Wait… which part was the reverse psychology?

Filed under Found on the Web

You know, imperial troopers just haven’t been as sinister since they abolished the minimum wage. There’s more here.

Four T-Shirts to Answer the Question: Is the Glass Half Empty, or is it Half Full?

Filed under Works in Progress

Today, your friends at the Retropolis Transit Authority* present you with four answers to that eternal question: is the glass half empty, or is it half full?

These four bits of wisdom have been carefully devised to apply, in evenly divided quarters, to the entire human population. So there’s that sorted out, then.

Whether you’re a spaceman who’s grateful that his glass is 50% atmosphere, or an engineer who realizes that the specifications for the glass included too much overage, or a demented subatomic physicist who knows that the glass itself is mainly empty space, or – finally – if you’re that guy who makes sure nothing gets wasted at the bar (excepting himself), well, there’s a T-shirt here for you, bub. Or bubette.

Now, on to glasses with a variable fill rate… for the glass harmonica!

*Me.

Doctor Grordbort’s Aetheric Oscillators, now Animated on Venus

Filed under Found on the Web

If you’ve ever wondered exactly what quasi-victorian interplanetary conflicts you needed one of Doctor Grordbort’s Infallible Aether Oscillators for, well, one click will show you everything you need to know.

This short animation from Weta Workshop could even be a teaser for a new project (collectible tanks!) but whether or not that’s true it’s an inspiring view of what all that Aetheric Oscillation is needed for, apparently on Venus.

via i09.

News Flash: Futurama’s Bender Sighted in the 1940’s

Filed under Found on the Web

This shocking picture proves – definitively! – that Futurama’s Bender Bending Rodriguez once traveled to the 1940’s, where he worked as a comic book cover model. Or was photographed during a heist. Or something.

He’s clearly inviting his pursuer to bite his shiny metal ass; also, note the somewhat enhanced size of his antenna. Does this show excitement? Or is it some sinister modification? And are those interesting tubes that lead to his head part of a primitive beer hat?

We have to thank Mister Door Tree’s Golden Age Comic Book Stories for this tantalizing glimpse into the time-traveling adventures of one of our favorite robots.

First milestone for Part Two of The Toaster With TWO BRAINS

Filed under Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, Works in Progress

The noisemakers and trumpets in the Secret Laboratory are making as much noise as you’d hear at a Retropolitan chess tournament because this morning I finished the first draft for Part Two of The Toaster With TWO BRAINS.

It’s just five pages (or "nodes") short of Part One, in length, but when I’m done it’ll probably be just about exactly the same. The story is following that different interactive structure I described earlier with story branches that are longer, but narrower, and I figure I’ll be adding a small number of very minor alternate nodes to fill it out a bit.

Also I haven’t done a lot with new inventory items, and I may want to review that, too. But it’s a pretty reliable first draft and with that, anyway, I’m pretty happy.

I got a little bit stuck as I tried to start the final section. I cleared my mental palate by working for a few days on a new set of T-shirt designs. (They’re not up yet: there will be four – or possibly five – in the set, and I’ve only done three so far.)

Once I’d reset my brain by doing those the rest of the TWO BRAINS script came together pretty quickly.

Of course I need to go over it and make a lot of changes. That ought to be all done well before April 4th, which my calendar tells me is the day when I have to switch back over to the next illustrations for The Lair of the Clockwork Book. In fact I wouldn’t mind having some TWO BRAINS illustrations done by then, too. But we’ll just see.

I’m glad to see that the page updates feed worked properly yesterday – I’m not sure what went wrong in the first place so I can’t be sure that it’s fixed, either, but we look good so far.

Thrilling Tales: the Page Updates That Couldn’t Die

Filed under Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, Thrilling Tales: Page Updates

I’m pretty sure that the brain I implanted in the Thrilling Tales page update system was not labeled "Abby Normal". But I do get a little absent minded, so….

Anyway I’ve made a couple of slight changes and did a new test behind the scenes, and everything worked just splendidly – possibly because it was behind the scenes so you couldn’t see it.

But since we’re talking about what’s behind the scenes, here’s what goes on there.

When a previously scheduled post goes live at Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual*, it emails a page update notification to an ultra secret email address. The Webomator blog checks the email for that address, and if the email is legitimate the Web-O-Blog publishes it as a post in the Thrilling Tales: Page Updates category. Then it deletes that email from the mail server, just like your own email client probably does when you download new messages.

For whatever reason, I think that the emails weren’t being deleted this morning. So every hour the Web-O-Blog would check the email, find a "new" message, and post it. That shouldn’t have happened, and I can’t make it happen again now, so maybe I fixed it. The next real world test will happen Monday morning when another page goes live.

I sure don’t know why it happened in the first place; if what I did this morning really did fix it, it may have had something to do with the way the emails ended. Anyhow: I’m sure it was annoying if you saw it – if you’re seeing these posts on Facebook, you’re still seeing it. Please believe that it annoyed me at least as much as it did you.

*This is the clever bit, because only serialized Thrilling Tales pages are scheduled ahead of time.

[tags]thrilling tales of the downright unusual, the lair of the clockwork book, stupid wordpress tricks[/tags]