bug advocacy

LILITH (two of eighteen)

every monday

Artistic Diversity & the Internet

I love the band The Cars, and recently read the following in an interview with Ric Ocasek:

AVC: It's hard to pinpoint any hard influences on The Cars besides old-time rock and maybe krautrock. What were you listening to then?

RO: As a songwriter, oddly enough, my influences were people like Bob Dylan, The Velvet Underground, and Buddy Holly. Some psychedelic stuff, too. Back then, there wasn't a lot of press on bands. There was Creem and Rolling Stone, and that was about it. There certainly wasn't the Internet. You would stay in your basement and create something and then come out. You didn't have anything to rub off on. You didn't know what the band down the street was doing, because you couldn't look it up, and you couldn't see it on TV. I think people tended to come out with things that were different because they weren't influenced by their environments as much. I find these days, you almost have to force yourself to stay in a vacuum to become different—if you really want to be different. Maybe you have to have something different inside of you as well.

This got me thinking about how this applies to art and cartooning. The internet has made available such a wide variety of material, but instead of creating diversity, it seems to have created a kind of "blandization" or homogenization in art, music, movies, and culture in general.

What do you think?

LILITH (one of eighteen)

EVERY MONDAY FOR THE NEXT 18 WEEKS

He should have been a tester

When trying to define what makes a good tester, a number of characteristics often come out: ability to learn quickly, attention to detail, resolve. I’m sure you could come up with more.
Which made me think; there must be lots of people out there who are slogging away at their job even though they were born to be a tester. They make a perfect match for the software tester role but somehow destiny has gone against them. Poor little souls.

Have you seen any of these people recently? Have you spotted a “should have been a tester” type person?

Milt Gross Dream Book

The Complete Milt Gross Comic Books and Life Story by Craig Yoe is my choice for book of the year.

Being obsessed with cartoons most of my life, I've often had dreams about finding wonderful cartoon books that never existed. I imagine Craig has had those dreams too, and he's now doing us all a huge favor by making them a reality.

When I first discovered Milt Gross at Spumco almost 20 years ago, I went on an obsessive search for all of Milt Gross' comic book stories, digging through dusty boxes at comic conventions and bookstores. His stories were usually well hidden in the backs of obscure old humor comics, and I had to open a lot of taped comic bags to search the contents, enduring the withering stares of the snotty dealers. When I found a new Gross story it was a real thrill, and I would then take them to work and enlarge them on the WB color copier, and put them into sleeves and binders in my first attempts to make my own cartoon books for myself and friends. Craig has saved you all that trouble and produced the ultimate Milt Gross book. He even found some stories I've never seen before.

I'm not going to go into the comics themselves- you either love Milt Gross or don't get it, but the book itself looks, feels, and even smells great. It really is a treat to hold. The reproduction, binding, layout and supplemental materials are all PERFECT. And I can't believe how cheap it is- $39.99, or $29.19 at Amazon.

Thanks, Craig!

Perfect Software

Load testing

I'm afraid this is the last cartoon in the "No user would ever do that" series. I hope you’ve enjoyed them!

Some people have not understood the cartoon about bugs being socialites. The idea behind the cartoon is that bugs often cluster or group together (in my humble experience). For example, if you find a number of bugs in one area of the software, you can bet your donkey there will be more bugs if you continue to test this area (although you might need to change the type of testing you are doing).
If ever you don’t get a cartoon, feel free to email me and let me know and I will be more than happy to explain, or add a comment to the post and other people might chip in with their thoughts too ;o)

One last thing, for all the twitters out there, I’ve just joined twitter! Search for cartoontester to find my tweets.

KEPT IN BALANCE BY EQUAL WEIGHTS (one)

KEPT IN BALANCE BY EQUAL WEIGHTS (two)

KEPT IN BALANCE BY EQUAL WEIGHTS (three)

KEPT IN BALANCE BY EQUAL WEIGHTS (five)

KEPT IN BALANCE BY EQUAL WEIGHTS (four)

KEPT IN BALANCE BY EQUAL WEIGHTS (six)

What's your Fault-Feedback-Ratio?

DISCOMBOBULATED VENTRILOQUIST "2009"

I am proud to announce that I have a new sound recording available for listening and free download via NEW OTHER THING. It consists of six tracks and lasts for almost nineteen minutes. These sounds were recorded in the Echo Park, Mt. Washington, and Beverly Hills areas of Los Angeles during the tail end of 2009. This digital recording and presentation of sounds is a new step, as most previous Discombobulated Ventriloquist sounds have been recorded and released on cassette. Thanks to SH, BS, JW, GB, and LF

Recent Rock Show posters

Here are 2 show posters I've drawn recently. One the shows has already happened, and one of them is coming up soon.