Oh right! Updates!
Man, I really suck at communicating with people. Did I seriously not post anything AT ALL since January? Sorry about that, I guess I just got reeeaaally into the groove of re-editing/re-posting comics and forgot about other stuff. Actually, I KNOW that’s what happened, because it’s what that doodle up there is about.
I said in the previous post that I was having to get used to a whole new computer with all new art programs. The GOOD news is that the “learning new art programs” part of the process has more or less taken care of itself, and I’m at least CLOSE to using these things about as well as I was the old ones. there’s still a lot of muscle memory to un-learn and stuff like that, but I can more or less make the same kind of comics I was making at the end of last year. Which is good, because I was so laser focused on that stuff that I drastically neglected EVERYTHING else that was supposed to be happening right now. There’s still an awful lot of website stuff that I haven’t finished setting up yet, and I don’t just mean all the remaining comics. Far Out There doesn’t have all its cast profiles and FAQs and store and other side pages restored yet, or even a proper banner (the current one was just slapped together as a placeholder). Conventional Wisdom also has a lot of side material that needs to be re-posted, never mind the full-on sub-domains I need to set up for all the Voting Incentive/Patreon comics. Also, I still haven’t gotten around to setting up new advertising on any of the sites, or even THOUGHT about what the permanent version of THIS site will look like. And then there’s the actual COMPUTER stuff…
Yes, where that salty doodle came from. In my mad dash to get basic productivity back on track, I only did the absolute bare minimum to set things up on the computer. I got the scanner and art programs set up, dumped all my comic files on an external drive, and just started working. I didn’t even bother to organize new folders for the recent scans, I just saved everything straight to the desktop and planned to put it all away later. Well, later finally rolled around a week or two ago, and I started seriously trying to get this hunk of technology properly, permanently set up… and GREAT GOOGLY MOOGLY it’s been obnoxious. I was NOT prepared for just how much fiddling with comparability and reformatting and all that boring, boring, BORING techie minutiae I’d wind up having to slog through, and it’s still nowhere near finished. For one thing, I somehow went MONTHS without realizing that the external drives I had all my old files backed up on were formatted in a way that left them read-only on macs, so I had to spend several days juggling MASSIVE amounts of files across various drives, just so I could reformat them and then put all the old files RIGHT BACK AGAIN. I seriously spent nearly two whole days just getting my ginormous iTunes library ported over to the new computer, and I STILL don’t have it on proper speaking terms with my phone yet (you don’t understand, having the “plays” counter accurately reflect what I was listening to on the phone is IMPORTANT! THE DETAILS MATTER!)
And, of course, if working on comic stuff distracted me from computer stuff, then working on computer stuff is of course going to distract me from comic stuff, and I feel like I’ve lost whatever rhythm I might have had with the updates recently. Well, rest assured I’ve forced myself away from the computer fine-tuning and back to the webcomic-making, and I’ll try not to go so long without an update over here, as well. There MIGHT be some cool Conventional Wisdom news to come in the near future, depending on how some other stuff outside my control ends up panning out. So stay tuned for that!
Of course, the actual good news is that you’re in the top 20 on Top Web Comics, and seems to have been fairly consistently in the top 50 or so.
Setting up a new computer to be Just Right™ always seems to take longer than expected.
I’d been wondering when the profiles and galleries and fan stuff and other pages would get ported over, but figured it would likely be after the archive transfer caught up. Also a link to this site from the others.
I feel like I should probably grab down all the comments in a friendly-to-use-for-scripts format from the old Far Out There SmackJeeves site (there’s a slightly out of date copy of it in the web archive, so only have a year or so of “guestuser” instead of actual names) and while at it probably from The Duck too.
I’m sure something can be done with them to have them visible on the appropriate pages on the new site.
Of course, it’s also possible I’m too lazy to actually do that.
Yeah, I’d though about trying to gather up the old comments and doing something with them on the new site, but honestly, there’s already too many things I haven’t even managed to get started with yet. Adding one more to the list just seems like a really bad idea.
Regarding the character pages, They were already long, LONG overdue some new profile art, so those aren’t gonna start getting re-posted until I finally have time to draw some new pictures for everybody (including all the characters who never even got a picture the first time around). Now, don’t expect them to all be fancy, full-color pictures like the main cast gets. Most of the third-tier characters will just be getting black and white line art. Gotta try and save some time SOMEWHERE, right?
Oh, and the continuous top 20-ish status of Far Out There these past few months absolutely BOGGLES MY MIND. The only thing I can think is that a whole lot of SmackJeeves comics must not have bothered to put a new button up anyplace after their old site got demolished, and that thinned out the herd a lot. Because that is an ABSURDLY high rank for a comic that’s only updating about twice a month right now. I mean, I’m incredibly grateful, but WOW!