Hmm. This could be a problem.

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I don’t know if anyone else is having this problem, but they probably are; the strip is currently returning a “can’t connect to MySQL site” error. I can access the database but it’s not loading on the page itself. Well, when it comes back there’ll be a new strip.

If it’s still down in the morning I’ll post the strip on Da Blog.

The guv hires prostitutes? Big deal.

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Let’s say you’re on a business trip, and you get lonely so you decide to hire a prostitute. But you like the girls you know back home, so you decide to place a call to your pimp back home, offering to pay for the whore’s transport to wherever you are in addition to your usual fee. Does it bend the law? Maybe. Does it mean you’re not fit for your job, even if you’re, say, a project manager and expected to lead? Probably not. Does it make you a horribly immoral person? Well, not that much more immoral than hiring a prostitute in the first place, which if you believe some people, is not much different from marijuana. Should you be run out of your job and disgraced for life regardless of how good a job you did before? If you used company funds, maybe; but if you paid with your own money it’s not even the company’s business.

But if you’re the governor of New York? Apparently it’s a different story.

I’ve been reading about the Elliot Spitzer scandal and beyond the hypocrital irony, I’m seeing a distinct disconnect. I’m not seeing how “patronized a prostitution ring” exactly equates to “is a corrupt politician” or, considering just how popular it really is, “is a reprehensible person”. If he used campaign or state funds to pay for his “night of fun”, or if he lied under oath about it or actively tried to obstruct the investigation instead of semi-fessing up, I could see the scandal, but if it’s about doing something that any red-blooded American of the same gender would do (well, most)?

Doesn’t this only show that Spitzer is (gasp!) actually human and not a perfect little saint? Do we actually expect our politicians to be the latter? Considering how many corrupt, truly reprehensible politicians there are out there, shouldn’t we be focusing on more important things for us to get upset about our politicians? JFK was anything but a saint, after all.

Really, aren’t there more important things for the media to talk about? I would think the damage the Bush administration has done over the past seven years is far more important than a governor’s sexual escapades. Bill Clinton, after all, had sex outside marriage while in an executive office, and I would say it didn’t affect his ability to be president too negatively, would you?

Apparently he rolled a save of 1. (If you get it, and you’ve already heard this, you’re probably groaning.)

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Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, died on Tuesday. If, like me, you weren’t around in the 80s when D&D was one of the biggest fads on the planet, you’ve probably never heard of him, and if you’re neither a fan nor one of those “D&D=Satanism” freaks, you probably think it only matters to antisocial geeks. You’d be wrong.

Freehostia’s security certificate is back to normal. Since today’s strip is up really late, tomorrow’s will be up around noon PT, Saturday’s will be up as early in the morning as possible, and Sunday’s will be back to being up at 11 PM PT.

Expect delays when reading comicked strips

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The next strip will not be up until sometime in the morning, possibly as late as 11 AM PT, though more likely no later than 8. This is because Freehostia’s security certificate has a problem, and while I ignored it long enough to get a strip up last night, I don’t want to risk it causing any real problems.

UPDATE 12:24 PM PT: The new strip is finally up, though Freehostia is not back to normal (though it may just be IE7’s cache). Tomorrow’s strip will go up no earlier than 8 AM PT, and strips will continue to go up at around noon PT until Freehostia is back to normal. If it’s not back to normal by one week from today, I’m going to be seriously considering dumping Freehostia.

Sandsday Feedback Open Thread

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I want you to check out my comic strip and tell me what you think. What do you think of the strip so far? What do I do well? What are your suggestions for getting better? Any questions or comments you may have on the strip are fair game.

(I’ve linked to this page from the strip so anyone who reads the strip is likely to be drawn here.)

I absolutely welcome ideas for specific strips, but I prefer that ideas I might use not be presented in a public forum before I use them. You can post them here, but I prefer if you e-mail me at mwmailsea at yahoo dot com.

Comment away!

Thoughts on the Oscars

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It seems very odd to me that the 50th Grammys, the 50th Daytona 500, and the 80th Academy Awards would all fall in the same year, indeed the same month.

I watched two of the three, and the broadcasts of the latter two made sure to reflect on the historic nature of the moment. Before the presentation of the acting awards and Best Director, the Oscars showed montages of presentations and acceptance speeches past.

I honestly don’t have much to say about the awards themselves, though I am glad that, for the most part, the awards themselves are the focus of the Oscars, unlike some awards shows I know.

I did see one interesting tidbit on Tim Dirks’ Filmsite: Every one of the Best Picture nominees could be classified as an independent, low-budget film. In fact, by Dirks’ count this was the third straight year where the Best Picture nominees were bankrolled outside the big-budget studio system.

There has always been a disconnect between the popular films and the critically-acclaimed best films that win Oscars. Could we be seeing the start of another disconnect – one that could start seeing big studio films disenfranchised from the big awards at Oscar time? Could the Oscars start doting over indy films like mad? Could it become little more than a film festival?

Not to say the nominees were overly artsy, or even unpopular. Lord knows I’ve seen plenty of ads for Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men, or There Will Be Blood. From what little I know of them, those movies deserve every inch of praise they get. There’s no real danger of Best Picture going to a film as artsy as, say, The Seventh Seal in the near future.

Well, at least let’s hope not.

In any case, this seems as good a time as any to plug my 100 Greatest Movies Project, an attempt to present the definitive list of greatest movies by combining all the lists that have come before. It will be a celebration of the history of film and a chance to find out what really makes a great film. If you consider yourself a movie buff, a true movie buff that appreciates true greatness in film, consider writing for the Project (with full credits) and bringing some of the great films to life. If you’re interested, e-mail me at mwmailsea at yahoo dot com or comment on this post.

A word for anyone who wants to see more than just a particular day’s strip

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Could you please make sure you have cookies turned on until further notice? Or at least have it set up so that Bravenet won’t idiotically count it as a separate hit every time you look back through the archive? I swear, once SiteMeter gets this “multiple counters on one account” thing nailed down I will run away from Bravenet so fast it’ll make your head spin…

The future of open-wheel racing

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In the end, we all learned the number 1 rule of open-wheel racing: Don’t bleep with the Indy 500.

Now that open-wheel racing in the United States is unified once again, the unified racing body can turn its attention to repairing the damage done by the Champ Car-Indy Car war. On that front, I have a few suggestions for what to do going forward:

  • Recognize that the war only helped NASCAR’s rise, but was not solely responsible for it. NASCAR was arguably bigger than open-wheel racing even before the split, or at least before it really started punishing then-CART.
  • Decide right away whether or not you can take on NASCAR. If you think you can (and last year suggested NASCAR may be plateauing), be aware you may need a 10-year plan for it, and hope for NASCAR mistakes. Push what makes your sport distinct, run races in places NASCAR doesn’t, and leverage the passion of the fans you have. If you don’t think you can, focus on carving out a solid niche and consider running some races overseas. Either way, immediate financial solvency should be the immediate goal if you don’t want to get absorbed into NASCAR.
  • Reclaim the North and West for yourselves. CART was more popular than NASCAR entering the 90s because NASCAR was a southern sport and IndyCar racing was popular in the north. The Kasey Kahnes and Jeff Gordons of the world should not be running off to NASCAR. Rebuild the infrastructure that was there before.
  • Marketability! You can attract eyeballs if you can market your drivers. You can keep drivers if you can create marketing opportunities for them. Plugging the hell out of the likes of Danica Patrick is your friend. But whoever your best drivers are, they should be appearing in advertisements and making other appearances if you want to even have a chance to keep them from jumping ship to NASCAR.
  • Either fix the problems that caused the split in the first place, or recognize that they are unfixable. The IndyCar series has fallen victim to many of the same problems that caused it to split from CART in the first place. The barriers to success for Americans are especially vexing because of how far open-wheel racing has fallen due to the war. Make it more affordable and try and find more American oval tracks. If you recognize they are unfixable, take steps to appropriate them for your own benefits, and work to overcome them.
  • Everything revolves around the Indy 500. I actually doubt Tony George wanted to “win” the war, only create a series to compete with CART. “Winning” and becoming the de facto open-wheel leader since about 2002 if not before only led to IndyCar inheriting CART’s problems. But the Indy 500 is the only race that matters and, despite declining ratings as a result of the war, it is more than twice, if not three times, if not four times as popular than any other open-wheel race. Any effort to rebuild the sport must revolve around putting your mark on the Indy 500, and rebuilding its prestige. Daytona is one of the biggest races on Earth, but that it is more than twice as big as Indy is unacceptable.
  • ESPN is your friend – or at least it used to be. ESPN must be an equal partner in rebuilding open-wheel racing, since they, along with ABC, are showing your races. But they were probably more inclined to do so before they also started showing NASCAR races. Still, they need to plug their IndyCar broadcasts during NASCAR and generally plug that IndyCars are still here, they exist outside the Indy 500, and they’re coming back.
  • Don’t completely destroy what Champ Car left behind. Only a smattering of Champ Car events are on the 2008 schedule. That doesn’t include some Champ Car events that were serving as the series’ lifeline in its later days. Completely junking almost everything about Champ Car will only alienate its fans. And it may have had only a few fans, but you need all the open-wheel fans you can get to serve as a base to grow on!

Of course, this only matters to one person other than me.

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I made a change to the webcomic that you probably won’t – and shouldn’t – notice. Previously, I had stored three variables in the metadata database: the strip number, the date, and a third field to preformat the date for display on the page, since I didn’t know how to use PHP to format a date I was only allowed to enter in one format. Well, last night I figured out how to do just that and the date will now be automatically calculated from a field designed to store the date.

I don’t know whether that will make it faster or slower. What I do know is I’m proud to have figured it out without trying to upgrade (or waiting for Freehostia to upgrade) PHP.

PS. I wrote the post below last night but my Internet started acting freaky at the worst possible time.

If you ever see me in person, remember…

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I am the definition of someone who is not a people person. If I’m not actively doing something, my mind is constantly drifting off thinking about semi-random things that interest me. If I’m jolted out of this by things not being the way they should be in a perfect, ideal world – if I’m forcibly pointed towards an imperfection – this annoys me because a, I’m no longer focusing on my own thoughts, and b, I don’t like imperfection.

I try to focus more in classrooms and to tune out more in broader public settings where I don’t need to concentrate so much, but it kind of goes against my nature, or at least my hard-set habits.