Quick note #1 - the Miho Blanket should be in the Megatokyo / Think Geek store sometime today. I may not have a chance to update this again before i go, so check the Megatokyo / ThinkGeek store under Cool Things to see if it's availible yet.

Quick note #2 - there are some pretty nice unofficial 'guest strips' showing up in the Story Discussion forums - you might want to check em out :)

The nicest thing about announcing my little one week hiatus for Megatokyo in the comic rather than the rant area is that most readers see it. As a result it gives a chance for all those readers who are "tired of all your excuses, you lazy [explitive]" to email me, proclaim in no uncertain terms that they are sick of my whining, the Dead Piro Days, the Shirt Guy Dom days, the lack of comics, the lack of story, the fact that nothing happens in Megatokyo, that they have been gracious in giving me a chance but now I have gone too far and that they will no longer read Megatokyo.

Now that those readers are gone, I guess I can speak more freely. I guess i don't have to worry about sounding whiney or that I might irritate those 'sensitive' readers. It's a nice feeling, really - I should do this more often.

The good news is that I'm on schedule with the prepress for book 2, we've had several months of regular comics, and my brain is only slightly more mushy than it usually is. It felt really good to burn that DVD-R and pop it in the mail to Dark Horse yesterday. I still have a lot to do on book 2, but the biggest chunk of it is done. It's all extra material from here on out :)

There are two kinds of tasks, i think. Big things that take up huge chunks of time (like doing a comic, or processing 160 comics for print), and little things - things that don't take more than 10 minutes to do, but when you put them all together adds up to hours of work. Yesterday was a 'little things' day. I don't know why, but it seems so much more rewarding to check off 30 things than just 1 thing at the end of a day.

As for what will be going on here on the MT site while i'm gone, aside from those insane people who actually WANT a week of Shirt Guy Dom Strips, the most common suggestion is to do a 'Guest Strip' week like I did several years ago. Well, there is a reason we aren't doing that. It's called 'learned from experience.' MT readers tend to be rather creative people, and the last time i did the guest strip contest, we received over 500 strips. Do you have any idea how long it takes to read, judge and select five strips out of 500? This was back when we had around 20,000 readers. There are well over 100,000 readers now, and I recoil in terror at the volume of strips we'd get. Weird as it might sound, it'd take less time to just do the strips :P That doesn't mean that this isn't a good idea, and that we won't do a guest strip week in the future, it's just that it requires planning (and we all know how good i am at planning).

I'll be putting up a DPD or something on Wednesday, and while we're in Europe Seraphim and I will be uploading rants and pictures from our activities over there. Also, there is the small worry that Dom has full access to the site, and i won't be here to keep an eye on him.

What are Seraphim and I doing in Europe? Well, we're going to be guests at Ayacon in the UK, and then we will be going to Dublin where I will attempt to give a lecture on 'Publishing your Creative Works to the Net'. Aya Again 2003 will be a fun opportunity to meet some of the European fans and hopefully this won't be my last time visiting that side of the pond. The funny thing about the lecture I will be giving is that the Dublin University Internet Society invited me to give this lecture well over a year ago - in fact, well before I i started doing this full time. It's given me an interesting perspective on it. The lecture will be Tuesday, November 4th around 7pm (I think, I'll need to verify that). If you can come, please do :)

Speaking of international stuff, over the past few years there have been many projects to translate Megatokyo into other languages. I welcome these projects - I consider them like fansubbing projects, as long as they are non-profit and are free to access for all who want to see them, I'm ok with it :) Truth is, I really need to organize them so that they are easy to find, and the efforts are coordinated in an effective way. One example of a translation project that is doing quite well is the German translation project. Last week they told me that they had successfully translated chapter 0 in its entirety. :) Other projects in the works is an Italian translation project and a French translation project.

Probably the most interesting thing about these projects is the software they have developed to streamline the process. It's called MegaLettering, and it involves mapping out areas in the comic where text are, and dynamically replacing this text with the translations. Neat stuff. Hopefully by next year we can see some well organized and focused projects in place in lots of languages, so I can get hate mail in more flavors :P I know there are other projects out there, I just don't have the info in front of me right now :) More on this when I get back.

Anyways, I think that once we leave and head off to Europe, I can relax a little, if only on the plane. I've been madly dashing around trying to get things in order, and I'm ready to just say 'the heck with it' and come what may. :P Once again, I am sorry about the week hiatus on the comic - we'll start rolling along with things when I get back. In the meantime, I've put together a little list of comics and other... links... you might want to check out, just for fun. There is no rhyme or reason to this list, and it's a quickly gathered one, so proceed with caution :)

I'll poke in with another rant once we are in the UK. Thanks all, have a good week!

Webcomics and stuff:

- Winter (it's back!!)
- Demonology 101
- Machall
- Nekobox
- Tsunami Channel
- Trilokan
- Underpower
- URD collaborative manga
- Get a Life
- Slackers
- Movie Comics
- Tea Club
- Follow
- Faito Club
- Strings of Fate
- Skinny Panda
- Tuesday Comic
- Ctrl-Alt-Del
- Little Gamers

Comic related websites:

- Onipress
- Slave Labor Graphics
- Friends of Lulu
- Sequential Tart
- Comic Pulse

Megatokyo reference and fan stuff

- McFinnigan's MegaTokyo Reference
(there are a lot of other good links at the above site)
- Readers guide to Megatokyo
- Megatokyo Database
- CG'd Strips Databasev0.75
- the font used in Megatokyo

Total Randomness

- Momotato Daioh
- Natsume Maya's Anime & Manga Webpage
- Moon Phase
- Quarter Iceshop
- Tinami
- Somnambulant Corpse
- Vintage Synth Explorer
- A Cat Shaped Hole in my Heart
- Mill Run Windpower
- SendaiPhoto
- Japan-a-radio

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- megatokyo merchandise -

Megatokyo t-shirts, posters and other merchandise can either be purchased online at the Megatokyo / ThinkGeek store, or from Wizzywig at various anime conventions around the country, even conventions that I will not be at. Below is a list of upcoming conventions where Wizzywig will be at:

October 24-26, Anime Reactor, Rosemont, IL
• November 7-9 - Neko Con (Virginia Beach, VA)
• November 21-23 - Sugoi Con (Cincinnati OH)

Just for reference, here is Piro and Seraphim's con schedule for the rest of the year:

• October 31-November 2 Aya Again 2003 (Ayacon) (Northampton, UK)
• November 4 Lecture @ Dublin University (Dublin, Ireland)