Resolutions For The New Year

Let me just preface this list by saying that I reserve the right to change my mind, slack off, and ultimately ignore any item on the list.

• Clean up the coding, and fix bugs and display errors on the web site.
• Finally complete the Bottom Strip.
• Make a Flash version for "Sunday In Ward 8" in time for Super Bowl XXXIX.
• Start a regular appearing web komyc strip.
• Put up the Fractals section, and add fractal art galleries.
• Put back up the printable U.S. Flag page.
• Write some more articles.
• Tidy up, and organize the Sky‑Palace.
• Conquer the Internet!

It may seem like a long, and ambitious list, but I have 365 days to do it all.  Of course, a year passes like nothing.  Wish me luck.

Happy New Year.

TOP

Flash My Past; My Christmas Present To You.

The Flash version of "Zel Avy'Mip" is up and running.  It's got bells.  It's got whistles.  Those bells and whistles don't make a sound, but you can't have everything. 

This should clear up any hard-to-read text (though it won't help you to understand it any better).  In addition, it brings out details in some of the artwork (though it won't make it look drawn any better).   Check it out!

TOP

“Guess What I Found!”

Last March, I posted up the artwork I'd done for my cousin's flight training class, back in 2000 (see "Working for the Military Industrial Complex").  Back then, I only had the final patch, and sticker in my possession.  I was unable to find my original line art of the design.

I still don't know where the original mechanical is.  However, today, while combing through the vaults here at the Riptania Sky-Palace, I found a photocopy of the afore mentioned mechanical.  I also found a second photocopy, where I crayoned in my color suggestions.

So, maybe you're saying to yourself "I guess Rippy will scan it and post it up on the web".  Well, guess what.  You'd be wrong…at least for now.

Right now, I'm still putting the finishing touches to the Flash version of "Zel Avy'Mip"; as well as ironing out some bugs in the project.  In fact, you'll have to wait about three months to see the newly found artwork.  I've decided to post it up this coming March, to coincide with next St. Patrick's Day.

TOP

Flashing My Past - Part II

Those bums at the phone company are jerking me around with this whole DSL thing.  My DSL line was originally supposed to be activated on December 1.  Then it was pushed back to the 13th.  Now it's been pushed back to the 23rd. 

All these postponements have postponed me putting up the Flash version of "Zel Avy'Mip". Regardless of whether or not I'm still stuck with dial-up, I'll try to get it up before the Goyishe holiday...er...I mean Christmas.  Just call me Rippy Claus.  Or don't.  Ho ho ho!

That reminds me…why do Santa and the Jolly Green Giant…oh never mind.  I might get a can of Niblets in my stocking.

TOP

Flashing My Past.  Presenting In The Near Future.

The Flash version of "Zel Avy'Mip" is pretty much finished, but I've decided to wait posting it until my DSL is activated.  Yes, I'm finally getting out of the dial-up ghetto.  Next week, hopefully.

Shout out to my cousin Brian, and his wife Susan, who gave birth to "Little Zaida" this past Sunday.

TOP

Color My Past.  Presently Here.  Flash In The Future.

As you can see, I put "Zel Avy'Mip" in the Komycz section, back on Wednesday.  There's a quiz afterwards, again.  Don't forget to take it.  Don't worry.  Your score won't go on your permanent record.

I'm currently working on a Flash version of the komyc.  I realize the lettering is hard to read in some spots, and the Flash version will cure that problem, as well as adding some snazzy effects here, and there.  Hopefully it will be up soon.

I hear the whip cracking.  Back to work!

TOP

Kugowast!  Yi Mof!  Ofru!

"Zel Avy'Mip" is finally up in the Komycz section.  Check it out .  Take the quiz.

More elaboration on it next week.

Happy Thanksgiving to all (mom's makin' her famous meatballs, and G'amma's apple sauce), and Happy Birthday, Ginger.

TOP

Peekaboo, Baby! (Gates' Gang Of Geeks Goof Again)

I was checking out a friend's new laptop computer, on Sunday.  He's got one of those wide screen monitors, and is using a 1440 x 900 pixel display.  I noticed that this widened screen resolution triggered the dreaded Peekaboo Bug in certain pages of this site (which was formatted for 1024 x 768), when viewed in IE6.  This causes the pages in question to be displayed all (for lack of a better word) screwy.  Thus, I spent a good portion of Monday trying to solve this problem.  I think I've done it, but with the plethora of browsers, platforms, and individual settings out there, who the hell knows if I totally succeeded. 

Needless to say, this has delayed the premiere of "Zel Avy'Mip" for a couple of more days.  Damn you, Bill Gates!  How many manhours of the world's time have you wasted due to your buggy products?  God damn you to Hell!

TOP

My Past Is Finally Colored!

The coloring of "Zel Avy'Mip" is finally complete.  Just some compositing, and page writing is left to do.  It should be posted up after the weekend.  Ain't you all exited?

TOP

Log Page Split In Two

I noticed that the log page was getting a little cumbersome, bandwidth wise, so I moved all the log entries from before August to a separate page.  I also added a table of contents to the side bar of each of the two pages.  In addition, I fixed a few bugs.

Still working on "Zel Avy'Mip".  Please be patient.  I know you're all pacing back and forth in anticipation.

TOP

Cosmetic Changes Made To Log Page

Coloring the last couple of panels of "Zel Avy'Mip" is proving more difficult than I first expected.  I guess I got a bit over ambitious.  Anyway, I'm going to have to push back its completion to next week.

Meanwhile, I've made some cosmetic changes to the main log page.  I'm not sure if you'll notice it. It's something I've been meaning to to do for a while, however.

I've got a lot more work to do on the log page.  I want to automate it as I've done with the log strip on the home index page.  It's a daunting task, and I'll start on it when "Zel Avy'Mip" is completed.

TOP

“Contact” Button Added

I took some time out from coloring of "Zel Avy'Mip" in order to add a "Contact" button to the site's navigation bar (it appears on the left side of every page on this site - just in case you haven't noticed).  A friend of mine told me that I needed one.  I had to agree with her.  So, guess what.  I added one.

Now, you can e-mail me, and tell me about how much you love Riptania.  Or you can tell me about how much it sucks.  Or you can tell me that you don't give a rat's ass, one way, or another.  Either way, tell me something.

I know you're out there.  I can hear you breathing.

TOP

Color My Past : Present Progress

The coloring of Zel Avy'Mip is nearly complete.  Look for it here, some time next week.  Hopefully, it will be worth the wait.

TOP

Color My Past?  Wait For The Future.

Yeah, I know last week I said that I'd be working on coloring "Zel Avi Mip".  However, since I posted that last log entry, I've done absolutely NO WORK on it.  So sue me.

I've been out and about all week…

• Monday night: I went to see a theatrical release of The Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus.
• Tuesday night: WWIII - Part 2 (Yankees vs. Red Sox in the A.L.C.S.) began.
• Wednesday night: I attended Game 2 of the afore mentioned A.L.C.S., and joined 56,000 other Yankee fans chanting "Who's Your Daddy?" to that poodle-headed punk, Pedro Martinez.
• Thursday night: I was resting and recuperating from Wednesday.

Tonight, Game 3 at Fenway Park has been postponed due to a deluge in Boston, so I may get a little work done.  However, more Yankee baseball tomorrow night, as well as next week, and - God willing - the week after that.  So don't hold your breath until November.

TOP

Color My Past.  Confound Your Future.

I'm almost done coloring an old strip retrieved from the Riptania vaults.  It's a little thing from 1992 called "Zel Avi Mip".  What does that title mean?  I have no idea.

It will be posted up in a week or so.  Maybe you'll be able to figure it out.  Get your thinking-caps ready.  Maybe you'll have better luck than me.

TOP

Tech Upgrade Progressing Nicely (If Slowly)

Here at the Sky-Palace, the new engines are humming and are almost at full speed.

I tell you, though, migrating files from an old PC to a new one can be a real pain in the tuchas, especially when that old PC tends to crash at will.  But that part of the process is almost complete.

Now, I can continue work on a few projects I started a while back, before my old PC started going to hell.  I'll also be working to make this site better and run smoother.  However, don't look for much right away.  October is here, and that means post-season baseball will be occupying much of my time.  GO YANKS!!!

However, I may be putting up another comic from the Riptania vaults before November rolls around.  I'm adding color and effects to it now.  This was one of the projects I started before the old PC starting getting moody.

Soon, you'll have something new to look at on this site besides these dopey log entries.

TOP

Rufus Hannassey - The Real Stinky Wizzleteats

Last night I stayed up to watch The Big Country on Turner Classic Movies.  Perhaps the most memorable performance in the film is that of Burl Ives, as rancher, and patriarch Rufus Hannassey.  In fact, it won Ives an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

Ives' character definitely has the most memorable lines.  The elder Hannassey has a penchant for speaking in metaphors, and clichés.  At one point in the film, Gregory Peck explains to him that a pair of old dueling pistols needs to be cleaned before they can be used.  Insulted by Peck's assumption of an ignorance of high class firearms, Ives replies "Teach your grandmother to suck eggs!"  This triggered an instant recognition in my mind.  After recalling some of Ives' other lines in the film, I realized that it was he that was the model for Stinky Wizzleteats.

Who is Stinky Wizzleteats?  If you remember a Ren & Stimpy episode called "Stimpy's Invention", then you should remeber Stinky.  Stinky Wizzleteats is the mythical singer who recorded the classic "Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy", which appears at the end of the episode.

Much of the Stinky's rantings in the song, such as "If'n you ain't the grandaddy of all liars!", "I told you I'd shoot!  But you didn't believe me!  Why didn't you believe me?!", and of course "I'll teach your grandmother to suck eggs!", are taken directly (though in most cases, not vertbatim) from Rufus Hannassey.  In fact, upon further review, it becomes clear that John Kricfalusi is attempting to do a Burl Ives impression when he voices Stinky.  It makes you wonder what ol' Burl thought of all this.  After all, he died only about three years after the episode first aired.

So, thus begs the question: Did Ren & Stimpy kill Burl Ives?

TOP

Secured Out Of My Own Site - Part II:  This Time I Can’t Blame Bill Gates

First an errata:  My friend who helped me test out the Sunday In Ward 8 quiz page was using WinXP-SP1, not WinNT.

Not that that matters, however.  It turns out the problem wasn't with XP, or the service pack at all.  The problem was with my Norton Internet Security privacy settings.  I changed them, and now I have no problem submitting the quiz.

If you are using N.I.S., or a similar product, and you cannot submit your answers to the quiz page, then you should go into the advanced privacy settings, add profiles for both riptania.com, and home.earthlink.net/~riptanion, and permit information about visited sites.  If this setting is set to block, you will not be able to submit your answers, or receive your "diagnosis".

I noticed only a hand full of you out there have bothered to submit your answers to the quiz.  Shame on you!  Now that you know how to keep your security features from blocking this function, you've got no excuse.  Click here NOW…before it's too late!

Once I have received enough quiz results, I'll beginning publishing a statistical analysis of them.  Bet you can't wait.

TOP

Secured Out Of My Own Site

After four years of using my old PC, with Win98SE running on it, I finally got a new computer, a few weeks back, complete with WinXPpro, with the latest service pack update.  There's a lot of new security features to keep the hackers, spammers, and spies out.  Unfortunately, it keeps me from doing things I want to do when I surf my own site.

While testing this site on my new PC, I went to the Sunday In Ward 8 page.  I realized the pop-up page that contains the actual comic doesn't always work with all the pop-up blockers installed.  Realizing that other users running on similar systems might also have the same problem, I put in a work around for this problem here.  The page now loads fine, but there are still problems with the Quiz page that follows.

The quiz page loaded fine, but when I went to submit the answers, I ran into this error page, instead of the Answer/Diagnosis page.  At first I thought there was a problem with the server, or I had somehow screwed something up when I moved the page to a different directory.  However, I went back and tried answering the quiz on the old PC, and everything worked kosher.  I also asked a friend, who's running NT, and he had no problems, either.  I'm not sure why, but it only happens when I try it on the new PC running XPpro.

This makes me wonder how many of you out there are also unable to receive Answer/Diagnosis page.  If you do, please click here to e-mail me about it.  If you have no problems accessing the Answer/Diagnosis page, then please click here.  I just want to see how just common this problem is, or if it's just me.  If I figure out why it doesn't work, and how you can change your settings to allow the Answer/Diagnosis page, I'll post it up right here.

Of course, if you know how to fix this problem, please, PLEASE e-mail me here.  I, and all my visitors would greatly appreciate it.

TOP

Out With The Old, In With The New

A few months ago, I told you about my technological headaches, and how they related to the many delays in putting together Riptania (click here, if you forgot).  Well, major tech overhauls and upgrades are happening here at The Sky-Palace.  The engines are almost fully charged, and warmed up, and we should be travelling at trans-warp speed very soon. 

Soon.  I can't change the laws of physics!  I've got to have a few more days!

And speaking of Scotty: Some happier news than I reported several weeks ago.

Happy Belated Birthdays to two comic book legends.  Jack Kirby would have been 97, this past Sunday, and Robert Crumb turned 61, Monday.  Keep on truckin'.

TOP

What’s That Man Movin’ ’Cross The Stage?

As far as I'm concerned, Jimmy Page is God; well, at least when it comes to guitar.  Earlier this week, Led Zeppelin's sorcerer of the six-string became the first inductee into the British Walk of Fame.  More proof that Great Britain is the only sensible country across the Atlantic.

I'm glad to hear this.  Zep never got the same kind of respect in their native land as they did here in America.  It reassures me that rock'n'roll is still alive and well.  Hell, I'm seeing more and more teenagers on the street wearing Led Zeppelin tee-shirts, nowadays.  It makes me feel a little less older than I am.  The blood has changed, but the song remains the same.

Of course, Jimmy Page meant more to the U.K. music scene than simply Zeppelin.  During much of the 1960s, Page was London's top studio musician.  If you were to pick up a compilation CD of British Invasion hits, I'd bet that Page is playing guitar on at least half of them.

Now, the Brits have got to give props to Pete Townshend, who is also God; even if he doesn't know there are someplaces on the net you should never tread.

TOP

Happy Birthday, God Of Thunder.

No, not the Mighty Thor, but KISS bassist Gene Simmons - The Demon, The Nickel & Dimer, Doctor Love, King Tongue, Lord of the A$$holes - who turns 55 today.

This of course makes me feel old. (It always comes back to me, don't it?)  I was a little elementary school whipper-snapper, buying KISS LPs, from $3.99 to $4.99, at EJ Korvettes, when the band was at its peak in the '70s.  Oy vey! Vhere's mine walker?

Oh, and Happy Birthday, Mom.

TOP

Ho Hum.  More Delays.

Are you as bored reading this stuff, as I am, writing it?

I've been meaning to work on automating Rippy's Log, but I was pooped after this weekend (saw The Dead at Jones Beach on Friday, and was at Little Steven's International Garage Fest for twelve hours on Saturday), and then I wound up getting a cold yesterday…just in time for my birthday, tomorrow.  Woop­dee­friggin­doo!

I'll get around to more work on the site, next week.  Promise. ;)

TOP

Finally!!!  It’s Finished!  (Sort Of.)

The Home Index Page is finally up!  Yea!!!  A new side navigation bar has also been added.

Still some tweaking to be done.  Still some bugs that need be fixed.  Still a lot of work to be done.

Things may look kind of screwy if you're using an antiquated browser.  I'll be adding some work-arounds for older browsers soon.  However, if you're using an old browser, I really recommend you get a new browser, if you can.  The two browser I've tested this site in are Internet Explorer 6 and Netscape 7.  For a long list of the various modern browsers out there, click here.

TOP

Another Site Update

The Riptania Articles Section is up.

Included is Working for the Military Industrial Complex, which has been put back up after a long absence.  Also, the two HOTZ V CLEMENS articles from 2000 (originally posted on the my old site) have been reformatted and posted up.  Enjoy reading my strange musings…if you dare!

TOP

Riptania Site Update

The Komycz (comics, comix, etc.) Main Index page is finally up.

Yeah, I know what you're saying.  "What the hell took you so damn long to put up one stinkin' page?  Where's rest of the site?"

Well, like I said before, I'm dealing with a crippled computer.  I'll be getting a new one, soon…hopefully.

I would also like to take this opportunity to wish a slow, painful, cancerous death on Bill "No Soap" Gates.  If this clown ran an automobile company, there wouldn't be a working car left on the roads.  Everybody would be riding bicycles.  How this geek gets away with putting out a defective product is beyond me.

TOP