Shizi Zhanzheng

Wow two updates only a week apart!

OK, this another technical notes page about another crappy human space ship you haven't seen yet! However it does mean that I've got a Blender model of this ship which will be used in the next Part XI update. I'm also still working on the next Part IX update which should be really spectacular.

Cornicopia

Yes I know, you've read a bunch of web comics where instead of new comics, they post pictures of characters who they say are going to appear in future issues of the comic. Then the comic just dies! Sometimes fillers are posted by comics which contiune or revive. Well here I am updating with a page about space ship which is going to appear in the comic in the future. It's not even a very exciting space ship (remember that a big part of the problems faced by the humans is that their ships suck compared to the alien ones). Well, you will notice that the picture of this ship is a 3D rendering because I've modeled it in Blender. I model most the spaces ships, meca and other complicated 3D objects in Blender and export to SVG so I can show them from different angles and have them consistent. Therefor this was modeled as part of the process to produce the next installment of Part XI.

Part IX is still in production and hopefully it won't take too much longer before I can post the next installment. I may post another Part IX extra installment (I know they're basically just fillers), if it takes that long to get another Part IX or XI up.

Mods in new forums

I've now added all the mod kinds that have so far appeared in this comic (at least those identified), to the forums so you can discuss them. I've also fixed the mod database so the forum links now take you to the forum for the mod in question. I know you all wanted that and were waiting for it in great anticipation.

The next three updates are in production so one of them should appear soon!

Finally here

Yes, the promised start of Part XI is finally up! Anybody who says that you can't graft Agaves or Aloes onto cacti (or anything else because their monocots should Google Astrophytum caput-meducae!

Still working on the next Part IX update, it will be ready before the release of Chinese Democracy - oh, what they actually finished that thing? Well before there's real Chinese democracy anyway. Seriously some time in the next month or so. There may be another Part XI extra update something before then, we'll see how things go. Unfortunately the next bit of Part XI involves the Omega space station which I'm going to have model in Blender so that could take a while.

Update soon

I'm still working on restoring the forums. This is partly because the next update will need its own forum and to have a link to it. That meanst I can't finish it untill I set up the forum.

In addition to the first installment of Part XI, I'm also working on the next installment of Part IX. That should be a lot to look foward to.

New forums

I'm setting up new forums at:

I'm in the process of changing all the forum links to point to these forums. If you find yourself at an Invision forum, try to remember what you wanted to discuss and come back in a few days. If you're really impatient, you can click on the gargoil (at the bottom of most pages) and email me.

I've got the first two frames of Part XI nearly done but it would be nice to have a forum for them. Invision seems to have forgotten my new password and ditto for my Zetaboard password. From their websites, it seems that these two boards have merged and their moving the Invision stuff over the Zetaboards. I suspect they're loosing passwords and things in the process (if I was paranoid I might think this was a conspiracy against me).

I'm seriously thinking about just setting up a forum somewhere that's run by different people.

I'm also trying to figure out how to get svgweb to work so I can have at least parts of my website doing fancy stuff on IE without having to worry about plugins. I tried writing a very simple script for it and it didn't work!

I'm also updating the svg viewers page for Opera 10. As far as I can tell so far, it's very similar to the previous version. This is generally good but there are clearly some issues, like why some SVG's used as images don't work and why some text doesn't appear.

Back from Conversion

Conversion 25 went really well and I had a great time. However this now means I'm rather exhausted.

So stop making excuses for the overly long tmes between updates! Let's tell you a bit more than "had a great time" which every other web comic creator seems to say when they're back from a con.

I followed Tanya Huff (writer of "Blood Ties") in the caberet so I felt I needed to eat some garlicky humas to prove I wasn't a vampier. It was good the niblies included something garlicky so I didn't have to demonstrate that I wouldn't die if staked through the heart :)

I have a sneeking suspicion that I'm in a computer simulation and there's a pause button hidden somewhere, if I do things I haven't done beofer I might find it. Most of the things I can think of never having done are illegal, imoral, difficult, dangerous, expensive or some combination thereof. However I now know that doing a stand up comedy act doesn't get out of this annoying, poorly programmed and rather boring game. Nothing lost even though people laughed at me.

I also read my short story, "The Prince of Wizards" and played Thor in the radio play, "Gods Annominous".

There was also a very interesting talk about the unsolved mysteries of astrophysics. I don't know how you can be a atheist considering all the weid stuff in the universe we don't understand (including the very real possibility that there are multiple universes).

Then there were loads of people in really cool costumes and I had some interesting conversations with people I don't see that often. Nicole and myself went to a filk session with Manx Cat but few people turned up. Filk doesn't seem very popular at this con. It was a bit sureal when Manx Cat started talking about how Sheiagh (I hope I spelt that right) Campbell had died last year like it was something in a history book. Sheiagh was staying with us while she was ill and we're still looking after one of her cats and another cat she was looking after for a friend.

Talking about sureal. The radio play, "Space Oddity" had an alien named Lucy (they actually had some "Lucy in the Sky with Diamons" references - this play was many bits of song lyrics, some of them distorted) quoating lines from "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft". I once had a girlfriend called Lucy (or perhaps it should be said that she once had me - stop it!) from Wallacy (just across the Mersey from Liverpool) who looked like one of the people on the back of Klaatu's (who wrote "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft") "Sir Army Suit" album.

Anyway, I suppose I should get back to checking email for oportunites to make huge amounts of money and perhaps working on the comic.

Gettin somewhere

Well I've got Scour to work and used it on the first frame of part XI. I've also added some animation to this frame because I want it to look really impressive.

I'm still fighting with svgweb. This is probably a longer term thing as I don't want to make loads of changes to get everything working with it and then have to change everything again when a new version comes out (it's still in beta).

I'll also find the time to continue working on part IX. The trouble is that this part seems to do somthing stupid each frame so I have to render one at a time and can't do much with the computer while it's being done.

New developments

If you're a regular visiter you'll know that you're previously had to click on the link to see this blog. I decided that I'd be more upfront with it so more people would read it and I could more easily give news relating to this site.

Firstly Part IX is still in production, it's just rather slow because I can only render one frame at a time and can't use the computer for much else while it's happening.

I've also started working on Part XI, which will start with a flashback so I can put it up without it being a spoiler for Part IX (Part X is a summery of the story so far). This will be a return to interactive SVG but with a few (I hope) improvements in the format. This will hopefully mean more frequent and and more interesting updates.

Another reason for starting on Part XI is so I can test Scour which eliminates unecessary code from SVG (this seems to be an inherent problem with using WYSIWYG programs - which you have to use for complicated SVG). This should produce shorter files and speed up the development process.

I'm also looking into svgweb which uses JavaScript to display SVG using Fash in Internet Explorer and native SVG support in other browsers. This will mean that 97% of people will be able to read this comic without having to mess about warning people about SVG. Unfortunately the latest version doesn't work locally, making development difficult. I was told a version which got round this would be available on Friday or Monday but it has yet to materialize.

I've also been having problems with the Forums as I've lost the ability to access the Admin CP and Invision haven't been very helpfull in sorting this out. This main mean a new forum, not that anybody seemed to be using it anyway (you will notice that links to the apropriate forum are now on the mod database - if anybody uses that).

Still working

The animation is proving to be like extracting teeth! Blender seems to find a new silly thing to do with each frame so I'm rendering them and tweeking them one at a time! I've also changed my hosting company which required more tweeks because it does some things a bit differently from the old one (e.g. didn't allow avi movies).

I've also changed those video adds because they were discontinued. All the comic is now Google Chrome and Safari friendly, except three frames which crash Safari 4 but worked in Safari 3!

I'm now on Twitter and will try to update that more frequently.

Another update to the part IX animation. I know that's what everybodie's been waiting for! It's really about half of what I intended for this update but I should be able to get the next installment (what should have been the second half of this) done fairly quickly.

It took a day for me to get my hosting company to let me upload it and now my site seems to be down. Anybody know a good cheap hosting company who are SVG friendly?

It seems that Buzz Webcomics has died so I've taken all their links off my site to get rid of the image not found messages. This probably means that they'll ressurect like a dead superhero and I'll have to put all the links back. I now have links to Choice web comics and Super100 webcomics list (or something).

A certain webcomics list rejected me because they claimed that most browsers can't read ".svga" files and seemed to think I worked on Mac because I suggested the use of Opera! (In case you don't know, it's SVGZ files, they're supported natively by Opera, Safari, Google Chrome and Firefox and can be viewed with Internet Explorer using a plug-in. Opera of course works on PC - I think it allwasy has. Safari used to only work on Macs but now also works on PC's). I think this guy ignored my instructions about how to view the site and just thought that if he couldn't see anything, nobody would be able to! What do you do about jerks like this?

Problems with hosting company

I'm affraid my hosting company has been having serious technical problems of late. My site seems to be down a lot of the time, I can't access with FTP to make changes and sometimes cgi scripts don't work. I've emailed them about this. Cgi scripts were working just now but I still can't log in with FTP. This means I can't upload the Safari/Google Chrome friendly version of part V I've been working on.