Well there goes my punchline...

Dutch! · Post by **Dutch!** » Wed May 24, 2006 10:55 pm

I steal my own jokes all the time. I love a bad running gag.

Turnsky · Post by **Turnsky** » Wed May 24, 2006 11:08 pm

as the last head warder of the tower of london used to say

"it's all in the execution"

that said, i don't make jokes, if i do, they're usually situational, sarcastic, or otherwise fairly dry.

SergeXIII · Post by **SergeXIII** » Wed May 24, 2006 11:19 pm

The Neko wrote:I can't say they're exactly the same idea. One was funny and well-done, the other...

Oww.

In my defence however, I wanted to be contemporary with that comic, and so I did it moments after watching the trailer (30 times) and reading up on the E3 reports regarding it, and so was more concerned with the timing (and was quite fond of my punchline).

Turnsky · Post by **Turnsky** » Thu May 25, 2006 12:55 am

SergeXIII wrote:
The Neko wrote:I can't say they're exactly the same idea. One was funny and well-done, the other...
Oww.

In my defence however, I wanted to be contemporary with that comic, and so I did it moments after watching the trailer (30 times) and reading up on the E3 reports regarding it, and so was more concerned with the timing (and was quite fond of my punchline).

regardless, your comic and the one in Vgcats had two different punchlines, you stopped at the mario slaughter, scott went onto the raiden punchline.

he didn't "steal" the punchline at all, more like completed it.

KittyKatBlack · Post by **KittyKatBlack** » Thu May 25, 2006 1:25 am

SergeXIII wrote:
TdotOdot2k wrote:If you're using "save for/to web" in photoshop once you're done coloring, there really is no need for it to go over 200k. I say 200 only cause that seems to be around the norm for ctrl+alt+del at times, and while Tim Buckley should by no means be considered a standard, he is popular, so if they were considered too big, he'd probably know by now.

The question is, would he care? Not sure. I'm also not sure if it's just the comic that slows the page down. Some comicgen comics sometimes get to retarded levels of like 600k, but those load much faster than yours. May wish to look into the filesizes of everything on the site...something isn't user friendly there.
OOOoooh, oh right I forgot about that.

Yeah, I started using .JPEGs when I became satisfied with hand drawn backgrounds with a coat of 55.4% transparent paint. I had a brain fart and used my old stlye without .GIFing it.

The other comics, like the newest one, come up fine right?

Go with .PNG. You get the color depth of a JPG, with the file size of a GIF. Best format ever. I save almost all my work in PNG format.

Edit: Actually, come to think of it, I think I found what might be causing part of your problem. From what I can tell, the ONLY images on your site even hosted on the Comic Genesis servers is the comics themselves. All your other images are hosted elsewhere. I don't know if this would cause the slow loading or not (Possibly if the server your images are hosted on might be having problems.) But I really see no reason to do this. CG gives you unlimited space to host your comic and comic related images, so your backgrounds, logos and all that can be hosted on the CG servers. You're probably better off switching them over.

Dutch! · Post by **Dutch!** » Thu May 25, 2006 1:34 am

SergeXIII wrote:
The Neko wrote:I can't say they're exactly the same idea. One was funny and well-done, the other...
Oww.

Look at it this way. Which of the two jokes (I haven't read either, so can't comment) do you prefer? Honestly now. Yours, or the one the other bloke did. There's nothing wrong with giving credit if somebody does an idea you thought of weeks or months earlier better than you did.

And if you prefer your joke over there's, it doesn't matter that they used the same idea, eh?

Mr.Bob · Post by **Mr.Bob** » Thu May 25, 2006 2:39 am

I think yeahfuff's is much more eerie.

Dotty · Post by **Dotty** » Thu May 25, 2006 6:58 am

Is that what's going on, KKB? Cause his newest comic loaded fine...but when I tried to scroll.... :S that didn't work well.

Seriously guy, you site slows down a dual T1 computer. Do you not notice your site scrolls remarkably slower than every other comic site out there? :p

Faub · Post by **Faub** » Thu May 25, 2006 8:02 am

Here's what happens on the internet when you request a page.

HTTP 1.0: you request a page. The server sends you the page then closes the connection. When you want to receive the images on that page, you have to make a separate request which requires you to open a new connection with the server. If there are 30 images, that's 31 connections. More if you have iframes, css and javascript files.

HTTP 1.1: you request a page. The server sends you the page then leave the connection open so you can make other requests. Receiving 30 images happens as fast as the server can dump them over the connection because the overhead of reestablishing the connection is gone. There is no pause as the server reassesses itself.

Your situation: you request a page. The server sends you the page and leaves the connection open for the comic so the comic loads quickly. You then have to make another request to a different server or multiple different servers for the rest of the images on the page. Basically, you've reduced the rest of your site to HTTP 1.0.

If your image server is overburdened (like photobucket) then your site loads very slowly. If your images are large, the site loads very slowly.

This is why you should host your images on the same server as your site. Take account of the size of the entire site. This includes background images and comics. If you're loading the page over dialup, you top out at around 5 KB per second. If your site is 250 KB, the site will take nearly a minute to load. If your site is over a meg, it could take up to 10 minutes to load.

A full T1 has a connection speed of 1.544 Mbps, which is roughly 200 KB per second download. Fractional T1s can be 256kbps, 384kbps, 512kbps or 768kbps. (Divide by 8 for the download speed your browser will support. bps is the number of BITS per second.) So, a dual T1, you could expect up to 400 KB per second if you have the line to yourself (that's a bit simplistic. Dual T1s can make requests on multiple connections at once since a T1 is composed of up to 16 separate lines which can be split between data and voice so you can get a LOT more performance out of lower speeds than you can with your 3Mbps cable connection which is only a single line). Usually that's not the case, but 150KB per second is good. If you have to reestablish the connection with every file, your 150 KB per second won't get utilized. It'll get cut in half or more. Sure, the single file downloads very quickly, but you have the whole Internet to cover with each connection. It's not just you connecting to the server. It's every server and router at each step along the way. There can be upwards of 30 steps. Sometimes that can be measured in seconds.

Code: Select all

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\John Fortman>tracert www.comicgenesis.com

Tracing route to www.comicgenesis.com [66.220.2.7]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     2 ms     1 ms     1 ms  192.168.1.2
  2     2 ms     1 ms     1 ms  192.168.1.1
  3    14 ms    14 ms    14 ms  clmamocobr2.clmamocoro1.centurytel.net [69.29.179.129]
  4    16 ms    14 ms    14 ms  clmamocoro3.clmamocoro1.centurytel.net [64.91.3.52]
  5    16 ms    13 ms    14 ms  clmamocoro1.clmamocoro1.centurytel.net [64.91.3.34]
  6    18 ms    17 ms    17 ms  host.lightcore.net [204.9.126.1]
  7    25 ms    24 ms    24 ms  chcgil1wcx1-pos4-1.wcg.net [64.200.201.129]
  8    24 ms    24 ms    24 ms  brvwil1wcx2-pos5-0-oc48.wcg.net [64.200.103.57]

  9    26 ms    24 ms    27 ms  chcgil9lcx1-pos6-0-oc48.wcg.net [64.200.103.118]

 10    25 ms    24 ms    24 ms  chi-ix.he.net [206.223.119.37]
 11    78 ms    77 ms    77 ms  pos1-0.gsr12012.sjc.he.net [64.62.227.53]
 12    77 ms    77 ms    76 ms  pos1-2.gsr12416.fmt.he.net [64.71.128.182]
 13    79 ms    77 ms    76 ms  pos10-0.gsr12012.fmt.he.net [66.220.20.138]
 14    77 ms    79 ms    79 ms  keenspace.com [66.220.2.7]

Trace complete.

C:\Documents and Settings\John Fortman>tracert freeweb.com                                                                                                      Tracing route to freeweb.com [207.44.141.40]                                    over a maximum of 30 hops:                                                                                                                                        1     2 ms     1 ms     1 ms  192.168.1.2                                     
2     2 ms     1 ms     2 ms  192.168.1.1                                       
3    14 ms    14 ms    14 ms  clmamocobr2.clmamocoro1.centurytel.net [69.29.179.129]                                                                            
4    16 ms    16 ms    14 ms  clmamocoro3.clmamocoro1.centurytel.net [64.91.3.52]                                                                               
5    14 ms    14 ms    14 ms  clmamocoro1.clmamocoro1.centurytel.net [64.91.3.34]                                                                               
6    16 ms    19 ms     *     host.lightcore.net [204.9.126.1]                  
7    22 ms    24 ms    24 ms  chcgil1wcx1-pos4-1.wcg.net [64.200.201.129]       
8    24 ms    24 ms    24 ms  brvwil1wcx2-pos5-0-oc48.wcg.net [64.200.103.57]                                                                                   
9    37 ms    39 ms    39 ms  dllstx1wcx2-pos12-0-oc192.wcg.net [64.200.210.42]                                                                                
10    38 ms    37 ms    39 ms  dllstx1wcx3-pos9-0-oc48.wcg.net [64.200.110.74]                                                                                  
11    44 ms    42 ms    42 ms  hstntx1wcx3-pos1-0-oc192.wcg.net [64.200.210.66]                                                                                 
12    44 ms    44 ms    44 ms  hstntx1wcx1-pos9-0-oc48.wcg.net [65.77.93.213]   
13    46 ms    44 ms    44 ms  everyones-internet-hstntx1wcx1-gige1-0.wcg.net [65.77.93.54]                                                                     
14    44 ms    44 ms    44 ms  ivhou-207-218-245-29.ev1.net [207.218.245.29]    
15    45 ms    44 ms    44 ms  ivhou-207-218-245-123.ev1.net [207.218.245.123]                                                                                  
16    46 ms    47 ms    44 ms  ev1s-207-44-141-40.ev1servers.net [207.44.141.40]        
                                                                                                                                                       Trace complete.

Let's see... ~79ms round trip to keenspace.com and ~44ms round trip to freeweb.com. These are roughly the setup times for each site. (Notice this says nothing about the actual download speed you're getting from either keenspace or freeweb, so it's really hard to give accurate numbers.) If you want to test the actual speed of a given site, post a 5 MB file on each site and download it, keeping track of the average download speed you're getting. Be sure to delete the file afterward.

web.adknowledge.com: 2KB ad banner
gnerds.comicgenesis: 23.5 KB page. 175KB comic. 3KB and 3.5KB next/previous buttons.
http://www.comicgenesis: 50KB newsbox
http://www.freewebs.com: 40KB background image. 51KB banner. 4KB, 5.5KB, 3KB, 5.25KB, 3.75KB and 5.33KB nav buttons. 11.25KB avatar.

Total: 386KB

A dual T1 should be able to download that in 1-3 seconds, probably less. My DSL got about that. I noticed that the large files (your comic and banner) visibly loaded, but overall it wasn't horrid. I expect that freeweb is overloaded since it's free web space and everyone and their mother is using it to host pictures of the kids. Your 50KB banner loaded in about the same time as your 175KB comic which means the browser was splitting its time on my DSL to download the comic and the banner at the same time or freeweb is 4 times SLOWER than keenspace. Either could be the case.

I suggest you reduce the size of your banner and your background to around 10KB or less and you put all your images on ComicGenesis. If you do this you should see a speed increase when loading your site.

Soldier Volkov · Post by **Soldier Volkov** » Thu May 25, 2006 10:30 am

mcDuffies wrote:I'm not sure that I ever wrote a joke that was original.
However, timing and context usually differ.

I read in a book: "Anybody who beleives they're going to come up with a fresh, original plot, a story that's never been told before, leads a far-too-rich fantasy life." -Fiction Writing Demystified - Thomas B. Sawyer

I guess the same goes for comic strip gags.

TheSuburbanLetdown · Post by **TheSuburbanLetdown** » Thu May 25, 2006 10:36 am

Execution and chracterization goes a long way.

LibertyCabbage · Post by **LibertyCabbage** » Thu May 25, 2006 11:09 am

Sortelli wrote:Well, it's actually not all that uncommon for different people to come up with the same joke. Hell, a gritty assassin like Snake going into Super Smash Bros, that joke writes itself. It's like saying every gaming comic stole the idea to make fun of the name "Wii" from each other.

Sortelli nailed it in the first post =/ It's a really obvious gag to do, so it's not that peculiar that VGCats did the same joke, or particularly clever of you for coming up with it in advance. I suppose you can be proud that you came up with the same thing as VGCats if you think the writing's good (I don't.) Anyways, I guess the moral is, try to think of ways to make your punchlines more special and clever. I'm sure at least 99% of the people who found out the Snake is in SSBB thought, "Solid Snake in Smash Brothers?? That's ridiculous!". You need to be creative into working that into a joke, not using it as the joke itself.

KittyKatBlack · Post by **KittyKatBlack** » Thu May 25, 2006 11:31 am

faub wrote:*the smart version*

Whee! I was right! I was right!

*dances*

Yeahduff · Post by **Yeahduff** » Thu May 25, 2006 8:05 pm

Mr.Bob wrote:I think yeahfuff's is much more eerie.

You say the sweetest things.

Garneta · Post by **Garneta** » Thu May 25, 2006 9:08 pm

Dutch! wrote:I steal my own jokes all the time. I love a bad running gag.

A bad running gag...seriously, is that supposed to be funny?