Do you think of the AI in your script more as “people” or as objects with intelligence? Do you even tend to make that kind of distinction?
I don’t make a distinction. If it’s sentient, it’s sentient.
Hullo. I was just wondering, are flared/bootcut/baggy jeans not big in America, or is it that you just don’t like drawing them, or that skinny jeans are your main characters’ style?
They’re what’s in style right now in the States so that’s what the characters wear. I miss when bellbottoms were popular and I didn’t have to know how to draw calf muscles or ankles.
Is that you screaming in track two of Meade’s Army? :D
yup
I’m kind of surprised that Hannelore hasn’t reprogrammed the Station and Ship AI personas to look like hunky firemen
She has kept her fireman crush secret from them
Would you consider tumbling a link to each day’s comic when it’s posted? For lazy people who forget to check daily and/or people who are trying to switch from Google Reader to Tumblr, it would be the bomb.
No. I already have an RSS feed, that is good enough.
How much of your influences are from other webcomics or cartoons or anime? And are you very into anime? Because you do reference stuff like Yotsuba or Haruhi Suzumiya.
Influence comes from everything, I don’t how how I would quantify it specifically. I’m not “very” into anime, I don’t think. I have a few things I like a lot and that’s about it.
How do AIs get their, for lack of a better word, “education”? Can they download new job skills any time they want?
AI learning is complicated because while they can store more information and access it more quickly than humans, they’re not fundamentally “smarter” than people. It’s more that they have greater resources and access to them.
There is also a degree of scale involved- for example, Station is a lot more powerful than, say, Pintsize, and can run an entire space habitat. You couldn’t just plug Pintsize into the same computer network and expect him to immediately be able to do everything Station can.
And of course now that I have codified all of this I will do something in the comic that completely contradicts it.
Hannelore said that the AIs in orbit couldn’t provide useful therapy. Why aren’t there AI therapists that Hannerdad could have installed? We know AIs can empathize with humans, care about them, and might feel safer to talk to than would another human (cf. Eliza). Therapists also need skills, but if those skills can be taught to a human, why not to an AI?
You’ll see.
Hey jeph, I was listening to your latest album (good stuff, good stuff) and I wanted to ask you: your chord progression is really nice. I particularly like the middle part in Ramona. Do you just come up with it and refine it little by little, or do you sit down and write stuff down according to tonality etc.?
Most of the time I just pick up my guitar and plug it into my recording software and mess around. Sometimes I’ll hit on an interesting idea, and the rest of the song sort of sprouts from that. There’s some conscious decision-making involved, especially when it comes to sequencing all the different parts of a song, but all the really good stuff just happens by accident.
As an unrepentant history lover (not to mention qc fan), I gave “Meade’s Army” a listen while watching clips from the movie “Gettysburg.” I just thought I should inform you that “Fix Bayonets” fits quit nicely with the action shots of Chamberlain’s charge down Little Round Top. BLARLGLAGHLARHL AWESOME. Is this what you had in mind?
YES
Is that redheaded sketchbook girl the hairdresser from #1983?
no
