Webcomics
All the stuff I spoke about webcomics. This stuff is mostly dated, as I’m no longer active in the field.
To which he muses tech crap
0In the end, the Cornstalker forums are completely done. The upgrade itself was relatively short in comparisoin to the preparation and cleanup of the forums. I attempted to prepare myself for this upgrade, but in the end, as well prepared I was, the problems I encounctered were server specific. My original plan was to access the Cornstlker server via ssh- only to find that there was no SSH support to begin with. FTP proved to be worthless- constant timeouts had me banging my head against the table. In the end, a slow http download that took hours was my only choice. I could have skipped the backup, but experience has strengthened m belief in the addage, “Better be safe than sorry”. The cleanup was simple- moving the old foruls to another folder and moving the new forums, creating a search index, so on and so forth were things I prepared for.
What’s next? Well, there are new smilies installed on the forums as requested by the administrators. The PHPBBlog on the frontpage is now broken. If I have the time, I may go back and re-write some of the code so I can get working with the PHPBB3 forums. I doubt it, thought. I’ve been working on CS pro bono so far, as a favor. Aside from the last bits of finishing the forums and the removal of PHPBBlog, I do think my work with the Cornstalkers is done for now- any other work will require compensation of some sort. I’m trying to start a side buisness of website design- at some point, i have to stop taking pro bono work. I won’t rule out working with CS per se, but my responsibilites with CS ended when I was removed from my assistant editor position. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy and worship these guys and gals for their incredible work (and i still read all of their comics), but I have plans of my own at this point.
Projeccts of my own are coming along now. I’ve been looking into grants for one of the projects, but this idea is so grandiose, I would rather get other projects off the ground before I focus on this one. All I have to say for this project would be a TV pilot for a documentary-esque show. I wish I could say more, but alas, my lips are sealed.
I’m also taking a look at the Facebook API. While the whole thing is over-hyped (I am of the opinion that the Facebook value is in a bubble, and will pop in due time) , I find great possibilities for the API in terms of creating mashups. I’m doing all of this while learning PHP as well as some MySQL. Applications and coding may be one of the new parts of the Team Mayhem conduit.
As for Team Mayhem, there are plans. ohoho yes, there are plans.
Cornstalker Forums Upgrade
0As requested by the wonderful , I am indeed working on upgrading the cornstalker forums, upgrading them to PHPBB3. They have been down since 9 am today. Here’s the rundown (will be updated as time goes on!):
9ish: Forums shut down, full backup request sent
9:30 am: Full backup clocking in at 1.9 gigs. Downloads of that update failed.
10:15 am: ssh not accepted by CS server. AUGH
11:30 am: Backup Attempt #2 failed.
11:45 am: MySQL tables back up successful.
12:15 pm: Backup attempt #3 underway
1:00 pm: Backup attempt #3 failed- FTP server countinues to time out.
2:00 pm: Backup attempt #4 underway via cPanelX backup
2:47 pm: Backup attempt #4 at 820.7 megs and counting.
3:30 pm: Backup attempt #4 at 1973 megs and counting.
4:21 pm: Backup attempt #4 download complete- expanding to make sure file is complete and not corrupted.
4:46 pm: Backup attempt #4 successful. Starting upload of PHPBB3 and creation of MySQL tables
5:20 pm: Upload complete. Having troubles with MySQL connections.
6:26 pm: CORRUPTED TABLES CAPTAIN! MySQL is all fucked up. Reading some of the reactions so far hasn’t helped, either.
6:43 pm: Fixed tables, fixed connections (thanks Levi) now moving on to conversion. step 16 out of 23.
7:12 pm: Conversion complete, moved phpbb3 to the /forums folder, just doing some cleanup. Open for business at 7:30 pm. sharp
7:19 pm: Scratch that. I can’t tell when the forums are finished indexing the search stuff. It will be up tonight, hopefully.
8:50 It’s DONE.
http://www.cornstalker.com/forums/
I’m going to get dinner now.
Keenlace 2008
0I’m organizing the Keenlace 2008 season over at http://keenlace.comicgenesis.com
Interested? Check out the rules here: http://forums.comicgenesis.com/viewtopic.php?t=83645
and email me at keenlace at gmail dot com
I promise to have more up soon. just BUSY.
evil, evil forum bots
3So I made a test forums in order to test the modified code that i did for the Cornstalker Collective Site (it works wonderfully now, thankfully!), but it wasn’t soon enough before… the bots invaded the test forums.
This picture is sliiightly old. by maybe a week or so.
The good news… new users need mod approval before they can activate their account and post. The bad news… the new users need mod approval before they can activate their account and post, notifying the admins via email. I have 125 emails so far notfying me of new users. 11 so far today.
Man, bots are getting agressive.
Banananana
2Well, I finally got down to it, and the Cornstalker website was released thirty minutes before it was officially supposed to. Everything’s gone off without a hitch, save for two bugs that were discovered after the launch – looks like there’s some CSS positioning troubles in Safari and maybe a preloading script issue (even though there is a preloading script in place, it’s not working properly, because there’s been a suggestion to put one IN). The blog is working fine, so I can finally put that Cornstalker project to rest and move on to new ones.
Website design related, my next big site will be my own portfolio site. Each Team Mayhem member has their own subdomain for a portfolio-Primo already has his, and that’s working out just fine. I’m the next one due, as i need something to put my own personal shit on. It’ll act as my own mini hub connecting all of my accounts all over the place (deviantArt, this LJ, twitter, etc.) as well as to post my site design, and finally, a list of webcomics cameos i’ve had. I’ve been meaning to post all this time. All my cameos from the first Darken cameo to the Reckless Youth one (I’ve been fond of that one, i dunno why) to my Legostar Galactica appearance (as a 70′s lego, which again, was pure awesome).
Roofing on my house starts tomorrow. Before I go to bed tonight, I’ll be moving my computer out of my room and into my living room ,as my part of the house… well, won’t have a roof at all, by the looks of it. My part of the house was added on later on, and as such, has no insulation… and a thin roof. This part of the roof will probably be torn off, and I’ll be out of a room and perhaps a computer for a while, unless i plug it in my living room, which actually sounds like a good idea to me.
As for the blog title… well, it just came to me off the top of my head. Don’t mind me.
status report!
0Webcomics Report site is almost done. I ran it through some tests and its working beautifully. Continuing with a blue motif.
All I need to do now is finish the review template and ACTUALLY FINISH A REVIEW. (shock and awe commence).
Friday or Monday are my deadlines.
Next week, Team Mayhem Productions.
EDIT:
Here’s a quick little preview of what it’s going to look like. The Ads aren’t finished yet, unfortunately, and i think the logo is going to change again.
i talk. and talk. and talk.
0Well, i’m in the midst of school and work, so its oddly busy for me to be working right now. Daylight savings time came, and went rather… slowly. i didn’t realize until i woke up this morning. i woke up this morning to find my cell phone an hour ahead of everything else. disoriented me for a little bit, but other than that, i think its been allright. The weekend was dedicated to studying and to working on the Team Mayhem Productions site.
One of my biggest problems as of late is the use of my nickname, Teammayhem. People all know me as Teammayhem in the webcomics world, and it ain’t all that fair to where i got the name, Team Mayhem Productions. There’s two other people with me on that front, and to be only known as THE teammayhem is a bit selfish on my part. So i guess with the launch of the Webcomics Report, I’ll be going by a different name. No clue as to what yet, but i want to sorta…. display a new image for myself. Teammayhem is the snot nosed kid who started writing two paragraph reviews back when he was sixteen, and i want to evolve from that point to something much more. So I guess i’ll start shopping around ideas in my head to what to do exactly for this issue. I want to create a new image for those who know me, and to create an image that can be easily approachable by those who don’t. So yeah, I’ll work on this.
On the subject of Team Mayhem, its working oddly… well. No really, projects are moving and maturing much faster to what they originally were supposed to do. Zombie was always being held up as I’ve had multiple people drop out and move away from the project, a crushing blow to my own resolve to the project. But its odd- Taylor and Primo (the two other members in Team Mayhem) have become my own resolve. I get calls from Primo on random ideas he gets for the project, and he’s writing an episode of it all by himself. Taylor’s promised to see this project through to the end, so we’re pooling our resources and making this series.
Writing… is coming along to me much faster now. I’ve looked through a review that took me close to two months to finish and i was able to rewrite most of it within a week. I can’t explain it, but it feels like i’ve just been powered up, feeling a lot better about myself. It really does help to get my work done and be able to multitask much more efficiently than ever before.
I’m still working with the Cornstalkers, even as a coder. Supposedly, i’m still referred to as the Code Monkey, but i really don’t have much say to what to do in the project. I have no comic of my own to represent in the fray, so I’m sticking to what i can do best for them- Coding. I’m working on two versions of their site that i was hoping to get done by the UK Webcomix thing, but that ain’t happening anytime soon. But this and other projects i hope can help push the collective into a different fashion then would be a regular comic collective. I guess it’s just to push around and see what i can get done.
oh, and i have an absurd amount of projects for myself- 1 music CD, 3 short films, 1 storyboard, 1 animation pilot, and 4 scripts. wooo.
Oh, and I’ll be doing something special from now on- I’ll be listing the webcomics I’m reading.
Webcomic Readings:
nine lives
Lightbringer (to be reviewed)
Callin for comics to review
2Yes, ladies and gentlemen, i am finally opening up and taking request/suggestions for the Webcomics Report review site (to be opened in March, thank you very much).
What comics do you think i should review? think of all of the comics, yours included.
and they can be bad/good, it’s okay.