That Joel And His Hijinks (They Ensue)

The iPhone 3G S was released recently. There was much rejoicing on behalf of the fans. I haven’t seen or touched one of the things, so I’ll leave you with a two-part interpretative dance on the topic:

Maybe it’s just me, but I think his art has improved recently. Anyway, he’s a good guy, so hit up his site.

In other news, I hope to one day be internet-popular enough that links like that actually generate significant click-through. Le sigh.

Weekly Shenanigans #1

It might be fun to add some sort of structure to the old blog, right? At the moment, I just sort of slap posts up as they come to me, with absolutely no consistency or discernible pattern. I’d like to try to change that. Maybe I won’t be totally successful at first, but eventually I’ll chisel out something of a schedule, with weekly columns and whatnot. Theoretically I’ll put out something like mobile gaming posts on Mondays, tech tutorials on Tuesdays, etc. Stuff like that, but without the horrific 1950s-style alliteration.

Sounds cool, right? I think so.

Now, it’d be all logical to just start organizing the posts that I already make into categories, but that would be boring and not very T+L-esque. Instead, I’m starting at the end, and writing up a wrap-up of tech and media items of note that caught my eye during the week but weren’t quite post-worthy, as well as some personal tidbits. Furthermore, I’m starting the posting of this column, entitled Weekly Shenanigans, on a Tuesday (because that’s when it makes sense to post something that is part wrap-up, part update, and part caffeine-fueled musing). Never fear, you intrepid logic junkies – that’s only going to be temporary. The following Weekly Shenanigans will go up on Saturdays, or possibly Sundays. I haven’t really worked all the kinks out yet.

Oh, and in the interest of full disclosure, and because some guy somewhere once said “know thyself” or something along those lines, I’m estimating that there’s a 28% chance that this will be the first, last, and only ever Weekly Shenanigans. That’s how I roll (28% of the time).

Okay. There. The column has been sufficiently introduced. Without further ado, and in no particular order, I present the contents of Weekly Shenanigans #1.

Interview: Joel Watson (of Hijinks Ensue)

Joel Watson, creator of Hijinks Ensue

Check it out, kids. For your reading and/or nerdtastic pleasure, I’ve got a nice little interview with Joel Watson, creator of the still relatively-new (one year?) webcomic Hijinks Ensue. He’s still in struggling-artist, trying-to-make-ends-meet mode, so we’ve talked a bit about his experiences in that regard. Check out his work at http://www.hijinksensue.com.

Let’s start off by going over your background. How long have you been producing Hijinks Ensue? What made you get into it?

HE premiered on May 11th 2007. it started as twice weekly and moved to 3 times weekly when I started doing it full time. I started the comic shortly after my daughter was born in order to “remake my life” into something I could be proud of.

Your comic has no discernible continuity or storyline. Is that on purpose?

Absolutely. My brand of comedy comes from taking one thing and turning it on its side, taking it out of context or juxtaposing it with a seemingly unrelated separate thing in order to play them off of each other. The characters in HE just serve has a medium to facilitate the jokes I want to make. Over time the readers have taken to treating them like “real characters” but I have no plans to expand on their personal lives, relationships etc. HE was never intended to tell a story. Just to make people laugh at geek pop culture.

Hijinks Ensue: Check It

I can’t for the life of me remember how I stumbled upon this website. I think it was an image search. Who knows. Wait a second, I got it. It was an image search for Jonathan Coulton. Ha. Good times.

Say hello to Jonathan Coulton.

Anyway, a Hijinks Ensue comic popped up as the first search result. The thumbnail looked sorta like Penny Arcade, which I like, so I clicked. I was mildly disappointed to realize that it wasn’t a PA comic, but very excited to have discovered a new webcomic, and quite by accident at that.