Tweaks

Saturday has been about my exhaustion. I'm just knackered. A long week has finally caught up with me.

I've also given up attempting to say when I'm going to launch my software. I want to say 'next week, definitely' but I fear putting a jinx on it. The past week has been a hectic one but I'm now at the point where I could launch it right now. Everything is done. Everything seems to work. However, showing it to a couple of people has resulted in my adding a few new tweakable options. I'm trying to make more features available to registered users, albeit they're largely cosmetic features such as custom colour schemes and (late last night) an option to have your own skinned background.

It's probably/definitely gilding the lily, if what I have here is in any sense a lily. It does what it does and people will either want it or reject based on how well it fulfills that. The rest is simply my indulgence.

One unexpected result of this tweaking has been my discovering a weakness of using Windows Forms, which I now realise take an age to update. A little research has explained why and now I discover that whilst Forms are relatively easy to program, the future of Windows development is something called 'WPF' or 'Windows Presentation Foundation'. Luckily, the 8 in 1 book on C# I bought for £1 yesterday has an entire book devoted to WPF, which I tried to read this afternoon but my brain shut down and I fell asleep.

But this is vague rambling. I still need to find one cartoonist who'd be willing to try this software for me and to see if they find it useful. A little input would boost my confidence and might actually make me commit to this little bugger.

There's never a cartoonist around when you need one...

There's never a cartoonist who has a Windows PC around when you need one. Maybe I need two.

The first and smaller of my two Windows apps is finished bar my dealing with any new bugs or bright ideas that crop up. It does everything I wanted it to plus a little more. I just need to test it and ensure that anybody downloading it can install it and get it operating with the minimum of fuss. It should work on any version of Windows. I don't believe it's fussy.

Since it's an enhanced version of the software I've been using myself when drawing cartoons, I'd like to give it to some other cartoonists to try and see if it helps them as much as it has helped me. Which brings me back to my initial point: there's never a cartoonist who has a Windows PC around when you need one. If you're a cartoonist and want a free copy of software you might find useful, feel free to contact me. I need my spirits lifting.

I didn't draw last night. I was exhausted after a very long day and, in all honestly, I couldn't be arsed like I'm not motivated to write much today. Traffic has nosedived as the SPAM into my inbox has increased. All the things I've written and drawn in the last few weeks have been viewed by so few people I've reluctantly decided to put less effort into this vanity exercise. Maybe I'll feel better tomorrow but, looking at the trend on my webstats, I think I might just feel a whole lot worse...

Hey Wayne!

Today I’ll be skipping my evening meal. I would normally call it my ‘tea’ but I’m reliably informed that you civilized folk call it ‘dinner’ and today I’m trying to raise my game. That means it’s a non-jeans day as I also give myself an early birthday treat. Birthday, you ask? Well, yes. Tomorrow, this lump of the corporeal jam marks the day when the Earth reaches the same arbitrary point in its orbit that it reached when I first had my bottom smacked by some firm-handed midwife. Famous people who also had their bottoms smacked on October 13th: Margaret Thatcher, Paul Simon and cartoonist Michael Heath. And what’s remarkable is that I’m a big fan of all two.

As to my treat: later I’ll be catching the Manchester train to attend the opening of ‘Hey Wayne!’, a new exhibition of cartoons from Bill Stott, Bill Tidy, Tony Husband and Chris Madden. It’s at the Richard Goodall Gallery starting at 6pm and ending at 8 with fisticuffs in the car park (Bill’s words, not mine). Now that I’ve advertised it here, I expect queues around the block, though I’d expect that anyway. This is a rare chance to see some of our most important contemporary gag cartoonists together in one room. If you like gag cartoons and live in the Manchester area, you’d be crazy not to attend. A prize for anybody who spots the tall nerd standing in the corner…

It’s my high level of cartoon nerdishness that gives me the confidence to attend, otherwise, it’s not in my nature to go to cultured events such as this. I usually plan to go and then discover a path of less resistance which takes me back to my more familiar routines. However, this time I’m determined to make the effort of showing up, standing in a corner, feeling extremely out of place, and then slipping away unnoticed. I wish I could be different, arrive with a flourish, slap Tony Husband on the back and give Bill Tidy a thumbs-up. Instead, I’ll be happy to finally meet Bill Stott, one of my favourite cartoonists and a really nice guy who displays remarkable levels of tolerance by enduring an email correspondence with a miserable would-be cartoonist plagued by a compulsion to over-draw everything.

Okay, now for a late lunch (dinner in these parts) and then I’ll get ready for the train. I’ll probably blog tomorrow. It’s my birthday but I try not to think about these things. I look younger than my years and I’m still a child at heart, even if you can count the years on the rings of my teeth. If I have the nerve, time, and figure out how to put a pound on my phone, I’ll Instagram tonight’s event. From here on, things will be bleak. Next week I’ll begin to anticipate the huge disappointment of not featuring in the results of the Observer’s short graphic story competition.