With this week's issue, we've finally hit 100 pages of comic! So to commemorate, I suppose, this week's issue cover is in color! Also I put up the full art for this cover, sans title, over in the Works section.

On other things, the Naruto anime series is almost done with it's 2 years of fillers, yay! I've been watching the last filler episodes, to see how they'd finish it off, and so far, not good. The current arc is basically a rip off of the whole sound 4 battle arc (for those who've seen it), but in reverse, and squeezed into 3 episodes. It seems they'll have room for a couple of episodes after this arc before it finishes and we move into Naruto: Hurricane Chronicles (Pokemon Chronicles?)(minor spoilers on the link if you haven't seen all of the Naruto anime before the filler episodes), so maybe they'll still do us right and finish strong.

Speaking of things that are similar, Nodame Cantabile. Separated at birth from Honey and Clover? Not quite. Though it is basically Honey and Clover, but with music instead of art, I find it a half step short in quality. It's about the same level of funny, but the pacing seems off, and the drama feels not-quite-as-dramatic. Still a good anime though, especially with Honey and Clover gone, and any real competition in this area of anime somewhat nonexistent at the moment, so we'll see how it goes.

Finally, I'd like to mention that we have post formatting now! Kly put up one Sunday evening, and its working great. For those that want to know, we're using TinyMCE, it seems quite nice so far.

My scanner started acting up today again. It's been getting worse lately. I have this fairly old scanner, a Visioneer PaperPort 6100. It's from like 1998 or something. But that's not the problem. The problem is the software. It's not made to run on Windows XP, it's for 98 and below, basically. So XP gives me that warning, which I ignore, but this program actually doesn't work when I run it, unlike every other program that warns me about incompatibility problems. There is a part of the program that does work, however, and that's the TWAIN import from Photoshop.

Now it works, but it's buggy. The main glitch it has is sometimes when I press the scan button it will start to scan and then immediately stop. Then the whole screen flashes gray and then the screen comes back and i'm left with a black image as the result. Lovely side effects of this include my Start bar going completely transparent until I mouse over every part or resize the whole thing, and Photoshop being totally unusable for scanning until I restart it.

Usually this only happens once in a while, but as of late its about 1 out of every 3 scans. That's really bad. Do you know how much it sucks to restart Photoshop and fiddle with the start bar every 15 minutes or so when I have to scan in like 10 pages? A lot. That's how much.

Anyways the point of all this is that I almost couldn't scan in the cover for next week's issue, as well as the sketch I just put up. I say almost, because after it crashed a few times in a row, and waiting an hour or two, everything just worked again, all magic-like. Things like that happen to me a lot, especially with my computer. The magical self-fixing I mean, not the horrendous crashing. I'll relate those stories to you some other time, perhaps when I can finally format my posts without actually typing any html.

Yeah this week's issue didn't have the best title, but I really couldn't come up with anything better. Just finished the cover for the issue this Sunday too.

Expect at least one sketch this week, possibly late in the week. I really need to start filling out the "works" section right now, seeing as there's only one work in it.

I got a new hard drive this week, don't know when I'll get to install it though. I've had it for about a week now, I suspect it'll be at least one more before I see an extra 400GB in my computer.

You may have noticed that we have a masthead now, yay! It was actually much much taller, like around 300 pixels, as opposed to the 100px it is now. It took up so much screen space on lower resolutions that you could barely see the id boxes! I also made a couple of fixes to the css and html that I just found here and there.

I also added a new sketch today, this one is actually for the layout of the character Ian's house, as well as his pet. It's somewhat odd that I layed out his house with so much detail, because it doesn't appear much in the story, but the time when I made this layout I still thought it would (ooh maybe spoilers huh? I didn't say anything...) Anyways, still working on more updates. There's a distinct possibility of there being no comic this week, or else next week. I know I keep saying it and it never happens, but this time it really might. Isn't it better if it doesn't keep coming true in this case though?

Issue 7 of Portals is out now. Just thought I'd mention.

I've been trying hard to get stuff to put on the site, the effect of which seems to be a lack of updating other than the comic and occasional sketch, but don't let that fool you. The lack of site activity just means that I'm doing a bunch of stuff behind the scenes. Really. The front page will get a bit nicer, I have a masthead coming soon, and I'll probably adjust a few things.
I'm also going to put up a new sketch or two this week as well. Maybe a color art or something if I have time. Those issue covers are tough to think up, I don't do them in advance, it's an on-the-fly sort of thing, so sometimes it can be hard.

Also I'd like to mention that Kly's inactivity lately has been because he just got a new job recently, and had to move. Because of this, he doesn't have any internet right now, and so no posts or anything. When he gets back though expect some upgrades that you won't see the direct results of, but will feel in other ways.
For instance, we're going to set up some sort of formatting tool for our posts. As it stands now, we just type into plain text boxes, and have to do all formatting ourselves with handwritten html tags and such. Not much fun. Expect nicer posts with things like images(ooh) when that's set up. Another side effect of this will also be my posting more regularly, and not just when I have a sketch or issue to put up.

Note: Love the new thingy at the top.
Looks so awesome.


Well, after being a ghost of the internet past for about 3 months, then being dead for a week, I've finally returned to the realms of the online living (as opposed to the online dead -- the on-dead).
What does this mean?
For you, joe average user who probably didn't even notice that I was missing, given that I don't post all that often anyway and I'm not all that important in the timestream-universe that is this website, probably absolutely nothing.
But for patron saint of Portals, Kris, my return to this side of the Digital River Styx makes a somewhat more significant difference.
For one, I can actually look at all those links he keeps sending me.
Sheesh.

My return also marks a new phase in my life, which also gives me a legitimate reason to not post such long messages and not post so often, which is my new phase in a different area of the world, where I actually have a job.
It's a big difference. Really, I mean it. The excitement of have a job plus my return from Virtual Valhalla makes this a noteworthy event for me.

Oh yeah, there was suposed to be a comic for New Year's...unfortunately I was so busy getting where I am now, I never actually put it up and well...I think the joke would be kind of old now, so I'll just put it up next year and you can see just how much I failed in my New Year's Resolution.
Except for speaking like a pirate. Arrrrrrrr.

My New Year's Resolution was to talk more like a pirate this year.
Since I don't really talk like a pirate during the year, I figure that the title alone should cover it.
Stay tuned next year when my resolution will be to talk some more like a pirate.

This holiday has been an interesting one, with this project behind and ahead lies the unknown, I haven't been thinking about relaxing at all. In fact, these days have been some of the most interesting and yet least festive. They were just days that were slightly more holiday-ish than normal. Except the people that I'm trying to contact...they all seem to have this whole "We don't work on Holidays" thing going on. It's making it very hard for me to find everything I need as I prepare to move into my new life.
Unlike normally, this new year actually represents a lot for me, most of it extremely exciting and frightening at the same time. I'm picturing myself not surviving.
Anyway, forget about my problems, it's time for some more cheer. Yaarrrrr!
I'll be keeping this in mind when the next National Speak Like a Pirate Day rolls around.
I'll spend a little time on a a New Year's comic. I'm not exactly in the making mood. More like destroying.
See you gents later.