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  Those snails must get tiredAug 31, 2015 10:35 PM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Snail-mailed out a fresh batch of pencil and ink monthly sketch rewards for Patreon supporters, so I'm nearly all caught up! ^_^ Well, until the new month starts tomorrow, I guess. ; )
 
 
 
 
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  Ink Sketchin'Aug 29, 2015 2:56 AM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Here's an ink sketch I sent to a reader a while back as their monthly reward for supporting the comic through the A* Patreon campaign:
 
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A big thanks to them and to everyone else helping me out through Patreon, it really does help keep this comic going!! Thank you!
 
 
 
 
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  One Stroke to bind themAug 27, 2015 10:14 PM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:I got a new brush! In fact I've been using it for the last half or so of this episode's A* pages; it's a 1/8" (3mm) Winsor & Newton Artists' One Stroke Watercolor Brush, which is a flat-ended brush; here's a photo of the current three I use for watercolor work:
 
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That's the new 1/8" One Stroke brush on top, my big ol' reliable 1/2" One Stroke brush below that (the sizes being the width of the end of the brush heads), and then an ancient, beat-up size 4 Raphaël 8404 that I use for the white ink (which is murder on delicate brush tips!) below that.
 
I *had* been using an 8404 for watercolor detail—what I'm using the 1/8" One Stroke for now—but the 8404s, which are *very* high quality brushes, excellent for both ink and watercolor, are round brushes, with very fine points for delicate line work—and line work, at least past the pencil stage, is not really my forte. See, I don't want to work in lines, but in um shapes, and the 8404 kept tempting me to put in little lines everywhere—as you can see if you flip back through the first bunch of pages in this episode. I've been having a lot of fun doing big areas with the 1/2" One Stroke, so I thought I'd try a smaller version of that for the detail stuff, hoping it might help get me away from trying to rely on lines, and I *think* it's been working, particularly in this latest page—look ma, no lines!
 
This particular 1/8" One Stroke doesn't form the most orderly brush tip of its own accord, but I've had problems like that with smaller Raphaël pointy brushes too (like the size 0, which is what I've been using for inked Patreon reward sketches), and I think it's just 'cause really short sable hairs are hard to manage. In a way that sort of helps because it makes it harder to do really nice lines ; ). You can do pretty zippy straight lines with it if you want though, which is keen; it's the more meandering curving lines that I think I was getting bogged down in—trying to do *those* with this brush results in funky cursive-ish squiggles, or even ragged split-ended borders, like on the edges of the background dust in the previous page, which can make for some nifty effects.
 
Another advantage of the 1/8" One Stroke over the size 4 8404 is that, having much less sable hair in it, it's about a third of the price. : )
 
(The other thing that helped today, I think, was restraining my urge to put every color everywhere just a wee bit, and resisting the urge to try to model volumes—so the pure blue and pure red are fairly isolated, for a bit of a graphic effect.)
 
 
 
 
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  Why futurists really get speeding ticketsAug 26, 2015 11:49 PM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Boy, I'm not doing a great job of keeping quite on-time this week, hrmph! Must go faster, faster, faster! : P
 
 
 
 
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  Publicizing the privacy policyAug 25, 2015 11:02 PM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:The only other thing I got done today was updating this site's privacy policy. Did you know I had one? :o Yep, there's a little link to it way down at the bottom right-hand corner of the front page, been there for ages now. Why? Well, basically because many advertising services require you to have one if you want to serve their ads. Weird, huh? And it actually got shorter! I removed a huge paragraph about an advertising service I haven't used in years, oh and I updated the name of Google's cookie, which they seem to have changed at some point. : P
 
So yep that's the kind of fun we get up to around here on a Tuesday night!
 
 
 
 
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  A magnetar at the galactic centerAug 24, 2015 11:16 PM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:A couple years ago, a magnetar was discovered very close to the supermassive black hole (called "A*") at the center of our galaxy: the source of a powerful X-ray burst detected by Swift on April 24, 2013 (source), having a larger Faraday rotation (magnetic polarization of light) than any other detected source in our galaxy besides A* itself (source), was eventually deduced to have come from a previously unknown magnetar, designated SGR J1745-2900 ("SGR" stands for soft gamma repeater, a class of objects that emit gamma and/or X-rays at irregular intervals). An estimate (source) places SGR J1754-2900 at roughly 0.1 parsecs—about 1/3rd of a light year—from A* itself.
 
The Wikipedia page for SGR J1745-2900 says it is the first discovered magnetar, which is very incorrect: the first magnetar (magnetars are neutron stars—remnants of stellar collapses that weren't quite massive enough to break standard laws of physics and collapse completely into black holes—with extremely powerful magnetic fields) was discovered in 1979. I think, then, that claim on the Wikipedia page is just the result of a misplaced comma, and it's trying to say that it is the first magnetar (out of the 24 or so known magnetars) discovered in orbit around a black hole, implying that it is orbiting A*; this has not yet been proven conclusively, especially given the uncertainty of the exact distance (and even at 0.3 light years, A*'s gravitational effect on the magnetar would be "small"), but further observation (here, for instance), suggests that SGR J1745-2900 likely *is* part of the group of very massive young stars in wide orbits around A*; that won't be known with certainty, though, until later observations can be used to calculate the magnetar's acceleration, because it is still possible that it is accelerating fast enough to break A*'s gravity and move out of the galactic core.
 
 
 
 
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  A*, Dione photos; Skylab haircuts suckedAug 22, 2015 2:30 AM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:I've been wanting to get a little messy and today's page...got more than a little! The secret, apparently, is to do everything wrong the first few times.
 
The ESA has some crazy new photos of the supermassive black hole known as A* and the galactic core around it.
 
The Cassini probe is taking "Farewell" pictures on its last tour around the Saturnian system before it intentionally plunges to its doom in 2017. It just took some nice last photos of Saturn's moon Dione.
 
In microgravity on Skylab in the '70s, a haircut involved close contact with scissors and a vacuum cleaner simultaneously.
 
Have a nice weekend, people. Be cool to each other.
 
 
 
 
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  Rank widget returns, efficientizedAug 20, 2015 10:14 PM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:I forgot to press the "Start Streaming" button when I began drawing today's page, and didn't notice until I was about 12 minutes from finishing the pencil part >_<, so if you tried the "live now" link earlier and got dead air, well, that's why. Sorry about that! Still a darn n00b at this streaming stuff—I'll try not to forget to stream my stream again! : o
 
I got A*'s voting rank to show on the TopWebcomics widget at the right side of the social networking bar below the comic again, but this time without any kind of loading delay or flicker: I realized that with a tiny bit of scripting I could just check the rank once every 24 hours, instead of every time someone turns a page! So the TWC widget on the front page might not always have *quite* the same rank showing as the one on the "about" page, which checks for the current rank every time you load it, BUT it also doesn't slow down paging through the comic, so huzzah. : )
 
 
 
 
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  Sunrise and spaceshipAug 19, 2015 10:25 PM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Here's a watercolor painting I sent to a reader a while back as their reward (this is the top tier reward, but it's A* page size rather than the larger reward painting size at their request—they wanted it to go with the A* original art pieces they've won off me on eBay : ) for supporting the A* Patreon campaign, which is what, more than anything, makes it possible for me to bring you brand-new A* adventures each day:
 
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Thank youuuuuuuuuuuuu~///!
 
 
 
 
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  Egyptian, Arabic, Javascript, KappaAug 18, 2015 9:51 PM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:"Wasat-jret" is my own awkward little portmanteau of Egyptian and what turned out to be Arabic; if you can figure out the much more well-known name it came from...you probably have too much free time. ^_^ Anyway I thought what I ended up with sounded cool in a Dune sort of way. ; )
 
Thanks to a reader on Google+, who reminded me that smart way to make sure readers' web browsers catch the updated version of a Javascript file called in a page, in this case the bookmarking widget below the comic image that may also have been appearing down at the bottom of the page for those with old cached versions of it, is simply to add an arbitrary variable onto the end of the URL used to summon it in the page HTML: "ctd.js?v=2" instead of "ctd.js," for instance; the addition of the spoof variable tricks most browsers into reloading the Javascript file instead of just using their cached version. So that should take care of that. ^_^
 
Here's a Post-it Note doodle I did for a viewer on Twitch, when they came on while I was drawing yesterday's A* page and asked if I could draw them. I swear this is how they described themselves:
 
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Just another afternoon on Twitch! O_o (Man, I should'a held out for a donation! =p)
 
Speaking of (t)which, just to bother you more obnoxiously about checking out my live stream while I'm online and drawing and painting for all the world to see, I increased the size of the message/link that appears next to the site menu below the comic, and made the Twitch button in the social networking bar below that kind of light up, so if I'm currently streaming (and you refresh the page) it'll look like this:
 
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Just 'cause, you know, I knew you didn't want to miss it. ^_^
 
 
 
 
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  Social network rainbow & dumb browser tricksAug 17, 2015 11:26 PM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:The brand new episode 26 e-book is now available for purchase from the episodes & e-books page! (And supporters of the A* Patreon campaign at the appropriate support levels will get their complementary download link for the e-book e-mailed to them at the beginning of next month.)
 
And there's a Patreon button on the front page now, in a bar below the comic—where there had been just a Patreon blurb and text link—along with buttons to the A* areas of some other popular social networks! And if the network of your choice (like G+ or YouTube or deviantART) isn't listed there, you might be able to find it on the about page, where I had space for all of them at once. And it really was just coincidence that the ones I especially wanted to fit on the front page happened to form a nice blue to purple rainbow echoing A*'s own color scheme! ^_^
 
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While I was rearranging stuff, I went ahead and moved a lot of things around behind the scenes, basically moving the triggers for various Javascripts (like the bookmark widget below the comic) out of the main block of code on each page, which helps everything except the bottom of the page (where they all got lumped!) load faster, for smoother site browsing, especially in the Chrome browser, which for some strange reason likes to flicker and redraw the page every time it gets a Javascript launch trigger. ; P Silly Chrome! Anyway, if you're flipping through the comic quickly you should find it a little smoother now, so huzzah!
 
The one widget whose loading I was *not* able to accelerate to my satisfaction was the little TopWebComics voting widget at the right of the social networking bar below the comic; in order to display A*'s rank in their list of many online webcomics (determined by daily reader votes, which I greatly appreciate! ^_^) right on the widget itself, it has to load the data from the TWC site before it can display itself on *my* site, which means it can only load as fast as the TWC site + a round-trip data request, which is about a half-second slower than A* is loading—which is too slow! : P It was a little distracting popping in late on every page, so I replaced it with a static TWC button, which works just like the old one did—clicking it takes you to the daily A* vote button—only it doesn't display the current rank on the button itself. If you miss the old rank-displaying version, never fear! It is still displayed on the aforementioned "about" page.
 
Optimizing the Javascript deployments did end up involving changing nearly every page on the site (mostly because I'd put a Quantcast demographic data gathering script in a poorly deployed position right at the *top* of each page's code, instead of at the bottom >_<); I spot checked representative instances of most of the altered pages, but if you do find one that is now somehow goofed up, do let me know!
 
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Just to get super-geeky on this little weekend site-wrangling adventure, I came across a couple silly technical things while trying to figure it out—mostly in Google Chrome (Firefox is my personal power browsing choice, so I use Chrome as my alternate for testing when I'm tinkering with things).
 
For one thing, Chrome, at least in Windows XP, is not quite as thorough as it should be when deleting all browsing data: you can delete the cache and cookies and browsing history and everything, but Chrome will still retain a memory of something to do with the layout positions of certain page elements; I found this out because after I replaced the TWC dynamic widget, which would perform a delayed flicker-in after each page turn of the comic, with the static version, then deleted all my browsing data in Chrome and flipped through the comic to test the response, the static button, which is just a normal web graphic image in a normal hyperlink, was still flickering in late, as if it was still the dynamically generated version! So I guess Chrome saves a sort of layout scheme of the page in RAM or something, probably to accelerate page display times, and this remains resident even after deleting all browsing data—it only goes away once you completely close and restart Chrome. : P
 
Second, Chrome (and even Firefox, although Chrome is more stubborn about it) is very reluctant to check to see if a Javascript called by a page is actually updated. So, if you haven't cleared your cache since you saw the pre-social-networking-bar version of the site last week, if you scroll down to the very bottom of the comic page you may find a second copy of the bookmarking widget sticking rather awkwardly out of the left side of the ad box down there. This is because I didn't know enough Javascript to make the bookmarking widget load itself in the correct place under the comic while triggering it from the script quarantine area at the bottom of the page, so I removed the part of it that assembles the graphic parts of the widget together, and now I just do that in the my Perl script that puts the rest of the page together—but if your browser hasn't thought to load the new version of the script, it now (temporarily) gets two versions of the widget put together: one below the comic, assembled by my Perl script, and one in the script dungeon at the bottom of the page, assembled by the old version of the bookmark widget's Javascript. I suppose what I should have done was rename the new version of the Javascript, so the browser would think it was brand-new and definitely download it, but ah well, the browser should get around to checking it eventually. :"P
 
 
 
 
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  Episode 27, Comet 67P, and a brush penAug 15, 2015 3:14 AM PDT | url
 
Added 2 new A* pages:Episode 27 is here! I'll be wrapping episode 26 up into e-book form over the weekend; supporters of the A* Patreon campaign at the qualifying support levels will get their complementary download link to the e-book emailed to them at the beginning of next month, while other folks will be able to buy it at any time (once I get it added, so by Monday, probably) through the episodes & e-books page.
 
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Comet 67P has reached perihelion, aka its closest approach to the Sun, between the orbital radii of Earth and Mars. While still intact, the orbiting Rosetta probe has spotted intense gas jets shooting out of the warming comet, and even snapped a shot of a chunk of the comet splitting off. Although it is now receding from the Sun, the heat it flew through is still building in its effects on the comet, so the turmoil will get a bit more intense. Will the loose ball of icy chunks survive? And what about the little Philae lander on its surface, which hasn't been heard from since a brief contact two months ago? : o
 
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A brush pen is an excellent thing for getting out late night art frustrations. From last night:
 
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  The Enigmatic Ending of Episode 26!Aug 13, 2015 9:32 PM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:That's the end of episode 26! If you'd been hoping Selenis was going to get into a fight with someone on that stolen ship, tune in for episode 27—starting tomorrow!—in which *a* Selenis will get into quite a melee when a corporation gets a little too close to home! What do I mean by "a" Selenis? Have I said too much? : o Find out next episode!
 
 
 
 
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  Episode 27 starts Friday!Aug 12, 2015 10:54 PM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Just one more page to go in episode 26! Then episode 27 will start on Friday! I've just ordered a different kind of brush to try out! Man!
 
 
 
 
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  A* nominated for award, universe endingAug 12, 2015 12:12 AM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:A*'s been named a finalist for "Best Sci-Fi Comic" in the Drunk Duck Awards 2015; DD is a webcomic collective site, and I upload A* over there each day. Thanks to whoever nominated A*! : )
 
There's an interesting article on the BBC about how the universe is fading; specifically, a new study has refined our estimates as to how fast the energy output of the visible universe is declining: "star formation peaked a few billion years ago and has been declining since"; "when the team totted up the total energy output of galaxies at three different ages, they saw a steady slump"; "from 2.25 billion years ago to 0.75 billion years ago, the Universe's output apparently fell by about 40%." So when your kids get uppity, you can tell 'em that the universe is less lively now than when *you* were their age. : P
 
 
 
 
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  Time travel, mwahahaAug 10, 2015 9:58 PM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Sayonara, Monday! I'm going to bed to I can skip ahead to Tuesday. : P
 
 
 
 
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  Pentel's foamy Stylo sketch pen!Aug 07, 2015 6:02 PM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:While at my local everything store this week to purchase their bulk toiletries, I couldn't resist a stroll down their art supplies aisle, and noticed they had a pen by Pentel that I haven't tried before, the Pentel Stylo, advertising itself as a sketching pen. It's got a "unique" triangular nib made of hard foam or something, which I guess is supposed to act kind of like a traditional metal "crow quill" nib, letting you vary the width of your line with hand pressure. I like Pentel's "Pocket Brush" brush pen, and the Stylo was only about $3, so I let curiosity get the better of me picked it up. ("Stylo," incidentally, is French for "pen." Clever, non? :"P)
 
The Stylo has a nice chunky body in a dark wine color, rather similar to Rotring's Tikky Graphic pens if maybe feeling not as substantial or precisely machined. You do get a *little* width variation out of the foamy nib thing, but not much—not nearly as much as you'd get out of a flexible metal nib, and only a bit more than you get out of, say, a 0.5 Tikky Graphic, and with not as generous a flow of ink, although it isn't too bad in that respect. The ink *is* darker than the Tikky Graphic, but not waterproof, I don't think (I didn't test it, but it isn't advertised as such).
 
The foamy nib produces a sort of nails on chalkboard feeling of drag against the paper that is not pleasant, and also feels somewhat imprecise. If you can get over the shudderific foam rubbing feel, you can doodle okay with it, but for my money I'd spend the extra 50 cents and have myself a Tikky instead. But it was fun to try a new pen, anyway! Here's the test sheet I made with it in my notebook: top half is the Stylo, with two sizes of Tikky Graphic below that, and a Pocket Brush doodle at the bottom:
 
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I might get up to streaming some more Pocket Brush doodling this weekend, we'll see! No Stylo doodling, though—it's joining so many others in my art supply cupboard of shame. : o
 
 
 
 
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  Frankly doodlin'Aug 06, 2015 10:48 PM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Here's a brush pen doodle I did for a viewer on my live Twitch stream today; they'd requested something else but it was complicated so I just did this instead ^_^ >_>
 
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Brush pennnnnn
 
 
 
 
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  Getting ahead of myselfAug 05, 2015 10:19 PM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Day three and I'm still on schedule, woo. Kind of pooped, though; who knew daylight was this exhausting? Well I'm sure my body will figure out this whole sleeping at night thing eventually. : D
 
In addition to the day's usual drawing and watercoloring of the A* page, I've also been streaming little sessions of drawing reward sketches for Patreon supporters earlier in the day. Almost caught up for...one month back, now! ^_^ And Patreon was still processing *this* month's contributions over the past weekend, but that's done now so I'll be able to send out the latest round of support e-book rewards this *coming* weekend.
 
And hey if I can keep to this schedule thing, I'll be able to get my Saturdays back, and do some more giant-size A* paintings; I managed a few of those a while ago but haven't been able to fit more in up to now. : o
 
 
 
 
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  Punching ClocksAug 04, 2015 10:04 PM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Well after a two whole days I'm still on my daylight hours schedule, which is good, I guess! I felt a little rushed today—gotta stop losing time when I'm not looking. ; )
 
Also I found my ink refills for my Pentel Pocket Brush Pen! I'd been afraid I'd used up all my ink obsessively doodling portraits on Post-it Notes with it over the weekend (you can see some of the better ones at the bottom of my August archive on tumblr), but now I'm reloaded and ready for more doodling whenever I get a minute :D
 
 
 
 
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  OMG Live Art BlooperAug 03, 2015 10:21 PM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:I finished (for now, I guess : p) sprucing up my Twitch channel with art samples and links and stuff (down below the streaming video window). And I caught an art blooper on the live stream while streaming the painting of today's A* page! A pretty good one, too! : D I dunno that I've ever made one that bad (certainly not *live* : o); it involved a brush fully loaded with white ink, my butterfingers, and giddiness and haste brought on by perhaps one too many Post-it doodle responses to funny viewer comments in the chat window. ; ) Anyway, now this inner bulkhead outside the cruiser's cockpit has a um cool blaster scar on it—yeah, yeah that's what it is!
 
 
 
 
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  Revenge of the Midnight StreamerAug 01, 2015 11:13 AM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Thanks to everyone who helped make the Big A* Original Art Sale a success by buying my art! I sold way more pieces than I thought I would, so huzzah! : )
 
Let's see, it's a new month so that means I can ship out another round of e-books to supporters of my Patreon campaign at the e-book support levels, so maybe I can get that done this weekend. For next week, I'm going to *try* to hold a little better to daylight hours (centering selfishly on my Pacific time zone) so people on my own continent who don't just stay up all night can have a chance of catching the live stream of me drawing and painting A* pages five days a week! Mind you, every time I say I'm going to try to stick to that kind of schedule, it almost immediately falls apart, but umm I didn't have people to stream video to before? Anyway if I can get started drawing and streaming by oh 3:00 pm or so on Monday, and not end up staying up all night finishing the painting, then I'll be a happy munchkin. We shall see how it goes next week!
 
 
 
 
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