Ah, no man… They’re the new chromaphore enhanced arms… Skin like an octopus, can change colors and patterns at will… The normal rest state is the black stripes on pink…
Yeah… That’s the ticket!
(Actually, if the scientist who created the Catians could do the kind of bioengineering needed to CREATE the Catians, than a bit of chromophore tailoring should be a snap. Especially if he made the Tatiana universal donors of skin, limbs and organs.)
I missed the arms the first time through. What always hits me are Ragdoll’s eyes. When I slide past hot anger into cold, most of the color washes out of my eyes. My father’s were the same way. I know, they say eye color changing with mood is a myth, I know from personal experience it isn’t. When I see someone’s eyes noticeably paler than what their skin color leads me to expect, that’s where my thoughts go immediately, and when he showed up in the recovery room, even though I’ve seen them before, my first automatic thought was to wonder who had made him mad enough to kill. And knowing intellectually that the two are really only loosely associated in modern populations doesn’t help. Neither does the facial expression. Expressions are voluntary, the eyes tell you the truth.
Yeah, I can attest to the color change thing. My mother, when she gets, well, pissed off, (sorry, there NO other way to describe it… She’s red head) her eyes literally change color.
I’ve been told that when I get to that level of angry, my irises turn from brown to red. Fortunately, it usually takes a LOT to get me to that level of angry, so only a few have actually seen it happen… And lived to tell about it… (Ok, that last part was a joke…)
Noticing some impressive detail on Ginnie’s scrubs. Whoever did those is a stickler for detail. He/she even included gathers at the sleeve seams and the red brand label on the left sleeve. I came to realize that it is those little “throw-away” details that help sell the CGI to the eye as real. I’ve seen some videos on YouTube – cinematics from video games – which were damned near indistinguishable from videos of live actors. Not talking mo-cap here but pure CGI video with no live actors involved. Given time, they might just be able to do away with actors entirely. Definitely approaching the “uncanny valley” now. The problem is that rendering CGI video requires enormous computational resources. Ask the Catman. Just doing the stills for this comic requires a shit load of memory and an ungodly graphics board. First time I rendered the 6 second video of my cargo module doors opening I did it straight, no compression. Took something like 5 seconds PER FRAME at 24 frames per second and my system has 16 gigabytes of system RAM and a graphics board in the middle of the top 10 most popular boards. To render a movie like “Toy Story” or “Cars” requires banks of what would have been considered super computers just a few years ago.
Yeah, I’m a bit of a computing geek. Have been since Jr High back in the mid 60s. First computer programming language I learned was COBOL on a Burroughs B-3900 mainframe using punched cards – one card minimum – per line of code and even a small COBOL program runs a couple of hundred lines. My typing is so bad I was doing good to average one good card per minute. Add in the fact that the compiler was as likely to point to the line AFTER the error message as to the one before it and debugging an assignment could be a stone bitch. Did win a steak dinner at the Officer’s Club for the wife and I, though – ON THE INSTRUCTOR! One of the other students was having trouble with an assignment. Couldn’t figure out where the error was. I figured it out but the instructor – a Captain in command of the base data center – disagreed. I bet him a steak dinner. Couple of evenings later the wife and I – me proudly in service uniform staff sergrant stripes and all – were treated to a steak dinner at the Officer’s Club with theCaptain and his wife. Ordinarily NCOs are not allowed in the O Club but we were guests. Note: I do not gamble. If I am willing to bet money on something then in my mind it is a sure thing; like yesterday’s box scores. Accordingly I almost never lose a bet.
Bill – Really good work on the military medical set modules !
I hear you re: COBOL programming.
I got my start after RVN DEROS, Hunter AAF, GA, US Army’s Univac 1005 with assembler language. I was not much help to the real programmers.
Then at ETSU (TX) (’70-’73) BS-Comp Sci. Fortran 4-D level, COBOL and PL1 on an IBM 360 Mod 40 with 512 K . . . and punch Cards.
I really did hate Assembler language. COBOL did have the nasty habit of generating error messages.
I think one of my student programs had 55 generated error messages after the initial one. Yeah – I had to buy the coffee in the S.U.B.
(I think the card puncher was an IBM 126(?). One 80 col card per code line.
I was writing COBOL programs for the University Finance office with 8K within which to work.
Wow – memory lane. Really haven’t used it since ~ ’77 at Ft Sam Houston in the 2-week tour when I was tasked to write some sort routines for the DA Form 2407 for the Post Engineers Maint chief to sort the Maint codes.
I left and learned later I was almost in trouble with the CID.
Seems the Chief had been misappropriating . . . CID wanted to talk to me about it.
Gratefully, his underlings told them I had nothing to do with it.
I was just a Two-Week USAR type, there and gone. A bit scared for a while !
Turns out my sort routines were the “nails in his coffin”.
WOW! That form has changed, from one 5×8 card to 5 pages.
(FWIW – I never bet more money than I was willing to pay for a “ticket to play”.)
Rag Doll’s enhanced shoulders should make any man proud of his Deltoids.
Ginny is so very cute.
My first language was FORTRAN, IBM Assembler was second, PL/I was third. The punch card routines I thought would be useful in real life were once, for bricks to stack boards on in makeshift book shelves.I made my living in PL1 for almost two decades. Now I work in VB, and curse Microsoft. I hear what you two are saying about the error messages, but I assure you getting an error message that tells you the type of error but not where it occurred or what variables were involved makes me WISH for the old IBM-style messages.
Petercat . . . .
Just wondering . . . . Have you ever considered a vote incentive Pin-up for Helen the CRNA?
Seems she may have a sister or cousin who is an incredible mechanic.
She so reminds me of a Surgical Nurse I had as a teen for some ortho surgery. . . . .
Jochi – not being strong in math, COBOL was by far the easiest for me to use.
– in the Late 60’s and early 70’s, my Dad at Dow Chemical, Freeport, TX, used BASIC on his office’s computer terminal and his little hand-held.
He was in Organic Chemistry Research – invented the Semipermeable Gel Chromatography process for sequencing complex hydrocarbon solutions by molecular weight.
Sadly – I did not inherit his genius level math and research chops.
I found PL1 to be cumbersome – seeming to combine COBOL and Fortran. Not my Cuppa.
Bill – At Hunter AAF, my assigned E-5P, former Door Gunner troop, went everywhere I did.
By then I had enough rank to tell folks to butt out – he was with me.
Walking by the Theater’s popcorn machine one evening with my family – it sounded so much like multiple small arms ground fire,
– we both flinched and ducked . . . and laughed.
😀
As for the latest vote incentive… Unless that Cat had a MAJOR amount of gun safety instruction, are you REALLY sure it’s a good idea giving a 12 year old Vatican a pair of 45’s?!?
Nah, it’s okay. They’re matched PPKs, .380.
Double action on a PPK is a real pain.
Cat age is strange, in Terran years she’s 10-11, while in lifespan terms, she’s 16-18.
Never had a PPK but I love the double/single action on my Jericho/Uzi Eagle .40. Just a slightly longer pull and a tad more weight is all the difference between single and double action. Whoever set mine up (bought it used) set the trigger nice and light. Not a hair trigger by any means but not much more than the minimum the law requires. Fits my hand like a glove. When I was at my peak – long past now – I could draw, and empty a 10 round mag in under 6 seconds with all head shots at 7 yards. Went to the range with my Dad a couple of years before he passed and had him time me for the last mag I was planning to shoot. Scared the shit outta him. I went for head shots because I had already blown a 3 inch hole COM on the target. I was never good enough to be a competitive shooter but I figure I could’ve handled myself if the SHTF. Nowdays I can barely see the numbers on the pistol target ar 7 yards. Gonna sell off all my weapons (“This is my weapon; this is my gun . . . “) except the 12gau pump. Eyes are too damned bad any more. Macular degeneration in my right (shooting) eye is so bad they cannot correct it to 20/40 any more. Last time I had my eyes examined it was 20/60 and expected to climb. Getting old is a stone bitch!
The PPK series had some user problems, notably a very stiff DA trigger, a small stiff magazine release, and sharp edges.
The slide serrations at the bottom edge of the slide were like saw blades, they would rake across the web of your hand
when firing, painfully turning the web of your hand into hamburger.
I melted the sharp edges of mine, ruining the collector value.
I once had a full unmodified set – .22, .25, .32 and .380 in a walnut display case that I sold to a collector for a ridiculously high price.
I had a S&W Sigma 9 that was a rebuild, with such a tight trigger pull, I eventually traded it off for a Tech 9… It kept pulling to the right, no matter how I squeezed the trigger. Truth be told,n I’ve never had a gun with a heavier trigger pull, rifle or pistol.
Petercat –
This from my desk calendar (Page A Day – Cats) yesterday – thought of you.
“The household cat is really a tiger that has undergone three counseling programs.”
— — Valeriu Butulescu
I think you forgot ‘Rag Doll’s’ arms in panel one. Other than excellent as always.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!
Thanks, I’ll correct it. Soon.
Ah, no man… They’re the new chromaphore enhanced arms… Skin like an octopus, can change colors and patterns at will… The normal rest state is the black stripes on pink…
Yeah… That’s the ticket!
(Actually, if the scientist who created the Catians could do the kind of bioengineering needed to CREATE the Catians, than a bit of chromophore tailoring should be a snap. Especially if he made the Tatiana universal donors of skin, limbs and organs.)
I missed the arms the first time through. What always hits me are Ragdoll’s eyes. When I slide past hot anger into cold, most of the color washes out of my eyes. My father’s were the same way. I know, they say eye color changing with mood is a myth, I know from personal experience it isn’t. When I see someone’s eyes noticeably paler than what their skin color leads me to expect, that’s where my thoughts go immediately, and when he showed up in the recovery room, even though I’ve seen them before, my first automatic thought was to wonder who had made him mad enough to kill. And knowing intellectually that the two are really only loosely associated in modern populations doesn’t help. Neither does the facial expression. Expressions are voluntary, the eyes tell you the truth.
Yeah, I can attest to the color change thing. My mother, when she gets, well, pissed off, (sorry, there NO other way to describe it… She’s red head) her eyes literally change color.
I’ve been told that when I get to that level of angry, my irises turn from brown to red. Fortunately, it usually takes a LOT to get me to that level of angry, so only a few have actually seen it happen… And lived to tell about it… (Ok, that last part was a joke…)
Noticing some impressive detail on Ginnie’s scrubs. Whoever did those is a stickler for detail. He/she even included gathers at the sleeve seams and the red brand label on the left sleeve. I came to realize that it is those little “throw-away” details that help sell the CGI to the eye as real. I’ve seen some videos on YouTube – cinematics from video games – which were damned near indistinguishable from videos of live actors. Not talking mo-cap here but pure CGI video with no live actors involved. Given time, they might just be able to do away with actors entirely. Definitely approaching the “uncanny valley” now. The problem is that rendering CGI video requires enormous computational resources. Ask the Catman. Just doing the stills for this comic requires a shit load of memory and an ungodly graphics board. First time I rendered the 6 second video of my cargo module doors opening I did it straight, no compression. Took something like 5 seconds PER FRAME at 24 frames per second and my system has 16 gigabytes of system RAM and a graphics board in the middle of the top 10 most popular boards. To render a movie like “Toy Story” or “Cars” requires banks of what would have been considered super computers just a few years ago.
Yeah, I’m a bit of a computing geek. Have been since Jr High back in the mid 60s. First computer programming language I learned was COBOL on a Burroughs B-3900 mainframe using punched cards – one card minimum – per line of code and even a small COBOL program runs a couple of hundred lines. My typing is so bad I was doing good to average one good card per minute. Add in the fact that the compiler was as likely to point to the line AFTER the error message as to the one before it and debugging an assignment could be a stone bitch. Did win a steak dinner at the Officer’s Club for the wife and I, though – ON THE INSTRUCTOR! One of the other students was having trouble with an assignment. Couldn’t figure out where the error was. I figured it out but the instructor – a Captain in command of the base data center – disagreed. I bet him a steak dinner. Couple of evenings later the wife and I – me proudly in service uniform staff sergrant stripes and all – were treated to a steak dinner at the Officer’s Club with theCaptain and his wife. Ordinarily NCOs are not allowed in the O Club but we were guests. Note: I do not gamble. If I am willing to bet money on something then in my mind it is a sure thing; like yesterday’s box scores. Accordingly I almost never lose a bet.
Bill – Really good work on the military medical set modules !
I hear you re: COBOL programming.
I got my start after RVN DEROS, Hunter AAF, GA, US Army’s Univac 1005 with assembler language. I was not much help to the real programmers.
Then at ETSU (TX) (’70-’73) BS-Comp Sci. Fortran 4-D level, COBOL and PL1 on an IBM 360 Mod 40 with 512 K . . . and punch Cards.
I really did hate Assembler language. COBOL did have the nasty habit of generating error messages.
I think one of my student programs had 55 generated error messages after the initial one. Yeah – I had to buy the coffee in the S.U.B.
(I think the card puncher was an IBM 126(?). One 80 col card per code line.
I was writing COBOL programs for the University Finance office with 8K within which to work.
Wow – memory lane. Really haven’t used it since ~ ’77 at Ft Sam Houston in the 2-week tour when I was tasked to write some sort routines for the DA Form 2407 for the Post Engineers Maint chief to sort the Maint codes.
I left and learned later I was almost in trouble with the CID.
Seems the Chief had been misappropriating . . . CID wanted to talk to me about it.
Gratefully, his underlings told them I had nothing to do with it.
I was just a Two-Week USAR type, there and gone. A bit scared for a while !
Turns out my sort routines were the “nails in his coffin”.
WOW! That form has changed, from one 5×8 card to 5 pages.
(FWIW – I never bet more money than I was willing to pay for a “ticket to play”.)
Rag Doll’s enhanced shoulders should make any man proud of his Deltoids.
Ginny is so very cute.
My god… I haven’t messed with punch cards since I was in high school!
Last programming I did was in C++…
My first language was FORTRAN, IBM Assembler was second, PL/I was third. The punch card routines I thought would be useful in real life were once, for bricks to stack boards on in makeshift book shelves.I made my living in PL1 for almost two decades. Now I work in VB, and curse Microsoft. I hear what you two are saying about the error messages, but I assure you getting an error message that tells you the type of error but not where it occurred or what variables were involved makes me WISH for the old IBM-style messages.
Petercat . . . .
Just wondering . . . . Have you ever considered a vote incentive Pin-up for Helen the CRNA?
Seems she may have a sister or cousin who is an incredible mechanic.
She so reminds me of a Surgical Nurse I had as a teen for some ortho surgery. . . . .
Jochi – not being strong in math, COBOL was by far the easiest for me to use.
– in the Late 60’s and early 70’s, my Dad at Dow Chemical, Freeport, TX, used BASIC on his office’s computer terminal and his little hand-held.
He was in Organic Chemistry Research – invented the Semipermeable Gel Chromatography process for sequencing complex hydrocarbon solutions by molecular weight.
Sadly – I did not inherit his genius level math and research chops.
I found PL1 to be cumbersome – seeming to combine COBOL and Fortran. Not my Cuppa.
Bill – At Hunter AAF, my assigned E-5P, former Door Gunner troop, went everywhere I did.
By then I had enough rank to tell folks to butt out – he was with me.
Walking by the Theater’s popcorn machine one evening with my family – it sounded so much like multiple small arms ground fire,
– we both flinched and ducked . . . and laughed.
😀
Yeah, that’s a great idea! Coming up.
I hope you’ll like the next one, too.
(Hint – it’s already on my Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/user?u=20043190&fan_landing=true)
As for the latest vote incentive… Unless that Cat had a MAJOR amount of gun safety instruction, are you REALLY sure it’s a good idea giving a 12 year old Vatican a pair of 45’s?!?
Nah, it’s okay. They’re matched PPKs, .380.
Double action on a PPK is a real pain.
Cat age is strange, in Terran years she’s 10-11, while in lifespan terms, she’s 16-18.
Never had a PPK but I love the double/single action on my Jericho/Uzi Eagle .40. Just a slightly longer pull and a tad more weight is all the difference between single and double action. Whoever set mine up (bought it used) set the trigger nice and light. Not a hair trigger by any means but not much more than the minimum the law requires. Fits my hand like a glove. When I was at my peak – long past now – I could draw, and empty a 10 round mag in under 6 seconds with all head shots at 7 yards. Went to the range with my Dad a couple of years before he passed and had him time me for the last mag I was planning to shoot. Scared the shit outta him. I went for head shots because I had already blown a 3 inch hole COM on the target. I was never good enough to be a competitive shooter but I figure I could’ve handled myself if the SHTF. Nowdays I can barely see the numbers on the pistol target ar 7 yards. Gonna sell off all my weapons (“This is my weapon; this is my gun . . . “) except the 12gau pump. Eyes are too damned bad any more. Macular degeneration in my right (shooting) eye is so bad they cannot correct it to 20/40 any more. Last time I had my eyes examined it was 20/60 and expected to climb. Getting old is a stone bitch!
The PPK series had some user problems, notably a very stiff DA trigger, a small stiff magazine release, and sharp edges.
The slide serrations at the bottom edge of the slide were like saw blades, they would rake across the web of your hand
when firing, painfully turning the web of your hand into hamburger.
I melted the sharp edges of mine, ruining the collector value.
I once had a full unmodified set – .22, .25, .32 and .380 in a walnut display case that I sold to a collector for a ridiculously high price.
I had a S&W Sigma 9 that was a rebuild, with such a tight trigger pull, I eventually traded it off for a Tech 9… It kept pulling to the right, no matter how I squeezed the trigger. Truth be told,n I’ve never had a gun with a heavier trigger pull, rifle or pistol.
Petercat –
This from my desk calendar (Page A Day – Cats) yesterday – thought of you.
“The household cat is really a tiger that has undergone three counseling programs.”
— — Valeriu Butulescu
also,, fixing.? when did Kelly’s eyes go brown..? every where else is blue…
unless this is the lighting,,, an they just look brown…