October 20th, 2007
Russian to finish it
I’m assuming you are all familiar with Tetris and that awful, horrible feeling just before you lose.
Everything is happening too fast – you don’t have any room for error and the end is approaching at speed.
Mental anguish turns into physical reaction as your hands get clammy and your heart rate increases.
You know you’re probably not going to make it anyway, but still you persist…
I’m a bit like that with deadlines.
Which makes me wonder why I always leave everything to the last minute.
Here’s Friday’s comic.
Happy Saturday.
Sean on 
Maddie on
i do that too…
That’s a very appropriate comic for 24 hour comic day. I did it- 24 pages in 24 hours; actually 17 hours, but still a lot of hours. Hopefully someday my wrists will forgive me.
Wow, that’s weirdly related to my life…it’s like one of those moments when a horoscope in the paper is acurrate, and you are weirdly surprised.
but anyways, not only have been addicted to and weaned myself off tetris like 5 times in the past year, but i always seem to leave things too late. i had three essays to do, a week to do them..so i left half an hour on the last night and ended up doing one essay and two paragraphs of another. skills, eh?
Tetris is my religion. But I’ve lost the knack. I subconsciously always want the bricks to line up symmetrically and that doesn’t make for the best game. My highest level on the cheap handheld version I have is like 46 but the highest I ever seem to get lately is between 10-20. It’s a shattering ego blow to know I no longer kick everyone’s ass at Tetris.
lol
I hate tetris.
Reminds me of laying bricks.
It like a game the devil made to torment us ppl who work in building.
He (satan) said “You shall forever lay these bricks of odd shapes and any well laid rows will forever disapear, but should you make it to the top, you lose”.
Yeah, great game.
ha! oh mr ben, most of the time you are exceedingly lame but sometimes…sometimes you are not. i have never ever thought of tetris like that.
Meh, bricks, only chumps lay bricks.
(Says me who is a proud roofer).
I don’t like Tetris either, not having the
patience for it. I’m either early or late
for a deadline… usually early. Why wait
for tomorrow when I did it yesterday?
Seraphine, i would love to be like you. seriously. actually, i feel rather proud at the moment. i have anentire week to do all my homework, but do you know what? i just did most of it. the second day of a 10 day half term, and i’ve done most of my work already. in fact, i’m now just sorting e-mails before i do some work on my essay. how’s that for discipline, eh?
and Ben, you’re right. but same as Justine, i’ve never thought of it in that way before. oh, and by the way, well done for being a roofer. people who lay bricks are too common, roofers are a lovely rarity
Yeah we are rare cos we keep falling off the roof.
Worst a bricky can do is drop a brick on their foot, we can drop ourselves on a bricky.
I am actually trying to hang up my tek-gun and snips, because of how stupidly dangerous it is. My insurance agent told me that the only way I could make it harder to get insurance would be to join the armed force in an active combat role.
Congrats to Seraphine and Maddie for having the discipline that I lack, I am meant to be in tafe right now sitting a welding exam that I should have done weeks ago. I’ll do it after smoko.
Congratulations Mr Hewitt… I was going to do something this year too, but I just couldn’t clear 24 hours (actually I couldn’t get a clear 5 hours). I’m not a fast drawer anyway. You’ll have to let us know if it is going to be available for general consumption.
Maddie, you’ll have to let us know how you weened yourself off tetris… is there some form of tetris-methedone?
TGJB, The aesthetic argument for tetris… I know a couple of players that struggle to win because of an over-riding sense of symetry. It’s like an analogy for religion.
Ben, Y’know I’d never thought of it that way. Perhaps next time you are on a roof you could start dropping tetris-shaped bricks on those below and watch them as they desperately try to line them up.
It’s currently up in the Ataraxia Theatre forum, and will later be going up on the website. It’s a shame you couldn’t take part- it was a lot of fun, in a very masochistic sort of way. ToastYeah of Chip SHop Adventures (I ought to learn everyone’s real name) also did one.
http://transplantcomics.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4103
Tetris stops me from sleeping. I lie awake as imaginary blocks fall through my mind and I always find room for them, so the game never ends. Being an insomniac really sucks sometimes.
Yay, thanks for the link (I should have checked).
That’s really impressive, seriously, you got all that done in under a day?
It’s amazing really, how much you can produce when you have the time and impetus.
ToastYeah = Matt Sandbrook… a very decent chap he is too. For those of you that don’t know his work, ChipShop Adventures, go and have a look:
http://www.mattsandbrook.co.uk/home.php
I have been known to dream in Tetris blocks.
I once had a dream I was on Star Trek.
Now when I go to sleep I try to think of Star Trek to see if I can make it happen again (but it never works.)
Matt is indeed a very decent chap. Yes, with the help of some time saving techniques such as writing all the dialog in ball point pen without preparing a script beforehand and not caring about perspective or consistent character design, I managed to do this in 17 hours and 14 minutes. It’s a great experiment to see what you can produce in such a compressed time frame.
Now I’m thinking about doing some mini-speed comics later- say, 6 pages in 6 hours with no preparation beforehand.
Ms Em- I do that too. I have a similar experience when playing Katamari right before bed.
For me the worst game for warping the mind is Zelda. When I walk into town the appropriate music follows me, likewise strolls in the country are soundtracked too and with the added tension of possible attack.
do you walk into someones home and hear “doo doo doodoodoo” music and proceed to jump on their bed, climb all their ladders, steal all their treasure/life savings and smash as much of their crockery as you can?
I can confirm that she does indeed do just that.
and i thought i was the only one.
from what I know, at least 10% of the population are acting like Link at any one time.
i love zelda a little bit <3
Adam, I have no idea how i weaned myself off tetris..i think the first time i lost my internet connection, then the other four i banned myself from playing. but, i’ve now got a new obsession so it didn’t work too well, clearly.
Why did you have to remind me of Tetris - i’ve bloked it out of my mind for a few years now.
woops. seems like tetris has reminded a lot of people of bad memories..
Hmmm, no, experiences of dropping things on ppl below tell me that there will be no frantic anything happening.
A long and stupid union meeting will follow, nothing will happen and then we go back to work.
After playing Tenchu or BurnOut Revenge, I feel that I shouldn’t be allowed out into society.
I have strong urges to run cars off the road and sneak behind ppl and snap their necks, dragging their still and silent bodies into a dark corner.
Fortuently, I have neither the ninja, nor the driving skills to achieve these aims.
I worked on building a roof once. It was pretty fun. It was only one story, though. Plus it was a VERY small house.
I love Tetris. I’m not addicted to it, though. I just really like it. I actually haven’t played it in a really long time because I accidentally deleted it, and haven’t gotten around to having someone get me a new copy. Hm.
I also love Zelda. Personally, I developed a compulsion for chopping down all the grass with my sword. Swissssh. It gets rather bothersome when I have to go through the same room multiple times because I keep dying or something, but somehow, I can’t seem to resist… But now every time I go through long grass in real life I expect a giant green stone to magically appear with a lovely *ding* sort of noise.
hehe. that, Easca, would be awesome.
*stands in a field*
“rocks, i command you, DING!”
*rocks, quite rightly, ding*
“YEEEEESSS!”