Indeed we did

Still working out some finer points with the style that I want to draw this in, I feel excited and confident that this is going to be a fun comic.

Stay tuned for tales of intrigue, suspense, romance, and adventure!

Terror!
Robots!
Rock and Roll!

TJ and I got together today to discuss and finalize the strip shape and size, as well as some other stylistic decisions. He also got started on the thumbnails, and it's already starting to look pretty damn awesome.

I've now installed Wordpress with the Comicpress plugin one of my other domains so I can test it out and figure out how the whole thing will work. It seems pretty solid so far, and I've been able to upload a few images and figure out how to get them to archive and show up on the right dates. I've still got quite a bit to learn before I'll be comfortable making a more public test, but so far it seems promising. I've been really on the fence about what to use for the syndication back-end, but seeing what Kurtz was able to do on PvP using just Comicpress sealed the deal. I may not be able to make it look quite as shiny as his does quite yet, but I figure if it can easily handle an almost 10 year archive and more vists per day than we'll be lucky to get per month, then it'll be more then enough for us.

Throwing down the gauntlet

Just trimmed all my facial hair to the same length for MaBeGroMo (Macho Beard Growing Month). Here's a pic of stubble mode:

I'll try to take pictures every tuesday / wednesday throughout the month. I'm calling out TJ to do the same (if he thinks he's got what it takes)

Things that are rad: Figuring out how to fix the broken garbage disposal yourself (+20 Man points)

Things that are the exact opposite of rad: Having your computer freeze while installing CS3, and upon reboot deciding that your system drive no longer exists right after you sent your last WinXP install disk to your mother so you could help her with her computer.

Looks like this little laptop's gonna be my only lifeline for a little while (unless the Saint of maybe-if-you-unplug-it-and-wait-awhile answers my prayers in the positive). Well, at least I can once again grind things into tiny bits which can go down the drain.

Stumble upon, Wikipedia, Fark, and Slashdot: The Four Horsemen of Insomnia.

Damn my inquisitive ways!

Wikipedia may just prove to be my undoing. I normally am proud of the vast amount of subjects I have a passing knowledge of, even if they knowledge is somewhat shallow (jack of all trades, master of none and all that), but now it's starting to infect my writing. I never realised how hard it would be to write a science fiction story involving space travel over vast distances when I actually know something about relativity. Sure, I can't call up the equations involved at a moments notice, and I don't have a complete understanding of all that it pertains to, but I've got the basics. Unfortunately, those basics say that not only is FTL travel impossible, but that the ramifications of speeds anywhere near light are pretty bad. For one (simplified) example, there's the twin paradox. The twin paradox is used to illustrate the principle that time slows when near large masses or traveling at exceptionally fast (relative) speeds. In other words, imagine that there are 2 identical twins; one of the twins is an astronaut and the other is an office worker. When the astronaut returns from a long trip having traveled at speeds near light, he will have aged less than the office worker. (For more information on this and some actual calculations, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_paradox )

Anyways, because of me knowing all this, I just spent over 2 hours trying to figure out ways around this. Even after coming up with possible plot devices that would excuse the time difference, there was still the small matter of the nearest system being 4.45 light years away. That means that even if we could somehow travel at 99.99% speed of light (which is impossible, and even if it weren't would require such a large amount of energy that it would still be unfeasible) , it would still take 8.89 YEARS to make the trip there and back, and that's assuming max speed could be achieved instantly (also impossible). 2 hours I spent trying to figure out how I could make it work when I finally realised that this was science FICTION, not science FACT I'm writing. Even the hardest sci-fi throws this shit under the carpet, and I've already played pretty damn loose with just about every natural law.

In other words: Fuck it; we're going into hyperspace.

How was your thanksgiving?

I just checked out the PvP site redesign, and man, am I inspired. The site is run on wordpress, using comicpress, and it looks gorgeous. I especially like the fact that Scott did it that way to show all us hopefuls that we can have a site design that's just as functional and flashy as the big-boys without having to spend an arm and a leg. Class act all the way.

I've been listening to the Webcomics Weekly podcast lately, and even though I've only gotten through the first 4 so far, I've already learned quite a bit. I'm actually kinda glad it's taken so long to get to the point I'm at right now, otherwise I wouldn't have had the opportunity to learn from them and avoid some newbie mistakes.

Wow, it really seems like I'm trying to brown-nose or something, but considering how few readers this blog has (unsurprising for a placeholder) and the near impossibility for any of them to stumble across this page, I'm pretty sure that's not the case.

Anyways, I just believe in giving credit where credit is due, and I can't wait to put what I've learned to use.

The biggest problem with writing a mini-comic? Keeping it mini.

by the way

Could somebody have a chat with Daft Punk and ask them to stop being so fucking awesome? They need to leave some for the rest of us

crisis time!

Not much of an update, just random happenings. I was just writing up a script for a minicomic TJ and I were talking about making for a con in January when I made a typo. No big deal, right? I hit backspace.

And nothing happened. Again and again I pounded on the key, but to no avail; it was like I was in the middle of and RPG and my memory card fried. I have to live with all of my mistakes, just like in real life! This is horrible! Not only that, but G stopped working! Probably other keys, too, but that was enough right there to cause alarm. With hope in my heart, I reboot the laptop.

Around 10 minutes later, XP was booted up (this computer is way too slow), and my hopes were dashed. With a heavy heart, I pursued the last option available before getting a new keyboard: the venerable google search bar in firefox (thank God for that. Imagine trying to get to google without a G key!). Anyways, the first result was from Yahoo answers, and described my problem almost exactly. The only answer was to shake the keyboard to get out crumbs in the keyboard; I couldn't this see applying to me, as I've never eaten while working on this laptop. However, I did see that he was using an HP, just like me, so I held my keyboard up so I could check my model number to see if they matched. They didn't, but all of a sudden, my backspace was working! My G was, too! It's like it just started working like magic! You know, right after I started moving the lap..top..... Shit. I'm a slob and didn't even realize it. Go me.

guess I should start using this

Work on the comic is coming along at a pretty good rate recently. The re-wright of the first storyline is pretty close to complete, and I've got some more afterwards outlined. Will you see the first pages of the comic before the end of the year? I wouldn't quite hold my breath. Due to our desire to present you with a high quality comic at a constant pace of 3 per week, and knowing full well the limitations we both face where time is consumed, we still want to have a buffer of at least several months worth of comics before we post.

This will also allow us to focus more on the story and the quality than just having something to post. As I've said before, it'll be done when it's done. Until then, here's a painting TJ made for me for my birthday: