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For other uses, see User Friendly (disambiguation).
User Friendly
"Press any key"
An example of a User Friendly comic strip
Author(s) J.D. Frazer, a. An author is defined both as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created J D Frazer (born 1965 Pen name Illiad, is the artist and writer of the Webcomic User Friendly. k. a. "Illiad"
Website http://www.userfriendly.org/
Current status / schedule Updated daily
Launch date November 17, 1997[1]
Genre(s) technology and geek humor

User Friendly is a daily webcomic about the staff of a small, fictional internet service provider, Columbia Internet. A website (alternatively web site or Web site, a back-construction from the Proper noun World Wide Web) is a collection of Web pages Events 284 - Diocletian is proclaimed emperor by his soldiers Year 1997 ( MCMXCVII) was a Common year starting on Wednesday (link will display full 1997 Gregorian calendar Technology is a broad concept that deals with a Species ' usage and knowledge of Tools and Crafts and how it affects a species' ability to control and adapt The word geek is a Slang term noting individuals as "a peculiar or otherwise odd person especially one who is perceived to be overly obsessed with one or more things Webcomics, online comics, or Internet comics are Comics Published on a Website, often exclusively providing easy access to an An Internet service provider ( ISP, also called Internet access provider or IAP) is a company which primarily offers their customers access to the Internet The strip's humor tends to be centered around technology jokes and geek humor. Technology is a broad concept that deals with a Species ' usage and knowledge of Tools and Crafts and how it affects a species' ability to control and adapt The word geek is a Slang term noting individuals as "a peculiar or otherwise odd person especially one who is perceived to be overly obsessed with one or more things

Drawn and authored by J.D. Frazer, a. J D Frazer (born 1965 Pen name Illiad, is the artist and writer of the Webcomic User Friendly. k. a. "Illiad", it has been running since November 17, 1997. Events 284 - Diocletian is proclaimed emperor by his soldiers Year 1997 ( MCMXCVII) was a Common year starting on Wednesday (link will display full 1997 Gregorian calendar

User Friendly is now published in a variety of newspapers. A newspaper is a written Publication containing News, information and Advertising, usually printed on low-cost paper called Newsprint.

In late 1999, User Friendly and Sluggy Freelance swapped a character (A.J. and Torg). Sluggy Freelance is a popular long-running daily Webcomic written and drawn by Pete Abrams. This is a list of characters from the popular Webcomic Sluggy Freelance.

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 days 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 presented by the characters or a cameo by Illiad.

Contents

Main characters

Main article: List of User Friendly characters

A. User Friendly characters are the characters that feature on the Webcomic User Friendly. J. Garrett

A. J. , Illiad's alter ego,[2] represents "the creative guy" in the strip, maintaining and designing websites. As a web designer, he's uncomfortably crammed in that tiny crevasse between the techies and the marketing people. Web page design is a process of conceptualization planning modeling and execution of Electronic media content delivery via Internet in the form In popular usage "marketing" is the promotion of products especially Advertising and Branding However in professional usage the term has a wider meaning of This means he's not disliked by anyone, but they all look at him funny from time to time. A. J. 's character 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. A grue is a fictional predator from the Zork series of Interactive fiction games by Infocom. [3] He was released from the company on two separate occasions, but returned shortly thereafter.

In the strip, he and Miranda (another character) are now dating. They also have previously dated, but split up over a misunderstanding.

The Chief

The Chief is Columbia Internet's CEO. A chief executive officer ( CEO) or chief executive is typically the highest-ranking corporate officer ( executive) or administrator 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. The Pointy-Haired Boss (often abbreviated to just PHB) is Dilbert 's boss in the Dilbert comic strip Dilbert (first published April 16, 1989) is an American Comic strip written and drawn by Scott Adams. However, Illiad says that The Chief was not inspired by the Dilbert character. [4]

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. A server is a Computer dedicated to providing one or more services over a computer network typically through a request-response routine Dust is a general name for minute Solid particles with Diameters less than 500 micrometers. Quantum mechanics is the study of mechanical systems whose dimensions are close to the Atomic scale such as Molecules Atoms Electrons 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. Quake is a First-person shooter Computer game that was released by Id Software on June 22, 1996. He also created an artificial intelligence named Erwin, with whom he has been known to do occasional song performances (or filks). Filk is a musical culture genre and community tied to science fiction/fantasy fandom.

Dust Puppy is liked by most of the other characters with the exceptions of Stef and the Dust Puppy's evil nemesis, the Crud Puppy.

Crud Puppy

Crud Puppy (Lord Ignatius Crud)[5], is the evil twin and nemesis of Dust Puppy and sometimes takes the role of "bad guy" in the series. Evil twins are antagonists found in many different Fictional Genres They are physical copies of Protagonists but with radically inverted Examples include playing the CEO of AOL or controlling a "The Thing" suit. The Crud Puppy first appeared in the strip on February 24, 1998. Events 303 - Galerius, Roman Emperor, publishes his edict that begins the persecution of Christians in his portion of the Year 1998 ( MCMXCVIII) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link will display full 1998 Gregorian calendar) [6]

Erwin

Erwin first appeared in the 1998-01-25 strip. Year 1998 ( MCMXCVIII) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link will display full 1998 Gregorian calendar) Events 41 - After a night of negotiation Claudius is accepted as Roman Emperor by the Senate 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. In scientific inquiry an experiment ( Latin: Ex- periri, "to try out" is a method of investigating particular types of research questions or Erwin is written in COBOL because Dust Puppy "lost a bet". COBOL (ˈkoʊbɒl is one of the oldest programming languages still in active use Erwin passes the Turing test with flying colours, and has a dry sense of humour. The Turing test is a proposal for a test of a Machine 's ability to demonstrate intelligence Humour or humor (see spelling differences) is the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke Laughter and provide Amusement He is an expert on any subject that is covered on the World Wide Web, such as Elvis sightings and alien conspiracies. The World Wide Web (commonly shortened to the Web) is a system of interlinked Hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. Extraterrestrial life is Life originating outside of the Earth. A conspiracy theory attributes the ultimate cause of an event or chain of events (usually Political, Social or Historical events or the concealment 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, (with Dust Puppy being the toilet brush). A visual display unit, often called simply a monitor or display, is a piece of Electrical equipment which displays images generated from the Video In Computing, a keyboard is an Input device partially modelled after the typewriter keyboard which uses an arrangement of buttons or keys A computer is a Machine that manipulates data according to a list of instructions. See also X86 assembly language The generic term x86 refers to the most commercially successful Instruction set architecture in the history of Personal In Computer engineering, computer architecture is the conceptual design and fundamental operational structure of a Computer system The iMac is a desktop Macintosh computer designed and built by Apple Inc Palm Inc is a Personal digital assistant and Smartphone manufacturer headquartered in Sunnyvale, California that is responsible for popular The Coleco Adam was a Home computer, an attempt in the early 1980s by American toy manufacturer Coleco to follow on the success of its ColecoVision Mir (Мир which can mean both Peace and World, and was the name given to peasant communes in pre-revolutionary Russia was a Soviet (and A Furby (plural Furbys or Furbies, according to Tiger Co is an electronic toy more specifically a Robot, made by Tiger Electronics Nuclear weapons delivery is the technology and systems used to place a Nuclear weapon at the position of Detonation, on or near its intended target Silicon Graphics Inc (commonly initialised to SGI, historically sometimes referred to as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) is a company The O2 is an entry-level Unix Workstation introduced in 1996 by Silicon Graphics (SGI to replace their earlier Indy series A calculator is device for performing mathematical calculations distinguished from a Computer by having a limited problem solving ability and an interface optimized for interactive Reverse Polish notation (or just RPN) by analogy with the related Polish notation, a prefix notation introduced in 1920 by the Polish mathematician Yoda is a Fictional character from the Star Wars universe, who appears in all of the franchise 's films except for Star Wars Lego, officially trademarked LEGO, is a line of construction Toys manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately LEGO Mindstorms is a line of Lego sets combining programmable bricks with Electric motors Sensors Lego bricks and Lego Technic pieces The is a handheld Digital pet created in 1996 by Aki Maita and sold by Bandai. The Segway PT is a two-wheeled, self-balancing Electric vehicle invented by Dean Kamen. International Business Machines Corporation abbreviated IBM and nicknamed "Big Blue", is a multinational Computer Technology BattleMechs (often abbreviated ' Mechs) are large walking war machines that feature prominently in the Fictional universe Hastur ( The Unspeakable One, Him Who Is Not to be Named, Assatur, Xastur, or Kaiwan) A toilet brush is a domestic implement designed for the cleaning of the lavatory pan usually in conjunction with Toilet cleaner or Bleach.

Greg Flemming

Greg is in charge of Technical Support in the strip. 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. Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational Computer technology Corporation, which rose to dominate the Home computer

Mike Floyd

Mike is the System Administrator of the strip, 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, and no weapons in sight. He loves hot ramen, straight out of a styrofoam cup.

Miranda Cornielle

Miranda's character is a trained systems technologist, an experienced UNIX sysadmin, and very, very female. Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX, sometimes also written as Unix with Small caps) is a computer Female (♀ is the Sex of an Organism, or a part of an organism which produces ova (egg cells 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. Evil, in many cultures is used to describe acts or thoughts which are contrary to some particular religion Although she has few character flaws, she does express sadistic tendencies, especially towards marketers and lusers.

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. The ILOVEYOU virus also known as VBS/Loveletter and Love Bug virus is a Computer virus written in VBScript. [7]

Pitr Dubovich

Pitr is the admin of the Columbia Internet server, and a self proclaimed Linux guru. Linux (commonly pronounced ˈlɪnəks 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, Pepsi into Pitr-Cola and making Columbia Internet millions with a nuclear weapon purchased from Russia, and the infamous Vigor text editor. Coca-Cola is a carbonated Soft drink sold in stores restaurants and Vending machines in more than 200 countries Pepsi-Cola is a carbonated beverage that is produced and manufactured by PepsiCo. A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from Nuclear reactions either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Russia (Россия Rossiya) or the Russian Federation ( Rossiyskaya Federatsiya) is a transcontinental Country extending Vigor is a clone of Vi for UNIX that adds as a joke a cruel Parody of Clippit, the Microsoft Office assistant

Sid Dabster

Although a relatively new character, 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 round of Jeopardy! that was hacked in favor of Sid, by Sid. Unlike Pitr, he has no ambitions for world domination per se, but he is a friend of Hastur and Cthulhu (based on the H. P. Lovecraft Mythos characters). Hastur ( The Unspeakable One, Him Who Is Not to be Named, Assatur, Xastur, or Kaiwan) Cthulhu is a giant fictional creature one of the Great Old Ones in H Howard Phillips Lovecraft ( August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American author of horror, fantasy

Pearl Dabster

Sid's beautiful daughter named after the computer language Perl. NOTES FOR EDITORS "Perl" is not an acronym (read the "Name" section below Pearl is often seen getting the better of the boys, the antagonist of Miranda, and occasionally the object of Pitr's affections much to the chagrin of Sid.

Smiling Man

The Smiling Man is the company Controller. He is in charge of accounts, finances and expenditures. In Accountancy, an account is a label used for recording and reporting a Quantity of almost anything The field of finance refers to the concepts of Time, Money and Risk and how they are interrelated He smiles all day, for no reason. This in itself is enough to terrify most normal human beings (even via phone). However, the Dust Puppy, the "Evilphish" and a consultant in a purple suit have managed to get him to stop smiling first. User Friendly characters are the characters that feature on the Webcomic User Friendly. A consultant (from the Latin consultare means "to discuss" from which we also derive words such as consul and counsel) is a Professional His favourite wallpaper is a large, complex, and utterly meaningless spreadsheet. A spreadsheet is a Computer application that simulates a paper worksheet

Stef Murky

Stef is the strip's 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, even once managing to die at the startup screen in Quake III Arena[8]; in addition, he manages to die by falling into lava in any game that contains it, including games where it is normally impossible to step in said lava. Quake is a First-person shooter Computer game that was released by Id Software on June 22, 1996. Quake III Arena or Quake 3, abbreviated as Q3A or Q3, is a Multiplayer First-person shooter 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. Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational Computer technology Corporation, which rose to dominate the Home computer 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. Events 1129 - Formal approval of the Order of the Templar at the Council of Troyes. Year 2005 ( MMV) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. [9]

Information on other characters and first appearance links to comics can be found at List of User Friendly characters. User Friendly characters are the characters that feature on the Webcomic User Friendly.

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. The Slashdot effect, also known as slashdotting, is the phenomenon of a popular Website linking to a smaller site causing the smaller site to slow down or even temporarily

Bibliography

Several cartoon compilations have been published:

Recurring Themes

References

  1. ^ UserFriendly Strip Comments
  2. ^ Frazer, J. D. (2002 March). The llama ( Lama glama) is a South American Camelid, widely used as a Pack animal by the Incas and other natives of the Andes Butter is a Dairy product made by churning fresh or fermented Cream or Milk. J D Frazer (born 1965 Pen name Illiad, is the artist and writer of the Webcomic User Friendly. User Friendly v1. 0. Plan Nine Publishing, 67. ISBN 1-929462-39-5.  
  3. ^ UserFriendly Strip Comments
  4. ^ UserFriendly Strip Comments
  5. ^ Nag Strip, Sept 15, 2005
  6. ^ Anatomy of a Crud Puppy
  7. ^ Cartoon for May 11, 2000
  8. ^ UserFriendly Strip Comments
  9. ^ UserFriendly Strip Comments

External links

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