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UNDER CONSTRUCTION - back to today's strip

THE ARCHIVE
[TODAY'S STRIP] [CAST]

Every strip so far, oldest first. All six are on this one page, about 75K of pictures, so on a modem give it a minute. Jump to one:

#1 · #2 · #3 · #4 · #5 · #6


#1  Monday, August 16, 1999

UNDER CONSTRUCTION #1. Dig, the little construction worker, jackhammers on a gray floor under a cloudy sky, beside a barricade. DIG: Hi! I'm Dig! Welcome to the home page! Under a piece of an UNDER CONSTRUCTION banner, by a traffic cone. DIG: Pardon the mess. It's been under construction since 1996. The spinning globe floats by. GLOBE: So when will it be finished? Close-up on Dig, still smiling. DIG: Finished? Nobody said anything about finishing.

The first one. I had Dig's line in panel four before I had a name for the strip. The banner across the top of panel two is 416 pixels wide, and the panel is 188, so you get UNDER CO and your imagination. That's about how it goes on most pages, too.

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#2  Monday, August 23, 1999

UNDER CONSTRUCTION #2. A plain gray page: a link that says MY COOL LINKS, a red NEW! badge beside it, a rainbow divider, and the hit counter reading 001207. NEW!: Hey! Guess what's new on this page! COUNTER: What? NEW!, blown up big and yellow: Me!! COUNTER: You've been up since March 1997. I was counting. NEW!: New isn't a date. It's a state of mind.

NEW! has two frames, red with yellow letters and yellow with red letters, and he switches between them for as long as you leave the page open. The gray background is no background at all, the way pages looked before anybody found the tiles. The link is in plain blue, underlined, because NEW! always sits next to a link nobody has touched in years.

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#3  Monday, August 30, 1999

UNDER CONSTRUCTION #3. Monday. The mailbox, flag down. MAILBOX: Maybe somebody will write today. Friday. The mailbox, with the cone nearby. MAILBOX: Still nothing. Not even the guestbook. Sunday. The flag is up and a letter sticks out of the mailbox. MAILBOX: Mail!! Somebody wrote me!! MAILBOX: It says send it to ten mailboxes or I'll have bad luck. I only know Cone. CONE: ...

The Mailbox has three frames: flag down, flag up with the door open, and a letter sticking out. On a home page he plays all three over and over, a letter arriving every second and a half, all day long. In the strip he only gets the letter when somebody actually writes. I wrote the chain letter myself. It took four minutes, which tells you something about chain letters.

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#4  Monday, September 6, 1999

UNDER CONSTRUCTION #4. The spinning globe drifts up to Dig. GLOBE: It's Labor Day, Dig! Take the day off! DIG: A day off? Sure! I'll stop right now! That night, under the stars, Dig is still jackhammering. DIG: Any second now. The globe, still spinning. DIG: I can't. I'm a four-frame loop. GLOBE: Lucky. I'm 24.

The Labor Day strip. worker.gif is four frames, and it loops about three and a half times a second, forever. globe.gif is twenty-four frames, a full turn every 2.4 seconds, also forever. I counted them one at a time, and I needed to sit down afterward, so I know how he feels.

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#5  Monday, September 13, 1999

UNDER CONSTRUCTION #5. The hit counter floats among the stars, reading 000846. COUNTER: 846 visitors! I'm the most popular thing on this page! The globe spins nearby. GLOBE: Most of those were the owner, hitting reload to watch you go up. The counter clicks to 000847. COUNTER: 847! There! A real visitor! GLOBE: That was the owner again. The counter clicks to 000848. COUNTER: 848! The owner is my biggest fan.

A confession: I reloaded my own front page eleven times while I was putting this one up, to watch my counter go up. You've done it too. It's fine. The Counter's digits are the gallery's, white on black, 16 by 24 pixels each, and in the strip he gets six of them, the same as everybody's.

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#6  Monday, September 20, 1999

UNDER CONSTRUCTION #6. In front of a brick wall, Dig jackhammers beside the mailbox and the NEW! badge. DIG: Big news, everybody! This page will be done by the year 2000! The hit counter, reading 000853, and the spinning globe. COUNTER: You said that about 1997. GLOBE: And 1998. And 1999. DIG: Sure. But I've never been this close to 2000! Close-up on the traffic cone. CONE: ...

Cone's big moment, at four times his usual size. As of today Dig has 103 days to make good. I'd like to say I believe in him.

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[TODAY'S STRIP] [CAST]

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Last updated Monday, September 20, 1999
UNDER CONSTRUCTION © 1999 Robin Lowery