I used to make comics. I know that because strangers would look at my work and immediately share their most excruciatingly banal experiences with me:

— that time a motorised wheelchair cut in front of them in the line at the supermarket;
— when the dentist pulled the wrong tooth and they tried to get a discount;
— eating off an apple and finding half a worm in it;

every anecdote rounded of with a triumphant “You should make a comic about that!”

Then I would take my 300 pages graphic novel out of their hands, both of us knowing full well they weren’t going to buy it, and I’d smile politely, “Yeah, sure. Someday.”

“Don’t try to cheat me out of my royalties when you publish it,” they would guffaw and walk away to grant comics creator status onto their next victim.

Nowadays I make work that feels even more truly like comics to me than that almost twenty years old graphic novel. Collage-y, abstract stuff that breaks all the rules just begging to be broken. Linear narrative is ashes settling in my trails, montage stretched thin and warping in new, interesting directions.

I teach comics techniques at a university level based in my current work. I even make an infrequent podcast talking to other avantgarde artists about their work in the same field.

Still, sometimes at night my subconscious whispers the truth in my ear: Nobody ever insists I turn their inane bullshit nonevents into comics these days, and while I am a happier, more balanced person as a result of that, I guess that means I don’t make comics any longer after all.

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Cake day: November 23rd, 2024

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  • I agree with your initial paragraph, certainly to the point that we shouldn’t focus on ActivityPub as some grand unifier or a goal in itself. It’s just the protocol that currently federates with the most different platforms.

    AFAIK some bridges from AP to other protocols currently exist, but we would really need to bridge (or somehow fully integrate) all the federated protocols you mention to talk about one fediverse. Whether it will be made possible through ActivityPub or some other protocol, that remains to be seen.



  • I tried Yunohost once, and everything worked as long as I stuck to the officially supported apps. The community forum was supportive within reason, and would respond with advice fairly quickly. When I reported an error with an unofficial app, however, I was instantly told off that I shouldn’t expect any help.

    Now, having used and admined my Linux desktop systems for a decade (without claiming to be an actual sysadmin), I nosed around the system a bit and to my eyes it seemed a right mess of app and user folders, permissions and containers. Surely, a combination of my limited understanding of server apps and a system that is made primarily for GUI use to make administration easier for beginners.

    What I mean to say is, if you already run a set of working docker containers, you’re probably more advanced than the intended Yunohost user. I was that half ounce more literate that I became frustrated with the GUI-centric setup, and imperial pounds too illiterate to actually muck around in the command line.

    Look at it this way, Yunohost offers a fraction of the apps available on Docker, and not all of them are maintained. They do offer a graphic admin interface and out-of-the-box working setups (or did five years ago when I tried it).










  • Technologies like Electron make it easier for app availability: Controversial opinion but True

    I do agree, but currently Electron is great for apps the way Flash was considered great for the web. It solves one problem, but creates a bunch more.

    In itself, Electron is pretty bloated*, but I don’t dare check how many versions I have installed because different apps have stuck with older ones. I’d really like to see a less resource consuming, backward compatible alternative to Electron.

    * From my thrifty perspective of keeping older hardware alive with Linux, that is. On your high grade, best-of-class gaming rig, mileage will definitely vary.


  • Like most articles on itsfoss, this one is only a notch over clickbait — a kernel of an idea not fully developed, written with the last minute energy of a student who pushed off the assignment until right before deadline — but I’ll be damned if that title isn’t beautifully turned.

    I haven’t had to have Windows installed for more than a decade, but on recent occasion I’ve borrowed Windows and Mac computers for work. Those revisits didn’t give me reason to switch back, only to long for my lean Arch install.

    As the next major version of Windows approaches like a Santa down the chimney with all sorts of “AI”-infested gadgets in his sack, I do hope more will make the more often mentioned switch to a Linux distro from the advertising platform OS that came with their computer.

    But this headline deliciously reminds us that there is already a good chunk of users who made the jump, or are sitting on the dual booting fence, one boot (sorry!) on either side. This article is for them, yes, but also a gentle nudge for those still gathering courage.

    At this stage, it is time to seriously change the perspective of that switch. The single reason for switching from Windows to Linux is … the utter state of Windows. Only the most blinkered of tech journos can continue to pretend that all is well on Windows, and not at all a sophisticated malware infection.

    So bravo itsfoss for the clever barb, less so for the depth of the article itself.




  • I tend to agree. I like being able to install whatever distro I want and add the DE of my choice, and there is a glut of different combos to choose from.

    However, are KDE and Gnome going to gradually focus on making their respective DEs work on their own branded OS, rather than any old base system? I know that’s a worst case scenario, but putting a lot of added effort into a full OS is a nontrivial investment for a desktop environment. Some mission drift might be expected.