Previous News09.05.2011 - Terrence Marks:Now, there's been a few things updated. First of all, the comics. Triple comic day. Second of all, the tag search defaults to alphabetical sort instead of by popularity. I'm sure I had a very good reason for doing it that way originally, but I forgot it so I'm doing things the sensible way now. Thirdly, NamirDeiter.net is in the midst of a major revamp. We've added a bunch of navigation features to the commentary - archive pages, storyline navigation, weekly view. You can now view the comments for a week of comics at a time. We're still getting things converted over and features added as time goes by, so expect more stuff this time next week.
Isabel and I went bowling a little while back*. It didn't look that hard to get good at bowling.
I will note that there are three phases with any activity. A thing looks difficult when you don't know much about it. You learn a little about it, and it looks easy. Then you find out about the inherent complexity and that most of the little random elements aren't so random at all, and find out that it is very difficult indeed.
I'm at the middle step when it comes to bowling. I realize that bowling is not inherently set up so that you get better at it. If you want to be a good batter, you go into a batting cage and hit a hundred balls in a row. You repeat the motions so that your body becomes used to it. If you bowl, you throw a ball, wait for the pins to get reset, wait for your ball to return, and throw a second ball. Then you wait until everyone else has had a turn and go again.
If you want to really get good at it, you'd throw a hundred balls in a row and get a better idea what works and what doesn't. So it occurs to me that a bowling alley would run a lot faster without pins than with them. Removing them would be trivial - you can measure the speed and angle the ball is coming at, and the rest is just physics.
But I realize that's not the point of bowling. Half the fun is hearing the ball hit the pins and seeing them fly. That's the whole satisfaction of it. It reminds me of why some writers stuck to manual typewriters long after electric ones were available. Or why others stuck to electric typewriters after word processors were available. Or why I'll still be using a physical keyboard once on-screen ones are the norm. If you take that away, it's hardly worth throwing the ball.
So my plan would involve becoming really good at bowling by making it not fun at all. At that point, I decided I was better off waiting for the ball return, even if it gave me time to come up with plans like this.
*: About a month; I need to write these things more often.
Favorite You Say it First story (Year 1, Division A)
A Date in the Park Kimberly's New Old Hat Job Hunters The New Swing of Things An Early Morning Jog
Votes so far: 148
Now, we're not getting as many votes in these polls as we did in other ones, but this is a much more involved question. Now, I will say that A Date In The Park is one of my favorite stories, and there's a reason why it made the cover of book 2. I can't say much more about it without it sounding like I'm bragging, but it's one of my favorites and I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks so.08.29.2011 - Terrence Marks:Favorite ND character (Division 3)And Blue wins by a landslide, with almost half the vote. This surprised me a bit. Last time we had a poll like this, Joy and Tipper were practically tied for first. Then again, there have been a lot of very good stories featuring Blue recently. Or maybe Joy and Isaac split the rabbit vote.
Blue Joy Isaac Daisy Roxanne Nanda Galvin Mina Dimitri Maurice The CD that came with the router? Did not include the user manual. It had a link to the website that had the user manual. This would have been very useful, except we needed the manual to set up Internet access. Seriously, Linksys. Why would you do that?
Are you on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+?
All of the above Facebook and Twitter Facebook and Google+ Google+ and Twitter Just Facebook Just Google+ Just Twitter None of the above
I was going to try to make a Venn diagram showing this. It looked horrible and didn't really contain much information. But out of the 326 of you who use social networks, 308 of you are on Facebook. We don't have any kind of social media strategy, but if we did, that's where we'd concentrate our resources.I'm on all three. You can see my Twitter account on the sidebar, when I have something interesting to say and time to say it and it's under 140 characters. That's a rare overlap these days.
I'm on Google+, but like everybody else, I have no idea what to do with it. I got on early, when people were begging for invitations; it was like Facebook, except nobody I knew was on it. And the whole point of Facebook is that it's just this website, except everybody you know is on it. I played the put-people-into-circles game for a bit, and that seems to be the funnest thing there.08.15.2011 - Terrence Marks:Happy Monday.
What have we been up to? Last week I took some time out for fun and went to see DEVO with my friends. The guys put on a good show. Decent mix of old and new material. I hear it's hard on a band when most of the crowd's there to hear your hit single. It must be harder when most of the people are there to hear the hit single from thirty years ago. But they still rock. I prefer guitar-based DEVO to keyboard-based DEVO; Are We Not Men is my favorite album of theirs. I enjoyed the concert, but I was delighted when they switched instruments halfway through.
As I mentioned last Sunday, we had some car issues and some Internet issues. Planned on going to work a bit early, maybe get some overtime. I turn the key. The engine chugs once or twice, then just clicks.
According to the Internet, it's either a battery issue, a starter issue, or an alternator issue. Now, I'll mention that last year, my car went through four starters in three months. This one has been working pretty well, but I really don't want to start that process over again.
So I open the hood and start cleaning the battery contacts. It's not the most likely fix, but it's one of the few useful things I can do with the tools available to me. Turns out the battery/alternator/starter wasn't the only thing to go. The hydraulic thing that holds the hood up when you open it doesn't work either. So I have to keep pushing it open every minute or so. I get the corrosion off the contacts just in time for me to leave for work, and nothing. The car still just clicks.
None of the local places rent cars on Sundays. I work until midnight, a long way away so there's nobody I can ask for a ride. I could try to find a mechanic that's open and get it towed there, but my car has over 200,000 miles on it - there's a limit to how much I'm willing to pay to keep the car going, and that limit is slowly getting lower and lower.
Fortunately, my father-in-law is a mechanic. He has a multimeter. It turns out that it's a battery problem, which is the cheapest and easiest of the alternatives. He also remembers that the battery is under warranty. I was able to get this fixed for under $30. And a day of work. But it's fixed.
That night, we also had out wireless router stop working three times in an hour, which is why comics were late. That story is less interesting. (It's not the first time it happened, so we went and bought a new router. The end.) It wasn't a good day to be an electrical device that we owned, though.
Favorite ND character (round 2)
Twix Snickers Cerise Mamma Dorpe Murphy Dorpe
Really? No love for Murphy Dorpe? Just one vote? I'd think the moustache alone would be good for, like, ten. Snickers won this one handily, with Twix and Cerise rounding out the Dorpe-Namir family poll.
08.10.2011 - Terrence Marks:We're going three days a week for Namir Deiter and You Say it First this month. That's all the comics I think we can reliably deliver to you. We've got a lot of little things going on, and I don't want to tell you we can go five days a week, then end up falling behind and scrambling to stay on top of things. I'd rather be able to give you comics on consistently and time, because you deserve that.08.04.2011 - Terrence Marks:First of all, comics are going to run late this week. Isabel has family obligations that require us to shift our schedule forward by about six hours. We apologize for not having comics done before this, but it's not something we can skip on or risk sleeping through.Secondly, you'll notice that several of the You Say it First arcs have had a Recommended Reading tag. There hasn't been one on the recent storylines because there's an awful lot of it. The stories are meant to stand on their own. I hope they do, but it's a moderately complex situation and I think that if you understand more, you'll enjoy it more. If you want to catch up on the backstory:
A lot of what we're seeing here goes back to The Troublesome Troubles of Ms. Taylor.
Kimberly's Grandfather and the history of Lemon Technology were mentioned in The New Guy, The Letter, and What Happened?.
Patrick and Sofia's relationship was a primary focus of The Dance. and The Roommate, and a large plot point in Lateral Transfer.
Patrick's interactions with Brisbane, Kimberly, (and Richard and Sinclair) are many, but the more notable and recent ones include Employee of the Year, Lateral Transfer, and Port Problems.
If you're just getting in, this chain of events (and all the ones in the Troubled Times stories) were set in motion by The Troublesome Troubles of Patrick Windsor.
I'm not sure that's everything, but I believe it's a good start.08.02.2011 - Terrence Marks:Favorite ND Character (Division 1)
Tipper Charles Gabby Joan
Votes so far: 453
We saw Charles and Gabby in a dead heat, with Joan not far behind. Tipper wins with not only a majority but a plurality. I'm not surprised. I almost feel bad about putting people up against Tipper. Almost.