Lovelace and Babbage: The App!

Heigh ho, Loyal Readership!  As I drag my exhausted form over the desert wastes of the last three weeks of film production, a glimmer on the horizon.  Is it… a mirage?  Or could it be…

Lovelace and Babbage: The App!

You may recall my mentioning some time ago that these lovely mad folks were making an iPad app of the comic– well, we’ve been working like dogs, dogs I tell you and it’s nearly ready for release!

The first release is free, it’s ‘Lovelace The Origin’ that we all know and love and it looks awfully snazzy if I do say so myself! Screencap:

As well as The Origin (freeeee!!) we’ve included The Client (not free! we’re charging, I dunno, a pound or something, haven’t decided), which I’ve gone over and done a bunch of cleanup on, because man some of those drawings were gnarly. Why the Client? The Organist was too long and The Economy too hideous for the time I had available to clean up the drawing (i.e., none), so the Client it is!  The others will follow along presently.

It wouldn’t be 2dgoggles without the footnotes of course!!  Plenty of footnote action in there, revealed through the magic of iPad Rotate-O-Vision!!

The footnotes are way whizzy, they’ll have zoomable images and snazzy primary document embeds and the whole of Babbage’s autobiography is in there and they’ve worked super-hard on them over at Agant.  I think it looks fantastic.

All this magic will be up on the iTunes app store on October 7th for Ada Lovelace Day, so I hope at least a couple of you have iPads otherwise that’s a lot of weekends I could have slept in.  Alternately there may be people out there with iPads who haven’t read the comic, if such a thing is conceivable, so if you know such a person you might want to say, “I say!  You should download the Lovelace and Babbage app!”

For the Loom-Smashers

If you don’t have an iPad, fear not, Citizens!! Because now that I’ve spent all this time cleaning up The Client I’ve got all this nice cleanish artwork on my hands and at such times a young comic artist’s fancy lightly turns to thought of PRINT.  PRINT I TELL YOU!  I’ll tell you something about print thought:  it is a hella work.  They take whole forests and chop them down and mash them up and flatten them out and then your lousy comic is sprayed onto it with LASER BEAMS!  So it’s kind of an operation.  Will keep you posted on the whole print thing.

And if that’s not enough to worry about there’s also…

User Experience

Ripped from the headlines!  The latest dispatches from the WAR on ERROR!  When it’s not falling off my wall it looks like this:

And Finally…Rare Public Appearance By Recluse Author!

What with all this work and excitement I could sure use a dry martini, hence my appearance this coming Tuesday the Hendrick’s Lectures, where there will be Monster Hunters!  and Beautiful Clothes! and the fine fine Steampunk Bible! And if anyone wants me to deface their copy  I will be on hand.  It’s on Tuesday the 6th of September  at 11 Mare Street, E8 4RP in Fashionable Hoxton, doors open at 6 pm, show begins at 7pm.

Anyways a million apologies all for the long long wait between comics this time around.  I am well aware the The Mysterious Forces of the Universe have given me a great responsibility in this here comic; a responsibility my craven addiction to making a living has caused me to let down lately.  But much is happening below the surface and soon my mole army will burst out of the earth.  As it were. In the meantime hold tight.  Listen to the Goon Show or something.  Yehti!!!

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32 Comments

  1. […] the most delightful accounts of her life I have come across so far (and will also be available as App […]



  2. elizabeth on October 4, 2011 at 8:17 am

    Another request for an Android version, please. :) I’ll content myself with a paper version in the meantime. (Perhaps I’ll scan it.)

    (Was there no existing app that could handle combining comix with footnotes??? What is the world coming to?)



  3. oob on October 3, 2011 at 10:11 am

    PDF please – so that we can print or read it in different ways.

    :-)



  4. Amanda on September 25, 2011 at 5:01 pm

    Soooo happy you’ll be making a print version too. Be keeping my eyes peeled for jt!



  5. Elmo on September 23, 2011 at 7:01 pm

    I’m so excited I almost jumped in my cubicle. Thanks Sydney!



  6. AndyG1066 on September 23, 2011 at 6:21 pm

    Sydney – found ‘Lovelace and Babbage’ today (via Twitter and Jack Schofield) and, as a geek, a comic fan and the son of a lifelong engineer, I have been totally blown away!!! I have read all the Comics today, followed some of the links (more later!!) and haven’t laughed so much in ages – I applaud you on this. Frazetta – always been a fan!! Just one comment to make re your use of the term ‘cogs’ my Father would have muttered under his breath “a cog is a boat” and as a ex-navy engineer, vintage car restorer and horologist whose heroes were Brunel, Trevithick (a fellow cornishman) and Harrison – he did know!!
    Also – +1 for the Android App and the hard copy – if this were to go on Unbound (link:http://unbound.co.uk/ ) I would support immediately



  7. Frederica on September 22, 2011 at 6:19 am

    Print indeed! The things about iTunes (and Amazon too) is that electronic documents that one has paid for have been known to DISAPPEAR because of the decision of a nameless, faceless drone at one of those organizations. grrr
    I would rather have a dead-tree edition – only thing I have to fear then are fire or flood. And in case of power failure, a pulp book can be read by gaslight! Dead tree editions may also be defaced by the author ;-) Howard Taylor of Schlock Mercenary does that for pre-orders of new books.



  8. Eleanor on September 21, 2011 at 8:09 pm

    You may have already seen this, but just in case:

    Babbage Analytical Engine designs to be digitised
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15001514

    How exciting!



    • Nimrod1943 on September 21, 2011 at 11:07 pm

      Indeed exciting! Ahahah as soon as I saw the article I was going to post the link, but you beat me to it!



  9. Owen Fleet on September 20, 2011 at 9:14 am

    Could this be the next storyline? Babbage and Lovelace vs the iSteam? Apps on punchcard?

    Just remember to credit me in the footnotes :)



  10. TuringTest on September 16, 2011 at 2:24 pm

    I’ve found this amazing story of a ciberpunkish automatic chess player. Just in case you need inspiration for your next short story, maybe the Spanish civil engineer that made it could be time-shifted to the pocket universe. It may an interesting conversation at evening between Babbage and Torres y Quevedo.

    http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2011/09/el_ajedrecista.php



  11. […] the wonderful webcomic, The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, has announced that she is releasing that very first episode as a free iPad app. You’ll also have the option to buy another webisode, The Client, for, and I quote “I […]



  12. Dave Van Domelen on September 12, 2011 at 11:02 pm

    Irrelevant to this thread, but relevant to this site: my office is in Bruner Hall of Science. But thanks to this site, I keep telling people I work in Brunel Hall of Science.



  13. AJR on September 7, 2011 at 9:18 pm

    PRINT?!?! You mean I might at some point be able to read in hardcopy? Might be able to re-read in my lunchbreak without relying on the snail-slow work connection? *calls over partner to let him know* Hmmm…, might yet have to get 2 copies…



  14. Kaazz on September 7, 2011 at 7:44 pm

    *swoon*
    An iPad version!!!! Yes! YES! (jiggity-jig) I absolutely cannot WAIT!!! And, because I am also a lover of “real” dead-tree books, I will ALSO buy the print version! One simply cannot have enough of Lovelace & Babbage and their adventures.

    Congratulations and best wishes for fame, fortune and glory! (or at least some sort of personal fulfillment…)



  15. the doodler on September 7, 2011 at 12:50 pm

    Print?! PRINT! :D



  16. Anon, a Mouse on September 7, 2011 at 3:08 am

    Yay, Apps!

    TRIPLE YAY, PRINT!!! CONGRATULATIONS! I can not wait to ride the train in to work while holding your work aloft that other commuters may gaze upon it in wonder.

    They (whomever they may be, grandchildren probably) will have to pull the flammable flattened forest pulp from my cold dead hands. Books is books, y’all.



  17. Kitteh on September 7, 2011 at 1:05 am

    Thirdsies on the Android app request! I am most particularly peeved at iTunes, which will not even consider a linux user’s money – must install only a stinking-apple or a stinking-winblows application in order to enter so as to then have the honor of giving them your money. Quite infuriating, really. Would not own an iPad if you personally autographed it and gave it to me for free (though I would cry myself to sleep for several weeks after refusing the offer – entirely for regret of not having such a solid memento of your personal awesomeness, not from any disappointed pecuniary interest).



  18. Pete on September 6, 2011 at 11:47 pm

    If you print it : They will buy.

    Or, at least, I will buy.

    Also, did you know that an early iDevice was in use as early as 1873? As this recording of Sir Phillip Bin and journalist Jeremy Sourquill clearly proves;

    http://kor.yolasite.com/resources/The_iWAX.mp3



  19. Redshift on September 6, 2011 at 6:12 pm

    Yay! Onward and upward!



  20. Mary Ellen on September 6, 2011 at 2:03 am

    Couldn’t the laser beams be aimed onto *recycled* flattened forest?
    I will probably never have an iPad, but it’s nice for those that do. Looks very user-lovely. As to the art cleanup business… I clean up my stuff digitally because it’s not really mine, it has to pass muster with a client and be acceptable to the common eyeball. I enjoy the process (usually), and I know well the pixel-picking obsessiveness that can take one over like a creeping case of Barsoomian Mold, and – hey! – it’s 4 a.m., how’d that happen! And I also understand the desire to put forward one’s art in its finest form… but Sydney, honestly, I LOVE your gnarly art. I truly do. I love the fast, sword-swashing lines, the jumble of half-detailed details, the sense of inspiration and excitement! I’m not trying to dissuade you from cleanup (like that’s likely!), but I just want you to know.



  21. Galadriel on September 5, 2011 at 3:16 pm

    Will be keeping my eyes peeled for the print versions.

    Any plans for Android?



    • Jondxs on September 6, 2011 at 9:47 am

      Can I be the first to second a request for an Android version?



      • Carl on September 7, 2011 at 11:13 pm

        Yes please!

        Also… looking forward to the print version.



    • Annubis on September 8, 2011 at 10:04 am

      yes PLEASE



  22. John on September 5, 2011 at 1:28 pm

    I avoid iProducts because iTunes gives me an iMigraines what with the way it acts pretty much like a virus under Windows, so I’ll pass for now. But paper!? That’s important. Way more important than those forests. What’d they ever do for us?



  23. Edward Harris on September 5, 2011 at 11:01 am

    I have an eye-patch so let us know when they become available on the eye-store!

    What’s the “Energy Meets Art” picture on your wall?



  24. Marie Brennan on September 5, 2011 at 10:55 am

    I was going to say that I would be first in line for a print copy, but as Brian beat me here, I guess I’ll have to settle for second. :-)



  25. Submariner on September 5, 2011 at 9:58 am

    I _don’t_ have an iPad but will buy one just for this.



  26. Judy on September 5, 2011 at 9:46 am

    If I didn’t already have an iPad I would rush out and buy one just so I could have this app :)



  27. Brian on September 5, 2011 at 8:26 am

    PRINT!!!!!