Everywhere I go there are kids zooming in front of me, this way and that, on wheels. And quite frankly it pisses me off. They get in my way, they don’t look where they’re going. I’ve lost count of the times a child has crashed into my leg. It’s dangerous and it’s stupid. And I want them. Pfft, for children 5-12 my arse. Look at them, gliding along, so happy. That could be me. The bastards.

Sorry for the late updates (Tuesday’s went up today as well, go check it out), my hard drives are currently failing, resulting in a lot of errors, a lot of programs shutting half way through without warning, which itself has resulted in a lot of swearing and general animosity towards my computer. It looks like I’m going to have to shell out a couple of hundred quid to replace the parts. Just what I needed.

You just know that even though on paper the job sounds great, a challenge, fun, interesting, give it two weeks and all you will have done is type up people’s reports and fill in data sheets. All the stuff people don’t want to do. Oh well, I guess it’ll look good on the CV.

I went to the Webcomix Thing in London last weekend; check out the blog post I wrote about it. Oh, and come and keep me company in the forums.

So on Saturday I set off for London to go to “The Thing”, dragging my brother along with me. I didn’t have a stall or anything, just went to see what a convention was like, and to see the people that make the comics that I read. After taking a wrong turned and walking for while down the wrong end of the aptly named “Mile End” we eventually got there. I swear that was the windiest road in Britain. Today at least. I’d heard the forecast that it’d be a cold one but I thought, “hey, it’s London, it never gets THAT cold in London…” Silly me. So after being battered by the bitterly cold wind it was nice to get inside. I was of course late for a rendez vous with NobbyNobody from the quite simply amazing Odd-fish and Anezka from the TWCL forums. But they were found happily chatting to each other. We even got a free key chain from Nobby. Score! Speaking of Merchandise, I bought the two bunny books, and got Huw to doodle in them. Also, weirdly, I bought Issue one of Steve and Bob by Michael Georiou. Weirdly because I had literally only come across Steve and Bob the night before, and hadn’t realised he was going to be there. So when I recognised the art and characters I had to say hi.

All in all it was a good day out. I bought a few other bits and bobs, got a few freebies and plenty of flyers. The only downside is that the moo minicards that I’d ordered didn’t arrive in time for me to take, so I had nothing to hand out. A bit of a missed opportunity! But it was nice to go to a convention for the first time. And I’ll definitely be going next year. Who knows, I may even get a table!

So I saw a woman smoking the other day. Whilst it’s a filthy habit I don’t tend to complain unless they blow their smoke in my face or put their cigarettes out on my arms etc. I mean it’s a free country (sort of) and if people want to slowly kill themselves by sucking on cancer sticks, that’s their choice. The problem I had was that this woman was quite clearly heavily pregnant. And I did check, she wasn’t just fat, it was definitely a baby bulge. In my opinion that’s just wrong, studies have time and time again shown that smoking, drinking and doing drugs can damage a babies growth in the womb. What do you guys think? Am I just being over the top again, or do you guys agree? The weird thing is, even though I find it disgusting to see a pregnant woman smoking, whenever I see the warnings on the back stating that “Cigarettes may harm your baby” I can’t help buy think of a baby being bullied by over sized cigarettes. I think I blame those nicorette adverts… I’d post a link to a video, but I can’t find one. You know the ones. With the giant cigarettes? I’m sure I didn’t just make it up…

I’ve made some minor changes to the site layout. I’ve changed the area below the comic on the main page, it now shows the latest entries from the site blog, which, with any luck I’ll start updating more regularly. Also, below each comic post is a bunch of new nifty looking links, if you haven’t already you can add the facebook app, subscribe to the RSS feed, post to comic to social sites like stumble and del.ico.us and email your friends. Annnnnd you can vote for it. Next week should see the return of votey rewards, so stay tuned on that front. What do you guys think about the updates? Like them, hate them? Apathetic?

So, are there any guys heading out to the UK webcomix thing on Saturday? If you are, let me know, because I’ll too. I’m cool like that. You know, giving it back to the fans. Both of you guys.

PS: Sorry about the late update. I actually uploaded it on Wednesday, but I put the wrong date on the time stamp, and I only just noticed! Sigh, even when I do a comic early, it goes up late.

In fact there are a lot of things babies can’t do. Calculus. Hold a conversation. Pay their share of the rent. Cook a meal. Tidy up once in a while. Pfft, let’s face it, babies are rubbish.

If you haven’t yet checked out the webcomic wiki, well, then you’re rubbish. Quite frankly you sicken me. Now get on over there and check it out. And submit an article. Do it.

I am humbled by the gift of a guest comic by non other than Spear from tnt comic. Humbled because his art shows up mine for the rubbish it truly is! You should all definitely go and check out tnt comic, it’s a very funny strip. And you should tell him to stop being so good at drawing, he’s making me look bad.

You should also check out the webcomicwiki for the brand spanking new guide on using social media to promote your comic - it’s awesome if I don’t say so myself. But I do. I wrote it.

Also, if you’re all up to date with the new fangled interwebs, and use stuff like Twitter and Stumble, you should totally add me. (click the links and make my day)

I really wasn’t. Sure I was aware there’d be work to do, but come on! The stereotype of lazing about in front of the TV watching rubbish day time TV, nursing a hang over from the night before? Not for me. It’s all busy busy busy, coursework this, dissertation that. Sigh, and here I am applying for another year!

Some site stuff today. I got a nice email from Guy saying how he missed the rotating Polaroid shots at the top of the page, so now they’re back and I’ve added a few as well. What do you think? Also, Spearr from tnt comic contacted me about making some buttons, I’ve had these lying around for a while now and so, if you want to show all your friends that you love Apathetic Rant (and lets face it, you do…) why not declare your love with one of these nifty buttons or banners? (scroll to the bottom of the page) If you want to make your own, feel free, shoot me an email and I’ll put them up on the site for all to see. I also put up some avatars I made a while ago. Enjoy.

In webcomic wiki news, approaching 300 articles now. Approximately 250 are actual webcomic entries, or articles about webcomics themselves, which means that there’s still about 30-50 guides floating around there, so it’s definitely worth a look. If you’re interested in using social media to help promote your site then check back in a few day as I will have uploaded an article about by the next comic update.

Most of them are though. It made me laugh when in lectures the other day, the lectures mentioned that the stuff we were about to cover was at the “cutting edge of philosophy” – I actually laughed out loud. Just the idea of cutting edge philosophy sounds amusing to me.

And low, He spake that there would be two comics on the weekend and so it was. Was a close one, but I managed to get them both up before the end of the weekend, on British time anyway. And we all know Britain invented time… If you haven’t checked out the webcomic wiki yet you should definitely do so.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have my own army. Obviously it would be best to start from scratch, with babies. Then you could train them up. Some call it brain washing, I call it… Well, I call it brain washing too, but I say it with a happy face so people don’t think it’s a bad thing.

Woah weekend updates? Yes. I missed this weeks due to work and a secret project I’ve been working on. So you get Saturday and Sunday comics instead. That make it better? Oh, ok! I’ll tell you what the secret project is too. It’s a webcomic wiki. A place where people with webcomics can come together and read and write articles and guides about webcomics. What they are, how to make them. Hopefully, over time, it’ll become a resource useful for everyone involved in webcomics. If you think you can help, check it out. There are a few articles already up, and there are lot more planned. The address is www.webcomicwiki.net – go on, you know you want to! And don’t forget to come back tomorrow for Sundays comic, you’re getting two comics this week even if I have work on a Sunday

Bah, computer problems. I hate them, in no small part because I know nothing about computers. I try adding some more RAM to my computer and it doesn’t work. It resets the BIOS, more than likely because I’ve shorted something out. Luckily it’s a good motherboard and was clever enough not to screw everything up just because of a bit of static. After getting the BIOS settings right again (thanks Iain and Matt) turns out there’s corrupted files on the hard drive as well. Lame. Sounds like I’ll have something to do this weekend afterall.

Have you signed up to the forums yet? Because you should!