If I’d been doing this for more than a few months, it may warrant emotions or thanks, but this is like many other webcomics - a blip on the radar. Twas fun. I won’t take the site down just in case I continue working on it at a later date, but for now the hiatus begins.

Thanks.

- George

It certainly wasn’t a terrible film, but there were definitely some oddities in it that throw off simple folks who’re expecting to see a film about warring robots (that transform).

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090623/REVIEWS/906239997

I agree with Ebert’s disdain of every second of film spent on the Witwicky family is like all the worst Erkel moments replayed on some tortorous projector in formulaic slapstick Hell. But the robots were cool, and tickets for only $5 each where we went, so it was all good.

If you didn’t see the film, perhaps the robot testicles reference eludes you. A good link on the matter:

http://filmdrunk.uproxx.com/2009/06/transformers-has-actual-robot-testicles

I should note the factors at play: my daughter’s two, my son is turning one shortly, and Fallout 3 just came out with a new expansion pack. With the scant free time I was blessed with after 9pm last night (the complete lack of free time beforehand to be explained in the next cartoon), I ventured toward the dark side, setting the pencil aside to add an extra 2 hours of play time to my save game.

This holiday weekend doesn’t bode well for cartoon regularity either, but then again I will be near grandparents, so it may just give me more opportunities to draw than I have at home.

Sure, it’s lame to suddenly pull out the “two kids - no free time” card now after 30 cartoons without a missed day, but finding two and a half hours to draw three times a week is definitely a challenge when you’re raising two kids that need constant supervision and resist all forms of sleep. We ain’t the Brady Bunch or Jon and Kate - I know it could be a lot worse. All I’m saying is to all my carefree Facebook friends who post comments like “Don’t know what to do this weekend” or “Gosh I’m bored tonight”, I envy you to my very core.

Sure, my children are a blessing and undoubtedly the best thing I’ll ever contribute to this world, and yeah it was our decision to be parents.

But I’m very short-sighted and petty, and right now I’m extremely jealous of my single, childless and bored friends.

It’ll pass.

- George

Because seriously, aren’t we due for another Matrix reference?

I was talking with a few people about browsers yesterday. It’s funny how IE started out as a standard (because Netscape? Seriously?), but widely regarded as buggy and annoying. Mozilla had a good run, but it had to move on and let Firefox take center stage, which was a huge hit in the developer community (glory be Firebug, hallowed be thy name).

Odd side note: for the sites I work on (sites with more than 60 hits a day), IE6 is still more widely used than Firefox 3. True story.

For a while, I was a Maxthon guy - still am, actually. It sits on top of IE and makes it 500% more usable. Only in the last few months did I discover enough Firefox plugins to make it comparable, but lately I’ve found FF experience buggy here and there.

So Firefox purists and, well, everyone else who never cared enough to switch their browser have had a lot to quibble over. IE and Firefox are definitely different enough to give every front end web developer a daily migraine. Personally, if I tell a DIV “be 400 pixels wide”, I expect him to stay 400 pixels wide, regardless of it’s padding! (Dammit!)

As much buzz as Firefox has received in recent years, even the biggest Firefox advocates are starting to move to Google Chrome. Apparently it doesn’t choke when one window is waiting on a server (like FF and IE). It also doesn’t hog memory like the others the longer you use it. Not sure if these statements are totally true, but Google has a permanent, self-promoted air of perceived awesomeness around all their products, so at least that’s how the browser is viewed currently. No doubt in a year people will curse the simplicity of chrome and some other issue it’s lacking in.

Of course , all this flies over the heads of most users, who really just want to google map directions and play dumb Facebook apps. On that note, here’s a humorous video on what lay people think a “browser” is. Clearly, they are not the target audience for this cartoon.

So Scott from Google, what’s the lesson? Your company’s browser product is largely overlooked. Because, like it or not (and Firefox know this already), regardless of hyper-intelligent design and perceived security features, most folks don’t care how they get to the Internet, just what shows up on the pretty screen when they search for Lindsey Lohan gossip.

- George

I’m not inclined to think we’re seeing “the worst” generation, just the latest. It is crazy to compare the leaps that happened between generations in the past against what we’ve seen in the last 20 years. How do you compare the steam engine to MRI scanning and GPS devices? Paved roads to cell phones? It’s hard keeping perspective when each volley of tech gadgets trumps the last every 6 months.

Next, a video from the Onion. This is the same public disappointment in bleeding edge tech devices - the quicker they come out, the more their quality seems to suffer.  Just a heads up - it has a lot of swearing.

Sure, you could write this off as one person being way too touchy about her barber’s handy work (and a haircut I had every summer until I was 12 no less), but it’s not a new theme. It just seems like today’s parents have become way too sensitive about what their kids are exposed to, what activities they’re scheduled for, how quick they’re learning and, most importantly, how they’re being raised.

I won’t rant about how wimpified kids are becoming. I’ll just say these aren’t little pet projects that we’re incubating until they’re ready to leave home for college - they’re individuals that parent’s are hopefully guiding through their own individual growth. Lighten the hell up; they’re not some delicate balance that’ll crash and fall apart if your vigilance falters for a moment. They’re resilient, quick-minded, savvy little versions of you that want your love more than anything else.

And a Nintendo DS for their 10th birthday wouldn’t hurt.

- George

Apparently, a few resourceful Nigerians have caused a lot of financial woe abroad with these emails.

• http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8171053//
• Good list of these emails: http://fraudgallery.com/

You’d think the fact that they rarely state your actual name would be the first clue, but of course it’s probably a lot easier to say if you didn’t hand over your bank account info to a distressed barrister. Spoiler: it’s a bad idea.

For your edification, some lively discussion on events in Nigeria.

For geeks, you may as well ask who the one true God is, and how to worship Him (or Her). Everyone has a different angle, many travel in groups, and they all claim to want the same end goals. It’s amusing the volumes that have been written on this subject -  the models, the frameworks, the approaches, they all want to create a program quicker, safer, more supportable with less bugs and the best possible quality for the client.

But they all tend to be incredibly self-absorbed. First off, if you’re spending your time arguing your approach to how you work over that of others, you’re already focusing significantly on how you do you work. One could argue  that attention is better paid to the software users. Plus, these arguments spend a lot of time detailing the approach to work without really distinguishing the environment each approach is suited for. It’s often spelled out that a given coding approach applies best in “software development”, overlooking the many different types of environments that can fit under this umbrella term.

People will dictate their approach

In most development teams, you’ll have a lead or head honcho of sorts, and chance are, if he’s drinking Kool-Aid, he’s gonna want his team members to take a sip.  If he leaves and someone else with fiercely opposing ideas comes in, the tune will change and pressures in another direction are applied.

Still, people perform however feels best and right for them. You can tell a carpenter to use a certain saw on the job site, and maybe he will, but if you ease up and leave him alone, he’ll gravitate to what he prefers. Same for coding - it’s a personal thing. You can funnel folks into a certain “methodology” or programming style, but you can’t be certain you’ll convince everyone. And if you demand all people code according to your prescribed approach, you’ll screen out people who don’t see eye to eye with you, and ultimately reject a lot of potentially otherwise productive people.

And you’ll have the beginnings of a mini cult. Side bonus, if that’s how you see it.

Environment will dictate an approach

Few of us have enough influence to control our work environment. Clients have set behaviors, support teams have set behaviors, and project / program sponsors have their own behaviors as well. So expecting that your environment will work around your programming methodology is ridiculous. You can sell your approach to stakeholders and attempt to change your environment, but that’s an act of business politics, not proselytizing.

At the end of the day, developers and programmers are charged with producing a product. You can’t obsess with how that product is made - that part will come naturally from your environment. Even if you’re a technology-first group where the code drives the business, you still are bound by dynamics of how your product is released to customers and how the business gets revenue from the product.

All that to say…

I think it should all come down to two people, in this order:

1. The long term user.
2. The next guy who has to fix or update your code.

If you’re making the customer happy, you’re obviously doing something right, and ultimately this is the end goal, bar none. Everything else is a distraction… with the exception of #2, keeping the guy after you sane. Because customers don’t like it when you’re the only human with the capacity to understand what you wrote.

You want a scrum? Do tollgate meetings? Stand on your head while you code? Go nuts… so long as the end product is what we want.

And now I’m wondering if lumberjacks have the same types of arguments? I’m guessing not.

- George

Here’s a few good related links:

• http://www.codewalk.com/code_indentation_style.html
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/357931/no-room-for-elegant-code
• http://agilology.blogspot.com/2008/05/why-elegant-code-doesnt-get-agile.html
• http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/FrontAhead-Design.aspx

See the creepiness and utterly amazing markup here:

• http://atlanta.craigslist.org/search/sss?query=shabby%20chic
• http://atlanta.craigslist.org/search/bar?query=massage