I guess it's like a journal

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Sat, 19 Sep 2009 10:29:48 -0700

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#131: Oh yeah
Monday, 16 February 2009

Yep, that’s it for FC!, for now anyway. As the comic implies, I have other, better projects in the works, and FC! changed from being fun to a distracting obligation. I’ll continue to put stuff up on my LJ, and I’ll make an announcement here when I have a new online project going, so stay subscribed to FC! or the LJ for nooz. (I recommend the LJ.)

Phoo, what a relief.

Tags: alex, eeen, paper, pencil
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Fri, 13 Feb 2009 04:17:18 -0800

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#130: Subway 2
Thursday, 12 February 2009

Drunk guys sure love to sleep on the subway

Tags: brush pen, paper, subway
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Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:02:28 -0800

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#129: Drawing Instead Of Partying
Wednesday, 11 February 2009

Another doot. Something seems to be wonky with WordPress and ComicPress, so if the site gets weird for a bit, I’m trying to fix it.

Tags: paper, pencil
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Tue, 10 Feb 2009 17:51:04 -0800

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#128: Laundromat
Tuesday, 10 February 2009

A sketch, for FC #10000000! Did you know that “Laundromat” is a genericized trademark, like “Aspirin” and “Linoleum”?

Tags: paper, pencil
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Tue, 10 Feb 2009 06:06:12 -0800

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#127: Haircut
Monday, 9 February 2009

Hey remember when I colored these? Yeah!

Tags: ballpoint, eeen, lyndsey, paper, watercolor
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Sat, 07 Feb 2009 19:53:12 -0800

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#126: In cafés
Friday, 6 February 2009

Hey, post-it comics! Friday! (There was a 4th post-it, but I screwed it up by trying to mask part of it.)

Tags: brush pen, cafe, eeen, post-it or similar
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Fri, 06 Feb 2009 09:06:25 -0800

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#125: Makin’ faces
Thursday, 5 February 2009

Hi! Remember that Sangaku puzzle from a while back? Well, I received a solution from Thomas Weibull, a mathematician working at the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. I got it a while ago, but I forgot to post it here until now! Grab a pencil and some paper, here we go:

Let the big circle be C1 with center C, horizontal diameter, left end
point A, right end point B and radius R (so |AB| = 2R).

Let C2 be the circle internally tangent to C1 at A, midpoint D (on
AB), other intersection with AB E, radius r < R (so |AE| = 2r). The
base of the isosceles triangle is EB and |EB| = 2R - 2r. Let F be the
midpoint of EB, so |EF| = |FB| = R - r. Let G be the top vertex of the
isosceles triangle. By the theorem of the chords, or by the fact that
ABG is a right triangle, |FG|^2 = |AF|*|FB| = (R + r)*(R - r).
[This is R^2 - r^2, so there's a right triangle with hypotenuse R and
sides r and |FG|; oh yes, |CF| = r and |CG| = R.]

EFG is a right triangle, so the Pythagorean theorem gives
|EG|^2 = |EF|^2 + |FG|^2 = (R - r)^2 + (R + r)*(R - r) = 2R*(R - r).

Let the circle C3 be determined by
(1) it is internally tangent to C1
(2) it is externally tangent to C2
(3) it is tangent to EG.
We want to prove
(4) the line from its center to E is perpendicular to AB.
Now, conditions (1), (2), and (3) determine C3 uniquely.
However, conditions (1), (2), and (4) also determine a circle
uniquely; let’s call it C4 and let its center be H. Condition (4)
seems a lot easier to work with than condition (3), so that’s what I
will do and complete the task by proving that C4 is identical with C3.

We apply the Pythagorean theorem to the two right triangles DEH and
CEH. Let the radius of C4 be s.
Then, since C4 is tangent to C2, |DH| = r + s.
Since C4 is tangent to C1, |CH| = R - s.
|CE| = |2r - R| (absolute value, we don’t know which is bigger, 2r or
R, but it doesn’t matter since we square it).
EH is a side in both right triangles, so we get two expressions for
its square: |EH|^2 = |DH|^2 - |DE|^2 = |CH|^2 - |CE|^2, so
|EH|^2 = (r + s)^2 - r^2 = (R - s)^2 - (2r - R)^2.
The left equality gives |EH|^2 = s*(2r + s), while the right equality
and some algebra gives s = 2r*(R - r)/(R + r).

Now let I be the point on the right half of C4 such that EI is tangent
to C4. Then EIH is a right triangle and if we can show that EIH is
similar to GFE, we are done, since then angle HEI equals angle EGF,
which means that the line EI coincides with the line EG, so C4 is
indeed tangent to EG, that is, coincides with C3.

Well, both EIH and GFE are right triangles, so it is enough to show
that |HI|/|HE| equals |EF|/|EG| (these quotients are actually the
sines of angles HEI and EGF, respectively, but we don’t need the
language of trigonometry). Now,
(|HI|/|HE|)^2 = s^2/(s*(2r + s)) = s/(2r + s) = (R - r)/2R
(after a little algebra), and
(|EF|/|EG|)^2 = (R - r)^2/(2R*(R - r)) = (R - r)/2R
so we are (finally) done.
[Of course, now you might start wondering why this squared ratio is
equal to |FB|/|AB|, but maybe it's wiser not to go there ...]

I hadn’t seen this before, so it was fun, and it was also a nice twist
to switch from C3 to C4, which agrees with one of Polya’s heuristics:
start with the unknown.

—Thomas Weibull

Thank you, Thomas!

Tags: brush pen, eeen, marker, paper
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Thu, 05 Feb 2009 05:17:30 -0800

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#124: Café Orwell
Wednesday, 4 February 2009

To be fair, Café Orwell is actually a pretty sweet place, and their coffee ain’t bad.

Tags: brush pen, cafe orwell, eeen, paper, pencil
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Tue, 03 Feb 2009 19:35:36 -0800

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#123: Love Lost Slug
Tuesday, 3 February 2009

Hey, hi. Octopodes. I think Lynda Barry is getting to me, and that’s a good thing.

Tags: eeen, love lost slug, paper, pencil
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Mon, 02 Feb 2009 20:09:29 -0800

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#122: Hourly Comic Day 2009
Monday, 2 February 2009

Hey so yesterday was hourly comic day, and I obviously didn’t have anything better to do while I sat around being sore and grumpy.

Tags: eeen, hourly, michael, mimi, mimi's mom
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Fri, 30 Jan 2009 21:09:42 -0800

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#121: Flubies
Friday, 30 January 2009

Hey hey illness. Friggin flubies.

Also I need to remember that my site layout is really better for vertical comix, cos this drawing is actually a lot wider than I could reasonably fit here. Too much detail to scale. So, click for the widescreen version!

Edit: just realized that this was probably heavily influenced by el Reyyy (as in both Zubies and Seedless). Sry mang

Tags: brush pen, eeen, egyptcat, flubies, marker, paper
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Thu, 29 Jan 2009 19:24:14 -0800

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#120: Subway
Thursday, 29 January 2009

So today the L doesn’t actually go to Manhattan. Joy of joys!

Also, look whose drawing is gracing the Mercury Dime’s fan page! Is it mine? Yes it is

Tags: brush pen, nyc, paper, subway
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Wed, 28 Jan 2009 20:22:26 -0800

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#119: Markel, on the couch
Wednesday, 28 January 2009

My friend Markel, on a couch, doin some Internet crap like she do

Tags: brush pen, markel, marker, paper
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Tue, 27 Jan 2009 21:46:00 -0800

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#118: Model, Bill Behnken, and students in the Art Students League cafeteria
Tuesday, 27 January 2009

It’s Tuesday. And I missed a day, finally. So here’s what’s up:

Reyyyyyyy said recently that you’ve got to “draw what you want when you feel it”, which might seem vague, but I get the sentiment. And I’m not drawing what I want right now, and I’m not feeling it. What I’m currently doing with FC! stopped being fun, I’ve got a lot of other responsibilities now that I’m back in school (some of these, thankfully, are still comics!), and my schedule has gone crazy.

So: FC! is going into sketchblog mode for a little bit while I decide what happens next.

Which is kind of bad timing because Evan Dahm just linked me up on rice-boy.com, and I just got a nice little traffic spike. Sorry, new readers! Also I should mention that everyone should be reading his comics because they are excellent surreal fantasy! Thanks Evan!

Tomorrow: a better drawing!

Tags: art students league, back of art students league schedule, bill behnken, pen, staple
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FOOLISHCREATURES! | Like a journal comic, updated weekdays.

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 20:51:30 -0800

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#117: Electricity
Friday, 23 January 2009

A comix study of some things in my room.

Also! Katie Rose did a post-it portrait of me, it’s pretty awesome! (And also some other people.)

Pretty suave!

Tags: paper, pen, turmeric
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