What’s the worst file name on your computer?

Why are they finalists? Because I want YOU to choose the winner! You’ve got until Monday the 20th, 2013. GO!

Update: The votes are in!

With a total of 968 responses, the results are:

• indexOLD2.html … 14.26%
• asdfqweklrj~1.doc … 30.17%
• DRAFTBrand_Logo_FINAL_NEW_r07b.psd … 55.58%

A close match, but once again proving that nobody likes a file that just won’t stay done. Thanks to all of you for voting!

There is only the joke. There is no joke.

Super Art Fight Kickstarter’s Final Days!

We are wrapping up on our Super Art Fight book Kickstarter, and can still use your help! While we have met our goal (thank you so much) we are still looking to make the book bigger and better, and are close to our next stretch goal. If we can raise another (as of this posting) $444 we will be adding an amazing comic about a prehistoric Super Art Fight to the book courtesy of Michael Bracco. You can learn more about it here.

Thank You Awesome Con DC

Thanks to everyone who came to Awesome Con. It was by far the one of the best cons I have ever been to, which is the highest praise I can possibly give to a convention that did not exist before this year. Oh, and it was less than 2 miles from my house, which also made it the most convenient convention I have ever been to. We did our amazing Super Art Fight on Saturday to a completely packed room. I’m finding YouTube vids of it and will post separately in the next few days.

For a little behind the scenes, sales were amazing. The best I’ve ever had at a convention. I had to run home on Saturday after the dealer room closed and bring back more prints and shirts to sell, because I had run out of everything. On top of that the fact that it was so close to home and I didn’t have to pay for a hotel or anything, it was flat out amazing.

I’ll write up more about the show soon, but thank you again to all who came out! As I always like to say, it’s great to put a commenter-name or site visit number to some faces. It’s heartwarming to know real people out there read this nonsense. Thank you.

More Shirts Soon

Keep your eyes peeled to the site because I’m going to be reordering a bunch of shirts that I am now out of over in the HilariAwesome.com store. If you want a women’s shirt in any size, I don’t keep them in stock but am happy to order them for you. Just email me at systemcomic at gmail dotcom with which one you would like and what size and we’ll take it from there.

A pseudo-followup in my ongoing series to “mathify” things:

• Beards turn laziness into awesomeness.
• My body is a filter. Coffee goes in and sarcasm comes out.
• My computer helps me the further I am from it.

Like numbers 500, 400, 300, 200 and 100, another recap of what we’ve learned in the last 100 comics. I enjoy putting these together, but they do take quite a while. All the panels are from comics from the last 100 comics. Can you name where all of them are from?

Also, we have something else to celebrate! We also recently passed the four-year anniversary of the comic as well. 400 comics! That’s pretty good, right? That officially makes The System my longest-held job / relationship.

<I’ll insert more words about what it’s like to do 600 comics here soon.>

Anyway, if you want to help me celebrate, there’s a few things you can do:

• Share your favorite comics from the archive with friends.
• Comment on posts.
• Buy prints of any comics you like from HilariAwesome.com, our online store.
• Buy shirts from HilariAwesome.com, our online store.
• GET READY to give me more money, because I’m going to be launching a Kickstarter for The System Book 1 in a few weeks. As soon as the book is mostly built and I have a quote for the number of books, it’ll all come together. Stay tuned!

I need to buy more RAM, right now my state-of-the-art computer (that you guys helped me buy, thanks!) only came with 2GB and FREAKS THE HELL OUT whenever I ask it to do, yknow, things. I’m adding more, don’t worry.

Come see me at Connecticon!

I’m here at Connecticon already! All weekend I’ll be at a table with posters, comic prints, and some shirts from the online store. You should come by and see it! It’ll look something like this:

Also, if you come by, I’ll give you free stuff if you mention you read the comic. It’s that easy. Just say that you read it. I won’t quiz you! High fives are free.

Based on today’s trip to the Apple Store. Turns out the only thing wrong with my MacBook Pro is that I use it for things.

So that happened. Sorry for the delay on posting this, it has been a weekend without Internet. A new comic tomorrow!

Responsive web design is the new thing, and if you asUPDATE:k me DAMN interesting. It can solve a lot of problems for web sites, since it means not having to build a separate mobile site. Everything just works fine on every device! Of course, building one is a lot of extra work and planning, not to mention that it is a lot of tedious little maths. Still, you can see some great examples of responsive sites in action over at MediaQueri.es, and learn about them from the beginning with Ethan Marcotte’s first article on the matter over at A List Apart. There’s also now a book on it, too!

Oh, and the new SystemComic.com site? TOTALLY RESPONSIVE.

Last chances to get the deal of the century on CATS DON’T CARE shirts! Next up for HilariAwesome.com is something with this comic/chart. As soon as I figure out what. Suggestions in the comments?

There was some feedback that the last comic (The System 586) seemed sexist due to the fact that a male character was helping a female character with a computer issue. The original comic was based on a real conversation between me and my mom a while back (sorry Rossmom, it happened), so I just kept the genders the same. Anyway, here’s a new version of it to balance it out.

Truth is, I have a lot of respect for women and think about gender roles. Unfortunately, the way these symbols are set up is a perfect example of what is the case in a lot of our culture where “male” is seen as the default and “female” is seen as the variant. Seen below is “arriving flights”, “waiting area”, and “water fountain” aka “dudes doing things”.

I don’t know the exact history, but my guess is that since these were created in 1974 (more about the original set here), that was just the thinking at the time. For the sake of the philosophy of the icons, there was a need to have a default character, and in this case they made it a guy (which you can argue is gender-neutral, except the same one is used for “men’s room” as well so there goes that idea). For this reason I try to switch up the gender of characters when the jokes don’t rely on gender. Generally my default is a man and a woman talking, simply because they are different-looking in this very simple style, so it’s easier for the audience to read as separate characters. My default narrator is myself, and therefore a male character and therefore you have a male character talking to a female character, and dialogue ensues (and sometimes fart jokes). Sometimes I make a point of changing this “default” approach and it works out, like Jimmy the Murderdog’s first strip. Sometimes it doesn’t, like this joke I wanted to do about Zeno’s Paradox which, upon reviewing, kinda sends the wrong message.

So my point, if I have one (and I’m not sure that I do) is that women are great. They do everything men do and more and manage to smell better. Sometimes they are the butt of jokes in these comics, and sometimes they aren’t. One thing you’ll never see is a comic that says “she’s X because she’s a woman,” and you never will. That kind of joke has no interest to me, and I don’t believe it to be true. I’ll generalize designers, coffee drinkers, and the Internet as a culture, but not women or men for that matter. So there.

Following the The System 394: Inverse Law of Computing.

I really couldn’t decide which face was funnier for the last panel. I decided the creepier one was the way to go. But here’s both, for reference:

Anyone else for cat shirts!? They’re still on sale!