Last year at SPX I took this picture:

The guy on the upper left is Mark McMurray, the first person I ever shared a table with at a comic book convention (SPX 2005). The guy whose head he’s licking is Mark Griffin, who I met the next year at SPX 2006.  I took this picture at SPX 2007. And, about a week before MoCCA 2008, Mark Griffin passed away after a long battle with cancer.  He was working on a comic about it called Karma Shmarma, which is now unfinished.

Mark was a very cool guy.  I only met him a few times at MoCCA and SPX, and now I wish that I had been able to hang out with him more.  He will be missed.

• Big Bug Fix: the plugin now only loads the editor widget JavaScript while in the ComicPress Manager plugin. This was a problem for folks like myself who put their wp-admin folder behind HTTP authentication. IF you were running an older version of the plugin, this particular upgrade is very important , as it saves on bandwidth and improves security for your site.
• Now supports moving the WordPress folder to a different location on the server (see http://www.lunchboxfunnies.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5889#5889 ). This requires that your comics folders be at in the same directory as the index.php file that you moved out of the wordpress directory.
• Improved config editor with more intuitive choices and more robust file writing (thanks to feedback from Sunday Funnies podcast #10 )
• Prepare ComicPress Manager for internationalization . If any one wants to offer to help translate CPM into another language, let me know.
• Improved comicpress-config.php write permission detection
• Improved config checks
• The ability to disable config checks for improved performance if you know your site is set up correctly
• The ability to upload any file to replace an existing comic
• Big UI improvements

Download the plugin and give it a span.  I’ve started tagging the old releases, so if you have a problem, roll back to 0.8 and post a message on the thread on the Lunchbox Funnies forum .  Also, I’m looking for translators!  If you have time, use the POT file in the plugin archive and send me a translation.

It’s the start of Chapter 3, and there’s some cool things going on lately. First, I’ve been to both MoCCA and Heroes Con to visit and buy lots of comics. Second, I’ve been getting ready to reprint Volume 1, which will involve a big redesign of everything. That means I’ll finally finish with this site. Finally, if you’re running your own ComicPress install (or are thinking about running one), Sunday Funnies podcast #10 talks about setup and maintenance. In fact, a few things in the podcast prompted some changes that will be coming up in ComicPress Manager 0.9 that will make the user interface much, much nicer. Yeah!

And we’re at the end of Chapter 2!  Chapter 3 will start next week.

So there’s two things going on right now that I want to tell you about.  First, I’ll be down visiting this weekend at Heroes Con.  I’ll have my Angry John! t-shirt on, so if you see me, say hi.

Second, I’m starting to get ComicPress Manager set up so that it can be translated into other languages. If you have experience with translating software, or want to practice, let me know once ComicPress Manager 0.9 comes out.  That will be the version when I start soliciting translators.

• The ability to upload thumbnails into the RSS or Archive folders
• If you can’t write to comicpress-config.php, you can still change the config — you’ll just be presented with the necessary PHP code to copy and paste into your comicpress-config.php file.
• Warnings have been improved and shuffled around, so that an out-of-the-box ComicPress install will only give a big warning on the lack of property category setup and a missing comic folder.
• Show Debug Info packages up a lot of information on your ComicPress install in a format that will help others debug problems with permissions, folder names, and categories.

Go get the newest version of the plugin and try it out.  I’d also like to thank the first person who donated to the ComicPress Manager project!

Sorry for the initial lack of witty comment, it’s been a very busy week and I haven’t had the time to come up with anything else to go here.  Enjoy the comic that has Johnny greedily ripping the lid off of his coffee can.

And a brilliant plan is hatched…

This week my spare time has been spent working on an illustration for my friend August’s book “National Darkroast Day.”  Hopefully I can get it completed sometime next week and post it up here.  Oh, and I also fixed some stupid ComicPress Manager bugs.  0.7.1 is out, but it’s a silent release, just bugfixes for non-Firefox users.

I love drawing those puckered-up faces.

Friend and fellow DC Conspirator Evan Keeling is posting promo pages for his and his wife’s book CrumbSnatchers every Friday up to October. It’s great stuff.  They asked me to do a pinup for the book, which I gladly did…here’s a smaller version of it: