Month: November 2007

1.) THE BOOK: I have it on good authority that a big ol’ shipment of “A Blizzard of Lizards,” the new Sheldon book, is a mere day away! Shazam! Quicker than I expected!

So if you were hopin’ to snag one of those 250 Artist’s Editions, make sure you’re signed up for the newsletter, as those folks will be getting first crack at it! (Note: if you get Sheldon by e-mail, you get the newsletter automatically. No need to sign up again.)

2.) YOUTUBE: Do you remember
this strip, complaining that YouTube doesn’t have anything worthwhile on it? Sheldon reader TJ e-mailed me to share this video of a MIG-25 reaching the edge of space. The beginning is a little slow, but MAN…seeing that jet get to the edge of space is amazing. “The Soviet Union: We Might Not Have Been Able to Build a Car That Could Last Longer Than Two Years, But Our Aeronautics Were Pretty Dang Cool.”

3.) SHELDON MIIS FOR WII: Sheldonista Mike tells me that the Wii system has a new channel called “Check Mii Out”…and that he’s gone ahead and created some Sheldon-inspired Miis. I still don’t have a Wii (*sad*), and so haven’t seen them myself, but I encourage you to check ’em out:

0664-1252-2837 — Sheldon

7616-2906-4837 — Dante

5272-3914-9525 — Gramp

Thanks, Mike!

I’m such a sucker for fun news.

I wasn’t gonna share this for another week or so, but so many folks have been askin’ about it that I’m giving you a sneak peak: Ladies and gents, may I proudly present Sheldon Book Four, A Blizzard of Lizards!

I’m so excited for you guys to get your copy of the book. It really came out great. It has every strip since the last collection, plus a specially-formatted version of the Saturday-only Storyline “Good Luck, Baby Duck,” and extra content you won’t find online. (Want to see a bigger image? Click here. )

Sales for the book should be starting in 7-10 days, and will be shippin’ out in time for worldwide Christmas deliveries. I’m hoping a lot of these puppies will be discovered under the tree Christmas morning.

The one thing I always hear from Sheldonistas is “don’t leave any strips out” of the book collections. And to make sure we get ‘em all in there, we’ll be doing two books a year from now on: One in time for Christmas, and one around San Diego Comic-Con in mid-summer. Just like “A Blizzard of Lizards”, each book will have all the strips in high resolution (showing you the little details you can’t see online), plus book-only content you can’t find anywhere else.

“A Blizzard of Lizards” will be going on sale in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. And, as always, first crack on the Artist’s Editions will go to
newsletter subscribers!

(I just realized I wrote “two shakes of a lamb’s tail”. What a huge dork I am.)

If you’re reading this in the U.S., it stands to reason you won’t be swinging by the ol’ Sheldon site on Thanksgiving. Which is a shame…since the special Thanksgiving-themed strip is particularly awesome this year.
If you get the chance, try to swing by after your fourth helping of apple pie.

In the meantime, here’s an old Thanksgiving favorite from the Sheldon archives.

And, just for fun, a random turkey-related Chuck Norris reference.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

1.) The winner of our first Scavenger Hunt, Greg, sent me a nice follow-up note today. Lots of folks were amazed that Greg found the square in only 14 minutes, so I thought it was worth it to share a bit of his e-mail:

“I guess staying up late reading web comics paid off for once. I
really just went back a couple years in the archives and started
reading until I saw the little square. I kept having to go back to your blog post as I read through the archives because I kept
forgetting what I was looking for.”

Now that we’re done with our first Scavenger Hunt, what did everyone think? Was it fun? Should we do it again sometime? Once or twice a year? Lemme know!

2.) I try to make it a point to answer every e-mail I get, but after a bit of weekend travel and a few pending projects, I’m a little behind! My apologies if you’ve e-mailed and haven’t heard back: I’ll definitely catch back up by Thanksgiving.

3.) Today’s strip has a nice echo to this strip (one of my all-time favorites). I had to return to this concept sooner or later…I just love it when Flaco has to explain something at length.

4.) Speaking of Flaco, I love that the one navy in the world he ended up with is the Bulgarian Navy. “The Bulgarian Navy: Kickin’ Butt and Takin’ Names on the Black Sea, Since 1878.”

5.) And finally, a quick bit of future news to file in the back of your brain for later: Sheldon Book Four Is Coming!

This is awesome. See if you can throw a wad of paper into a trashbin, while accounting for wind speed in the office. What a great time-waster!

Well, after a week of folks diving through the archives to look for the scavenger hunt item, I’m happy to finally reveal our big winner! But first, some fun facts:

1.) There are just over 2,000 strips in the Sheldon archives to search through to find the hidden image.

2.) We had roughly 260 people find the hidden image — which I think is pretty impressive.

3.) Among some of the methods used to find the hidden image, this qualifies for the “Easiest Possible Search Technique” Award. Sheldonista Dani W. found the hidden image by hitting the blue Random button underneath the strip…and “boink”, up came the scavenger-hunt item!

4.) Easily qualifying for the “Least Best Use of Lab Time, But Still Arguably An Inventive Use of Leisure Time” Award was Sheldonista Carlos Z., from Sao Paulo. He’s a software developer who works with computational vision and image processing, and wrote a small program to “check if a given strip had the square.”

5.) I had lots of folks e-mail me to say that, after they started searching, they got lost in actually *reading* the archives…and looked up five hours later not remembering what they were looking for. That’s awesome! My secret hope was that you’d have fun reading through the archives again — and a lot of you clearly did. Interestingly, lots of those folks ended up buying Sheldon Books this week. If it’s all right with you, I’ll take that as a compliment. You had fun readin’ the archives and wanted to read more — so thank you for that!

6.) I won’t (yet) reveal which strip holds the hidden image, as I know a half-dozen folks are still looking.

7.) And the winner is….ta-dum! Greg Schatzman! Greg, e-mail me to talk over your prize sketch!

8.) Greg, by the way, found the image 14 minutes after my blog post went live.

Over in the Sheldon Forums, Tovias left one of the nicest posts ever. Here’s his post:

I just want to thank Dave for having the contest. I got up early Monday morning (even though it was a day off) and saw the blog post and immediately started through the archives. Pretty soon I had forgotten the contest and was enjoying reading the comics. A little later my daughter woke up and joined me. We started reading the strips out loud. She would read the Arthur parts and I would read Gramp and Sheldon. Then my son came down and started reading the Sheldon parts.

It turned out to be one of my best mornings with the kids and everyone had a blast.

A few readers have forwarded this to me over the past few months, so I should probably share it with you all.

Ladies and gentlemen: The Pug Monitor Cleaner

I just noticed that my buddy Greg has passed the 8-year mark with his comic “Real Life”. If you’re not familiar with the strip, here’s a recent favorite of mine.

If you’ve ever listened to three dance songs or dance remixes in a row…you’ll know exactly what Greg’s talking about.

Ran across this quote again, recently, and thought I’d share it…as it’s an ol’ favorite.

“It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.”

– Eleanor Roosevelt