Recently, there were comments at the Pibgorn GoComics page about using affiliate links to shop at Amazon.com rather than using their front door in order to share a little of what we’re going to spend anyway with Pib supporters.
Howard Tayler, who draws Schlock Mercenary has posted the same "shop Amazon locally" sentiment on his blog and has invited his fans to post 'worthy' affiliate links.
On behalf of fellow 9CwL/Pib aficionado Fairportfan at http://electronictiger.net/ and myself, thank you for your patronage!
I recently found where the microfilm archives of the Ocala Star-Banner are available online through the resources of the Google News Archive. The Star-Banner published the very first 9CwL on 08/02/93. However, they dropped the strip after six weeks. I have been able to recover Brooke's artwork for those days that the Star-Banner is not charging an access fee.
Once again, our friends at Brand X (otherwise known as Comics.com) have restructured their file systems and forced a site-wide revision of this site.
"... a real job?" has been rendered into a format that can be uploaded to YouTube. As they have a ten-minute limit on clip length, I had to cut the show into thirds: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.
THE UNICORN ARC is now a slideshow, and I'm working on a video version, entitled "... a real job?" The latest rough cut is here. The video runs 0:25:22 and the file size is 22 MB. My server will stream it, but is does not have playback controls. (You may want to right-click and save the file locally.) If you have suggestions about edits and transitions, please feel free to email me. I do plan on producing a better narration track and possibly adding some natural sound.
I recently got a nice note from Jo, who said, "I LOVE the slide shows! Is there a way to slow 'FORM' slide show down or have an optional 'manual' slide advance? I would like to take my time savoring the images, but ..."
A rework of the shows is finished... longer dwell time, smoother transition and a pause feature (mouseover the image to hold)... and there's now a third show: THE FOURTH WALL.
Finally found time to process the latest dispatch from our good friend BFMartin. It included the remaining 14 images from the "known archives" era.
Also, on Friday, 09/11/09, the Honourable Master posted an item about Iana Salenko, first solo dancer of the Staatsballett Berlin at his Chickweed Café blog. After you check his comments, please join the Casting discussions at the Pibverse Forum.
Just received the 1999 Sunday files from BFMartin. That leaves 14 missing files from the "known archives" era.
I also received files from Tsukyomy for the week of 07/10/06-07/15/06. These are the same images that comics.com is serving for that week, but they are actually repeats from the week of 07/05/04-07/10/04. This suggests that there may have been a deadline issue in '06 and comics.com republished two-year-old strips in the same manner as the the deadline issue from Jan '09. In any case, thank you, Tsukyomy, for your contribution.
Thanks to a discussion at softsailor.com, I have obtained the IP of the server where the 9CwL content resides. All 467 pages on this site that formerly referred by name to that server have been edited... which means we once again have artwork!
Most of the artwork on this site comes to you by way of links to comics.com. Their server, along with the server that drives snoopy.com, went down sometime Friday, taking us with it.
Many more thanks to BFMartin... I just received "the next shipment," as he puts it... all the missing strips from 2000. That adds the week of 01/01/00 and all the Sundays through November '00.
A big thank you to BFMartin! He has shared three missing panels that are not in the comics.com archive... Wed 01/01/03, Sun 05/14/06 and Sun 04/01/07. That means that with the exception of the week of 07/10/06, we now have access to all strips back to 01/07/00.
The menu pane is much less daunting, thanks to a JavaScript-driven accordion menu. (Those following Pibgorn know how powerful an accordion can be!) Also added: a date input box to allow quick jumps to a specific date.
Thanks to The Old Wolf's digging in his archive, we now have all but 9 of the 9CwL images from 11/06/00 to present and all but the Sunday panels for 10/04/98 to 11/05/00.
Added "Landmarks" to the menu to help folks jump to specific events. If you'd like to add an event, drop me a line.
Just perfected a new feature: external linking to a specific day's panel. If you know the day of the strip you need, just type ?= and the date as m-d-yy after the URL. For example: today, UncaAlby referred to a strip published on Sat., June 18, 2005. To see the full week in which that was published, come to this site and tack ?=6-18-05 onto the end of the archive's URL (i.e.: http://image66amarillo.com/9cwl/?=6-18-05) and hit enter.
The archive is complete from 09/28/1998 to present (for the most part), and the shooting arc has also been posted. Many thanks to CoBass and kcboomer for filling holes in the archive. CoBass also writes, "First, be sure to add The Old Wolf to the "Thanks" on the "Welcome" page, since he was the source of the 07 Jul 2008 week strips. Second, you might add a mention that all strips prior to 06 Nov 2000 and some post-06 Nov 2000 come from the archive that used to exist at the Houston Chronicle, and the remainder come from comics.com. Might answer the question of "Why are there two different styles of images?" (Although my hunch is that the type of people who ask that kind of question aren't the type of people who read introductory material.)"
We’ve found all but 76 of the panels dating back to 11/06/00. Most of those missing panels are Sundays.
Again, thank all of you for the kind words.
Big thanks to phamp, who just sent me zipped files for 09/28/98-11/05/00 and the school-shooting arc (08/25/97-09/20/97).
Got a note commenting on the minor inconvenience of having to scroll back to the top of the page after loading the [Next] page. That's one of the drawbacks of building a framed page, but there is a work-around. Right-click on the first week you want to look at and select "Open Link in New Tab" or "Open Link in New Window". That will break you out of my frames and take you back to the top of the page when you click either [Previous] or [Next].
And the mystery of the two 07/05/06 strips has been solved! While reviewing '04, I discovered that the folks at Brand X managed to duplicate a portion of '04 under the guise of '06 content.
Finally got all the fiilenames correlated to dates for 2006-2009, so I can say with what borders on impunity that the archive is complete back to two months into the previous millenium. That period has mostly sequential filenames, but there were about 50 less images than days on the calendar. Imagine my surprise to discover that in the week of July 3rd, 2006, not only were there were two strips dated "7/5" but a Thursday strip referring to Friday's offering as belonging to Wednesday, which means the Thursday panel... errr, excuse me while I consult Thorax on this one.
To quote Wolfgang from Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (yes, the character actually had a name), "Verrrrrry interestink!" In checking pages for errors, I find that on 08/06/01, an analyst addresses Gran as "Mrs. O'Malley". Does that mean Juliette's maiden name is also O'Malley and that we could be of the same clan?
Big thanks to eschmenk! He sent me a list of 269 week's-worth of image filenames to integrate into the site. That means we now have 11/06/00 through 12/31/05 in addition to 2009.
Oh, and I'm working on a slideshow of specifically-themed weekday panels... but don't tell anyone (yet).
The OTC came up with a new challenge... a site similar to my unofficial reference of Pibgorn for 9 Chickweed Lane. This one's gonna take a lot longer, because comics.com uses a non-linear file system and the chron.com filenames have a random component. I just fnished the tough part: writing the JavaScript to generate each weekday page with the least possible work. Using that as a template, all I need to do is change seven variables and save the page with a dated filename to harvest the images.
I'm compiling the site in reverse chronologic order, so if you happen to click back past where I've not yet trod, expect a "page not found" error.
AmriloJim - Jim in Amarillo