The 2019 Farmers' Almanac is available for pre-order! (Ships August 13th)

♐ Sagittarius - Archer (Thighs)

Evening - FAIR

Seeds planted now will do poorly and yield little.

The Moon's current percentage of illumination is 92%.

Dry Fruits and Vegetables, Cut Hair to Slow Growth, Mow...

Https is an important part of keeping your data safe, but it's only a part. It's important to understand what it does and doesn't mean.

Are HTTPS Connections Really Safe? from Ask Leo!.
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When your email is suddenly accessed from a new location, it could mean someone other than you is trying to log in. Email providers like Outlook.com watch for this.

How Do I Keep Outlook.com From Locking Me Out When I Travel? from Ask Leo!.
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Making money online sounds like a wonderful opportunity. It is, if you have the personality for it.

How Can I Make an Income Working Online? from Ask Leo!.
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The Windows 10 Mail program supports multiple email accounts, so I'll show you how to add one.

Add an Account to the Microsoft Mail Program from Ask Leo!.
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Security threats for people working from home are increasing. I'll review steps you need to take to keep yourself, your company, and your job safe.

Five Steps to Better Security Working from Home from Ask Leo!.
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Filters are incredibly power and overlooked ways of managing your email. I'll review setting up filters for common tasks like keeping certain senders out of spam, as well as sending others directly there.

Filters in Gmail and Outlook.com – Ask Leo! Live from Ask Leo!.
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The most important life skill, for everything from getting your computer fixed to becoming a highly-paid professional, may not be what you think it is.

The Most Important Skill from Ask Leo!.
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Technical aptitude and skills are important, of course. But the ability to relate to and work with the people around you is just as crucial.

Are Human Relations Skills Important in Tech? from Ask Leo!.
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Windows can't fix all the bugs on each release. I'll look at some of the reasons Windows might not fix something you consider important.

Why Didn’t Windows Fix My Pet Peeve? from Ask Leo!.
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We need updates, yet they can cause problems. How aggressively should you update your Windows 10 machine?

How Important Is It to Seek Out and Take Updates? from Ask Leo!.
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As of early 2018, scarygoround.com has stopped updating. I am still alive. I've been working on creator-owned print projects (like GIANT DAYS and BY NIGHT for Boom, and STEEPLE for Dark Horse) and doing webcomics for fun on the bobbins.horse website when I've not been drawing anything else. New comics are running there right now.

VISIT BOBBINS.HORSE

I've updated the front page of the Scary Go Round site to reflect my current projects.

That's it.

Thank you, Scary Go Round RSS subscriber.

Billie is terrible at being a Satanist, and Maggie isn’t much better at renouncing it. But the main issue today is how many bicycles I drew. One is too many. It beats Maggie’s Harley Davidson(RIP), mind, that was a real trial to render.

The first issue of my new Boom!Box series, WICKED THINGS, is out today (March 18)! The Giant Days team of me (writing), Max Sarin (art), Whitney Cogar (colours) and Jim Campbell (letters) reunite for an all-new story of Bad Machinery’s Charlotte Grote (and Little Claire), as they are sucked into a fiendish world of metropolitan mystery. 

Get it from your local comic shop (if you can’t get there, you can order it from Page 45 in the UK and Midtown Comics in the USA) or digitally on Comixology.

Here’s an interview I did with CBR about the new series and here’s a six-page preview of issue 1.

Brian looks nude in panel 2, he’s actually wearing trousers where the speech bubble seems to be preserving his modesty, but feel free to imagine him “skyclad”.

Maggie used to be the barmaid at the Victoria, but she no longer rules the roost. “Wasson” means “how’s it going”, or so my regional sensitivity consultant tells me.

From today’s email list:

My approach to writing these comics is to make pages that are a hybrid between a print edition and a straight-up strip. So you get a little punchline payoff and some good panel density (“no splashes” is the rule), but also, they’re designed in two-page spreads to be printed, maybe, one day (if anyone ever wants to). There is a conflict between advancing the plot and telling a joke; you can’t throw away a page on a scene transition in the same way you can in print, with the next page just seconds away. That sucker is up when fresh for, as currently, forty-eight hours. And at the same time, you can’t crash from scene to scene too much between pages because it won’t make sense in print, and if you stick an extra page in for print to make things a bit clearer, it throws off the balance of all your double-page spreads and big-reveal (haha) page turns. So you have to put two boring pages in. Mind you, I think this email I’m currently writing might be a considered a boring page so perhaps I know nothing.

Today’s page is an unavoidable scene transition. I did my best within the constraints of the format. I jazzed it up with the following:
1. Picture of Queen Victoria with little devil horns
2. Carefully designed new character (see fig 1)
3. Magus Tom Pendennis reading very interesting-looking book
4. Under-table angle worthy of The Magnificent Ambersons
5. Person in fedora. TRAY mysterious?

FIG 1

Now a page that could have been, and let me put this plainly, dull as ditchwater, is instead as rich as fruitcake. My gift… to you.

How many books of Ringo Starr songs does Billie own? That’s the second one!

Is today’s comic safe for work? I think it is but it’s the sort of comic I never run on a Friday because it’s definitely too hot to be up on a Sunday.

Purple Listerine is definitely the tastiest one. No one ever gargled Listerine like Christian Bale in “Vice”. He musters a really bubbly spit that it’s great fun to emulate.

I think I got the lighting on Brian’s arse just perfect. Eisner time once again! Tee me up!!!

Don’t ask me why Penrose didn’t just throw that thing back into the sea. Maybe he just thinks it’d be safer all round to be certain that the damn thing stayed dead.

“Squinting bishop” sounds like a sort of cheese, but that’s Stinking Bishop, right? Which is also the name of a kind of pear.

There is a Cornish cheese called Yarg that is wrapped in nettle leaves. “Yarg” tended to be the sound a minor character made when being obliterated in the Transformers comics of my childhood.

Poor Maggie. The road to hell is paved with good intentions etc etc

Mrs Clovis certainly hands out a series of sick burns in today’s page. These burns need to get to hospital, they’re powerfully unwell. Poor Maggie!

Everybody’s going to be cosplaying in Billie’s mad eye-cape. Even if it’s just in their own living rooms.

This comic was a bear to draw. It took twice as long as normal. I don’t know why. I just couldn’t frame myself. The next day I came back and fixed it in 20 minutes flat. Sometimes it’s best just to walk away.

Today we remember Ringo Starr’s deeply non-U hit, “You’re Sixteen”. Appalling then, actionable now. Here’s the video.

And I bring you..

Malham Tarn

This week I have been back on my track bike, for the fist time since my crash in October last year. Now in recent months I have been cycle commuting on my road bike, but somehow it is different and slightly scary to be back on a track bike. Scary but good. It also looks … Continue reading [push] Getting back on the bike.. →

Ok not today but recently…

Finished my first book of the year on new year’s day is a bit of an achievement, but I did start it a month or so ago. The book focuses on his last year as a professional cyclists and insights into life in the peloton. Not quite as satisfying read as the Fall and Rise … Continue reading Book #1 – David Miller – The Racer →