01.03.2010 - Terrence Marks:

The first two entries mostly concern various changes of mood and acceptance of the past. The third, finally, touches on stuff that actually happened. If you read our comics, you will find this entirely appropriate. Most of our big stories were more internal than external.

So, what happened in comics?

Tipper and Charles finished getting married. Falco, Isaac, Cedric, and Joy's relationships went from less complicated, to more complicated and appear to have stabilized, at least for the moment. Falco and Cedric moved to Durri, then moved in with Taimoor and Dahlia. Joan started going out with Gabby, moved in with Tipper and Charles, and
did some remodeling. Isaac met Joy's family, and spent some time with his niece

You Say it First has added Caleb's manager, Michelle Hickman (note to self: put her last name in the comic some time) and Bram (note to self: give him a last name). Sofia and Patrick broke up. Dan and Lola seem to have hit it off. At least one of the lounge guys is good at something. Brisbane and Kimberly finally redecorated their apartment. And Brisbane and Kimberly have a better understanding of their pasts.

And there have been quite a few Spare Parts comics over at NamirDeiter.net. Todd and Shandra's relationship appears to have made significant progress.

We'll have an offsite backup within a week or two (30 DVDs! And it'd be more if we still had the high-quality files for the first few years of ND and Unlike Minerva).

There were some issues with NamirDeiter.net last night; everybody had to log back in. This was because I set the cookies to expire on January 1, 2010. Back when I designed it, this seemed far enough in the future that I'd never have to worry about it. Or far enough in the future that I'd be able to install a more elegant fix before the deadline hit. My point is that the indefinite future became the definite future.

We've got a lot planned for the next year. Including finally updating the cast page and FAQ in You Say it First, finishing up the FBAORPG arc over at NamirDeiter.net. I've got ideas for two large arcs and one medium one, once the Singles Cruise reaches port. We're going to take vacations; we're still discussing the details, but expect us to take a week off in some form. We're going to look into reprinting our old books, opening the store, and maybe getting some new books made. Then there's the secret plans. And I'm going to play through Super Mario: RPG.

Happy New Year

12.30.2009 - Terrence Marks:

Santa Blue's last heist has concluded. Enjoy Brisbane's Quest.

12.27.2009 - Terrence Marks:

Our year in review, part 2

Kevin & Kell is runs in color in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Now, I don't claim any credit for this. That goes to Bill Holbrook, the paper's editors, and an Internet campaign. When you contribute to a comic in some way, seeing it in print is awesome. The Sunday comics look amazing in print, and I'm glad to be a small part of the process. (The dailies look ok; there's always a 1mm offset between where the colors are and where they're supposed to go; it's a limitation of the technology).

Secondly, we started doing promotions this year. Santa Blue giving you stolen library books, letting everyone back in for December, the $4/month subscription we had going for the fourth anniversary of NamirDeiter.net. I enjoyed it. I appreciate the turnout and thank everyone who helps support the comics.

We had gotten away from that kind of thing, I think around when we stopped going to conventions. If you look back at my old news (which you can't, easily, because they're scattered throughout a large number of sites [to do: put all my news-updatey things in one place]), you'll see that we've been to a few cons but didn't have too much fun at most of them. A few years ago, we decided that it wasn't them, it was us. Since then we've been fairly quiet online, putting out the comic and letting it speak for itself. I think we're going to take a more active role in promoting the comic next year.

And to follow up with the last Year in Review post, the count in 2008 was 172 - 153, with Isabel in the lead by about 19 (and I say "about" because there are enough times when one of us contributes strips, punchlines, or ideas to the other's stories that there's a margin of error here). In 2007, it looks like around a 2:1 ratio; I'm not sure about all the arcs (there were a lot of 1-2 week stories that year). I know that Some Day, and The New Guy are mine, and there are a few that neither of us are sure about. I think that we wrote A Good Question together, which is fitting since it's the engagement story. Normally, I'd say that it was because I was working on Spare Parts, except that's not much of an excuse. Firstly, Isabel was working on Namir Deiter, herself. Secondly, she wrote more Spare Parts than I did that year, too. 2006 was 145 of mine to - 123 of hers if I'm counting right (with 9 comics that are 50/50 collaborations). But then, I think she wrote all of Spare Parts that year. And, as always, all of Namir Deiter. And most-all of the bonus content on NamirDeiter.net. Now, this is all just trivia to most of you. I'm not asking anyone to pick out what I wrote or what Isabel wrote. But to me, it's an important reminder that I'm (usually) an equal contributor. I mean, Isabel is one of the hardest working women in webcomics. She's not easy to keep up with.

12.25.2009 - Terrence Marks:

Merry Christmas! Santa Blue stole you Better than Valentine's Day last week. Today she stole Elemental Story, part 1 which was a surprise to all of us here. This Sunday she'll pull off her last heist of the year - Brisbane's Quest. It's a cute wordless story about Brisbane, Kimberly, and Valentine's Day.

12.19.2009 - Terrence Marks:

Two technical questions, if someone can lend a hand:

I'd like to create Facebook and/or Myspace pages for our comics. I'm strictly a web 1.0 kind of guy. I code the sites in a text editor. I'm still kind of suspicious of inline frames.

I don't really know what I can do with these sites. What kind of awesome stuff would you, the readers, like to see there? At the moment, I don't see what the fuss is about since we have our own website. Then again, I didn't see what the fuss was about CDs until I noticed that none of the albums I liked were coming out on vinyl anymore.

So, what can I do with this fancy new media that's a better use of my time than updating You Say it First's cast page, or replying to your email, or (more likely) watching MST3K?

Secondly - and this is the more difficult one - I've got a hard drive that I need data recovered from. The drive is detected, but fails just about any test I can throw at it. I can't get a file listing off of it; at the moment, it's showing as a 1GB recovery partition (which is correct, and gets a file listing), 32GB raw FAT32 partition and 127GB of unpartitioned space (which is incorrect and should probably be one 159GB NTFS partition).I want to repartition it so that the two larger bits are together. I want to do this without losing the data. I've tried a few linux bootable drive recovery utilities, and have gotten far enough to realize that they can be dangerous if you're not sure what you're doing. I'm not sure what I'm doing. Suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

12.18.2009 - Terrence Marks:

We wound up spending the day orchestrating a party for our five-year-old nephew. We had a great time. He was kind of grumpy, though. Anyhow, between that and errands it's late. Over on You Say it First, my blog has been updated if you care to read that.

12.17.2009 - Terrence Marks:

Our year in review, part 1

Firstly, we've both been doing the online comic thing for ten years now, both together and separately. Mostly together, and I'm glad for that. I've been thinking a lot lately about how many of the cartoonists I knew back then are still doing it and how many of them aren't. I'm glad we're on the "still doing it" side of the equation.

Secondly, it looks like I'm writing exactly half of You Say it First this year. To date, Isabel wrote 161 comics, and I've got 148. This story will go on for at least two more weeks (we're at about 4 PM on the second day of a three-day cruise), which will put us at 161-162. No, this doesn't mean that I win. Isabel also wrote every single Namir Deiter and a majority of the bonus content at NamirDeiter.net.

(This is a count by story arc; I wrote a few comics in Isabel's stories, and she wrote a few in mine. If we were to go comic-by-comic, I figure it'd mostly balance out)

I'm proud of this - my first guess was that I wrote a third of the comics. I haven't counted up previous years and this may be a high point for me with two big stories, Minervacon/Ten Minutes and Singles Cruise, and I'm proud of both of them. I was hoping that Professor Marvello would have shown up at the convention, but I didn't have any lines for him besides "My oriental magic is powerful,I say! Powerful!".

Thirdly, 2009 saw the rehabilitation of Unlike Minerva and commentary on almost the entire run. Some of it, I genuinely had nothing to say about. I know I'm not the only person who did commentary on their series, and am amazed that others haven't run out of things to say. It was different than I remembered it. Better in certain places than I remembered it, and worse in others. (Or, rather, some of the parts I expected to be horrible were bad-but-fun, some of the parts I had been proud of, I do not regard fondly upon rereading). Anyhow, I like to think that I learned from it, both doing the comic and re-reading it.