Blógünder Schlock

So, there’s this tendon in my hand that still hurts, and I’ve discovered to my delight that it hurts when I type. That’s why this post is so short.

We’re on a new server, and haven’t straightened the kinks out yet. I’ll spare you the details: Here’s Sunday’s update.

Linky-lynx!

First: It has come to my attention that Schlock Mercenary is one of 22 webcomics that some columnists over at the Washington Post are letting you vote on (voting closes Wednesday.) The winner gets riches and fame, plus the admiration of the entire world as the Washington Post sponsors a ticker-tape parade in honor of the best webcomic of the decade. I guess that falls under “fame,” too. Also, “wishful thinking.” As you well know there can be no ticker-tape for webcomic heroes because ticker-tape is from the era of print, and webcomics mean Print is Dead.

(See what I did there? HUMOROUS IRONY. See also “Trolling for Ted Rall.”)

Anyway, there are comics there you probably want to vote for. Pick only one. The stakes here are incredibly low, so we can all expect the competition to be legendarily cutthroat, complete with ballot-stuffing, name-calling, and DDoS attacks on the Post. But me expecting that behavior and me encouraging it are two different animals. Play nice. There’s a third animal here — my pit-bull*. He has rabies, H1N1, and no leash.

Second, and completely unrelated! There’s a new episode of Writing Excuses up, and in this one I talk about why I don’t listen to anything you say. Admittedly, me announcing that is not a great way to entice you to listen to the podcast. More especially, it’s a horrible way for me to invite you to post comments, but it’s also the Truth, or at least one flavor of Truth depending on the day.

Third: unrelated to The Washington Post, but very related to Writing Excuses: In just under three weeks I’ll be at Life, The Universe, and Everything 28, the Brigham Young University symposium on Science Fiction and Fantasy. This event kicks off convention season for me, and also happens to be where all of my local SF&F industry friends hang out each year. Admission is free. The schedule is here. No, I don’t know what Bob and I will discuss yet, but “The Bob and Howard” show sounds too interesting to pass up. Just prior to the event I’ll publish the schedule excerpts that apply specifically to me for you to print out and stick in your wallets.

Finally: Unrelated to all of this, but still lynxish: If you’ve been following the Howard Tayler Twitter Feed you know that I spent the first couple of weeks of this month being incapacitatingly sick. You also got to read funny things I wrote, and you got linked to a couple of things I found clever, amusing, or awful. Maybe I’ll put the Twitter feed on the front of the site someday, but today is not someday.

(Okay, it IS someday, but it’s somebody else’s someday. Why they were longing for this day, I have no idea. Today was SILLY.)

(*Note: I considered using a lynx instead of a pit-bull, but the lynx is very skittish and not especially threatening — even when rabid. )

I’ve got a long list of things I want to do this year, but most of those things won’t be interesting to you. The short, Schlock-centric version of the list looks like this:

1) Deploy a new Schlock Mercenary website design with new plumbing underneath it. This should be done fairly soon.

2) Kick-ban everybody who leaves comments with suggestions for the new design underneath this post. This can be accomplished starting immediately.

3) Get three more Schlock books in print. With Travis’ help on the coloring I believe this is actually possible. He’s amazing.

4) Overhaul my convention process. I learned a lot at GenCon Indy last year, and expect to be employing what I learned fairly quickly.

5) Celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the strip with something impressive. The local constabulary won’t let me mark the date with anything more explosive than croup, so I’m got about five months to come up with something non-conflagratory. (Note: Suggestions on the 10-year-anniversary are welcomed. Focus your efforts there, and avoid incurring wrath!)

The Schlock Mercenary iPhone app, which is disambiguously called “Schlock Mercenary,” was approved by Apple today, and is now available in the App store. Click on the application image to the left, or follow this link to go directly to the iTunes store to have a look.  If you’re not using iTunes you can still check out the developer’s page here.

With this app you can now enjoy your daily fix on the go, luxuriating in features not available on the web! For starters, all strips are 28% larger than online, and the app lets you see the future with strips available 3 days ahead of the web. You can pan and zoom, or use the simple panel-by-panel navigation.

You can create your own bookmarks, and they can automatically follow you through the archives, all the way from the very beginning.

Yes, you get all this and more for only US$0.99 a month. You can also buy 6 months for only US$4.99. The first month’s subscription is included with the initial purchase of the app for US$0.99. Subscriptions are purchased in the application with your iTunes account.

Note: Requires iPhone OS 3.0. An internet connection and current paid subscription are required to download content. Strips are cached on the device, but are not stored permanently.

There is a footnote for Sunday’s comic, but when I wrote it I only uploaded it to the queue for the iPhone app.

I suppose if the app were in the Apple Store already I could have used this “mistake” as an opportunity to drive sales. But the app is NOT in the store yet, and the beta has ended, so the only people able to read the footnote right now are me and the developer.

The footnote will go live on the web with Monday’s update. So… just as soon as today’s comic is yesterday’s comic you can read today’s footnote. As a bonus, I’ll throw in a footnote for yesterday’s comic, too.

The difference between Blogunder Schlock and my Twitter feed is that on Blogunder I can luxuriate in the absence of a 140-character limit…

Note from Sandra:

The XDM pre-orders went out today.  Sketched Under New Management second printing will go out early next week after Howard has a chance to do the sketching.  Thank you to everyone who ordered.   Extra special thanks to the volunteers who cheerfully helped even when the plans had to be shifted around to meet events.

While I am thanking people, I also want to thank everyone who bid on the auctions or donated money.  Howard got his iphone yesterday and is now cheerfully contemplating what Schlockish apps can be devised for it.

Also thanks to all of you who read and laugh every day.  You make what we do possible.

XDM Pre-orders are closed. Tracy, Curtis, and I signed two pallets of books on Monday, and I think we’ve got a few left over.

I’m going to be taking some of them to Dragon’s Keep. That’s right, on Wednesday (the day comics arrive) by 2:00pm you can get a Pre-order edition of XDM: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery at Dragon’s Keep in Provo. As an added bonus, I may be able to draw a picture in the back for you.

In other news, watch this space for:

* My WorldCon Schedule! See me in Montreal!

* My GenCon Indy Schedule! See me in Indianapolis!

* Some auctions, maybe! Including one of only three upside-down-bound copies of XDM! Tracy got one, Curtis got one, I’m going to draw in mine and then sell it because I want to have an iPhone.

As you may have noticed I’m not going to be at Comic-Con this week. Go see my friends in the Webcomics Pavilion, including the Blank Label Comics crew in booth 1330, sandwiched between Penny Arcade and Keenspot.

First: The Star Pirates folks have been welcoming Schlockers with open arms. The Tagon’s Toughs fleet is up to 66 members. If you head on over there you’ll be in good hands.

Second: The automated update system for Schlock Mercenary is broken, and has to be manually dialed in each evening. This has confused the poor RSS scraper, which expects the comic to be up at a given time. Thus for you, the reader, the comic is showing up a few minutes late and the feed has nothing in it but a link.

That’s the current state.

The plan, at least as I’ve plannified it (yes, I have a copy of Barnum’s Thesaurus) is to migrate the whole mess, current layout and all, over to a WordPress/ComicPress architecture sometime this month. The source for the RSS feed will change, but the current feedburner address will still be valid. This will certainly bring its own set of hiccups, hiccoughs, hernias, and hex-nuts, but I believe it’s time to put that old system to rest and step into the 21st century.