The comic is on time. I am getting better at this... my art looks better and I only started sketching on Friday. I even went out on the weekend too... not proper out... but I didn't spend the whole weekend indoors. So I am getting faster too... which is good. I rushed it slightly... but overall I am happy.... but I have rushed other comics much more than this one... so I am definitely getting faster...

If I continue at this speed I may be able to release comics faster... but no promises though... same as before... :)

Time to go to bed...

Edit: If you don't believe I have improved look at the original "sentient pudding". This was done in the beginning of October I think...

Damnit... I spelt raisin wrong... fixed now...

Something I am busy working on... Tetris built entirely using css and plain vanilla JavaScript. It's work in progress. Almost there though: http://lucienne.co.za/demos/tetris/. (If anyone is looking for a JavaScript engineer/programmer please hire me... I didn't realise how much I love that language.)

Now you know what the L. stands for if you didn't already...

Edit: I thought I was good but this guy is insane.

http://www.elizium.nu/scripts/lemmings/

I feel pretty crap now... nevermind though... the idea I have next will destroy his idea...

Oh yeah... Dramatic Irony. Huh? Huh? Bet you never saw that coming....

Hey... sorry all... I haven't started the comic yet... I am feeling like shit... been sick since monday last week.. and it's still going strong...

In a way it's a good thing though... the next script is just ok... I want it to be awesome... but maybe I will just go with an ok one... but yeah... not really feeling all that good... all I am capable of doing right now is lying in bed... feeling sorry for myself... I think it might be a bad case of man flu.

Here are some links to tide you over till the comic arrives. If you play smash brothers you might find this funny. Also by the same guys, a halo 3 spoof... spoofing other games...

How do you convey, using the medium of text, that something has the qualities of iron? Do you say the object is irony? And what the fuck is up with the spelling of iron? You don't say "eye ron"? WTF man? The english language needs to sort itself out...

A mummified dinosaur was in the news a while ago... when I read the article I gave a chuckle as the comic is what I had hoped they had found. I have been meaning to do this comic since then.

I put this up yesterday as a placeholder for today's comic but took it down imediately... I didn't want to spoil the gag incase you guessed it...

I had all these updates I wanted to do. It was all supposed to work perfectly when I did the update. No such luck. I am pretty pissed. it's 3:30 here in SA now and no luck.

This is why you commit your work little by little and not everything in one fucking big bulk.

Hopefully I will get the updates done tomorrow.

Fuck. I REALLY wanted these updates to come out with the new comic... PENISCOCK!

The new features are up:

In the top right corner you can see the Logo. WOOT!!

New pandanauts can now browse to the beginning of the archive instead of being forced to read everything in reverse order.

Comments: You can now comment on the strip or post. It only allows plain text comments at the moment. Even though I'm a web developer the amount of work I have done that takes user input from the web is very little. Most of the work I have done has been on internal systems. So I don't really know what to expect in terms of bugs or spambots filling in the form. So for now it's just a simple form to minimise the number of things that could go wrong.

There's also a comment rss feed. I built this mainly for myself to can keep up with anything happening on the site.... but you may find some use for it too. I have linked it into the site but you can also find it here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SpacePanda/comments

Just an aside, I programmed everything myself from scratch and judging from the fact that nothing was working last night, it's all a bit rushed. So if anything doesn't work let me know... also if you have any suggestions... I would be happy to hear them. :)

Some of you are proably thinking: "why code everything yourself? You can just get *product x* that already exists and does it 20 times better and it's free." True... but this is also a portfolio site so if anyone asks me to show them some code, I can point them here and give them Space Panda code as a sample. The site serves a dual purpose... do you see how dynamic I am... Do you see!!?

All those updates I did to the site and worked my butt off for were just April fools!! Haha... I got you guys good. I am gonna remove them now.... HAHA... you guys so fell for that one..

I don't really get April fools. Reading the stories that get passed around by email, I get the impression that you can do anything you want just as long as you say "April Fool's". If you kick someone in the balls? That's ok just as long as you say "April fool's". Or like a friend of someone I know who's girlfriend walked in on him with another woman. He said the first thing that came to his mind. This happened to be "April Fools!".

Obviously I made up that last story... but I don't see why that should stop me from telling it.

Also I am putting google ad's back on the site... I am pretty sure I won't get any money from it so it's mainly as an experiment to see what google links the site with.

I found this quite funny...

I need to finish off the colouring. Check monday night ... london time. I would finish it tonght but I dont want to feel like shit for work tomorrow.... I already feel like shit...

Wow... I haven't seen you guys in ages. It feels like its been about a month since I last saw you. Don't blame yourself... It's totally my fault. I actually had the script done the day I finished the last one but didn't get off my ass until earlier this week. Also part of the reason it took so long was because sometimes I find the visualisation of the strip difficult. I was having trouble with the emperor's buddies. I was trying to come up with characters for them and all the ones I came up with were too plain. Then finally I came up with the blade guy... the little guy I still don't like... not much thought or design went into him... but the blade guy I thought was good enough to make up for the crapness of the little guy...  so I went ahead and used them... In fact this blade guy got me thinking that the emperor is a bit plain... he has no ability to show any expressions because of the hat... It was cool having this cold mysterious character in the beginning but as the strip progresses... I find using him a little boring... he feels to much like a robot. I think that if the strip is cartoony, like this one, I think you need facial expressions which with the hat makes quite difficult... well you don't NEED them but they add a bit more the the strip. Its not much but as a result I think the 4th panel in this strip is my one of my favourites...

Hmmm... I think I might redesign the emperor when I get a chance...
 

I have been back in South Africa for the last week. I came back for Easter. I was not originally going to come back unless my visa expired.... but I ended up getting the highly skilled visa about a month ago. So this means I can stay in London for a bit longer should I wish to. The weird thing is the longer I heard nothing from the visa office the more nervous I became and the more I wanted it... but as soon as I heard I got the visa I thought that I don't really want it anymore.  That kind of irritated me because as far back as I can remember I always hated people who wanted things just because they wanted them... and somewhere along the line I became one of them... I don't think that is the case though. I think maybe my desire to move on just coincided with the exact same second I got my visa... but I am not going to move on just yet... I still have a lot to do here in London.

Anyways that is not why I am writing... like I said ... I am in South Africa... but not to fear... a repeat of "no comic for a month" like the last time will not happen again. I don't need a scanner this time. I brought my tablet with me. For some reason last time I was scared of doing the whole process digitally. I needed to sketch it out on paper first. This time it's all done digitally. I am actually quite impressed with the result and kind of want to just put up the sketch without any inking. I feel like I am gonna lose a lot of the detail when I ink it.

I am going to ink it. If it looks rubbish I will put up the sketch instead of the ink. Either way there is going to be a new comic soon.

Oh yeah... Sick as a dog... even though it's awesome weather here in Port Elizabeth, I am sick as a dog... and spending all my time inside... in front of the computer... comic-ing and programming.

Oh and another reason I am excited: I was working on a Space Panda logo. I have one that I am really happy with... but what do I know... I am not a designer nor a LogoMaker guy. Anyways... like I said I am very happy with it and It should be up on the next update!

This movie really gets my imagination going. An ant megalopolis. Entire cities underground! It's really awesome. Awesome in the true sense of the word.

Seriously... FCKeditor rocks. I just changed the site to use it... I was using this PEAR wikiCreole extenstion because I was adverse to storing HTML in my database. In this case the ease of use and flexibility far outweigh my concern... I came across it about 3 or 4 years ago.. but I dont remember it being this robust...

The only thing is I noticed that firefox's spell check does not work in FCK textareas... In FCK's defense it does have a spell check built in, but it's not automatic like in native firefox and I also I dont think I have it configured to work.

Also you may have noticed that I have increased the line height... I saw it on a site a few days ago and thougt that it makes it a lot easier on the eyes...