Posts Tagged ‘vacation’
4 items.
Yowza!
What a life. I spent Saturday floating down the lazy Apple River in Wisconsin. It was very cool. I was having visions of Apocalyse Now. With nine inner tubes lashed together, eight of us and a cooler drifted down the river, forced to accept what was to come. There was excitement at the beginning, when one of our tubes sank slowly into the shallows. We had to stop and reconfigure our layout, demoting that particular tube to cooler duty. Even a slow river is hard to stand up in, especially when the rocks below are round and slippery. We discovered this when some of the twine broke and split us into two groups. One group drifted near the shore while the group I was in moved on down the river until we were finally able to stop ourselves.
As we drifted in and out of different parties, I half expected Robert Duvall to come out to the water and demand that we give his surf board back.
It was a fun experience that I wouldn’t mind repeating.
Last night, I watched Road to Perdition with my sweetie. You can’t beat a good gangster film. It was very good, if not somewhat predictable.
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Holy crap!
I had so much big news to share about the book and the sponsors, I totally forgot to tell you guys that I am in dire need of guest comics!
Remember how I was talking about Cami using the computer for her Accounting final? Well, that’s because on May 14, she’s graduating with her Masters degree in Public Administration!
As part of that celebration, Cami and I are spending what little money we had left over from the last two years and going to Europe with it. We’ve both been to Europe on our own, but this will be the first time we’ve gone together. From May 18 to May 31, we’re going to Barcelona, Nice and Rome. It’s a dream come true and it significantly marks one chapter of our lives ending while turning the page on a new chapter.
As such, since we’ll be away for so long, I really need someone to help me mind the store. In other words, I need guest strips.
If you’re interested in contributing, I think it would be really worth your while. I have some ad purchase lined up with some pretty big web comics that is going to drive a lot of traffic to this end of the internet. So I’m sure you’ll get a little extra exposure from that since I plan on crediting everyone accordingly.
Please send me your guest strips as soon as possible to theaterhopper@hotmail.com
Thanks in advance for your help!
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I just wanted to say something really quickly about the book pre-orders before I talk about today’s guest strip.
Tomorrow Cami and I are going on vacation. It’s a long one. We won’t be back until May 30. When we get back, we have less than two weeks to really drive home pre-orders to meet the minimum requirement we need to be able to pay the printer. The deadline in June 11.
You guys were really great about placing your orders last week when I mentioned the deadline, so I want to mention it again. I’ve also posted a new graphic to the right of the comic that outlines EXACTLY what we need to make this a success.
If you’re thinking about buying the book, please do so now. How awesome would it be if Cami and I came back from vacation and found 225 pre-orders in my mailbox? That would be pretty flipping sweet!
So, once again, I stress that I need your help. You know the reasons why. Time is running out.
For those of you who have already placed your orders, you guys are awesome and I really appreciate your support. The time is drawing near. It won’t be long now until you get your copy delivered to your hot little hands!
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First things first. Hello, and Happy New Year!
As you can see, I’ve redesigned the site. This is something I’ve promised for a long time and have been working on even longer. Since October of 2007, if you can believe it. This thing has gone through so many revisions and so many different ups and downs, I can’t tell you how relieved I am to finally bring it to you.
The new site is being powered by WordPress and Tyler Martin’s excellent ComicPress content management system. Tyler was of great personal help to me putting the finishing touches on the site. He helped me not only to customize the archive, but with some of the CSS and page layout as well. He was a very patient teacher and a great help. If you have a webcomic, you NEED WordPress and you NEED ComicPress running things behind the scenes.
Of course, there were others who helped me along the way. I cannot understate the value that my good friend Brian Arnold brought to the project. Brian is a good friend of the site and has actually being hosting Theater Hopper for years. Not only that, but he’s been my go-to guy when things go kerflooey. He has an amazing talent for scripting and is always willing to help. I can’t tell you how many jams this guy has pulled me out of, but in regard to this latest revision, he was INVALUABLE in helping to transfer over 1,000 pages of content from the old database into WordPress. I can’t tell you how much time that saved and I am truly grateful.
Words of thanks also have to go out to Steve Wallace, who was an early contributor to the project. Steve helped me get my head around WordPress and helped me piece together a few layouts.
And last but not least, I have to once again thank David Buist. Dave put together the original PHP database that managed Theater Hopper for years and years practically from scratch. It was a great system, but I would always find a way to break it. He was always very patient and helpful when I sent panicked e-mails to him in the dead of the night. I have to thank him for his contribution or else Theater Hopper would have never lasted this long — and that’s the truth.
I’m taking special care to give a shout-out to all of these guys because this redesign was not an easy process for me. It forced me to adopt some new technologies that I didn’t completely understand and these guys patiently showed me the way. The best I could do was come up with the look and feel. These guys helped make it fly. This change would not have been a success without them. Thank you, guys.
Now, on to business.
There are a lot of big changes all around the site, but I don’t want to overwhelm you with too much at one time. I encourage you to look around. Hopefully you’ll notice that there aren’t as many dead links in the navigation like there was before!
Most prominently, I’ve brought back the Theater Hopper THorum. So, if you’re looking for a place to hang out and talk to other fans of the comic about movies or whatever, it’s open for business!
I’m moderating the board very heavily at the moment because the last THorum was overrun by spammers. I’m approving everyone individually right now, so it might take some time before you can participate. But I’m very much interested in cultivating a community aroud Theater Hopper and plan on working hard to make the THorum the kind of place that I want to hang out as well. So once you’re in the door, you’re going to like it a lot. I promise.
In the meantime, the second big addition are comments under every blog post. If the THorum sounds like too much of an investment, this is your opportunity to leave your thoughts and contribute to the discussion in a different way!
Comment areas can sometimes be dodgy and I’ve had some contemporaries talk me out of including them. But I plan on heavily moderating these as well. If things get hairy, I’ll take care of it. But, for now, I’m interested in them as an avenue for instant feedback to the strip, the site or whatever.
So what do you say we test them out? What do you think of the new site? Do you see any room for improvement? Some easy fixes I could make? What do you like about it? Let me know in the comments below and thanks for visiting!
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