Previous News10.03.2011 - Terrence Marks:So, what happened? It wasn't a good weekend for working on comics.Firstly, it would've been our niece's 18th birthday. She died nearly three years ago. Isabel spent most of the day with her family.
Secondly, my cousin died this weekend. We weren't close; she lived on the other side of the country and I'm not going to tell you that we had a lot in common. We hadn't talked in years. But she was family, and she was about my age.
So it wasn't a good weekend for working on comics. Turned out to be a good weekend to sit around and contemplate one's own mortality.
09.26.2011 - Terrence Marks:Sorry about the delays. Isabel was feeling bad on Friday and her condition was quickly downgraded to stomach flu. She's feeling a bit better, but we had an unpleasant weekend. The less said about that the better. So we'll get things colored probably in time for Wednesday's update, and we appreciate your patience.09.19.2011 - Terrence Marks:Our NamirDeiter.net Automatic Account Creator appears to be working properly. The sale - half off a NamirDeiter.net account - is still going on until Wednesday night!Favorite You Say it First story (Year 1, Division B)
Fixer-Upper Work Harder, Work Smarter New Horizons The Holly-Jollies The Gift That Keeps on Giving
Votes so far: 86
And The Gift that Keeps On Giving wins by a landslide. It's a story that's got it all. Holidays. Nice relationship moments. Lingerie.
Summer's (mostly) over. Did you go anywhere?
Yes No It's winter over here...
Votes so far: 333
And no, we didn't go anywhere this summer either. We hung out a lot and worked on comics. Y'know.09.14.2011 - Terrence Marks:We've got a special on NamirDeiter.net memberships - half off for one week.NamirDeiter.net now has automatic account creation. Under the old system, you sent us the donation, then I set up your account and e-mail you the details. That works pretty well, but it can take a while. I wanted a system that didn't involve waiting for me to wake up and/or get home from work. Why? Because you deserve the best service we can give you.
So I spent the last few days coding the NamirDeiter.net Automatic Account Creation System. And I'm pretty sure it works. But it needs more testing.
And because it's still being tested and there's the small chance that things might not work instantly, I'm not going to charge you full price. So until 11:59 PM (Pacific Time) September 21, memberships are half off.. Five dollars gets you one month of high-quality NamirDeiter.net content.
Also, if you're already a member, you can renew your account for the same low price. Why? Because it's the right thing to do. And because I hate it when I miss out on a good deal because I'm already a member. You're awesome enough to pay full price, and we appreciate it. And if you already donated this month, you should have two extra bonus comic books in your online library.
Secondly, you can now search using multiple tags! If you want to find the Namir Deiter comics with the slug chasing after the blonde puppy girl, you can go to http://www.namirdeiter.com/comics/search.php and put "BoB, Falco" in the search box. That'll take you to the ten strips they're both tagged in, instead of you having to look through the 165 that he's in or the 336 that she's in.
Right now, commas are the only valid separator. I wanted to let you use AND, but there are some comics that are tagged "Sales and Marketing", for example and I don't want to break those. I'm sure there's a way to let you search for "Cookies and Pudding and Tipper", so that the system knows you're looking for two tags instead of one or three. Unfortunately, the ways I tried to implement that ended up being very complex and not working. I may try again later on, but for now the problem is, as Mark Twain would say, too many for me.
Thirdly, we've got a few ads on the site. We've had the in-house ads for the comics for a while. We're looking for more ways to spread the word about the comics, and running these ads helps offset the cost of advertising our comics elsewhere. We think that more people need to know about our comics, and this helps us make that happen. NamirDeiter.net is, as always, ad-free.09.05.2011 - Terrence Marks:Now, there's been a few things updated. First of all, the comics. Triple comic day. Second of all, the tag search defaults to alphabetical sort instead of by popularity. I'm sure I had a very good reason for doing it that way originally, but I forgot it so I'm doing things the sensible way now. Thirdly, NamirDeiter.net is in the midst of a major revamp. We've added a bunch of navigation features to the commentary - archive pages, storyline navigation, weekly view. You can now view the comments for a week of comics at a time. We're still getting things converted over and features added as time goes by, so expect more stuff this time next week.
Isabel and I went bowling a little while back*. It didn't look that hard to get good at bowling.
I will note that there are three phases with any activity. A thing looks difficult when you don't know much about it. You learn a little about it, and it looks easy. Then you find out about the inherent complexity and that most of the little random elements aren't so random at all, and find out that it is very difficult indeed.
I'm at the middle step when it comes to bowling. I realize that bowling is not inherently set up so that you get better at it. If you want to be a good batter, you go into a batting cage and hit a hundred balls in a row. You repeat the motions so that your body becomes used to it. If you bowl, you throw a ball, wait for the pins to get reset, wait for your ball to return, and throw a second ball. Then you wait until everyone else has had a turn and go again.
If you want to really get good at it, you'd throw a hundred balls in a row and get a better idea what works and what doesn't. So it occurs to me that a bowling alley would run a lot faster without pins than with them. Removing them would be trivial - you can measure the speed and angle the ball is coming at, and the rest is just physics.
But I realize that's not the point of bowling. Half the fun is hearing the ball hit the pins and seeing them fly. That's the whole satisfaction of it. It reminds me of why some writers stuck to manual typewriters long after electric ones were available. Or why others stuck to electric typewriters after word processors were available. Or why I'll still be using a physical keyboard once on-screen ones are the norm. If you take that away, it's hardly worth throwing the ball.
So my plan would involve becoming really good at bowling by making it not fun at all. At that point, I decided I was better off waiting for the ball return, even if it gave me time to come up with plans like this.
*: About a month; I need to write these things more often.
Favorite You Say it First story (Year 1, Division A)
A Date in the Park Kimberly's New Old Hat Job Hunters The New Swing of Things An Early Morning Jog
Votes so far: 148
Now, we're not getting as many votes in these polls as we did in other ones, but this is a much more involved question. Now, I will say that A Date In The Park is one of my favorite stories, and there's a reason why it made the cover of book 2. I can't say much more about it without it sounding like I'm bragging, but it's one of my favorites and I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks so.08.29.2011 - Terrence Marks:Favorite ND character (Division 3)And Blue wins by a landslide, with almost half the vote. This surprised me a bit. Last time we had a poll like this, Joy and Tipper were practically tied for first. Then again, there have been a lot of very good stories featuring Blue recently. Or maybe Joy and Isaac split the rabbit vote.
Blue Joy Isaac Daisy Roxanne Nanda Galvin Mina Dimitri Maurice The CD that came with the router? Did not include the user manual. It had a link to the website that had the user manual. This would have been very useful, except we needed the manual to set up Internet access. Seriously, Linksys. Why would you do that?
Are you on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+?
All of the above Facebook and Twitter Facebook and Google+ Google+ and Twitter Just Facebook Just Google+ Just Twitter None of the above
I was going to try to make a Venn diagram showing this. It looked horrible and didn't really contain much information. But out of the 326 of you who use social networks, 308 of you are on Facebook. We don't have any kind of social media strategy, but if we did, that's where we'd concentrate our resources.I'm on all three. You can see my Twitter account on the sidebar, when I have something interesting to say and time to say it and it's under 140 characters. That's a rare overlap these days.
I'm on Google+, but like everybody else, I have no idea what to do with it. I got on early, when people were begging for invitations; it was like Facebook, except nobody I knew was on it. And the whole point of Facebook is that it's just this website, except everybody you know is on it. I played the put-people-into-circles game for a bit, and that seems to be the funnest thing there.