Restoring web stuff without backups is almost impossible unless you are the paranoid type (in which, you wouldn’t have it publicly accessible in the first place). I say nearly since the ‘web is both wonderful and horrid about storing anything and everything put into it. Most of everything I’ve done in the past I usually look back and think “what the fuck, is this person drunk/on crack/not out of primary school?” and trawling my past trail of simply awful drivel did reveal one ‘gem’ (in the same vein as ‘salt of the earth’) – Working for SchIT.

For a refresher: Working for SchIT was a very sporadic web comic placed in my university webspace, that mainly focused on the lives of students/post grads in the School of Information Technologies. Of course, at the time, I was a student myself and the attitude that things were going downhill in passing pretty clueless students strongly influenced the writing. The ‘SchIT’ name-change of the formally known (perhaps old-fashioned sounding?) School of Computer Science (‘and Technologies’) was the straw that broke the camel’s back as it were. Those involved at the university at the time did find some amusement in the method of shortening the name.

As a disaffected university student (I give credit to Despair.com for that one), I graffiti’d my notebooks with plenty of ideas – but I didn’t process many beyond the sketch-phase. So, from the festering cesspools of the interwebs, I give you (what I could find) 3 out of the 4 comics in existence of Working for SchIT:

Issue 1

Working for SchIT - We really hate cheating

This comic was written completely by Yvan (it does show, if you know him personally). He was the first to scrawl the outline on a napkin (probably) over coffee; at which we had a good chuckle – I had to get this prettified. The original sketch is in one of my scribble-books – used to spare some space in my notebooks for actual notes. This was one of the earliest examples of my use of GIMP (and shows how much of a n00b I was).

Also noteworthy: Vlad is based on someone Yvan and I know personally, though his appearance here was completely contrived. I wonder if it’s obvious who it is..

Issue 3

Working for SchIT - Do not operate heavy machinery

Skipping issue 2 (I can’t find it), I remember not being motivated (see above) about writing something witty. I do recall that one day where one of the societies was giving out free ‘beer’ on a recruitment drive – which I did in fact retrieve – for joining. The society was relevant, but I didn’t actually drink the VB – it was for someone else (I didn’t ask either). I did eat the BBQ sausage-in-a-bread-slice though. Regardless, one really needs to question themselves if they are any self-respecting human for possessing such a thing.

Issue 4

Working for SchIT - Sleep is for wimps

Pretty self-explanatory.

Wow, how quaint. I don’t think I’ve progressed far with my use of GIMP, but I know the reason why I don’t do illustrations like this more often: they require a bit of work. I guess I still share that ‘disaffected university student’ attitude yet..