Hobo Lobo of Hamelin

Story Index

•  Page 1 from: Jan 26^th 2011 to: Feb 23^rd 2011
•  Page 2 from: Mar 6^th 2011 to: May 29^th 2011
•  Page 3 from: Jun 26^th 2011 to: Dec 4^th 2011
•  Page 4 from: Jan 1^st 2012 to: Feb 26^th 2012
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•  Page 5 from: Jun 9^th 2012 to: Jul 19^th 2012
•  Page 6 from: Aug 12^th 2012 to: Jan 13^th 2013

Stats: Updates happen on average every 15 days. Recently they’ve happened 37.1 days apart. Last update happened 124.8 days ago... Ahem, I am probably very sorry stuff is late. I suspect I may have a good reason for it. Twitter or Tumblr may know more... Also, check out stats over time.

About

Hobo Lobo of Hamelin is a thing by a dude, who’s all like, “I’M GONNA MAKE A THING.” And then he did. Or is doing. Or, you know, whatever. This dude can be found on the internet. He kerns alphabet soup and rearranges window dressing in the aether to put food on his family.

Technical Considerations

If you’re on a crappy internet connection, my condolences. Even though 1MB per panel gives me nightmares, there is no way for me to make the thing I want to make if I compress the assets further. I’m sorry! Open the page and walk the dog wash the dishes twiddle your thumbs make dinner check your mail finish and send some of those drafts you’ve had sitting in your mail client for weeks now like Hobo Lobo on facebook follow me on twitter ask me something on formspring tumbl me on tumblr ‹VERB› me on ‹CREEPY PENOPTICON/VANITY INDULGENCE WEB COMMUNITY DE JOUR› brew some tea contemplate your breathing compose a haiku about the virtues of patience tell your meat friends how much you dig Hobo Lobo fondly gaze upon your loved ones push old ladies down some stairs don’t push old ladies down stairs (what the hell is wrong with you) pull old ladies up some stairs watch this exhibitionist bit of html+js+css as it mimics real-time editing (until it starts to repeat and maybe then some) play some Monkey Island while it loads.

If you’re using an iPad or iPhone or mobile whatever, don’t. iOS Safari and mobile browsers in general are a can of worms which I am somewhat ignoring it at this point. It helps that I don’t have any iOS devices to be annoyed by Hobo Lobo’s behavior on them. That said, I can’t imagine it would be too difficult to make stuff work. I just don't feel like it and the lack of convenient testing hardware gives me a ready excuse. It is a pity tho, since Apple’s inertia-supporting touch-input devices make for the most enjoyable way to read the comic. If anyone at Apple or wherever wants to expedite the Hobo Lobo Mobile Safari support, send me an iPad, or equivalent in cash moneys.

For close to a decade now, a large part of my life as a designer/developer has consisted of slapping Internet Explorer until it played nicely with the internets I was making. It has never NOT been a complete pain in the ass, and it has somehow gotten more annoying since we buried IE6 in a shallow grave in the desert. Since Hobo Lobo is a fun personal project and not an overcommitteeed pin-striped blue monstrosity for a bank or something, I am petulatnly ignoring IE altogether! WOO! The site will probably not look totally borked in IE, but I don’t guarantee that I will care to test it or make patches to get everything to look the same in IE as it does in real browsers. Still, do get a proper browser, please. Here are some decent options: Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari. Pick the one with the neatest name, whichever one you like the most. It is worth noting that historically, all versions of Internet Explorer put together account for less than 5% of the total number of hobolobo.net visitors. Friends don’t let friends use Internet Explorer. Unless it is v. 10, which may work just fine.

If you are encountering weird bugs, please send them my way. If any optimizations and tweaks that could make the site work better pop into your mind, please share them.

Can I Make Something Like This?

I consider the front end code to fall under the Creative Commons badge found at the bottom of the page. If you want to make another comic/storybook/thing that works this way, you are free to as long as you give me a shout out. Note that this blanket permit only applies to narrative/creative uses. If you want to use this structure for commercial ventures, you’ll have to talk to me.

Read my tutorial to get a better idea of how stuff works under the hood. You can grab the demo files from it and use them as a starting point. Make sure to comment out helper lines in parallaxer.js before you start production (they are guilty of replacing the content of panels with the panel’s width). Since that tutorial was written many refactorings of code ago, it might be a good idea to grab the freshest parallaxer.js and retrofit it into the demo files. The tutorial also contains a crash course on turning pencil drawings into transparent-background assets.

If you also want the back end that powers the whole dealio (it needs PHP & MySQL), inquire within. I am leaning towards asking for a nominal sum of some sort, just to weed out people who will waste my time. I may be willing to not ask for said nominal sum if I like your project. Some knowledge of basic HTML and CSS layout techniques is a must. Check out what the admin layer looks like in action.