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INTERVIEW
Illiad Talks
with LWM
UserFriendly, the world of IT,
and artificial stimulants
One of the perks (and believe me, there aren’t many) of being senior editor of a
magazine is that sometimes you can share a personal addiction with the rest of the
world. For me, UserFriendly is that addiction.
UserFriendly is drawn by J.D.
Frazer, better known by his nom
de plume of “Illiad.” Born in
Hong Kong, he is now a naturalized
Canadian citizen living in
Vancouver. If you’re not one of
the million and a half people already reading
this online cartoon strip, here’s a quick
synopsis. Columbia Internet is just your
average ISP, populated by a pair of techies,
an overwhelmed phone support guy, an
ubergeek with dreams of world domination,
and another one who cut his teeth on
punch cards. Add in a comptroller who
never stops smiling, a befuddled CEO, an
artificial intelligence living in what looks
like a classic Mac, and a creature that
spontaneously evolved from dust inside a
server, and you have your typical day at the
office. Oh yes, and there’s also the world’s
most clueless marketeer.
Every month, you’ll find a reprint of a
UserFriendly strip in LinuxWorld
Magazine (selected by me, another rare
perk). But every day, you can find a fresh
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James Turner, senior editor of LinuxWorld
Magazine, is president of Black Bear Software
as well as director of software development of
Benefit Systems, Inc. James has written for
Wired, Christian Science Monitor, and other
publications. He is currently working on his
third book on open source development.
turner@linuxworld.com
strip at www.userfriendly.org, along with a
very active discussion board that, on a
good day, might actually be discussing the
comic strip. Recently, I got to chat with
Illiad about the strip, the world of IT, and
artificial stimulants.
LWM: What would you say are the demographics
of your typical reader?
Illiad: Well, three quarters of that person
are an IT worker. There’s one-quarter that
is anything but. There’s anything from military
personnel, scientists, and engineers to
people who are just retired, students – students
tend to come from one of the computer
sciences, or they’re working in engineering.
And then there’s that sliver in the
demographics that’s fairly odd; you wouldn’t
expect them to read a geek comic strip.
They’re salespeople, marketeers, some
doctors, and – I’m trying to remember
what the oddest one was – I remember an
actress....Oh yeah! An orchard grower. He
grows orchards.
LWM: The FAQ on your site alludes to you
being an IT worker, but it’s a bit vague on
the details. Can you give us a quick synopsis
of your history?
Illiad: Sure. It’s mostly been in multimedia.
I really kicked off my recent IT career in
Web dev and Web design. The job that really
got me into it was when the Web was just
beginning to take off; it was when
Netscape had just gone to version 1.1, I
INTERVIEW BY JAMES TURNER
remember that very specifically. I was
messing around with Mosaic for a while,
and Navigator, they decided to bump
Navigator from 1.0 to 1.1, and that was
kind of a pivotal point for me. I was hired
by western Canada’s largest ISP to start up
their Web services division. So that was
what I did, and I shared a lot of the pain
that tech support people do, because I also
did Web support for people. So here I am,
desperately try to get this business unit
going, and I managed to succeed, but in
the meantime, I’m also trying to support
people over the phone. There’s nothing
more painful than trying to explain HTML
to someone who’s in their late fifties and is
convinced that they’re far more intelligent
and educated than I am, and they probably
are more educated, but they insist that the
solution that I’m giving them is incorrect,
and they’re using things like blink
tags…there was a lot of pain. That was kind
of the real kick-off in the last little while.
Prior to that, I’ve been messing around
with computer technology probably from
day one, I mean when I was 11 or 12 years
old.
LWM: Looking at the strip, the characters
seem to generally support the open source
movement, with the exception perhaps of
Stef (the marketeer). Do you tend to use
open source systems and tools?
Illiad: Yeah I do, I really do. I use them
where I can. I’m not a zealot, it doesn’t
matter what dictionary you open up, I
don’t fall under that definition of zealot.
And that means a zealot for either end of
the bell curve. I appreciate open source for
quite a few reasons, and a few of them are
ethical reasons. One of them is that I much
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2003 80 www.LinuxWorld.com