GPF News Archive

Another Quick Update: We're back from Genericon, gang! It was a great trip and a great con. The con report is almost finished (I got a lot of work done on the plane), so I expect it to be up tomorrow or Wednesday. Again, I apologize for not having daily reports during the con... we just didn't have a decent working 'Net connection, and I completely forgot to bring my Ethernet connector, so I couldn't hook into the school network.

Quick Update: Just a reminder that I'll be at Genericon XV today (Friday, January 25th) through Sunday. It looks like the dial-up service from my cable company has fixed their authentication servers, so I should be able to get online. That said, make sure to check out the Genericon XV Report page throughout the weekend, where I hope to post nightly updates and pictres like we did for previous cons. I hope to see some of you there!

Hey there, gang! Big news this week, including some we've all been waiting for for quite a while. So why don't we get down to business and get started, shall we? ;)

First and probably most important, this weekend is Genericon XV, January 25-27, on the campus of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY (near Albany). We'll be winging up there for this gaming, anime, and science-fiction con, and we'll be bringing Plan Nine Publishing and all their books with us. We'll also be joining our fellow Keenspotters Josh Phillips (Avalon), Mike Rosenzweig (Everything Jake), and Jamie Robertson (Clan of the Cats), as well as Jonathan Rosenberg (Goats). As always, we're excited to be going to a new con, and this one is no exception. I can't wait to meet all you New England Faulties. For more information, check out our Shows & Cons page now, and during the weekend for the daily con report updates (provided I can get online). (And while you're there, make sure to check out the Raleigh Super Computer Show report.)

That said, there's always a chance I won't have Internet access during the weekend. In fact, my cable modem service recently instituted dial-up access for traveling customers, but their authentication servers have been down for weeks, so I may not be able to log in. If I can't, I won't have access to e-mail nor will I be able to post daily con updates like I have in the past. Hopefully this won't be the case, but this is just a forewarning if I seem to disappear until we get back. Cross your fingers, gang.

Big News #2: If all goes well, we'll also have something special at the Plan Nine book for our Genericon friends... Book #3 is finally here! That's right, our third book, And the Geek shall Inherit the Earth, is finally back from the printers and available for pre-order. (It will officially ship next month, but as in the past, you can pre-order the book now and reserve your copy.) However, there's a chance Plan Nine will be able to bring copies with them to Genericon, so con-goers there might be the first get this book in their hot little hands. No hard promises, of course, but we're hoping this is the case. At the very least, Genericon attendees will be able to pre-order the book at the con and have it shipped to them for free.

There's nothing else new to report, but here's a quick reminder for those new readers out there. I explained a couple months ago when Year Four and Surreptitious Machinations first started that this story was very different from other stories that we've done, and that there would be periods where there would be less humor and more action, drama, and adventure. The current sequence, obviously, is one of those periods. That doesn't mean, however, that the humor has been cut out of the strip; on the contrary, some of the funniest strips we've ever done are still coming up. Many of you have been very understanding and have even been praising the current sequences for the greater character depth and plot lines. But there's still some of you out there who've been turned off by the lower humor content. (I received an e-mail this weekend from a reader who promised to never read the strip again for that very reason.)

As stated before, we haven't given up on the laughs. There's plenty of them still to come, and I think that readers who stop reading now will be missing out on some of our best material. But if you find the current sequences more difficult to follow due to the pacing or lower humor levels, I'll offer the same suggestion I did before... try reading a whole chapter at a time. You'll find the pacing of action, drama, and humor mixes much better when the story is digested all at once. Just step away from the site for a while, and check up periodically to see when we've moved to a new chapter. Then use the story drop-down box to go back and read the entire chapter at once. I guarantee it will sit much better, and hopefully you'll appreciate it even better when the entire story comes to print.

Well, I guess that's about it. Don't forget to swing out to this thread on the message board or drop me an e-mail on your thoughts and ideas for our upcoming Skotos-based chat/MUD. Also, while we did meet our goal for our Skotos sponsorship, we still encourage our readers to try out this great games service if you haven't already. Of course, below you'll find the (un)usual extras. Until then, see you in New York!

• Keenspot PREMIUM Subscribers: Download my dramatic reading of last year's hit poem, How Trudy Stole Christmas, from the warpKEEN After Hours section! This MP3 file is a must-hear for all Faulties, especially Trudy fans, and is only available to PREMIUM subscribers. If you don't have Keenspot PREMIUM, click the link above and sign up today! (Or, you can still buy the Plan Nine Publishing Christmas Annual 2000, where the poem first appeared. It's still for sale!)
• The "Red Ink" Sunday strip is now available as a limited-edition print from Plan Nine. The print is $15 USD, and all profits—both mine and Plan Nine's—will be donated to the American Red Cross to help in disaster relief efforts in New York and Washington, D.C. Follow this link to see all three disaster relief prints available, including the two previously offered by Pete Abrams and Illiad.
• The GPF Tip Jar is now online, by popular demand. If you feel the need to tip the ol' artist, you can now do so through PayPal or Amazon.Com. This service is completely voluntary and without obligation.
• Don't forget that all three of our GPF books are out there, selling like hotcakes, at Plan Nine. Portable funnies without batteries... what better way is there to share GPF with friends and family?
• Are you a Perl hacker with a little free time? Then help out the KBB crew! A group of Keenspot fans (including some loyal Faulties) are fed up with the unreliable, buggy Ultimate Bulletin Board (UBB) scripts that Keenspot uses for it's message boards, and they're taking matters into their own hands. If you have some Perl knowledge and want to help out, check out the Keen Bulletin Board home page for more information.
• As always, feel free to let me know what you think of the site and the strip either through the GPF Message Boards, our IRC channel, or drop me a line.