Wednesday, March 24, 2004

Master's Thesis Blues

Well, I finished the rough draft of my Master's Thesis a scant ten minutes ago, and I'm damn happy to have that thing taken care of. It's still real choppy and rough, but it's only the first draft, and my brain's pretty well fried. It's currently 28 pages long, though I already know I'm going to be adding to it (if for no other reason than to tie everything together better and get to the required 30 pages). Headin' home in a couple of hours, so I'll be out of touch pretty much until the weekend. Don't worry, though--I've already done tomorrow's comic, and I'm getting ready to do Friday's as well.

Super Happy Chibi Smitin'...Shirt?

So I noted in the commentary on Friday's strip that I wanted the last panel as a t-shirt someday. Well, Monkey went and made one. It can be found here. Feel free to pick one up and feel the Dim Bulb love. As soon as I have some extra cash, I'm buying one myself...unless someone wants to get me one for my birthday (I take a XXL and can provide my mailing address upon request :) ).

Death By Thesis

So I'm in the process of writing ye ol' Master's Thesis. It's been kicking my butt. Hard. A lot of the sources I had turned out to be fairly useless, so I've been scrambling for others, trying to rework the paper so that it fits what I actually have...it's just been rough. But I've still got a few days to write, and I'm actually writing now, so it's going better than it was Sunday and Monday.

But enough about that! I'm here to tell you about the nifty comic I discovered today. It's called Deity Permit, and I heartily recommend it. The art is absolutely breathtaking. It's a groovy little manga with interesting characters, an intriguing developing storyline, and it's not so far along yet that it'll take you ages to get through her archive (she updates like twice a week, and started after we did, so you can catch up real quick, and be sitting there ready for your next fix.

Anyway, I need to go draw Friday's OU Daily comic, and possibly Friday's Crooked Halo as well. I'm hoping to wrap up the current story in the next couple of updates. Sorta depends on whether or not I come up with more ideas.

Oh, let us know what you think of the new site design in the forum.

Wednesday, March 10, 2004

MIA

The real question is, does MIA stand for "Missing in Action" or "Master's in Action?" 'Cause either would be appropriate this week, since I'm going to spend the whole thing writing said Master's Thesis. Should be able to have the rough draft knocked out by Friday...at least, that's what I hope, since that's when I told my committee and my parents I'd have the rough draft done by. Sounds like this is gonna be a week of many all-nighters. Also looks like I picked the wrong year to give up soda pop (and thus, caffine) for Lent. The amusing thing about that is, I'm not even Catholic.

Changes

As the Monkey pointed out, and as you may have noticed if you have eyes in your head, the site is under a wee bit of construction. We're trying to work out a more efficient way of doing the newsposts (we've got a couple of ideas in mind), and a couple of other minor things...such as the new background. And the dropdown. And we'll have a few links to our friends and favorites on the main page, just for kicks. And when I say "we" are doing all this, I really mean "Adam is doing all this," because I learned long ago that my abilities with html and site design are...how to phrse this? They're complete crap. So I let Adam do all this stuff.

Granted, we're both busy as hell this week, so don't expect anything to really get done until Spring Break at the earliest.

Speaking of Changes, we're not the only ones going through 'em. It appears that Ping of The Jaded got an offer from a website called Graphic Smash to come join them for a six month trial period. This is important because they're gonna give her money to do her comic. That is really freakin' cool. It's always nice when someone recognizes really amazing talent with monetary compensation. Personally, I'd love to get paid to draw Crooked Halo or write Troubled Times. I'm gonna keep doing them even though I'm not getting paid (just as I know Ping would do even if she weren't getting this deal from Graphic Smash), but it's nice to see that good work gets recognized.

Monday, March 08, 2004

Fanart!

We got our first fanart yesterday, a double shot from the indomitable Ping. We have two pictures of Earl: one that's more my version of Earl, and another that's more in keeping with Adam's rendition of everyone's favorite archangel. I cannot even begin to express how much I love these pictures, or how much I want to thank Ping for doing this for us. She's been nothing but helpful since Adam and I started this thing up, helping us figure out little things and even really big things (she was the one who first pointed us to the solution for the archives, even going so far as to toss code our way for it). She's plugged us relentlessly, as we have her, and I still think she's one of the nicest folks I've met online yet. So, much thanks to Ping, and go read more of The Jaded. It's getting really interesting right now anyway.

Guest Starring...

So I've got a few guest comics for other people coming up. I know there's one that'll make an appearance over at Reasoned Cognition, an interesting comic that answers real science questions. I've also done comics for NeTrek and ORBVS, but I don't know when the last two will appear online. More to come when I actually know.

Chuck to Grad School: Screw You

I've only heard back from one school, the University of Wisconsin. The word I heard back was "no." Well, screw you, Wisconsin. You and your cold weather, and your cheese, and your ridiculously-named professional football quarterbacks. C'mon, "Favre" should not be pronounced "FARVE." That's not how the English language works.

This moment of bitterness brought to you by Chuck's future. Chuck's future: God only knows what's in it, except for a lot of beef jerkey. Mmm, jerkey...