HD

Unfortunately, it doesn't matter how many pixels you broadcast in, until GoComics introduces its zoom facility to Sherpa we're stuck with a maximum resolution of 600 pixels across.

Of course, this blog has been in HD for the last two years. Click on any of these strips to see them at a glorious 1200 pixel resolution.

The right hand panel was drawn as small as I could make it using the thinnest pen I could find, and then scanned at 1,200 dpi - a good 600% higher than my usual sample rate when scanning. The idea was to get the rough finish and texture you'd expect when seeing something in much finer detail than usual. Of course, then I had to reduce the final artowrk to get it to fit into GoComics' 600 pixel width limit, and all the roughness vanished. So I've had to reintroduce it again using Photoshop filters.

Finding Smith on GoComics

GoComics has gone a bit wibbly over the last couple of days. If you rely on the A-Z listings to find Smith every day, you'll have noticed it's no longer in its usual place - the alphabet has been scrambled. You'll now find it near the top of the left hand column. This is probably a temporary state of affairs and just the act of making this post will cause GoComics to magically repair itself, but in the meantime, there I am.

GoComics is undergoing maintenance

Please have patience with GoComics today - they've been doing some behind the scenes fiddling in order to improve the performance of the site, which has been pretty slow lately. They're still putting all the pieces back together, so todays strip hasn't loaded yet.

However, the old Sherpa site at http://www.comicssherpa.com/site/feature?uc_comic=csmdx is working OK. And you can still see today's strip in the post below.

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Friday 13th Part 2

I always like to do something a bit strange on Friday 13th, whenever it comes along. Running the cartoon reversed, running the cartoon with the frames in the wrong order, running the cartoon upside down, I've done all of those so far, deliberate mistakes designed to make it look like something's gone wrong with the strip.

Ironically something has gone wrong with the strip. GoComics has been refreshing its website and there have been a few teething problems.

I say 'a few teething problems'. Some are more serious than others. The internal navigation going out of order I can live with. The loss of editing on posted comments is an irritation but not a disaster. But having 100 subscribers evaporate into thin air is unforgiveable. I know this has happened because I subscribe to my own strip, and my emailed selection of strips from the main GoComics page and Sharpa has been a mess over the last few days. I get multiple copies of some strips and no Sherpa strips at all.

I'm giving GoComics the benefit of the doubt for the moment - it's a huge database driven site and it's probably a nightmare to update - a tiny bit of code going wrong somewhere in the guts of the system can lead to massive errors when it comes to assembling pages. But I don't have infinite patience.

If you're having problems with the GoComics site I suggest you resubscribe to the strip on the original Sherpa site: http://www.comicssherpa.com/site/feature?uc_comic=csmdx or follow this blog instead.