Must be an electrical problem, Sean. Nothing to worry about.

Story Notes: Just establishing the environment here.  Sean has gone down to a computer room in the basement of building 243.

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to work inside a large data center late at night, I can sum it up with one word: creepy.

To elaborate: Large, uninhabited, sterile-looking rooms with lots of big metal boxes in them; enough background noise in some places to make it difficult to hear anyone else that might be standing or sitting around the corner, while simultaneously walking on raised (and sometimes imperfectly seated) floor tiles that make your footsteps loud; intermittent beeps and motor sounds; random hot and cold spots; and room lights that are often automatic for power saving.

Art Notes: Dear god, this page took forever to finish. Partly that’s because I caught a cold in the middle of making it, and partly it’s because all of that perspective stuff is fiddly to do in inkscape. On paper you just plonk down a ruler; in inkscape, you need to make guide lines for each edge to serve the same purpose.

Inkscape has built-in 3D perspective tool that would have made it easier if 1) I could figure out how the thing is supposed to work (bear in mind that I’m an experienced 3D modeler; this should not be difficult) and 2) it weren’t buggy (it offsets the vanishing points from their displayed locations sometimes).  Anyway.

As I think I previously mentioned, this page is the first one using the ISO 216 paper aspect ratio (A4, A3, etc).  All that this really means for you is that you get a slightly (roughly 6%) taller page than before.  That’s right, 39200 extra pixels (at web resolution)!  Maybe I should put a big “6% More Shadsly” thing on the page, like the candy bar folks do.

Naah.

Mostly I changed it because I like the ISO format better (it makes more sense, kind of like the metric system).  This may be relevant if I ever print the comic later.