Comic for Thursday, March 10th, 2018
Okay… so, I’m going to try really hard this weekend to get back ahead of schedule, but I can’t make any promises. If I don’t get back ahead this weekend, we will probably have to take the week after next off again, as I’ve gotten spoiled with the concept of a buffer, and it really is better for everyone. Hopefully it doesn’t come down to that though, last week was just a pile of poor decisions, wasting time on dumb things like work and people when I had important things to be doing like drawing comics.
Anyway… also, I know the TWC voting thing is broken, will fix that this weekend too. Frankly, it’s not the end of the world, TWC is sort of a bot laden mess, so I’m not that worried about it. I always appreciate those that do vote, but, well, yeah. It’s not exactly the forefront of fair and equitable voting on the internet, so I don’t stay up late a night worrying about my TWC Rank (most nights… 😉 ).
I feel bad for Amy… she’s not actually a BAD mage. She’s just surrounded by better mages most of the time. Her friends are just not really fair people, given that she spends most of her time around Mione, Tyler, Marc. In terms of fighting with an Orish agent… well. Mr. Pink Hair here… well… he’s a powerful mage, he’s just sort of a dumbass. I’ve noted before the a lot of using magic to fight is less ability to use magic and more ability to think quickly and not do dumb things, and most of that comes from actual experience. This is what sort of bites Tyler compared to other mages in his weight class… and he’s got a way more combat experience than Amy (not to mention the whole different weight class thing).
The MTT program does not actually require you to be a powerful mage – as per their inclusion of Peter and Mium – but there is a tendency to be a big overlap between people with expertise in magical theory and people with expertise in magical application. Amy is more the study hard sort of person. I don’t know if Ila could get into Levenworth’s MTT program… for example… well, she could, probably, but not for academic reasons…
Anyway, we are already super late, so post!
Oh, about the poll at the bottom of post… yeah, I’m probably going to cut the Google ad. Those that have been here since the Past Utopia Print! days know that sort of despise a lot of advertising agency practices, and tend to be skeptical of ads in general, and due to the Patreon, I don’t really need that ad that bad anymore. The main question for me is if I’m going to cut the Project Wonderful ad as well. The Google ad gives me very little control over what sort of ad I show, and they keep updating their ToS to be less data tracking friendly (as I don’t like data tracking stuff, there’s a whole thing with ads where half of what they want is my audiance demographics).
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So, just to keep everyone update to date on my ever-shifting goal posts…
My weekend is basically offset by one day this week, so Monday’s comic might be late, but I have Monday off work, and will finish Monday’s comic and Thursdays comic on Monday.
So the plan is still to catch up this weekend, the weekend is just offset by a day, which means for Monday the update will be during the day sometime.
Everyone is normally afraid to post right now, for fear the update will happen and no one will read their words.
Not me though! I work in IT, and as such am accustomed to people ignoring what I write. And then later blaming me when the software doesn’t do what they expect.
Work smarter not harder! Wait, work smarter AND harder! And faster! And longer!
Yeah… I’m really sorry about the random update schedule, etc. Unfortunately I tend to plan a little too much into my life, and when things don’t go to plan it takes awhile to shake out.
Pretty sure I will get caught up tomorrow though, at least for a bit 🙂
Monday’s update will be early afternoon Monday, and Thursdays should be Wednesday at midnight again as per buffered schedule.
Heh. “Early afternoon Monday” – you’re just trying to get us to keep refreshing the page so you get your view count up for the ads you’re keeping, aren’t you? 😛
Well… I’m pretty sure it’ll work. On me, at least. I really wanna see where this goes. (… As always, with this comic.)
Hmmm? No, I’m not hanging out waiting. I just happen to be standing here. I was going to stand here anyway. I like it here.
I’m rarely part of everyone.
I archive dive enough that I see that people even make new comments on archived entries, and there are sometimes even (very slow) discussions there. So I know that it’s not a question of will the comment be seen, but how much will it be seen.
Also, most web comic commenting systems like this give the site admin(s) an efficient way to read the comments in submission order, hopefully with references to what post they were replies to. While I do not know about the inner workings of this website, I have noted that when PastUtopia replies to my archive comments, it’s usually in a similar timeframe as responses to comments on the current comic. That said, it does seem less likely for him to reply to those – possibly due to the assumption that the comment will not be read by many.
To clarify, I generally don’t mind adds unless they include popups, music, or otherwise attempt to hijack my browser. Google, though, has gotten a lot more demanding about forcing interconnection and can sometimes skirt the line between “insisting that their add is shown” (which I understand) and “attempting to shut down my main program used to avoid maleware hidden in adds because it can also shut down the adds as well”. Seriously, I get more maleware trying to get on my computer through ads than everything else combined a dozen times over (and that, sadly, isn’t an exaggeration). Other than those times when I have to block Google completely to let anything run (without letting things I don’t want through), however, the Google adds are actually a LOT better than what you get with a LOT of advertisers. My personal opinion is that I am ok with the Google adds so long as they don’t insert code into the website that basically shuts it down if the add doesn’t run, as that allows me to block it when it is a problem, but still allows the webpages to get the extra income. How to condense than into the poll other than “don’t like Google Ads” (sometimes), though, I don’t know.
Also, I do click on the project wonderful ads somewhat frequently, if that makes any difference at all.
Ads. I’m usually not bothered by the Google ads, and they are more likely to contain something I am interested in. I agree, Google sometimes does a horrible job of filtering hostile content.
Project Wonderful has rejected my advertising attempts on the basis of their rampant phobia of firearms, so if that ad were to disappear I’d lose no sleep.
What type of advertising were you trying to do? (just out of curiosity. And hey, I guess telling me would count a little like advertising, right?)
I wouldn’t mind advertising here, if I were paying for the privilege. I’m not. I was looking to advertise a classifieds site. About 5% of the ads were for firearms. They were polite, but clear that I wasn’t one of their people.
This is why I make my stance on what ads are allowed to execute on my computer. Companies will never learn the lesson that my computer is mine, unless we have laws in place that punish the individual developer who makes a hostile ad, all of the management people that requested or approved of using that malware in their ad (this unfortunately would require determining whether they were aware the malware was included, which can be annoyingly difficult to do), and the company as a whole. And that will never happen.
So my computer has to be hardened, and I would recommend others do likewise.
What security programs would you suggest?
Ila I guess its lesson time 1 on stopping murders; Ensure all suspected murders are completely restrain/defanged/rendered ‘safe’ before interogating any.
Really? Not remaining at your post and getting your snacks delivered? (Or just getting them beforehand?)
I never said that was the only thing in the lesson. Just the thing she had to learn NOW (Or really 1 minute ago).
That very last panel, we’re seeing Magnolia fall, aren’t we? From an assassin blade?
I suppose if you’re going to get sliced apart, inside a hospital is as good a place as any.
In read that as Amy either leaping in front of Tyler or Magnolia, but I suspect it is intentionally unclear, given that @PastUtopia likes to play “who got stabbed roulette” with last panels.
Maybe I am biased though as I cannot accept that Magnolia will get killed before we learn her secrets. You cannot simply put a character in, show that they have extensive unrevealed secrets, and then kill them off before the reveal them. I mean, if you look carefully seem seems to be casting a golden/yellow calculation circle, which is something we have only ever see Nathan do.
I am not a big fan of Amy getting killed off either, but if I had to choose, well. Sorry, my avatar here is making the decision.
I think that last panel is Magnolia fainting from magical exhaustion or overload. Amy’s calculation is a single broad and diffuse circle probably a simple shield. Magnolia calculation is tighter more intense with no less than 5 sub-calculations. And we have been shown clues that she pushed herself to the limit running diagnostics on Weber.
Ninja lady is up and moving only due to the boost engine that is showing cracks in its casing. Ila’s limit is six simultaneous calculations but we have only seen that with identical calculations.
Well, as it happens, I tend to be more likely to click on wonderful ads than googly ads. So I’m not sure it matters much.
In other news, I oddly seem to be out of snickerdoodles.
Oh, and Ila, if you want to blend in, it might be helpful to not refer to people by species. This is something I know from personal experience, and I come from a world that does not officially have non-human English speaking sentient life forms. And, for that matter, I live on one of those also.
Edit:
I suppose I should have expected this sort of update. Though, it’s only Friday on *most* of the planet right now.
…
Considering that the denizens of this planet have seen fit to define 27 major timezones, from GMT+12 all the way to GMT-14, this may be my day for making null statements. I mean, ok, it’s only Friday on *most* of the planet about 1/7 of the time, but it’s never Friday on all of it.
I don’t get the feeling fitting in really keeps Ila up at night. I am not sure that Mium really cares, most of the time. He IS capable of acting way more human than he usually does. I think both of them rely on the fact that people in the world don’t seem actually know entirely lifelike androids exist.
Ila just does not really give a damn a lot beyond proving that she is awesome and getting snacks. She seems to be getting attached to Mium, which I guess makes sense when you compare him to Mir he is pretty reasonable. And he provide snack money.
AH, but I must disagree. Due to the nature of time zones it is fryday for the entire world for exactly 1 hour for each weeklong period of time. In fact, due to that same mechanic, it is friday for some part of the world a single hour shy of 2/7 of the week, or 28% of the time (rounded down, in fact). This means that over a quarter of the week is friday somewhere! And in much sadder/less sober news, the country song was right: it is ALWAYS “Five O-Clock” somewhere.
What this has to do with snickerdoodles is a question for the ages…
Entertainingly, the GMT time in which all the world is on Friday is between 10:00:01am and 10:59:59am, not noon, which would have been my guess.
Similarly, it is not one *hour* short, but one second (or less) short of 2/7ths.
We have places that are +13 and places that are -10. None of the +/- 0:15 or +/- 0:30 are near enough the dateline to matter for that, but they do matter enough to throw off the idea that everywhre always fits into the same 24 hour period, even if they *do* fit into a given calendar day.
Let me try communicating this bizarre fact one more time.
Look up Kiritimati on google maps. Zoom out until you see the international date line.
That is enough of a deflection that even with Daylight Savings Time, it is never a single day everywhere on earth.
There’s also Near Island and the Rat Islands that apparently prefer to be on the same day as the US as much as possible, and American Samoa that prefers to not be, but there it requires both the northern hemisphere people and the southern hemisphere people agreeing to disagree on where the international date line should be to not even be the same day when the southern hemisphere is +1 hour.
I agree from a logical perspective this should not be, but apparently, politics.
Politics ruins everything. Yet another proof of this universal fact.
You’re right – but it’s worse than you think!
Baker Island pushes things even further. When it’s 7am Tuesday on Kiritimati, it’s 5am Monday on Baker Island!
It’s not worse than I think, because I didn’t tell you what I think.
I suspect, somewhere in Antarctica, some country has probably staked out a piece of ice, and skewed its timezone so far that it’s *never* the same of the week day as anywhere else on earth.
That someone is The Doctor, and this is where he’s imprisoned the other time lords. (just kidding.)