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Tycho

We’re in Spokane for the Fourth of July, and presumably sometime after, as we wait for a break in the Bloodstorms to make our escape.

It’s shocking and criminal what they will try to sell as Internet Access here; it’s a misnomer, and neither word is true.  Uploading this post was like waiting for the blast shield to stop whirling around the MCP: I had a finger over the enter key, and an eye on the router, and one chance to thread the needle.

When I lived here, the town seemed like one of those all-facade Staged Cities you would film a western in.  It seemed false on purpose, designed.  I understand now that it’s just…  cruft, I think, that’s the programmer term.  Nobody thought about why they were doing any of this stuff at any point, they just kept piling town on top of town, until they had something that resembled a civilization from the air.

It’s true enough that I was rarely in my right mind while I lived within its weeping membranes, but I had to get out of here, and I wasn’t picky about the route.  Anyway, that doesn’t necessarily make the revelations illusory.  It depends on what the revelations are about!  If they’re about living fruit, or a feline despot or whatever, maybe file those in the other bin.

We created a comic for today, about the Fourph, in the vein of our 2006 Summer Road Epic.  Sort of.  Maybe.  Hold on, I need to brush off a scorpion.

If something is happening in a videogame related vein, I don’t know about it.  We’re under constant assault; I need to gather medicinal roots, herbs, and bark.  I also need to suck the poison out of my rapidly expanding forearm.

(CW)TB out.

never a boast or brag

Gabe

Recently I’ve been getting back into streaming while I draw the comic strip. I’ve messed around with a few different services and Ustream still seams to be the best overall. It’s fun to draw the strip live and watch people chatting in the social stream. I like seeing people guess what the strip is about just from the art and then laugh as I drop the text in at the end. The only problem I really have is really the quality of the video. Robert and I talked about a way to record the drawing at a higher quality and I think we may have a solution. We set up a camera over my shoulder last week while I was drawing and you can see the results on PATV today.

I tried a couple different screen recording options but they gave me some strange lag when drawing that I just didn’t want to deal with. So a physical camera behind me seemed like a good option. I’m curious what you guys think about this as another show on PATV? Is this something you want to see more of? Right now it is in real time, is that okay or do you think it should be sped up?

I still plan on doing the live shows and you can always find out about those by following me on Twitter. I usually tweet about an hour before I kick off the stream. If you can’t make a live show though, or you just want better video quality, this recording seems like a cool deal. So tweet at me or send me an email and let me know what you think.

-Gabe out

Gabe