Thursday, January 29, 2009

gripe gripe whine whine complain

Alas, I have spent a goodly portion of my precious free time these last couple weeks troubleshooting my computer (trying to fix the OS, installing a new version of the OS, trying to fix the new OS) before whittling it down to a hard drive issue. I have not dealt with many hard drive failures in my day (knock wood), which may have affected my slowness in figuring out the problem. Also, Linux has some really powerful diagnostic tools that give elaborate results that I have no clue how to interpret. But the experts at the Ubuntu-Eee boards have spoken: send it back to Asus and get it fixed. (I am so not used to having that option.)

So that's why, even though I drew my January 3 on the 3rd comics (admittedly a couple weeks late), I still have not posted them. Or blogged, or commented on your blog, or shared Google Reader posts. I have been over here in the corner, gnashing my teeth and feeling sorry for myself.

In related news, February 3rd is on the horizon. While gazing toward its noble silhouette, you may have overlooked February 1st, which is Hourly Comic Day. On Hourly Comic Day, everybody draws one (1) autobiographical comic for every hour they're awake. This inspires some really streamlined comicking; the veterans tend to whittle it down to a couple of frames with minimal dialogue, and make the most of mundanity. But still, I won't kid you: it's a lot of work. It really puts the whole 3 on the 3rd challenge into perspective.

Which is why I'm doing the Hourly Comic thing again this year. It's on a Sunday, so there will be no comics-on-the-sly at work. There will be some churchgoin' and some special out-of-town guests visitin', and some other things that will be a surprise to me too!

If you think I'm crazy for doing this, get a load of John Campbell, who does Hourly Comics all January long, as he has for years. Other people try this, but they mostly do not succeed. Here is my favorite attempt.

(I read a lot of John's hourlies before I figured out that his girlfriend (cleverly aliased as "Kate") is Kate Beaton who draws history comics! It makes me inexplicably happy to discover that one of my favorite obscure comic artists is dating another of my favorite obscure comic artists, even if they do live in different countries. Here are a couple portraits Kate did of the two of them last year. The second one is especially lovely.)

I think I accumulated a few more things to blog about over the course of this month, but I can't remember them anymore, so I'll just belatedly wish you a happy Year of the Ox and sign off.

4 comments:

evannichols said...

Hi! Good to see you post, but sorry to hear of the computer problems. :-(

Good luck with the Hourly Comic Day! It is a lot of work. I will be devoting much of the weekend to comics, but not the hourly sort. (That huge stock of comics I was going to prepare over the holidays didn't exactly manifest.) But I look forward to seeing your comics!

ah said...

On the 3rd you just may be too bizzzy having fun!

upsidedown cat said...

aughhh....! hourly comics... hmmmmmmmmmmmmm...i'll have to think about that...

The Browns said...

5:47pm
a marvelous minute