User Friendly
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- For other uses, see User Friendly (disambiguation).
| User Friendly | |
|---|---|
 An example of a User Friendly comic strip |
|
| Author(s) | J.D. Frazer, a.k.a. "Illiad" |
| Website | http://www.userfriendly.org/ |
| Update schedule | Updated daily |
| Launch date | November 11, 1997[1] |
| Genre | technology and geek humor |
User Friendly is an online daily comic strip about the staff of a small, fictional internet service provider, Columbia Internet. The strip's humor tends to be centered around technology jokes and geek humor.
It is drawn and authored by J.D. Frazer, a.k.a. "Illiad". It is considered to be one of the first major webcomics, and has been running since November 17, 1997. Although the drawings were shaky to start with, the jokes have been popular and the artistic style has developed. Its popularity inspired many other webcomics with similar themes, the most popular being Penny Arcade, PvP and Megatokyo.
User Friendly is now published in a variety of newspapers making it one of the first webcomics to make the transition from the net to the mainstream.
In late 1999, User Friendly and Sluggy Freelance swapped a character (A.J. and Torg).
In 2000, the Waiting For Bob webcomic ran a series of comics where several of the characters visited Columbia Internet to have them design and host a website advertising their product, "Caf".
There is a running storyline and sometimes several day's worth of comics are drawn in advance, but the Sunday comic is always drawn for immediate release and breaks from the regular storyline. The Sunday strip is based on current events and is in full color, unlike the regular daily strips.
Periodically, there will be "nag-strips" which are special strips drawn for promotional purposes. These strips appear for 30-seconds before jumping to the daily strip. The content of these strips is to ask for donations or introduce advertisers, often in funny ways presented by the characters or a cameo by Illiad.
Contents |
[edit] Main characters
[edit] A.J. Garrett
A.J. is the creative guy for the company, maintaining and designing their websites. As a web designer, he's uncomfortably crammed in that tiny crevasse between the techies and the marketing people. This means he's not disliked by anyone, but they all look at him funny from time to time. A.J. is shy and sensitive. He loves most computer games, nifty art, and has a big brother relationship with the Dust Puppy. A.J. is terrified of grues and attempts to avoid them.[2] He was released from the company on two separate occasions, but returned shortly thereafter.
He and Miranda are now dating. They also have previously dated, but split up over a misunderstanding.
[edit] The Chief
The Chief is Columbia Internet's CEO. He is the leader for the techies and salespeople.
Illiad based the character on a former boss:
| The Chief is based on my business mentor. He was the vice president that I reported to back in the day. The Chief, like my mentor, is tall (!) and thin and sports a bushy ring around a bald crown, plus a very thick moustache. |
The Chief bears a superficial resemblance to the Pointy-Haired Boss of Dilbert fame. However, Illiad says that The Chief was not inspired by the Dilbert character.[3]
[edit] Dust Puppy
Born in a server from a combination of dust, lint and quantum events, the Dust Puppy looks similar to a ball of dust and lint, with eyes, feet and an occasional big toothy smile. He was briefly absent from the strip after accidentally being blown with compressed air while sleeping inside a dusty server.
Although the Dust Puppy is very innocent and unworldly, he plays a superb game of Quake. He also created an artificial intelligence named Erwin, with whom he has been known to do occasional song performances (or filks).
Dust Puppy is liked by most of the other characters with exception of Stef and the Dust Puppy's evil nemesis, the Crud Puppy.
[edit] Crud Puppy
Crud Puppy is the evil nemesis of dust puppy and sometimes takes the role of "bad guy" in the series. In example by playing the CEO of AOL or controlling a "the thing" suit. The Crud Puppy first appeared in the strip on February 24, 1998.[4]
[edit] Erwin
Erwin first appeared in the 1998-01-25 strip. Erwin is a highly advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) created overnight during experimentation in artificial intelligence by the Dust Puppy, who was feeling kind of bored. Erwin is written in COBOL because Dust Puppy "lost a bet". Erwin passes the Turing test with flying colours, and has a dry sense of humour. He is an expert on any subject that is covered on the World Wide Web, such as Elvis sightings and alien conspiracies. Erwin is rather self-centered, and he is fond of mischievous pranks.
Originally, Erwin occupied the classic 'monitor and keyboard' type computer with an x86 computer architecture, but was later given such residences as an iMac, a Palm III, a Coleco Adam on Mir, a Furby, a nuclear weapon guidance system, an SGI O2, a Hewlett-Packard Calculator (with reverse Polish notation, which meant that Erwin talked like Yoda for weeks afterward), a Lego Mindstorms construction, a Tamagotchi, a Segway, an IBM PC 5150, a Timber Wolf-class BattleMech, and an internet equipped toilet as a punishment for insulting Hastur.
[edit] Greg Flemming
Greg is in charge of Technical Support at the company. In other words, he's the guy that customers whine to when something goes wrong. He blows off steam by playing visceral games and doing Bad Things to the salespeople. He's not a bad sort, but his grip on his sanity hovers somewhere between weak and non-existent, and he once worked for Microsoft Quality Assurance.
[edit] Mike Floyd
Mike is a System Administrator, and is responsible for the smooth running of the network at the office. He's bright but prone to fits of anxiety. His worst nightmare is being locked in a room with a sweaty Windows 95 programmer[citation needed], and no hacking weapons in sight. He loves hot curries, preferably ones with the same properties as Alien acid-for-blood.[citation needed]
[edit] Miranda Cornielle
Miranda is a trained systems technologist, an experienced UNIX sysadmin, and very, very female. Her technical abilities unnerve the other techs, but her obvious physical charms compel them to stare at her, except for Pitr, who is convinced she is evil. Although she has yet to reveal any character flaws, it is a commonly held belief in psychological circles that "perfect" people like her are deeply disturbed neurotics with sociopathic tendencies. Maybe that's why she smiles so much.
She and A.J. are now dating although she was previously frustrated by his inability to express himself and his love for her. This comes after years of missed opportunities and misunderstandings, such as when A.J. poured his feelings into an email and Miranda mistook it for the ILOVEYOU email worm and deleted it unread. [1]
[edit] Pitr Dubovich
Pitr is the admin of the Columbia Internet server, and a self proclaimed Linux guru. He suddenly began to speak with a fake Slavic accent as part of his program to "Become an Evil Genius." He has almost succeeded in taking over the planet several times. His sworn enemy is Sid, who seems to outdo him at every turn. Pitr's achievements include: making the world's (second) strongest coffee, merging Coca-Cola and Pepsi into Pitr-Cola and making Columbia Internet millions with a nuclear weapon purchased from Russia.
[edit] Sid Dabster
Although a relative newcomer to Columbia Internet, Sid is the oldest of the geeks and very knowledgeable. His advanced age gives him the upper hand against Pitr, whom he has outdone on several occasions; including in a coffee brewing competition and in a (rather biased) game of Jeopardy!. Unlike Pitr, he has no evil ambitions per se, but he is a friend of Hastur and Cthulhu (based on the H.P. Lovecraft Mythos characters).
[edit] Pearl Dabster
Sid's beautiful daughter named after the computer language. Pearl is often getting the better of the boys, the antagonist of Miranda, and occasionally the object of Pitr's affections much to the chagrin of Sid.
[edit] Smiling Man
The Smiling Man is the company Controller. He is in charge of accounts, finances and expenditures. He smiles all day, for no reason. This in itself is enough to terrify most normal human beings. However, the Dust Puppy, the "Evilphish" and a consultant in a purple suit have managed to get him to stop smiling first. His favourite wallpaper is a large, complex, and utterly meaningless spreadsheet.
[edit] Stef Murky
Stef is the Corporate Sales Manager. He runs most of the marketing efforts within the firm, often selling things before they exist. He is a stereotypical marketer, with an enormous ego and a condescending attitude toward the techies; they detest him and frequently retaliate with pranks. He sucks at Quake, often managing to step into a lava pool at the starting screen; in addition, he often does so even in games that do not have lava pools. Although he admires Microsoft and frequently defends their marketing tactics, infuriating the techies, he has a real problem with Microsoft salesmen, probably because they make much more money than he does. His attitude towards women is decidedly chauvinist; he lusts after Miranda who won't have anything to do with him. Stef is definitely gormless as demonstrated on January 14, 2005.[5]
Information on other characters and first appearance links to comics can be found at User Friendly characters.
[edit] User Friendly community and the comment board
Every daily strip has its own comment space for people to comment and discuss the strip in, known as the comment board. A community has evolved around the comment board, which is considered by many User Friendly fans a contributing factor in the popularity of the comic.
Common threads found in the comment board are:
- Illiways, the café at the end of the Ufieverse (a pun on Milliways': The Restaurant at the End of the Universe): This thread is used for café-like, general conversation. Newspapers, coffee and warm fuzzies are available daily.
- Question of the Day (QOTD): Almost 5 continuous years of daily questions.
- "I don't get it" thread (IDGIT): A thread for people who don't get the joke in the comic.
- Translations Thread: Translations into many real and fictional languages and dialects by the readers.
- The UF appeal for help: Reasons why you should donate to UserFriendly. Each day posted using a randomly generated colour string that appears differently in Internet Explorer and Opera (but always black in Firefox)
- Comment Board Trivia: Trivia questions of varying degrees of difficulty
- Crypto Thread: Crypto puzzle that is posted every day until somebody successfully breaks it, when a new crypto is posted instead.
Based on the community built, some contests are held on a periodical basis, such as UFie Idol (a pun on American Idol), where the readers compete sending their recordings (in MP3 format), which are judged on voice quality and "geekness" (i.e. technical ability such as clean recording or mixing). More occasionally, an Illiad for a day contest is held, where people are encouraged to create a new, "original" strip using artwork from previous strips. Given UF's blatant "Xeroxed talking heads" style, the title is rather fitting.
The source code for the board software, ARS (Account Registration System), is available for download.
[edit] Link of the day (LOTD)
Every day a link suggested by the community is posted to the main page. The sites selected are usually not well-known and mainly non-commercial. As the User Friendly community has grown larger being selected as the link of the day has a similar effect as being Slashdotted.
[edit] Bibliography
Several cartoon compilations have been published:
- User Friendly ISBN 1-56592-673-0 January 25, 1998 - December 25, 1998 (misses out December 20 and probably some others)
- Evil Geniuses in a Nutshell ISBN 1-56592-861-X January 3, 1999 - December 11, 1999
- The Root of All Evil ISBN 0-596-00193-2 January 1, 2000 - December 31, 2000
- Even Grues Get Full ISBN 0-596-00566-0 January 1, 2001 - November 17, 2001
- User Friendly - Die Deutsche Dialekt-Ausgabe (translation to several German dialects) ISBN 3-89721-380-X
[edit] Recurring Themes
- Tech-support jokes
- The computer game Nethack and Amulet of Yendor
- On-and-off romance between A.J. and Miranda
- Illiad, the web comic writer, sometimes puts in a cameo appearance, often in the "nag-strips." He is represented as a guy with a paper bag over his head and two-eye holes poked through the bag.
- Rivalry between Sid and Pitr for being the smartest genius.
- Pitr's quest to be an evil genius and take over the world.
- Erwin's transfer between various corporeal machine embodiments for his artificial intelligence.
- The RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, SCO, and other targets of geek ire.
- The disconnect between Stef's marketspeak and the geek lingo of the rest of the cast
- the fictional material Deletium
