Rosscott, Inc.

Ever try to go to a restaurant’s website, only to discover that most restaurants are not yet in the same era that the rest of us are? Flash intros, bad music, etc? Such is the dialogue between Dan Wineman and a website every month or so, from Dan’s awesome website:

Me: (tries to visit a local restaurant’s website via iPhone)
Restaurant website: I require Flash. Fuck off.
Me: I just want to know how late you’re open.
Website: Nope.
Me: But I’m on my phone. Don’t you have a little “HTML Version” link up in the corner or something?
Website: I’m ignoring you.
Me: What if I’m on my phone because I’m out, looking for a place to eat? Didn’t that ever occur to you?
Website: Fuck entirely off.
Me: (gives up, switches to computer)

That’s just the beginning. It gets better from there. Go check it out. LINK.

Greetings again, Systemics, to another edition of System in the Wild! You send in System-style images spotted wherever to me through Twitter (@rosscott / @systemcomic) or email (systemcomic at gmail) and I post them here on the site!

First up (above) comes from Systemic Larom. We were debating whether this is a “no fellatio” sign or a more general “stay away from my crotch” sign. I vote for the latter. Somehow I made a connection to the world’s oddest game of ‘telephone’… LINK.

This next one I must unfortunately say goes unnamed, as I forgot to write down who sent it in. It was through Twitter, I remember that much. Beyond that I have no idea. Whomever it was, be sure to click the link to see WHY THE GUY IS ON FIRE. Worth it, trust me. Any IT guys out there? You’ll love this. LINK.

Finally, this last one is from ME. This comes from the A Day in the Life Conference to be held in Baltimore, MD at MICA. I’ve been asked to speak along side such people as Ellen Lupton and Other People I Don’t Know. I’ll be speaking more about my day job as a web designer than the comic things, but it’s all on the table. If you’re in the Baltimore area and like design geeking out, come join in. The magic day is April 24th. LINK.

As always, if you have things to send in that match in style to The System or are just awesome, send them over to systemcomic at gmail, or any of that other stuff I mentioned above. Until next time, Systemics!

UPDATE: The feed has not been working for some people. As far as I can tell this is due to the lag it takes to slowly get it all to feed / propogate. The link that should work is http://feeds.feedburner.com/systemcomic . This now works for me to add it to Google Reader, let me know if you’re having trouble.

Howdy, Systemics! I don’t know what you think goes on behind the scenes of this comic, but I’m going to try and start being a little more up front and see how that goes. Hopefully you guys appreciate seeing how things really work here either as fellow creators, voyeuristic readers, or just because you like reading crap while you’re bored at work.

Did you know I would like to make money off this comic? I know, that’s crazy talk. The first part of that comment you should realize is that right now, I don’t make money off this comic.  Sure the HilariAwesome store is available and I get a sale or two a month, but the only real revenue ever seen is when I go to conventions and get to deal things in bulk. I love doing that, but it would be great if the site at least paid for it’s own hosting, maybe even a little extra. That could really take the edge off and help justify the time I put into things around here, as well as help out with the upcoming site redesign and The System Book 1 printing costs. So I’m trying to optimize / revitalize the way I try and make some cash on the site.

No, I’m not going to start charging for the content you’re used to getting for free. But If I can find ways to get the site to pay for itself or maybe even earn me a few bucks without having to inconvenience you the reader too badly, I figure I should give it a shot. As such, today starts the Great Feed Experiment. I would like to be pretty up front about this so here are all the details:

Readership on this comic is around 3,000 - 5,000 readers a day, depending on which stat tracker I look at, what sites are linking to me, what StumbleUpon feels like doing, and what I’ve been doing to update lately. It’s been there for over 6 months and it’s a great number though I’m not a fan of the plateau. From what I understand a comic running under 2 years this is a great number. I’m certainly proud of it, though of course it would always be nice if it was growing. Unfortunately, it’s not a big enough number for web ads to really do that much good. You need orders of magnitude more in the way of readers or amazing ad networks to do anything near good money with ad traffic.

However, there’s a silver lining. For a site this size, we have a HUGE number of RSS feed subscribers. Google Reader alone shows 1,398 followers as I write this, which as far as I can tell is really big for a site this size. That’s only the Google Reader ones, not to mention people subscribing through other means. After talking it over with my internet brother from another mother Marty, I’d like to know more about it and possibly utilize it a little bit, so as of today I’m starting to run the feed through FeedBurner to better track how many people are subscribing, and adding Google Adsense to the feed. I know that Adsense is one of the worst ad networks in terms of revenue because they are so general, but it’s a start until I can get on some better networks.

If you are a subscriber through the RSS and something I’ve done in this process has effected the way you read the comic and made you want to STOP reading the comic, let me know. (systemcomic at gmail) I’d rather have readers than money hands down. (systemcomic at gmail) If it is simply messing with the way you read the comic or possibly breaking anything, let me know that too. (systemcomic at gmail) I’ve tested and it seems to all be working but I won’t know for sure until you tell me what’s going on.

Anyway, thanks for understanding and of course reading the comic. It’s often easy to forget that looking at the numbers relates to real people who have taken time every day to follow what I write / draw here, which is why I always encourage you to get in touch with me. (systemcomic at gmail) Hopefully we are all building to something together. As it says in the masthead, comics will keep being posted until morale improves.

Thanks all.  Feel free to leave any thoughts in the comments, message me on The Twitters, or email me at, you guessed it, (systemcomic at gmail).

Howdy Systemics! Sorry for the delays with Friday and Monday’s comics. We’re a little off schedule this week but a comic will be up tomorrow (Tuesday). Hang in there!  In the meantime, check out this awesome animated short called Logorama. It’s up for an oscar and a fun watch. LINK.

If you liked that post the other day on pictograms, here’s an animated one that features some awesome stuff.  It also features default music from iTunes. Classy, Stephen Heller.  Btw, if anyone knows how to tell Stephen Heller about my comic, I think he’d love it if he just saw it. Don’t you?  Then again, he’s kinda full of crap. Okay I’ll stop being a whore. Just check out the vid.  LINK.

DISCLOSURE: I was in need of a couch and got in touch with Simplicity Sofas. In return for an honest review and ad space for a month (should be right above, but you can find them here), they gave me a discount on the couch.

A while back I moved into an apartment that has a great deal of perks. Cozy, high ceilings, and in the heart of DC. Unfortunately it had one small drawback. It is very, very tiny. Still, I was determined to make the best of it and searched for ways to optimize the space. A friend of mine suggested Simplicity Sofas, a company that specializes in couches for small apartments. What does that mean, exactly?

First of all, the furniture comes in a variety of sizes from small to large to fit whatever size apartment you have. The different styles of their collections include full-size sofas, apartment sofas, loveseats, and chairs-and-a- half, as well as other features such as a dual 20-inch deep air sleep system. This gives you the bonus of turning of your living room couch into your bed in minutes with a push of a button. As someone who once had to carry such an apparatus down 3 flights of stairs, trust me this is a much better idea. I opted for the ottoman as well, which I discovered on arrival has a compartment inside to store all my wires and video game accoutrements.

But what really won me over is the setup. Most couches arrive in one large box. Not so. Instead, this came in a series of smaller boxes. Ideal, since I had to carry each one up four flights of stairs. Once in the apartment, the whole thing comes together in 15 minutes without even those little Ikea wrench thingies.

As for comfort and wear, I’m about 6 months in and all is well. My only suggestion is to opt for the “premium” fabric or “pet-proof” fabric. Then again, maybe I just eat too many meals on my couch. Did I mention my apartment is small? A dining table would be a luxury. So check out their site.

Systemic Boxhill sent in this one. As she says, “System-in-the-Wild meets the Birth of the System? Cycling-centric, too”. It covers the history of “Helvetica Man”, and even some other examples (though this site has been left seemingly absent). LINK.

In case Monday’s comic on curling whet your tastebuds for curling (check out the comments), here’s a great infographic from GOOD about how curling works. I’m not seeing any “curl”. LINK.

It’s like Ren and Stimpy meet Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends! (For more info, check the post on BoingBoing)

“The Modifyers” animated pilot from Chris Reccardi on Vimeo.

As seen on BoingBoing. Can you guess either of these? The one on the left, probably. LINK.