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Home | Archive | Forums | Real Life Store | E-Mail | Deutsch

Home | Archive | Forums | Real Life Store | E-Mail | Deutsch

Home | Archive | Forums | Real Life Store | E-Mail | Deutsch

Home | Archive | Forums | Real Life Store | E-Mail | Deutsch

Home | Archive | Forums | Real Life Store | E-Mail | Deutsch

Howdy, folks! I know I rarely come on and post on here these days, but I felt this was too cool to just relegate to a facebook post or some such. Those of you who follow along with the comic know that Liz got an embroidery/sewing machine for her birthday last year, and since then, I've kind of gotten the machine embroidery bug. It's a lot of fun to add artwork to various items of clothing. (And yes, to Harper's Diapers) Then I went and did a comic featuring Steampunk Bacon Cat, a design Liz downloaded from Urban Threads.

That very night, I was contacted by the owner of the Urban Threads site, who saw the comic and thought it was cool - this is another of those mutual fandom kinds of things, as I'd become a big fan of the designs on their site, and REALLY impressed with the way they stitch up. These people know a thing or two about embroidery design, let me tell you. I've made a few fun embroidery designs recently, but then I see the stuff they do, and I'm just humbled.

And I was even MORE humbled when I was asked to participate in their "Featured Artist" program! Click on the image above (or this link here) to head over to my featured artist page, which just went live this morning. They have a pretty fun interview on there in addition to a digitized version of my "Nerd Rage" design for sale! It's available in three different sizes, so even schlubs like me with a pathetic 4"x4" hoop can stitch it up. And while you're there, browse through the different designs they have available - these guys are the utlimate geek source for machine/hand embroidery patterns.

I realize embroidery is an EXTREMELY niche thing, but crafty folks would do well to look into it. You can buy a Brother SE400 machine on Amazon for as little as $350 (Far less expensive than the average $1,500 machines you will see out there) and get into the hobby. Trust me... this stuff is addictive. Thanks again to everyone over at Urban Threads for letting me into the fold - you guys rock!

Longer version: My computer is set up with a RAID10 array across 4 drives... OSTENSIBLY to keep the data more secure and have things run faster. Except, it would seem, that the controller card that managed this house of cards is something that I skimped on, and IT crapped the bed. And it did so RIGHT after I restarted the computer to speed it up a little bit... and right after I finished the comic. This has rendered my array essentially useless, which is OKAY, really, since it contained my dropbox (backed up online) and a bunch of program files. Except that tomorrow's comic (both the AI file and the PNG) hadn't yet finished synchronizing when I restarted, so now they're locked away on this RAID array.

Gonna try to do some data recovery and see if I can't pull the files off somehow, but it's going to be at LEAST a few days before I get to sit down at my computer and work on it, so... yeah. Not super happy at the moment. And Illustrator was installed on that drive too, so I can't even get any new comics done until I get this resolved.

Cautionary tale, folks - don't buy budget RAID controllers. It'll only bite you in the ass.

On the bright side, as tomorrow is my birthday, the likelihood of it ending with alcohol is fairly high up there, so it'll be just that much simpler to pretend today didn't happen.

Blerg. Gonna rally and see if I can't pull off another 5-comic week next week to make up for it. Odd that a 5-comic week would be such a strange occurance... but hey, tiny victories.

An hour and a half later, it's now 2:15 AM and Harper just went down to sleep. My plans for comicking went right out the window, and I have to be up early myself. This is the kind of thing I can't plan for, folks. When you pop over to the site and a new comic isn't up, odds are better than average that I've had a night similar to this one, and there's very little I can do to control it. And honestly, not getting 5 solid comics a week out frustrates me to no end.. you have NO idea how much it frustrates me. As Harper gets more and more able to fall asleep and stay asleep on her own (she's getting there little by little) things will ease up a bit, but my first duty is always gonna be to my daughter. That's just the way life is. I never plan on stopping the comic, so put those kinds of fears to rest... and I patently refuse to just switch to a M-W-F schedule. I've done Real Life the day before it goes live for twelve and a half years now, so I don't have any plans of changing it. The schedule went through some bumpy times back when I was in culinary school, and I got through it. This is much the same thing. Just bear with me.

In a brief bit of other news, some of you may remember this comic from the dark ages of 2009. It is with that in mind that one of the products released today on ThinkGeek (and one that amazingly ISN'T an April Fool's gag) is an inflatable captain's chair. It's for kids only, sadly - only rated up to 120 pounds. But still... pretty bad-ass. Harper's gonna need that for her bedroom before too long, methinks. :)