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Discordance and Discord
i was putzing around the other night, don’t judge me, loaded up my site’s admin page and was about to reply to some comments. i was greeted with a symbol in a place i had never seen it. a red exclamation point indicated there was an issue, and my site was down. no big deal, and i went to work on fixing it. then it happened. the site disappeared. entirely.
this isn’t me being hyperbolic, as though there was a blank page, or a 404 not found, this was worse. when i loaded my admin page, i was greeted with a statement that said something to the effect of ‘it looks like you want to start a website’ followed by stats that stated that i had never had a visitor, and i had never posted anything.
i proceeded thoughtfully towards having a mini panic attack, as one should in such circumstances. i think a blank page would have been better. this was the difference to find an empty house when you thought someone was home, and finding a body. i’m not web guy, and if the site went down, the hoops i would have to jump through…. i don’t even know where i would start.
anyways, an hour or so goes by, i’m sifting through emails regarding hosting, domains, and what have you, and it corrected itself. i have no idea why. but if there’s a lesson here, it’s ‘freak out, or don’t, nothing matters and we dance to the tune of a capricious and sadistic god.’ but it started me thinking, maybe i should diversity a bit. stretch out my platform.
that lead me to what i’m announcing here, in a long and winding way, that i’m starting a discord server. i plan to post the comic in it’s entirety there, and maybe open a general chat room. people can ask question, rant, maybe fan art if i were to be so lucky…. i don’t expect that this would be the kind of thing that would make someone want to intall discord, but if you’re on it already, check it out! i’m also hoping maybe i can pull some new readers by being on multiple platforms. and, if the site ever decides to give up the ghost, at the very least, there would be a place i could tell people what’s going on, without them assuming the worst.
so, here’s the invite, it’s a little bare bones at the minute, but i’m always up for ideas, especially from people who know discord better than i do. at best it could be a fun little way to grow the community, and at worst, a back up space for the comic should something ever go actually wrong. see you there, or see you as some sort of 4 sided shape…. equal sides…. right angles….. you get the point.
Izzat a Spine Man?
dats seagull
Oh yeah.
Sorry, the view … wow
haha, sometimes i draw things off model. well, he’s in a lot of shadow too. so that makes sense.
It was the brownest of trousers times, eh? Considering it was late at night on a weekend, odds are someone was moving new code into production and a bug got through. My best guess is there was a query that was changed that either had a logic error in it (which the state of test data in dev/QA concealed) or was pointed to a dev/QA database instead of production.
Anyhow, Discord’s probably a good idea. Hopefully everyone will avoid politics. I’ll join it some point soon.
oh yeah, it was a scene. i was so shocked, i couldn’t get my head around it to start working on it. as for your tech explanation…. um, yeah, that’s exactly what i was thinking. but like, with the widgets, in the….. codec…. space. extra.
for sure! there’s been a really good turn out so far, i’m pleasantly surprised. as for politics, it seems like it permeates everything lately. i get that, big stuff is happening and people want to discuss current events. but i think telling people what they can’t discuss is like pointing out the hot stove in the corner no one noticed. some people will rush at it with open palms. i have faith in the people on the comic taking the same respectful and chill vibe over to the discord.
About politics: if you like, you can always put a channel just for “political discourse”, putting a warning at the beginning to keep things NICE or the channel will be removed. I’m seeing things about that and it does work out, about 50% imho.
what works 100% of the time is not engaging with it. i do think that it would be fine. so far, from the slight glimpses i’ve seen of political chatter, most people are respectful, and on the same side of the divide. but even though i, along with everyone else have opinions, i can see how an online comic is an escape from that mundane yet frustrating nonsense.
Actually, we don’t dance to the tune of a capricious and sadistic god. We muddle our way forward, and then somebody makes a stupid typo, and the world dies.
Just ask Amazon, it happens on occasion. Once, someone decided to buy Hulk Hands for their special occasion, and planned to give them out to coworkers. So our naive user logs on to Amazon, and proceeded to put 500 Hulk Hands into their cart, and then check out. Then all hell broke loose. The processing loop on the back end caused a massive chain reaction, halting service until they sorted out the problem.
Another time at Microsoft (it wasn’t me), someone found themselves as a member on a big email list. They sent an email to the whole group, “What is this group for? I didn’t sign up for this, so could you please tell me?” And somebody replied to that, “Me, too.” And another replied, “Me, too.” And yet another replied, “Me, three.” And it went downhill from there. The group list was gargantuan because the list was for testing the server software. And the server where this was running was on a slow server. And of course email was DEAD for days while the server chugged through this garbage. They gave out some t-shirts with “Me, too!” printed on them.
that’s what i call a ‘hulk smash’.
i’ll show myself out.
Whew! That had to be nerve-wracking! Glad it’s okay now. I do have Discord, but it’s going to be February before I have a second of free time again. Just don’t let me forget about it and I’ll come play later! Also, great page. Wonder how often Batman thinks that way?
i don’t know… batman is all about ‘not killing’, but i played some of those games, and he pile drives people’s heads into concrete. i mean, you can claim you don’t kill, but no one is walking away from that with perfect spinal health.
and yeah, wander around when you get a sec. i imagine the holiday season is going to be crazy for quite a few people.
Did you try coming in from the user side? Everything seems to be there at first glance, from what little effort I made to inspect it.
you mean with the website? yeah, i think everything is good now.
Phew, scary! Sounds like somebody unplugged the network attached database server that hosts your comic. Glad they plugged that back in. Butterfingers.
super frightening. my halloween scare.