Soup the Comic Strip by Alun Clewe
About
Archive
Forum
About
Archive
Forum
Comic strip for September 29 2023.
PANEL ONE: The gods Erlak and Lambor stand in front of the bar. Drv'dxx can be seen behind them. LAMBOR: Hi, Erlak. You look depressed. PANEL TWO: Reverse shot ERLAK: Oh, hey, Lambor. It's just... Well, it's Conniff. LAMBOR: Conniff? I didn't know you two were close. PANEL THREE: Close on Erlak ERLAK: Well... We're not. But I'd like us to be. That's the problem. PANEL FOUR: Closer on Erlak. ERLAK: But now she's going out with the storm god Thrumger! I'm too late! PANEL FIVE: Erlak raises his arms and shouts. ERLAK: _I've missed my chance to tell Conniff I love her!_ PANEL SIX: Everyone in the bar is looking at Erlak. LAMBOR: I think you just told the whole bar. ERLAK: Oops.
September 29 2023

Hm, welp. It is not currently looking good for the prospects of my finding those missing Illustrator files for the October strips. They're not on my current desktop computer, but I figured I'd check my previous computer to see if they were there. Unfortunately, my previous computer is refusing to boot, and while I can get into the advanced startup mode and into command prompt mode, when I do so it shows the C drive as being empty. I tried various measures from the command prompt, none of which seemed to accomplish anything. I suspect there's an issue with the partitions, or something, and maybe I can get the computer working again with the right recovery software, but that will take time—and, if free recovery software doesn't work, possibly money, which, largely due to the strikes, is something of which I do not currently have an abundance.

Now, truth be told, while I figured I'd check just for completeness' sake, I was pretty sure the files weren't on that computer anyway; because there were indications the hard drive was failing, I'd copied all important files from that computer to an external hard drive some time ago, and I'd already searched that external hard drive for the missing Illustrator files. Still, that computer being out of commission is an annoyance, because that's the computer I had hooked up to my TV and was using to watch streaming channels. (Which I haven't really made time to do in quite some time, though, so I'm not sure just how long the computer's been kaput.)

But I still have my previous desktop computer, as well, although I hadn't gotten around to trying to turn it on and hook it up since taking it out of storage a few months ago. So I tried that now. And... well, the computer seems to start, but nothing shows up on the screen. Which very well could be an issue with the cable I'm using; that computer is old enough it doesn't have an HDMI output, but I have an HDMI to VGA adapter (actually, it turns out I have at least three of them, for some reason), I managed to find one old VGA cable. But the VGA cable is so old that I guess there's a good chance it's not working. Now, I do have one oldish monitor with a VGA cable that I know 929for sure works, largely because I have it hooked up to my current desktop (along with a Wacom Cintiq and a TV I'm using as a second monitor (or third, counting the Wacom tablet), and it's in fact the monitor I'm typing this text on right now. Which means I can't very well plug it into my old computer. At least, not right now, but later I'll shut off my current desktop and try plugging this monitor into the old desktop in question and see what happens.

Unfortunately, though, I'm not terribly optimistic about the files being on that older desktop, either. And if they're not there (or if I can't get that old desktop working), then, well, while I don't have any desktops older than that still intact, I do still have the hard drives from many older desktops, and it's possible it's on one of those. However, I don't currently have a way of reading those old hard drives, and even if I did have some sort of suitable adaptor, I'm not at all sure they're still in a readable condition. Even if they're not, there's still the possibility I could get the data from them using a data recovery service, but, again, that costs money, and anyway it's definitely not happening before October 1. (There's also an old external hard drive the files might conceivably be on, but unfortunately a connection came loose on that hard drive, and while it's possible I may be able to fix it, it's much more likely I'll have to resort to a data recovery service for that too.)

Which, at this point, leaves it looking very likely that I'll have to layer the new lettering over the old screen-resolution bitmap strips for now. There still remains the possibility I can find those missing files later and do it right... but almost certainly not before October 1. Dagnabbit.