JANUARY BIRTHDAYS Art Brown, Jan 2, 57 yrs. Lisa Ciurro, January 3, 38 yrs. Patty G. Henderson, Jan 6, 57 yrs. Matt Drinnenberg, Jan 9, 47 yrs. Nicholas Castellano, Jan 13, 8 yrs. Scott van Sickle, Jan 14, 45 yrs. Tedd Webb, Jan. 29, 59 yrs.
Established A.D. 2000, March 19. Now in our ninth calendar year! Number 406 (Vol. 9, No. 1). This edition is for the week of January 1--6, 2008.
Hello everyone and welcome to 2008! I hope you had a fun and safe New Year's celebration.
Mine was the lamest in memory. I was flat on my back and sick as a dog, exhausted and with a nasty toothache. Of course, these things happen over not just a weekend, but a holiday weekend ensuring nothing is open for up to 5 days in a row!! Fortunately, I'm on prescription medication now, got to my doctor's appointment (yep, it's an abscess), and things are getting better. But it cost me LOTS of production time.
Which means the roll out of PCR 2008 could be delayed until next week. I apologize, but it cannot be helped I assure you. Hopefully, however, I can get most of it up and running over the weekend and build from there as I go.
So, for right now, the existing PCR architecture from 2007 is going to be hanging out with us a little while longer!
To all PCR writers: All writers' columns are still fully functional and have already been set up to archive to their 2008 databases! The architecture of the columns is a separate entity from their contents. When the changes are made, any new content will be ported over automatically. Please post this week's contributions in the normal manner and schedule. And thank you!
To all PCR readers Thanks for hanging out and I appreciate your patience.
Talk Shows Return
Glad to see David Letterman and Jay leno getting back to work on their late-night talk/comedy shows, but their set-ups, as I'm sure you've heard by now, are markedly different from performer to performer.
Letterman somehow worked out a legit deal with his original group of union writers that allowed him to come back to the show, something no other show did, or was able to do. Jay Leno, himself a writer, pledged his support for the union strikers but said he is not in conflict since he's writing for himself. Same thing with Conan O'Brien.
Letterman made perhaps the biggest splash, with a new beard he's sporting (which guest Robin Williams made fun of mercilessly), and with dancing girls. He also scored an opening bit from Hillary Clinton.
Only Jimmy Kimmel seemed a bit perturbed saying that he feels the strike is ridiculous. I didn't see the show, I'm going on hearsay, but he didn't seem to agree with the other hosts regarding the validity of the writers' demands.
NetFlix to Enable Direct Downloads to TV
DVD-by-mail service Netflix Inc. (featuring next-day delivery) will begin delivering movies and other programming directly to televisions later this year through a set-top box that will pipe entertainment over a high-speed Internet connection.
The set-top box, to be made by LG Electronics Inc. as part of a partnership announced late Wednesday, is designed to broaden the appeal of a year-old streaming service that Netflix provides to its 7 million subscribers at no additional charge.
The funny thing is I was just talking to somebody about this only a couple weeks ago, that an outfit like Blockbuster would almost have to develop something similar to this if they are going to survive the ever-increasing transition to pay-per-download.
Previously, main objections from TV fans to downloading movies seem to revolve around not being willing to watch entire movies on a computer monitor, or more likely, a too-slow connection speed making it impractical. I suggested if future TVs have the technology built-in, or come with a set-top box, they wouldn't even need a computer.
So, while the NetFlix news made me feel prophetic, I also knew things like this had been developing for a while and it was just a matter of time. Good going, NetFlix.
Update on the CANOVA comic
I know it's clunky putting the comic pages up one at a time, but please appreciate how labor-intensive coloring and finalizing these things are! (To say nothing about actually drawing them, thanks John!) I literally can only get to one page a week at this time. The current page, Number 2, is up now and there is one more page left in Episode One which will come next week.
Artist John Miller is taking over the coloring after that (whew!) by hand-coloring methods and direct scanning-and-upload. By that time, it will be entirely produced by John Miller, and I for one am incredibly grateful he's doing this and I'm honored to have helped bring it this far.
Keep in mind we're still working out the most effective display plan as well. Right now there are no convenient archives because I'm desperately struggling to upgrade everything for 2008 and got a late start. But the comics are still available by going to the PCR Archives and finding the issues they appeared in. All pages to all episodes will eventually be put on the same web page of my design for more coherent reading and continuity.
John and I are amazed and extremely pleased with the overwhelmingly positive feedback we've received thus far, it's been very encouraging. I just wish there were more hours in a day so I could do more, and faster. But we're doing our best to keep up the pace we started!
Please consider making a donation to help support Crazed Fanboy! Click on the "donate" link below and give whatever you can. I sincerely thank you for any and all consideration.---Nolan