I’m heading off on vacation for the next three weeks ^-^ The pages for the time I’m gone are all queued up and ready to go. I don’t anticipate any problems but if for some strange reason, they don’t update right, then please head over to one of the mirror sites linked to on the right ^-^

I’ll be away from a computer for most of the time but I’ll catch up on all emails and PMs and everything when I get back ^-^ Oh, and the donation bar won’t be updated over that time but any additional pages accrued will be posted when I get back, as well. I should probably mention that the donation bar IS currently up to date. I never reset it after the last extra page because it went right back up to $82 again… which was weird. I think 82 must be the Picatrix lucky number ^-^ Aaaaanyway, I hope you’re all having a great summer and I’ll see you all in three weeks ^-^

Made a few updates to the site today:

1) Fixed up the link page and separated comics into ‘Updating’ and ‘Not updating’. Once in awhile I get asked ‘Do you really read all those comics on the link page?’ Yep, sure do ^-^ Plus a whole bunch over at Comics.com ^-^
My cat Bucky with his namesake from Get Fuzzy:



2) Added a twitter box to the site. It’ll be easier for me to keep up to date with the site while I’m gone on vacation ^-^ Seem to be getting a bit of a hang to the site from it, though…. hmmmm, well, I’ll try it out for a bit and see how it works out.

3) Added a new skyscraper ad, thus kicking off my attempt to find a set of advertisements I like. I use the ad revenue to take out ads for Picatrix on other sites but also, I’m hoping that I can use earn enough with ads to drop down on my commission work and add extra days to Picatrix’s update schedule. If I could do a Monday-Friday schedule, that would make me happy ^-^ But it’s going to take some playing around to see if I can get it to work. In the meantime, feedback on the ads on the site is really appreciated. Like, is a certain ad/adbox super-annoying? Does it make the site slow to load? Are ads you consider offensive showing? Have you noticed any pop-ups that shouldn’t be there? (Picatrix will NEVER have pop-ups! I’m sticking with good ol’ banner ads ^-^) Basically, if you notice anything bothersome or concerning and don’t mind taking a minute, please email me! (jlharam(remove this)@picatrix.net).

Hmmmm, I think that’s all I’ve gotten the chance to update recently. I’ll be making use of that twitterbox to let you know what I’m working on as it’s happening ^-^

*whew* I’ve finally gotten some time to update the news ^-^ I always mean to update it when I post the new day’s comic but lately, it’s been so hot out that I’ve been finishing up the pages in the dead of night and then groggily slorging off to bed XD

So, what’s up in the world of Picatrix…. I’m STILL working on the site. I know, I’ve been working insanely slowly this past… oh geez, month? Six weeks? It’s because I’m leaving home in about a week and a half and taking a month long vacation to just bum around northern and western Europe and I’ve been working SUPER hard to get all the Picatrix pages plus all my freelance work for that month done ahead of time. (That’s also, by the way, why I didn’t take any time off a couple of weeks ago when I got sick… I try hard not to take time off sick without making it up and I didn’t want to fall farther behind ^-^;) So although I’ve been REALLY slow at… well…. pretty much everything…. I do have a pretty big to-do list on my desk that will eventually get finished ^-^

Well, I’ve got quite a few things planned for the site…. whether I’ll be able to get them done before I leave is another matter ^-^; For now, my priority is getting the guest comic and gift art pages back up (it’s taking me forever because I’m having some issues with needing to change some image sizes to fit them nicely into the page layout) and getting the rss feed set up. I’m also trying to set up a spiffy rotating image that will display a random comic from my links page on the main page…. I haven’t gotten it to work yet so for now, I’m using a Xylia banner as my placeholder for that…. because Xylia is awesome (it has faeries! And it’s so pretty…. seriously, check out this page ^-^). I’m not sure if I’m going to keep the banner above the news there… I’ll probably try moving it around to different places to see what looks best… so don’t be disturbed by the banner moving around the page ^-^; Let’s see, what else…. oh, I pruned down the news page a bit…. I’m going to set up a news page archive so I don’t have to delete off the old news all the time and at the same time, I’m going to add a comment box to the news so you don’t have to use the comic commenter one for news stuff. Probably won’t get that done before I leave but that’ll be something to do in August ^-^

Ahhh, I did get most of the work on the forum done. It looks and functions MUCH better now. I just need to get the avatar gallery uploaded and get the ranks to work properly but those are just cosmetic things. Hmmmm, think I’ll finish that off tomorrow (Tuesday) ^-^ As usual, it seems, I’m super late at replying to email. I’m still digging away at it so if you’ve emailed me, don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten you! I’m just still tackling with the mountain that accumulated over that time I was sick ^-^; Geez, was this a long enough news post? ^-^;

Yay, we hit the donation mark so there’ll be an extra comic on Thursday this week ^-^ I’m still plugging away at the site and forum upgrades…. they’re taking so much longer than I’d thought but the forum at least will be finished up and up and running very soon ^-^