Blógünder Schlock

Some of you may have seen your posts disappear. This is because Akismet thinks you’re dirty spammers, and I need to teach it otherwise. I get a lot (a VERY lot) of spam, and the Akismet queue ends up quite deep.

So… if you post, and it doesn’t show up immediately, that means it’s been trapped. Email me, and I’ll de-spam it, teaching Akismet that you’re actually okay by me.

Sorry for the inconvenience. Fortunately this is MORE convenient than wading through the spam would be. We have 8,300 legit comments on 561 posts here, and Akismet has trapped 85,000 spam comments. Do the math: we’d be 10:1 under spam without it…

I’ve known for weeks now that there is a petition demanding that Uwe Boll stop making movies (like Bloodrayne, of which you may recall my review.) I’ve also known that Boll himself has said that he will indeed stop if enough signatures are collected.

Most of you probably know this already too, but apparently until I post the news, you’ll keep emailing me, so I’m caving in.

And now my thoughts on the matter: My dad used to warn me about sucker bets. “I bet you I can make that cat play the piano,” was the example he often used, followed up with the statement: “Never take this bet unless you really WANT to see the cat play the piano.” He never explained how it would be done, or how the weasel-words would cheat the sucker out of his wager. He just laid it out as a truth.

Uwe Boll has proven to be a masterful manipulator of publicity AND a masterful filmmaker. In the case of publicity, he’s turned negative news into name recognition, and in the case of films, he’s taken fine (Oscar-winning, even) talent and churned out deplorable tax-shelters. I don’t LIKE what he does, but I have to give the man credit: he’s got me convinced that the cat can play the piano.

What will happen if there are a million signatures on that petition? I suspect that Boll will either weasel a way into demonstrating that there are NOT one million or more signatories (and I’m sure there are enough of us signing several times to make the case for him) or he will find a way to take this list of “one million people hate me” to the bank for some marketing endeavor or another. Or, worst case, the petition will top out at around half a million, and it’s like we ALL went boxing against Boll and got our noses bloodied.

Maybe he was speaking rashly. Maybe your signature really will end his torturtous treatment of our favorite video games. But where Boll is concerned, I’m always ready to expect the worst.

I’ve been tempted to rent “In The Name of the King,” just to see how bad the film is, but I realized that if I do, Boll wins AGAIN. I’m not even allowing myself the privilege of enjoying the bad reviews, because that’s just another kind of cat playing the piano.

I got an email message from a “Wikinewsie” named Brian a few days ago in which he asked me if I would help with the current Wikimedia Foundation fundraiser. I declined, and stated that my non-contribution was the only tool left for protesting the manner in which a few Wikipedia editors and administrators treated dozens of articles about webcomics and the webcomic community.

As it turns out, this particular pot was ready for stirring. Brian abandoned his “help raise money” cause, and is now out to raise awareness of this particular problem. He is calling upon other Wikinews.org journalists to investigate, and he has asked me to round up webcartoonists who might be able to contribute to the discussion.

I’m unwilling to stop at webcartoonists. I believe that “notability purges” are being executed throughout Wikipedia by empire-building, wannabe tin-pot dictators masquerading as humble editors. They are the enemy. They are articulate, erudite, convinced of their moral and intellectual superiority, and need to have their proverbial pictures plastered on the walls of the proverbial post-office.

If you know of a case in which notability guidelines and/or heavy-handed editorial tactics were used to speedily delete useful articles, please help out by providing that information. You can post it in comments below, or you can (I think?) directly edit this Wikinews page.

The Wikimedia Foundation is holding a fund-raiser. That means this would be a perfect time to contact them and tell them why they can’t have your money.

By Sandra Tayler

There is a story of a couple who had their car towed to a mechanic because the engine had seized up. The mechanic asked the husband when he’d last put oil into the car. The husband said that his wife put oil into the car. The mechanic then went to the wife. She assured him that her husband put oil into the car. Thus the car died for lack of oil.

This story is extremely pertinent today. Howard and I both assumed that renewing the schlockmercenary.com domain name was taken care of. The registrar company knew that it wasn’t, but all of their contact information was 7 years out-of-date, because the last time we renewed we paid for 7 years.

Fortunately our domain registrar has a policy of holding on to accounts for 30 days past the end of registration. I made a phone call this morning and paid up to renew. I’ve updated all the contact information and I’ve marked in red on my calendar when I need to be thinking about renewal again. It won’t happen again.

Many thanks to the fan who posted a link to the hard IP address so that people could still find the comic. Even more thanks to the fans who emailed to make sure we knew something was wrong. And to the couple of fans who actually called on the phone to offer help, thank you very much. We didn’t need the help this time, but it warms my heart to know that there are folks out there who care so much.

If the six auctions that opened Monday morning aren’t what you’re looking for, here are six more, again sponsored by Wotan LLC as part of their Kayuda launch. Kayuda is a web-based visual wiki, a mind-mapping tool, and a non-linear writing tool that allows you to track ideas and the relationships between them.

As I said on Monday, Wotan purchased these pieces from me, and then told me to auction them off and keep the proceeds. So there it is, I got paid twice. But wait… all of these but one (I bet you can guess which) appear in Schlock Mercenary books, so I already got paid once for the artwork.

I am SO doing the happy-dance.

I’ve been using Kayuda to help me organize some of my story notes, and I like it. I think you’ll like it too, especially since you can try it out for free. I don’t usually say “please support our sponsors,” but the Kayuda team has been very generous with this campaign, and I’d love to see them get lots of attention as a result.

Here is a list of the auctions that opened Tuesday evening:

• Haban

• Tchukk

• Tagon’s Signals

• Andy

• The Blackness Between Cover Art

• Howard’s Happy Dance

I’ll understand if the bidding on “Howard’s Happy Dance” stays down around $0.99. I drew that one just for this campaign at the express request (read that “contractual demand”) of the sponsor. The Cover Art auction is a different story: It includes all three inked pieces I used to assemble the cover, and this is the first time I’ve made something like that available.

Go check out the auctions (here’s the full list), and give Kayuda a try too.

It’s auction time again, only this time we’re doing something different. There are six auctions starting this morning, and they’re being sponsored by Wotan LLC.

How’s it work? Well… Wotan is launching their new product, Kayuda, today, and the Kayuda team wants people to start using it. Kayuda is a web-based visual wiki, a mind-mapping tool, and a non-linear writing tool. It’s free, and any number of people can collaborate simultaneously in real-time. You can have any number of “wikis” (called “workspaces”), and you can choose how private to make them.

So… how did Wotan’s Kayuda team set about “sponsoring” these auctions? It’s simple. They bought the artwork, and then told me I could auction it off and keep the proceeds myself.

Wanna know the best part? All of the pieces on the block right now were used in Schlock books. That means that after the auction closes, I will have been paid three times for each piece — once through book sales, once by Wotan LLC, and once by the winning bidder.

Isn’t mercenary work fine?

Now then, I’m not just shilling for them because I’ve got their money. I’ve been using Kayuda on and off as a scripting tool, and it’s pretty handy. In short, I wouldn’t have accepted their money if I didn’t like their product. I DO like it, and I think lots of you might, too.

My glimpses at the super-secret Kayuda Roadmap hinted at upcoming support for tags, file attachments, per-node permissions, chat, and full Entity-Relationship Diagramming. The developers are also soliciting input for what they should build next on this platform: project management, sketching, something else? Try out what they’ve got today, and send them your feedback.

Oh, and here’s a list of the auctions:

• Six-fingered DerTrihs

• Breya and Jevee

• Doctor Edward Bunnigus

• Colonel Jaksmouth

• Schlock and the Puppy

• A Tank

Go have a look, happy bidding, and even if you don’t win, you can use Kayuda for free.

For my birthday, my brother Randy took me out to lunch. He related something to me about “my biggest fan” and his friend Larry at Randy’s work (for the record, I already know who my biggest fans are, because they’ve done minion-time at book releases.) And now, because it amuses me to post others’ chat logs

[2:51:48 PM] Larry Raab says: So was lunch fun? Great!
[2:52:29 PM] Randy Tayler says: It was fun. I told Howard your friend the biggest fan said Happy Birthday.
[2:52:45 PM] Randy Tayler says: And we ate meeeeeeaaat
[2:52:46 PM] Larry Raab says: Did you say Josh in Seattle!
[2:52:55 PM] Randy Tayler says: I… said…
[2:53:00 PM] Randy Tayler says: um….
[2:53:07 PM] Larry Raab says: Does he ever do blogs?
[2:53:13 PM] Randy Tayler says: Howard?
[2:53:18 PM] Larry Raab says: ya
[2:53:23 PM] Randy Tayler says: do = write?
[2:53:33 PM] Larry Raab says: Whatever…make love or write whatever
[2:53:42 PM] Randy Tayler says: He has 2 blogs
[2:54:05 PM] Larry Raab says: Just wondering if he would ever just say “Hi to Josh in Seattle” just so my friend believes me

Larry, I hope your friend Josh in Seattle believes you. Also, how I do blogging when I do my blogs (of which there are five) is knowledge exclusive to me and the fine woman who does my laundry.

I did a “Time Friends” comic over at Halfpixel a while back, and it aired on Saturday. Go see!

Note: Time Friends is funny on lots of different levels. For starters, the fact that the artwork is (almost) always re-used tells us that any universe that supports time travel will find itself eternally repeating history. Oh, wait… we already DO that, don’t we? Deep, man. Ponderously deep.

Chalain (his friends call him “Dave”) writes over at chalain.livejournal.com about waking up next to a strange yet beautiful woman one morning.

She gets out of bed and stretches, perfect curves sliding under silky lingerie and momentarily making me forget about breakfast, meatloaf, and whoever it was I was married to before last night. She seems to know this, and smiles at me again, but apparently she’s serious about making breakfast. She turns and strides confidently from the room. As she does, I see for the first time the large Microsoft logo splayed across her back. My stomach lurches as I suddenly remember everything.

Windows Vista. I bought a new computer yesterday… and it came with Windows Vista.

You need to read the whole thing.

My brother Randy pays more attention to these things than I do.

Penny Arcade, PvP, and Schlock Mercenary are all webcomics. All have a print presence. All of them are supporting their creators as full-time cartoonists. This you probably knew.

This morning I found out that they all have a Google Page Rank of 7/10. That’s not news for PA or PvP, but it’s a recent uptick for Schlock Mercenary.
Thanks, for the heads-up, Randy!

(And thanks to the rest of you for not only reading, but also linking to Schlock and talking about it on your sites. Google Page Rank is something YOU did… not me.)