I apologize for the lack of updates for this and next week. Julia and I are visiting our good friends in Atlanta and then spending Thanksgiving with family in Florida.
I promise to continue with our regularly scheduled web comics family fun on December 1. Happy holidays all y'all!
Friday, November 21, 2008
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Hooray for America!
America made the right choice yesterday, and we made a definitive statement with a landslide victory for the good guys. I couldn't be more proud of our country and with the rising level of intelligence and awareness of today's voter. I wrote a post in our other blog detailing what Julia and I did on election night. It was a celebration and a night to remember.
I am not sure if Obama's presidency will make "Joe the Cartoonist" a priority in his first hundred days, but maybe once he solves our country's staggering deficit, two wars, recession, and housing crisis, he could turn some of his attention to America's struggling working cartoonists ;).
I am not sure if Obama's presidency will make "Joe the Cartoonist" a priority in his first hundred days, but maybe once he solves our country's staggering deficit, two wars, recession, and housing crisis, he could turn some of his attention to America's struggling working cartoonists ;).
Monday, October 20, 2008
Slight Delay
I just bought a new laptop which is a huge improvement over my old cartooning machine. Unfortunately I have slacked a bit in setting it up to do all the things I need to create this comic (damn you, fantasy football!). I expect to have a new comic up early this week.
Incidentally, if you live in Colorado and want a good reference on how to vote on the staggering number of constitutional amendments on this year's ballot, I posted a blog that links to a good (progressive) source of information. Don't forget to vote in this most important election!
Incidentally, if you live in Colorado and want a good reference on how to vote on the staggering number of constitutional amendments on this year's ballot, I posted a blog that links to a good (progressive) source of information. Don't forget to vote in this most important election!
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Change, For Better or For Worse
No, that's not a reference to Lynn Johnston's brilliant comic, but rather a mundane announcement regarding a software change to this site. All the comic pages used to be served dynamically, using Python CGI. Under the hood, this involved a fair amount of processing, including XML parsing of the ComicsML data for each cartoon. I have rewritten the site to generate static HTML pages for each comic - this only affects you, the reader, if you have previously linked to any of the archived comic pages. If you have linked to a comic image, not a page, this will not affect anything.
I am generally against the practice of changing URLs, but I was always bothered by the limited scalability of my dynamic pages - especially since even the index page was generated dynamically (and my web host's machine isn't exactly a powerhouse). So I decided to bite the bullet and take the plunge. For the one or two people this may inconvenience (it's likely that no more than that many people actually read this comic), I offer my sincere apologies.
I am generally against the practice of changing URLs, but I was always bothered by the limited scalability of my dynamic pages - especially since even the index page was generated dynamically (and my web host's machine isn't exactly a powerhouse). So I decided to bite the bullet and take the plunge. For the one or two people this may inconvenience (it's likely that no more than that many people actually read this comic), I offer my sincere apologies.
Friday, July 04, 2008
Writing the Not-So-Great American Novel, Part 2
Happy Fourth of July! It is a day to remember and appreciate the freedom we enjoy in this great country, such as the freedom I have to produce my humble educational comic strip.
My birthday has come and gone, and I have to report that I have not completed my goal of creating the first draft of a novel. I have however breached the 10,000 word mark, which is further than I've ever gone before, and I fully intend to continue this endeavor.
Lessons learned so far: I have found that it is really easy to lose motivation. This is probably the worst enemy of completing the 50,000 word challenge. After a few days of frenzied writing, my day-to-day life catches up to me: going out with friends; work projects; social obligations; Battlestar Galactica; etc. I found myself putting off writing one day, then two days, then three days at a time. After a while my head was no longer in my book, and that is when my inner editor pounced with a litany of doubts and fears: my plot is dumb; my characters are flat; I don't know enough about my subject matters... why bother continuing?
I found the best way to combat this creeping despair is just to force yourself to write at least a sentence each day, even if you don't feel like it. No matter how tired or uninspired you feel, you can write a sentence. This forces you to keep your head in the story. You end up thinking about the plot, settings, and characters at least a little bit each day, and you avoid feelings of futility by knowing you can quit after one sentence.
This calls to mind a great blog post I read about the power of daily routine. Think about it: if you wrote just one sentence per day since that moment when you first thought, "I could write a book," you probably could have written a book by now (probably not a good one, but hey).
My birthday has come and gone, and I have to report that I have not completed my goal of creating the first draft of a novel. I have however breached the 10,000 word mark, which is further than I've ever gone before, and I fully intend to continue this endeavor.
Lessons learned so far: I have found that it is really easy to lose motivation. This is probably the worst enemy of completing the 50,000 word challenge. After a few days of frenzied writing, my day-to-day life catches up to me: going out with friends; work projects; social obligations; Battlestar Galactica; etc. I found myself putting off writing one day, then two days, then three days at a time. After a while my head was no longer in my book, and that is when my inner editor pounced with a litany of doubts and fears: my plot is dumb; my characters are flat; I don't know enough about my subject matters... why bother continuing?
I found the best way to combat this creeping despair is just to force yourself to write at least a sentence each day, even if you don't feel like it. No matter how tired or uninspired you feel, you can write a sentence. This forces you to keep your head in the story. You end up thinking about the plot, settings, and characters at least a little bit each day, and you avoid feelings of futility by knowing you can quit after one sentence.
This calls to mind a great blog post I read about the power of daily routine. Think about it: if you wrote just one sentence per day since that moment when you first thought, "I could write a book," you probably could have written a book by now (probably not a good one, but hey).
Monday, May 26, 2008
Vacation Procrastination
I probably won't be able to get a comic out on the usual Monday date this week. Julia and I decided to take a vacation to New Mexico for Memorial Day weekend, which precluded my comic productivity. Hopefully I'll have something ready by early this week.
New Mexico, by the way, is beautiful. The weather is sunny and dry, and all the buildings look like adobe huts and forts. We had some great micro brewed beer in Santa Fe, and we learned a bit about the dinosaurs that roamed the New Mexico flood plains. Go New Mexico!
New Mexico, by the way, is beautiful. The weather is sunny and dry, and all the buildings look like adobe huts and forts. We had some great micro brewed beer in Santa Fe, and we learned a bit about the dinosaurs that roamed the New Mexico flood plains. Go New Mexico!
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Writing the Not-So-Great American Novel
I will finally take the plunge. I intend to write a novel by my birthday, June 30.
This is something I've always wanted to do, but for various reasons, I could never get very far. The task is simply daunting, and when I read good literature, I despair at the chasm in ability between myself and say, a Faulkner or a Nabokov.
But then I started thinking about National Novel Writing Month, and its simple tenet that you just have to sit down and write, and who cares about quality - it's all about quantity! I decided that the only way that I will accomplish my goal is to adopt a deadline and keep writing each day until the job is done.
Armed with a copy of SuperNotecard (which I highly recommend for fiction writing) and NaNoWriMo founder Chris Baty's motivational book, No Plot? No Problem!, I am setting out to create the mediocre American novel. Truly, I have found out two things about myself in the last couple days:
1. I am a very bad writer. I mean, bad.
2. The above doesn't matter, because I know I can do this thing. If I force myself to turn off my "inner editor" I can churn out the dreck, and it's actually pretty fun.
My friend Todd got excited about the idea too and decided he wanted to give this novel writing thing a try. In order to keep us motivated I made a mailing list for us to share advice and encouragement. If any of you want to join us in our quest, please contact me and I'll add you to the mailing list. Let's write!
This is something I've always wanted to do, but for various reasons, I could never get very far. The task is simply daunting, and when I read good literature, I despair at the chasm in ability between myself and say, a Faulkner or a Nabokov.
But then I started thinking about National Novel Writing Month, and its simple tenet that you just have to sit down and write, and who cares about quality - it's all about quantity! I decided that the only way that I will accomplish my goal is to adopt a deadline and keep writing each day until the job is done.
Armed with a copy of SuperNotecard (which I highly recommend for fiction writing) and NaNoWriMo founder Chris Baty's motivational book, No Plot? No Problem!, I am setting out to create the mediocre American novel. Truly, I have found out two things about myself in the last couple days:
1. I am a very bad writer. I mean, bad.
2. The above doesn't matter, because I know I can do this thing. If I force myself to turn off my "inner editor" I can churn out the dreck, and it's actually pretty fun.
My friend Todd got excited about the idea too and decided he wanted to give this novel writing thing a try. In order to keep us motivated I made a mailing list for us to share advice and encouragement. If any of you want to join us in our quest, please contact me and I'll add you to the mailing list. Let's write!
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