March 2009

We will be back in March. This is a promise.

In the meantime, follow us on Twitter.

Boring Internet closing doors

Temporarily or permanently? I can’t say. On what date? I also can’t say – likely by the end of the week.

For the time being, please redirect your favourites to this blog; all of my own text-based content will eventually be archived here, and all image content will be archived in the Flickr album (link forthcoming).

It’s been a fun, interesting and mildly stressful ride. Unfortunately, I’m cutting costs in real life, and the website, which has been in a still semi-dead status since its ‘return’ in December is one of the aspects that I’ve decided to let go of. My interest in it has similarly disappeared – writing and drawing crap just isn’t as fun as it used to be.

What’s that mean for various features, like The Biased and the A-Z? The Biased will hopefully see completion elsewhere on the web at some point across 2009 and 2010, but the A-Z will likely not be so lucky.

I’ll post here now and then to keep you guys in the know. Until then.

Boring Internet

April 2008 – January 2009

Thanks – that was fun.

Don’t forget: no regrets.

2008: A Year in Review

Today, 2008 draws to a close as yet another year slips away from us. So, what better way to commemorate than with a blogpost devoted to the highlights (and some lowlights) of 2008, both on the website and in my own life – along with a look at what you can and can’t expect during 2009.

Highlights

After nearly a year of concrete planning to set up a website, and even longer of vaguely thinking about it, Boring Internet was finally launched. The domain was purchased in the final week of March; the first official day of updates was April 4th 2008.

After writing one of my most popular articles – Why I Hate Laurell K. Hamilton – I kindly posted a link to it on her official MySpace. Her personal assistant messaged me, oddly not taking it harshly in the slightest, but offering a few corrections – one day, I’ll incorporate these into a follow-up article.

Diary of an Emo made an impressive return to form after a sudden end earlier in the year – it went on to become one of my favourite features on the website.

Slowly, Boring Internet has been securing new writers; starting with Stuart Pryke’s novel X-Con, the first five (and later, sixth) chapters of which were released to promotoe the novel’s release, new features such as The Cell and The Adventures of Fuckwit the Wizard are produced specifically for the website by individuals other than myself.

Searching on Google for ‘boring internet’ sees the website take the top spot.

The Biased launched; the first drama comic series on the website. Though it has been released more slowly than I had hoped, it continues to be a success and a surprising amount of fun to make.

Lowlights

When trying to advertise the website after it launched, I wrote the URL in biro on the wall of a cubicle in the toilets of my college. My pen ran out halfway through and I was too afraid to get another one and go back to fix it.

The first layout proved to be far too bunched together, meaning there was a tiny space for articles. In addition, the background colour changed quite a lot in a small space, further reducing the slot for articles allowing them to be readable.

Due to the way I’d used IFrames on the original layout, linking to an individual page was impossible; this, along with the tiny layout (originally optimised for 800×600 displays) prompted a redesign for 1024×768 displays.

Despite fixing various problems, the overhaul was not perfect and the site still suffered an odd design as well as layout quirks; comics were directly linked rather than incorporated into the pages of the site.

The next layout almost nailed it, but colours meant there were issues with low-contrast monitors. This was finally corrected in the latest site overhaul, optimised for 1280×1024 displays, though designed in a way to take advantage of other display sizes.

Beginning October 23rd, Boring Internet took a roughly six-week long sabbatical as I sorted out issues in my own life and then set about redesigning the website layout without needing to make new graphics for a relaunch on December 1st. This relaunch was actually very mediocre.

Things you can expect to see in 2009

More of the same – The site will continue to be updated in its regular fashion, slowly trickling more content into itself. Whether that content will be any better remains to be seen.

Pixelated Anne – Season 3 of the comic still has 10 comics to go before Pixelated Anne draws to a much-needed finish. Most of these 10 comics are larger undertakings the most seen in season 3 so far – hence their delay – but they will get here eventually; 2009 will see the release of as many as possible.

Things you can’t expect to see in 2009

Diary of an Emo – No matter how much I would like to, and no matter how much people might ask, Diary of an Emo will not make a return during 2009. The story has come to an end, and though I won’t rule out a return later, say in 2010 or further down the line, Misunderstood’s return is not currently on the cards.

Who Killed Tobias Stanhope? – I’ve mentioned it a couple of times on here in the past, and I was hoping to start an ARG in 2009, but it’s indefinitely postponed; no groundwork is down yet, and it will take time to sort out entirely. It will come sometime, but pinning down a date is impossible at this stage.

Happy new year, folks.

A Christmas sabbatical

Christmas is almost upon us, and as such, the week of December 22nd – December 28th will see a week-long break from updates here at Boring Internet. Tomorrow’s update will be the last before Christmas, but because I will only have time to place a brief update on the site, I’m posting this lovely message now.

So I would just like to take this opportunity to wish you all happy holidays, a great Christmas, happy Hannukah and enjoy whatever other festivals or holidays you may celebrate.

Thanks!

Posters

My old bedroom was jam-packed with posters. Seriously. There were absolutely fucking millions of the things. Never mind that, for the most part, they were quite shit posters, they covered most of the free space on my walls.

… Well, okay. The above paragraph is hyperbole. But I did have quite a few posters, but now I’ve changed bedrooms, I don’t have any: the only thing anywhere near similar to a poster is an oil pastel drawing a girl from work gave me to cheer me up when I was still working there, and then let me take home when I left.

As such, I am on a poster hunt. An Evangeline Lilly poster would be quite nice – this one specifically. However, it’s from one of those sites that just generally manufactures posters based on images submitted to them, by the look of it, so I’m not sure it’ll be high quality when it’s blown-up to poster scale.

That said, there are no official Evangeline posters from what I can tell. Which is a shame, really.

Speaking of Lilly, she’s on the adverts for something or other in the UK now! I saw it first on Monday then promptly forgot about it, before seeing it again yesterday while I was playing with my phone at mum’s – I believe my exact response was a gasp, and “Yay, it’s Evangeline Lilly from Lost!”

*

Anyone suffering from some mental deficiency will have been looking forward to the X-Con paperback release, and will know that it wasn’t actually released yesterday. The problem was actually on Lulu’s end of things, so sadly, none of the blame can be placed on Stuart. Though, given that I completely forgot that I needed to rejig the cover art to the new proportions until midway through yesterday, it was very nearly my fault.

(Yes, I did do the fucking amazing cover art to X-Con, which you should know by the ‘Cover designed by Nicholas Ambrose www.boringinternet.co.uk’ message on the back of the novel. I also wrote the blurb – perhaps the best piece of writing from cover-to-cover.)

Update schedule

As of January 5th 2009, this update schedule is current.

MONDAY

• The Biased*
• General Articles

TUESDAY

• Silly Poems
• The A-Z of Why the Internet is Shit

WEDNESDAY

• Boring Comics

THURSDAY

• The Cell
• The Biased*

FRIDAY

• General Articles
• KittenCam update

SATURDAY

• Not-So-Nice Nursery Rhymes

SUNDAY

• Boring Comics

A new Video of the Day will be posted every day.

* Currently The Biased is on a brief sabbatical while chapter 2 is planned in further detail. Expect a return in the coming weeks.

Pleasing the masses

Some of you have been understandably slightly miffed at the generally poor relaunch of the site: admittedly, I am too, so I feel your pain. The reason for the shitness can be placed down to my current distractions with other things – namely, A-levels and such, though some of you might see my wish to place emphasis on the wonderful thing called life as unforgiveable.

As such, however, I will be making an effort to get the site back to its former glory. How? Over the next 3 days I’ll be sorting out a proper update schedule and working on content in advance once more in order to get back into the swing of things and actually kick myself in order to churn stuff out.

The new update schedule will be posted next Monday, when it begins to take effect. The next 3 days will be uneventful for the site – expect no updates while I work at getting stuff done. It’s not ideal, and means that temporarily the lacklustre relaunch becomes more crap, but it is for the greater good.

It is a sad day

Oliver Postgate, creator of children’s TV classics such as Bagpuss and The Clangers has unfortunately passed away. Rest in peace, Mr. Postgate – they don’t make children’s TV like you did anymore.

The Biased is Back

After an extended absence, slightly longer in fact than the site’s lack of activity, The Biased has returned with the long-awaited page 14. Admittedly, page 13 wasn’t the best of locations to have stopped the series, given its cliffhanger-style ending with our favourite unnamed evil soldier villain looking down on red base, but hopefully it has provoked wonderings of what will come next; will the soldier be slain?

The Biased should continue to see release on Mondays and Thursdays, like previously, but I make no promises as I do have other things to get on with (A-levels and all that as I frantically attempt to get two new qualifications in home study courses in order to go to university and then be a teacher), and a single comic does take far-too-long to put together.

That said, I will shortly be re-releasing the earlier comics in higher quality (they have a very reduced colour palette, particularly the earliest ones as I worried my bandwidth would be sucked away) and also be releasing some wallpapers and 360 themes based on the comic – particularly, of course, said unnamed villain.

The Briefest Sabbatical

Yesterday’s missing content is something I don’t really feel guilty for, but maybe should given the shit Stuart is kicking up about it.

I was, in fact, many miles from home, having woken up early to go pay a visit to Writtle College – not in case I decide to go there and be all animal-smart or agricultural, but to visit who I charmingly refer to as ‘the lady’. I considered churning out a quick and pointless update whilst playing on her laptop, but then decided I couldn’t be fucked and tried to go to sleep instead while she looked at sperm under a microscope.*

Things I Hate, now a three-part adventure into despair and dislike, is something I rather hoped to write more of as the site grew; instead the articles became less quickly run-off the ‘press’ of my grotty keyboard so they took a backseat. So releasing one today was greatly refreshing, if too quick and easy to please the masses. Will I be accused of releasing shit since the site has relaunched? I already have, but I tend to ignore what people say about Stuart’s stories, since I don’t write them.

* not mine. Seriously.