Finally Back!

It has been a long time; updates have been sparse in the past two years.

I'm working on the storyboard for page 120. We left off at the last update with the battle between Rojo and Virulyde. My notes for the storyline are still around, although they need a good dusting off and maybe a little rewriting.

What have I been up to? Traveling a bit, working a lot, and the pursuit of other hobbies such as electronics and ham radio. Also, I've watched quite a few anime series in the meantime.

Plans came, went, and were on and off with reviving the site with new material. Honestly, interest and motivation dried up starting in mid-2004, but with new ideas and inspirations comes motivation. For those of you who have been following the site over the years, I've tried new comics, varying the format, and mixing some things around - this is all part of the process for making the creation of the comic a new and exciting experience again, both for you and me.

So... let's plan on page 120 posting this week. It has been a really long time since I've drawn anything at all, so some of the process is going to be practice drawing.

I'm Back

Sorry about the lack of updates. I've been up to lots of other stuff that's been consuming my free time.

One of those things was getting my amateur radio license. Currently, I'm just technician class. My call sign is KD8FUD, if there are any of you who are hams in the Cincinnati area.

Aside from that, quite a bit of free time was set aside for learning about Linux. I re-built the main Linux server that is used for backing up Nitrocosm.com as well as other automated tasks. Additionally, a third rack-mount box was created for experimentation and the Linux server's old parts were used to create yet another box.

As it turns out, there are now seven computers in my studio. That has to be too many.

On to business, I'm a bit stuck on how to set up the next few pages of 2214. Obviously, there's a big fight going to happen, but the presentation of that battle through action shots, angles, and whatnot has been tricky to plan.

The most important thing, however, is to let everyone know that I'm still around and still intend to continue 2214, despite these huge delays. Work and life do have a tendency to get in the way, especially when there are multiple hobbies and educational stuff running in parallel.

So... bear with me. I'll keep you updated on the status of the next page.

Going Portable

Over the past few months, I've been working on making my computer and multimedia equipment as portable as possible. As electronics have been getting smaller and cheaper, I invested in a minimal "take-everywhere" laptop and a small Wacom tablet for updaing the comic or making sketches on the go. That Motorola Q I bought recently was supposed to help ensure connectivity, but Verizon's draconian "go over 5GB of transfer in a month and your account will be terminated without notice" policy has derailed my plans for connecting the laptop to the phone.

Anyway, the whole idea of going portable is mainly to be able to get work done from anywhere, although there was a power outage last night followed by an Internet connection outage during an ice storm. It was good to have everything powered by battery and it would have been possible to update the site - although uploading files would have been tricky given the configuration - using portable, battery-powered equipment.

That made me think about the concept of "living off the grid". Of course, the "grid" in this case would mean anything wired. Truly living off of the grid means that you provide your own power from sunlight or whatever, provide your own waste management, water, etc. I'm not talking about that. It made me think about whether or not we would all, at some point, rely on completely wireless communication, such as Wi-Max or an equivalent providing our phone, television, internet, and the whole bowl of gravy. No more worrying about the cables getting chewed up by squirrels.

I'd like that.

The comic update might be delayed until Monday evening if I don't finish it up tonight.

Howdy

Here's another comic update and another short rant this week.

This weekend, I decided to hop on board the good old PDA / Smartphone bandwagon and bought myself a Motorola Q. It's definitely good as a phone and the browser is nice, too. The only big gripe I have is that I can't get it to work as a modem for the laptop, which I was hoping to do in case a work emergency arises, but it's nifty other than that. The cost for the unlimited data plan plus the voice minutes is going to be astronomical, especially since they like to tack on a half a dozen taxes / fees / extra charges seemingly just for the hell of it. Oh well. Internet in my pocket, hoo-rah!

In other news, the site's running an ad on Megatokyo.com this week, so to those of you first-time readers coming from there, welcome. Also, to you new readers, please forgive the bad artwork in the earlier chapters; 2214 was started a long time ago and my skills weren't up to snuff way back in the day. The earliest pages were re-drawn back in 2004 or so, in color to replace the sketches-only pages of chapter 1.

That's all I have for now. Have fun.

Sticking to the old story

UPDATE: Yeah, it's been almost a year or something, but here's an update on the *original* storyline.
It's never been taken down since the re-make effort started (and fell flat after three pages), but the main page features the original 2214 comic again.
Why, do you ask? Okay, you probably didn't ask. After a couple of years of inactivity, it'd be surprising if anyone still read this column.
What's my plan? I reckon if there's any more work done on 2214, it should continue the storyline rather than try to re-tell it. Sure, the early pages are pretty much exactly what I *didn't* want the comic to turn out to be, but after going this far into it, it seems like a waste of effort to re-create the comic instead of just continuing it and moving forward.
Having said that and not having worked on the comic in a very long time, moving forward with the story is a greater incentive to resume work than starting over from the very beginning.
So... what have I been doing? Professional stuff, learning new software, and to some extent, still taking online courses. That, and hiking in freezing weather.
Something might happen here soon.

Happy New Year

Just posting to let you know I'm still here. Although I am busy, there are plans (just plans) for new art / music for the site. I won't make any promises for the comic yet, though.

Howdy Folks

Sorry for the extended lack of rants.

I recently started a new job (it's my policy not to give details on that; you know, the whole 'blogging about work' thing) and still doing the online uni thing.

There should be a new 2214 page late on Saturday; I'm thinking it's time to finally do some drawing. It'll be a welcome break from studying; that's for sure.

UPDATE: My Uni assignments put me behind schedule but most of the sketching and storyboarding is done for page 4. I might be able to find some time during the week to finish up.

So... studying AJAX some more and watching RahXephon in the few moments during the week that were available is the name of the game. Eventually, Nitrocosm.com V.5.0 will be XHTML and AJAX based, with PHP on the backend, as always. Of course, without content updates, there won't be much of a point to that - so if I do anything to the site, it will be art or music first.

Uni Stuff

There hasn't been anything new posted here since the music video, so I'm letting you know the site hasn't been abandoned or anything.
I've been busy with uni stuff, so bear with me until my paper is finished.