I think I finally figured out why I’m never able to create a buffer.
Based somewhat on a twitter exchange between @pcweenies and @damnyouwillis. You can catch their much better (I didn’t say that) comics at PC Weenies and Dumbing of Age (also, I guess, at Shortpacked!), respectively.
Although I use RSS to let me know when other webcomics have posted, I usually have my reader go directly to the site rather than pull the article down itself. As a result, I’ve found many sites are not all-client friendly (i.e., they don’t work well with all clients, mine in particular) or they are outright broken. A lot come up with invalid date (usually due to date format problems).
There’s an easy way to check your RSS feed, though; run it through an RSS feed checker. The one I recommend is w3.org RSS validator. Just enter the URL of your RSS feed and see what it comes up with. It could be a pass, a pass with recommendations or it will list bad entries.
Typical problems I’ve seen are bad or problematic date entries. Examples:
Fortunately, the RSS code in WordPress generates valid RSS (usually); so, you should be safe if you’re using it with ComicPress, comic-easel or any other plug-in.
It takes less than a minute to check and it may avoid you using some readers; so, give it a try.
I’ve added a Patreon Link page for the webcomics I know that are now using Patreon for funding. You’ll find it under the Resources pull-down on the link bar at the top of the page.
Why am I making this list? Because, frankly, Patreon’s search function sucks.
Well, due to a disk failure, and the need to rebuild my computer, Monday’s comic will be out Monday evening, sometime.
I have preliminary pencils done, but no wording. (And, trust me, you don’t want to see my prelim pencils. I’ve seen a 3 year old’s crayon scrawls that make more sense than these.)
In case you’re wondering what happened to the last two updates, well, Real Life interfered, big time.
Last weekend (4/8 comic):
Decided to get taxes done early (like that worked). Tried an update of Wine (program that lets me run Windows programs under Linux) which hosed my use of Manga Studio 5 to a greater degree than normal. Reverted back to previous version which didn’t put it back like it was. I forget what happened Monday evening. Decided to punt to following weekend…
This weekend (4/15 comic):
Saturday, finished taxes (yay!). Tried to fix basic problem with Wine running MS5; gave up after a while.
Sunday, started on comic, trying to work around existing bug, but needed to get to bed early because I needed to get up early Monday.
Monday: got up early to do ham radio support (net control) for Boston Marathon. I was almost done with my stint (had two stations to close) when the explosions occurred. Stayed another 4 hours. Dropped another ham off at his house on the way home. Still needed to do dinner. Lo-o-o-ong day.
Tuesday and Wednesday evenings are already booked. I also have another comic web site to fix on Thursday (not one of mine).
I still need to fix Wine, but I can probably work around it.