Are we all seeing this




for now, whether or not we have new messages, like a show-and-tell demo?

Because I'm seeing it, but have no messages. Aside, ya know, from the invisible ones.

Ya, you just have to reload or hit F5 or control F5 to get rid of that. The new feature is just bedding in :)

The PQ notification is exciting! Now I just need to get PQs…

ozoneocean wrote:
Get it Lonne. SSDs are the Bee's Knees!

So I've heard. They've become nearly as cheap as hard drives (you get more storage per $1 with a traditional HDD), have better durability and can store data for a very long time provided you power it on every so often. Apparently they will last for decades under normal use. However, constantly writing on the entire drive can kill it very quickly. But I doubt anyone would put such punishment on a drive if they use it normally.

It's nice to know PQs work now. I'm tempted to send a few, but I fear some poeple get creeped out just by recieving them (regardless of content)…

And now I also wonder… is there a trope about a very jealous man who murders any woman that shows interest in his rival to ensure said rival remains single forever? And goes so far as to follow said rival anywhere in the world to ensure this?

ashtree house wrote:
The PQ notification is exciting! Now I just need to get PQs…

Done…

Thank you for leaving the option to turn it off. The envelope icon was squishing the rest of the page and obscuring the navigation bar.

bravo1102 wrote:
Thank you for leaving the option to turn it off. The envelope icon was squishing the rest of the page and obscuring the navigation bar.

Bravo, all you need to do is the page to stop it ever doing that again.
Normal behaviour for it is to just harmlessly go into the middle of the page.
Please turn it on again and try giving it a go. It won't got at the top of the page like that after a simple reload.

I'm sure some of those PQ notifications are gonna be very romantic…



… mine are…

tupapayon wrote:
I'm sure some of those PQ notifications are gonna be very romantic…



… mine are…

So that's where Meg Ryan ended up. Free her now you evil butterfly!

Why is it that when you think you think you can get through the work you have in front of you super fast and easy, it turns out it just swamps you instead?

Part of my work today was doing the featured comic for tomorrow. I read through my chosen comic and just couldn't find a handle on what it was about… the first few pages were good, but later on it go worse and worse, horrible spelling and grammar mistakes that made it unreadable almost… but I stuck with it.
I fell asleep reading it even, but I stuck with it…

I kept on trying. But in the end I finally gave it up and picked my second choice which turned out to be SOOOOOO much better! I read it all the way through and loved it.
Unfortunately that meant I was sitting for hours ad hours reading webcomics off a screen… so got nothing at all else done.


Honestly, at this stage I would love to give up doing features for good.
I've been doing them for about TEN YEARS!
I only do one every second week now and Kawaii does the other, which makes things SO much easier than it used to, but I'd love if we had someone else as dedicated as Kawaii who would be willing to take on doing my feature slot as well every 2nd week.

Still in need of more judges for the DD awards, go on… you know you want to.

Owch… my computer rig is now partially outdated as far as current games are concerned. When I build my PC I try to overkill on hardware so I don't end up shopping for new components because software requirements exceed my current specs.

And now my video card is not up to spec anymore. There is a card I did want, but the thing is way too large to fit in my case…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oddGwo5oM8

As for video cards, I'm looking at getting this… But if I can find it used it'll be cheaper…
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ZFNCD7K/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_3?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A2X4SCQKUVJWDK

Gonna have to upgrade this machine bit by bit. I'm going to have to replace the memory (that can easily wear out), the case fans (and possibly the case as it's not large enough to house a water cooling setup), I'll probably add a good quality sound card and replace my current video card as well as it's not longer sufficient to run many of the top games out there (like No Man's Sky, whose developers claimed that the video specs were “reasonable”).

At least I don't have to worry about replacing my CPU. It's got 8 cores, runs at 4ghz clock speed (stock) which makes it overkill for most programs I end up running. And it was a HUGE upgrade from my Athlon II X2 260 (dual core 3.2ghz). Hmm… I wonder if I can donate my old processor to someplace which has servers that can use it (it can run Windows 10)…

Wow… gotta stop geeking out here. But now I'm curious… are the DD servers going to switch to SSDs anytime soon (if they haven't already)? :)

Impressive specs Lonne.

The DD server has an SSD, the specs are pretty modest:
8Gig of ram, 4 Cores, 96Gig SSD, 4TB ransfer, 40 Gbps in, 500 Mbps out
That costs $40 a month, but with backups that adds an extra $20 for a total monthly hosting cost of $60 USD.
(on Linode)

Our image hosting is done by Amazon S3 services and they're SSDs as well. SUPER rock solid reliable with backups being part of the package. Storage is relatively cheap, but serving those images costs much more… and that goes up if the site becomes more popular. Last month the cost was $45.42 USD, which is pretty good…
In the past sometimes it has been MUCH more.

And our Quackcasts cost $20 a month…


Which is all mine and good but advertising only scraped in about $90 USD, so there was a shortfall of $35 US, which I paid. Not a huge amount but it does add up over time.
We've been running in the red like that for a few months now, not to mention another $700 US of my own money for extra features and fixes given to our programmer after the Indeigogo funds were used up.
Hmmmmmmm…

Well, if you ever want to, I'm spending my spare time doin' some lernin about setting up and administering online apparel stores and working with drop-shipping to fulfill for them. I've got a couple clients that it would make sense for me to do it for them, and going from what I've learned so far, it wouldn't be too hard to integrate something like that for the ol' Duck. I doubt it'd bring in much, but I'd be more than happy to lend my newfound knowledge in setting up the online store again since if my semi-faulty memory serves, it hasn't been functional in years.

lba wrote:
Well, if you ever want to, I'm spending my spare time doin' some lernin about setting up and administering online apparel stores and working with drop-shipping to fulfill for them. I've got a couple clients that it would make sense for me to do it for them, and going from what I've learned so far, it wouldn't be too hard to integrate something like that for the ol' Duck. I doubt it'd bring in much, but I'd be more than happy to lend my newfound knowledge in setting up the online store again since if my semi-faulty memory serves, it hasn't been functional in years.

I was all for getting rid of the store, but this sounds interesting.
-Banes also suggested using an Amazon referral link

How would you envisage this working for DD?

Would you be able to get a store running that offers custom mugs and t-shirts and such? I know there are loads of these but here we could get various ones tied in with the comics of the duck maybe. How well would it work with worldwide shipping? We are a pretty spread out user base.

ozoneocean wrote:

lba wrote:
Well, if you ever want to, I'm spending my spare time doin' some lernin about setting up and administering online apparel stores and working with drop-shipping to fulfill for them. I've got a couple clients that it would make sense for me to do it for them, and going from what I've learned so far, it wouldn't be too hard to integrate something like that for the ol' Duck. I doubt it'd bring in much, but I'd be more than happy to lend my newfound knowledge in setting up the online store again since if my semi-faulty memory serves, it hasn't been functional in years.

I was all for getting rid of the store, but this sounds interesting.
-Banes also suggested using an Amazon referral link

How would you envisage this working for DD?

I'd have to do a little more research, but the easiest way that I would try to do it would probably be to have it link to an external store website that looks like DD but is administered by and forwards the orders to the print shop. That's as simple as setting up a Wix site or something similar. You could probably even borrow the code from somewhere and build the site on your own server if you really wanted. Essentially, if it works the way it normally does, nobody from DD would have any need to be involved in the running of that site at all beyond dealing with artwork for the products. From there, it'd be a case of filling it with products and advertising it.

It'd get a lot more complicated if it involved any sort of mechanism for people to upload their own designs or if you opted to custom build something instead of using an established template though. I haven't gotten that far into this stuff yet.

Do you think there'd be the demand to justify a custom store like that? Also the associated costs?
Maybe a pre-setup thing like cafe press would be better?
I just don't know.

——–

My old failure white sheep's fur busby is getting a new lease on life.
I took off the huge heavy outer fur cover and I've fixed up the old smaller inner original one with its bag and added a nice big skull. :)

The OUTER cover I'm turning into a GIGANTIC soft fur hat. It's really quite oversized. :)
I should finish it tonight.

Ugh. Family bugging me to go get married. AGAIN! And they want me to settle down and have children. I told them that I'm way too old for that (45) and they tell me I'm not.

I then tell them how crazy some women are and that finding a good partner is like stepping through a minefield (and unfortunately I've seen a LOT of crazy women this day and age).

*sigh* I'm so tempted to get back at them by stating the problems in their own marriages as a reason why it's better for ME not to go that way.

Maybe I should get off this island and join the Foreign Legion. I think they're in… Canada?

No Man's Sky. For the Playstation 4 an the PC. Apparently it's gotten a lot of hate due to it not being what people expected. They apparently wanted a multiplayer online space shooter/flight sim. What they got was an exploration game. Personally I'm saving what I can to buy a video card upgrade because I love games where you get to explore new places, meet/eat/kill/get eaten by new creatures, interact with alien civilizations, etc… So No Man's Sky is a perfect fit for me. Almost… it has no Gas Giants in there…

From what I hear no mans sky is… okay ish but despite the size there isn't much variety. TBH I expected trhis from seeing the pre release footage. I'll get it when on sale for under a tenner.

Heh…

A coworker was curious as he has the same video card I have but has an i7 Intel Processor. According to him the game will run on an R7 240 with 2 GB of video RAM. It won't look pretty, but it will run near decent if you have the processor power to back it up. So I can get the game first. I'm still going to grab a video card upgrade so I can play the game at medium levels…

@Lonneheart: go for one of those internet match-up Filipino girls. She'll cook, clean and be little to no problem. Or how about Indonesian, Korean or Chinese? Very traditional cultures and obedient.

You may scoff, but I know guys who did it and it worked out fine. I know others who went with the Russian girls and the girls ditched them because they were gold diggers. Strange the people you run into working industrial security.

And I have always found women no matter how mess up in the head far more satisfying than computer games. Must be something wrong with me that I'd rather beat the live action role-playing game that is dating as opposed to a computer simulation. But then i have been know to actually tear apart game consoles and throw controllers and even stomp on them. It's more challenging to hold back those passions while sparring with a potential mate. or maintain the constant battle of supremacy that is marriage,

But then I have been married for over 20 years and that has been such a roller coaster ride. I feel the real problem with so many people is that they just won't let themselves be happy. They always find some reason not to be happy as opposed to just relaxing and enjoying where you are. Open up the hatch on the “box” and take a look around. Wave at others from out in far left field and be crazy. At least I am having fun. And so what if the grass is four feet tall, it would make for a great photo essay on suburban aesthetics.

And maybe once i can decide on a design I might paint a mural across my fence. It's so boring in that weathered brown. And I love the weathered look of my front steps because it has so much texture. More interesting than plain white. Maybe I could do that in an interesting pattern too.

Stop worrying and download Tinder on your phone Lonne.

———-

I decided to do some vids explaining my hussar uniform and a bit about hussars in general- answering the sorts of Questions I get asked about it all the time. I'll eventually upload them to youtube.
I thought it'd be fun to do (in full costume), but it's not really, and It's hard to get good lighting. Was more of a pain in the arse than anything.

ozoneocean wrote:
Stop worrying and download Tinder on your phone Lonne.

———-

I decided to do some vids explaining my hussar uniform and a bit about hussars in general- answering the sorts of Questions I get asked about it all the time. I'll eventually upload them to youtube.
I thought it'd be fun to do (in full costume), but it's not really, and It's hard to get good lighting. Was more of a pain in the arse than anything.

You're still at the “costume” stage as opposed to work-a-day uniform stage. It takes a long time for a uniform outside of one's daily experience becomes a second skin. You can see it going to reenactments, the huge difference between the guy who “dressed up in costume” and the guy who is totally comfortable and natural in period clothing. That's the guy who ask questions because he'll give you commonsense answers that you only get by living in the outfit as opposed to wearing it.

You're still at the “costume” stage as opposed to work-a-day uniform stage.

Not at all. I call it “costume” because it's easier to communicate to people, also “outfit” and “getup”.
Saying “uniform” implies a connection to a military unit, which I don't have and I don't want to mislead people, so I'm careful how I talk about that.
-i.e. I'm not pretending I'm a soldier.

The uniform itself is too familiar to me to be a dress-up anymore. I don't have to be careful how I move in it, it's comfortable to sit in, I'm not constantly adjusting fittings…

But it's harder than I thought it would be to TALK about it, also, getting lighting right and shadows UGH!!!! That's where it's a pain in the arse.

I'm going to redo all the vids when I have time- knowing what I'm going to say beforehand so I can eliminate ums and ahs, and I'll KNOW how to sit so my face isn't black with shadow. Bloody overhead lighting!

Switched to my data drive now. My system drive failed… utterly…

Tomorrow I'm going to have to reinstall a LOT of stuff to this machine. Still gotta wait ‘til I can order an SSD for my computer, though…

On the bright side I can clean out stuff I either haven’t used for a while, or the junk my computer downloaded behind my back (such as tutorials and instructions on how to conquer the world)…

ozoneocean wrote:
Do you think there'd be the demand to justify a custom store like that? Also the associated costs?
Maybe a pre-setup thing like cafe press would be better?
I just don't know.

——–

My old failure white sheep's fur busby is getting a new lease on life.
I took off the huge heavy outer fur cover and I've fixed up the old smaller inner original one with its bag and added a nice big skull. :)

The OUTER cover I'm turning into a GIGANTIC soft fur hat. It's really quite oversized. :)
I should finish it tonight.

Urgh. Life got ridiculously busy. Should have caught this earlier.

Cafe Press has crap quality is the problem. At this exact moment in time, I doubt there's enough interest or a big enough user base to justify it, which is why I said if you ever decide to in the future.

Right now, DD is facing down the fact that being a BBC forum-based community site makes the old girl a bit of a dinosaur and a hold-over from a past era in webcomics, before getting your own hosting and custom wordpress/etc. site was easy. I'd say finding a way to fix that is a higher priority. Personally, I could really easily see transforming the comic hosting portion of the site over to something like the Cargo Collective model, but for comics, wherein creators get to build their own stand alone site by picking from a variety of pre-designed site templates that they can then customize the CSS and HTML of, and in order to remove the link footer and use their own domain name, etc., they pay a small premium fee for the option that's still a lower cost per month than getting hosting of their own. That would bring more users in, generate revenue and allow you build up the community enough to start opening other revenue streams, like a DD store and adding the feature for creators to build their own personal site store via something like the Society6 model.

ozoneocean wrote:

You're still at the “costume” stage as opposed to work-a-day uniform stage.

Not at all. I call it “costume” because it's easier to communicate to people, also “outfit” and “getup”.
Saying “uniform” implies a connection to a military unit, which I don't have and I don't want to mislead people, so I'm careful how I talk about that.
-i.e. I'm not pretending I'm a soldier.

The uniform itself is too familiar to me to be a dress-up anymore. I don't have to be careful how I move in it, it's comfortable to sit in, I'm not constantly adjusting fittings…

But it's harder than I thought it would be to TALK about it, also, getting lighting right and shadows UGH!!!! That's where it's a pain in the arse.

I'm going to redo all the vids when I have time- knowing what I'm going to say beforehand so I can eliminate ums and ahs, and I'll KNOW how to sit so my face isn't black with shadow. Bloody overhead lighting!

You mean actually write a script before putting something together? Whatever can you be thinking? Noone ever does that!

Now you know why some of us plan everything before hand. Something I learned about lighting for photos, the light should be aimed at your forehead. And the background should be neutral for interiors. You want the focus on you. Ideally it should a light color that reflects the light back.

It's all the stuff I've been doing in my comics all these years.

Iba wrote:

Right now, DD is facing down the fact that being a BBC forum-based community site makes the old girl a bit of a dinosaur and a hold-over from a past era in webcomics, before getting your own hosting and custom wordpress/etc. site was easy. I'd say finding a way to fix that is a higher priority. Personally, I could really easily see transforming the comic hosting portion of the site over to something like the Cargo Collective model, but for comics, wherein creators get to build their own stand alone site by picking from a variety of pre-designed site templates that they can then customize the CSS and HTML of, and in order to remove the link footer and use their own domain name, etc., they pay a small premium fee for the option that's still a lower cost per month than getting hosting of their own. That would bring more users in, generate revenue and allow you build up the community enough to start opening other revenue streams, like a DD store and adding the feature for creators to build their own personal site store via something like the Society6 model.

Iba, this makes a lot of sense! Not sure what kind of technological/financial undertaking this would be, but it sounds like a good direction to head in!

Mobile device optimisation is the single most important consideration at this point.