Site stuff, then real life stuff

First and foremost, I forgot to talk about this previously when I discussed upcoming site updates; when I update the site in CSS in December – assuming I do, as I hope to be able to – I will be implementing skins next year, which will be very nice and lovely if you don’t like the current design but would like me to do a tonne of work on alternate designs just to make you feel happy and such.

The September update will also see some ad pages thrown into the mix. There won’t be too many, but I’ll be adding them in various hotspots just between pages, to help get some attention and cover hosting fees – though my AdSense stuff has served over 13,000 page views, the click-through rate is 0.11%; thus I have currently accrued less than $4. This does not cover the $10ish (£4.99) monthly hosting fee. Thankfully, I will bless you with text very big and obvious that will allow you to skip ads to head to the content you’re wanting.

September will also see a brand new, more serious comic series, and will likely separate most of the Halo-themed comics from the Boring Comics series. No update schedule yet, but I’m working on the story and I think two updates per week will be likely. It will reduce Boring Comics to a once-per-week update cycle, though I may add an extra day for the comic so production doesn’t slow down horribly on the middle child.

Also; as I said, July got over 4,800 hits in total. August, in its first 20 days, has matched this and so I expect to surpass 6,000 hits this month.

In reference to yesterday’s post; I was told by the owner of HBO, the site featured in Boring Comics #13, that he found it funny, so though Monday’s offering did not please, Wednesday’s offering got a laugh from the man, so at that, I am pleased with myself. The Wednesday comic, perhaps in light of a positive remark from HBO’s Louis Wu, is now this month’s most viewed in a single day, too, so I now know I can either write crap or write gold to draw in views, though nothing in between. Oddly, this is not helpful.

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Just lately I wish I hadn’t adopted the Xbox 360 when I did.

Obviously, I love the console and though it has seen a red ring of death and had to be replaced by the wonderfully quick Microsoft staff, it’s one of my favourites things. It’s given me hours of fun over my host of games, provided me a fantastic Xbox Live experience far surpassing that of the original Xbox and a tonne of great features.

Still, when I bought it, it was £279.99 – though I got it in a £299.99 deal with two games and an extra controller (which broke earlier this year, incidentally) – and was, as I bought it at the end of 2006, the 20GB model lacking a HDMI port.

Nowadays, you can snag an Elite – a better looking black version of the 360 for less than this, and it not only has an HDMI port, but a hard drive six times bigger than my own. Not only that, but you can get the model I own, albeit with the added HDMI port, and now a 60GB hard drive for £179.99. This is £100 less than what I paid, and it is a substantially better deal, both due to decreased cost and spectacular improvements.

This, of course, does not affect you, as you don’t care that I’m jealous of all the people buying 360s right now and heading into the future. I just wanted to complain.

I downloaded the ten-day trial of World of Warcraft after almost two years of delaying it. I, unfortunately, like it, though I’m hoping I get bored by the end of the trial, as I’d rather not spend £8.99 a month on a game that I may become hopelessly addicted to as so many others have. I’ll post my server at some point, and if you don’t mind hanging with a low-level character (currently I’m level 7) in Goldshire or areas around there, post a comment and I’ll hook you up with my details.

My Sea Monkeys tank arrived yesterday, and in roughly eight hours I’ll be putting the eggs in. So that’s cool. Tsubasa Chronicle volume 4 didn’t arrive, though, so I’m hoping the bastard shows up today. If you would like to please me, feel free to check out my Amazon wishlist, where you could, if you are so kind, snag me a copy of volume 5 of Tsubasa Chronicle, thus stopping me from having to wait a month or so before I buy it. You can also buy me a copy of the first volume of Great Teacher Onizuka, which I’m told is funny, or perhaps even a copy of Tomb Raider: Anniversary on the 360 for me to play after I’ve puzzled my way through Tomb Raider: Legend.

Alternatively, if you don’t like buying things for other people but you do like buying things for yourself, look no further than the Boring Internet store, where you can currently score yourself a pillow depicting the Queen’s true identity, or a wonderful set of coasters topped with the happiest seagull in the world.

This post has a fucking tonne of tags.

Irony!

Despite the somewhat negative comment about the Monday edition of Boring Comics, there was ironically almost 900 hits that day, which makes the comic the most viewed in a single day this month. It’s an odd relationship, but apparently if I write comics people think are crap, I’ll get shitloads of viewers. And also, apparently, fucking loads of spam comments posted to this blog by trawler bots.

I will, however, side with Louis Wu in that the joke is poor even at a stretch, and was merely meant to make light of Dave’s inherent crapness. Unfortunately, it wasn’t very obvious and so I promise to try to make punchlines easier to understand for the uninitiated from now on.

Today’s comic, in response to the comments, is my way of laughing things off, and is in fact one of my favourite Dave and Frank jokes thus far, excluding perhaps #9 – The Facilities, which is disgusting really, but oh well.

Not much stuff to talk about, to be honest! I’m working on yet another new novel, I’m awaiting Tsubasa Chronicle volume 4 and a new Sea Monkey playset (this is perhaps the 7th or 8th in my life), which I hope will come tomorrow. My exercise bike has broken, probably due to overuse, as it has seen an hour and a half of use a day, or more, since I got it, so that needs to be sent back to Argos. I’m applying to jobs whenever I can, so if you’ve got a job available that pays £20k a year or more, needs fuck all in the way of qualifications aside from average A level results, you don’t mind having a long-haired guy do the job without tying his hair back and the job involves talking about how much I hate various things (ie. Laurell K. Hamilton) or taking the piss out of people and/or companies, then drop me a comment.

Oh yes, and I nearly forgot: Stuart is too shit to get things done by the deadlines he sets, so X-Con will not be released until September 3rd. I’m also told that the chapters I have posted are outdated due to edits, so if you buy the book, re-read chapters 1 – 4, if you read them on the site, for whatever changes have been made. I don’t expect they’re anything particularly drastic, other than word and grammar changes, but let’s be on the safe side, shall we?

HELL YEA- aww shit.

The HELL YEAH? Geometry Wars Evolved 2, on Xbox 360. Download it from Xbox Live Arcade now, because it’s insanely fucking intense. I will be reviewing it for the site (also, expect a review of It Ate Billy On Christmas sometime too) at some point in the near future. Possibly.

The aww shit? Firefox screwed up and went and wiped all my favourites. Admittedly, there weren’t that many, and of them, I visited even fewer. But it is quite annoying and I will need to spend like two or three minutes getting them back myself.

Also, my Converses came, and unlike the last pair of shoes I bought from that site, they fit perfectly, so no need to spend them back due to dodgy sizing. Yay!

In an effort to stop my trousers from being destroyed, having finally given up with my previous worn-out pair that I spend most of the time in, I’ve pinned up the bottoms of each leg. Unfortunately, my dwindling supply of safety pins is now limited to just three gigantic and unslightly pins, and the tiniest things imaginable, barely visible to the human eye. Due to the abundance of these micro-sized ones, I am using those. Sadly, unable to actually hold material together very well, they pop open quite often.

Please buy me some new safety pins, someone. Or, if not, just buy me something off my Amazon wishlist, linked on the website.