Idle Minds - News Archive

I demand the right to be educated as to how to choose the lesser of two evils!

Here in America we have the god given right to be educated about our democracy, yet they don't seem to want to prepare us for one. Wanna know why less than half of the population votes? Because they weren't brought up in a democracy, no kids were, schools don't teach kids how to participate in the government, they make all the decisions for the kids and never ask for input, thus making our public schools tyrannies. The people that deal with school every day of their life, 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, 36 weeks a year, 17 years out of their entire life (more if you're a grad student) have no influence over their educational experience. Wanna know why so few people vote? Because they don't know what the hell to do with a democracy, they grow up being told what to do and when to do it and then we're all handed a democracy and told to participate. America is the land of crazy assed administrators!

Sometimes people ask me who my favorite author is, other times they ask me who the hell I am, still other times they ask if I'd like to go play a game of Shadowfist, a mysterious game in which you have to hang out in the shadows and make a fist, I've never played before but I know they aren't allowed to wear watches for some reason. As for my favorite author, that'd have to be Warren Ellis, comic book writer of such kickass titles as Planetary, Transmetropolitan, The Authority, and now author of the new webcomic, Poppy. How can we ever hope to compete with THAT? I assume we'll be hiding the top 100 banners from now on, for fear that he'd apply. Ooh! On that note, thanks to all that have clicked the banner, in the week that we've been in the Keenspace top 100 we've gone from spot 79 to spot 38, booyes! Wanna help us get higher? No? Well click the banner anyway.

Update on the merchandise, Sam and I are making sure we've got a nice set of crap for you to buy, so far we've got a mousepad, a white t-shirt, and a sweater. We're starting on the gray t-shirt and one of the coffee mugs now, after that we'll be working on the baby tee, girls, once the shop is opened, please buy a baby tee, take a picture, then send it to me.... please? ...... Lisa?

I assume you've all heard the news on Napster by now, the company has been bought and is being bankrolled by BMD records, they're gonna start charging for usage of the Napster servers, the charge is said (not confirmed) to be about 5 bucks a month, which certainly isn't bad, and BMD says that they'll be releasing higher bitrate versions of their signed artist's mp3s. Don't start bitching just yet kiddies, lemme break it down for you a tad more, at the price of about 1 CD single a month, you can download any song you could possibly want which some of them in better quality than ever before, put it this way, if you can afford internet access then you should be able to afford the new charging Napster. But if you don't want to, there's always Scour and Napigator.

A bit of a personal note, I missed the Simpson's Halloween special, yet I don't care, to me the Simpsons has been degrading in quality for the past 3 or so years. It's lost all the subtlty that made me love it in the first placed, I hope to god it gets funny again, because as some of you (read: anyone that's ever showed interest in me when I go off on a rant about Peanuts) I can't stand it when something that sucks gets to hang around just because it's old. I can't stand the fact that Peanuts managed to go into reruns when it so blatantly sucked to anyone under 60 at the time of Shultz's death. Why do the bad comics get to stay? Why is it that Calvin and Hobbes had to end when crap like The Family Circus gets to remain? I suppose it'll be this way until the baby boomers kick off.

Oh yeah! The links! I almost forgot about the links! We all like looking at links! As you can see, I'm on a Turn-A Gundam kick right now, my first DVD arrived a couple days ago, and while I have no idea what they're saying, it's still very cool. Check it out sometime.

Yep, Stig's back, and I'm taking the news update only 25 minutes after arriving back at my house! You wanna know what my problem with Scribble.nu is? It's a public journal... I'll repeat that because it bears repeating, it is a PUBLIC (as in: anyone can see it if they like) DIARY (as in: a book you keep your private thoughts and emotions in). Does that make sense? I certainly don't think so, although Joel's tried to convince me with the whole "You can make entries private" arguement, which makes the situation mildly better, but it's still a bad idea to me, essentially (if you make a post public) it's no longer a journal, it's an E/N site, your personal thoughts and comments for anyone to see. So I'll say this, the day I set up a scribble account is the same day I make my own E/N site, however, I'm not totally against digital journals, just public forums like that. I do actually keep a digital journal, except it's with a freeware program called ActiveDiary, which spits out my journal to a hidden directory and has it's own file format that demands a password upon opening, this way I'm secure in the knowledge that my own personal thoughts and feelings will stay just that, personal. Joel says that I'm afraid to let other people see what I think (or something similar, I didn't really pay attention) but I personally don't give a rat's ass what people think of me or anything about me, my problem with scribble is the restrictions that come with it, you'd have to be a moron to keep anything but random thoughts in a public post, I use my journals to relay my thoughts as well as pen down interesting numbers or names that I found from the day, I'd rather not allow anyone who reads my posts the option of bugging a new friend with calls or something similar. I don't like scribble because of the uncertainty that comes with each post, and that's my main reason.

Above would be a full rendering of 'Manda-chan's amazing art style, which I hope will some day grace the pages of IMEX, it's also been submitted to MegaTokyo as a piece of fanart, though Piro probably hasn't come across it yet.

Yep, v.4.0 is up! I like this one MUCH better than the last, actually adding a bit of structure to the site and getting rid of that ugly, over simplified 3.0 has to be one of the best things I've ever done to the site. Well, that and add a News Archive with all our posts dating back about a month or so. There'll be a bit of tweeking over the next couple days, but it won't be much because I *really* want to finish up this layout.

Yay! Lucky me! Strangers with Candy is in reruns! So what if the series has ended? I still get to watch Jerri Blank learn nothing every week, without that bothersome League of Gentlemen chaser of old. You see, I don't get to watch much TV, from about 10 to 3 is the only time when I can be in the same room with a television, so my view time is considerably less than most everyone else. Generally I can be satisfied with 1 of 4 stations, NBC, Fox, Comedy Central, and Cartoon Network (though I skip on the news broadcasts, I'll stick to the paper thankyouverymuch). Comedy Central keeps me nice and entertained too, some of the comedians on that Comedy Central presents are pretty damn good (I'm talking to you, Wanda Sikes!) While others just end up creeping me out and/or annoying me (I'm talking to you, Steven Lynch!).

Good news for all you IM starved kiddes, for the next 2 weeks IM will run 6, count 'em, 6 days of the week! Why? Because we're finishing up this storyline and we wanna get done by all hallow's eve. Also, other site news, you may notice the little Merchandise link to the side, well, sorry to say we aren't offering anything just yet, though I have a great idea for a Joel shirt. I'd love to make us a black sweater or even better, a blue sweater. But apparently Cafepress only likes to let people have white to ash gray clothing printed. And since we now have a News Archive (in addition to our FORUMS) all the prior posts to this one can be seen there.

I'd love to hear any comments you have about this layout, it fits much better into the 800x600 reso than any previous incarnate of IM, and the colors played out nicely here (pssst... if you haven't noticed, IM's layouts have always been comprised of 2 somber shades of blue and white, and the occasional brain or brain in jar).

Not much to say today my little chickidies, so I'll leave you with a quote, "It hurts!"

Think of Phil Hartman as the Anal Retentive (insert job title here), de-age him about 20 years.... aaaaaannnnnnnnndddddd...... STIG!

I'm not joking either, I spent a couple days doing this layout, it didn't work so I had to compromise, and then it all came full circle, a layout that I wasn't too fond of in the first place (but did because it would be nice for our 800x600 readers) became uber ugly and not at all what I had envisioned, but I have had a new vision, and it is good. Oh, and if you're a dimwit, I just inferred that I'm going to be producing a new IM layout. I hope to god this'll be the last, I don't want to make a habit out of this, mostly because I work. In the grand tradition of keeping a layout a secret so I can lord info over the few readers that care... I'm keeping the layout a secret so I can lord info over the few readers that care...

Sam and I are in the midsts of generating some gift art for our favorite strips out there, most prominent being Penny Arcade, PVP, Real Life, and (if I have my way) Joshbabes. Ooh! The Amazing Manda has also come out of the sands of time and agreed to do our piece of MegaTokyo gift art, (she's the girl that did them pretty pictures at IMEX, which still doesn't have an ETA). So expect our special brand of ooogly to appear on some of your favorite comics soon! Yes! It's all a part of our master plan to something and whatever! If you're a normal person then you quit after seeing the words "master plan" for fear of a stupid rant about how we're going to be taking over the world, a lathe horribly unoriginal interviews on Battlebots! The worst show ever! And I quote!

"So and so was created for total domination, world wide" -Crazy old man in straw hat and hot pink t-shirt.

As you can see, today's strip was created to um... illustrate how much richer I am than the average person, but we rich people are the same as you, you see. We each have our hand maids put our pants on one leg at a time, we each have to clean that annoying smear off of our crystal capped cane every day before we dawn our top hats and monacles to take our daily tour of our factories. We each hit our workers and lock them up in solitary confinment when they steal lumps of our precious coal. So don't take today's strip as me trying to say I'm better than you, after all, just 'cause I'm rich doesn't mean that I've lost touch with the people. I'm just like all of you, only better... NO RICHER! ONLY RICHER!

You know what I'd love to do in the near future? I'd love to get off of Keenspace and become a self contained comic, possibly hosted on the coolest of cool hosting sites, Rydia.net. I'd also love to offer up special merchandise of us for each of you, but I'll be damned if I use Cafepress, they couldn't do the Joel shirt I have planned justice. Speaking of Joel, he has to be my favorite character in Sunday's strip, he just looks so much like, well, Joel...

Update on our domain name: I certainly am going to buy it off of NameZero, but to do so I'm going to have to get to my bank before it closes, and seeing as how I when it is open, this'll be hard. After we buy the domain, don't be surpised if we set up an everyone.net account, I've always wanted to give out e-mail addys and not actually have to set up the pop3s myself.

*coughcough* You know, sometimes I find certain sites totally by accident that end up being totally funny, not news, right? Well check out what I *coughcough* accidentally *coughcough* ran into a couple days ago. BTW, this has to be the best use of jointed wooden models I've ever seen.

MAC USERS! I FEEL YOUR PAIN! Well, not much anymore, though I do occasionally use a mac for my graphic design, but I too know the pains of having to use IRCle as a client, or even worse, Homer *shivers* but that has nothing to do with this paragraph, this paragraph has to do with me finding a kickass katakana font site (for macs) that I'd like to share. Hopefully these fonts have a couple of the characters that the fonts of Gray Graphics were missing.

Well, due to an utter lack of professionalism and ramapant idiocy on the part of Baby Boomers, I have dropped one of my clients, and I don't feel like picking up another one! I love this feeling! I felt so damn good on Friday that I slapped together a Flash pong game (if you want to call it that). It was fun making though, and for every 5 points you score, the ball speeds up. Enjoy!

Last paragraph, I swear, anybody got any dirt on LiteStep? I've played with it a tad before at friend's houses, but I'd like to know a little more if I'm going to sink my money into it (I've got a spare box that I use as a playground for this kind of stuff, and I'm getting tired of Turbo Linux). So please to be posting to the FORUMS because unlike a fansub distro, this is actually legal, remember, post to the FORUMS, and if you don't, I'll post your e-mail to the FORUMS so everyone can benefit from your wisdom...... FORUMS

NO SAM DAY! (Sam's out sick or working or something, so we've thrown together a strip for yas! Hope you like it, with any luck Sam'll be back tomorrow)

Yep, I'm back, thought they managed to get rid of me, didn't you? Stig here reporting another exciting SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY! IM strip. Wanna know why I was gone this week? TO BAD! YOU'RE GONNA HEAR IT ANYWAY! Much like the guys over at Megatokyo, I've been overworked. You guys all know about my month long vacation for September, well, see, I forgot something in that time, and that would be that I agreed to take on a job which required me to use Director (amoung other proggies). Now Director was incredibly hard for me to learn (wouldn't know why, I took to Flash pretty easily) and it's always been sort of my bane. It's the program that I never mention at the top of my resume on the fear that someone might actually want me to use it. For those of you who don't know what Director is, head on over to shockwave.com and look around, practically everything you see there was done in Director. For those of you with a bit more multi-media experience, Director is to Flash as a PIII 1GHZ 700megs RAM is to a Commidor 64. A lot of the same principles of Flash apply, but it has a ton of additional features and is capable of much more. My problem with it is the reterming of everything (note to readers: I almost never bother to learn the technical term for something in my work, I just like to do it and let that be it, terming everything I do during work with the sheer volume of things I do during work could make a kitten's head explode, and if you're a decent human being then you don't want that to happen mister!). But I 'spose I'll put some more work into it like I was doing this week, I spent this week doing moderate work for my clients, learning director, and sleeping (which sucks 'cause I only got to see Lisa like 2 hours a night >.<;;) But now I'm back, and oddly enough I feel like diving off a high board today. But not before I bore you with a couple more paragraphs!

HUZZAH! I've got a new headset/microphone! (well, Lisa bought if for me 'cause my old one sucked). Labtec you guys, LABTEC! Have a look, sweet, no? Plus when I pull down the little mic I look like a Gundam Pilot!

Ah, to pilot a Gundam, my dream since I laid eyes on the series back in '85 (though it was a bit hazy then, me being 5 and everything) So you can imagine my excitement (though sullened because I missed Joel, Sam, and Panda-chan) when I found a booth of guys making their own mech and looking for a test pilot at AnimeEXPO this year! I damn-near wet myself! Have a look at my new best buddies' site. The guys were pretty cool, and they didn't lie to me saying that the initial mech I was up for piloting (yes I asked to be in it!) would most likely handle like a tractor. I've been quiet about it because, quite literally, I don't know what the hell's going on. But if I get to pilot a mech, then I can die happy (herm... maybe I'll just ask that guy who built a Zeta Gundam replica, if I can use his).

Heh, Sam's got me there, I have actually been planning a couple changes to the site. Most are purly functional and will only make your experience more enjoyable. Example: On 800x600 the site scrolls horizontally, I'm trying to fix that inbetween work but it's taking a little while. Also, I'm trying to get as much of the site automated as possible (why you ask? So if I'm not here the site can do everything on it's own!) Right now I have a bigger role in the site than I need to have, Our frontpage is almost totally automated (since we signed up for the Blogger service, which is what's making this news post available right now, but something I'd like to change would be the link buttons you see (they change every week!) If I can get these automated, then if one of the cast finds a cool link they can just upload it and it'll be worked into the rotation (this is farely simple, I'm told, but I'm by no means a coder so I'll probably ask Joel to do it). If it works out to what I'm planning, whenever you refresh (or reload for you Netscape patrons) you'll get a new set of IM cast favorites!

Well, I'm off to eat, what's up with you guys? You don't like our forums or something? I'm hurt!

UltraFlash 3000 - I've been sitting on UF3K for a while, it was a pretty cool flash site with a cute little animated style, but then came the redesign, and now it kicks too much ass not to share! I love seeing Flash developers incorporate some user preferences into their site, which is exactly what UF3k has done (allowing users to specify background music, which is easy enough, but also allowing them to specify the layout color! Which is incredibly sweet and different! I prefer a dark gray). Make sure you check it out, Supermonk along is enough to make this site worthwhile.

10/7/2000

I am vengence, I am the night, I am not, however, Darkwing Duck!

There's a part of me that wants to be Batman, a part of me that wants to be Kevin Bacon in Footloose, and a part of me that wants a cup of Daiquiri Ice from Baskin Robbins right now. The first is the most prominent mind you. Why is Batman so cool? Because he's not some kind of dumbass who jumped into a pile of beakers filled with sparkly liquids to gain power, hell no! He's a big scary man that's trained himself to be a big scary man who can kick ass. I'd like to be a big scary man that can kick ass. Now, I do actually have a batarang, that's why this strip exists, I have two actually, a classic type and a functional type. The classic type looks like the batarang from the early 90s cartoon, and the functional type actually works do to design changes. Just another reason why I am truly qualified to be Batman, in this world of Incredible half naked green men, and pretty Latinas with *HUGE* lips, we need a big scary guy that can kick ass.

Heh, wanna know something funny? The ancient layout for Idle Minds (read: El Crappo!) still exists. Originally we intended to host the comic on my Hispeed account, using various perl and php scrppts to get the automization, but I hate coding and Keenspace does it for us. Anyway, the point of this paragraph, the ancient layout still exists on my hispeed account from when we were testing it out, if you'd like to see it, click here (warning, shield your eyes with some kind of protective wear, this page emits fugly like... well... fugly.com). An update on our domain, we know that the frame doesn't disappear on some browsers, this is because it's run through Namezero right now because we're all cheap bastards. I should've bought the domain from Namezero over a month ago, but it didn't happen for some reason.

Remember that uber secret thingie we spoke about a while back? IMEX? Well, it stands for Idle Minds EX, our own little manga strip spinoff (essentially our answer to Megatokyo). Have a look at the site here the comic strip itself hasn't launched yet, our artist (Panda-chan) has been pre-occupied with stuff that she actually needs to do. The sketch gallery is up as well as some other parts of the site that I don't think I can remember right now. Don't I look hella cool? Don't hassle Panda-chan about it though, 'else the mighty foot of Joel shall find it's way up your ass! Upon arriving up your ass the tip of Joel's shoe shall break off, becoming firmly wedged up your pooper and totally inoperable if done correctly, do you really want to risk that?

*zzzzzzt* hey kids, Sam here, breaking in to Stig's regularly scheduled news update for a little tidbit of information. As you read this, I'm out editing a project for money, because money is good. This is one of the reasons I'm not writing said update from start to finish. I'm essentially speaking to you from the past! Well, around 2pm Saturday, at least. Anyway, you'll notice that this sunday's strip has something to do with last sunday's strip. And it's not coincidental! Sundays will have roughly something to do with each other, and will contain their own storylines. They're essentially in the same timeline as the weekday strips, but showcase the other characters. Enter: The Batman Saga. However short it may be *smiles weakly*.
In other news, I went to check up on the The Fine Print page over there on MP3 dot com and, lo and behold, they've got a new track up! Needless to say, this just made my freakin' day along with Joel's. So much so that I, finally, decided to trade money for their CD, $484.00, and have my own damn copy. While in the spending frenzy that was buying that, I paddled over to LewisBlack dot net and purchased his comedy CD as well. Mr. Black is one of my favorite comedians out there, and if you haven't seen him on The Daily Show, either of his two Comedy Central Presents comedy shows, on Late Night with Conan O'Brien or any other late night talk show, then you, sir or madam, are a horribly deprived human being. If you can even CALL yourself a human being.
On that note, I'll send you back to Stig and his update. Hopefully my friend Jason and I will finish editing this in time to check out the update!

GO WATCH RUN LOLA RUN NOW!!! I'm not asking you to, I'm TELLING you to! It's easily the coolest movie I've ever seen, right up there with Swingers, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Go, and even the uber cool Surf Ninjas! Teaming of a great story, a girl who can scream so loud that it shatters glass, and a debt to a mean looking gangster guy make this movie yummy (for lack of a better term). AND LOLA IS HOT!!!! *prepares to lose his nuts by the hand of girlfriend Lisa*

You know, updating the news here at IM is a very large responsibility, only bestowed to me so that I may abuse it and link you to friends sites, so that's what I'm gonna do smarty man! A lot of people have asked me whether I'm a Republican or Democrat (note that I didn't say, "since we opened the site") and I'm none of the above, I, like my buddy Isa, am an Otakan! originally I supported Pikachu, but since that whole scandal with the cross dressing and boozing he's lost my support. So this coming November, vote Goku! Because a moron in office can't possibly do any harm! (we hope). Also the site's being redesigned and it looks damn cool, great work Isa!

GRAAAAH! WHO IS THE DIGIMON EMPORER? I miss one episode and now I can't find a single person in all my hangouts that'll answer me! I think it's Joe, 'cept he looks all weird and stuff.... Wai! I had Lisa translate the title to Candidate for a Goddess and came up with Megami Kouhousei, which I plugged into a search engine and found this little gem. Read up on the series, it's hella cool, and pretty new apparently. Also, a very new anime that I couldn't recommend more highly, Love Hina (and according to Molokidan, Hina either means doll or country) has amazed me from episode 1, I'd have to say that Motoko's my favorite right now, with Kitsune in a close second. Both of these are available in DVD form, and I recommend you sink some cash into both, you won't regret it (or at least shop around the internet for some encodes.. just see them). Well, by the reflections on the glossy paper on which I sketched a couple Hitmonlee and Blastoise about 2 years ago, I can barely see my wall clock, meaning I'm leaving now and trying to justify it.... Bai now!

-Stig

**Image no longer availableImage no longer available image no longer availableimage no longer availableImage no longer available***

What you just saw was my driver's license photo, taken a year ago last August. Scary, ne? I could explain why I look like that (pssst, that's not how I usually wear my hair! Please don't hate me smarty popular reader!), but I probably won't.

Now, as a Danish/American, I was exposed to a lot of sucky TV when I was a child (as is a customary Danish upbringing), and my one salvation from said suckiness was the muppets (and at times DJ Cat). So I was freakishly suprised when I found this site, easily one of the funniest things I've seen since the JeffK "Usar Feinddly!!!!11" Flash toon. Click NOW!

Links I'm loving right now:

- Javascript Games
- The Encyclopedia Mythica
- SNL Sketches
- The Serial Experiments: Lain Root

You know, them boys over at Penny Arcade? Thems good people, Ias like talking wit' dem...... Wow, without Communism I don't have much to say... I'm just going to quit now, rather than bore you with crap about me that you couldn't possibly care about, bai now! :).