Wow. A friend just messaged me the news that actor Heath Ledger was found dead in New York. I thought he did great work in A Knight’s Tale, Lords of Dogtown, The Brothers Grimm, Brokeback Mountain and Casanova among other roles, and was looking forward to his portrayal of The Joker in the upcoming Batman movie. Man, what could’ve been.
Today’s my parents’ Gold Anniversary so I just want to give a quick shout-out to the two of them. It’s pretty rare for couples to stay together for a year or two these days, much less 50, so here’s to them on their special day! My mom’s told me the secret to happiness in a relationship is communication; basically, make sure you fall in love with someone you can talk to and vice versa. So take that to heart, dear readers!
May they have (at least) 50 more years of marital bliss.
Love you guys.
UPDATE: CONTEST IS OVER.
Thank you to everyone who submitted an entry!
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UPDATE (01/23/08):
I’ve been getting quite a few emails inquiring about who won the contest, so here are the winners, as randomly picked by mombot and popbot (so you can be 99% sure there were no shenanigans involved):
• Bonnie Gillespie, Hollywood, CA
• Jeff P., Los Angeles, CA
• Kellee B., Northridge, CA
and the additional, JEFBOT Mailing-List-Peeps-only winner:
• Mary P.
Californians, all. So the no-shenanigan meter has been re-set to 89%. Congrats again to the winners!
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UPDATE (01/16/08):
Congrats to the winners of the Free JEFBOT T-Shirt Contest! Three winners from the open contest and one from the JEFBOT mailing list only contest should be getting their t-shirts in the next week or two. Thanks to everyone who participated and made the contest such a success!
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As I mentioned last Wednesday, I’ve been planning to commemorate the 25th JEFBOT strip by giving away some free JEFBOT t-shirts. Well, the planning’s done and here are the details:
1. In one of the strips in the JEFBOT Webcomic Archive, I’ve secretly replaced the number “6” emblazoned on the shirt my character Jeff wears, with the number “25.” Find that strip.
2. Once you’ve found it, email me the date, title or number of the strip. Don’t reveal which one it is in the comments, just email it to me. Remember: the less people who know, the better your chances are to win the shirt.
3. The contest will run from now through next Sunday, January 13, after which I’ll throw all the names of the people who emailed me the correct answer into a hat and have someone trustworthy randomly pull out three lucky winners. I’ll announce those winners on January 16.
I think that about does it. I’m hoping this contest will introduce new readers to the first 25 JEFBOT strips in a fun way, and give longtime readers an excuse to re-read some of their favorites. Check out the shirt design below. Unless something at the factory goes wrong, winners will have a choice between the white or black. I’m personally loving the black right now.
Happy hunting!
Warner Bros. announced today that it’s going to drop support for HD-DVD in May of this year and support the Blu-ray format exclusively, which basically means, in my mind, that the High Definition Disc War is over, Blu-Ray won, and HD-DVD needs to pack it up. Not that I’m an HD-DVD hater or anything, I have players for both formats and my HD-DVDs have generally had more interactive features than their Blu-ray counterparts (300). But Blu-ray has caught up technically and will be putting out discs that can compete with those features (like picture-in-picture) going forward, plus a lot more information can be stored on Blu-rays than HD-DVDs, in some cases more than twice the amount of storage space – something the HD-DVD camp can’t fix with a firmware upgrade. And now that Warner Bros. has gone over to Blu-ray, that leaves Paramount (except for Spielberg flicks) and NBC as the sole studios hanging onto HD-DVD. WB, Sony, Fox and Disney (so Pixar) are all supporting Blu-ray.
Anyway, I think the faster HD-DVD gives up, the less confusing it will be for consumers looking to get a high-def disc player, and the quicker it will be for HD-DVDs to go into the bargain bins where I will gladly pick them up. Unless another drastic, unprecedented announcement is made where a few Blu-ray studios jump ship to HD-DVD, I think if you’re looking to pick up a movie player for your new HDTV, your decision has just been made for you. I’m just glad the format with the cooler logo and name won.
Almost every year, I design a Christmas card my mom sends out to friends and family. Since I had half my family already designed for the webcomic, I decided to do a JEFBOT-themed card this year. A nice side effect was that I now have the rest of the family members comic-ready for future strips.