Tag: eler

Speaking at the Manchester Free Software Meeting

I’m speaking next Tuesday (15th April 2008) at the Manchester Free Software about my geeky web comic, Everybody Loves Eric Raymond. Apparently people are still interested in it even though it hasn’t been updated since December! Hooray!

It’ll be a bit of a mix of the two talks I’ve done before on ELER, so some stuff about the history of the comic and how I make it, plus some ranting about free software, free markets and leaders.

I was asked by the then organiser (and my friend) Matt Lee who was then extraordinarily renditioned to North America with his new wife, leaving the new organisers to pick up the pieces. Luckily most of the pieces were found and it’s all go, though I do now appear to be talking about my new Rails hosting company too and my name is spelt differently. If there is time, I’ll talk about some of the stuff we’re doing at Brightbox with Free Software.

Talk starts at 7pm at the Manchester DDA. More details on the Manchester Free Software website.

ELER Italian Transcription

Luca Andreucci has contributed the first Italian transcription of my web comic, ELER. I love how the last pane of the current strip is described.

“Eric ha le sopracciglia di Linus, più le calze e i sandali”

Bruce Schneier whistles white noise

The new ELER strip is about Bruce Schneier and links to a Chuck Norris style Bruce Schneier Facts Database system I wrote. It got linked from Boingboing, Metafilter, Reddit and even Bruce Schneier’s own blog!

As you might imagine, it’s getting trabigillions of hits right now. Lucky I wrote it in Ruby on Rails with its built in page caching which (after first render) serves as fast as the webserver can serve. And since I’m using Lighttpd too, that is very fast.

LUG radio

I’ve just got off the phone with the chaps from LUG radio. They were chatting with me about the Everybody Loves Eric Raymond comic strip. 10 million geeks will hear it next Tuesday and rush to buy the tshirts I’m hocking on there. Or will be. By next week. Then I can retire at 26.

Anyway, it’s an amusing show so you should be listening to it whether I’m on it or not, so get downloading.

Comic strip harrassment

My “weekly” comic strip Everybody loves Eric Raymond is still going, but I’m sometimes late because of the difficulties involved in producing high quality humour and because I’m lazy.

I’m currently over half a day late with this weeks strip and I’ve begun to get comments:

Scrotor: Leach - It’s WEDNESDAY, and guess what?

I don’t know who this Scrotor is. My teachers at school used to call me by my surname too. It amuses me that now random geeks call me it too. Unless my old teachers read my comic.

I really should be getting on with the strip rather than yapping about it here. This week features a new character that I don’t have a body for yet so is appearing as a ghost. Actually, I could have easily got a body sorted but the ghost idea amuses me.