"Can Google Hear Me?"

Dang, wish I'd thought of that.

"22" Vision.

Peter Venables has a new and interesting exercise based on Wally Wood's "22 Panels That Always Work." If you're an artist looking for an excuse to GET BETTER, this is a good one.

Random Idea: Rhymer?

I'm just gonna put this out, here.

Does anyone know where I can find a program that'll sort large blocks of text by rhyme?

I'm looking for the ability to do something like this, but using actual rhymes, not words that just end with the same couple of letters ("stopped" does not rhyme with "glared").

I'd be willing to pay for this, or pay to get it developed. Anyone know anything?

CAPTCHA This!

Got a forum? Worried about spam attacks? Read on-- this may help...

Because Penny and Aggie has a discussion forum about teenagers, albeit fictional teenagers, we found especially vile spam on our PHPBB pages almost every day. It got so bad that I was considering restricting access to current members and people who e-mailed me personally. And that's no way to grow a community. So what could we do?

The default security on discussion forums is a "captcha." The most popular kind of captcha is shown at right. As you can imagine, the string of characters is computer-generated. But PHPBB is free software. Anyone has access to its program. Anyone can take it apart and see how it works. "Anyone" includes everyone who programs spambots for fun and profit. And no "randomizing" software is truly random-- take two copies and run them under the same conditions and they'll always come up with the same results.

Ah, but spambots can't anticipate human behavior! What if you modified the captcha so that forum owners could personalize the test, and create a version that applies only to one forum, ruining the "economy of scale" that makes forum spam profitable?

Torstein Hønsi asked this "what if," then made it happen. Thanks to him, Gisele and I can sleep soundly at night, knowing we will not have to delete "OMG RAPE STORIES" first thing in the morning.

I hereby declare this National Torstein Hønsi Day.

The Most Beautiful Collaboration Webcomics Have Ever Produced.

If you haven't caught the MP4 that is the crowning achievement of Eric Burns' life to date, there's really nothing better you can do with the next few minutes. (Warning: music.)

If you've caught it, see it again, because there's really nothing better you can do with the next few minutes.

Eric says today has been a good day.

UPDATED: When I first posted this, the non-animated version of the mp4 had a bug. It's fixed now, and it features an important postscript. :-)

More Cartoony Jobs

For full-time job-seekers:

If you know to hyphenate "super-breath" but not "Superdog," DC Comics has an opening for a proofreader.

Could be long shots for beginners, but if you've got training: Storyboard artist wanted for feature film. From the same source: animator position and head of story position, matte painter and editor.

Adult Swim wants a Web development manager.

Disney wants a director of character art.

Star Farm (who works with Nickelodeon, Mattel and Simon and Schuster) seeks an animation concept artist/illustrator.

Sandman Studios Animation wants an animator/modeler. Immediate position, $30-50K per year.

Blizzard Entertainment wants a story artist.

For Freelancers:

Draw the Realteer, a superhero designed to represent a company.

Design a complete ecommerce website with cartoon characters.

In shape? Comics fan? Want to break into acting? Be a Marvel superhero for $100.

This guy wants ten caricatures of himself for his business, including one as a cowboy.

This one wants some art for a career fair poster and brochures.

Draw "Lucky Luke."

How about a bird conducting music to promote a new invention?

This one wants a fun and mildly non-PC cartoon logo.

Freelancers should also be looking at Digital Webbing's talent pages and Comic Jobz.

I'm toying with the idea of making this a regular feature (relying less heavily on eLance). Would you support it? Is there more you'd like to see, or should I narrow the focus? Write in and let me know.

"Time Friends" by Kris and ME!

Kristofer Straub's Time Friends has become an intriguing experiment in user-generated comics. Here are my entries in this new genre!

ComicNe.ws.

"It's like Digg, but for comics!"

Good! I had a few minutes of free time I was using to sleep.

Kidding aside, it's remarkable how quickly these Web 2.0 ideas are finding purchase in comics. It gives me an idea... but that's another post.

Mobile Discontent

The tests I mentioned yesterday were successful.

Effective now, I'm a part-time professional blogger! I was involved in an initiative to bring comics to mobile phones for about four seconds this year (don't bother Googling it), time enough to develop a keen interest in the field, seasoned with a healthy skepticism for its hype.

Catch the rough, unofficial version of the resulting blog, Mobile Discontent, here. Coming soon to a corporate webpage near you! (Which, technically speaking, they all are.)

Testing An Industry Blog Today...

Not many cycles left for other things right now.

I have too many ideas sometimes.

ComicSpace.

ComicSpace.

MySpace for comics.

Brilliance.

X For A Month.

Fleen makes note of what could be an interesting new meme: X For A Month.

Why not? A month is long enough, in this age of possibility, to live most dreams, yet short enough that you can escape back to your old life if you find it's not all you hoped. This idea could make a higher percentage of blogs more interesting reading-- which is to say, it could accomplish MIRACLES.