Contact Info. Updated

Hi Gang,

I just updated my contact info. and added new information about items for sale. Take a peek if you ever want to write me a letter or order any of my art/comics.

I'm still working on the project I've been alluding to. All will be revealed in due time, but these husky dogs will make an appearance:

I have several completed drawings done for this already, but I can't give away the whole game plan just yet!

Hopefully everyone had a fine St. Patty's day. I made Irish potato candies (the kind with real potato and no coconut or cream cheese; I have no idea how that wildness got started) and cabbage, which I keep forgetting is delicious and very cheap. I went vegan for Lent again, so I seasoned it (the cabbage, not the candy) with olive oil and salt and ground mustard seed. Very simple and yummy, if you like bitter and slightly medicinal foods.

Here's the elusive "real potato" Irish potato recipe, lest it get lost to the ages forever. Boil and mash up peeled potatoes (don't add milk or salt or anything). Then add confectioner's sugar until the mixture is thick enough to roll into balls. You'll need a lot of confectioner's sugar, like a pound of it for each potato. Make little potato shaped balls (or, more accurately, ellipsoids) and roll them in cinnamon for yummy flavor and to give the appearance of real little potatoes! Real yummy stuff, man.

Thanks for reading! 

Chrissy

I Just Deleted a Bunch of My Facebook Fans

I just deleted a few hundred fans from my Bibliowhining Facebook page, assuming they had no actual interest in my art or writing.

Over a year ago, I put up a targeted Facebook ad for $2/day in hopes of attracting fans who would go on to buy some art or brighten my days with encouraging likes and comments. After a couple weeks, I attained hundreds of fans, but only one or two interacted with my page or site at all, and then only minimally. I canceled the unhelpful ad.

Soon I noticed ads for pages like "Justin Bieber" and "Taco Bell" that said, for example, "366 of your fans also like Justin Bieber." It was then I realized that most of my new fans were impressionable teenagers who would click indiscriminately on anything presented to them. I wasn't crazy about having so many such fans, but I didn't see any harm in it. I may have been wrong...

I don't know if Facebook changed its algorithm or what, but I recently noticed a decrease in the people who see my posts. Looking up the problem on the Internet, I discovered that negative feedback ("fans" hiding a post or reporting it as spam) can penalize your page so that Facebook doesn't display its posts to others. I exported my data and saw that several people were giving negative feedback whenever I posted anything, especially one of the "creepy" drawings that make up about half of this site's content.

Of course, I couldn't see who was giving the negative feedback, so to be safe I just deleted a bunch of bikini babes, trendy teens and anyone else who looked like they were "liking" my site for reasons other than interest in my comics, artwork and writing. I apologize if, in my trigger-happiness, I accidentally deleted you. Nothing personal, and I hope you'll come back! This is the last time I'm going to delete fans like that; I only did it to get rid of the fake fans attained through the useless Facebook ad. Nothing to complicate your life like Facebook, huh?

We're on TWITTER, too.

As always, thanks for reading! Stay tuned for news and scans from my next big project.

Happy Saint Valentine's Day from Bibliowhining!

Heresy's Hisses, 2013 Christina Spallone

Happy Valentine's from all of us at Bibliowhining! Thanks as always for your readership, and be sure to check our Facebook page for the juicy little bits of news we don't always post on here. It's time consuming to cross post the same news in multiple locations, and Facebook is the big kahuna of the bunch. I'll continue to post most of my comics here, but you won't miss a thing if you join us on the ol' fb.

What's This Effect Called?

There's a "floating" effect that occurs when one solid block of color is drawn inside another block of solid color that clashes with it in a certain way. One famous example of this is this album cover for the punk band The Adolescents:

 Another example is the album cover for The Waitresses "Bruiseology":

The '80s offered a lot of this sort of thing, but let's not leave it in the past. It's a legitimate art effect that I enjoy and would like to experiment with. BUT WHAT IS IT CALLED? My love of classic punk and new wave brought me to the above examples by chance. When I actually try to describe and search for the effect, to find photo references, all sorts of other things pop up --"3D color effects" brings up anaglyphs and Disney Pixar type renderings, while "clashing colors" displays tints that look garish together without any special floating properties...

If there's another term for it, let me know, but I'm coining the term HOVERGLYPHS to name images that exemplify this property. There's a neat obscure font called "Hoverglyphs," too, but that's such a narrow use for the term and I can't come up with anything better, so hopefully we can share.

Here's my attempts at hoverglyph effects in some Spook Show cards.:

 

Have you seen any hoverglyphs lately? What colors can YOU think of that go together to produce hoverglyphs?

Hoverglyphs.

The New iPhone is Here!

New technologies are a common theme here at Bibliowhining. I'm not anti-technology, but I like to question things. For example, why does my tape Walkman from the early 90s still function while these new phones and MP3 players and such break after fewer than five years? Why are so many people okay with that, rewarding shoddy craftsmanship with repeat purchases from the same company? And why is manufacturing and throwing away plastic products year after year considered more "green" than a book or record album that you'd keep forever, sell or give away to a friend? Why do we buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like? Anyway, here's a quick comic about the new iPhones.