Blog – Page 41 – Xaviar X. Xerexes

The 2005 Digital Strips Interview

by Xaviar XerexesAugust 30, 2009

For the historical record: I was interviewed by Zampson and Daku for the original version of Digital Strips back in 2005 — the only time I’ve been on a podcast. I had this on in the background all morning. One – hope I apologized to Kelly back then about talking so much (I think I had a hard time hearing her on the internet call we did for the interview). Two – the library idea did work but I pulled it down in the change from Postnuke to Drupal (I wrote that code on Postnuke) and after its test period I needed to re-do it to require less editorial …

Webcomic Merit Badges

by Xaviar XerexesAugust 29, 2009

Guest Artist Okay I get this merit badge — I did a few guest comics for others back in the last century. The main two I remember (fondly) are one for Chopping Block and one for GPF. I just found the GPF one — it was a joke about patents! Ha, perfect for GPF. And jokes about patents are just as relevant today as they were in 2002. (Can’t find the Chopping Block one on google though…) Gabba Gabba Hey You get the webcomic merit badge Gabba Gabba Hey for joining a collective. Hey I get this one too – I was part of Alternative Brand Studios (or Altbrand as it was known as) back …

Mashup of Annie Lennox Solo: Backwards, Forwards

by Xaviar XerexesAugust 5, 2009March 8, 2020

Annie Lennox let DJ Earwig at her master tracks to create a single mashing-up various songs from her solo career. The resulting single/video Backwards Forwards is really good. You can hear the other songs in it but it’s definitely something new too.youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fht_R7ELZZs?rel=0 While I’m posting about mashup video I’ll sneak in here a re-post of the buzzed about clip-up video from April that takes the music mashup to infinity and beyond — Mother Of All Funk Chords — remixed by Kutiman from pre-existing YouTube clips. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tprMEs-zfQA?rel=0

Custom Pager Module for Drupal

by Xaviar XerexesAugust 1, 2009

The Custom pager module for Drupal is what makes it possible to do a webcomic site with Drupal. It’s not the whole reason but it’s a key piece. A couple notes for using it — one if you want the first and last links you’re going to have to add a couple lines to the module file and to the CSS file. I think the more “correct” way is to put it in the template file for the theme (instructions here). It’s also possible to theme it with images for the links (instead of the words “next” “last” etc) – I’ll add more to this post …

Mind of Freeman

by Xaviar XerexesJuly 28, 2009March 8, 2020

Half Life is one of my favorite videogames of all time. I only found out about Ross Scott’s series of videos called Freeman’s Mind this year. Simple but funny – Scott riffs over the action in the original Half Life game as if he was the main character. It is not at all what I’d think of as Freeman’s personality (although in a remarkably McCloudian trick, Half Life gives no personality to Freeman so that every person playing the games gets to fill in whatever they imagine).

Using Drupal to Publish Webcomics

by Xaviar XerexesJanuary 11, 2009

Drupal really missed the boat in not more actively supporting webcomics a few years ago and now WordPress with the help of the very effective Comicpress theme has taken a huge chunk of that market share. If you’re starting from scratch WordPress + Comicpress is a great way to get going. But for me I decided this year I was going to put everything I did on Drupal to save me some time administering the various sites I keep up. Drupal is actualy really good for setting up one code base and running multiple sites off of it. This way I spend less time updating …

Neal Stephenson Enters the Googleplex

by Xaviar XerexesSeptember 15, 2008March 8, 2020

Neal Stephenson is an amazing processor of information. I (like countless other fans of his work) am currently reading Anathem, his latest novel which tackles such myriad issues as religion, science, the long clock… I’m only 200 pages into a lengthy brick of a book. So far it is living up to the amazing trilogy of his previous work, The Baroque Cycle books. If you missed them, The Baroque Cycle books are Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World. Stephenson has an amazing ability to process, digest and integrate knowledge in his work — the books are historical …

Drupal 6.0 Is Go!!!

by Xaviar XerexesFebruary 14, 2008

I have been waiting for Drupal 6.0 to drop. I switched to Drupal from Postnuke in early 2006. Drupal was at 4.6 (which was quite good in many ways) although it wasn’t too long until Drupal 4.7 came out and I made the switch. ComixTalk has been on Drupal 5.0 for about a year now and it’s showing it’s age, but knowing that 6.0 was coming I didn’t want to spend too much time on the 5.0 version.