Geek Tragedy Blog Archives

	April '08
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29 / APR / 08 - 0813 CST : In recovery... Hey folks. After the 14 hour drive back from the Calgary Comic Expo I decided to lay down for a "nap" before starting in on the strip updates. It's now nine hours later and I just woke up a few minutes ago, so I'm thinking my body was trying to tell me that it needed a little bit more than a few hours sleep to keep going at this point. Anyway, I'm now wide away (well, maybe *wide* awake is a bit of an overstatement) and ready to tackle some more work, so keep a look out for a new GT² and an update to the main strip area later in the day. As for the con itself, it was amazing! Without a doubt the best one I've done so far. Met some great people, saw some incredible art, and took a whole whack of pictures. I've already set plans in motion to have my booth babes Travis and Steve come over on Friday and record the con report, and I'll be posting some pics, and dropping some names and links throughout the week and weekend. Oh, and on Saturday I plan to re-record the long awaited Megacon con report, but this time with the help of the lovely Miss Grace. This should've been done and posted ages ago, but unfortunately my first attempt to do it using the pitiful equipment I had available to me at the time didn't work out quite as well as I had hoped. And no matter how much I touched up the audio and remixed it certain parts of it still sounded just awful, so I decided it was best to start over from scratch. Alrighty guys, time for me to get my ass up and get to work! Later, -Ed **** 24 / APR / 08 - 0845 CST : The frozen road to Cow Town... Hey folks. Can't talk long as I'll be heading out to Calgary today for the Comic Expo and I'm still trying to throw all the stuff I need together to get it all ready for the trek. However I figured I should at least swing on by and check in before I go. Now for t Anyway, regardless of the weather I'm sure we'll all get there safe and sound with plenty of time to spare. However, while I'm out of town I might not be able to write a whole lot here till after I get back, and the strip updates for Friday and Monday might not be posted till much latter on in the evening those days. So please excuse the possible tardiness. Alrighty! Time to get back to packing! Have a great weekend everyone and hopefully I'll see a few of you out at the con! Later, -Ed ** 21 / APR / 08 - 0845 CST : Hello strangers... Hey folks. Y'know, when I went to go write this I was kinda surprised to see that it's been six days since I checked in with you guys. Of course the strips themselves have been updated on schedule during that time, but still! Six days is waaay too long to wait between news posts. In fact, unless I'm mistaken, I think that's the longest pause I've had since the site started (or damn close to it). All I can say is that I've been hauling ass in an effort to get all my site / colouring / art obligations done before I head off to Calgary for the Comic Expo this coming weekend, and I totally lost track of time. And while this has meant giving up a lot of what little free time I had to spend a lot of my "free time" in front of a computer for the past week / week-and-a-half, I'm hoping that it'll all pay off in the end. Meaning, I'd for once like to see how it feels to get home from a con and not have a whole pile of work waiting for me that needs to be done right away. Also, if everything goes as planned this'll mean that I won't have to substitute any of the regular strips with filler art during my trip like I normally do. Keep in mind though that the world of "everything goes as planned" is a place that I rarely get to visit. Which means there could very well still be filler on the way, but let's all hope for the best! Now, regarding today's GT². There's not much to say really, other than the fact that I ~~am dying~~ (<--edited out due to obscene puniness) can't wait to see Romero's Diary of the Dead when it comes out! And since that subject has been on my mind so much lately I figured I might as well give it some strip time. The thing is though, I've done a few strip with zombies already, so I kinda wanted to try and shy away from putting any of the walking dead in this one too. So I figure that the best way to go about that was to have the zombie master himself make an appearance. As well, drawing real life folks all cartooned up and yet still accurate enough to be recognizable is something I definitely want to work on as an artist, so I figured this would be good practice. And while I admit that it may not be perfect, I think I did an fairly okay job with good ol' George there if I do say so myself. Alrighty guys! That's it for me for now. I'll see y'all tomorrow! Later, -Ed ** 15 / APR / 08 - 1238 CST : Touch-ups come tomorrow... Hey folks. I'm still getting used to the new wider / shorter strip style, so I forgot to scale back the font size I normally use. Unfortunately I've got some other work I need to get to first, so I'll try to fix that up tomorrow. However, for those of you who are visually impaired, consider today's strip my special gift to you. Later, -Ed ** 14 / APR / 08 - 1223 CST : I still O.U... Hey folks. I know I still owe y'all a decent sized news post, but unfortuantely I'm feeling a little under the weather right now, so I'm just going to make this brief. Today's GT² is riffing off of this news story about a group of teenage girls who filmed themselves beating someone unconscious, and then posted it on YouTube. I think what bothers me most about this story (aside from the violence itself) is that fact that there were something like seven people involved in this attack. That means seven chances that someone was going to stop and say "Gee, y'know what? Maybe this isn't such a good idea" and yet no one did. Listen people, if any of you out there are stupid enough to do something like this, all I ask is that you have at least one friend in six who's at the very least smart enough to maybe advise you against this type of activity. I mean, I'm not saying you need to buddy up with Einstein, just pal around with one single person who isn't a total fucking idiot. Okay, that's it for me guys. Later, -Ed PS: In case you're wondering, no, I haven't watched the video. Nor do I ever plan to, but if you want to see it you can check it out here. ** 11 / APR / 08 - 2009 CST : I.O.U... One news post (which I'll try to get done tomorrow). Now, I owe myself one good night's / day's sleep. Later, -Ed ** 10 / APR / 08 - 1339 CST : Block buster... Hey folks. In truth, I didn't hammer out the idea for today's GT²** while in the brutal clutches of that evil beast known as "writer's block" (the strip took me till now to post because I took a little nap when I got home from work). In fact I came up with this one a looong time ago. Pretty much the second after I first wrote the "Pain Puppet" into the strip oh so many moons ago. The only reason I haven't used this idea till now is that I prefer to let these sorts of things sit for a bit before I start up a reoccurring gag, and so I never felt the time was quite right yet...till now. Alrighty! I better go get some more work done. Oh, one more thing before I head off though. Back near the end of March I mentioned that I'll most likely be switching back to smaller strips in the near future. Well the future arrives tomorrow folks! However, I'm not going to get into the my reasons for doing so right now, but I'll be sure to share my thoughts behind the change once the strip is up on Friday. Later, -Ed **** 07 / APR / 08 - 0900 CST : A joke unto itself... Hey folks. There's nothing really to say about today's GT² that hasn't already been said within the strip, so I'm just going to move right along. Bragging rights... First off, I'd like to mention that I'm particularly pleased with how the colours turned out for today's Evil Inc strip. In fact, the current storyline that Brad has on tap for today is hands down my favourite one that I've had the pleasure to work on to date. Also, you might consider showing Brad some love, and order a copy of his latest book. I have copies of the first two, and let me tell you, Brad really puts a lot of work into his annual reports. He does an amazing job of taking his strips and reformatting them into a very cool looking graphic novel. So if you haven't picked one up before, you may want to head on over there and buy one (or both) of his previous books as well. Talk hard or hard talk... So over the weekend I was able to do most of the audio editing for the Megcon con report, and have it set up so that people listening to it can follow along with the sound of my silky smooth voice as they scroll through the pics I took while I was out there. And let me tell you, to call that whole editing process a "learning experience", would be a ridiculous understatement! Actually the cutting, pasting and inserting parts of the editing were surprisingly easy (at this point I can practically spot all the "uhh" and "ums" that need to be cut before just by looking at a wave file). It's all the mixing, tweaking, normalizing and adjusting that's the real bitch. Granted my decision not to wait to do the recording till I had a proper microphone probably has a lot to do with why there was so much need to fuss with the sound. So when you look at that way, I've really got no one to blame but myself. Thankfully though, I'm currently awaiting some equipment I ordered last week to show up at my doorstep anytime now. Which hopefully means that all future recordings will require a lot less effort during post-production. As for the report I'm presently working on, I've listened to the full mp3 from beginning to end, and with the exception of three small sections where the audio is kinda botched, it's sounding not too bad (for a first attempt at a recording at least). And yes, I know I said it would be posted last week, but let's face it; The con was almost a month ago, so at this point it's not like the report itself is breaking news. Besides, the longer I take (hopefully) the less crappy it'll sound, right? Alrighty folks, that's it for me for now. I'll see y'all tomorrow when I post the final part of The Noname Clause (yes, there actually is an end). Later, -Ed ** 03 / APR / 08 - 0959 CST : Stranger than fiction... Hey folks. Since April 1st was April Fool's Day, I generally looked upon anything I found on the internet that day as being what the French might call, "Le Bullshit." Which is why, at first, I naturally assumed that this article I read over at Engadget was some kind of joke. Surprisingly though, it's all too true. Now for those of you who aren't in the clicking mood, let me give you a brief rundown of what it says; It seems that Deutsche Telekom, the owners of T-Mobile, delivered a letter to Engadget requesting that they stop using the colour magenta on their EngadgetMobile site. The reason being that good old colour #ed008c has in some way been trademarked by them and they feel that (despite the fact that EngadgetMobile is a news site which no sane person could ever mistake for a cell phone shilling mega power) the use of this colour outside of the T-Mobile universe may "confuse" people. Now this whole crazy story has really got me thinking. So while I've got y'all here, please allow me to share some of these thoughts with you. 1) T-Mobile shouldn't really worry too much about this flagrant misuse of colour confusing people who are looking on the internet for cell phones, as anyone who would find themselves in such a state due to a freakin' colour most likely lacks the intelligence to work a web browser to begin with. 2) Never in my life did I ever think that someone would go to such lengths to lay claim to such a hideous colour. And last but not least, 3) I should really send a letter to T-Mobile asking them to refrain from using a colour code that has my name in it, as it may confuse people trying to find my site, and inadvertently cause folks to look to their company to provide them with dick jokes four days a week instead of Geek Tragedy. Alrighty, that's it for me. Tune in again tomorrow when I try to prove to the world that I can in fact produce more than just a black and white strip once and a while! Later, -Ed ** 02 / APR / 08 - 0932 CST : We are experiencing slower than normal response time... Hey folks. I've had my nose buried pretty deeply into my computer for the past few days, so I haven't been as quick to get back to people's e-mails I would like. So I just wanted to swing on by quickly and apologize, let y'all know that I'm not ignoring you, and assure you folks that I'll catch up with you by the end of the week! Alrighty, back to work! See you guys tomorrow when I post the next GT². Later, -Ed ****