tatsuya Ishida. One of the most (pun intended) slickly produced webcomics out there, Ishida has a fantastic understanding of his own sense of humor. The common complaint is that Slick is a knockoff of Calvin (or of Milo Bloom), but honestly I don't agree -- there's nothing wrong with being influenced in art, and I don't see Calvin macking on Suzie in the reprints, do you? There's artistic validity in taking the familiar into unfamiliar territory. Besides, Satan and God rock. And the animals. The animals, man. Normally rock-solid in updating, but with exceptions.
• The Suburban Jungle by John Robey. Not the best work that Robey's done (it doesn't hold a candle to Robey's brilliant Never Never (which itself suffers with its new artist, who is brilliant but doesn't bring out Robey's whimsical cynicism very well), but by far his most popular, so he sticks with the one he came in with. It's my favorite "furry" comic, even eclipsing the technically superior "Kevin and Kell," for two reasons. One, it doesn't rely on the fur to bring the funny or the serious, which makes the anthropomorphic characters more a style choice than an end unto itself, and two, because it doesn't make every anthropomorphic character exactly like every other. Mice are mouse sized, even if they walk on their hind legs. Dogs are much smaller than tigers. Tigers are larger than housecats. That appeals. Plus, he has strong characters. Now, if he'd stop with the furry community in-jokes, it'd be better still ("Spiked Punch?" Someone has to be kidding me....)
• Goats, by Jonathan Rosenberg. Distinctive and funny, unafraid to experiment, but also pulls its experiments off, Goats is generally damn good. Occasionally, it falls flat, but hey -- what doesn't? I do like the fact that the superfluous and unfunny junior character added to the cast is named "Oliver." It gives me hope that he's meant to be a riff on Cousin Oliver from the Brady Bunch. And with luck he'll soon die. Of cancer.
• PvP, by Scott Kurtz. I have a total love/hate relationship with this strip, because Kurtz can be and often is a total asshole, but his strip is extremely funny. By far the best of the "Geek Humor" strips, because it's not actually a gamer comic, or a tech comic, or an RPG comic. It's a comic about geeks, and it's brilliantly pulled off. It really should be in the "Night Comics" section, though, because the last time Kurtz actually put his strip up on time Clinton was President.
• Irregular Webcomic, by David Morgan-Mar. Proof positive that you don't need to be able to draw to create a comic strip, and further proof that funny is not dependent on medium. Entirely composed of digital photos taken of lego characters and painted miniature figures (excepting only a very occasional dip into "Supers" drawn by a collaborator), Morgan-Mar distills the essence of funny out of Role Playing Games (and popular culture) and pours it through peg boards. As of this writing, it's the newest addition to my daily trawl, and I'm glad to have it.
• Two Lumps by J. Grant and Mel Hynes. I admit it freely. I'm a major J. Grant fanboy. His level of brilliance is hard to achieve, and Flem Comics is high up on my 'sporadic check list.' (I don't do it daily because I find I like it better in bunchs. Also, like many others, I prefer Grant's storylining to his random comic drawing, and Flem's currently in random mode.) However, Two Lumps is by far the best thing he's produced. It may be the influence of his writer, Mel Hynes, but I think it's because the subject matter is universal (to cat owners, anyhow), and therefore J. Grant's utterly horrific twisted sense of humor can deliver its steaming payloads when you least expect it. I love this strip.
• Real Life Comics, by Greg Dean. I have no idea why I read this. Inertia, I guess. It's not bad and it used to be fantastic, so I keep up with it. It's on the 'maybe drop' list, right now. I can't point to why. I just can't point to why I'd keep it or why I'd recommend it. It's just there, taking up a Safari Tab.
• /usr/bin/w00t/ by Chaobell. Still a journeyman comic in a lot of ways, but one that's fun to follow. Unashamed to be a gamer comic, though falls into a few of the more common webcomic pitfalls. Still, it's got some good resonance and it's a lot of fun, and it encapsulated the LARP experience better than any comic I've ever seen (in part because it didn't try to encapsulate the role playing experience, but instead the batshit insane group politics that surrounds most LARPs. Now that's funny.
• Penny Arcade, by Mike Krahsomethingorother and Jerry Holkins? Hopkins? What the Hell? Gabe and Tycho. I can say Gabe and Tycho because they put those names on their site in a LEGIBLE FONT making it POSSIBLE FOR ME TO SPELL THEM! Seriously, people. If you're going to put your name in a copyright notice, make it possible for critics to read it. Oh sure, I could do a websearch and get the spelling from an article or something, but that's already more effort than I'm willing to put into this piece of shit bullet point. Oh, and the strip? It's funny. And they have a juicer that fucks fruit.
• Astronomy Picture of the Day, by NASA. Okay, you got me. This isn't a webcomic at all. But it's in my tabs list because... well, because! It's gorgeous! It's majestic! It's the universe we live in! Take eight seconds out of your day and be impressed with the incredible place we call home. Jesus Christ, life isn't all webcomics and snarking, you know!
• Road Waffles by Eight. Incredibly sporadic, as Eight runs out of enthusiasm on projects, puts them on hiatus for a long time, runs random weirdass crap in its place, then picks it up later. And yet, I could read Eight doodling randomly for five screens and still groove on it. This isn't a webcomic, it's a Jazz riff, and the man can play a sax.
• Her: Girl versus Pig, by Chris Bishop. A weekly cut and paste comic, so we're not talking about significant effort here. And yet, it balances surrealism with cynicism just about right for my tastes, so I read it. Weekly. You know, because that's how often it comes out.
• Lore Brand Comics by Lore Sjöberg. Like Her, a weekly cut and paste comic strip, generally. Really, just a medium for Lore to say weird things. And that's enough for me.

Later on, you'll get the Night Comics, plus the Collected Comics Page, and the "sporadically reads." And if you're very good, the "used to read but then they lost me" list. Which has Megatokyo on it, so it's very, very likely it'll piss you off.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 5:05 PM | Comments (9)

Eric: Mission Statement

Do we really need another commentary blog on the web? I mean, honestly. How many of these are we supposed to accept, willy nilly? And who actually says willy-nilly in casual conversation? Or is that getting off the subject.

Why are we here?

It's more than the core of Western Philosophy going back to the Greeks as refined through Augustine and briefly sidetracked through the Asharites who figured we can't know the answer anyway so why ask the question? It's a justification for effort: the effort I put into creating websnark.com, and the effort you put into reading it.

Well, I've always been snarky and opinionated. My tribal totem is the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons (though a friend always claimed my avatar should be the Sea Captain. I don't know why. He also thought I was most like Nate from Overboard. I'm generally polite, though. An outlet where the ground rules state explicitly I'm being an opinionated bastard can only be a good thing for my psyche.

And besides, like a lot of websurfers ("surf" the "web." Is that hopelessly 90's or what? Should we have an updated phrase for the 21st century? Like "powerslacking?") I consume an absurd amount of web content every day. I read over sixty comic strips on the web. I read news sites and commentary sites and livejournals and weblogs. We live in an era where your office computer and your living room television have exactly the same capacity to entertain, with only differences in production values.

Looking back over my Livejournal for the past couple of years, I realize the ratio of content (defined as me bitching about my life, which is what you do in a Livejournal. It's in the terms of service) to "hey, look at this funny picture of a drawn dog" posts is pretty lame.

So. Why not put the dog pictures into their own shiny website, complete with automated systems for posting and automated comment systems so you, the reader, can agree that the picture of the drawn dog is in fact funny.

That kind of answers why I'm here and what I'm doing. But it doesn't really get into why you're here and what you're doing.

I have no answer for that. I mean, I don't think you're my mom, who wouldn't be reading this garbage anyway.

Whatever. Thanks for coming.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 5:00 PM