GPF News Archive

Hi, gang! Another long week has passed, and things are still hectic behind the scenes here at GPF. This week has been especially rough, mostly because I haven't gotten my weekly quota in. (Gasp!) So I'm behind a week. Well... technically, I'm behind two weeks, because I lost a week a few months back and never made it up. Fortunately for all of us, I work ahead, so I've still got a chance to play "catch up," so I plan to be quite busy this week. Like I am, every week....

*Sigh.*

But I do have the most incredibly wonderful excuse for not getting last week's strips done: I got to see one of my good college buddies tie the knot this weekend! I'd like to wish Shawn and Joanna all my luck and prayers as they start their new life together. I had an incredible time this weekend, seeing old friends and getting great news (You're next, Dennis!). I also think that we've all learned never to plan a wedding during the 50th anniversary weekend of a Harley-Davidson plant. I saw more "hogs" this weekend than I've seen in my entire life. Not that this is a complaint, but the traffic hold-ups could have been avoided....

Anyhoo, as a corollary, I might be a little slow responding to mail this week. I think I'm caught up; if you've sent me mail and I haven't responded, please be patient. If you don't hear from me for quite a while, then you might want to mail me again, to make sure I'm still alive. Your message may have accidentally slipped through the cracks. (And I do mean accidentally.)

This week's big news: Come Friday, you may find the daily strip may look a little different. In an effort to help speed things up a little bit (and to save a little space on our server), we're going to start serving GPF strips reduced to sixteen (16) color gray scale. I've traditionally used 256 colors for the strips, but with more and more complex color schemes coming through, the files have been getting bigger and bigger. While I personally prefer the clarity and quality of the 256-color strips, the biggest (and almost only) complaint I've gotten from you guys is that the Archives are getting pretty slow. While part of this is the scripts on the server (which I can't help much), the biggest part is file size. Well, gang, I've heard your requests, and here's the plan. I've fiddled with the settings in my software enough to find a reduction scheme I can live with, and I've cut the size of many strips in half (and all below 40k). New strips will begin appearing in 16-colors as of October 1, and I'll convert most of the strips in the archive as I have time. (This may take a while, since I'm currently working on another, more important project.) With any luck, this will speed the archive up considerably, sacrificing only a small portion of image quality. And not to worry, the strips are still being developed in 256 colors, so they'll still look crisp and clean when they are printed... if they are printed... which may or may not be sometime in the near or not so distant or very distant future... or not....

Was that sufficiently vague? I hope so... :)

Now... what to next? How about the Top 100 lists? GPF has slipped down in the Internet Homepages Top 100 lists this week, down to #8. Again, I'm not broken up about it; I'm just happy to still be in the Top 10, even after all this time. For those of you who've followed the rec.arts.comics.strips news group of late, you'll know there's a lot of skepticism going on about how kosher their voting system is. If any of you are concerned about this, I encourage you to join in the discussion there. As for voting, I don't want anyone to feel obligated to vote for GPF if you don't want to, but I'll happily continue to put up the voting link as long as you guys want to keep clicking on it. The jury is still sequestered on the Big Panda list, too, but I'm leaning toward supporting it. Again, only you have the power to click the link. So follow it if you want; if I understand this thing right, GPF gets points if you follow the link to their site, then use their site to find other online comics.

Now here's a recap of other recent news:

I want to thank TechMall again for making GPF the September 20th Editor's Choice of the Day. Woohoo!

In case you missed it, the Comics Archive (not to be confused with the Archive Browser) has had a recent, slight overhaul, so it now updates daily. Yipee skipee!

And here's the another bit of follow-up news: I also have a bit of follow-up news on the ol' copyright struggle. I am happy to report that one of the two sites targeted by the "I'm a Thief!" campaign I ran back in June has closed its doors, as of August 24th. (I won't mention the site's name or give out its URL, but those of you who have moved over here to get your GPF fix after it closed know what site I'm speaking about.) This site has been ripping off literally hundreds of cartoonists, professional and hobbyists alike, by using their strips without permission. And while my personal appeals to have its owner remove my strip fell on deaf ears, it seems that others with a little more clout have managed to get through to him. This site has been robbing us of somewhere between 500 and 1000 hits a day (according to our estimates), which if we were running paid advertising (which we've considered but haven't implemented yet) would have cost us a lot of money. But the site's owner isn't giving up completely, and is looking for a new ISP to host his site. If you were a former patron of his site, and feel that his actions were wrong, feel free to write him and let him know. As for those of you who've been visiting us since that site closed, I'd like to officially welcome you aboard! Hopefully, getting your fix from the source will be better than getting it second-hand.

Thanks again, everyone, for your support. I remember that one of the first e-mails I got concerning GPF was a scathing blast claiming that this strip was a direct rip-off of another popular online strip. Since then, I've received virtually nothing but praise from everyone, letting me know how original and unique you think it is. Your mails have been one of the biggest encouragements I've ever received, second only to the support of my biggest cheerleader. (That's you, sweetie!) I could never let you guys know how much you've really helped keep this strip online. Kudos to everyone!

Well, that's all I really have to show for myself this time. As always, you can e-mail the man behind the comic and don't be afraid to browse through the FAQ if you have any questions. Catch you next update!

Old News Items:

• June 14, 1999: "I'm a Thief!" Campaign