GPF News Archive

Howdy, all. Once again, I must apologize for the lack of news updates. In general, when there's a really long lull between updates, that means there's a lot going on behind the scenes keeping me from really saying anything. It also means that nothing has really changed that is worth posting about, and unfortunately this post is mostly just a perfunctory one to pop in and say "I'm still alive, and it's the same old same old." I would really prefer to do this on a Monday, but every time I've tried to get things started on the weekend, I can't seem to get it out in time.

State of the comic as of today: I've received a small but significant number of e-mails over the past several months begging me to increase the main comic updates beyond once per week. To me, these messages are more than a little frustrating, as several of them have been toned in such a fashion as to make it seem that I either don't care about the minimized schedule, or that I've never offered an explanation as to why it happened. It's frustrating because I've spent a considerable amount of time explaining the whys and hows of the schedule downgrade, if only these people would bother to take the time read the News every now and then. The rationale behind the downgrade was explained in detail back in the September 4, 2006, News post; read from there onward to get the full story. The conditions upon which GPF would return to more frequent updates is also well documented: I will increase the frequency of the updates if and only if I can statistically prove that my comic production output meets or exceeds the comic publishing consumption for the updated schedule. At this point, that threshold has not been reached, and thus I am sad to report that GPF will remain weekly for the foreseeable future.

While I am working as diligently as humanly possible to bring GPF back to its prior output, I'm only one person doing the work of a small multitude. As GPF does not pay the bills, it must take a back seat to the day job, watching a growing toddler, and a ton of other conflicting priorities. Unfortunately, my patience with people who can't be bothered to read months old News posts is wearing quite thin, and further inquiries on when the update frequency will increase will either be met at best with a terse link pointing to these dusty News posts, or at worse with silence. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to rehash something I've gone over multiple times already. If you don't have time to read the old posts, I don't have time to respond to you.

If and when there is News worthy of posting, there will be a News post about it. That is especially true for any update frequency increase, which would surely be the biggest News I'd have to post about when it happens. Until such time, you can safely expect the status quo. GPF will remain on its weekly schedule at least until the end of August; I'm hoping to re-evaluate the schedule again before then, but I don't intend to make any changes if I can't support them.

That said, some of you haven't been noticing the News posts on the rare occasions when they're posted. There's really no excuse for missing them anymore, as we have two very handy and reliable mechanisms for notifying you of updates. The first is the News Notification system, which uses JavaScript and a small cookie to inform you of when a new News post is available. This has been active for quite some time and has proven to be very reliable. Just activate it and a flashing icon appears on the main page whenever a new post is available. You can find the link to this feature at the top of the News hub page. The other is our RSS feed, which includes News updates. If you don't like JavaScript and cookies or you otherwise prefer RSS to keep track of updates, this is the way to go.

Friday Updates: BiKEENi Summer Reruns: Most of you have probably noticed by now that Mischief's Night Out is now over and we've moved on to a new temporary Friday feature. We're rerunning some of our old pin-up pictures from BiKEENi Summer 2000, which will run at least until the end of August. If you've missed the last few installments or would rather not wait for the reruns, you can always click this link and see all our entries, as well as tons of other pin-ups created by Keenspotters of yesteryear. However, I'd still strongly suggest you keep up with the Friday updates here on the site, as we'll be running a couple of brand new pin-ups never before seen anywhere. (Hint: They're for characters that weren't regulars back in 2000.)

The Wednesday Sketchbook reruns will also continue until further notice.

SIGGRAPH 2007: Just another reminder that I'll be at SIGGRAPH 2007 in San Diego, CA, next week. The pre-con report is available, including as much of my schedule as I can provide. Since I haven't received any response to my feelers for either an informal Faultie gathering or a key signing party, I'll assume nobody is interested. If this assumption is in error, please e-mail me ASAP or hop on the forum to express your interest. Please note that even though my e-mail response time is still abysmal, it's going to get even worse next week. Don't expect any responses until I return (except, perhaps, to the inquiries just stated).