Three Obscene Letters For Monday

Funny how three letters make this cartoon pretty obscene but would it be as obscene without the three letters? Perhaps too much to dwell on so early in the week.

It's been a strange morning. I woke up to see the headline on The Guardian that Tony Hart had died. Not a good way to start the day but I was relieved to later notice that the report was an error. He'd actually died over half a decade ago, so that's a relief. We can all cheer up.

Even though he didn't die today but over half a decade ago, I don't see why I can't mention how much I used to love Tony Hart's programmes when I was a kid. My favourite part of the show was the gallery. We'd all sit around and cynically proclaim the better drawings done by parents and give big cheers to the really bad drawings obviously done by university students as a prank. I never sent any drawings in to Tony Hart. Had I been old enough, I'd have probably fallen into the latter category of pranksters. It would never have occurred to me to send an actual drawing. Teachers at school had told me that I couldn't draw so I never tried. Of course, I still can't draw as today's cartoon demonstrates.

I drew today's cartoon because the idea made me smile as soon as it popped out of [blatant plug] The Gag Machine, late last night. However, when it was finished, I realised that it had absolutely no value. Nobody would buy a cartoon like this. It's overdrawn and bestiality is never a popular subject. It was a complete waste of my time drawing it.

Because I've been adding new features to The Gag Machine, I've been drawing lots of cartoons the past week. The beauty of the machine is that I now have more ideas than I can use. However, for once, I'm trying to work in a professional manner. I'm building up a stock of cartoons which I can send to magazines in a last desperate attempt to sell at least one. This 'never sold a single cartoon' tag is beginning to kill me.

Speaking of new features: I've now got the program emailing joke ideas to me. At the moment, I use it as an easy way of transferring ideas between devices but I'm now wondering if I can use it more creatively. Perhaps even automate a twitter feed... Hmm... So many ideas and I have more data to compile. Must get cracking.

The Joke Machine Perhaps

Worked on a cartoon last night but fell asleep before I could finish it. It means that I'm a bit light on material to post today and I've a dozen things to do so I haven't time to write a long essay on the newly discovered Michelangelo bronzes or 50 Shades of Grey or Stephen Fry and God or any of the things currently in the news. Shortly I'll have to nip out to Tesco to see if my nemesis is on the till. Before then, I have code to write.

Over the weekend, The Gag Machine underwent a little update. Unlike a lot of software which is written by people who don't use it for people who need it, The Gag Machine is written by the person who needs it and offered to people who might want it. It's why I'm happy to leave it as a quiet backwater of the internet. I've not yet mastered it enough myself that I'd want *every* cartoonist buying it and using it. The key seems to be finding the magic number of words to combine in an idea. It can work with up to seven fields but two seems to be the best for quick ideas when I'm really tired. Early in the day, three and four can work really well.

I'm just finishing the new update which has added a full screen function, which means I have more screen real estate to deal with and extra functions to write. I'm eager to spend some time using it this afternoon but an American friend suggests I change the name since he thought gag had something to do with strangulation. I have to rethink websites and logos. The Joke machine might have been a better title but I don't know if I can be bothered changing it now. Not when I have so much to do and one pair of hands is about four hands too few.

The Gag Machine 1.01R

Too exhausted to talk much about this tonight but I'm (hopefully) finished preparing the new website and software project. From now on, it's dealing with anything that crops up and, in the coming weeks, improving it as I hopefully get feedback from users.

What is 'The Gag Machine'? It's the Windows-based development/improvement of the app I wrote for Android last year. I never shared it with the world but I've found enormously helpful. I wrote it to help with my cartooning and it genuinely helps me come up with new gag ideas. However, I've now made it flexible enough that anybody can import sets of data (it reads simple .txt files, one item per line) which it then randomly displays. You can control which fields change as well as the ordering and a whole bunch of other things. You can export files containing many thousands of variations... I'm really not doing a great job of marketing this but I'm absolutely exhausted. I'm asking what I hope is a fair price, especially for the packs which contain the data I use myself and which are the key ingredient. If you're a cartoonist/creative and you can't afford it, then I'm also willing to give it away for free if you genuinely can't afford it. How do people convince me that they can't afford it? I haven't yet decided. I guess it's not my job to do the persuading.

So, please, if you're interested in, head over there and downloads the trial. And please be gentle if there are any small problems I've not yet spotted. Even thought it's a simple project, working on my own means that this has been both a labour of love but sometimes a bit overwhelming. One other point: It does require the .NET 4.5 framework, so depending on which version of Windows you're running, there might be an additional download from Microsoft.

I guess this is what's called a 'soft launch' if, by 'soft launch', we mean I'm now going to hide in a dark corner for about a week...

Before I do that: here's a video I did about two weeks ago when I previously thought I was finished. The performance/looks/functionality of the software has improved but (as you can see) I put too much effort into drawing the cartoon ideas that emerged from this session not to use this video.