Webcomics, RSS, and updates

Comic Alert!

I haven’t been able to make as much free time as I’d like, but I did manage to find what is proving to be a real time saver. With all of the webcomics I read, checking for updates can be very time-consuming. Especially since many of them don’t provide RSS feeds.

Comic Alert! is a website I found while googling for an RSS feed on a particularly confusing site. Essentially, you sign in (you don’t even need to give an e-mail address) and build a webcomic favorites list.

It will then check the comics for updates and notify you through your choice of three methods:

  • Your own custom “all my favorite comics” RSS feed
  • A daily e-mail digest (Obviously, requires you to give an e-mail address)
  • Your own “These comics have been updated” page complete with thumbnails.

The service is completely free (even from ads, at the moment) and according to the FAQ, they never want to go beyond in-site ads when it comes to getting paid. My favorite part is how it leverages the social aspect of having all those favorites lists on a single site in order to suggest new webcomics. Of course, I already knew about all of the comics It’s recommended to me, I just haven’t had time to try them.

The other potential gains which haven’t really come into their own yet are the “Related Sites”, “Similar Comics”, and “User Reviews” functions. I spent about an hour this morning submitting Wikipedia articles to be added as related links. I just can’t wait for their planned my.comicalert.com feature. Then I’ll be able to let their software automate the task of maintaining a publicly-visible favorites list.

Anyway, subject change: When I came to post this article, I was informed that there was a WordPress 1.2 vulnerability and my blog had been disabled. As such, I finally got upgraded to 1.5. As you may notice, there is no Captcha anymore. I left it that way on purpose in an attempt to goad myself into giving the blog a major overhaul. It’s needed one for a while.

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Fanfiction – “Hidden in Darkness”

Title: Hidden in Darkness
URL: Furinkan.net VFFA
Author: Space Pirate Hamster
Source: Sailor Moon
Rating: 5.5/6
Type: Continuation with a possible hint of AU
Length: 6 Chapters + Omake (Complete)

After doing the bit of reading that resulted in the previous post, I was left with the annoying fact that this was probably the only fic on the Sailor Moon page at Furinkan.net that I had not read. The tab remained open in my browser for weeks as an annoying reminder that I refused to remove, but never had the time to make use of until now.

Hidden in Darkness is one of those fics that turns things on it’s head by doing nothing more than revealing (creating) some hidden fact about the canonical story. (One of my favorite kinds) Essentially, it raises the question, “What if the destruction of Metallia left a race of half-youma refugees who desired only to survive?”.

As with Space Pirate Hamster’s big-name works like newRanma and The Virus, I consider this fanfic to be very well written. The setting and plot are believable, and it’s a true mark of a good author when you can get your audience to enjoy new characters in a fanfic, as opposed to disliking them or not caring. In fact, the combination of skill and subject matter reminds me of Stefan Gagne’s original work, Sailor Nothing. (which really deserves it’s own review)

Anyway, if/when you do read this, I highly recommend reading the “Author’s Notes and Omake” file. It’s rather reminiscent of Arthur C. Clarke’s “Lost Worlds of 2001” in that you might have difficulty telling whether you enjoy the main feature or the discards more.

What really surprises me is that the only other decent fic I can think of which tries the “non-evil youma” idea is a Ranma 1/2 – Sailor Moon crossover which I have yet to review. (Youma 1/2)

My apologies for the fragmentary nature of this review and it’s tendency to go off on tangents, but I’d rather post an over-concentrated review while half-asleep, than risk getting bogged down with work and forgetting about it entirely. Of course, I could say the same thing about the disorganized nature of this blog too.

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Status update

Well, I’ve been very busy and probably will continue to be. However, I did manage to fit in three review-worthy things:

Until I have time to write proper reviews, here are some simple ones.

Fushigi Yuugi

If you’re like me, you’ve probably grown really tired of anime that re-uses the same old character designs and plot twists. Especially when it feels lacking at the end.

I like to think of Fushigi Yuugi as Japan’s answer to “The Neverending Story”. It’s an epic with highly unique characters, any cliches that it does use were not cliches at the time it was made, and I consider it to be one of the set of classics which includes Ranma 1/2 and Evangelion.

Slayers Virtual

Ever wonder what Slayers would be like if it were Cyberpunk instead of Sword and Sorcery? This is a collaborative fic (each chapter has a different author) which I considered highly enjoyable. It does a very good job of mapping the Slayers mythos to a Sci-fi setting. I’d rank it as 5.5/6 and, as anyone who reads my other posts knows, 6/6 requires a re-read.

Gabriel

Ever read “The Virus”, “Ranma’s Apartment”, or “newRanma”? They are all written by an author who uses the pseudonym, “Space Pirate Hamster”.

“Gabriel” is a gender-bending work of original fiction which follows a transsexual main character of the same name in a real-world setting. I don’t apply my fanfiction ranking system to original fiction, but I can say that it is very good.

…that reminds me, There’s another work of original fiction that is of similar quality. I have to find it again and review it. (It’s a sci-fi story that’s in some profile on The Lost Library of Florestica)

Anyway, I’m trying to get some of my programming projects done right now so proper reviews may have to wait a while. On the other hand, at least I’m finally making progress against the great deluge of TODO notes.

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Browser configuration

Well, it’s been a while since I tried to share my browser setup and it has changed a fair bit. (For example, I installed InfoLister which allows me to quickly generate a list of installed
firefox extensions.) So, here is my current setup. I’ll probably be adding an ad-blocking related extension within the next few days since the browser is now quick enough for each image to make a noticeable difference in page load times.

Last updated: Fri, 12 Aug 2005 12:09:27 GMT
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8b3) Gecko/20050712 Firefox/1.0+

Extensions (enabled: 23, disabled: 6):

Themes (1):

  • Firefox (default) 2.0

Plugins (5):

  • Default Plugin
  • Helix DNA Plugin: RealPlayer G2 Plug-In Compatible
  • Java(TM) Plug-in Blackdown-1.4.2-02
  • QuickTime Plug-in 6.0, Windows Media Player Plugin are supported by mplayerplug-in
  • Shockwave Flash

And, since I made so many changes without need for extensions, here
are my user.js, userChrome.css, and userContent.css files:

// --- user.js ---
// Reveal more tab/window options: (No more need for "Tabbrowser Extensions" Bloat)
user_pref("browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs", true);

// Put an end to blinking text!
user_pref("browser.blink_allowed", false);

// Make sure all windows are resizable, minimizable, and have menus, scrollbars, and navbars:
user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature.resizable", true);
user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature.minimizable", true);
user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature.menubar", true);
user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature.location", true);
user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature.scrollbars", true);

// Force frames to be resizable:
user_pref("layout.frames.force_resizability", true);

// Change non-URL entry in the address bar to a hybrid of Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" and normal Google search:
// If there's a clear-cut match, go to it. Otherwise, show search results.
user_pref("keyword.URL", "http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=");

// Don't wait 250ms before rendering page.
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);

// Enable Pipelining
user_pref("network.http.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.proxy.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.pipelining.maxrequests", 8 );

//Explicit Javascript Blacklisting (For cases where Javascript is definitely not necessary and is just annoying)
user_pref("capability.policy.policynames", "nojs");
user_pref("capability.policy.nojs.sites", "geocities.com");
user_pref("capability.policy.nojs.javascript.enabled", "noAccess");

//(Disabled) Javascript Whitelisting (For if you don't want to muck around with the NoScript! extension)
//user_pref("capability.policy.policynames", "jsok");
//user_pref("capability.policy.default.javascript.enabled", "noAccess");
//user_pref("capability.policy.jsok.sites", "http://www.example.com http://www.example.net");
//user_pref("capability.policy.jsok.javascript.enabled", "allAccess");

// Make middle-clicking tabs close them. (A fix for a change in the defaults)
user_pref("middlemouse.contentLoadURL", false);

// Turn off image animation (Valid choices are "none", "once", and "normal")
user_pref("image.animation_mode", "none");

// Partially-untested changes which apparently do something I want.
user_pref("plugin.expose_full_path", true);
user_pref("ui.submenuDelay", 0);

// Show pictures as they load (Gives the illusion of quicker loading)
user_pref("browser.display.show_image_placeholders", false);
// Use error pages instead of error dialogs. (Much better for tabbed browsing)
user_pref("browser.xul.error_pages.enabled", true);

//The Following is a "Fast Computer, Fast Connection" enhancement profile.
// See http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:http%3A//www.tweakfactor.com/articles/tweaks/firefoxtweak/4.html
user_pref("content.notify.backoffcount", 5);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 48);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 8 );

// Feel free to use 65535 (64MB) if you are willing to let your browser's cache grow that big and use the back button a lot.
user_pref("browser.cache.memory.capacity", 32768);

// Only set this if you can guarantee nobody else can read your cache files
user_pref("browser.cache.disk_cache_ssl", true);

@namespace url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul");
/* --- userChrome.css --- */

 /* Hide the Go menu */
menu[label="Go"] {
   display: none !important;
}

/* Italicize the title of unread tabs */
#content tab:not([selected]) {
  font-style: italic !important;
}

@import url(chrome://flashblock/content/flashblock.css);
/* --- userContent.css --- */
/*
 * This file can be used to apply a style to all web pages you view
 * Rules without !important are overruled by author rules if the
 * author sets any.  Rules with !important overrule author rules.
 *
 * For more examples see http://www.mozilla.org/unix/customizing.html
 */

// Stop useless, annoying "blink" elements.
blink   { text-decoration: none ! important; }

/* Change cursor for links that open in new window */
:link[target="_blank"], :visited[target="_blank"],
:link[target="_new"],   :visited[target="_new"] {
   cursor:  crosshair;
}

/* Change cursor for JavaScript links */
a[href^="javascript:"] { cursor: move; }

/* Stop those marquee tags! */
marquee {
   -moz-binding                  : none !important;
   display                       : block;
   height                        : auto !important;
}

/* Add a skull and crossbones after links marked rel=nofollow */
a[rel="nofollow"]:after {
   content: "

I also have over a dozen Greasemonkey scripts to make site-specific improvements to my browsing experience, but I don’t know of an easy way to get an HTML-fomatted list of them. As you may have noticed from the user agent string, my browser version is 1.0+. That is the
evidence that I’m using Deer Park alpha 2 as detailed in my previous post.

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Mozilla Deer Park Alpha 2

Mozilla Deer Park Alpha 2

If you run Mozilla Firefox on Linux, you’ve probably noticed, among other things, that:
* Its Open/Save dialogs are custom-designed so you can’t use your GTK+ 2.x bookmarks. (Firefox always requires GTK+ 2.x so please don’t remind me about KDE’s folder bookmarks.)
* It takes noticeably longer to render a page on Linux than it does on Windows.

Deer Park is the codename for the upcoming Firefox 1.1 release and both of those problems are fixed. I can vouch for this because I am posting this entry using Deer Park alpha 2.

It also has a few platform-independant improvements. The following are rather subjective since they’re based on my experiences and you may multitask more than I do (or have a slower system), but they should still be indicative of the improvements.
* If the Back and Forward buttons were any more responsive, they would be instant. (At least, as the human mind perceives it.)
* Loading a page is usually about as quick as clicking Back was on Firefox 1.0
* There’s a noticeable drop in text window latency (the delay between pressing a key and seeing the result)
* You can “Sanitize Deer Park” (Clear your tracks) with CTRL+SHIFT+DEL and you can also set it to do so automatically when you quit.
* My bookmarks still take a second or more to appear, but that’s because I have 500KB of bookmarks and no folders. (I’m in the process of moving them to del.icio.us where I can sort them using keyword intersection rather than hierarchical folders)
* There is no longer a comfortable user interface for picking exactly what you consider to be “Javascript Annoyances” (Unless you use about:config, it’s all or none.)

All in all, I consider it to be a great leap forward for usability (especially on Linux) and I do understand how the average user might feel intimidated by the old method of specifying what is a “Javascript annoyance”, but I wish they would provide some kind of advanced mode that is a middleground between novice and about:config.

I haven’t tested it enough to really give a verdict on it’s stability, but it hasn’t crashed yet. It has been my experience that when the Mozilla foundation says alpha, what they really mean is “Won’t crash any more than Internet Explorer would but may crash just as much”. If you are an ordinary user, I suggest waiting for the final Firefox 1.1 release. If you are geeky enough to know how to back up your Firefox settings (~/.mozilla on Linux) then I suggest you give it a try.

I recommend installing SessionSaver and Bookmark Backup no matter what version of Firefox you’re running. An ounce of prevention saves a pound of pain. (or something like that)

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My “Nerd Score”

I finally remembered where I ran across this funny little
jewel. I am nerdier than 98% of all people. Are you nerdier? Click here to find out!

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Fanfiction – “Harry Potter and the Flak Jacket Mafia”

Title: Harry Potter and the Flak Jacket Mafia
URL: @ Outpost Daria
Author: Canadibrit
Source: Harry Potter, Daria
Rating: 5.5/6
Type: Crossover
Length: Really long one-shot

Well, I decided to add at least one more review to the blog before merging them into my main site. I should warn any potential readers that, while it is good, it is script-form fanfiction.

The story basically follows the premise “What if the Daria cast were rushed into Hogwarts, skipping enough years to catch up with the HP cast?” I have never seen Daria myself, but this fanfic has made me seriously consider it. (I prefer things which can be read at high speed like Fanfiction, Manga, Novels, and the like.) For the record, I found it through the comment boards on the Anime Addventure.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got. I’d say more if I had watched Daria.

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