Sunday, September 04, 2011

My New Book

My new book is out and my new website is open. Come on over. Everybody welcome except you supporters of Damn United...

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

The Baddams Family

Another entry in the Guardian's Gallery competition but essentially my finding more excuses to practise drawing these panel strips. Click the pic to make it bigger. [singlepic id=135 w=600 h=450 float=center]

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Britain's Got Talent

Dear Apple… From The Shmuck

About a week ago, my second generation iTouch stopped working. I woke up one morning to find it stuck on the Apple logo. I tried to restart it but it wouldn’t switch off. I tried a reboot and, again, it just sat on the Apple logo for about half an hour until the screen flashed and it rebooted again. At the time, I was really busy with work so I didn’t dedicate much time to getting it working. I read the many reports of similar failures on the web and realised that I would have to take it to the Apple Centre in Manchester.

Yesterday was a big day. Despite missing my music as I work, I finished the first draft of the book I’ve been writing/drawing since January. It was a big thing for me, so I got up today determined to treat myself to a trip into Manchester to fix the problem that has kept music out of my life.

I arrived at the Apple centre to find it as congested as usual, with an equal number of staff to customers. I was quickly intercepted. They probably smelt money, though I know it wasn’t coming from me.

‘Hi, can I help,’ said a guy.

‘Yes, my iTouch won’t start.’

‘And what’s your name?’

‘David,’ I replied, buying into the slightly 1960s vibe they encourage at the Apple Centre.

‘Great. I’m Ken,’ was the reply (though I forget the actual name). ‘Can I take a look at your iTouch?’

I handed it over. He played with it. He scratched his chin. ‘I’ve not seen this problem before,’ he said, though I didn’t believe him and neither should you. Just Google ‘iTouch stuck in restore. ‘You need to make an appointment to see the staff at the Genius Bar’.

The Genius Bar, in case you don’t know these things, is the bit at the back of the shop staffed by wise Macheads who sort out your hardware problems. I made my appointment for an hour later, left the shop, walked around aimlessly, and trudged back in time for my 12.30.

‘Hi, my name’s Barry,’ said the guy at the Genius Bar. ‘What’s your name?’

‘David,’ I said, feeling the slight shame I feel when in these friendly relationships with Apple staff. I’m not a happy clappy sort of guy. I feel awkward, too big, too unfashionable, too trivial and too serious all at the same time. I don’t wear beads or rubber bands around my wrist. I don’t have long flowing hair or a beard. I’m grumpy, scruffy, and my fingers are covered in ink…

‘And what can I do for you?’ asked Baz (I think he’d allow me to call him that, if that was his name).

‘My iTouch won’t start.’

‘Okay,’ he said, ‘if you can just wait a moment, I’ll get a colleague to come and see you.’

Minutes pass before Baz’s colleague arrives.

‘Hi, I’m Simon,’ said somebody probably not called Simon. ‘Can I ask your name?’

‘I’m David,’ I said.

‘And what’s your problem?’

‘My iTouch won’t start.’

‘Okay, let’s have a look at it.’

He proceeded to restart it. It wouldn’t – the power had drained due to my inability to turn the damn thing off – so quick as a flash (it is a Genius Bar, after all) he plugged it into a Mac to get some charge.

‘I’ll be back in a minute, David,’ said Simon. ‘Let’s just give it some power.’

So I waited. And I waited. And Simon (or was it Barry or Baz) went off to serve another customer.

And he completely forgot about me!

Thankfully, another of his colleagues eventually spotted the miserable guy not buying into the Apple vibe as he watched his iTouch recharge.

‘Can I help?’

‘My name is David and my iTouch won’t start,’ I explained.

‘Okay, my name is Stewart. Let’s have a look shall we?’

Now the iTouch had some power, Stewart could try to restore it by putting it into DFU mode: hold down the 

Home Key and Power, count to ten. And miraculously, something happened! It came up with a bar to show that it was uploading my new firmware.

‘Okay, that will take some time,’ said Stewart. ‘I’ll be back in a bit.’

Well, I’ll give Stewart his due, he didn’t forget me. Although he began to serve another customer, he paused at one point to inform me that the firmware wasn’t reinstalling.

‘It’s stuck,’ he said.

‘I know,’ I replied.

‘Okay,’ he said, ‘this looks like it’s a hardware fault. I’ll get another colleague to come and talk to you about your options.’

I was then introduced to yet another member of staff.

‘And you are?’ he asked.

‘David,’ I said. ‘And my iTouch won’t start…’ I waved at the thing. I was too tired. My feet were aching after standing there for half an hour. (Incidentally, the floor in Apple centres is solid granite or something equally hard and uncompromising. I’m sure it’s to stop people loitering for too long. I was luckily standing slightly behind the desks where the staff stand on two inches of foam rubber. All very telling…)

However, I digress.

‘My name’s Sidney,’ said the bloke who looked like a Sidney but probably wasn’t. ‘Let me just check the serial number.’

He typed it into his iPhone. ‘This was bought in December 2008,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I replied. Two years and a few months sounded about right.

‘Well, that means it’s out of warranty. You have two choices. You can have a brand new unit for £112 or you can have 10% off the price of any new iPod.’

I thought about it for two seconds.

‘I’ll have neither,’ I said, picking up my iTouch. ‘I’ll go buy a HP.’ And with that, I walked out the shop.
Now, I felt bad being so spikey. You might say I was even rude. But before I get to the second part of this story, let me just say that I always had faith (perhaps naïve faith) that Apple were a better company than this. I know what my local Trading Standards officer would say about 30 months of use from a device that cost me the best part of £300. Warranties don’t mean a thing. You have to have ‘reasonable use’. I wouldn’t call 30 months reasonable use, especially when I was pretty sure that this was a software fault and not, as the staff maintained, faulty hardware.

Yet Apple portray themselves as a company who really care about their customers. They treat you to this fake bonhomie, as though we’re all part of this big happy family. Only, it’s not a family. It’s a prostitution racket and they love you until your money runs out.

Well, to conclude this story: I get home, utterly dejected. Not just about the iTouch but lots of other things in my life, which is what happens when my luck isn’t in. It was raining, I was bemoaning my writing, cartooning, blogging, everything and more. But I was also determined to prove that my iTouch wasn’t dead because, frankly, I can be a very stubborn bastard.

The next bit won’t interest anybody except anybody with an iTouch stuck as mine was, so I’ll cut the story short: ten minutes past ten tonight, I was listening to Spark’s ‘Lil Beethoven’ album belting out of my fully functioning iTouch. Screw you, Apple!

Here’s what I did.

The DFU mode is important. You’ll have to do this a lot. Hold down both the Home button and the power button, count 10 seconds, let go of power whilst keeping Home pressed in. Do this whilst the iTouch is connected to the PC via the USB. You should hear the PC recognise the device.

Download the 3.0 version of the firmware. It’s available on the web. Apparently, it’s the only one that doesn’t have the protection that prevents you from downgrading…

Boot your iTouch into DFU mode, load iTunes, hold down the shift key as you click on the restore button. Pick the 3.0 firmware you’ve downloaded. It should install.

The first time I did this, it reached 100% but no further. I rebooted the iTouch and did it a second time. That’s when it worked.

Along the way, I’d done many other things (working by trial and error, I was rebooting the iTouch and trying to restore it for about 5 hours before it work), some of which might have contributed to my eventually unbricking the iTouch.

I used TinyUmbrella, though it didn’t work the majority of the time and usually crashed when I tried the ‘Restore Fix’.

I’m not sure if this was the reason it finally worked but I also used the ‘greenpois0n’ jailbreak hack. I’ve never wanted to jailbreak by iTouch but I’ve done it now and I’m be grateful that these devices have been broken. And those people who think jailbreaking is bad, consider this: there are clearly techniques for unbricking an iTouch that Apple, despite their huge revenues, haven’t explored or don’t want to make available. A simple bit of software distributed around the Apple Centres could probably restore functionality to the majority of bricked iPods. Could it be that difficult?

How many people have gone into Apple and agreed to pay £112 for a new iPod when their old unit was functioning perfectly, just stuck in a loop somewhere in its firmware? Are we to assume that Apple encourage their staff to look puzzled before they declare with their very best expert advice that they’ll have to regretfully squeeze you for £112?

I have wanted to buy an iPad but this whole experience has put me off the idea. Those Android tablets are looking more impressive by the day, especially when I have days like today…

Thursday, June 09, 2011

Little Jack Warner



The cartoon I didn't send to the Guardian on the theme of FIFA...

Tuesday, June 07, 2011

Some FIFA Cartoons

Proving that you should always quit when you're ahead, I entered this week's Gallery competition at The Guardian. I won last week but haven't done at all well this week. My first cartoon they rejected because they thought it wouldn't get past their lawyers... No idea what the hell I've said in it to warrant that...


So I did this cartoon, which did make the final selection...

Sunday, June 05, 2011

Have I Got News For You...

Been really busy the last week. Barely spent any time away from the drawing table. One thing of note was seeing one of my old Photoshopped images on 'Have I Got News For You' on Friday. Not sure Richard Madeley was too pleased though...

Monday, May 30, 2011

Ned


(Click the picture for the larger readable version)

First of all, let me set the record straight: I don't hate everybody. I'm nearly 7% less misanthropic than you'd think I am after reading the above cartoon. In fact, I'm nothing like Ned. Except I have been getting a lot of emails from Facebook recently and, try as I might, I still can't learn to enjoy social networking. Twitter can sometimes be fun in that I can vent my nonsense somewhere with no consequences. It's a one-sided conversation and I don't need to lose a valuable hour of my day chatting with somebody on the other side. Facebook, on the other hand, is a long term commitment to relationships. You're meant to be interested in what other people are doing. And the thing is: beyond the circle of my friends, I'm really not interested in learning what other people are doing. I'm really am just too busy.

I wouldn't mind it so much, though, if it was limited to just knowing what other people are doing. Facebook continually tells me what a great time other people are having and I don't want to know how hot it is in the Seychelles. Here in the North West, it's raining. It's June in a couple of days yet here I am trying to stimulate my brain with my SAD lamp. Then there are the constant pointless messages. Join this. Vote for that. I'm a vampire, bite me! Well, I'm a socially awkward nerd, so why don't you bite me instead?

I sometimes wonder if it's impossible to find the right audience on the web. I disappear from the blog for a few days and come back to find that my most regular visitors are people searching for 'nipples' and 'royalty sex'. Those visitors won't read this. Which means, if you've got this far, you can be certain you're not a 'Barry' and possibly not even a 'Ned'. You're probably one of the people who might enjoy a website like 'The Laughing Squid'. I go over there and begin to think that the world is not all bad.

And would you look at that: it's finally stopped raining.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Volcanoes

Dear Internet,

It's been too long since I last wrote. How are you? Keeping well? How's the family? I'm sorry I've not been in touch. I've been very busy finishing my next book, now over 90% complete though delayed last week as I prepared for the Rapture. I'm pretty sure you were as excited as I was about the prospect of hearing Gabriel's Trumpet. They say he's been having lessons from Roy Castle. However, I will admit that I was disappointed when Judgement Day didn't arrive. It's not that I really wanted the world to end but I don't like being lied to. I mean: if you can't trust Christians, who can you trust?

Yet I suppose life's grim duty must carry on. It was brightened somewhat by the news that the royal couple are back from honeymoon. It's been a long fortnight since I've felt safe sculling in the rip tides off Anglesey and I've also been waiting to see some more of Kate's legs. Pippa, frankly, doesn't do it for me and I haven't been able to get my mind off Schwarzenegger's flooze, pictures of whom leave me feeling a frisky as the Frenchman who confused the IMF with IVF, both of which seem to involve injecting liquidity into an unwilling market.

Apparently, many French people believe that Strauss-Kahn's alleged crimes are no big deal, which baffles me but perhaps explains the shoddy service in French hotels where you can't even order a hot indecent assault in your room after eight o'clock at night. I also fail to see Strauss-Kahn's motivation. Was he really that sex starved or did he just need a reason to take out a superinjunction? It seems that if you want to be talked about these days you must take out a legally watertight injunction demanding that people don't talk about you. Either that or take a bullet put through your eye. 

Speaking of bullets-through-the-eye-being-surprising-debilitating: purely for the reason that I've only just worked out how to draw him, I'm still disappointed that Osama Bin Laden remains dead. It also explains why I was looking forward to the Rapture when the dead would again walk the earth and be valid targets for satire. However, I'm turning my negativity to better ends and I'm now learning how to draw Castro, Gadhafi, and Jim Jong Il. I'm also writing lots of material about David Cameron's Big Society, which I'm sure we'll still be talking about in ten years' time…

 Right. I shouldn't waffle about like this any longer. I have work to do. I hope to be around some more this week but it depends on which way my brain goes and which way the jet stream blows in from Iceland. In the meantime, have a very hastily doodled cartoon about volcanoes.

Thursday, May 12, 2011

A Random Post Signifying Nothing

Dear Internet, Why do you only send people this way when they're looking for images of bondage, nipples or Bin Laden's gruesome remains? It fills me with very little enthusiasm to write or to draw. Not that I suppose it matters to you if I do, Internet. There are millions more people out there willing to fill your infinite space with their infinite outpourings of hope and suffering. You are the magical typewriter onto which an infinite number of monkeys hammer and here is my random keystroke of the day. It's a crap cartoon to fill the time when I'm off doing something more productive. I might come back to you, Internet. Then again, I might not. S.

Monday, May 09, 2011

The Collaboration



My third attempt at animation after being seriously let down by a Zebra who claimed that he couldn't find his microphone in his loft and then claimed that they don't sell them at Argos...

Thursday, May 05, 2011

The Worst Form of Government Except For All Those Others


Bit of a late post today, though perhaps apt as we get closer to the moment the polls close. Apologies for the lack of cartoons today. I'm working on a new animation which is my most ambitious yet. Might not get it finished tomorrow so expect to see it Saturday, Sunday, or even next week.

Tuesday, May 03, 2011

Butterflies



Well, that was a wasted few days. Been learning how to animate and this is my very first attempt at hand animation... Wish I could work out why there's cracking in the audio. Not much else to say but it needs work...

Saturday, April 23, 2011

That Big Fat Gypsy Royal Wedding

Some two years ago or so, I was told by somebody close to an editor at a national newspaper that there's no way that Photoshopped satire was ever going to succeed. At that time, I was producing one or two 'cartoons' a day. Occasionally a picture would get picked up by the newspapers and my blog would earn a mention. But as far as producing work for newspapers: they weren't interested. Editors, I was told, were very twitchy about the copyright issues of Photoshopped work. Like most people working in digital satire, I had to 'borrow' my source images from elsewhere. Working for nothing and producing no income from your work means that it's impossible to pay photo agencies upwards of £50 a picture, which you then pull apart and combine with other pictures, also priced upwards of £50. It was a depressing thing to hear after two years working on 'The Spine' but I knew other Photoshop satirists were discovering the same thing.

Realising I needed to do something different, I quit the blog and went off to write a couple of books. Yet at the same time, I was also being enlightened by reading Nige's blog. It was Nige who introduced me to the work of B. Kliban. I'd always been a huge fan of cartoons but I'd never studied them with any seriousness. It was through Nige that I started to form an attachment to the holy trinity of Ronald Searle, Ralph Steadman, and Gerald Scarfe. American illustrators interested me less, though I would eventually be drawn to the work of American counter-culture cartoonists, notably Robert Crumb, Spain Rodriguez and Drew Friedman, as well as modern satirists like Steve Brodner, Pat Oliphant, and Tim Kreider. Yet discovering Kliban was an utter revelation. His cartoons filled an empty space in my brain. The first time I saw one of his gags, the click was almost audible. I realised that I wanted to try real cartooning myself, that the execution mattered less than the joke, and that I should try to draw the kinds of cartoon that amuse me. I began posting the results on my private blog.

At the beginning, they were very basic line drawings created in Adobe Illustrator. I couldn't draw but that wasn't the point. I just wanted to create cartoons that made me laugh.






I created hundreds of cartoons over a year or so until a couple of real artists who read the blog persuaded me to start using ink. Ink! It was a horrendous feeling at first. I couldn't get over the fact that there was no CTRL+Z to allow me to go back and fix my (many) mistakes. I also wasn't set up for using pen and ink. It was a matter of simple things like arranging a place to draw, buying a lamp, a drawing board (and eventually a chair and drawing table). It was finding the right instruments, struggling to understand how dip pens work, and to find which pens suited me. Then I had to find the right paper. I began drawing at A3 scale but discovered it was far too big for the one or two cartoons I was trying to produce every day. Then there was the physical side of sitting over a desk, living with my fingers almost perpetually covered in ink... But I was cartooning on a daily basis and I was enjoying publishing the results on my private blog. Yet daily satirical cartoons have a short shelf-life and I realised that I might as well do something with them. I'm working on other things which keep me busy and it sometimes makes it a struggle to update here every day. Some weeks, like this last week, I'm not in an ideal mood to cartoon. Yet for all its sins, badly-drawn figures (sometimes, to my chagrin, commented upon, sometimes not), jokes which only I find amusing, and the horrorshow of the statistics, this blog has been something I've enjoyed.

Yet the world's hard brutal irony has a way of creeping up on a guy. I link to Gerald Scarfe's website because he still has the devil's flair. His strokes are wild, loose, yet absolutely precise. I buy his books. I search out his work in the newspapers. I check his online shop. I try to figure out his techniques and yet get nowhere when I study his crosshatching. Today I noticed that there's a new book listed there… It's called 'The Big Fat Gypsy Royal Wedding' and it's written by Scarfe's two sons, Alex and Rory. It's a clever idea, looks a funny book, and I'd encourage you to go out and buy it (though only after you've bought the book listed top right of this blog).

But what frustrates me, leaves me standing against the wall banging my head against the plasterwork until my brains leak into the cavity beyond, isn't the fact that it's is a royal wedding satire when I couldn't get a publisher to look at the book I'd written eight months ago… It's the simple fact that it's not a book of cartoons. There's not a single bit of splattered ink in sight. What frustrates me, makes me gasp with sheer irony of it all is the one simple fact: the whole bloody thing is Photoshopped.

Ed Miliband Set For Op to Cure 'Bunged-up' Voice

The Grand Scheme of Things

A Little Minecraft Humour



Don't worry. It makes no sense unless you're one of only 2 million people who play this game and also have a sense of humour as dumb as my own...