Monday, October 23, 2006

Why I love the Sims 2

Because of their amazing bugs. I've bought the Sims 2 Pets on Friday and I was browsing a fansite forum, when I came across this post by a concerned player:

I had the weirdest thing happen after installing Pets. I created a dog and then called for an obedience trainer. They trainer sim came to the house but just sat in a van in front of the house sobbing and crying continuously! I couldn't get it to stop and I couldn't interact with the trainer sim. I ended up moving the family out and demolishing the lot. Has anyone else seen this?

That's such a great bug.

It seems that people don't have much luck even if the trainer is not upset, though, according to this answer:

My trainer won't train either. She came, I purchased training, then she sat on the couch and watched TV.

Are you unable to connect to the main webcomic site?

Two readers have posted comments saying that they have been unable to view the main webcomic site for over a month. I've spoken to the network administrator of the host who told me some things that you can check out if this is happening to you. He would also appreciate if you could post/email the results of these checks. Comparing them for all the people who are having problems would help him to see if there is a problem at our end.

These are the checks to do:
1. In windows, press start, then Run, type in CMD (win 2000/XP/Vista) or COMMAND (Win 98/ME)
2. In the command window, first type:
nslookup http://www.thenoobcomic.com
the IP should be 67.18.37.227

then type:
nslookup http://www.thenoobcomic.com 67.18.37.226
the IP should still be 67.18.37.227

If the first fails, but the second works, it is your local DNS server and you should be able to fix the problem by contacting your ISP. Even so, please send us the results so the network admin can check them.

3. If both work, type tracert 67.18.37.227 to see how far you get. (Tracert displays all the hops that you do to reach the page.)

HOW TO DUMP THE RESULTS TO A TEXT FILE
In the command window, type the following (where filename stands for whatever name you want to give to the file and [ENTER] stands for pressing the Enter/Return key):

nslookup http://www.thenoobcomic.com > filename.txt [ENTER]
nslookup http://www.thenoobcomic.com 67.18.37.226 >> filename.txt [ENTER]
tracert 67.18.37.227 >>filename.txt[ENTER]

Paste the results of the text file here as a comment or email them to me at gianna.masetti@gmail.com

In the commands above, > writes to file and >> appends. If you want to write the file in a specific folder, e.g. a folder called misc on your c: drive, just type the whole path, > c:\misc\filename.txt.

In the meantime the network admin has made some small change at his end so you may be able to view the comic website already. I hope this helps!

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Minor things that annoy me

Commentary in some documentaries.
The sensationalist spooky bullshit, specifically. "There's something haunted here... something scary... IN THE POSTAL MUSEUM!"

Labelling in grocery stores.

Tesco, the supermarket where I normally buy my groceries, sells normal sized bananas and slightly smaller, misshapen ones. Instead of calling them honestly grade B bananas or something, they label them "Fun sized bananas". Fun sized? FUN SIZED?!?
Oh yeah... hilarious...right... "Joe! JOE! Oh God, come here, you have to see this!!! IT'S A SMALL BANANA! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!". Jesus.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Force of gigantic dis

I'm participating to season 6 of Sketchbattle (with AF writing the scripts) - which is a lot of extra drawing but is also good fun. Today KC Green destroyed the other contestant in the best battle since the creation of the website. Just the hands spelling "Bitches" is pure genius - I was transfixed. He should win the season automatically just for that. The guy's comics are very funny - those I've read, anyway, because it would take 10 years to go through all the archives. By the looks of it, he draws two dozen strips per day. And most of them are very good.

Another contestant that I really like is Fabricari. His art is amazing (I'm not so sure about his bespoke sound effects though - zottlx?!?) and he's had a very good idea about setting a webcam on his drawing table so that people can watch him draw in real time. He explains how to do it and I am tempted to set it up too.

Monday, October 02, 2006

UK Webcomic Thing 2007

I've booked a table for the UK Webcomic Thing 2007. Now I MUST get book 3 ready - maybe even book 4. I just shudder at the thought of printing episode 200 because it would have to span across two pages. It's a pain in the ass to do things by trial and error by normal post across two continents.
I'm also thinking of buying a badge maker and make buttons. I don't use them but I've seen people walking around the convention last year with so many badges on their clothes that I wondered how they still managed to move - so I guess that they are a popular item. If not, I can try to use them instead of coins in soda vending machines.
What else? I have some fridge magnets and stickers from last year (the pirate parrot was particularly popular) and very few t-shirts left. Time to print some more.
If only I didn't suck at organising this kind of stuff.