shanesemler

I've started on my second comix blog. In it, I recount a dream I had about the Christian Devil. I occasionally write down my dreams and this one I thought was especially interesting. I'm going to have Thanksgiving dinner at my mom's house tomorrow but I think I might be dragging my sketchbook along to finish the rough layout.

Also available on shanesemler.com.

Originally published at shanesemler.com. You can comment here or there.

I hate politics but these ideas get stuck in my head and this is a way to exorcise the little beasties. The image file is rather large so if you’re on dial-up, be warned that it’s 560.97 KB in size. Judging from the length of time it took to create this comic, I’ll probably do about one a week. Font by Blambot.

In other news, the archive is now displying properly.

I hate politics but these ideas get stuck in my head and this is a way to exorcise the little beasties. The image file is rather large so if you're on dial-up, be warned that it's 560.97 KB in size. Judging from the length of time it took to create this comic, I'll probably do about one a week. Font by Blambot.

In other news, the archive is now displying properly.

Also available on shanesemler.com.

Originally published at shanesemler.com. You can comment here or there.

Ubuntu pissed me off because they deleted multiverse which made it very difficult to install Java - so I went looking for a new distro. I didn’t get very far. I tried SUSE but it’s Wacom support is glitchy, which makes it useless for The GIMP. Also there’s no simple and easy way to find and add app repositories to YaST. Another thing YaST lacks is a way to select which sound card you want to use (if you have more than one). SimplyMepis’ monitor and graphics card detection isn’t so hot and the Nvidia accelerated drivers turn the screen so dark it’s unusable. So I ended up going back to Ubuntu. It just works, even with the annoying changes they made to the repositories. The fact is, out of the box it has the best detection and ease of setup of any linux distro I’ve ever used. Many other so-called desktop friendly distros lack Ubuntu’s polish and seem to be plagued by one show-stopper bug or another.

So anyway, I did finally get Java installed.

My new comic is taking a bit longer than I expected and I still need to finish up a few bits on my new website. Stop by, check it out and drop me a line and let me know what you think.

Ubuntu pissed me off because they deleted multiverse which made it very difficult to install Java - so I went looking for a new distro. I didn't get very far. I tried SUSE but it's Wacom support is glitchy, which makes it useless for The GIMP. Also there's no simple and easy way to find and add app repositories to YaST. Another thing YaST lacks is a way to select which sound card you want to use (if you have more than one). SimplyMepis' monitor and graphics card detection isn't so hot and the Nvidia accelerated drivers turn the screen so dark it's unusable. So I ended up going back to Ubuntu. It just works, even with the annoying changes they made to the repositories. The fact is, out of the box it has the best detection and ease of setup of any linux distro I've ever used. Many other so-called desktop friendly distros lack Ubuntu's polish and seem to be plagued by one show-stopper bug or another.

So anyway, I did finally get Java installed. :)

My new comic is taking a bit longer than I expected and I still need to finish up a few bits on my new website. Stop by, check it out and drop me a line and let me know what you think.

Also available on shanesemler.com.

Originally published at shanesemler.com. You can comment here or there.

I’m working on a redesign of the site. When it’s finished I will upload the first of what I hope will be a semi-regular blog-as-comix or comix-as-blog, take your pick. It’ll be my thoughts and stuff, like my normal journal but in a comix form. As I said in one of my recent posts, I don’t like the word “blog” but since there’s already a Comics Journal I didn’t want there to be any confusion.

Redesigning the site reminds me how much I dislike coding websites. I enjoy doing the graphics but the coding is such a chore. This time, I’m dumping all the CSS crap and going with a table layout. CSS prevented me from making the site the way I wanted it to look and it really screwed up Gallery. Gallery uses tables exclusively so the CSS had a very negative impact on it’s functionality. For example, CSS won’t adjust it’s size properly to fit content that is bigger than the CSS container. Tables fixes this problem.

Despite all the CSS crazies claiming it is the greatest thing since the invention of the Internet, an interesting fact I discovered in my research on CSS is that web site layout is NOT PART OF THE SPEC! It never was! From the CSS specification (the bold italics are mine):

CSS1 does not offer:

* per pixel control: CSS1 values simplicity over level of control, and although the combination of background images and styled HTML is powerful, control to the pixel level is not possible.
* author control: the author cannot enforce the use of a certain sheet, only suggest
* a layout language: CSS1 does not offer multiple columns with text-flow, overlapping frames etc.
* a rich query language on the parse tree: CSS1 can only look for ancestor elements in the parse tree, while other style sheet languages (e.g. DSSSL [6]) offers a full query language.

So there you have it. CSS is not for layout, therefor I will not use it for layout.

I'm working on a redesign of the site. When it's finished I will upload the first of what I hope will be a semi-regular blog-as-comix or comix-as-blog, take your pick. It'll be my thoughts and stuff, like my normal journal but in a comix form. As I said in one of my recent posts, I don't like the word "blog" but since there's already a Comics Journal I didn't want there to be any confusion.

Redesigning the site reminds me how much I dislike coding websites. I enjoy doing the graphics but the coding is such a chore. This time, I'm dumping all the CSS crap and going with a table layout. CSS prevented me from making the site the way I wanted it to look and it really screwed up Gallery. Gallery uses tables exclusively so the CSS had a very negative impact on it's functionality. For example, CSS won't adjust it's size properly to fit content that is bigger than the CSS container. Tables fixes this problem.

Despite all the CSS crazies claiming it is the greatest thing since the invention of the Internet, an interesting fact I discovered in my research on CSS is that web site layout is NOT PART OF THE SPEC! It never was! From the CSS specification (the bold italics are mine):

CSS1 does not offer:

* per pixel control: CSS1 values simplicity over level of control, and although the combination of background images and styled HTML is powerful, control to the pixel level is not possible.
* author control: the author cannot enforce the use of a certain sheet, only suggest
* a layout language: CSS1 does not offer multiple columns with text-flow, overlapping frames etc.
* a rich query language on the parse tree: CSS1 can only look for ancestor elements in the parse tree, while other style sheet languages (e.g. DSSSL [6]) offers a full query language.

So there you have it. CSS is not for layout, therefor I will not use it for layout.

Also available on shanesemler.com.