Hi all,
after weeks of struggling with the idea, I have decided that it’s time for me to take a break from Geek Hero. This does not mean that the comic is dead: a break is a break, not an end. The site will continue to work, and so will Talk and the IRC channel. I don’t know when I will start making new comics, and whether they’ll ever be regular again, but I think I will publish some material every now and then. It might be a comic, or a drawing, or a joke, I don’t know, but hold your RSS readers and do not delete the feed!

If you’re not an RSS user, please become one, or subscribe via email, so that you can reserve yourself the possibility of staying in the loop, when I’ll publish some material again.

After doing this for almost two years, it has occurred to me that I wasn’t doing it solely for myself anymore, but because of you, the readers. There’s between 5000 and 6000 of you out there, and it breaks my heart to know that some of you will be disappointed. Many of you have donated money too, and I thank you very much, because that has kept the website running.

Because of the way the comic has started to feel to me, I started to feel it was too much of a responsibility, and it has made me anxious at times. The decision of taking a break is a very very hard one, trust me, but I need to see what it’s like without.

I might just miss it very much, and get back to it. I need to find out. Hopefully Randie and Boris, and everybody else, won’t feel as dead ones to you. I have decided to take this break the moment I realized I was mourning them already, since it’s really hard to let them go.

I hope you will understand my feelings and stick around just in case. If you want to write me a support or hate email, feel free of course.

Nonetheless, I’m glad I have given some of you some smiles or LOLs some times.

Thanks for reading so far,
Salvatore.

Novermber’s been here for a while, so sorry I was late, but here’s a a new Wallpaper of the month!

I experimented with a more painting style technique, I hope you don’t mind!

Solitary Hacker

Please donate any amount (click here to know why), and I’ll email it to you. Randie, Ted, Boris, Ross and everybody thank you for your support!

October’s around the corner, so here’s a a new Wallpaper of the month!

Here’s a preview of our heroes doing some extreme peer programming, snowboarding while chased by an angry bear:

Extreme Programming

Please donate any amount (click here to know why), and I’ll email it to you. Randie, Ted, Boris, Ross and everybody thank you for your support!

The wallpaper for September 2009 will start a series dedicated to Extreme Programming. Are you ready for some action? Check out this preview!

Extreme Programming

Please donate any amount (click here to know why you should), and remember to specify your email address, the desired size for the wallpaper and whether you want the little calendar on it or not, and I’ll email it to you. Randie, Ted, Boris, Ross and everybody thank you for your support!

Hi folks! I know that many of you know what it takes to make a usable and pleasant website, so I’m turning to you for a suggestion.

I was thinking about 3 improvements:

1. Replace the LOVE HATE TALK box below the comic strip with something that actually tells how many up or down votes the comic got, and how many comments.
2. Have a thin but wide enough text entry below that strip, called “Quick comment”.
3. Have a way to show the few most recent comments in the comic page.

Now what troubles me is the last one, because I wanna keep the design simple and uncluttered, and possibly avoid fancy JQuery animations.

My idea so far is something like this:

                        |<   <   >   >|
                Tags: Boris, Radie, whatever
|------------------------------------------------------------|
| Quick comment
|------------------------------------------------------------|
  Recent comments (see all):
    user3: lol, very funny!
    user2: This comic sucks.
    user1: Whatever.

“Quick comment” would be grayed out and deleted when the user starts to type. When he’s done, his comment would replace the first of the recent ones.

“see all” is a link to the Talk page for that strip.

Now I need to hear your suggestions and thoughts! So click here to comment!
Thanks!

That’s right! I think we all need to support Open Source by making more noise, and bringing it out on the people we cross everyday walking the streets of our cities. With this high-quality, 100% cotton t-shirt that comes in 3 nice light colors, you can proudly announce your support for Open Source. And yes, I made it with the Gimp. So if you feel like it’s a nice t-shirt, go ahead and get one!

Also available in Natural and Light Blue.

Here’s a drawing of Randie as seen by Rasmus of Glitchtown. Enjoy!

Arto Liukkonen has shown me how he’s nothing like Ross, and has implemented a new Facebook app that looks and feel really good. With this app you can freely navigate the strips:

And read them one by one:

And if you tune the proper settings

you will get Notifications when new strips are published!

So if you find this easier than RSS or coming back to check the site, get the application and get notified when new strips are published!
Don’t forget to come back to the site to check the blog and comment on the comics :-)

Hello everybody! As the ones that have been keeping an eye on me on Twitter and Facebook know, I have been busy preparing something juicy for the Geek Hero growing community. That’s you!

As you can see (if I didn’t mess up with the cache), the website has gone through some minor face-lifting to accommodate a new feature: Talk@GeekHeroComic!

Let me introduce it to you:

Talk@GeekHeroComic is:

• The new way to comment the the site
• A forum where you can discuss and vote Geek Hero strips
• A place where Geek Hero fans can connect
• A way to share interesting links

Since its code is based on the one of reddit, if you are a redditor you can skip this tutorial and head straight to Talk@GeekHeroComic and start playing around!

Registration

Creating a new account on Talk@GeekHeroComic is just about as quick and painless as can be.

You don’t need to tell us your name.

You don’t need to click on a link in your email.

In fact, you don’t even need to tell us your email address (though if you do, we can let you back into your account if you ever forget your password).

You just go here and:

1. Pick a username
2. Pick a password
3. Type in some wavy letters

That’s it. After you press “submit”, your account will instantly be created and you’ll be automatically logged into it. Then you can start voting and discussing things.

Your profile

Once you’ve registered and logged in, you’ll see your username (#) in the upper-right corner of the screen (the (#) is your karma score).

Click on your username or any other username and you’ll be taken to their profile page. Along with some personal stats, you’ll find tabs for the following sections:

• overview an overview of the user’s comments and submissions

• comments the user’s comment history

• submitted all the links submitted by the user

The following sections will not be visible to other users unless you’ve made them public in your preferences section:

• liked all the links a user “liked” with a vote up

• disliked all the links a user “disliked” with a vote down

• hidden all the links a user has hidden (you can also unhide sites here)

Submitting links

Once registered, you’ll be able to submit links and earn karma. Anything can be submitted to Talk@GeekHeroComic. Clicking on the submit link will take you to a form.

url: enter the web address of what you want to submit. (e.g. http://slashdot.org).

title: enter a thoughtful headline here, because skillful naming is crucial to getting the attention of your peers. If you don’t enter one in, clicking the submit button will generate one automatically, which generally is a good place to start.

Commenting

You can post comments on any Talk@GeekHeroComic link or topic, and read comments that other people have posted. You can even vote on them! Just like links, comments will rise and fall in the rankings as people vote on them.

When posting a comment, you’re not just limited to plain text. Here’s a handy reference table that shows how to use the most common markup:

This table can also be accessed from any comment box by clicking the “help” link.

Messaging

Once you’re logged in, you’ll notice a beside your username.

If you’ve got new mail, it will light up .

Clicking on it will send you to your inbox.

From here you can select compose to prepare your own message.

Select sent to relive all those old messages you sent to your friends.

That’s it!

That’s all you need to know! Just head over Talk@GeekHeroComic, sign up and start interacting!

Jarmo, author of Finn-Strip and Insect Life, drew a very nice sketch of Randie. I like it very much and I thought I’d share it with you. Here it is, thanks Jarmo!

Randie sketched by Jarmo